Let Me Tell You Something (18 page)

To this day, I love to go on the teacup ride with Al, he will spin the wheel so fast and it makes the kids laugh so hard to see me screaming like that at their father.

I feel that now, in our lives, the real adventures are about to begin. Albert and I have the world at our feet, and I can't wait to get out and see it. I thought that it would be fine to go to countries where
Housewives
isn't shown, but I hadn't thought about other travelers! When we were in Italy for our twenty-fifth anniversary, we ended up getting chased by American tourists. It was ridiculous, being chased down the piazzas. I know the show is big in England and Australia and Germany, so I guess I'll wait to go to those places.

Our next trip, I hope, will be to Scotland and Ireland, to explore all the old castles and ruins and see the gorgeous countryside. Then I want to go back to Italy, and do a foodie tour. I want to see Paris and London. We also want to buy a boat and spend our summers sailing up and down the East Coast. Years ago, we used to take the kids to Cape Cod, to a town called Orleans. I want a house there, but now we're worried about living too far away from our future grandkids.

It doesn't matter to me that I may not speak the language in the countries I want to go to, or know my way around or understand their customs. I've waited my whole life to see this planet of ours, and now that Al is about to have the time, I can't wait for the best job a retiree can have: tour guide!

Cheating? It didn't
happen, but it could.

I've had plenty of opportunities to cheat on Al. Over the years a lot of men have come up to me, they've pinched my ass, they've flirted, they've propositioned me. I've always laughed them off, shrugged them away. Why the hell would I ever cheat? Why would I risk what I have at home for a few hours of fun?

I've worked for too many years to throw it away on a fling. Men have tried for years, and the answer is now and will always be no. I'm fiercely loyal to Albert, and I'm just as committed. Nothing is worth losing a lifetime with somebody else. What do you get out of an affair? Do you get to check it out with someone else? Is it even that interesting? I'll tell you what—it's not interesting enough to risk your marriage.

But I think that times have changed and now people use the term “hook up” very lightly. Men and women seem to be much better at separating sex from feelings. They can have sex with no strings attached, they can almost do it for fun. Of course, some people do fall in love with their affairs, and that scenario is never going to end well. These days, it seems people can hook up recreationally and move on without a second thought. They can pick up a stranger in a bar, bang them, and come home without ever thinking of that person again. People can do whatever the hell they like, but I am definitely not wired this way.

There are many types of cheater. There's the guy who makes a mistake just one time, and there are serial cheaters. How you react depends on your situation. The worst thing you can ever do is confront your partner with both guns a-blazing.

If you think your partner has cheated on you, before you even confront your partner, try to learn the specifics of the situation. And then ask yourself, why did he cheat? Is there something broken in your relationship? When I hear that a guy is cheating, I always wonder if his wife stopped giving him attention, or if she became so involved in her kids' lives that she has forgotten about him altogether.

I hear about people who cheat on their partners because they don't like it that the partner has gained weight. They're assholes. Love is blind, and beauty is in the eye of the beholder. If a person is still attentive to their mate, they won't care that they gained weight for whatever reason. When I see Albert, I don't see a bald man with a gray beard. I see the man I fell in love with.

If you ask yourself what's broken and the answer is that your relationship is in trouble, you sit down and talk it out. You loved each other enough to get married, where's that love now? If the following words are coming out of your mouth on a regular basis—“Where are you going? Are you going out with your friends again? When are you going to fix the roof? You need to pick up the lawn!”—then you've turned into your mother. Shut the hell up and be his friend. Guess what? He didn't marry his mother, he married his girlfriend. Fix your marriage and work through the momentary indiscretion.

I don't know if Al has ever cheated. I don't have any reason to suspect that he's ever cheated. But I do know that the odds are against me. I'm certainly not going to open up Pandora's box and ask if at some point during the last thirty years, he messed around on me. If he did, it would have been in a moment of weakness or at a time when he was stressed. I honestly don't know. I'm making assumptions here. But statistically speaking, he was twenty when we met, and we dated from that young age. All logic tells me that the odds are stacked wildly against me. And I'm fine with it because there's never been any indication of any other relationship from him. I'm just saying that my brain tells me that the odds aren't in my favor.

Listen, if he'd come home with lipstick on his collar, I would want to know what the hell was going on. I've never seen lipstick or smelled another woman's perfume on my husband. I don't see the point in going looking for something that's not necessarily there.

My husband would die for me, he'd take a bullet for me. So why would I want to go back in time and say, wait a minute, did you have a fling? No, I'm not going to do that. I understand that I married this man at a very young age. He dealt with tremendous pressure and responsibility. And if he fell or stumbled, he picked himself up. I'm not going to obsess over it, but I'm aware of the realities of my situation.

How to argue with your
husband so he still loves you!

Everyone argues. It's a fact of life. When it comes to my marriage, I always argue with a smile on my face. In the middle of an argument I'll ask “What's the problem, let's talk about it,” we'll break it down, and then I'll laugh, realizing that there's really no need for an argument after all. Very little is worth having a war over, so I'll start to crack a joke rather than crack a skull.

Al and I don't fight much, but we disagree all the time. In thirty years, we've maybe had four major fights but a million disagreements. I'm smart enough to see that moment when something can turn into a war if I choose to be an asshole. At that point, I lighten the mood and make a joke. “You're gonna leave me now? You gonna draw up divorce papers?” It defuses the argument very effectively.

It makes you realize that whatever you're arguing about isn't as important as being happy with each other.

Last season on the show during the episode where it was our anniversary, we went to our old apartment above The Brownstone and Al got strawberries and champagne. There was no way I was going to give the producers footage of me eating strawberries, fed to me by my husband, so I decided I didn't want to eat the strawberries Al had gotten for me. Al got upset, and that's the sort of thing that could've turned into a silly fight, so before it got out of hand, I started laughing and I bent his finger back, and then he was laughing, and we moved right past the problem.

Sure it's important to get your point across, but it's more effective to chase it with something silly or stupid to lighten the situation. Unless it's the most serious matter you can think of, a silly argument or a tiff is never worth escalating for the sake of your pride.

I honestly don't even recall our biggest fights. Even at our worst, we are both looking for ways to stop the fight rather than add fuel to the fire. Some couples thrive on the drama of arguing. They love the passion and they love the makeup sex. I am not that person.

Screaming is no good in a relationship. When somebody screams all the time, the scream becomes less effective. Albert never raises his voice. I've only seen him lose it a couple of times, always at The Brownstone, and when that happens, you better run. But if he screamed like that all the time, nobody would listen. The secret to our arguing is that our goal as a couple has always been to make the other person laugh. Al has always said that my tears are his Kryptonite. He cannot stand to see me unhappy. If I cry, he literally cannot function. He will call me a million times until he thinks I'm OK. This is why when we're arguing we don't ever get to the point of no return.

Al lost his father suddenly and tragically when he was so young. He learned very early in life that you never know if you'll see a person again. I know in my heart this is why he never wants to end any of our communication in a negative way. At the end of a disagreement, he'll always tell me he loves me and ask for a kiss. The big picture is always bigger than what we're dealing with.

I have a nervous laugh, so when I'm nervous about telling him something, I start laughing. Then he starts laughing, and whatever I have to tell him becomes a lot less serious. And this is how I've mastered the art of arguing so that my husband still loves me when we're done disagreeing.

My kids will all grow up
and leave me one day to
start families of their own, and
nothing would make me happier.

As much as I have not loved the long hours that Albert worked, I have benefited from it, as it has permitted me to devote every night to my kids. Albert never felt the brunt of my dedication to the kids because he was never home. If he'd been home at five or six o'clock every night would I have been able to be the type of mother that I am? No way in hell. I compensated for the fact that he wasn't around too much by becoming a better mother. I could've instead surrounded myself with girlfriends and gone out to dinners with them when Al was working late, but that's not what makes me tick. There's nothing I'd rather be doing than hanging out with my kids.

I made sure I shared everything that the kids did with Albert; I kept them very connected. Even though his work caused him to miss important milestones in the kids' lives, I made sure I shared everything with him and kept them very connected. Even to this day we share everything, and that strong connection is the glue that holds our marriage together.

I know that Lauren and I will keep this kind of bond until I die. It's easier for mothers and daughters to be connected like that. But somewhere out there are two women who will come into my sons' lives and take them away from me. And that's fine. That's how it should be.

I'm absolutely ready to lose them to those women, if they're happy. You raise your kids to be happy, whole individuals, and all you want is for them to be content. When I married Albert, I became the most important woman in his life forever, until he dies. That's how it should be. I became his wife, and then the mother of his children.

I don't think it's going to be too tough when my boys get married. I will be the best mother-in-law on the planet. If you make my child smile, I will love you forever. I don't care if you're purple and paint yourself in green latex and do backflips through my house while you're yodeling. I don't care if you cook, I don't care if you clean, just make my child happy.

I've been with Albert for over thirty years now, and when that man walks in the door, my heart could explode. If he walked in right this second, I'd stop writing this book to hang out with him. To hell with you. That's the way I am. People tell us all the time that we beam when we see each other. That's my wish for my children, nothing more. To have the same bond with their spouse as their father and I have. When that person walks in the door I want my child to beam after thirty years.

I would like to be a mother-in-law that is around a lot. All three of the kids, in any relationship that they've had, I've become a friend to their partners. And I'm honestly looking forward to each of them marrying and moving on. It's the next phase in the life of this family, and I can't wait to be a part of it.