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" They teach women to have better sex, stronger relationships, and fewer fights about money, yet the women you&amp;#039;ll meet here didn&amp;#039;t have all the answers, especially when it came to their own marriages. Now they tell us what they learned the hard way \u2014 and how it can help you. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;M AN OB/GYN WHO HATED SEX&amp;quot; Lissa Rankin, M.D., is a huge believer in frank talk, which is why she recently authored the book What&amp;#039;s Up Down There? Questions You&amp;#039;d Only Ask Your Gynecologist If She Was Your Best Friend. She could have used that kind of support when she was launching her medical career. Lissa suffered from vulvar vestibulitis, a condition in which the entrance to the vagina gets inflamed, making sex excruciatingly painful. &amp;quot;It feels like you&amp;#039;re being stabbed,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;You anticipate the pain, and that makes it even worse.&amp;quot; Her husband was understandably frustrated. &amp;quot;It became a huge issue,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;There was no way for me to experience sexual pleasure.&amp;quot; She tried most of the standard treatments, which include a topical numbing agent (&amp;quot;but that&amp;#039;s numbing for your partner, too, which sort of defeats the purpose&amp;quot;). Eventually they divorced, in part because of the strain caused by Lissa&amp;#039;s condition. The pain of her failed marriage was especially acute since so much of her work was with happy couples starting families. She reached her lowest point when she helped deliver a friend&amp;#039;s baby. &amp;quot;As I was holding this sweet newborn, I thought, I&amp;#039;m going to be an old maid delivering other women&amp;#039;s babies. I&amp;#039;ll never have that experience myself.&amp;quot; But after a year and a half of celibacy, she mustered up the courage to have sex again. &amp;quot;I explored some emotional issues with a therapist, worked hard, and when I met a new man, I was amazed that sex didn&amp;#039;t hurt at all,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;Fortunately, he was a bit smaller, if you know what I mean, and I think that helped both with my confidence and my vagina.&amp;quot; She now believes that vulvar vestibulitis has a psychological component, and that her prolonged episode of it was caused largely by the stress of her medical residency and the strain in her marriage. &amp;quot;There was a lot of trauma in my life \u2014 I was finishing up grueling training, my husband and I had to live in different states for a while, his mother died \u2014 and those stresses were being reflected in my body,&amp;quot; she says. After a few not-quite-right boyfriends, her luck finally turned in a big way at 33, when she met her current husband, Matt. Now they have an adorable 4-year-old daughter and, yes, an extremely satisfying sex life. Lissa says she wouldn&amp;#039;t change a thing about her 20s because her experience has made her a better doctor. &amp;quot;I go further. My intake form asks, &amp;#039;Are you happy in your relationship? Are you satisfied with your sex life?&amp;#039;&amp;quot; she says. Many of her patients have been suffering in silence with a painful vaginal condition or loss of libido and are grateful to be asked. &amp;quot;When I make the diagnosis, I tell them about my personal experience,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;They&amp;#039;re so relieved to know that they&amp;#039;re not the only ones, because everybody in the movies is having effortless orgasms.&amp;quot; Her history also has made Lissa doggedly determined to help these women overcome their disorders. &amp;quot;I treated one woman with vulvar vestibulitis who was engaged but whose fianc\u00E9 was about to call off the wedding over it,&amp;quot; she recalls. &amp;quot;In addition to prescribing the standard medications, I taught them both sexual and romantic techniques that would help her get more comfortable with penetration. It took about six months, but it worked, and they wound up inviting me to their wedding. It was so satisfying, and moments like that have totally redeemed that hard chapter of my past.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;M A MARRIAGE COUNSELOR WHO WAS THISCLOSE TO DIVORCE&amp;quot; As a couples therapist, Nancy Fagan helps clients resolve their marital issues for a living. But six years ago, she was sneaking out between appointments to consult with a divorce lawyer to end her own marriage. She felt her husband was controlling and that he put his adult daughters (from his previous marriage) before her. &amp;quot;For the first time, I experienced emotions that I&amp;#039;d only heard about from my clients,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;d lost my sense of self because of our problems.&amp;quot; Although Nancy had been married once before, to her college boyfriend, that divorce had been extremely amicable. Her second marriage was supposed to be the forever one, and she was blindsided when it began to sour. &amp;quot;I could look at my clients and think, Oh, my gosh, so this is what you&amp;#039;re going through!&amp;#039;&amp;quot; says Nancy. &amp;quot;But since I couldn&amp;#039;t reveal that I was failing at my own specialty, I couldn&amp;#039;t talk to anybody. I was so ashamed.&amp;quot; She felt herself shutting down emotionally and says, &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;d seen so many other women do that, and I knew that withdrawing makes it nearly impossible to rescue a marriage. But I just couldn&amp;#039;t stop myself.&amp;quot; Nancy explains that it&amp;#039;s pretty typical for women to assume the role of relationship caretaker, and if the husband won&amp;#039;t participate in trying to improve the marriage, the wife eventually takes it as evidence that he&amp;#039;s no longer emotionally invested and just gives up: &amp;quot;When this happens, it&amp;#039;s crucial that the husband take the reins to help fix the problems, because by then the woman just feels over it.&amp;quot; Luckily, her husband, a corporate strategic planner, wouldn&amp;#039;t go down without a fight. &amp;quot;He said, &amp;#039;We both have these incredible tools that we use to help others, so how can we apply them to ourselves?&amp;#039;&amp;quot; They sat down, listed each other&amp;#039;s strengths, and then tackled each other&amp;#039;s shortcomings. Nancy told him that she hated how he shared intimate details of their lives with his grown daughters, and he said he resented that she no longer trusted him and wouldn&amp;#039;t give him a chance to change. Then they identified specific actions that would fix those issues. For example, &amp;quot;He committed to always tell me what&amp;#039;s going on in his life first, and we made a list of topics that should never be discussed outside of our marriage,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;In exchange, I agreed to open up to him again without waiting for him to prove his trustworthiness. I gave him a clean slate.&amp;quot; Lists, agreements, actions \u2014 it all sounds like a meeting with human resources, but it resonated with the Fagans. &amp;quot;It was a very pragmatic way of looking at the issues, and it worked,&amp;quot; Nancy says. She used their experience to launch a brand-new type of service, which she now calls &amp;quot;marriage mediation.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Unlike traditional marriage counseling, mediation isn&amp;#039;t about exploring your emotions or the roots of your issues; it&amp;#039;s about identifying specific problems, hammering out solutions \u2014 and being committed to changing your ways,&amp;quot; she says. Her technique: Approach your marital problems as if they were work issues. &amp;quot;Use a pad of paper or a white board to write everything down. It will help you remove some of the emotion from the situation.&amp;quot; Once couples agree on a game plan, she tells them to put it in writing and sign the document as they would a legal agreement. Nancy&amp;#039;s marriage is now better than ever. When she has a bad day at the office, her husband will show up with homemade chocolate chip cookies, and he recently whisked her off to a seven-course gourmet dinner, just because. But more important: &amp;quot;He sticks to the rule that I get to hear his secrets and important news, and first.&amp;quot; Of course, &amp;quot;it&amp;#039;s human nature to revert back to old habits, but if you put your new plan in writing, it&amp;#039;s harder to,&amp;quot; Nancy says. &amp;quot;My husband and I still &amp;#039;check in&amp;#039; every few months to make sure nothing negative is festering.&amp;quot; So far, the agreement is binding. NEXT: &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;M A FINANCIAL EXPERT MARRIED TO A CHRONIC SPENDER&amp;quot;  &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;M A FINANCIAL EXPERT MARRIED TO A CHRONIC SPENDER&amp;quot; In her mid-20s, Ellie Kay had a newly minted business degree, was debt-free, and was already a successful financial broker. Then she met Bob. An Air Force fighter pilot, he had &amp;quot;the confidence of a Top Gun and the kindness of a Jimmy Stewart,&amp;quot; she says. Oh, and $40,000 in debt. &amp;quot;I didn&amp;#039;t realize what a mess his finances were until we were already in love,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;He was on a modest military salary and had to help support two children from his previous marriage, so our ability to dig out of that debt was very limited.&amp;quot; Things got even trickier when Ellie quit her job to have kids (five in the first seven years they were married) and prioritize Bob&amp;#039;s military career, which had them moving 11 times in 13 years. Although Ellie had always been frugal (&amp;quot;I&amp;#039;ll wear underwear with holes in it!&amp;quot;), she soon realized that Bob was anything but. &amp;quot;He would go out to buy batteries and come home with a VCR \u2014 and we didn&amp;#039;t even own a TV!&amp;quot; she says. Her low point came six months into their marriage, when she was pregnant with their first child. &amp;quot;We had maxed out all of our credit cards and didn&amp;#039;t have money to buy groceries,&amp;quot; she recalls. Unsure how they were going to eat, the couple went to pick up Bob&amp;#039;s daughters from his former mother-in-law&amp;#039;s house and, as luck would have it, found that she was cleaning out her pantry and had bags of groceries to give away. Ellie stretched the handout for six weeks. That rock-bottom moment inspired Ellie to get serious about fixing their finances, and to get an equally humiliated Bob to sign on to doing it her way: &amp;quot;We made a commitment to stop the madness of spending and put every extra dollar to paying down the debt.&amp;quot; Their extreme scrimping and saving meant secondhand clothes and no eating out, not even fast food. In two years, the couple eliminated every last dollar of that $40K debt, but rather than treat themselves, Ellie insisted that they build their savings instead. Occasional trips to McDonald&amp;#039;s were now in the budget, but &amp;quot;I was adamant that we only go on Tuesdays, because that was Happy Meal night, and I&amp;#039;d eat one along with the kids,&amp;quot; she says. They couldn&amp;#039;t have done it without communication. &amp;quot;We would sit down for an hour every Monday night after the kids were in bed and talk through our finances,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;And I made it a rule to always start out saying something positive, even if we were angry.&amp;quot; After taking a hard look at the numbers and working through their issues of the moment, they&amp;#039;d agree not to talk about them again for a week. &amp;quot;This was crucial, because it kept us from being obsessed about money all of the time,&amp;quot; she says. They also set some basic ground rules. They adopted what Ellie calls the &amp;quot;envelope system&amp;quot;: placing all of their budgeted cash for the week in envelopes designated for groceries, gas, and other expenses. &amp;quot;That gave us a visual reminder of how much we were spending,&amp;quot; she says. Any purchase of $100 or more had to be cleared with the other spouse. Ellie clipped coupons like crazy, and called up their credit card companies to ask for lower APRs. Two decades later, Ellie travels the world for speaking engagements and has authored 14 books on personal finance. She says that the struggles of those newlywed years have inspired everything that followed. But that&amp;#039;s not to say that her money issues are all resolved. &amp;quot;We bought an HD television a few years ago that works great, but now Bob really wants a flat-screen LED,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;I teach people that there&amp;#039;s always going to be a newer TV, computer, or car, and you have to compartmentalize the urge to spend and be content with what you have. I call it &amp;#039;choosing contentment&amp;#039; \u2014 and we&amp;#039;ll always have to work hard on that.&amp;quot; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.redbookmag.com/love-sex/relationships/advice/a6685/experts-with-love-problems/>