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"Liz is 46; Dave is 47. They were introduced by Dave&amp;#039;s ex-girlfriend and have been married for 21 years. How did you guys meet? Liz: I&amp;#039;d been on a bunch of bad blind dates and I&amp;#039;d decided that I wasn&amp;#039;t gonna commit to dinner or an evening out with somebody on a blind date anymore, so I said, &amp;quot;Let&amp;#039;s meet for drinks.&amp;quot; We met at this bar. He was already there and I walk in and we&amp;#039;re carrying the same messenger bag from Banana Republic. Dave: Circa 1987 or something like that. Liz: And then we sit down at bar and we&amp;#039;re talking and we realize that we have a lot in common. We&amp;#039;re reading the same book \u2014 and it was Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, so it wasn&amp;#039;t a common new release. Dave: Our birthdays are a year and a day apart. Our phone numbers were similar. Liz: Same numbers laid out differently! Which is one of those little things, like I don&amp;#039;t even know how we got there, but we had more significant things in common. So we decided to go for dinner. We went to a Chinese restaurant and at the end we got our fortune cookies and Dave opened his and it said: &amp;quot;Your future happiness is across the table.&amp;quot;  Awww. Dave: The deal was after the first date, we both had to call [my ex] and sort of report back. Liz: Which was awesome! Dave: We got the lowdown on each other and she said, &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m gonna tell each of you that you like each other.&amp;quot; Liz: So we went out the next night! Dave: And pretty much every night thereafter. That was February. We got married Valentine&amp;#039;s Day the following year. We had dated and gotten married in 51 weeks. Liz: In &amp;#039;93. And a year and a half later we had our first child. We had four kids by 2003. What kind of wedding did you have? Liz: It was pretty traditional: a Jewish wedding with a chuppah. My parents paid for it, but they&amp;#039;re not wealthy people, so my dad says, &amp;quot;Here&amp;#039;s your budget and you can spend it however you want,&amp;quot; so we planned it, and every time we&amp;#039;d report back with an expense, like the invitations or the flowers, he&amp;#039;d put it on the spreadsheet and we&amp;#039;d get a pie chart like, &amp;quot;This is how much you have left.&amp;quot; [Laughs.] So, what do you fight about now? Dave: The money is usually a big thing. What to do with it? How much to make? Liz: How much I spend. I have a graphic design freelance business, but it doesn&amp;#039;t really impact our lifestyle. I had a job for a year as an administrative assistant, which, again, didn&amp;#039;t impact our lifestyle and I couldn&amp;#039;t do it. My parents are having health issues and between them and the kids, me being out of the house for what I was making \u2014 or not making! \u2014 didn&amp;#039;t work for us.  So when you do fight about money, what does that look like? Liz: It isn&amp;#039;t so much my personal spending, it&amp;#039;s like I wanna do stuff to the house or we wanna go on a family vacation and he doesn&amp;#039;t wanna spend the money. Dave: My general default in life is that I don&amp;#039;t like thinking about change, but when it happens, I enjoy it. So like with travel, I don&amp;#039;t want to think about planning something \u2014 it&amp;#039;s moderately overwhelming \u2014 so I&amp;#039;ll say no. I&amp;#039;ll maybe complain about it and not be helpful, but once it actually happens, it&amp;#039;s great.  Isn&amp;#039;t it fascinating to hear him say this? He has such clarity in this moment. Dave: I totally get it! If you chart my emotions, I go from normal to blowing up to fine really quickly. Liz is very even-keeled: not raising her voice, not raising her voice, not raising her voice, and then three weeks later it could be that one little thing like not doing the dishes that night that sets her off and then I hear about things two or three weeks in the past. Liz: My tendency is to let it go, let it go, let it go, and then I realize I&amp;#039;ve let a bunch of things go and I can&amp;#039;t anymore and I pile on. Dave: There are a lot of words that are used, like, &amp;quot;I can&amp;#039;t take it anymore!&amp;quot; and I&amp;#039;m like, &amp;quot;Wow, after all this time this is what&amp;#039;s going to blow it up?&amp;quot; Liz: Probably the biggest issue is your delivery. Dave: Yeah, I don&amp;#039;t always choose my words wisely. Liz: It&amp;#039;s not always the words he uses; it&amp;#039;s the delivery of the words, and it&amp;#039;s not just me, the kids also have this joke. They call it \u2026 Dave: Crazy eyes. Liz: His eyes get really big when he gets really mad. So it&amp;#039;s like, Why do you have to talk to me that way? After 22 years, we both know this about each other ... It is what it is. Dave: And I try not to take it personally.  How has your sex life changed over the course of your marriage? Dave: Honey? [Waves hand toward her like, &amp;quot;Take it away, Liz!&amp;quot;] I actually think it started out fine, but then with the kids, that was a big deal. I went from moderately resentful to being horribly resentful to then not caring that I was resentful to then realizing I probably need to make an effort at it. Liz: I mean, we got pregnant right away, so for 99 percent of our marriage I was pregnant or we had a baby or small children. And then you have teenagers! Dave: They&amp;#039;re roaming the house at 11 at night. Liz: Yeah! They&amp;#039;re up at all hours! The privacy issue becomes part of it. And sometimes you&amp;#039;re just exhausted and you don&amp;#039;t want to. Dave: Every magazine, I automatically go to the sex pages to find where it says, &amp;quot;The best thing you can do, even if you don&amp;#039;t feel like it, is to be intimate with your husband.&amp;quot; And I always leave that page open. Liz: He&amp;#039;ll dog-ear it. What are you most looking forward to in your marriage? Dave: Our last anniversary, over dinner, we said, &amp;quot;Let&amp;#039;s think about what we wanna do when the kids move out; everything is on the table. Do we wanna move back downtown? Do we wanna travel?&amp;quot; I didn&amp;#039;t realize how much from Liz&amp;#039;s perspective it was going to be all about the kids. I open the other page on those magazine where it&amp;#039;s like, &amp;quot;The kids will be better off if they can see that mom and dad are happy and spend time together.&amp;quot; And it&amp;#039;s not that we don&amp;#039;t have that ... Liz: We don&amp;#039;t have it maybe as much as we should.  What&amp;#039;s the best thing you&amp;#039;ve done for your marriage? Dave: Um, put a lock on the door. Liz: We put a lock on the bedroom door, yeah! Dave: Because Liz was like, &amp;quot;Someone is gonna come in!&amp;quot; and I literally got up, went to the hardware store, and got a lock. Do you and your spouse want to tell your story? Or do you know a great couple who should tell theirs? Email secretlifeofmarrieds@gmail.com to submit for this column. The Secret Life of Marrieds is a weekly series of interviews with married couples about the things no one tells you about marriage. Check back every Tuesday at 1 p.m. EST for a new interview. Previously: What It&amp;#039;s Really Like to Get Married Young. RELATED: 20 Things No One Tells You About Wedding Planning Jane Marie is a writer living in Los Angeles. Follow her on Twitter. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.cosmopolitan.com/sex-love/q-and-a/a28468/the-secret-life-of-marrieds-liz-dave/>