Category: Relationships Publisher: The Peppertree Press
ISBN-10: 1936051281
Type: Non-Fiction
Pages: 168
Copyright: September 9, 2009
ISBN-13: 9781936051281
Frequent Foreplay Miles shows you how to create intimacy in all aspects of your relationship. Turn everyday stuff into opportunities to score big with your sweetheart!
Want more WOW in your relationship-in and out of the bedroom?
FREQUENT FOREPLAY MILES shows you how to create intimacy in all aspects of your relationship. Written with humor, common sense practicality, and a conversational style, this book shows you how to turn everyday stuff-from a trip to the grocery store to an uh-oh situation-into an opportunity to score big with your sweetheart and rack up Frequent Foreplay Miles. You'll also learn how to:
Develop the habit of constructive candor
Turn knee-jerk negative reactions into positive spin
Embrace differences as ways to express your love and strengthen your bond
Honor and protect your relationship as something bigger than the two of you
Experience individual, personal growth
Deal with habits that might otherwise drive each other crazy
With FREQENT FOREPLAY MILES as your guide, you'll have more WOW in your relationship and the Total Intimacy you want. It's fun. It's easy. It's sexy. And it works.
Excerpt
It began twelve years ago over morning coffee and cinnamon toast. Dale, my husband, was always late. It always annoyed me. I had gently suggested, then nagged, to no avail. On that day I had an inspiration. I would put it in a context he would understand: SEX! I smiled sweetly, pointed my butter knife at him for emphasis, and said, “Dale, you need to know something about being in a relationship: foreplay is all day, every day, 24/7. It includes anything and everything that affects how I feel about you. So here’s an idea for you. Try racking up Frequent Foreplay Miles by being on time. The more miles you rack up, the more ‘in the mood’ I’ll be.”
We laughed, but Dale got it and, in his sexual self-interest, pledged to become the on-time guy. After breakfast he earned Frequent Foreplay Miles by wiping the table free of toast crumbs. I earned mine by ironing his shirt. Our good-bye kiss was especially sweet. The sheets sizzled that night, and in the afterglow we acknowledged that the simple idea expressed in our morning’s playful exchange had legs. It became our philosophy to earn as many and lose as few Frequent Foreplay Miles as possible. We had fun with it. When I made Dale a tuna fish sandwich or he emptied the trash, we made sure we got our Frequent Foreplay Miles. Before long it was an integral part of our life. Laughter was the hallmark of our relationship. We were the couple others envied. We were so easily happy and fit so naturally together, we thought it would never change.
We were wrong.
Because of a business partnership that went bad, we suffered a financial setback that turned our idyllic life on its head. Faced with the loss of our financial security, we left the life we loved in California and moved to Richmond, Virginia. Dale and I are adventurous people. We arrived in Virginia with our sense of adventure intact. I would build a business and Dale, as part of our economic recovery, would remodel our “new” 80-year-old, long-neglected Tudor that was the evil twin to our beautiful California home. We said it would be fun. And it was—for a little while.
Our furniture would not arrive for several weeks. We moved into the house with our cat Sophie still drugged from the Benadryl that kept her calm on the plane from California, a coffee pot, towels and bed linens, work clothes, and a blowup bed. I had the foresight to pack a repair kit for the bed, but we were never able to find the pinhole leak that caused it to slowly deflate. Every night, about 2 a.m., we would wake nose-to-nose in the sagging middle, wrestle with that giant-balloon-of-a-bed to pull ourselves to the edge, blow it back up, then spend a few minutes giggling—or a lot of minutes doing something else—before going back to sleep.
Our days were spent working on the house. While Dale gutted the kitchen, I stripped paint. We made jokes about the pinhole leak and its effect on our middle-of-the-night sex life. When wasps as big and as mean as fighter jets invaded our house, we took turns shooting them with bug spray and competing over body count. We bought a small TV at Costco and watched the 2004 election results as we sat on the floor eating grilled cheese sandwiches cooked on the electric skillet that was our kitchen. The Richmond International Raceway is a few miles from our house. On race night, we’d open all the windows and listen to the live roar of the engines as we watched on the muted TV. As lifelong residents of California, we were weather weenies. Thunder and lightning, common in Virginia, had us out on the porch, holding hands, watching in awe.
There were good times. But we were alone in Richmond and missed lifelong friends. We were no longer able to travel or afford the things that had made our life enjoyable. The remodeling project quickly became overwhelming. Before long, we began to grieve for the life we had loved and lost. That grief spilled over into our relationship. One day, as we made our billionth trip to Home Depot, it hit me. We weren’t talking. It was quiet in the car. We, who had so often vied for airtime, had run out of things to say. I searched for a way to jumpstart the conversation. Nothing. I was too sad, too depressed, too emotionally tired. Dale was too. The joy and laughter we once shared had given way to feelings of disappointment and individual guilt over the circumstances that had led to our move. Our sadness bordered on depression. We were no longer having fun. We were drifting apart.
I’ll be honest. I wondered whether we would make it. As I look back, I am convinced that our marriage survived because long before our financial woes we had made a conscious decision to bank those Frequent Foreplay Miles. We continued to do the “little things” that kept our FFM accounts full. Dale still brought morning coffee to me. I still put his laundry away. He noticed when I finished a book and bought me another of the legal thrillers I am addicted to. I had his car washed. Those small acts of kindness were reminders of our “for better or worse” pledge to take care of each other, reminders that kept us focused on easing the other’s pain. We weren’t perfect. Like all relationships, ours is not free of wounds. And like most people who face adversity, we weren’t always at our best. We made Frequent Foreplay Miles “withdrawals” by being testy, grumpy, irritable and, sometimes downright disagreeable, but because we started with a high balance and continued to add to that balance, our Frequent Foreplay Miles accounts were always in the black.
Most importantly, as a byproduct of our philosophy, we had established mutual trust. As we worked through the challenge we felt safe expressing our thoughts, our doubts, our fears, and our hopes, even when what one of us said was difficult for the other to hear. The joy and the laughter eventually came back. By staying true to our Frequent Foreplay Miles philosophy, we emerged as a stronger, more committed couple. The intimacy we now share—in and out of the bedroom—is richer and better than ever for having faced down the challenge.
Frequent Foreplay Miles. It started as a bit of a joke, nothing more than my playful way of making a point to Dale. It became a philosophy of marriage that sustained us through a major challenge. From there, it has evolved into what it is today—a strategy that will help you have Total Intimacy. That is when:
• You are so connected in mind and heart you feel a physical bond;
• It’s totally cool to share your most private thoughts, needs and desires;
• You are 24/7 cheerleaders—nurturing, loving, and supportive—so you become the best that you can be;
• You trust that even when mess-ups happen, you’ve both acted with good intentions; and
• As an added bonus, you want to jump each other’s bones at every opportunity!
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