I forgot to add this wrinkle to my post about my non-anniversary. A few weeks out, I told Rob I had a business trip to Chicago just after our big day, and suggested that since neither of us had ever spent time in the Windy City, maybe he should come along and we could tack on an extra night in the hotel.

We have no love life at home, so you know, I figured it wouldn't hurt to see what playing around in a new city and retiring to a lovely hotel room could do for us.

He said he'd check about getting a day or two off from work to make it happen, and then promptly forgot, day after day, to do so. Sounds like a guy who is not up for a romantic whirlwind trip away to a new city with his much-adored wife, right?

The truth is we both find excuses to avoid romantic situations. And week after week we work with a therapist on improving our communication and figuring out our shared goals, and never speak of the fact that there's nothing intimate about our relationship. We're all about denial.

A friend recently admitted he has to make a conscious effort to have relatively frequent sex with his girlfriend. He says it's too easy to forgo it in the name of exhaustion or lack of amorous mood, and that he find he has to work at it, as you would in creating a new, good habit. He's never disappointed once things get going, and always happy he made the effort.

But it has been so long for me a Rob — a year and a half — that I can't imagine getting over that initial hurtle...or enjoying the experience, much less make a habit of it.

Okay, I'm making a pledge now to bring up sex at couple's therapy soon. If you think you're getting tired of me posting about my lack of a sex life, imagine being in my shoes (or bed). 

Congrats to Alice on her recent anniversary! I just celebrated one as well: my fifth wedding anniversary. But since my friendly and comfortable relationship with Rob sorely lacks romance, the idea of making big deal about our fifth was a bit embarrassing.

Add to that how I gave Rob an honest yet hopeful note card last Valentine's Day and he gave me nothing (I know, it's a ridiculous holiday, but nothing whatsoever?), and you get full-blown AWKWARD!

A few days out, Rob actually checked in to see how we should handle it. Well, we had already justified our recent vacation by calling it an anniversary gift to ourselves. So maybe we were all set. Plus, we had a block party and another friend's house party to attend on the anniversary date. So we'd spend the day being neighborly.

When our actual anniversary arrived, this time I had nothing for Rob and he had a note card for me. It read in part: "I'm glad to be where we are today.... I'm glad we're on this path together and I love the family and home we've made together."

Oof! I felt guilty. I don't disagree with what he wrote, but even in the face of his transformation from drinker and gamer to more thoughtful partner and fellow meditation practitioner, my doubt about us surviving long-term remains strong. Congeniality and shared interests are important, but when there's no sex, it's nearly impossible to pretend everything is good, much less something to be celebrated. 

The other day I was cruising around online for success/failure statistics on re-marrying your ex and the closest thing I could find was an un-sourced article that said there are none. Helpful.

If I'd found the numbers, they wouldn't really apply to me anyway, being as I never technically divorced my ex before the reunification.

And, really, who cares about the numbers anyway?

What I found way more practical than a bunch of numbers that have little to do with my husband, my relationship, and my attempt to raise it up from the ashes was a list of 10 tips for making a second marriage work.

It's the kind of stuff we talk about in therapy every week. Right now the biggie for me is flexibility, figuring out how to integrate all my solo routines back into a partnership lifestyle without feeling like I've forfeited myself.

These first few weeks it's been rough transitioning back to being on as a mom everyday; I've mourned the me time I had half of every week and I realized I'm just as exhausted by the change in routine as I was when I left two years ago.

Aha, there's that aha moment. The change in routine. It's the transition exhausting me, the recalibration itself, more than specifics of how things are changing.

That whole first year of separation was a struggle to figure out how. How to do it all myself. How to get dinner on the table every night and kids to school on time every morning. The second year, I had it down.

Easy isn't the right word, but it stopped feeling impossible.

Flexibility for me right now is all about figuring out how to do it differently, and remembering that's okay. 

Want to hear the definition of uncomfortable? Try going to a movie with your husband that's chock full of sex even though you and your husband's level of intimacy is strained at best.

True story.

Last night my husband and I went to see Choke. If you go to see it then expect to see plenty of sexual situations. It's not like I wasn't expecting it since I read the book beforehand, but it was the first time my husband and I had been to a movie together that featured so much naked fun during a period in our life when our sex life consists of once a week or so me nudging him and saying, "If you want to do it, go ahead before I go to sleep." Ahh, romance. 

It's tough to watch a movie that so blatantly displays one of the very things we have tried to deal with but can't seem to fix.

You've heard about not talking about the elephant in the room? This was like the elephant sat in front of us at the theater and bellowed loudly from its trunk every few minutes.  And wore a big hat. And threw popcorn at us.

Stupid elephant.

My husband is enough of a gentleman to not nudge me and say something vulgar about how he's glad someone is getting some enthusiastic sex once in a while, but I've been with the man long enough to know what goes through his mind. 

Unfortunately I haven't figured out how to turn off emotions and just have a passionate romp in bed with him while our relationship flounders. I wish I could, though, because it would certainly make going to the movies a lot easier. 

I reserve Sunday mornings for the Globe, freshly ground coffee, and Rob. We typically banter about the news. But this week I kept mum while reading a Parade Poll Special Report "The Truth about American Marriage," wherein Leslie Bennetts admits that divorce in the news makes the state of marriage in the U.S. seem like a toxic mess.

Take for example the stories about John Edwards, Paul McCartney, and Alex Rodriguez. But if divorce has made the news more spectacularly more often in 2008, this is not necessarily indicative of the true state of affairs. In this national poll, 88% of respondents reported being happy or content in marriage.

With a divorce rate over 50%, that seems incredibly high! And something I can't relate to.

On the other hand, close to 30% of respondents described their marriages as "peaceful coexistence." Now that sounds familiar. And pitiful, no? It's a bit...lacking.

This I found somewhat shocking: Men are happier than women in their marriages. Nearly 70% of men said they "never" think of leaving, whereas nearly 50% of women say they do — sometimes daily.

Sex? 60% of men and 51% of women aren't having as much as they want. Frequency? According to Bennetts, 31% have sex less than once a month. But 27% have it a few times a week. Nice. But that leaves us wondering about the remaining 42%. Daily? Never?

There is a new trend arising in my house. Every few nights before falling asleep, my husband will roll over and sigh, and then look at me with the whole, "We gotta talk" facial expression.

He'll then start telling me that this isn't working, when am I going to stop being mad at him for the past, what does he have to do to get his wife back, etc, etc.

That one is my favorite:  "What do I have to do to get my wife back?"

It's not what he should be doing now. It's what he should have been doing years ago. He should have taken a more active role in parenting instead of leaving it all to me. He should have helped me out when I had post-partum depression instead of just waiting for it to go away. He should have spent some time nurturing our relationship when we became new parents instead of just dumping everything into my lap while he spent seven hours a night playing video games.

He shouldn't have resisted counseling when I begged him to go.

What is he supposed to do now to get his wife back? I haven't a clue. Does he want the same wife he had before kids...the one who had tons of energy and could spend inordinate amounts of time making sure everything was just right for her husband? Does he want the wife who trusted that her husband would always have her best interests in mind? Does he want the wife who didn't stick up for herself when things weren't right?

That wife is gone, baby, gone.

One thing is evident. My whole tactic of waiting everything out to see what happens next seems less and less effective nowadays.  My husband and I have both said out loud that our relationship isn't working. What happens next is anybody's guess. 

Okay, so last week I gave a nice shout-out to the mistress. Lest you think I'm one of those wives just blaming the other women for my husband's affair, don't worry. Two to tango, I know, I know.

So I promised you a missive to Dear Husband, after he was spotted shoe shopping with the mistress last month.

Hey DH, those really were nice Jimmy Choos you bought her. Always knew you had good taste.

Funny though. I thought your lunches were all booked up with clients, not expeditions to find three-inch heels.

I remember getting the call late in the afternoon. "Geeg, it's Rachel. Don't know how to tell you this, but I saw your DH in the Jimmy Choo store today with someone ... "

I had fun with that, later that evening, when you got home. And don't think I wasn't thinking about this when I watched that episode of Mad Men last night, where the wife is trying to get Don Draper to admit he was having an affair.

"How was your day?" I asked casually.

"So intense," you said. "Our long position in pharma is killing us, and no way we're underwriting the new allergy drug in Curtis's pipeline."

"Let me guess. You took old man Curtis out for a nice lunch at the Yale club and broke the news to him when the appetizer arrived."

"Yep. That's how I did it. But we talked about the Yankees first."

DH, you continued to describe a lunch in perfect detail — a lunch that never happened. Impressive.

"So you made it through lunch," I said. "Did you guys go upstairs and sweat it off in the gym?"

"No. He had to go back and tell his office. But it's all good. We're both Scroll & Keys — we've survived worse than this."

Labor Day Weekend is over. Fall begins. The answer to my last post "Is Vacationing with my Husband Asking for Trouble?" is no...and yes.

Our trip to California was not plagued with fights or, as I pointed out would be worse, boredom. So we passed that test. No need to board the one-way train to Splittsville just yet.

In fact, Rob and I never fought. I can't remember him driving me up the wall even for a moment! Instead, we giggled on the plane, chatted endlessly with our Californian friends who met us when we landed, snorkeled, rode horseback, dined al fresco, and hiked.

But for all that doing, we didn't do IT. Seems not even time alone in a lovely hotel room overlooking the ocean can make us horny. Instead, we read quietly. Yawn.

While we were away, a young couple moved into the apartment above ours. We haven't met them yet, but we already know a bit too much. At 1 a.m., they get randy. And at a pretty good clip and decibel level. The more they moan, the more frustrated I get.

I want to scream but instead I get as quiet as possible — I think we both pretend we're asleep so we don't have to acknowledge to each other that yes, we hear them, and no, we don't do that anymore. And isn't it a shame.

I know I should get over it, but I can't bring myself to talk about this problem at depth in couples therapy yet. I think it would be easier to test those waters on my own: to find out if there's something wrong with me, and to get comfortable talking about it before opening the Pandora's Box of couplehood.

Anyone know a good sex therapist? A self-help book for sexless couples? I'm making it a goal: By the end of 2008 I'll have had sex with my husband. At least once. 

I just thought I'd take a late summer moment to give a nice little shout-out to my husband's mistress: Hi, hon! Love your new Jimmy Choos! Oh, your boyfriend bought them for you? Wow.

I didn't know he — my husband, I mean — had such excellent taste in shoes!

So he went right into the Madison Avenue store with you? Did you sit on his lap as Francisco, down on his knees, measured your delicate, expensively pedicured foot? Maybe you got a quick little reflexology session while Francisco disappeared into the back to gather your requests? How cool!

Did you know that that same man yells at me when I come home with a fresh pedicure from the Korean salon next to the train station? Yells at me when he sees the shoe bill from Century 21, let alone Jimmy Choo right on Madison.

When I tell him that my pedicure was a Wednesday half-price special, he says, "Screw the pedicure... shouldn't you be going to the gym?"

Oh, he hasn't given you that disapproving little lecture? That's right, you haven't had two kids yet (and when he's with you, he doesn't have kids, either). You don't have to decide daily whether to run to the gym after work, or go straight to the big kid's hockey game, or indulge in a — oh god — a pedicure, before you hit the home front with all four cylinders running.

Oh, that's right: You can take a two-hour lunch for shoe shopping.

Right now, my lunches are spent at my desk, because I'm filling out back-to-school emergency forms, and figuring out which stores I have to zip through on my way home. You'll find me at JCPenny's, gathering back-to-school supplies.

You, you can have a Bellini at Cipriani after work (with my husband even — which is awesome, girl!) then stumble off drunkenly to the gym while he catches the train home.

Hell, after the gym you can even go to the fancy nail place that stays open until 11 pm and get that pedicure.

I took introduction to psychology in college so I have a general idea of what the term "passive aggressive" means. It wasn't until recently, however, that I really got to witness it in person.

Apparently my husband has decided that this is his newest way to complain about the things I do without actually complaining about them.

Here are a couple of examples, which could easily be compiled with a slew of others for a "passive-aggressive husband reference manual":

The other day my kids and I went out to lunch with a couple of other moms and their kids. I don't eat out for lunch all the time, and this was an impromptu get-together. I had packed my husband a lunch that morning for him to take to work so he had leftovers. When he gets home he tells me this: "The guys at work said, 'Let me get this straight...she gets to eat out for lunch and you have to eat leftovers? Man, that's messed up!' Ha-ha!"

Translation: He's ticked off that I got to eat out and he had to eat leftovers.

My husband recently did some volunteer work with the guys at church that involved a lot of physical labor and when he got home he said, "Bob told me he was so glad that his wife and daughter were out of town because after we finished up he was going to go home and take a long nap without interruption. Ha-ha!"

Translation: He wants to take a nap but knows that we already agreed that he would take the kids so I could get some work done. He's hoping I suggest he takes a long nap and I'll just stay up until two in the morning working.

How do I know it's all passive aggressive? These comments don't even go with the flow of conversation. They come out of nowhere, and he gives a long pause afterward as though he's waiting for me to fall to my knees and beg his forgiveness for going out to eat with my friends/not offering him a four hour nap/whatever else I do that ticks him off.