Ann Jacobs - Love for Grown-ups

There are so many people we wish to thank for helping us with this book, but it all happened because of our wonderful agent, Garter Bride Chris Tomasino. For her talent, determination, dedication and encouragement throughout the entire process, she has our eternal gratitude.

Working with three authors could only have been handled so expertly by Toni Sciarra Poynter. Her skill, thoughtful organization and unfailing sense of humor have been astonishing. We are truly grateful. We couldnt have done it without her! We always felt Harlequin was the right place for us and fortunately our editor, Deborah Brody, did, too. Her help and support are truly appreciated.

Thanks to all our family and friends, who rooted for us the whole way. For their generosity of spirit, time and talent we want to thank Cynthia Finn Barry, Gloria Bremer, John Caffrey, Rollene Saal Forma, Lynn Goldberg, Mike Levesque, Mike Levesque Jr., Tim Meola, Brenda Philip, Melody Rabe, Johnny Rabe, Kevin Ryan, Lisa Schultz, Dr. Leigh Simone, Tina Beana Strasberg, Bonnie Stylides, Bob Watson and Claire McKean, who believed in our book from the beginning.

We would also like to thank those who gave us support in unique and important ways: Stephen Donovan, Edward Nunes, Eda Rak, Angela Seracini and Peter Zimmerman.

And a special thank you to all the Garter Brides who shared their stories and wisdom. Your enthusiasm and sharing of your happy lives were true gifts and youve become our friends and sisters.

And finally, most important of all, our thanks to the very first Garter Bride, Nina Weber Worth, who started the tradition.

The Story of the Garter Brides

Taking Your Romance to the Next Level

Friends, Family, Exes and Everyone Else

Fitting Kids into the Picture

Moving In Together: Romance and Reality

Grown-up Issues for Grown-up Brides

Having Your Wedding, Your Way

The Story of the Garter Brides

Its a luscious experience, falling in love as a grown-up. Youre wise to the relationship hazards that used to snag you, you know whats important in a partner and wont settle for anything less and youre ready to meet a man as an equal on every level, including horizontally!

And those are all good things.

We wrote this book just for you.

If youre single and wondering whether youll ever find someone to love, if youre dating a special guy and not sure whether you should take your relationship to the next level or if youre on the fence about going after grown-up love with all the hope and passion in your heart, the Garter Brides say, A thousand times yes! We know, because we did itand were on a mission to show other women how.

Love for Grown-ups is a relationship book full of field-tested advice from us and from other women who found lasting love and happiness after our thirty-fifth birthdays had comeand gone. Were not psychologists or relationship experts, but honors graduates of the School of Relationship Hard Knocks: weve forged happy, successful, sexy, fun, grown-up marriages not when the storybooks predict, but when we and our husbands had histories, careers, furniture, sometimes children, ex-spouses and all kinds of responsibilities.

We knew there were lots of other women out there who had done what we did. Weve sought them out, tapped into their insights about what works and what doesnt and want to share the tried-and-true wisdom of this special sisterhood with you.

What can we tell you about grown-up love? Between us and the many women weve interviewed, quite a lot. We wont insult your intelligence with babble about getting in touch with your inner beauty. Lets talk turkey: youre a hot babe with a busy life youd love to share, a cozy bed into which youd welcome a good man for some great sex and great fun, and a well-oiled BS detector you didnt possess in your twenties. Youre mature enough to handle grown-up love, to move forward without looking back and to appreciate how great a gift that is.

Like you, we took some extra time to find our own true lovesand it was well worth the wait. But marrying later in life isnt as simple as finding Mr. Right, getting married and having a family. We know a lot of grown-up women whose relationships failed because they didnt know how to handle some of the situations they faced. We want to make sure that doesnt happen to you.

Who Are the Garter Brides (GBs)?

It all started, as many great adventures do, with girlfriends having dinner (i.e., drinks). Nina, Ann and Pat were business colleagues and longtime friends, all over the age of thirty-five. All had successful careers and were going on dates (approximately 9,000 of those by Pat alone, according to her), but none of them thought shed get married.

But

Six months later, Nina got married. Six months after that, Ann got married. Six months after that, Pat got married.

Nina said, At my age you wear a garter, but you dont throw it. She slipped it off and gave it to Ann, who wore it at her wedding. Ann then gave it to Pat, who wore it at her wedding. They named themselves the Garter Bridesand a new tradition was born!

Today, this good-luck garter has been worn by girlfriends ranging in age from thirty-eight to fifty-seven, and it has traveledin a FedEx boxall over the United States and even to that city of ultimate newlywed bliss, Venice!

Everyone whos heard about the Garter Brides has been captivated by the story of how this little scrap of lingerie was part of so many happy endingsor shall we say beginnings? One of the many women who loved hearing the Garter Brides story was Tish Rabe, because she kept on believing in grown-up love when she found her own happy beginning: she married for the first time at thirty-sixto a man shed known since high school! She encouraged Ann and Pat to share their stories, and thus the idea for Love for Grown-ups came to be.

From a Tiny Garter, a Sisterhood Grows

All of the Garter Brides have been questioned repeatedly about how they met their husbands and made new lives with the men they loved. How is a mature marriage different from when you get married in your twenties? Keep reading!

Where dating books leave off (although we talk about dating, too), the Garter Brides book continues. We know that a grown-up womans wedding is just the beginning of a rich, rewarding lifeone she probably couldnt have handled when she was twenty-five. (As one woman we know says, Thank God I met my mother-in-law when I was thirty-fiveat twenty-two, she would have eaten me alive!)

Were writing this book on the best authority: our own life experiences and those of women weve interviewed around the world, from ages thirty-seven to eighty, who have applied their grown-up life experiences to forge happy, sex-filled marriages in all types of circumstances. We are producers, lawyers, actresses, teachers, masseuses, psychologists, yoga teachers, agents, writers, fashionistas, art critics, financial advisers, nurses, real estate brokers and even a dancer of the bump-and-grind variety!

Some of us are first-timers at marriage; for some its husband number two and for others its husband number three. Some became stepmoms, first-time moms or stepgrandmoms and a number of the brides adopted children. We met our true loves in all sorts of waysblind dates, parties, online dating, the commuter train, even while taking flying lessons. Our dream weddings ran the gamut from ultra-glam to super-casual; our households are filled with everything from antiques to running toddlers to crazy Jack Russell terriers. And we have great heres how I did it stories to share about moving in together, becoming a stepfamily, navigating finances and the art of joining two full and complex lives.