As much fun as the tour has been, we're looking forward to some downtime with our families. As one of Celeste's friends recently emailed, "Make sure your guys' next book isn't titled: How to Lose Your Husband After Leaving Him With Multiple Kids to Go on a Tour About a Book on Successful Marriage" Point taken. A huge thank you to our wonderful husbands for holding down our respective forts with such grace!

One of the questions we are asked most is “If I marry later, shouldn’t I worry about infertility?”  Not really. How's that for definitive?  Seriously, though, while it’s true that a woman’s fertility begins to decline at thirty-five, the risk of infertility doesn’t rise significantly until age forty.  And really, how many kids do you plan to have between twenty-eight and forty, anyway?  Unless you would like to have kids in the double digits, starting in your early thirties is just fine for most women.  And better to have two children with a husband you chose wisely than to have four children you end up raising as a divorced single mother.  Don’t give in to the fear of infertility.  Give your children the gift of a solid foundation: a lasting marriage with a great father and a mother who knows who she is and has a vast array of life experiences to draw from as she raises those little bambinos.  

Ah, how easy it is to long for the Knight in Shining Armour (aka a crisp Armani suit) who rides up on a steed (aka the new Audi 5) to sweep you away from your money woes.  Sure, being taken care of  would solve some immediate problems, but it's a dangerous reason to say "I do."   Remember, being forced to budget and go without is great training ground for when you're married and are working hard to save for a house or when all your extra cash is going toward the arrival of your new bundle of joy.  If you're in a financial mess, there's only one right way out and it doesn't involve a white dress or anything sparkly.  It will require some grit and discipline. But when you're finally back in the black, you'll be able to stand tall knowing that instead of wasting time wishing for a tall, dark and handsome escape route, you've got what it takes to take care of business even in a tough economy.

So why do women in their early twenties tend to gravitate toward guys who aren't  the best-for-the-long-haul, marriage-material types?  Well, for starters, when we're young, we're sort of stumbling along, trying to figure out who we are.  We're beginning the process of trying to make sense of our childhood and how it has shaped our expectations, beliefs and perceptions of the world.  Let's say you grew up poor and with a lot of instability in your family.  Who do you think your unenlightened twenty-one-year-old  self is going to be drawn to?  That's right, the guy who can offer the security you've always craved.  Never mind that he may not possess the character qualities that are truly important to a long-term marriage.  Or maybe you have always struggled with feeling unattractive.  You may find that good looks rank way too high on your List  because an attractive guy provides the ego boost you crave ("he's hot, he likes me, I must be hot too").  Hearing Lori Gottlieb tell you that you shouldn't blow off someone because he's not rich or handsome isn't going to spark your aha! moment.  If only it were that easy.  It's the process of living through your twenties and say, gaining clarity about your relationship with money or understanding how your body-image impacts your relationships, that will get you where you need to be.  But this process takes time, work and the willingness to sit with the uncertainty.  The thing is, once you get there, you won't feel like you've settled at all.   You'll feel like you dodged a whole arsenal of bullets and won the lottery.

Getting married is a perfectly normal desire for a woman to have.  But when it becomes an all-consuming focus and you find yourself  ashamed of your solo status, you need a perspective shift—STAT!  Once you let fear take over, you’re dangerously close to seeing that Old Maid Cat Lady every time you glance in the mirror.  Each time someone asks, “Are you single?”  it rings like  a judgmental gong in your ear, clanging over and over again:  “You will die alone!”  That kind of fear can drive you straight into the wrong man’s arms simply because you believe that getting married is the only way to save yourself from such a gruesome fate.  Don’t fall for it.  Change your perspective.  Your twenties is an incredible opportunity to get a life you love.   When you get busy doing what you love, discovering what you want and need in life, you’ll see a beautiful, confident single woman staring back at you—and kicking that feline-obsessed Spinster (and her stigma) to the curb!