Life Is Not a Reality Show (3 page)

For me, it’s Dating 101: you should never, ever offer to pay the bill when you’re dating. For one thing, it sets a precedent. And if a guy expects you to split a bill, I think it’s an indication that he’s cheap. I don’t like cheap, and it has nothing to do with the amount of money someone has. You can be rich and cheap—believe me, I have seen plenty of that!

My girlfriends and I used to joke that when we see a guy happily going Dutch, it’s like his wiener falls off!

Please don’t think I’m saying that guys should be taking you out and treating you all the time if they can’t afford it. If a guy doesn’t have money, then tell him he doesn’t have to take you to dinner! Suggest you do something else fun that doesn’t cost a lot—have dinner at home, see a movie.

But if he asks you to dinner, he should pay. Then one night, you can take him out to dinner and treat him, as a special occasion.

I know some people will consider me old-fashioned, but it’s just the way I was brought up. The other night Mauricio and I were out with two other couples, and when I excused myself to go to the ladies’ room, all three men stood up! Oh my God, when does that ever happen in this day and age? Three absolute gentlemen. I love that!

I also love it when my husband opens the car door for me. But only when we’re leaving—not when we arrive at our destination. Then I open the door myself because it’s too embarrassing to sit there waiting for him to come around and open my door. I mean, this isn’t the 1940s!

Remember, you deserve to be treated with respect, and a guy who’s good for the long haul will always treat you with respect. But not only you. A good person treats
everybody
with respect. That quality was something I found very attractive in Mauricio, and, I think, he in me. It’s a lot of what draws us to the friends we have. We like to spend time with people who are genuine.

Mauricio is such a people person. Sometimes when we come out of a restaurant and the valet attendant brings the car around, he’ll be chatting with him and high-fiving him and exchanging phone numbers. “I’ll call you!” he says on our way out. It doesn’t matter who you are or where you came from or what you have, he treats everyone with kindness and respect. In this town, that’s not always the way it goes. A lot of people
only
care about who you are, where you come from, or what you have. I can see those people a mile away, the social climbers who surround themselves with people with status or money and treat everybody else like dirt. You don’t want a snob for a boyfriend, much less a husband.

I really do think it’s important for you to refrain from paying when you’re on a date. But that doesn’t mean you can’t do something special for a man you’re seeing. Maybe on his birthday you can take him to his favorite steak house. Or don’t even wait for a special occasion. Just call him up and say, “I want to do something special for you, and I have a fun evening planned.” You could get him tickets to a game. If he’s a sports fanatic, he’ll love you for that! Even now, in my marriage, long after the dating stage, I know that when I cook a big meal for Mauricio’s entire family on a Jewish holiday, it makes him so happy and appreciative.

Bottom line: yes, let him pay on your dates, but now and then make a heartfelt and thoughtful gesture to let him know you care and that you appreciate him.

So we want Mr. Right to be respectful to you and respectful of people in general, but what about the relationships in his life—the ones that existed before you came along? How does he get along with his parents and siblings? Is he good to his mother? How does he treat kids? How does he treat animals? (I personally would be extremely wary of a man who wasn’t nice to animals, even if he didn’t particularly like them or want them as pets.)

Men never lose that instinctive desire to be the hunter, even after they’ve caught their prey: you! You want to feed that instinct by making sure you remain a tasty morsel they’ll lunge for, no matter how long you’ve been married. The best way to do that is to remain your own person after you’re married—an independent being with your own interests. Your husband can’t be expected to fulfill all your needs. Have your own life!

It’s also important to nourish his sense of self. Tell him he’s hot and fabulous. Build his confidence! Stroke his ego. And why not act like you are the hottest stuff going?

Nourish your own sense of self too. Carry yourself with pride. A woman who is comfortable with herself and not seeking approval all the time is much more alluring than one who puts herself down. But not so comfortable that you’re digging ice cream out of the carton in stained sweatpants when he comes home!

And keep stoking those fires, baby. Mauricio and I call each other during the day just to say “I love you.” We try to have as many date nights as possible.

Chemistry in a relationship is not the same as sexual attraction. It’s not being magnetically drawn to someone physically. Chemistry happens when you start talking.

When I met Mauricio, I could tell he was kind and sweet by the way he talked about his parents and how polite he was. He seemed the perfect combination of masculine and gentle. I loved that he spoke Spanish, was from Mexico, and was Jewish. That was the perfect combo! I’ve always wanted to go out with someone who spoke Spanish and to marry a Jewish man because I heard they made the best husbands.

Seriously, because so many of my friends growing up were Jewish, and because my mother never taught me much about our faith, in some ways I related more to Judaism than to Catholicism. I used to pretend that I was Jewish! On the weekends I would wear my friends’ private school uniforms and a necklace with Hebrew writing on it that I’d gotten at my friend’s bat mitzvah.

How embarrassing!

I think I mostly liked pretending that I went to school with my friends. I was a child actress, and when I was five, I was cast in
Little House on the Prairie
. I played Alicia Sanderson Edwards and appeared on and off through seven seasons. I remember riding horses on the set and catching guppies and playing near a pond with ducks. It was a good life, but definitely not a typical upbringing. I was tutored on set, and like all of the kids on the show I went to school right there where we shot, in one classroom, with one teacher.

It was fun, and it was all I knew. But I longed to have the same kind of life my friends had. My parents were divorced, and I looked at my friends whose parents were married and wanted that so badly. I thought they were the luckiest people in the world. The dad would come home to the mom and the kids with a briefcase in his hand. I was in complete awe! I decided that when I grew up I wanted a more traditional situation, a normal family with normal kids who went to school in uniform and had parents who were married. (No coincidence that my daughters are enrolled in a Jewish school, to which they wear uniforms!)

When Mauricio came along, I was drawn to the fact that he’d grown up in a strong family.

On our first date we went to dinner, and he asked me out for lunch the next day. And at lunch, he asked me out to dinner that night. And from then on, we were together every single day and night. After four months, he said, “I’m in love with you and I can see myself spending the rest of my life with you.” And then he said, “Would you ever be willing to convert to Judaism?”

I said, “Yes.” To me, it was a big step toward that traditional life I wanted, to the sense of belonging that I’d always yearned for.

At first when Mauricio and I got serious, his parents were not wild about the idea. I don’t blame them! I was divorced, not Jewish, and an actress. Does it get any worse? I understand how they felt. I wouldn’t want that for my son.

After we got engaged his grandmother wouldn’t even look at me. So I wrote her a letter and told her I knew how much she and his parents loved Mauricio. I said, “I just hope you know how much I love him too. And I want to be the best wife to him and the best mother to our children.” I tried to explain that there was nothing more important to me than creating our family together with his family’s support, because such a big part of what attracted me to Mauricio was his closeness to his family.

That letter seemed to change everything—along with a talk Mauricio had with his mother. He said, “Isn’t it wonderful that I’ve had a chance to see what kind of mother Kyle will be? What a good mother she already is? How many men have that opportunity?”

If you ask me why I have such a successful marriage, I’ll tell you that it’s because Mauricio and I saw in each other attitudes and priorities and goals that we shared. Thank God we were both smart enough to recognize what we needed to go the distance.

One thing I really liked about Mauricio even from the very first night we met and started talking was the way he spoke of his parents. You could just tell that he honored them. And he spoke of them affectionately too, which was a very good sign. Then, when we began going out, I saw that they played a big part in his life, which I loved.

For me, trust is essential in a relationship, and especially in my marriage. Mauricio is not a fighter; in fact, sometimes I wish I could get him to fight a little. Ha! But we have had our issues.

One of the most difficult conflicts I’ve ever experienced with my husband was when I found out that he had been keeping a secret from me. I was devastated because I felt it violated our trust.

A friend of mine had gone to lunch with Mauricio and told him that she wanted to leave her husband. She also said that she’d been cheating on her husband, who was a friend of Mauricio’s. But she asked him not to tell her husband or me any of it. And then one night at 2:00
A.M.
when she had had a fight with her boyfriend she called Mauricio to come and get her, and pleaded with him not to say anything about it to her husband or me. That was when my mother was very ill and I was out of town taking care of her.

Mauricio is such a nice guy that it can get him into trouble. He doesn’t know when to say no. He went to get her that night and honored her request to keep everything confidential. But keeping that secret from me was like bringing another person into our marriage. I was extremely hurt by that, and I let him know.

He finally told me all about it during a phone call one day. I was at home, and I really lost my temper. He said he hadn’t wanted to bother me when I was out of town, and he was just trying to be a nice guy, but I felt he had violated the sanctity of our marriage.

You don’t keep things from each other like that! Especially not when you’re allying yourself with a friend of mine and the two of you are keeping a secret from me! I was so upset it’s hard to describe. It was the worst day of our marriage.

I told him not to bother coming home that night. But he came home anyway. I threw a candle at him, and it hit the wall. Mauricio apologized profusely, but it took me a while to calm down. Later, we said “I love you” before we went to bed, but really getting over it took time and a lot of discussion about trust and keeping our bond intact. But we were ultimately successful because we do have trust in our relationship.

Of course, it’s possible to have too much of a good thing! If a man is so devoted to his parents—let’s face it, usually his mother—that they’re essentially running his life, that can be a problem. Often it will resolve itself naturally; a young, single guy is likely to grow out of that kind of extreme attachment once he has his own family. But if you’re dating someone whose focus on pleasing his parents is getting in the way of your relationship, you’ll have to raise the issue with him—in a very gentle, sensitive way!—and try to help him shift his focus. You’ll be treading on dangerous ground, though. You don’t want to be seen as an interloper, so make it clear that you respect and embrace his family. If it continues to be a problem, decide how much it means to you. Is it worth ending the relationship over? I would much rather have a guy who’s close to his parents than one who has no relationship with them at all.

Very early in my relationship with Mauricio, I learned that every Thursday was Umansky family dinner night no matter what. Even if there was some big party happening at the same time—and this is when we were still basically kids, remember—too bad. Thursday was family dinner night, period, end of story. What that told me is this: he prized family. He shared one of my deeply held values.

Mauricio also won me over by the way he behaved around my daughter. Some guys who are twenty-three years old would not have a clue about how to treat a five-year-old, and many of them would have no interest in finding out! But Mauricio was wonderful with Farrah, solicitous of her attention, bringing her presents, saying things like, “Why don’t we all go to Disneyland!” and then piling us into his car. How can you not love a man who’s so fabulous to your child, and sincerely so?

Beverly Hills is filled with ambitious men, but we’ve also got our share of opportunists.

You know—the fakers and the guys who are always looking to take advantage of people—which may include you! You have to be able to distinguish the two or you can get into a lot of trouble.

I can spot manipulators a mile away. An ambitious man wants the nice things in life and works his butt off to get them. An opportunist looks for ways to exploit other people. Here are some telltale signs you’re dealing with the latter: