Love: Lost and Found

With Valentine's Day just been and gone, this week seems like a good time to post about long lost love.
I always love these stories where couples rediscover each other years after they originally broke up and find all those old feelings are still there. It's so romantic. 
Of course it can also be very disruptive when they've married in the meantime and often people can end up getting hurt. I remember years back there were a string of stories about Friends Reunited breaking up marriages after old school romances were reignited. Nowadays it seems to be Facebook, or even Twitter, that are the main culprits.
I suppose love - and life - are never simple, and you just have to do what you can. And I think it's inspiring to hear that the decisions you make don't always have to be final, and there are second chances.  
Here's a story of mine that was published in Woman's Own last week. I'd love to hear any of yours about starting over with someone from your past.

Going to the chapel

For the last few years the Office for National Statistics has reported that marriage rates are at their lowest since records began.
Last year it was reported that, for the first time ever, fewer than two in 100 women over the age of 16 got married in a single year.
The rising cost of weddings and cultural changes, such as women working and wanting to get married later, or not at all, have all contributed to the decline in marriage.
With these statistics in mind, this week I'm exploring the reasons why women do or don't get married, and looking for women with stories to illustrate the arguments for and against.
Perhaps you went through with your wedding only to regret it afterwards. Or did family and/or friends try to talk you out of it? id you overcome all the odds to get married and was it the happiest day of your life - or did you break up on honeymoon and vow never to marry again? Or maybe you came close to marriage and decided against it at the very last minute.
Whatever your story, I want to hear it, so please get in touch. Email alice@medavia.co.uk

Friends with no strings attached benefits

“Friends with benefits” seems to be a popular theme in Hollywood this year. Two films are due to be released in the next month or so, both exploring the idea of no-strings attached sex with a friend. Rather unimaginatively, one, starring Mila Kunis and Justin Timberlake, is called Friends With Benefits, while the other, starring Natalie Portman and Ashton Kutcher, is called No Strings Attached. See what they did there?

So, do these kinds of set-ups ever work? In my experience, no. It’s a situation that’s inevitably fraught with all kinds of complications and one, if not both parties, almost always ends up desperately hurt. The trouble is that the guy is usually genuinely delighted with the arrangement while the girl pretends she’s all fine and dandy and laidback about it but secretly hopes he’ll fall madly in love with her. Which never happens.  Except maybe in a Hollywood film.

Here comes the bride

Magazines always love unusual stories with anything to do about brides, weddings, hen nights... So when Katie got in touch some time ago and told me how she'd had a massive row with her bridesmaids on her hen night and sacked ALL of them just weeks before the wedding, I knew we could get her a deal. Now magazine loved her story about the blazing argument and how she'd had to find new bridesmaids at the last minute.
Likewise, when Joan, who appeared in the Channel Four documentary My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding, got in touch with my colleague Nic to share her story about how her life had turned out after the big, lavish wedding, we knew the newspapers and magazines would be interested. We were right.
Women just seem to love reading about weddings. Maybe it's the romantic streak in us... or maybe we just love looking at pictures of beautiful dresses and big, fancy cakes.

Long-distance and other love stories

Today I’ve been mainlining tea to try and stave off the utter exhaustion that comes from getting up before dawn to drive three hours to work.
I do this commute every few weeks so I can spend Sunday night with my boyfriend, who lives about 140 miles away from me. We only get to see each other at weekends so, knackering as it is, it’s worth the early start to spend that precious extra night with him.
Long-distance relationships aren’t easy. We have to plan when we’re going to see each other weeks in advance and it’s hard missing him, and not being able to get a hug after a hard day at work. Phone calls just can’t replace actually being with someone. But we just get on and do it because, for now at least, it’s the only option.
And, difficult as I find it, I know that many other couples have it much harder. In the course of sourcing features for magazines I’ve spoken to women who have managed to make relationships work when their partners live on the other side of the world, or when they’ve faced fierce opposition from family and friends.
There are the women who’ve been heartbroken when they discovered their man was cheating but decided to give them one more chance and I’ve even spoken to a couple of women who met their men in prison and stuck by them until they got out.
It constantly amazes, and inspires me, how hard people are prepared to work in the name of love. And the good news is that magazines never tire of these stories. So if you’ve battled against the odds to keep your relationship alive, get in touch.

Domestic Violence

We get a lot of women getting in touch to talk about very serious topics, one of the most common of which is domestic abuse.
It's shocked me since starting this job just how many women seem to have suffered at the hands of their partners at some point in their lives. And what's most upsetting is how many of these have never pressed charges, so those men have effectively got away with it.
It's also frustrating because, for legal reasons, it makes it difficult for these women to speak out publicly in a magazine or newspaper article about what happened to them.
Of course I can completely understand the many reasons why women may not feel able to go to the police to report abusive boyfriends - these situations are never simple. But it's always great when someone gets in touch who has taken their ex partner to court, as then we can tell the whole story, and hopefully inspire other women in similar situations to do the same.