When I was a kid, it was simple.

People met, fell in love and got married. Then they had kids, worked at jobs they tolerated and dreamt of moving out West and buying a ranch.

But instead they stayed put, worked for the PTA and joined the local Y, spent an occasional long summer weekend at an affordable resort and then their kids grew up, got married, tried to hold on to mediocre jobs with bosses they usually didn't like and so on and so on.

But when I was a child I dreamt of something different. I used to spend long summer afternoons tucked away with my diary and pencils in an alcove of trees, at the corner of a dead end street at the far end of my neighborhood, knowing that there had to be more to life.

When I sat on grass that had become dried up like hay, surrounded by fallen pine cones and bushes with little blue berries that looked delicious but didn't taste very good, I read about exciting places and imagined handsome, smart men joining me in adventures and love.

Meanwhile, my mom packed my lunch every day in predictable brown bags and my dad brought me home beautiful postcards from places he visited as a salesman. I knew the postcards were probably more beautiful than the reality but they fed my imagination anyway and gave me something to think and dream about when I would escape to my alcove.

I left Marietta at the age of eighteen. College, various jobs...Today I'm a Vice President and Creative Director at Cunningham & Cooke, a Boston ad agency.

I meet a lot of attractive men in the course of my work. Some of them have tried to invite me into their lives for more than a brief drink. I always said, "No". I never asked myself if that was the answer I wanted to give. I just knew that my marriage vows were real and binding.

But this time it was different.

Maybe Dan and I had grown apart like many couples - not dramatically, but slowly, painlessly, still sharing our children, bank accounts and bed.

We almost never fought. Maybe if we did, it would have been better. Maybe that would have meant there was still some fire left. If I've learned one thing about marriage, it's that fire is better than drought, even if it means you can get burnt sometimes.

After thirteen years of marriage, I was beginning to wonder what love really is - the passion we felt for each other when we were younger, when I was the dreamy theater major from southern Ohio and he was the bright MBA student from Detroit? The closeness we felt as we raised a family together? Maybe if I knew the definition of love, I wouldn't be in the position I am today.

Or maybe there was more to this than the question of love.

We found a little time for each other now and then, but the old soul-mate connection was gone. I think we were afraid to ask ourselves if it was gone forever, or just on vacation.

Truth is, I'm not so sure that Dan even noticed it was gone. The entrepreneurial dreams he had when we first married had evolved into a fierce struggle in the real world of the competitive auto import business. I guess some of our other dreams had also fallen by the wayside.

From Dan, all I began to sense was indifference. Or maybe he was just so locked up inside of himself, trying to make it, that it seemed like indifference. Either way I felt shut out.

Maybe if he had tried to cry out for help, to cry out for me, it would have been different. But he didn't.

Maybe the first step toward repair is despair.