5 Quotes by Virginia Laken

Four months without sex made me begin to appreciate the integral role sex played in our marriage. Making love was what we did to reconnect when things weren't going well and how we celebrated when they were. Without sex, we had felt isolated from each other.

We make sure our love making takes place, even though our bodies are not driving us to make love -- our minds are. We realize that lovemaking is so important to our marriage that we set aside the time.

Keith and I thought we had really good communication but we hadn't had to have this kind of communication about our intimacy. We so often equate intimate relationships with ability to have intercourse, and what we try to help couples understand is that intimacy is not totally equated with intercourse. Intimacy -- as we all know but don't usually put into practice -- can happen in many, many ways.

We were just so stunned at how this affected our relationship, and so much at a loss for finding resources to help us. We had made this promise to each other that if we got through this we were going to tell our story because we were so hungry to hear other people's survivor stories.

This is just one step in revitalizing the downtown, but it's a good first step.