The 50 Shades of Sex Talk
Janelle, 34, a photographer in West Palm Beach, Florida, suspected her single days were much crazier than her boyfriend's. "I opened up," she says. "He wasn't threatened by my past, and that moment has let us keep talking sex for eight years!" And periodic check-ins are important, Levkoff stresses. "Throw out a casual question like: 'What do your friends say about their sex lives?' Or, 'Would you ever do that thing we saw on Orange Is the New Black?' You never want to have a sit-down-and-talk conversation about your own sex life because then it becomes finger-pointy."
The Living Together Talk
Studies have found that couples who discuss living together have stronger marriages than those for whom the roommate thing just...happens. Erin, 34, a dentist from Melville, New York, remembers blurting out to her boyfriend that maybe he should move in. "He stammered," she says, "and I backpedaled," but a few days later, they started actually talking—and now they've been married three years. The opposite happened for Nancy and her guy: "Once we considered what the next step meant for our finances and future," says the 37-year-old San Diego aesthetician, "things unraveled. Ultimately, it was for the best. I took a trip to recover, and met my husband!"
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