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Love, honor ... and blog: Musings on marriage are surprise hit

 

Paul and Lee Reyes-Fournier, here with son Ricky in the center, work on their relationships website and blog, coupledumb.com, from their home office.
Paul and Lee Reyes-Fournier, here with son Ricky in the center, work on their relationships website and blog, coupledumb.com, from their home office.
PETER ANDREW BOSCH / MIAMI HERALD STAFF

Advice for couples

Here are Lee and Paul Reyes-Fournier's top tips:

Remember that a marriage is a corporation, not a partnership. Partners compromise, but corporations work for one thing and one thing only: to better the corporation.

Establish healthy boundaries with everyone, from your spouse and children to the grocery bagger.

Know the difference between love and flash paper. Love is eternal, lasting from lust all the way through Social Security. Flash paper burns bright and fast and leaves nothing behind.

Communicate in a healthy, effective manner that is respectful of your partner's state of mind and cognizant of all the experiences that have molded you.

-- Adapted from coupledumb.com

aveciana@MiamiHerald.com

Perhaps the most important thing to know about Lee and Paul Reyes-Fournier is that they believe in happily ever after. They have been married, mostly blissfully, for 20 years. This despite four moves, several job changes, a stretch of infertility and, finally, the chaos of three children -- a teenager, a 5-year-old and a 2-year-old.

No one in their circle of friends has been married longer, they say.

``But I do tell people it is possible to do it and you can be happy about it,'' says Lee, 43, a psychotherapist. ``It doesn't have to be heartbreak.''

Adds Paul, 44, an astrophysicist turned businessman: ``We always talk nice about each other, but in so many families that just isn't the case. People talk bad about the person who is supposed to be the love of their life.''

To share this and other secrets of their success, the Reyes-Fourniers created coupledumb.com (shorthand for the dumb things couples do to each other), a website and blog that addresses relationship issues from sex to money to music to grandparenting.

Here, for example, is an excerpt from an April post by Lee:

Whatever happened to old fashioned f - - - - - -? Seriously people! You aren't getting scored by an international judge and there is no need for special accouterments if you just get down to the business of pleasing your partner. Jeesh! Toys, costumes, extra players, events, equipment -- My idea is cheaper and way more satisfying.

Sometimes snarky, usually irreverent and unfailingly frank, the site, launched in January, has proven far more popular than the couple ever imagined. Coupledumb.com gets about 65,000 page views a month, says Paul, and is ranked 5 on a 10-point Google scale that factors in page views, unique visitors, time spent on the site and more. Two-thirds of their visitors, he says, are women ages 25 to 38. (Nielsen Online and comScore, research companies that measure online audiences, do not have data for coupledumb.com.)

The South Miami-Dade couple acknowledges that the occasional ``f-bombs'' and sexually explicit language may not be for everybody. But it is that frankness that has endeared them to some readers.

Susan Broehm of Walnut Creek, Calif., says she likes the site because the Reyes-Fourniers ``speak from the heart.'' A single mother of three who's in a new relationship, Broehm says she finds the blog entries entertaining and relevant.

``They're very accessible,'' she says. ``What they say and how they say it is not about shock value. I think they're really speaking their mind.''

No subject is off limits for the couple, who respond on the blog to reader questions that span the spectrum from the political to the personal.

``We're not doing anyone any favors if we hold back,'' says Paul. ``People can see right through that.''

TALKING IT OUT

The Reyes-Fourniers say their relationship advice can be best summed up this way: It's all about setting boundaries, about establishing who you are and what you want as a couple. This, they add, involves a lot of talking it out.

``It's best if you get it straight from the start,'' Lee says. ``If you don't set it up right in the beginning, it's a lot harder to do it down the road.''

They're as informal in person as they are online. For an interview, Paul is barefoot and dressed in jeans, Lee in workout clothes and sneakers. They write on their laptops in a room off the kitchen.

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