I was as indoctrinated into a female dream world as most women, reading romance novels, watching romantic comedies, and plotting out a dream wedding some day. Life has a way of ruining just about everything you imagined it would be. Instead, I married someone who didn't have a romantic or charming bone in his body. I settled for having a justice of the peace wedding and catered my own reception. I was not told I was beautiful or given compliments. And, when I caught a cold or flu, he threw his arms into the air and grumbled, " Oh great! Now I'm going to get sick! " It should have broken me and made me bitter. Instead, it left a hunger in me. A hunger for the tiniest gesture of kindness and caring; not because of obligation, duty and chore, but because I somehow evoked tenderness in a man. It was only this year that I had the single most romantic moment of all the moments of my entire life combined. For anyone else, it would make no sense why it was utterly captivati...