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" Love is irrational. I think we can all agree on that. And men and women are different. I think we can all agree on that, too. (In fact, we have an interview on page 312 of the March issue with Louann Brizendine, author of the new book The Male Brain, on this very topic.) So wouldn&amp;#039;t we expect relationships, especially marriage, to be, well, complicated? Humans have been fighting to understand love as long as we&amp;#039;ve stalked the earth. What I think we forget, though, is that hate can be just as irrational, and we should be equally motivated to understand it in a relationship (along with torpor, rage, boredom, passion, sex, infidelity, and just plain old commitment). Enter ELLE Editor-at-Large Laurie Abraham, who spent two years with five couples in marriage therapy to find out just that: How can we apply our logical, intellectual aptitudes to sorting out (and &amp;quot;making better&amp;quot;) something as emotionally complex, muddy, nuanced, and irrational as love? Or at least marriage? In this issue, we excerpt Abraham&amp;#039;s book The Husbands and Wives Club, diving into the inner workings of a marriage therapy group on &amp;quot;sex day,&amp;quot; while also talking with Laurie about the whole discipline of couples/sex therapy: its history, competing philosophies and research, efficacies, and outcome (page 324). Abraham is that rare combination of lyricist and reporter, a writer who, when she thinks hard about something, can explain the world anew. You should definitely go buy Husbands and Wives; it&amp;#039;s riveting to be inside other people&amp;#039;s marriages, and Laurie&amp;#039;s reporter&amp;#039;s suspicion and truth telling, mixed with her writerly compassion, make for a well-reported, deeply engaging book that may help your relationship as well. But back to irrational love: It&amp;#039;s fair to say that women&amp;#039;s abiding passion for pumps, platforms, sandals, boots, tiny jeweled handbags, crystal bikinis, C\u00E9line&amp;#039;s perfect leather dress, etc., is not completely understood as a mere expression of the need to cover our nakedness, any more than men&amp;#039;s enthusiasm for watching football is just because there&amp;#039;s nothing better to do on Sunday nights. Both: irrational! I have found that the &amp;quot;shoes are to women what sports are to men&amp;quot; analogy sometimes actually works. I mean, all of us can understand being passionate about something we can&amp;#039;t explain.  But enough of the philosophizing: Check out our five pages of Trends, in which the season&amp;#039;s most important ideas are thematically arranged, and our 11 pages of ELLE Shops, in which the season is broken down into its fundamental elements and then remixed for fresh ideas on how to wear it all. Meanwhile, Creative Director Joe Zee has a lot of fun reworking the Glee cast into school looks fit for grown-ups, and then, with the help of photographer Carter Smith, indulges Keira Knightley&amp;#039;s softer side, dressing her in some of spring&amp;#039;s most elegant, tulle-tailored looks (&amp;quot; Quite Knightley,&amp;quot; page 332). Alexei Hay&amp;#039;s beautiful portfolio of model Coco Rocha (&amp;quot;Hot Coco,&amp;quot; page 392) shows why it&amp;#039;s no surprise that Rocha&amp;#039;s not only runway royalty but also the recently chosen new face of Rimmel London cosmetics.  But if you really want something new, check out our carefully curated ELLE+Edit pages (page 257), which, as far as I know, is the first time a brick-and-mortar retailer, a magazine, and a website have collaborated to bring readers an &amp;quot;editorial&amp;quot; collection\u2014selected by our own fashion champions\u2014that can be purchased either in-store or online (ELLE.com/edit) at the very moment you&amp;#039;re reading this. The store is called, appropriately enough, Edit! Quite rational, indeed. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elle.com/fashion/a9058/march-2010-elle-editors-letter-398316/>