married couples rule!

Rebel, 41, spent nine years living as a divorced single before social and economic pressures forced her back into the man hunting game - only this time she was looking for a well-heeled guy rather than a well-hung guy and she had no trouble finding one!

"My first husband was a real hunk," laughs Rebel, "but the marriage only lasted eighteen months. He spent more time with the guys than he did with me and I got bored with the whole thing. You know, just sitting home at nights on my own wondering why I ever gave up the good life to marry him."

"We parted company amicably," explains Rebel. "I paid him out and took over the mortgage on my own. I expected to return to the sort of life I once had but it just didn't exist any more."

"By then, all my girlfriends were married and when I went back to the old haunts I didn't know anyone any more. Eighteen months had changed not only the social scene but me, too."

"I threw myself into my work and gradually made new friends," says Rebel, "and life was good for a while, even though it was different, but after the age of 35 I really started to suffer."

"I was fast being overlooked at work - and on the social scene - by the young girls," says Rebel. "My married friends were treating me like I was an alien, and my income just wasn't meeting my expenses any more."

"One month I couldn't pay my mortgage and I just sat down and cried, realizing that I'd have to sell up and start renting again."

"I sold the apartment at a loss and went through the money like wildfire."

"It dawned on me that if I had stayed married - even though I spent more time alone than as a couple - I would have been a lot better off than I ended up."

"Not just financially - in that two people really do live as cheaply as one as far as upfront living costs are concerned," adds Rebel, "but socially, too."

"You know how married couples socialize together and talk together afterwards about the other couples and any singles in the group?"

"Well, that was the sort of thing that went on when I was with married people," says Rebel. "I knew they were patronizing me to my face and laughing at me behind my back. They had their private jokes - even a private language - and it got to a stage where I just preferred to be alone or with other singles."

"I refused to share any of my feeling with my married girlfriends because I knew they would tell their husbands and the two of them would laugh at me behind my back."

"My married girlfriends would tell me to call any time," says Rebel, "but it wasn't too difficult to tell from their husband's faces that they knew what I'd told their wives. It's almost as if these women just wanted me to remain friends so that they'd have something to gossip about to their husbands. When a woman marries, she can't keep the girl secrets that she once kept as a single woman."

"When I lost the apartment I lost the only security I had," says Rebel. "It wasn't the same being alone in a rented apartment as it was when I had a place of my own. I couldn't decorate it and knock down a wall or something to make me feel better. And with the big 40 staring me in the face I had to get real about my situation.":

"I wasn't lonely or sex-starved," laughs Rebel. "I was getting old, my income prospects were diminishing and because I have expensive tastes I was virtually living from hand to mouth. I had a glamorous life but it was all on credit."

"I decided to sell myself to the richest guy I could find," says Rebel. "Sure, it was a cold blooded decision and little more than prostitution - but what else is a wife in any case but a glorified whore?"

"My second husband is short, bald, obese and nineteen years older than me - old enough to be my father - and it took me six months to find him and do the deed!"

"I don't love him any more than he loves me," says Rebel. "It's just a trade-off, a business deal that suits both of us. He gets kudos from having a stylish, attractive younger wife and I get open slather to his checkbook."

"Despite our physical differences we are quite compatible in most ways," says Rebel. "He's long past going out with the boys and takes me everywhere with him - including business trips - and I've become part of the married scene that I once despised so much because I never belonged to it."

"We go home and pull to pieces and laugh about everybody we met at social functions," says Rebel. "Those bad feelings I once felt about married couples are true. Every couple does it. They do it about us, too! It's bearable now because I have someone to alleviate the load of being talked about. I don't go home alone and feel psychically challenged like I did when I was single."

"On the downside, I don't enjoy the sex too much," laughs Rebel, "but it's a small price to pay for the social and economic rewards I'm getting from this marriage, and in any case I'm getting to that age where guys don't look at me much any more."

"I look at single women in their mid-30s and pity them," says Rebel. "I see myself as I once was and I'm glad I got real and made the decision I did. By the time they're 50 - even if they manage to keep and pay off their homes - these single women are going to be complete social misfits."

"Married couples rule the world," laughs Rebel. "You can't make it as a single - as a man and especially as a woman. I discovered the hard way that a girl truly needs the social as well as the economic security that a man can give her."

"Compared to my life before I married for the second time -- and taking into account my age," says Rebel. "I am definitely living in marital bliss now."