What Makes Thier Relationship Tick?

The Independent 4/20/2004

Carrie, 38, and David, 47, are both pop vocal coaches, with clients who include Lemar and Will Young. They live in north London with their two children aged nine and two

Carrie

We met when I was 20 and a television presenter on a Saturday- morning show called Freeze Frame. David, who was a bit of pop star in those days, was a guest. We got the same train back to London and he insisted that I sat with him in first class. What I loved about him was that he was intelligent and informed and very funny. We married two years later, in 1988. We keep things new by having adventures together. Our relationship gets more and more intense the longer we're together. He's my best friend, lover, an amazing father and a great workmate. He has the most incredible strength of
character and generosity of spirit. I want to grow up to be him. But that doesn't mean that we don't have conflict. We put boundaries on our arguments. Name-calling and swearing went out of the window a few years ago. We are really happy as a couple, but I would hate for people to think that ours was a perfect celebrity marriage. I really don't think they exist. Real life is messy and chaotic.

David

What first struck me about Carrie was that she had a real confidence about her, in a way that eluded most people that I knew of my age. And she looked fantastic. We are absolutely crazy about one another. The only difference is that she knows me completely, and I still haven't worked her out. Everything I do is twice as good when I can share it with her. A lot of people say that we have a great marriage, and we do, but we still have to work at it. We make time to sit down and say, how are you feeling, what are you going through
at the moment, how do you feel life is going right now. When you have been with one another as long as we have, you can assume that you know how the other person feels, but you can be so far off the mark. We keep a "short account" - if one of us has offended the other, we talk about it. Either of us has the potential to hurt the other with sometimes the smallest thing. Carrie has taught me the value of communication. In previous relationships, I would talk a lot and say nothing.