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ideal husband is a real winner In this relationship fantasy league, the woman
with the best man earns a prize Kim Cramer and the members of her
fantasy league are looking forward to an exciting season of marital strife and
bliss. That's because the game in Cramer's league is relationships and the
players are husbands. Well, not real husbands. The name of Cramer's Web
site -- fantasyhusbands.com -- makes that clear. More than 200 women have
signed up to take the field of matrimony this fall, positioning fantasy guys in
various relationship scenarios and piling up points each week if their man handles
the situations best. Cramer, a 40-year-old single mom from Tallahassee, came up with
the idea after thinking about the incredible amount of time that men devote to
fantasy football leagues. "I just thought that women would love to
have something to banter about and give the men a taste of what fantasy sports
are," she says. Here's how it works: Each week, players are given a
marital relationship scenario. They then choose three husbands from a roster of
20, taking care to pick the person they think would respond the best in the scenario
(based on the husband's "bio"). On Sundays, the husbands' actions are
posted and scored. The player with the highest totals at the end of the season
wins a prize. Although the husbands aren't real, their answers are -- Cramer
begged male co-workers, friends and acquaintances to provide responses. Scenarios
range from how a husband should handle a fight between his mom and his wife to
what he should do when a football game and his daughter's birthday party are scheduled
for the same time. But these scenarios don't necessarily have simple answers.
That's where marriage and family counselors Kay Colvin-Guthrie and Patty McAlpine
come in. Not only do they judge the responses, they offer explanations and advice. "Part
of what I want to do is to teach women that are not married that this is what
a fantasy husband looks like," says Colvin-Guthrie, who agreed to be the
league's referee after a chance meeting with Cramer in a store line. "Then
to the married women [we] want to be able to say here is what is appropriate for
a husband to do and this is what is not appropriate." The counselors
"really give tangible, real-life relationship analysis that should be applied,"
Cramer says. All this for only $9.95 per season? Vicki Curtis-Stoner
is sold. A 28-year-old Tallahassee woman, she participates along with several
other women in her office. "We have playful arguments over it," she
says. The preseason is well under way. There are then two seven-week seasons,
with the first starting Sept. 10. "Aside from shopping or gossip columns,
there isn't really anything that women can do with another group of women [over
the Internet]," says Curtis-Stoner. "So this is really great."
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