Now that the 2012 election is nearing and potential candidates who have committed ethics slip-ups are trying to get vetted by, say, the tea party, it’s fun to see the Righteousness Crew do their thing. There’s Newt Gingrich, toying with running, explaining away his adultery (not to mention his divorces) by citing Patriotism as his justification (If you love your country enough, how can you be asked to be faithful to a mere mortal?).
What if you knew that you’d lost half a million dollars because someone didn’t pay you your fair share of your salary? What would be your next step?
An eighth-grade girl in my town, 13-year-old Alye Pollack, recently released an anti-bullying video on YouTube—called “Words are Worse than Sticks and Stones”–that has gotten over 200,000 hits.
Everyone wonders how it is that young people are being so frightened by other young people; and I’m going suggest one source, and that that bullying is now de rigeur among older people.
Men say young women are demanding as hell—about money, about sex, about everything. So how come their mothers aren’t?
Are women waiting to get married? Are they defying the custom we believe to be truth–snaring reluctant bachelors into wedlock? Are they now the ones saying, Not Yet? Yes. Long thought to be the ones pushing those balky bachelors, women are no longer doing so.
A reader reminds me that, in my blogs about the Power of the Least Interested, I forgot to speak about how the phenomenon plays out in long-term relationships. Does the least interested maintain power over the more interested partner, once romantic attraction moves into love?
Not for very long. The usual set-up years ago was the familiar eager-to-please woman endlessly trying to engage her distracted, disengaged, or plainly disinterested husband. Her heartbreaking, losing techniques: Asking questions. Repeating questions. Attempting to be seductive, funny, young, pretty. (Just saying these in print makes me mad and remind me of all those magazine articles: “Ten Surefire Ways to Make Him Happy!” and all those songs about how to please, win back and stand by that cheatin’ guy.) One study showing that husbands and wives speak to one another an average of 13 minutes a week (and then, only because they have to arrange childcare and meal issues) says it all: Interest in one’s partner is at risk over time. And if that partner happens to be a woman, well, poor dear.
On my last television show–a cable-access show in Connecticut called The Love Goddess Show–I had two guests, a woman and a man, Louise and Tracy, …
Why do we suddenly love experts who scream at their quivering audiences? What is it in us that wants the Glenn Beck experience with our self-improvement? Who made it fashionable among advice-givers to shriek? Was it Dr. Phil, whose relationship tips are shouted out so roughly to troubled couples? Was it Jim Cramer of “Mad …
Women of all ages tell me that they want evolved relationships with enlightened men, men who know that developing intimacy skills is part of the job of being a 21st century guy. And I ask these 21st century women, “Okay, cool, but who are you in this? Are you playing the role of a 20th century woman?” The story …
(Part 1 of 7)
I’ve been thinking a great deal about the notion of power in love. Not power as in control, but how it is that the person in a relationship who cares the least has so much of the power—at least in the early stages. A piece in Psychology Today this week features the work of three social scientists studying uncertainty in romantic attraction. Their study counters the “reciprocity principle” of attraction, which states, in effect, that if someone is attracted to you, you’ll be more attracted to him—and vice versa.
If only. More often, in my long experience in this field, uncertainty is key.
