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Time Out

A quick note to say I’ll be away for two weeks and am abandoning ship for that time….but will be back in full force when I return to the computer! Please like my Facebook page, follow me on Twitter, join my LinkedIn network, and visit my YouTube channel to receive exclusive content. 

How Do Kids Become Bullies?

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.

Why Women Wait to Wed

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.

Why The Least Interested Loses in Long-term Love

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.

Advice or Abuse?

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 …

Advice or Abuse? Read More »

Whose Laundry Do YOU Do?

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 …

Whose Laundry Do YOU Do? Read More »

The Power of the Least Interested – Part 1

(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.

As in Handbags, So In Love–The Power of The Least Interested — Part 3

Victoria Beckham’s pink Birkin bag–I think it’s crocodile– is just one of many of her gorgeous Birkin bags. But watch: The Power of the Least Interested applies to getting an Hermes Bag in pretty much the same way as it applies to getting  a guy. It’s called the scarcity principle in purchasing, and Hermes is great at employing it. …

As in Handbags, So In Love–The Power of The Least Interested — Part 3 Read More »