Okay, how many of you spend more time thinking about how to present yourself online than what you’re looking for in a man? I know the answer. I’ve spoken with so many of you. And what I want you to do is to go back into your profile and your request and come back …
Not long ago, The New York Times reported a list of “money disorders” linked to our economy. Overspending. Underspending (hoarding); serial borrowing (we all know what that is); financial enabling (too much money forked over to adult kids); and so forth. Stars like Wynona Judd (overspending), admitted to once buying too many cars and Harleys, …
Right after the new year and just before Valentine’s Day, I always like to get the feel of what’s going on with love and marriage across the nation, and to make a few predictions for the coming year. Here they are: Love in 2012. 1. Everyone of all ages will be dating like mad. An unprecedented 110-million singles in America means …
A woman who appeared on my cable show not long ago revealed, when I announced that fifty percent of all American women will live with or marry a man with children, the following (familiar, alas) story. She’s close to retirement and has been saving for years. Her adult son doesn’t need money, so her small …
A group of young men were complaining to me the other night about their live-in girlfriends. “In three months, my fiancée has been home nine nights out of sixty-two,” Elliott said. “The other nights she’s playing tennis, learning French, seeing her friends.” “That’s terrific,” I said. “What’s so terrific? I never see her.” So I …
I wrote a long time ago, in response to the fact that so many women were leaving their marriages: “In the past 25 years women have bloomed. How can we still be talking about fitting modern wives back into an ancient institution, rather than enlarging an ancient institution to make room for modern wives?” I said this on …
More evidence that women’s attitudes toward marriage have changed dramatically: The Pew Research Center, which analyzes census data, confirms what I’ve been hearing from women: the desire to make their own self-expansion as important as it has always been for men and children. Women want more space in their relationships. Yes, I know, we used to mock …
That an entire book has to be written about the way in which the French put pleasure first in their lives–a pleasure gleaned from a lovely long lunch; a good cheese; a natural (as opposed to a creepy or inappropriate) flirtation, makes me sad that our culture comes out so unfavorably. It’s true that in our culture, “pleasure” seems to …
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.
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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.
