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Strollerderby
Who knows about boys better than dad?
As young girls grow older and enter adolescence, fathers often begin to feel a little left out. Suddenly, daddy’s little girl isn’t so little anymore. She’s likely to be less interested in toys and games and more interested in bodies, boys and other big girl stuff.
But while many dads are happy to step aside and let mom take over during this important stage of a young girl’s life, a recent study from New York University suggests that it might be better if they didn’t. Continue reading »
Silly Bandz, meet Serious Bandz.
Oh, hey guys, Happy Friday to you and yours! In the celebratory spirit of the weekend, I offer you a look at Gizmodo’s simple but brilliant Serious Bandz. They’re perfect for “anyone who has a dysfunctional marriage, a humdrum job, or a looming awareness of their own mortality.” (I’ll take the “divorce” band in one of every color, please!)
Yes, the Silly Bandz craze may be over for kids, but that doesn’t mean adults can’t have some fun with rubbers. (Ahem.) While some grown-ups are giving out Silly Bandz in bars as a way to flirt, slipping one of Gizmodo’s broken heart Serious Bandz on your (soon-to-be-ex) partner’s wrist could also be an easy, discussion-free way to break up. Continue reading »
This Funny Video Friday comes to you courtesy of my friend Eliot Glazer over at Urlesque. Any lady who’s spent any time looking for love these days knows that boys can be such babies when it comes to romance. Watch as this hipster kid tells his much-older girlfriend, “I like you but I don’t but I do.” p.s. – This may be the only time you ever hear a 4-year-old reference Vice founder Gavin McInnes. Continue reading »
We all want to keep our kids off drugs. Most of us also shudder at the thought of our babies starting to date. I breathe a sigh of relief every time my 16-year-old assures me he’s still allergic to girls.
A surprising study from the University of Washington suggests that dating may be the lesser evil, and even act as a prophylactic against drug use.
Teens in relationships were substantially less likely than their single peers to abuse marijuana, alcohol or smoke cigarettes.
Having a baby is exhausting. At the end of the day, you and your partner probably can’t wait to crawl into bed…and sleep. Doing anything else between the sheets fades to a distant memory, something fun some other incarnation of you used to enjoy. Sound familiar?
MomLogic offers up some tips to help tired moms hate sex less. This short article contains some of the most depressing love advice I have ever read. As one mom who read it over my shoulder said, “That makes me never want to have sex again. And that’s not right.” Continue reading »
This morning I had the pleasure of speaking to Dr. Helen Fisher, the famed biological anthropologist who, among numerous achievements, is known for creating the personality test on Chemistry.com. She’s a swingin’ 65-year-old who just joined the site herself, and she offered me lots of advice and insight about love and dating. Match.com and Chemistry.com are offering one lucky single person out there a free 6-month subscription to either site! Click continue reading to find out how to enter.
Carolyn Castiglia: I took the Chemistry.com personality test this morning, and it turns out I’m an explorer. I saw there are four different personality types, explorers, directors, negotiators and builders: do you think there are certain types that work better together?
Helen Fisher: The bottom line is, we are a combination of all of them. I studied 28,000 people on the dating site Chemistry.com. I watched who went out with who, and who they said that they had good dates with. As it turns out, explorers gravitate toward other explorers. These people are curious, they’re creative, they’re novelty-seeking, they’re risk taking, they’re spontaneous, they’re energetic, they tend to be very generous, they’re often quite liberal and they want somebody to get off the couch at midnight and go sailing with them in the dark. Whereas the builder, who’s very traditional, more cautious, loyal, conscientious, meticulous, follows the rules and schedules, likes plans, they want somebody like themselves. But the other two types, the director and the negotiator, they go for their opposite. What I think is going on there is that may have evolved to pool very different resources. The director, they’re good at math and engineering, but they don’t have great people skills and verbal skills, and they gravitate to the negotiator who does have very good people skills and verbal skills. People will often ask, “Do opposites attract, or do similarities attract?” Bottom line is, it depends on who you are.
Now, there are basically two parts of personality: character, which is everything you grew up to believe and do and think and say, and temperament, which are all your characteristics that come out of your biology. And that test is measuring your temperament.
CC: Unfortunately, my first husband, he had no character and lots of temper. So that’s why that didn’t work.
HF: (Laughs) Well, I’m glad you left him!
CC: I wanted to read you what I put on my Chemistry.com profile. As a single mother, I’m not sure where to begin.
HF: I just joined Chemistry.com myself about three weeks ago. Read me your profile.
CC: “I’m a comedian, writer and single mother (hey now!) looking for someone to have some good times with who is maybe also interested at some point if things go well in being a grown up and having a family. Such sexy first date material.”
HF: You’re a comedian? Very important.
CC: I think so, too. And this is a question a friend of mine wanted me to ask you. If you’re a strong, independent woman, do you need to do certain things to make yourself seem more attractive to men?
HF: No, because I think a great many men like a strong, independent woman. We are not in the age of men wanting to care for a wilting violet. In fact there’s new data, since 2000, that shows that men are more interested in commitment than women are, and that men are more interested in a woman who’s their age, their level of education and their level of economic power. So I wouldn’t try to hide being a strong woman. I think that we don’t really understand men. Men fall in love faster than women do, they have more intimate conversations with their partners, men are more likely to kill themselves when a relationship is over, men are more likely to remarry. So, men are nice things. They’re not scared of a strong woman. They had strong mothers and strong sisters. I think these days men really want a life partner who can go the road with them instead of having to be the major bread winner or the man of the house.
Now, when you say comedian, people are looking for the details. Do you do stand-up improv in downtown speakeasies? What kind of comedian? What kind of writer? Do you write novels or are you a journalist? Comedian and writer is good, but it’s nowhere near enough. Also, do you want to tell them you’re a single mother? It’s not mandatory. That’s the sort of thing you could tell them later if you want to. But in a lot of cultures, men want a woman who has already had children, because it shows that she’s fertile and that she’s compassionate. So it’s not a…
CC: A dealbreaker.
HF: But you don’t need to say “single” mother. Single mother has sort of a negative ring to it. You could just say mother of a 4-year-old daughter. What do you mean by “good times with?” Because that’s very generic. Skip the walk on the beach, the wine by the fire, skip the cozy Sunday morning with the tea, what kind of good times do you really want? Do you like bike riding in Ireland? Do you want somebody who will skip rope in the dark in Central Park? The kind of profile that gets attention is the kind that’s details, details, details. Tell them what you really do want.
CC: Yeah, that’s a genius idea, huh?
HF: (Laughs) You’re being too modest and too shy!
CC: I think coming off of a divorce and having a daughter and being only 33, I feel like most of the men that are my age don’t have half the life experience I have and so I think I’m concerned about the disconnect there.
HF: Well, every time a woman’s had a child, a man’s had a child, too. So, there’s a lot of men in their 20′s and 30′s who’ve also had a child. I wouldn’t be too down on the boys and think that they can’t cope with that. The ones that want children and want family are gonna be pleased that you are interested in that. A man with real personality is looking for personality in his partner.
CC: Interesting. In your TED talk, you talked about the pain and withdrawal people go through after a breakup, and a lot of single mothers have had pretty bad breakups, I think it’s safe to say. Do you have any advice about how to move on without bringing those types of things into future relationships?
HF: For one, I think you’ve got to break some bad habits about men. There are nice men out there. There’s a lot of men out there – at every age – and they’re looking for love just the way women are. One thing that might be helpful is to create an aphorism. The aphorism that I use is, “I love being myself with a lovely man of my own.” What you do with an aphorism is you say it as if it’s already happened. You don’t say, “I want to find a lovely man,” you say, “I love being myself” – which gives you some self-confidence – “with a lovely man of my own.” The only really important word in that sentence is lovely. What do I mean by lovely man? It could be very different from what you mean by a lovely man of your own. You want a guy who wants a family or children, I want an older man who’s got enough money to go traveling with me and likes poetry. So I would create and aphorism that gives you self-confidence, and I would repeat that aphorism to myself to build myself up.
Then the conversation turned to online dating itself. Is it best to follow “The Rules” and play hard to get? Continue reading to see what Dr. Fisher thinks. Continue reading »
Did your parents and teachers fail to teach you to find a husband? That’s the premise put forth by Eleanor Mills in the London Times this week. She looks around at her 30-something and 40-something single friends and thinks:
…as a generation we were bred not to prioritise finding a husband and having a family. Unlike generations of females before us, we were bred to work. I was born in 1970, in the middle of women’s lib. My mother and her peers were conscious-raising and feminist.
Seriously? There’s an epidemic of single ladies because our moms were feminists? I don’t think so.
Joslyn Gray 
Amber Doty 
Julianna Miner 
Monica Bielanko 
Sierra Black 
Meredith Carroll 
Carolyn Castiglia 
Sunny Chanel 
Madeline Holler 
Wendy Michaels 
Rebecca Odes 
Danielle Smith 
Danielle Sullivan 
Katherine Stone 
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