Look, I’ll just say it. Some people are really bad at picking romantic partners. What drives interpersonal attraction is often mysterious, hard to pin down. Perhaps it’s pheromones. Maybe it’s something within our genes deciding that we’d make good offspring with THAT PERSON OVER THERE (a phenomenon that strangely occurs even when it’s not biologically possible to bear children with a partner for whatever reason). » Read more
It Was Terrifying the First Time I Dated Someone Who Was Really Good to Me
I remember being scared a lot when we first started dating. Suspicious. Worried.
Not about you. Not about us. Or our fit. No, we always made sense to me.
I was worried because you kept doing nice things for me. Completely unprompted. You paid close attention to me, and you saw the areas of my life that were unwieldy and offered to help. » Read more
Sometimes You Just Don’t Have Enough Data Points
To minimize the geekiness in this essay, I’ll talk as quickly as I can (possibly risking inaccuracy via that brevity) about a basic statistical concept.
When you’re trying to conduct a scientific study, proper experimental design is a must — if you want to be able to have any hope of trusting the results. » Read more
What Is Financial Infidelity?
While sexual infidelity gets most of the heat these days, it turns out there’s another form of infidelity that’s markedly more common: Financial infidelity.
Studies show that as many as 41% of Americans say they have hidden secret debts, accounts, or purchases from their partner or spouse.
These sorts of behaviors are known as financial infidelity. » Read more
The 5 Apology Styles from Chapman (of the 5 Love Languages)
I’ve been meaning to cover this topic on the blog for a while. As some of you know, I write essays fairly frequently that deal with apologies. While research has shown that people are generally quite unforgiving (a finding I find personally depressing, as people are also imperfect and mess up, » Read more
Does Abuse Require Bad Intent or Can It Be the Result of Simple Incompetence?
I didn’t think of myself as being a survivor of anything — much less abuse — until I was in my 30s.
The news was delivered to me in my therapist’s office, spoken as an casual aside, quickly, as though she assumed the information was obvious to me.
“Well, that’s pretty common for people who have had abusive childhoods, » Read more
Once Upon a Time, You Could Sue People for Breaking Up With You
Our current conception of marriage as a romantic institution founded on love is relatively new. For hundreds, arguably thousands of years (since marriage ceremonies were documented as early as 2350 B.C. in Mesopotamia), marriage existed primarily to establish strategic alliances between families.
Marriage was a practical fixture, usually having a lot to do with money. » Read more
The Perils of Talking Over Your Relationship Issues With Other People
I’ve had a lot of long-term relationships. Some of them were rocky, some were much more even keel.
Nevertheless, all of them had conflict every once in a while. » Read more
Not All Romantic Gestures Look the Same
I’m not really a morning person and not really an evening person. I function about equally well all day long (even took a test that confirmed it). Sometimes I refer to myself as an asynchronous person. How I feel is more a function of how much sleep I got the night before than what time of day or night it is at the moment. » Read more
The Interpersonal Hellscape of Sanctioned Gift-Giving
My household subscribes to the Dollar Shave Club. I’m sure a lot of you are familiar with the service, but if you aren’t it’s a subscription box that comes every month with fresh razor blades.
It’s pretty great honestly. The price is really reasonable, and I always have sharp blades to shave with, » Read more