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The Married Millennial – Are We Too Young?

by RJ Newellin LOVE

A mistake is only a failure if you don’t learn from it. Marriage and divorce shouldn’t be any different.

I got married at 21. By today’s standards, that makes me a unicorn.

When I show up with a new tattoo, nobody bats an eye. But the second I say I’m married? I might as well have joined a cult.

“How old are you, again?” my yoga teacher asked.

I answered honestly. “I’m 21.”

Her face must have gone through fifty shades of pity. “Are you sure?”

In our early twenties, we are expected to make adult decisions. Finishing college, choosing our careers, voting in elections – these are not tasks for children. As an adult, I’m allowed to make choices for myself. I’m allowed to make mistakes.

If we can smoke cigarettes in our twenties (risking cancer), own a credit card (and a lifetime of student loan debt), or joining the military (at 18, mind you) – why is marriage such a scary concept to us?

Traditional marriage goes against what many of us have come to know.

“How long have you been together? Because when I was in my twenties…”

This is a trick question. It doesn’t matter how long we have been together – her mind is made up that I am too young. Her conclusion is probably drawn from her own experiences at 21 – and that’s not a bad thing.

A year before, I would have agreed with her. I’ve had every reason to not believe in marriage. My experiences with long-term relationships began much younger than most, and nearly all of them ended in heartbreak. I know what it’s like to think you’ll spend forever with someone, only to leave – or be left. My own parents divorced. My friends’ parents divorced. I’ve been to more divorce dinners than actual weddings…and that’s because I don’t like weddings.

Before my husband came along, I swore off the possibility of long-term relationships completely. Monogamy was a lie. Marriage was an outdated system. Why would a strong, career-minded feminist like myself willingly give herself legally to another person?

I argued this point whenever marriage was mentioned. I questioning my friends’ life choices and cut my own relationships short when things got too serious. I was content to spend the rest of my life as a happily single woman. Now, here I am, with a ring on my finger.

Is it scary? Yes. Do I question my decision? No.

A mistake is only a failure if you don’t learn from it. Marriage and divorce shouldn’t be any different. I can’t predict the next ten, twenty, thirty years. But no matter how my life turns out, I will be grateful for having shared it with him.

Nobody can predict the future, and that’s what makes marriage so huge.

I know a couple that dated for ten years before getting married. They divorced after one year. I also know a couple that got married six months after they met. They’ve been married for thirty years, and counting.

There is no guarantee that any relationship will survive. Our generation has been raised to value reward over risk. We want results, now. To many of us, marriage just sounds like a really expensive mistake. It’s easier to live together and have children together, without the hassle of expensive paperwork.

“Why invest in a marriage when you can have all the perks without it?” asked basically everyone.

As soon as our engagement announcement went live on social media, my inbox overflowed with congratulations…and concern.

“Have you been with him long enough to be sure?”

“Does this mean you giving up your career?”

“Are you pregnant?”

“I know it’s not my business, but…”

Sixty years ago, getting married in your twenties was totally normal. But then again, more of us had stable jobs in those days. People weren’t as afraid of the future then as we are now.

Nobody knows where – or who – we’ll be in five, ten, or twenty years. For many, this is why being “tied down” to any one person is terrifying. But for some, this is all the more reason to commit to something – or someone.

We’ve now been married for one year. So far, so good. We know that marriage is hard work. And it’s more than likely that we won’t be the same people in ten years. That’s not a bad thing. It means we’re growing – and hopefully, we’ll grow together.

Maybe you are also in your twenties, and you were hoping this article might help you decide whether to get married or not. My question for you, is – why?

Do your life choices reflect what you want, or what other people want? This applies to everything, not just marriage. Self-sabotage occurs by comparing ourselves to others and waiting for outer validation.

When my lover got down on one knee, he didn’t say, “Hey, friends and family, should she marry me?”

And I didn’t say, “Hold on a second,” and then get out my phone to Google national divorce statistics.

He simply asked, “Will you marry me?”

And I said, “Yes.”

Marriage is a choice between two people, to be made every day for the rest of life. I feel ready, but that doesn’t mean you have to. Love is all that matters. Embrace the way it lives for you.

Are we TOO young?

Are Your Genetics Effecting Who You Are Attracted to?

by zfortadminin LOVE

…the researchers set out to determine whether genes or the environment was a bigger influence on how people perceived attractiveness.

Is that guy sexy? Is that woman beautiful? If you ask these questions to a group of people, they may have different answers, and a new study hints at why: Your perception of other people’s attractiveness is mainly the result of your own experiences.

In the study of twins, researchers found that a person’s environment plays a bigger role than genes in shaping whom they find attractive.

The idea that beauty is in the eye of the beholder has been around for a long time, said Laura Germine, a psychiatric researcher at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston and lead author of the new study. But the scientific study of this idea has been limited, she said. [Seeing Double: 8 Fascinating Facts About Twins]

Most research on perceptions of attractiveness has focused on finding which characteristics people generally find attractive in others’ faces, Germine told Live Science. For example, researchers have found that faces that are more symmetrical are generally more attractive, she said.

In the new study, published on Oct. 1 in the journal Current Biology, the researchers looked at 547 sets of identical twins (who have identical DNA) and 214 sets of fraternal twins (who share half their DNA) in the Australian Twin Registry. The participants looked at 98 male faces and 102 female faces, and gave them a rating based on how attractive they thought the faces were. The researchers then used these ratings to come up with what they called “individual preference scores,” which were a measure of how much each participant’s ratings differed from the ratings of the average of all people in the study, according to the study.

In the first part of the study, the researchers found that if they selected two participants at random, the participants agreed on the attractiveness of a face 48 percent of the time on average, and disagreed 52 percent of the time.

That’s consistent with a previous study that found that, on the one hand, fashion models can “make a fortune with their good looks” but friends can still “endlessly debate about who is attractive and who is not,” the researchers wrote in the study, quoting an earlier study of the topic.

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Far Fetched? How a Woman Fell In Love With Her Sperm Donor.

by zfortadminin LOVE

TWO years since Aminah Hart’s love story with her sperm donor took the internet by storm, the pair have tied the knot — and she has penned a memoir detailing their back-to-front romance set to be spun into a movie.

Ms Hart, 46, met farmer Scott Anderson two years ago after she had selected him to be the anonymous father for her now three-year-old daughter Leila.

Ms Hart had lost two baby boys to a genetic disorder passed on from mother to son. At 42 and newly single, she felt anonymous sperm donation and IVF was her last chance to raise a healthy child.

Of the candidates, twice-divorced “happy and healthy” cattle farmer and footy player Mr Anderson, who also had four children of his own, stood out. She chose him as her donor.

When Leila turned two, Ms Hart became curious and she began seeking out her daughter’s biological father by googling clues to his identity. She made a formal request for contact — and the rest was history.

After making worldwide headlines in 2014 following their appearance on ABC’sAustralian Story, the smitten couple were married in December last year in Sorrento on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula.

“We managed to keep it quite a private day and it was just beautiful,” Ms Hart told Nine.

“There was a lot of love in the room for us. People were really happy to see two people so happy.”

But Ms Hart said she wouldn’t “ever advocate (sperm donation) as a dating service”

“What happened to Scott and I is such a random thing. He was basically just a brief profile on a piece of paper. He could have been anyone,” she said.

“The fact that we met and we liked each other and we fell in love and all of those things are still so farfetched to me.”

“Sometimes we do look at each other and go, ‘you and I met through (Leila) and we’re married now’. It’s kind of bizarre.”

Ms Hart has today released a new memoir titled How I Met Your Father. A production company has also bought the rights to produce a feature film based on their story.

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How This Couple Fell in LOVE through Sign Language

by zfortadminin LOVE

She watched the deaf-blind students talking with each other, signing into each others’ hands, feeling the words.

Tania and Jose Amaya are both a little shy, but ask them how they met and they’ll light up. She’ll blush. He’ll grin.

She was a computer teacher at the Braille Institute in East Hollywood, soft-spoken and sweet. He was a volunteer, deaf and legally blind, unable to speak. She was enrolled in deaf studies at Cal State Northridge. He’d help with her sign language homework.

They’d speak in a language for the deaf-blind, called tactile sign language. She’d sign, and he’d hold his hands over hers, reading the movements of her fingers. They’d make each other smile.

By the time they learned to communicate, something else happened: They fell in love. Next month, they’ll celebrate five years of marriage.

Asked recently what attracted them to each other, Tania signed the question to Jose, and they chuckled.

“How do you explain love?” she asked.

It’s the kind of thing that happens often at the Braille Institute. People — many of them sad and scared after starting to lose their vision — find community. They find friends. They find mentors. And, sometimes, they find love.

The institute recently lauded those relationships in a social media campaign called #loveatbraille, with couples and friends cheesing for the camera beside cutout hearts to “celebrate finding hope and love in our community.”

“It’s about redefining hope. People come here thinking they’re useless to other people and that they’ve lost their independence,” said Anita Wright, executive director of the institute’s Los Angeles center. “As students come here, they start to understand that there’s more to life than just the eyes, and that the eyes are to look through but the vision is through the heart.”

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Better Odds, Love or Arranged Marriage?

by Maria Shehatain LOVE

My grandparents were basically doing the same thing as dating site algorithms, just with higher stakes. 

My parents met in Cairo for the first time in 1971, and three days later they got married. Not because they were swept off their feet, but because they were ready to get married. Introduced to each other through their parents as two people with similar religious backgrounds and goals, they talked, neither one hated the other, so they got married. They were an arranged marriage, and they’re still together. Through thick and thin, good times and bad, good kids and insufferable rebellious teenager turned stand up comedian, they made it work. They used to offer to fix me up with someone, which was always met with an immediate “What, are you fucking insane?” I eventually found someone on my own, so now that it’s not a reality, I feel comfortable in entertaining the whole idea. It did take me years to find someone good, and it was never because of a lack of meeting people. New dating apps come out every week, and I’d sign up, completing each profile on autofill. I met guys all the time, but there was always something wrong. There was always a reason I didn’t want to commit, or vice versa. Most of my friends are in similar boats, a large percentage of us are sailing into our late thirties and early forties, single, and sick of mingling. Maybe this whole dating thing wasted a lot of my time, searching for that almost laughable concept of “soulmate.” If love grows in arranged marriages, and fades in love marriages, would it have been so awful to just let them choose, and use that extra time to focus on myself?

I asked my dad if, when he was introduced to my mom, he had to say yes, that was it, no questions asked. He said, “No of course not. It was our choice. I met a few other women before I met your mom.” I mentally flipped through all the different people I would have been if he’d married any of those other women. Then I thought about all the epic fights my mom and dad had over the years (I didn’t say their marriage was perfect), and I asked “Why’d you pick mom?” “She was cute.”

Cool, well, can’t judge you there, dad. It’s basically a swipe right, isn’t it? My grandparents were basically doing the same thing as dating site algorithms, just with higher stakes. Both methods find people with similar interests, values, and backgrounds, and you can decide if you’re attracted to them or not. But the major difference between dating apps and ethnic parents is, dating apps offer an endless amount of options. We have a world of people literally at our fingertips that we toss away like sifting through DVDs in a discount bin at Best Buy. If we could somehow eliminate all the options down to, say, five, and you HAVE to pick one to marry, you’d be happier with your choice. On the Bachelor, all those girls fell in love with their only option. Dan Gilbert, author of Stumbling on Happiness, said in his Ted talk, “The freedom to choose, to change and make up your mind, is the enemy of synthetic happiness…The psychological immune system works best when we are totally stuck… You’re married to a guy who picks his nose….eh, he has a heart of gold, don’t touch the fruit cake. You find a way to be happy.”

But limited options aren’t the only reason less arranged marriages end in divorce. They are also practiced in cultures with societal and religious pressure to stay together. In America, we’ve all heard it, one in two marriages end in divorce. We’ve all accepted this, and we seem to enter into a contract of marriage the way we get a tattoo. If we really hate it later, we can get rid of it. We may be bound by law, but only until we would pay anything to get out of it. So for an arranged marriage to work in this society, we would have to make it illegal to divorce.

While that will never be a reality, there are a couple things we can borrow from the concept. Don’t throw someone away because you don’t immediately feel a spark. If they have a heart of gold, a healthy drive, and take showers, that spark could happen eventually. And when you inevitably get into arguments, stick it out. There were plenty of times over the years, my parent’s fought so much even us kids were presenting them with divorce papers. But now that they are older, I see them getting along more. Maybe it’s empty nest, maybe because they are getting old and need each other, but they are softer towards each other. Their’s is still a partnership, no matter how much they fought over the years. Their marriage isn’t ideal, and of course if you can marry your best friend, do it. But in love or arranged marriages, if we ignored the unlimited amount of options, and had more resolve to stick with it, maybe we won’t spend half our lives tossing away an endless sea of faces with good hearts.

Falling in Love and Having Sex in Spanish

by zfortadminin Sex

In Spanish penis is polla, chicken is pollo. And you have no idea how many times I’ve ordered a dick sandwich. 🙂

We were back at his apartment after a long night of partying in my Madrid barrio, La Latina. On his couch, kissing sloppily, with our arms reaching and grabbing at body parts in the dark, I got my hands down to his belt buckle and undid it with a ferocious appetite. He exhaled a long drawn out “siiiiiiiii.” I flicked the button to his pants open and pulled down his zipper with what I thought was surprising dexterity, considering just how many vinos blancos I had.

Then thinking I was the embodiment of sexuality itself, I slowly made my way up to his ear. Breathing heavily, I placed my lips up to his lobe as I felt a shiver run through his body. Then in my best Spanish and with all the confidence in the world, I said: “Mmmm … I want to suck your chicken.”

You see in Spanish, the words for chicken and dick are extremely similar. I guess it makes a certain amount of sense: what is a chicken but a cock by any other name? In Spanish penis is polla, chicken is pollo. And you have no idea how many times I’ve ordered a dick sandwich. These are just some of the issues you run into when you are screwing/dating/in a relationship with someone who doesn’t speak the same language as you. On the other hand, lovemaking with a language barrier can also be a beautiful thing.

I moved to Madrid, Spain in 2010 right after college. The U.S. was in a recession and I had a degree in anthropology and political science. I figured I’d rather live in a different country working at a job I was overeducated for than in the States working such a job. So some friends and I got our TEFL certificates, packed our bags and set out to be English teachers in Madrid.

I hardly spoke a word of Spanish when I arrived. My high school Spanish was long forgotten, and I took Russian, a language I was already fluent in, as my required language in college for an easy A. The first month or so in Madrid was stressful. My friends and I tried to maneuver around the city, asking for directions to job interviews in bastardized Spanish and lots of hand gestures. We eventually landed our first jobs and got a shithole apartment with no windows in La Latina.

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Falling for Men with Narcissistic Tendencies

by zfortadminin LOVE

Most women claim to want the guy who is sensitive, emotionally fluent and intimate. Yet, when it comes down to it, women consistently chase after the “bad boy,” the guy who is narcissistic, self-absorbed and avoids all forms of intimacy as if they were infectious diseases.

A woman’s dating preference is the ultimate paradox.

The thing is, while we’re constantly on the lookout for that super sweet, caring guy who will make a great companion, we’re actually attracted to the guy who ignites passion within us.

Nice guys are just boring.

It’s a giant catch-22, isn’t it? We want to have serious relationships with good, sweet guys, but we want to make babies with aggressive assh*les.

There’s just something so satisfying about taking the jerk home from the bar who’s spent most of the night intellectually challenging you in a heated verbal debate.

He needs to be brought down a notch. He’s absolutely infuriating! And isn’t that so f*cking sexy?

What it all comes down to is biology. We are literally, scientifically geared to want assh*les.

While women claim to want “the nice guy,” we’re genetically hard-wired to want to procreate with the alpha male because he has stronger sperm.

There is an actual “Nice Guy Paradox”

In two studies highlighted in “Sex Roles, A Journal of Research,” the “nice guy paradox” is explored.

This nice guy stereotype contends that women often claim they want a nice guy, a man who is sweet, kind and sensitive, and yet, when it comes down to it, she rejects this man for one with “other salient characteristics” like a hot body or an ultra strong personality.

Both studies found that “nice” qualities were more desirable for long-term relationships while physical attractiveness prevailed in terms of sexual relationships:

Niceness appeared to be the most salient factor when it came to desirability for more serious relationships, whereas physical attractiveness appeared more important in terms of desirability for more casual, sexual relationships.

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Is it Love or Something Else?

by zfortadminin LOVE

Ever wondered if you were truly in love, or truly in lust?

Did you know that falling in love actually happens over time, and the journey from initial attraction to deep romantic love is a predictable course that depends on many different factors?

Love is an intense feeling of affection toward another person. It’s a profound and caring attraction that forms emotional attachment.

On the flip side, lust is a strong desire of a sexual nature that is based on physical attraction. Lust can transform into deep romantic love, but it usually takes time.

Two individuals will transform their lust into love when they get to see the whole individual (their strengths and weaknesses) and get past the “fantasy level.

Dr. Helen Fisher, a well-known researcher on the topic of romantic love, has identified three stages to falling in love in her excellent book Why Him? Why Her?: How to Find and Keep Lasting Love and I’ve been inspired by her research in writing this post.

Which stage are you at?

Stage 1: Lust

Lust is the first stage of falling in love. It’s driven by desire. The sex hormones play an important role in this stage. According to experts, this stage may begin immediately and can last up to two years.

Signs that you’re in lust:

  • You’re focused on the physical appearance of the object of your desire.
  • There is a strong desire to have sex, but not deep emotional conversations.
  • You’d rather keep the relationship on a fantasy level, not discuss real feelings.
  • You are lovers, but not necessarily friends.

Stage 2: Attraction

This is the “love-struck” phase. When you spend hours daydreaming about your lover; when you lose sleep or your appetite, you know you’re in this phase. The neurohormones that play an important role in the attraction or infatuation phase are dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin. These are the hormones that send our heart racing, and might actually make us feel like we are going insane.

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You Are Into Him and He’s Not….How to Say Goodbye

by zfortadminin LOVE

We’ve all heard the saying ‘If you love someone, set them free. If they come back they’re yours; if they don’t they never were.’

We’ve read this quote in countless magazines or books, or heard it in movies. What we didn’t know then, was how utterly painful it is. Those who have been through it and came out in one piece will tell you they feel they’ve been to a war. Hold on girls, it’s not that morbid, really. I can understand your situation; you love him, he loves you, all is well. Then comes that time when he no longer returns the feelings. That’s got to hurt, but making matters worse is the fact that you can’t seem to stop loving him. Well, here’s some good news, you CAN stop loving him. Just follow our guide, where we’ve laid out the top 12 ways you can get over him-for good especially if you are in a open-relationship.

Fall in love again-with yourself

Remember that person who loved the outdoors, but gave it up for the guy who hated it? Oh, and remember that girl who was the most popular in high school but had to drop out of her social circle to make time for the ‘love’ of her life? Yeah, that’s right. I’m talking about you. When we are with someone, we automatically put our single selves up on a shelf, transforming and molding ourselves into a person who’s easier to date & last but not the least, we try to save the relationship even to impossible extents. Now would be the best time to go back and reach out to all the friends you cut off for your guy. All the stuff that made you happy once when you were single is still out there, waiting for you to come back to it. Instead of feeling sorry for yourself, get out there and become the amazing person you used to be. Love yourself first; the rest will fall into place.

Get rid of excess baggage

This one might seem exceptionally hard to do, but once done, you’ll feel like a huge chunk of weight has been lifted off your shoulders. It doesn’t matter how many questions you have asked your boyfriend during the relationship. Delete and get rid of all texts, pictures, emails and anything else that is a constant reminder of him. You’ll question yourself whether you should, but believe me, you’ll thank me later. This doesn’t just apply to your cell phone. Go ahead and delete all your pictures together on Facebook, Instagram or anywhere else you can think of. Believe me, if there’s one thing we girls love doing, its torturing ourselves by going down memory lane, and that is exactly what you’re going to avoid. It was nothing but an abusive emotional relationship.

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Love is Physically Magnetic. Is this True?

by zfortadminin LOVE

Animal magnetism may be a more literal concept than it’s given credit for, according to a new study that finds that people are more attracted to their romantic partners after playing with magnets.

The research is an example of a social priming effect, an old idea in psychology that has recently become more controversial. The idea holds that when people are “primed” or prompted to think about a particular concept — such as physical magnetic attraction — it affects their cognition in surprising ways.

In this case, the magnets may make the metaphor of love as a physical force more prominent in people’s minds, leading them to report closer feelings with their partners, said Andrew Christy, a graduate student in psychology at Texas A&M University and a co-author of the new study. [13 Scientifically Proven Signs You’re in Love]

Social priming effects have become a battleground in social psychology in recent years. The entire field is in the midst of a “replication crisis,” because scientists have failed to replicate the results of many famous experiments when trying to repeat them. Social priming studies have been some of the highest-profile failures: In 2012, researchers failed to replicate one classic study of social priming, which found that people walked slower after being exposed to words related to old age, kicking off a firestorm of debate.

Today, some psychologists are unsure whether social priming really exists; others think it does, but that the effects are subtle and very context-dependent, making the effects hard to measure.

Love and magnets

In the new research, Christy and his colleagues attempted to guard against a false result by conducting their experiments twice, replicating their own research. However, independent replication by other researchers will be necessary to show that the magnetism effect truly exists, the researchers said.

In the new study, researchers focused on the metaphor of love as a physical force. They asked 120 students who were 18 to 22 years old and who were either in relationships or had been in relationships within the last few months, to fill out questionnaires about their connection with their partners. Before they began, the students were told to take a “mental break” by playing with blocks, putting them together and taking them apart. Some of the students were given magnetized blocks that attracted each other, while some had magnetized blocks that repelled each other, and some had blocks without magnets. [9 Cool Facts About Magnets]

The participants who played with the magnetically attracting blocks reported greater attraction, satisfaction and commitment in their relationships or recent relationships compared with those students given the other two block types, Christy told Live Science.

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Falling in Love in a Foreign Language

by zfortadminin LOVE

From the very first flirtation, dating a Frenchman is different

Devoid of a wingman, he’ll approach and break out some rusty high school English to compare the color of your eyes to the sky, to the river, to a bird he saw, once. When I first met my French fiancé, eight years ago now, his English was wanting, and he resorted, instead, to identifying random items in the room—table, teeth, bottle, bag.

Bless him, it worked.

But before I met my fiancé, I discovered quite a few duds in the French dating pool. These were men whose egos have remained resolutely intact after years of being brushed off by French girls who aren’t afraid of saying no. I was horrified when I realized that my all-American technique of “letting him down easy” just seemed to make French men try harder. I learned early on how to say “no” like a French girl: decisively and without apology.

After the rare “yes,” though, I learned that old-fashioned dating is alive and well in France—there is very little hookup culture and definitely no “Netflix and chill.” In fact, more often than not, both the first and the second date with a Frenchman are surprisingly devoid of so much as a goodnight kiss, which forces people in expat circles into analysis: Was something lost in translation? Have I found my way into the friend zone?

But France has no friend zone to speak of; it’s just that three is the magic number. After date three, the bise—that ubiquitous European double-cheek kiss—is retired without ceremony. You are a couple now; there is no conversation to establish this. Attempts to have such a conversation—or accidental offerings of a cheek for the bise, due to habit—both cause French men to react as though you are insane.

French men say “Je t’aime” far too quickly for my taste. I am convinced it means something different to them, because I’ve had it said to me long before the concerned party knows how to spell my name, and far before I feel ready to say “I love you” back. When my fiancé whispered it to me just hours after our first kiss—or maybe even before—I said, “I like you too,” and I tried to pretend that the translation mishap eluded me. At least I never had to worry about saying it first.

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How I Knew I Found Someone Special

by Robin Tranin LOVE

All I cared about is that she made me happy whenever I was around her, and she helps me help myself feel worthy of that love every day.

I’ve always been a bratty, picky introvert, lamenting about my loneliness while putting myself through self-imposed solitude. I can’t quite explain why. I love being alone yet I hate being lonely. It’s this inexplicable balance that I’ve lived with for the vast majority of my life.

I have a high capacity for love, yet a very low tolerance for stimulus. This means that while I appreciate every moment I get to spend with my friends and family, I was never able to see any one person more than twice a week before I started feeling overwhelmed. I would have to take regular breaks from seeing people.

That was, until I met my current girlfriend.

In 2012, I was going through a journey of self-discovery. That was the year I realized that I had never really been happy. I would smile and laugh occasionally, but the feeling of pure joy eluded me. I started figuring out how to love myself using cognitive behavioral therapy and meditation.

It was around this time that I met Cate. When I first got to know her, I didn’t know that she would be the person I’d want to spend my life with. We always got along made each other laugh, but I was still in the process of finding myself. I still held onto my rule of only seeing my friends twice a week. I kept a wall up, perhaps to protect myself from pain.

But one fateful day, after many months of cognitive therapy, I worked up the nerve to take a risk. For a long time, I had “jokingly” asked her on dates, which always gave her the opportunity to laugh off the situation. But not on this day.

I wanted to drop any pretense that I was joking and told her that I was serious, letting her know that I wanted to get to know her better. We finally set up our first date.

I wasn’t sure what I expected when we went out for the first time. All I wanted to do was have a good time, get to know someone new. I always enjoyed her company and our Facebook chats, and she was the smartest person I knew.

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My Crush Method Protection

by Eliza Hurwitzin LOVE

I blame it on my grandparents.

I think I’ve always had an idealized image of love and relationships. Part of the blame goes to Hollywood, with romantic comedies being a staple of my childhood. But I place the rest of the blame on my grandparents. They were high school sweethearts and were still completely and totally in love with each other. They would go on walks together every morning. Run their daily errands together. Watch Jeopardy together. Their days were spent, side by side, and the mundane errands never seemed to be mundane to them. I assumed it was simply because being together was joy enough. One of my favorite things they had hung up on their fridge, next to the artwork from me and my brothers and sisters and cousins, was a “Love Is…” comic strip by Kim Casali that said “Love is Having Someone to Hug.” Just like their relationship, it was simple, sweet and perfect. It was exactly what I wanted.

I clung to this notion of the perfect relationship desperately and because of these firm convictions and my stubbornness, I didn’t date in high school or college. I rarely even considered it. Though I would develop crushes, they never panned out, because as soon as I found a flaw, I would end it. If I couldn’t imagine growing old with him, taking a morning stroll together, it was over before it began and I would wonder why I was still without love. I remember one guy in my photography class in college; he had long hair and I felt a connection with him immediately. He was nice and seemed smart; there really was nothing wrong with him! I sensed that he liked me, but when he asked me out I declined. I had somehow convinced myself that he was pretentious. Another guy I went on a couple of dates with was a little too short for my liking…The thing is, I’m 5’1 so why would I bother being so picky about a vertical challenge that I suffered from too?!

Other times I would develop crushes on guys who were clearly disinterested. One crush in particular was on and off for 3 years. This is just way too long, but you can’t help your emotions. I had no reason to develop a crush on this guy. We barely ever spoke. He was shy. I was shy. He was from my hometown and I would only see him when I returned home from college for the summer and holiday breaks. Because of our lack of communication, I was able to create this long, unspoken, but deep connection between us. I call this the crush method form of protection. For someone who wanted a relationship, but didn’t really want a relationship, the crush method was perfect and non-threatening. Without any actions, there could be no consequences. Looking back, however, I realize these crushes were just another way of protecting myself from a committed relationship. I was letting fear decide my fate. Why take a risk on a relationship, I thought, if it wasn’t going to last? My mom would tell me that I was too picky and had my standards set too high. Although part of me knew this was true, I was unwilling to let go of the idea of a perfect romance.

By the time I was in my mid-twenties, I still hadn’t had a serious relationship. I started to feel embarrassed and worried that love just wasn’t in the cards for me. I was on all the dating apps and sites, to no avail. I was ready to give up and resign to a life alone until I realized that maybe, just maybe, my mom was right. Perhaps I was being too picky. It was time to lower my unrealistic expectations. But if let go of my standards, would I also have to let go of my idyllic, romantic notion of love? I was willing to give it a shot, but had a feeling it would prove difficult. After all, this was a belief that I was practically born with.

Fortunately, I quickly realized that this wasn’t a notion I had to let go of. What I did have to let go of was taking dating so seriously. By doing so, I was setting unrealistic expectations that every date would/should end in a lasting relationship. It wasn’t until I started dating for the fun of it, rather than finding the absolute perfect person, that I was able to find love. I did have to date a couple of duds in the process, though. There was a guy who was a terrible listener. Another guy who seemed lazy and unmotivated, and didn’t seem to have goals or ambition. Not only did those duds helped me realize what I want and need out of a relationship, but they also showed me that no one is perfect, everyone has flaws, but despite that, there is something redeemable in us all. The bad listener was so funny and fun to go out with. He would tell me long stories about his past, his family, and his childhood that would never cease to make me laugh. But I grew tired of his inability to hear me when it was my turn to speak. This, in my opinion, was selfishness. I learned that listening is a trait I care most about. Though the lazy guy couldn’t tell me one future goal of his or even past accomplishment, he had a vast knowledge of music. He had some passion, though it didn’t translate to any action. Still, I learned a lot. Because I opened myself up to the dating world, I knew what I was looking for in another person, and I found him. A good listener. A kind person. Someone to make me laugh. A hard worker. No, he wouldn’t meet my unrealistic expectations set in my early teen years, which was basically a mixture of Prince Charming and Jake Gyllenhaal. He’s short. He’s funny. He’s incredibly messy! No he wasn’t perfect. But neither am I. Nor is our relationship joyous and happy all the time, as I imagined my grandparents to be, but it’s ours and because of that, it is perfect. Though the person you love may be different than you’d expected, your relationship should be exactly how you envision it.

Supergirl’s Sister…Why She Is TV’s Most Realistic Coming Out Story

by Riley Silvermanin LOVE

Even when people are good, loving, supportive folks they can screw it up.

It started cute. In the third episode of Supergirl’s second season, Alex Danvers, Supergirl’s sister and tough-as-nails alien fighting government agent met Maggie Sawyer, a detective who is no stranger to alien activity herself. Despite the silliness of their roles on a TV show about a superhero from space, there was something real in the spark between them. In that very first scene I found myself mentally willing them to make out. Later in the same episode, when Maggie nonchalantly discloses her sexuality to Alex, I was in deep.

But here we are five episodes later, and while that giddy queer girl cheerleading is still screaming out from my heart, giving me the feels in a time when I really, really needed it, the storyline has evolved into something I didn’t see coming. On paper it seems so incredibly simple, if you take out the coming out element to it, what you have seems like a fairly common unrequited love storyline. Girl meets girl, they start flirting, girl makes a move, and is rejected, girl is sad. And in a genre of TV like Supergirl’s blend of comic book action with relationship drama, that’s pretty par for the course. Sister show Arrow is full of the bodies of failed relationships (sometimes in the form of literal corpses who may or may not stay dead), and even Supergirl has had some hetero versions of this same arc.

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Unrequited Love: Falling for Someone Who Prefers the Opposite Sex

by Clementine Francesin LOVE, RELATIONSHIPS

Unrequited love: am I like the girls I feel sad for?

So, one time, I fell hard for a guy. Relationships were only a concept that existed in fairy tales as far as I was concerned.  But, one day I met a guy who I thought was interested in me, and I decided if he asked me out I would say yes. We were always excited to see each other. We always spoke whenever the opportunity came, and I thought maybe something would happen.  But then he would say let’s hang and then not follow through. Or he would go days without texting, and I thought to myself: am I like the girls I feel sad for? The ones who settle for crap boys who don’t treat them well just because I wanted something to happen so badly?

It turned out he was gay!

He was attentive and interested in me as a friend! He cooked for me, invited me to things, said kind things about me. And I thought this was the behavior of a man interested, but it was the behavior of someone who liked me as a person, albeit semi sucky friend (cuz you don’t keep flaking on people!) That was strange, and devastating. Here I was, ready to believe that romance was not something that only belonged in books, movies, and songs and I fell for the wrong person.

I wanted him so badly to be bisexual before the idea of dating a bisexual guy was a stretch for me. It showed me that I was willing to give up anything I stood for just to try love. And I felt sad for myself. As a serial single person I thought I was strong in who I was. The minute someone showed genuine interest I wasn’t who I believed I was. It’s amazing how feelings can change your convictions.

Convictions, perhaps, are circumstantial.

Back to the safety of unrequited love: if you fall for a gay guy your friends don’t have to know, and you can feel like an idiot privately. Now, I’m afraid that if a guy shows interest in me it’s because he’s gay. There are three guys I call friends and I assumed they were all gay. Just found out one wasn’t, at least that’s what he has us believe, and now I’m curious if I’ve just assumed that about the other two. The way I’ve seen these boys is who I’ve decided them to be. The one that I am currently interested in could easily be gay. But, I have no idea if it’s just my preconceived notions. Now I feel bad that I could fall for a gay guy twice.

I should be able to tell the difference between a guy who is kind and a guy who is gay. My toxic experience with men in my life have eclipsed my ability to trust.  I FIND THEM ALL SUSPICIOUS!

Pros and cons of unrequited love when it comes to a man whose sexuality you’re not sure about?

Pros:

  • You have a great, kind man in your life
  • No one has to know you fell for a guy who could never fall for you

Cons:

  • If you ask him sooner than you don’t have to waste your time falling for him
  • You don’t have to live in uncertainty
  • You could sleep better at night
  • You could move on with your life
  • You could stop beating yourself up
  • You could stop being a victim

The cons outweigh the pros! Perhaps, unrequited love is not safe at all. It’s very dangerous to the psyche, the soul, the heart. What if I lived my life open and honestly? What if I loved freely? Maybe I’d be happier. Maybe I wouldn’t be hiding pieces of who I am. I believe living partially in secrecy affects one wholly.

I don’t believe in the safety of unrequited love anymore.  I’m about to quote John Green so please forgive me, but “It hurt, because it mattered.” Love or feeling anything comes with vulnerability and it can hurt because it matters.

I have not taken my advice yet, “ I give very good advice, but I seldom follow it.” Bit of Alice in Wonderland there for ya, but I digress. It might take me two years, but I’ll get there. I hope in 2017 you and I could live our lives out loud! No more hiding!