Tag: romance

Decoding When He Touches Your Leg

by zfortadminin LOVE, RELATIONSHIPS

Biologically, we are hardwired for communication – our fingertips have a huge number of nerve endings and are one of the most sensitive parts of the human body.

Sense of touch also plays a very important part in our romantic and emotional relationships. Men and women exchange body contact all the time, in many situations. But sometimes, it’s hard for women to differentiate between contact that may have a sexual meaning, and that which doesn’t.

So, what does it mean if a guy is touching you? Here are some answers to this question:

Face

We judge beauty by the symmetry and other facial features. Lips and kissing, on the other hand, are two of the most important aspects of our sexuality.

The importance of the face is obvious, and that’s why we rarely let anyone touch it. A stranger on the subway can touch our hand, but we won’t let him touch our face, and everybody instinctively knows this.

If a man touches you on your cheeks or any other part of your face, it’s a sign he desires to be closer to you, even if he is masking it in a neutral gesture like removing an eyelash. If he wasn’t interested in you, he would probably point it out verbally, and not go ahead and touch you.

Hair

The hair carries a big statement about our personality. It is seen by all and at the same time, it’s a way we send a message to the world. If a guy is touching your hair he is responding to your statement, most likely in a positive way. This doesn’t always involve a romantic motive, but it easily can. If he continues touching you, the probable answer is – yes.

Hands

Hands are the part of your body designed for touching. A lot of social gestures like handshakes or high-fives are common place in many cultures. Mostly, these gestures are devoid of any emotion. Yet, the duration of hand-to-hand touch can say a lot about its meaning.

If a guy holds your hand longer every time you great each other, there might be something there. Be aware of this the next time he touches your hand in any way.

Maybe he is trying to tell you something.

Legs

For the majority of men, women’s legs are a big turn-on. A light touch on your thighs, especially if you’re sitting down and facing the man you’re talking to, is always a way to become more intimate. Sometimes men will act as if they touched you accidentally.

This is probably a way of testing your reaction. Usually, if they conclude you’re into them, the next touch will be a longer, but equally light, caress across the length of your leg.

Back

Touching someone’s back carries a message of support and reassurance. It probably originated in ancient history, when people literally needed someone to “have their back”. But this is true for your upper back, and the area just beneath the shoulder bones.

If his touch gets lower, it carries a more intimate meaning. The area of the lower back is really sensitive and the longer a guy leaves his hand on this part of your body, the more you can be sure he is attracted to you.

Shoulders

In our culture, tapping on the shoulders is seen as a universal gesture of compliment. A boss will pat his subordinate on the shoulder after a successful project, and a sports coach will do the same to his players.

If a man touches you like this, he is either doing the same, or maybe using the opportunity to get close to you. This is even more likely if that guy is normally shy and introverted.

Sides and Hips

A woman’s sides, waist and hips have a strong sexual symbolism. In one sense, they represent the woman’s ability to bear children (remember those caveman figurines that represent women with enormous hips). If a guy is touching you in this area and you’re standing face-to-face, this is a clear indication that he wants to pull you closer.

Don’t be surprised if he tries to kiss after this particular touch, especially if it lasts for more than a second.

As you can see, touching can mean a lot of things in a lot of situations. Have faith in your knowledge about different touches as well as your gut feelings about them.

Curated by Erbe
Original Article

Hair and Romance in India

by zfortadminin LOVE

Ask a woman about her hair, and she just might tell you the story of her life. So much of a woman’s identity is tied up in her hair: large scale issues of family, race, religion, culture, motherhood, politics, professionalism, etc. And on a smaller scale, there is hardly anything more omnipresent in our individual lives — we grapple with our hair everyday. 

Romance and Ritual

As a child growing up in Calcutta in a traditional Hindu Bengali extended-family household, in which all adult women (except my widowed grandmother) and all girl cousins had long, strong, glossy black hair, I developed an unhappy relationship with my own fine, wispy hair. My iron-willed grandmother, who had been born in the nineteenth century, insisted on the family’s following the unbending rules of social comportment laid down in the ancient text The Manusmriti, circa 1500 BCE, popularly referred to as the Laws of Manu and ascribed to Manu, the First Man. Manu the Lawgiver dictated incontrovertible dos and don’ts on all aspects of Hindu domestic life, including the type and quantity of body hair and head hair desirable in women. Decent men were to avoid women with hairy bodies, women with reddish hair, and women with bald or balding scalps. To ensure the growth of thick hair, girl children in our community have their heads shaved around age four or five in the belief that the second, permanent growth will be stronger and fuller. I too had my head shaved as a young child, but my follicles did not produce thicker, blacker hair.

My mother expended a great deal of energy every morning, massaging hair oil into my scalp to increase blood circulation and revive fatigued follicles. This was a prebath ritual. She would sit on a chair, with me squirming on a low stool in front of her, and she would part my locks, strand by strand, in order to work pink hibiscus-scented oil into the follicles. Sometimes she switched to green amla fruit oil, not only because eating the tart amla fruit, with its sweet aftertaste, was known to control rheumatoid arthritis and osteoporosis, increase intelligence, and improve eyesight, but because the oil processed from it fostered hair growth. In addition, she was always on the lookout for the harder-to-find hair oil pressed from a berry called koonch in Bangla, because it was guaranteed to grow new hair. Every two weeks, a half hour before she shampooed my hair, she would slather homemade yogurt on my head to guard against dandruff.

I, an ingrate daughter, resented every aspect of her hair-enhancement rituals, especially having to sacrifice precious leisure time when I would rather have read novels. But now the very memory of my mother’s nurturing fingers kneading the oiled-slippery skin on my head, her favorite fine-tooth comb sliding and smoothing tangles, the gentle press of her knees as they supported my slack-muscled bookworm’s back, brings on surges of guilt and pleasure. As an adult, I have treated myself to head massages in upscale hotel spas in China, Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesia. But as a child, given my scanty, secondhand knowledge of Manu the Lawgiver’s definitions of ideal hair, I was convinced that my thin hair was a symptom of moral flaws.

The oldest girl cousin in our large household, a know-it-all teenager, had a practical explanation for why Hindu Bengali women were required to have thick, waist-length hair. She was eight or ten years older than I was; I can’t be sure. Even though my generation was the first in our family to have been born in a hospital rather than delivered by a midwife at home, we did not have birth certificates. No one in our comfortably middle-class neighborhood did. The dates of individual births and deaths were associated with natural events, such as earthquakes and fatal floods, or with historical and political events, for example, a massive-scale, British Raj–engineered famine in the early 1940s and hangings of nationalist freedom fighters. This cousin informed us younger ones that an essential rite in Hindu Bengali weddings — the wedding ceremony lasts several days — involves the brides washing the feet of her bridegroom and drying his feet with her hair. She herself had coal-black hair, long enough and tough enough to towel-dry the largest, wettest pair of spousal feet. She also confided that if a woman had reddish or brownish hair instead of black, it was inescapable proof that some ancestor of that woman had — horror of horrors! — mated with a firangi, a white-skinned foreigner, in the pre–British Raj past when European pirates regularly raided our bountiful coastal towns. Hindu society was divided into distinct castes: maintenance of caste “purity” and vigilant avoidance of caste “pollution” were required of each individual. My family belonged to the Brahmin caste and could marry only within that caste. Neither my cousin nor I had a way of foretelling that at age twenty-three, while a graduate student in the Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa, I would marry a blue-eyed American fellow student and become the first in my family to commit caste “pollution.” Perhaps my opinionated cousin was correct: my husband and I have two sons, and both have brown hair.

The girl children on our block, including my cousins and my two sisters, had healthier relationships with their hair than I had with mine. My sisters inherited my father’s thick, curly hair. Curly hair was admired. I had wavy hair, but the longer it grew, the less wavy it was. All of us parted our hair on one side or the other of our heads, preferably alternating sides to ensure the hair part remained narrow. The first time we expected to part our hair in the center would be on our wedding day during the sindur-application rite, when the bridegroom rubs lavish quantities of vermilion powder on the center part of his bride. The vermilion red in a Hindu Bengali woman’s hair part is the sign that she is married and that her husband is still living. The red represents life force. A married woman must wearsindur every day of her married life. The sindur containers on the dressing tables of my mother and aunts were intricate artifacts made of silver or polished buffalo horn. Though I have never worn sindur, I have collected these containers as homage to the anonymous craftsmen who elevated the functional to the beautiful. The vermilion used by my mother’s generation was later discovered by scientists to be cinnabar, containing mercury sulfide. Contemporary women have replaced the toxic original with a harmless vermilion-red powder. Hindu traditions survive by being adaptable.

Unmarried girls and wives take guiltless pride in their long, lustrous hair. But Hindu Bengali tradition requires widows to keep their heads permanently shaved as one of many gestures of penance. My grandmother was the only widow in the household of my Calcutta childhood. I remember the neighborhood itinerant barber, who tended to male customers under a shady tree on the sidewalk, coming to our home to razor-scrape my grandmother’s head every week. My fine-boned grandmother actually looked elegant even when, between the barber’s trips, her scalp sprouted silvery stubble.

My mother’s attempts to improve the quality of hair I had been born with paled in comparison to those of the more competitive mothers of unmarried girls in our neighborhood. Every weekday afternoon after we’d returned from school by bus or rickshaw and hurried through snacks at home, we congregated in the large front yard of the girl who lived next door to me to play until dusk. My sisters and I braided our hair with pretty satin or taffeta ribbons and looped the two braids like hoop earrings, using the ends of the ribbons to anchor them behind each ear. I loved my collection of ribbons, which I stored in cans that had originally contained imported chocolates. My worry was that during energetic games of hide-and-seek, the ribbons would slip off my skinny braids, which would be humiliating enough, and be lost, which would have been tragic. The girls who were obsessed with hair protection wrapped their braids tightly with ugly, black cotton tapes to protect them from sun damage and dust during playtime. At bedtime, they probably rewrapped their braids with clean cotton ribbons so that heads tossing against pillowcases wouldn’t result in split ends. My oldest girl cousin was the only one in our family to wrap her braids during the day. On the nights she suffered from what she called “growing pains” in her calves, she repurposed the black ribbons to neutralize the pain by winding them tightly around her legs.

The first wedding of a Mukherjee relative I witnessed, that of a paternal uncle, took place when I must have been five or six. Marriages were “arranged” by family elders on the basis of  economic  and  social  compatibility, the groom’s career potential, the bride’s physical comeliness and fair complexion, and the spousal candidates’ families’ medical histories (which had to be free of heritable and communicable diseases). The groom was a tall (at least by our standards), handsome young man with a full head of fastidiously groomed, wavy hair. Hindu weddings are elaborate, some ceremonies having to be performed in the bride’s home, and a lesser number in the groom’s. I remember with astonishing vividness my uncle, dressed in the Bengali bridegroom’s fine dhoti, silk kurta, and tall wedding head gear, ushering his bride in through the front door of our flat as the conch-blowing, ululating women in our family swarmed around her to welcome her. I also remember each adult woman relative sticking honey-dipped fingers into the bride’s ears and mouth so that she would hear and utter only sweet words. The literal and the symbolic merge in Hindu rituals, and though I didn’t recognize it then, I was learning a lesson useful for my future as a writer. During the wedding rites performed on the day after her arrival in our home, I recall witnessing this new aunt cooking and feeding her bridegroom rice and curried fish, giving him the whole fish’s prized head and torso, and keeping (as tradition demanded) the bony tail for herself. Did she wash the bridegroom’s feet and dry them with her hair before that ritual meal? I witnessed this ritual act of wifely obeisance, didn’t I? I can no longer be sure. A dear New York–based friend of mine, a naturalized US citizen, confided to me that she knew her first marriage was over when, on an impulse, she went to a salon and asked for her long hair to be chopped off. She wears her hair short and is happily remarried.

In the winter of 1948, after India had been a sovereign nation for nearly a year and a half, my father, mother, and we three sisters sailed for Europe, my youngest sister wearing a scarf over her recently shaved head. My father would work for a few years with pharmaceutical companies in Switzerland and England. We returned to Calcutta, but not to the extended-family household with its oppressive allegiance to ancient traditions. We began life as a nuclear family, and I found myself no longer fretting about my fine hair.

I now live in two cities: New York and San Francisco. When I first moved to San Francisco, I felt lucky to have been befriended by a California-born neighbor, who knew the answers to all the settling-in questions that I hadn’t yet thought to ask: for example, where to find the freshest fish, the most inspired florist, the masseuse with magic fingers, the caring yoga instructor. The only question that stumped her was where I should go to get a decent, reasonable haircut. It seemed that my hair needs were too simple — a cut, shampoo, and blow-dry every three or four months — for her to send me to the stylists and colorists she patronized. My hair has remained dark, as was my father’s hair when he passed away at age seventy-five.

I know my hair is thinning. When I run into old friends visiting the United States from Calcutta, some will exclaim, with the shocking frankness that only Indian friends you have grown up with can, “Bharati, you’re getting bald! Good grief, what happened!” There is a medical explanation: recently I’ve been diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, and the medications I have been put on list “loss of hair” as a likely side effect. Maybe I should go back to using amla hair oil, which is said to control rheumatoid arthritis. Maybe I should get a wig. I mentioned the wig idea to Amy Tan over an Italian dinner in Sausalito the night before she was to leave for New York to launch The Valley of Amazement, her most recent novel. We’ve known each other for over twenty years, and she has always come up with suggestions for coping, no matter the nature of the distress. She mailed me a human-hair wig within weeks of that dinner. The hair is lustrous, shoulder length. I take the wig out of the box it came in and caress the silky, supple strands. Apparently, the wig will have to be cut and styled to suit me. Amy has promised to help me find the right stylists. For every problem, there’s a solution. I am ready for the next phase of this hair tale: exciting wig adventures with the help of a good friend.

Curated Article
Original Article

This Secret Ingredient Creates Genuine Sex Appeal

by zfortadminin Sex

That is the kind of sexy that lingers on in the mind, inviting curiosity and interest.

Selling sex appeal is a billion dollar industry. Everywhere we turn, we are bombarded with sensory stimulation that insists how buying a certain outfit, a pair of shoes, a brand name perfume, handbags, prohibitively expensive cars, underwear, accessories even a certain pair of socks will make us ooze sex appeal.  Just the thing we need to spruce up our otherwise banal existences.

Billboards are getting exceedingly edgier, not to mention television advertisements in which models adorn high-end luxury cars, sending subliminal messages suggesting that the man who purchases this car will now be armed with the adequate sex appeal to attract copious leggy models. Recently I came across an advertisement doing the rounds on the internet, of a model biting hungrily into a juicy burger as mayonnaise drips down the corners of her mouth. It makes you think, who needs the hassle of a relationship when you can have a burger that apparently provides all the sexiness, without the drama?

Have we not become overburdened with such images? Everything guarantees sex appeal and lots of attention, even a dishwasher! So pervasive are these images that once too often we have noticed the poor dear on the street that donned the latest ‘sexy trend’ only to do him or herself the gravest injustice. Sexy is neither the fabric nor the tailoring, if you don’t’ have what it takes to carry it. But the persuasive advertisements will have you convinced otherwise. They will direct you to what ‘they’ think, (“they’ who have no clue of your individuality) what you should wear and how you should look. The dirty secret ‘they’ don’t tell you is how sex appeal, like many other qualities cannot be bought at the mall because it is not sewn into the fabric of the merchandise they are trying to sell you.

It is not such a rare occurrence to come across a uniquely attractive face, that does not hold up to the standard, air-brushed images splashed across magazine covers, and yet has a certain je ne sais quoi? We know it wasn’t the clothes or the shoes, it was unmistakably a deeper element ensconced within the personality, which ever so casually oozed out of every pore of that person’s being. You look carefully and see the facial features are not quite the standard idea of beauty, despite that, the whole persona is redolent with sex appeal.
When you don’t have to buy the hottest trends, the most expensive clothing or jewellery and get your hair and make up done by a professional each time you want to be ‘seen’, and yet, you exude an appeal that makes one hunger for just another look; that is what is sexy in the truest sense. We have all too often spotted women baring it (almost) all and looked on with dismissive amusement, while none can deny being totally taken by the vision of a confident woman who’s engaging and beautiful smile had our eyes follow her halfway across the block. There is an allure, a certain mystery that sets her apart. Baring it all will attract attention, for a definitive period of time and not always the kind one seeks, whereas floating with that inner confidence and feminine presence will always invoke lasting admiration.

Sex appeal is not a product that can be purchased over-the-counter, it is a state of mind, an inner state of being. It has nothing to do with the act of sex itself. It is not to be found in your closet, in what you wear, it is inside your head. Some women and men can look incredulously sexy hailing a cab, or stirring coffee in the kitchen or watering plants.

That is because sex appeal has more to do with self-esteem and confidence than with low necklines and high skirts. Not the kind of self-assuredness that comes across as hubris, but the kind that is at peace with its strengths and its flaws.

This holds true for men too — not all men who have toiled in the gym for the buffest body will ooze it. They may warrant a head turn or two; but we have also seen men who have a certain presence, an inner confidence as they walk into a room, again, that certain je ne sais quoi. That is the kind of sexy that lingers on in the mind, inviting curiosity and interest.

Confidence and self-esteem are qualities one is hard pressed to find in abundance in both genders. So when we see it, we instantly recognize it, it always makes the individual stand apart. It’s hard to put one’s finger on what it is exactly, but suffice to say people who have worked to conquer their inadequacies and made peace with themselves are the one’s who have that evanescent appeal.

Sex appeal comes from having the confidence to not just play up one’s qualities and revel in them, but to embrace one’s imperfections too. So its not as simple as putting on a sexy outfit, because on closer look anyone will notice that there is little else beyond the outfit. It is being sexy in whatever you’re wearing or doing.

Curated by Erbe
Original Article

Movie Romance — Lessons I Have Learned About Love from Films

by Virginia Jonesin LOVE

So, you get to a point in life where you think, hey, I’ve been dating awhile and I just keep dating awful people who are bad for me, I wonder why? Then you start thinking about your favorite movies from childhood and the messages you’ve internalized!  It’s amazing what a little emotional distance can do!

Starting with:

Beauty and the Beast- a beautiful village girl enters a monster’s castle to plead with him to release her father, and submits to her own incarceration, putting up with his temper tantrums and violence as he tries to force his way into her room, and then breaks up his own furniture.  She eventually falls victim to Stockholm Syndrome and falls in love with her captor.   Once she proves her love is true, he is revealed to be a prince!  This teaches us that if you have patience and love a bad person enough, he will become a good person. This could also be why women still feel hopeful about corresponding with online dating profiles with no pictures.  Perhaps he’s a prince or a celebrity!  If he doesn’t have a picture up, the truth is that he’s either married, ugly, or both.  What are some lessons we can take from this?

  1. Don’t trust people who wear too much velvet.
  2. Don’t date guys who have kidnapped any member of your family. No, not even a cousin.
  3. Rich doesn’t mean nice. Some might argue that it never does.

Grease- Two young attractive people meet over Summer break, fall in love, and then when they get back to school they’re worried that if they date, their friends won’t think they’re cool anymore because she is a “soc” and he is a “greaser”.  They spend the WHOLE SCHOOL YEAR pining for each other, and at the end they put on different outfits in order to meet the expectations of the other person, and then they appear to die, as they get into a convertible and their car drives into the clouds.  Lessons:

  1. Date who you want.  It doesn’t matter if your friends don’t like their jacket.
  2. You don’t have to change to be loved.
  3. Don’t have unprotected sex with Kenickie, or anyone really.

Breakfast Club- Some really weird pairings here.  Athletic, motivated Emilio Estevez falls for emotional basketcase Ally Sheedy because she wears her Holly Hobby underwear on the outside and ties a sock in her hair.  She’s a compulsive thief and liar and he has daddy issues, and the greatest thing they have in common is their twin suicidal ideation.  Molly Ringwald’s character falls in love with Judd Nelson’s even though during the eight hours they’ve known each other, it’s clear that he’s an addict, he’s a pre-abuser (he’s been abused, he reacts with violence), he sexually assaults her under a library desk, and he’s a compulsive cheater (showing her photographs of women he doesn’t think are worth being faithful to).   At the end of the movie, Anthony Michael Hall is not partnered with anyone because he is a clean-cut nerd with the best prospects for college and a good life.  Lessons:

  1. Don’t respond to negging! Judd spends the whole movie either calling Molly a slut or shaming her for having rich parents or telling her she’s a jerk for putting her lipstick on without using her hands, and she just can’t keep from attacking him in a broom closet.
  1. If someone can’t get through an eight hour detention without getting high, maybe don’t date them. That’s someone who’s gonna drink the rubbing alcohol in your parent’s bathroom to get through Thanksgiving.

Some Kind Of Wonderful- In this film, Eric Stoltz plans a dream date for a woman he has barely spoken to and only loves for her appearance, and when at the end of the date, she turns down his gift of extremely expensive earrings, he feels that she is being a real a-hole.  In retrospect, if a man with whom you had exchanged few words offered you a gift he bought with his college fund, you’d also wonder what he thought he was giving to, or getting, from you.  It’s a super weird gift.

  1. If a guy has a best friend who’s a girl and they hang out all the time, that girl is already probably in love with him, even if she dresses like a demolition derby driver.
  2. If someone plans an elaborate first date to try to win your love, and isn’t happy just to meet and talk over coffee, it’s probably a desperate attempt to paper over their own insecurities and trap you into something!

Pretty Woman- ok, it’s a cute retelling of Pygmalion/My Fair Lady, in which a street prostitute becomes a trophy wife, which is the same thing but in longer pants.  She gets an emotionally distant workaholic with no family ties, and becomes a kept woman- that’ll be fun in marriage counseling!  “Hey, I think our power dynamic is screwed up.” “Why is that, I wonder?”

  1. When a man buys a woman, it’s like buying a car- he’ll trade her in eventually.

Just remember that romantic movies are a fun fantasy, but many of the relationships depicted in them are a real nightmare!

Lovemaking 4 Moves to a High Quality Experience

by zfortadminin Sex, SEX TIPS

If these four sex moves are present in your relationship, then you are likely to last long as a couple.

Intimacy is an important part of any relationship. Be it physical or emotional, being intimate with your partner means being open and vulnerable to them

With this, it is understood that how your sex life looks will affect your relationship, either positively or adversely.

If these sex moves are present in your relationship, then you are likely to last long as a couple.

Respect

Respect is a very important component in the bedroom. You should show your partner that you respect their body. You should not do things that will make them feel degraded, used or guilty. You should always realise that this body belongs to an actual human being with feelings, so do not treat each other badly. If your partner says he/she is uninterested in sex, or if they do not want to engage in a particular sex act, you should respect their decisions.

Compliment

Everyone likes to feel good, especially in the bedroom. Your partner is completely naked and at his/her most vulnerable during sex, this is one time they truly need your words of approval. Never assume you have been together too long to give them some compliment on their body and their moves. Tell them how sexy you find them and how much they turn you on. This is the best way to have them bond and open up with you.

Experiment

No matter how long you have been with your partner, if you are still interested in trying something new, then your relationship is stronger than you think. You will only work hard towards coming up with new things with a partner who you still want to impress. This shows your relationship is definitely strong. If you never tire of finding new ways to please and love each other, in the bedroom and out, you are in a pretty good relationship.

Communicate

Does your partner tell you what they like in the bedroom? Do they tell you what turns them on? Do you believe that no sex topic is off limits between you and your partner? If your answer is ‘yes,’ then you are on the right track with your relationship. Every couple knows that having a no-holds-barred sex talk with each other is not usually the most comfortable thing to do, but it is very necessary. You need to talk about each other’s fantasies, pleasure, favourite moves, etc. You ought to keep up with their bedroom needs to keep things hot.

Curated by Erbe
Original Article

5 Honeymoon Tips for Twenty-Somethings

by RJ Newellin LOVE

A lot of young newlyweds feel too broke, too stressed, or too busy to go all-out on their honeymoon. If that’s you, don’t stress! When you’re young and in your twenties, a boring adventure is out of the question.

You can have an amazing time without breaking the bank. And once you’ve reached your destination, there are plenty of creative ways to make the most of it.

Here are five of the most important things I learned during the honeymoon planning process.

  1. Have an open mind.

I like museums, but my husband likes the beach. We made a list of places that had both. My first choice was France; he wanted Fiji. Both were WAY out of our price range. So when we couldn’t make up our minds, we decided to pick an affordable place that we were least likely to visit any other time.

The last place we ever expected to travel (but still really wanted to go) was Bali. So that’s where we went.

To my surprise, it actually ended up being much cheaper than our other options. And because we knew very little about the culture going into it, Bali was an amazing learning experience for both of us. I can’t imagine what would have happened if we had remained stubborn with our first choices. We might never have seen this faraway place!

If all goes well, you two have the rest of your lives to travel together. Don’t stress about the where so much. Talk about your interests, and make it a fun discussion. Draw destinations out of a hat if you must, but make the decision together.

  1. Less is more.

Our trip was three weeks long. For a couple on a budget, this was quite ambitious. And to spend so long in a place we’d never been, well…that took some daring! If trekking around a foreign land for a month seems like your cup of tea, go for it. But if relaxation is what you’re into, don’t underestimate what you can accomplish in a week or two.

Pros of a longer trip: Total cultural immersion, seeing more sights, and adjusting to a new way of life together.

Cons of a longer trip: It’s more expensive and stressful, especially if you’re staying in a lot of different places.

In the end, we were glad we spent three weeks in Bali. But everyone is different, so make sure you know what you’re in for before booking tickets!

  1. Do your research when buying cheaper airfare.

We bought our tickets on the Kayak app, which made our airfare significantly cheaper than anywhere else. But what we didn’t realize was just how long our layovers were. Often, cheap tickets mean longer layovers and no checked bags. It’s definitely something to talk about before you book.

Because we ignored the fine print, my husband and I spent the first three nights of our honeymoon sleeping in airports. If you don’t want this to be you… do your research!

  1. Define your comfort level in advance.

Do you want a luxurious hotel, or does AirBnB sound more fun? If you’re the adventurous type, I highly recommend AirBnB. But if you’re set on luxury, skip the guesswork and book a hotel in advance.

We stayed in several AirBnBs, which had its ups and downs. While staying in private rentals was cheaper and gave us a better understanding of Bali’s culture, we didn’t have hot water for most of our trip. When we finally splurged on a luxury hotel, I nearly cried with joy. Two weeks into our trip, we were finally enjoying bubble baths and drinking wine together. If I had been up front about my comfort level in advance, we might have avoided cold showers altogether!

Having a budget is one thing, but don’t compromise your comfort level on a honeymoon. Know your non-negotiable desire. If it’s romance, make decisions with that in mind. If both of you crave adventure, then that’s where you should splurge.

For a honeymoon, put your money where your needs are. Save the stress for a different trip.

  1. Remember your first priority: each other.

The most important thing on any honeymoon is your partnership. Your trip will only be as fun as you are. So, relax! There will definitely be obstacles during your trip. Things won’t always go as planned, because that’s life. But don’t let the logistics of your trip get in the way of why you’re there.

Look at your honeymoon as an allegory for your marriage: You can’t control the future, but you can love each other as life unfolds. Solve problems together, be considerate of each other’s needs, and have fun like the best friends that you are.

In the grand scheme of things, your honeymoon won’t matter too much. You can travel the world right after your wedding, or save money to go all-out years later. You can enjoy celebrating each other in a foreign country, or fake a weekend getaway with a tent in your backyard and a bottle of wine. Either way, have a blast!

You’ve made the commitment to be adventure buddies for life. Vacation is what you make it. Marriage is what you make it. So make the most of both.

See Who Thinks Romantic Relationships are Like Having a Job

by zfortadminin LOVE, RELATIONSHIPS

Who would you guess?

People around the world fall in love. That seems like an obvious truth today, but it used to be quite controversial.

In fact, some scholars still believe that romantic love was invented by European troubadours in the Middle Ages, and that people outside of the western tradition don’t really experience it.

“We decided to see if that was true,” says anthropologist Ted Fischer, who teaches at Vanderbilt University.

In 1992, he and William Jankowiak, an anthropologist at the University of Nevada Las Vegas, did a survey of anthropological research on 166 different cultures around the world.

“We looked for evidence of romantic love, and that could have been love poetry, or elopements, or just general descriptions of what we’d consider to be romantic love,” Fischer says. “And we found it in an overwhelming majority of cultures.”

Fischer says in the few places where they didn’t find evidence of love, well, the anthropologists who did the original studies weren’t looking for the factors he and Jankowiak were looking for. So elopements or love-related suicides might have occurred and just not been noted.

“So we thought it’s very likely romantic love is found in all cultures,” he says.

Jankowiak and Fischer’s paper made a big splash, and today it’s widely accepted that people in cultures outside of the West experience romantic love.

But perhaps not all romantic love is the same.

“When you look at cross-cultural research of romantic relationships, you get these very striking cultural differences,” says Xiaomeng (Mona) Xu, a psychology professor at Idaho State University.

For example, when asked about love in surveys, people in some Asian countries are more likely to describe love in negative terms than westerners are.

“The sorts of cross-cultural differences that come out of self-report questionnaires would suggest that easterners, for example, really don’t feel passion, really don’t think about love as a positive thing,” Xu says.

In countries with a tradition of arranged marriage, falling in love is disruptive and dangerous. Historian Stephanie Coontz studies marriage, and she says only recently has there been an assumption that love would come before marriage.

Historically, “falling in love before marriage in India was considered an actively antisocial act,” Coontz says. “In ancient China, the word for love connoted a very socially disrespectable relationship.”

Falling in love is arguably about pleasing yourself, and some cultures put more emphasis than westerners do on serving your family or your community.

When asked about love, many people in China will talk about melding two families, or carrying on the family name. They’re likely to emphasize long-term attachment, rather than Hollywood-style romance. They’ll talk about duty and commitment. When freelance producer Rebecca Kanthor talked to people on the street in Shanghai about love, the word that kept coming up was “responsibility.”

“Being involved in a romantic relationship is a lot like having a job, actually,” says Jessie Chen, 24, a Shanghai accountant. “Both of them are very risky, can be risky. Having a job is risky. Having a romantic relationship can be risky.”

Chen says she’s hoping to find a husband whose parents will get along with her parents.

“Two years ago, I would say getting married is more about loving someone,” she says. “But now I’m getting more and more practical.”

That kind of approach to marriage is still common in China.

“It’s very pragmatic,” Xu says. “It’s based on thinking about whether or not this person is going to fit into your family and if they’re going to be a good financial choice, etc.”

And yet there is love poetry in China, and songs about romantic love. Xu says the surveys that seem to indicate a lack of passion in China don’t ring entirely true.

“The issue is that all of these studies are done using self report,” Xu says. “So it’s really difficult to know: Are people accurately reporting their experiences and there’s this drastic difference between how westerners experience love and how easterners experience love? Or is it that culture is influencing how people talk about it?”

Xu headed the first study to look at the brains of Chinese people who were in love and compare their brain scans with those of people in the US and England.

“We found that they’re almost identical,” she says.

Xu says the few differences her team found may have been because they were using a stronger scanner than earlier studies had used.

This research provides support for what Xu had guessed was the truth: “How we go through the process of love can be very culturally defined,” but the experience of love is really not so different from culture to culture.

And Chinese culture may be changing when it comes to love and marriage.

Nowhere is that more apparent than in the marriage markets that have sprung up in Chinese cities in recent years. As millions of people have migrated to urban areas, old ways of negotiating matches have become impossible. You can’t consult with the neighbors if you don’t know the neighbors.

On a recent weekend in Shanghai, people looking for spouses filled People’s Park to look at personal ads laid out on the sidewalk or attached to walls. Many were parents looking for spouses for their adult children — sometimes without the children’s knowledge. Some opened umbrellas, set them on the sidewalk and clipped laminated sheets of paper to them, listing their children’s vital statistics — age, height, income.

Zhou Yun, senior matchmaker at Shanghai Hongyan Matchmaking Company, was at the market to help arrange meetings, for a fee. She says things have changed since she was a girl.

“In contemporary China, young people put a lot of emphasize on material conditions” when they look for a spouse, she says. “They are quite picky.”

One thing many parents of young women insist upon is that the prospective groom have his own apartment. Not many young men can offer that. Zhou Yun says people want too much, and so they’re not likely to find spouses.

“Many young people are the single children in the families,” she says. “Their parents are concerned about their kids being taken advantage of in marriage.”

Some people in Shanghai say they think Chinese ideas about love are changing, influenced by the West. But Zhou Yun disagrees.

“Actually throughout Chinese history, falling in love hasn’t changed much, regarding how people feel,” she says. “Regardless of Chinese or foreigners, our feelings are basically the same when it comes to love and relationships.”

Curated by Erbe
Original Article

I’m Single and I Officiate Weddings

by Jessica Garrettin LOVE

I have discovered my Perfect Man does this…

To get something out of the way right off the bat, I see it. I see the cliché dripping from my every word, so pointing it out is unnecessary. I see the cliché in recognizing one’s own cliché. I am 33, I am single, I live alone. I do not have a cat, but only because I’m allergic to cats. I schedule my masturbation. I leave toothpaste clumps on the sink. I leave flossers in the bed that poke me when I roll over. I cry at everything. I exercise religiously for two weeks, then give it up entirely for three. I eat in my bed. I think about dying alone. Like, really think about it. Not just conceptually, but actually dying alone. If I hit my head or have an aneurism, who cleans up the mess I leave behind? I didn’t used to believe in marriage, but now I believe it to be the most amazing thing a person can do. You are signing a contract that says, “You have to deal with this mess when I die.” I can’t imagine that.

I eat alone, I shop alone, I travel alone. In the rare instance where I find myself travelling with someone else, I panic. I feel the need to divulge all of my flying quirks in one hurried breath in the security line because I want my companion to have an out should they want one: I have to be chewing gum as the plane takes off. I have to have the window seat, even though I am 100 feet tall. I have to have a book, which I will not read. What I will do is mildly overdose on Dramamine and sleep fitfully for four hours. I will not wake up in a good mood or in my right mind when we reach our destination. And I have to, HAVE TO have a Hershey bar when I fly, which I will not eat. My mother always had one and I’m pretty convinced that they make the plane stay up. If you fly without a Hershey bar and your plane has never crashed it’s because someone else on board has always had one. Think about that.

The men in my life are bountiful. They are kind. They are handsome and flawed and they smell like laundry and they are passionate and wise. They are comedians and actors and teachers and entrepreneurs. They are fathers and brothers and uncles and they hold coats and know my drink order. They build things and write things and are feminists and warm huggers. These of course, are my friends. My boyfriends, my sex partners, my endless causes of scrunched up eyebrows have been many of the aforementioned as well. Just not for me. Or they possessed those qualities exactly and my head was turned elsewhere. Or some outside distraction had their attention, like an ex-fiancée or a new job or a drinking problem.

Pages: 1 2 3

Different Romantic Personalities. What Romantic Type Are You?

by zfortadminin LOVE, RELATIONSHIPS

You might not realize it, but you have a romantic blueprint. We all do. It’s one of five romantic archetypes. You might be the Madonna type, who’s all about loving and giving. Or, you could be the opposite, the Cool Girl, who is more about loyalty and trust.

In order to have the most fulfilling love life possible, you need to identify which romantic archetype you align with and which love language you speak. You might relate to elements of all five of the archetypes, but we each have one that is more prominent than the others. Knowing your romantic archetype gives you valuable information about how you’re wired to give and receive love.

If you don’t understand how you tick, how can your partner know what makes you happy? Once you figure out who you are and what you need in a relationship, you can give this valuable information to your partner…and vice versa.

What’s a love language?

We’re not talking parlez-vous français here. Your love language is how you like to communicate love and how you want your partner to communicate it to you. For instance, some women feel more loved when their partner brings them a gift while others feel more loved through physical affection or being helped out around the house.

Think of it this way: Your partner might think bringing you flowers is a great way to show you love when what you really respond to is his taking the initiative to do the dishes once in a while. So, you might go through years of frustration, feeling that he just doesn’t “get you,” when in reality it’s kind of your fault for not teaching him what your love language and romantic blueprint is.

The five romantic archetypes:

1. The Gypsy:

Strengths: This is the most erotic of the archetypes. She is a free-spirited, sexual woman. She experiences sexuality as a transcendent experience connecting her with energy beyond her partner. Because of this universal connection, she can be more detached and prefers freedom to the stability of committed relationships. She knows what feels good to her, so sex is something she engages in for her own pleasure instead of to please someone else.

Gypsy Prototype: Angelina Jolie, Christina Hendricks, Sofia Vergara

Pain Points: She doesn’t have a hard time finding romantic partners but does struggle to form long-term romantic bonds and connect on a deeper emotional level.

Love Language: Touch, sensuality, and intimacy. She communicates with her body by holding hands, touching her partner when she speaks to him/her, kissing, playing footsie under the table, cuddling, and, of course, sex.

Perfect Date: The gypsy is so in touch with her physical body, she doesn’t need a lot of warming up before sex. She is erotic and sensual, so sometimes going straight to the bedroom can be an ideal date. Using feathers and blindfolds to be creative sensually makes the experience much deeper and more intimate.

2. The Venus:

Strengths: She is typically put on a pedestal and perceived as beautiful and sensual. Because she is an object of beauty, she can become disconnected or numb to her own true desires and pleasures.

Venus Prototype: Kim Kardashian, Megan Fox, Scarlett Johansson

Pain Points: She might need too much validation from external sources, which makes her vulnerable to becoming an object of pleasure instead of experiencing pleasure for herself. For example, an actress client of mine used to fake orgasms. She was more concerned with letting the other person see how amazing she was while she had an orgasm than actually experiencing that pleasure for herself.

Love Language: Giving and receiving gifts. She is not afraid to use her femininity or her flirtatious persona to receive gifts and affection.

Perfect Date: The perfect date for the Venus is to relax, get out of her head and back into her body, and be able to feel her natural sensuality through luxury. Going out to a nice dinner or ordering a bottle of expensive champagne can help her engage her eye for beauty.

Pages: 1 2 3

How Size Doesn’t Matter: Take Napoleon for Instance

by Eric Lampaertin Sex

Every French man knows that like all good wines, women mature with age, in both beauty and brains.

There’s a general consensus that women love tall men, or at the very least taller than them. I am not sure what the benefits of being lanky are; my legs hurt in economy, the game limbo where people judge how low I can go is 15% harder and my career as a professional jockey is not where I’d like it to be. And yet, that hasn’t held us gargantuan men back from conquering the hearts of the opposite sex.

Conquering may be an inappropriate word, but it leads me nicely onto one of the most famous short men, Napoleon Bonaparte. Although listed as 5 feet 2 inches, those were the old French units which in the modern equivalent would make him 5’7”. (Same height as Tom Cruise. Coincidence? Yes.)

Napoleon not only wanted to conquer land for Lady Liberty of France, but also needed to conquer the heart of a potential empress to have by his side. Young Napoleon was in charge of older men who loomed over him and the only way he thought he’d have the respect of his men was by marrying a cougar. Meeeow. How’d you get this total babe? Oh you know, just invading multiple countries. No biggie.

Napoleon fell head over heels for Marie-Joseph-Rose de Meauharnais, later renamed Josephine because Napoleon didn’t like her name. We all give our lovers nicknames after all. The only problem with the relationship? She despised Napoleon. He was too much of a nerd.

Every French man knows that like all good wines, women mature with age, in both beauty and brains. (Cheese is also great the more mature it is, but not the best comparison for a lady). Josephine may have been a desirable decanter of Dom Perignon when it came to motherhood, but a Two Buck Chuck chardonnay with a crazy straw when it came to ROMANCE with Napoleon. She had no desire whatsoever to marry Napoleon, but was informed by a friend the only way for her to keep her lavish lifestyle and keep her two children safe was to marry Napoleon, whom was oblivious to her hatred for him.

They married and a few days later, it was a romantic honeymoon to Italy, without her. Alas, he had to go to work, and every day, the besotted general would write his wife love letters, while she was back home in Paris, Netflix and chilling with other men.
She made many excuses as to why she could not join him in Italy, and went as far as telling him she was pregnant and thus could not travel. She was not with child of course, which is surprising considering the amount of Parisian baguette she gobbled. She just wasn’t interested in giving the general a chance to show her he was worthy of her heart.

When the cuckolded Napoleon found out, angered by the betrayal, he decided to come back to France in a mission to cherish her. Napoleon’s attempt to win her heart lasted too briefly when she arrived and told him the reason she was no longer pregnant was due to a miscarriage. This devastated Napoleon. (I bet you didn’t know all this about the tiny man we mock).

After she cheated on him a few more times, he no longer loved her, but in a twist of fate, she now was falling in love with him. The story goes that Josephine was forever in love with Napoleon from the moment he parted ways with her. As she was dying of diphteria, her last word was ‘Napoleon’. He later re-married the Archduchess of Austria Maria-Louisa, later renamed Marie Louise because Napoleon didn’t like her name.

Tall men don’t necessarily make better men. Neither do ‘bad boys’. Ladies, give the not so tall nerds a chance, they might surprise you and go above and beyond to swoon you off your feet. And if they seem to try hard like Napoleon, it might just be because they’re really besotted by you. My wife told me she wasn’t sure about getting with me because I was too weird, but luckily one of her friends convinced her to give me a chance, and now we’re happily married. Give the nerds a chance.

If You Have Broken Up with Your Partner, Can You Get Those Feelings Back?

by zfortadminin RELATIONSHIPS

Is it really over?

Good news: You can rekindle love.

Researchers call it “love regulation.” A new study by psychologists at the University of Missouri—St. Louis and Erasmus University Rotterdam found that people can use thoughts to increase how much they love someone. People can also willfully decrease love, say after a breakup.

In the study, published in August in the journal PLOS One, 40 participants—half of whom were in a romantic relationship and half of whom had recently broken up with a partner—each brought 30 pictures of their beloved into a lab. First, they were instructed to look at the pictures while thinking positive thoughts about their partner, the relationship and their future together. Then, they were instructed to look at the pictures again and think negative thoughts about their partner, the relationship and their future.

Before they started and after each task, the participants were asked how attached to and infatuated with their partner they felt. Researchers also measured their brain waves, homing in on the Late Positive Potential Brainwave, which becomes stronger when people focus on something they find emotionally relevant.

When the participants had positive thoughts while looking at the pictures, they were able to “up regulate” their love—they reported feeling more attached to their partner, the researchers found. And their LPP Brainwave was stronger. When the participants had negative thoughts they “down regulated” their love, reporting less attachment and infatuation. The people in a relationship also had weaker LPP Brainwaves.

“People think they can’t control love so they might not even try,” says Sandra Langeslag, lead researcher on the study and assistant professor in the department of psychological sciences at the University of Missouri—St. Louis. “But this study shows you that you can.”

Psychologists are mixed on whether love is an emotion. Like emotions, it is complex and produces physiological and psychological changes. But it isn’t fleeting and doesn’t have a clear trigger as do anger or joy. Love may be more like a mixture of other feelings, some say.

People often feel like love is something that happens to them rather than something they can influence. It is true we can’t control love, as “control implies suppressing it and being king or queen of it,” says Susan David, a psychologist at Harvard Medical School and author of “Emotional Agility.” But we can, and do, shape and manage our emotions every day, and love is no different, Dr. David says.

Love in Control

To regulate love, we need to use cognitive and behavioral tactics early and often:

    • Think positive thoughts.Focus on what you like about your partner and the relationship. Imagine happy future scenarios, such as dancing at your child’s wedding. And write these things down. Research shows that people who write about loving their partner improve their relationship.
    • Make small tweaks.Hug goodbye in the morning; greet your partner warmly when you come home; listen when he or she talks. Engaging with your partner is an antidote to apathy and complacency, which kill love.
    • Smile at your partner.Smiling produces neural messaging in your brain that makes you happier. Some studies have shown that when we smile our facial muscles contract, which slightly distorts the shape of the thin facial bones. This leads to an increase in blood flow into the frontal lobes of the brain and the release of the feel-good chemical dopamine. And when we smile at someone, that person tends to smile back. So we’ve created a feel-good loop.
    • Have sex.Even if neither of you really feels like it, advises Nando Pelusi, a clinical psychologist in New York. It too releases feel-good chemicals in the brain, including oxytocin, the bonding hormone. You can actually be more attracted and attractive to your partner after sex.
  • Broaden your perspective.You see your partner a certain way. But how do others see him or her? Psychologists employ an “empty chair” exercise to help clients imagine having a conversation with another person. Envision your partner’s best friend or mother sitting in a chair across from you. What would that person say your partner’s best qualities are? Why does he or she love your partner? “We get consumed by focusing on what someone didn’t do, by the qualities a person lacks,” says Dr. David. “This helps us flip the focus.”
  • Let it go.We all have the proverbial sock on the floor—the seemingly small thing our partner does that comes to represent everything wrong in the relationship. Dr. David suggests reminding yourself it is just a sock. Try to pick it up without resentment. This applies to any pet peeve you have about your partner. Your spouse didn’t leave the sock on the floor because he doesn’t love you. He’s just messy. “If he ever weren’t alive, you’d do anything to have that sock back on the floor,” Dr. David says. Remember that.
  • Try new things together. Research shows that when romantic partners try something new together they feel more attracted to each other. So explore a new part of town or take up a new hobby jointly. Bonus tip: The more exciting the new thing is—the more adrenaline producing—the more attracted you will be.
  • Ask questions. When people first meet, they talk nonstop. And researchers have learned they can foster intimacy, and even love, between two strangers simply by having them answer a set of questions that gradually become more intimate. Start talking about your hopes and dreams again. Ask each other what you’d each eat for a last meal, where you want to go before you die, what time of life were you happiest.

Curated by Timothy
Original Article

The Origins of Valentine’s Day Are Not What You Think

by zfortadminin LOVE

Digging in to the Roots of Love on Wings, Beloved of the Day, and the original Roman festival 

In the Western world, Valentine’s Day was observed as long ago as during the Roman occupation of the British Isles. According to the American Book Days, the original connection between Saint Valentine and a lovers festival was quite likely accidental. Saint Valentine was martyred on February 14 in A.D. 270, and his name became associated with the Roman spring festival of Lupercalia, which was held on February 15. This festival, with its theme of fertility, apparently involved putting the names of young women into an urn, to be drawn out by men for “beloved of the year” pairing. Frank Staff, in The Valentine and Its Origins, notes the significance of a popular medieval belief that mid-February was the time birds paired for mating and that the associated idea of love-on-wings became connected to Saint Valentine and human lovers during that period.

Whatever its true origin, by the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Valentine’s Day had become a popular holiday, especially in Great Britain. It was a topic for poems and song lyrics, many written expressly for the occasion, such as John 14’ly’s “Apelles Song” 1584 in which Cupid and Alexander’s true love, Campaspe, play cards for kisses. Cupid unsuccessfully stakes his mother’s doves and sparrows on the game: a clear reference to the medieval association I have already noted. In addition, exchanging gifts-many times expensive ones-had become the custom on this date in the homes of the wealthy.

Pages: 1 2

The Real Love Drug

by Virginia Jonesin Sex

“Oh oh catch that buzz

Love is the drug I’m thinking of

Oh oh can’t you see

Love is the drug for me”

– Roxy Music (Brian Eno/Andy Mackay)

Head and Brain Gears in Progress.think about loveWe’ve known for a long time that people who have just fallen in love feel like they’re on drugs – their systems flood with the feel-good hormone oxytocin, they don’t feel as great a need for food or sleep, and they can feel like they’re floating on air.  In cartoons, their hearts beat out of their chest and they hear Klaxon horns when they look at the object of their affection.  Sometimes their eyes bulge out until they fall out of their heads and are revealed to be light bulbs, which would be challenging to most people, but it doesn’t seem to bother them at all.

We also know that sometimes, people take drugs like MDMA or ecstasy to feel like they’re in love – which floods their brains with serotonin so that they develop deep emotional connections with strangers in a sand-filled tent at Burning Man.

This week, researchers at the Imperial College London may have discovered a real love drug that stimulates not just sexual but romantic feeling – Kisspeptin.

This hormone has a couple of important functions related to sex and reproduction– it triggers puberty, but it also turns a young man’s fancy to thoughts of love and romance, based on a study of 29 young men and their fancies.  Men were shown sexual images, nonsexual couple-bonding images, and neutral images, and their brains were scanned to determine their stimulation – those who were injected with kisspeptin did not just experience increased physical arousal, they also saw increased desires for couple-bonding and affection.  Their brains lit up in the areas associated with love and sex.  They also found neutral-to-negative images to be less negative when they were on the hormone, just as a person in love finds their mood elevated.

Pages: 1 2

A Valentine’s First Date? Why Not! Do’s and Don’ts

by zfortadminin DATING ADVICE, LOVE

A guide to impressing your first date on the most romantic day of the year.

If you’ve asked a girl out on a first date on Valentine’s Day, then kudos to you, good sir – you have inexplicably doubled the amount of pressure a first date usually places on a man’s shoulders by holding it on the most romantic day of the year.

In doing so, you’re likely going to need a few tips to ensure that you make it through February 14th with your dignity in tact. Luckily, we here at Crave Online have compiled a list of Do’s and Don’ts that should see you through the date.

DO: Make a big deal out of your spontaneity.

Valentine’s Day is usually a date reserved for existing couples, not for two people who have only recently met. This is why you need to assure your date for the evening that you do not make a habit of going on first dates on Valentine’s Day, but rather it was something that you decided to do in this one specific instance because you are spontaneous and mad and any other quirky personality trait that women seem to go for.

DON’T: Make yourself seem desperate.

If you’ve asked out a girl you don’t really know on Valentine’s Day, then she likely had one of two reactions:

  1. She thought it was really sweet.
  2. She thought it was kind of weird and desperate, but decided to give you a chance anyway because you might have just been trying to be sweet.
Pages: 1 2 3

It’s Not the Climax Date on the Calendar That Matters

by Lisa Lauretain RELATIONSHIPS

This plan couldn’t be beat…until it was.

I’ve never cared much about Christmas, or Thanksgiving. I don’t go “home for the holidays.” I haven’t given Valentine’s Day a second thought since I was a teenager.

Precious Days

I’m not completely devoid of sentiment. I do have a couple of special days a year that I celebrate “religiously.” Halloween and New Year’s Eve have always had great significance to me. Halloween because it’s when everyone acts the way they wish they could the rest of the year, and New Year’s Eve because it’s symbolic of a new beginning, a wiping of the slate, a celebration of accomplishments from the year before and an acknowledgement of goals and dreams about what’s to come. Those are precious days to me and as such, I try to spend them doing special things with people who I find invaluable to my life.

This year, I spent Halloween with a friend rather than my partner, because my partner was out of town for a couple of months. When he’d announced his plans to be gone over my favorite holiday, I was slightly heartbroken, but understood. It was for the trip of a lifetime and I wasn’t going to let a one-day, city-wide costume party get in the way of that for him. It just meant to both of us that New Year’s Eve would be even more special.

Unforgettable Date with Mom

His mom was in town on over the holiday weeks, so on New Year’s Eve Day we went to a small island off the coast of Southern California and did some cave kayaking. It was amazing. I saw wild foxes, seals, dolphins and some whales; truly an unforgettable day. That night, however, was for us and his mom understood that, so she said we should take it for ourselves and do something special.

Epic Climax Date Plans

When he had asked me what I wanted to do, being the overly amorous gal that I am, I told him my only real goal for the night was for us to be climaxing during the countdown, and for a full release at “Happy New Year!” He agreed that would be an epic New Year’s plan. All that was left was location.

We’d originally intended to go camping, somewhere not too far, like Joshua Tree. However, the weather had other plans, deciding that torrential downpours followed by sub-zero temperatures would be a better way to spend New Years. So J Tree was out, however, there were closer places we could go. We explored all of our options, and as wet and cold as it was going to be, it seemed like the best plan would be to just stick to a hike somewhere close. We would get to the top of a mountain, screw each other’s brains out until the countdown was over, and then head home.

Dehydration…a Kicker

This plan couldn’t be beat…until it was. My partner, who avoided drinking water during our all-day kayaking trip because he didn’t want to pee in his wet suit, was extremely dehydrated. We took in a bunch of fluids and made some macaroni and cheese. Did I mention he’s lactose intolerant? Just a little bit, but apparently something like that is greatly exacerbated by a weakened system due to dehydration. Needless to say, he started to not feel very well.

Should I Stay or Should I Go

We took a quick nap before our hike and I woke up ready to go! He woke up…slightly less excited. I couldn’t tell at that point whether he just didn’t feel like going out or he was really ill. So I said I could go on my own. This was in no way meant out of spite or passive aggression, and he knew that. I simply wanted to be outside at midnight and I don’t like dragging people along when they don’t want to be there. He insisted on coming with me. He just kept saying, “I wanna be with you.”

What I should have said was, “okay, let’s stay here then.” But I still didn’t fully realize just how bad it was, until we got to the mountain. We got out of the car with our backpack filled with Trader Joe’s fireworks chocolate, sparkling apple cider, and a blanket. He wasn’t looking great, so I asked him if we should go back. “NO! I want it to be special.” Just minutes into the hike it became apparent to me just how ill he was. We were stopping every few minutes for him to collect himself. This was certainly going to be a special night. But not the type of special either of us had intended.

The Mountain at Midnight

We made it up to the mountain and during the midnight count down he was off in the bushes taking care of some nasty business while I toasted myself for my achievement of keeping cool and not being too grossed out. We headed back down the mountain and I drove us home. By this time more than ever I felt terrible for making him come with me and being so insistent on this being a special night.

Best Laid Plans Became a Care Package

I took care of him the rest of the night and the entire next day. While I nursed him back to health I realized something. I don’t know if it’s because I’m older now and don’t party anymore, or if it’s because I’ve finally found someone who I’m calm and comfortable with, but it didn’t matter to me that it wasn’t ideal. This night was actually the opposite of ideal. It was kind of the worst. I watched disgusting things happen to the person I was supposed to be doing altogether other kinds of disgusting things with. But despite this, I was glad to have spent the night with him. I was happy to have been able to take care of him and I was glad he was around. This leads me to ask the ever important question: what happened to me?!

Another Day for a “Special” Date

We made a deal to do a countdown later on this year, which we’ve set a date for. We’ll recreate New Year’s Eve well past its actual date, but it doesn’t matter. What matters is that we’ll be together, and that we were together.

So this Valentine’s day, I urge you, dear reader, to treat it like any other day: special. Special not because it’s February 14, but because of the company you’re with and the moments you share. Even if those moments turn out gross.