BY NICHOLAS K. GERANIOS
ASSOCIATED PRESS

Boy meets girl. Boy picks up girl. Boy tries to not drop girl on her head.

This is the world of pairs figure skating and ice dancing, the beautiful sports where a woman and man skate in unison across the ice.

But how do these skaters meet? How do they stay together? And what is the secret to their success?

Pairs skating turns out to have a lot of parallels to relationships in real life. Not the least of which is the potential for conflict while in proximity to very sharp objects.

Some pairs meet by accident, some are matched up by coaches or friends. Some seek each other out on the Internet.

At the U.S. Figure Skating Championships in Spokane in January, all manner of pairs were on display. The most successful was Caydee Denney, 16, and Jeremy Barrett, 25, who won the U.S. pairs title and competed in the Vancouver Olympics, finishing 13th last week.

Denney and Barrett began skating together in Florida in 2006, but Denney and her family moved to Colorado. They moved back to Florida in 2008, and Denney and Barrett picked up again.

Like a lot of successful partnerships, they are careful about what they say. Barrett blamed himself for some “poor throws” during nationals, and praised his partner for landing them anyway.

Finishing second at nationals were Amanda Evora and Mark Ladwig, who went on to finish 10th in Vancouver. In the tangled world of pairs, Barrett has dated Evora for years. The two teams skate at the same rink and have the same coaching team, making them training partners yet rivals at the same time.

Pairs skating is a complicated effort. Partners have to have absolute faith in each other to pull off all the jumps, spins and landings, some with names like “the death spiral.” The male partner must be strong enough to hoist the female into the air and set her down without apparent effort. This puts pressure on the man to stay strong and the woman to stay thin.

Finding a partner can be difficult. Pairs hopefuls have been known to advertise in skating magazines, through e-mail, and on Web sites such as icepartnersearch.com.

Skater Ameena Sheikh used that site, which is endorsed by U.S. Figure Skating, to find partner Aaron VanCleave. The site currently lists 59 males and 235 females looking for partners, which illustrates another challenge in pairs skating: There are a lot more women than men.

Women are encouraged to look for potential partners among hockey players, roller skaters, dancers and gymnasts.

Often, one skater has to move to be closer to the other for practice purposes.

VanCleave, for instance, moved from British Columbia to the Detroit area after he and Sheikh decided to skate together. Spokane was their second competition, and while they only finished 14th, they are staying together.

“We are going long-term, all the way,” Sheikh said.

Ice dancer Tanith Belbin was born in Canada, but moved to the Detroit area in 1998 because she was not able to find a good dance partner. She was partnered with Ben Agosto by coach Igor Shpilband, and they have enjoyed a lot of success.

At the Turin Olympics in 2006, Belbin and Agosto won the silver medal in ice dancing, the highest Olympic result of any American team in the discipline, and the first American ice dancers to win an Olympic medal in 30 years. In 2008, they moved to Ashton, Pa., to train.

They finished second in ice dancing in Spokane, behind Meryl Davis and Charles White, and both teams were scheduled to compete in the Vancouver Olympics.

Agosto contends they have never had an argument in 11 years of skating together. Successful skating partners have to be able to work through mistakes without exploding on each other, at least in public.

Source: freep.com

By Ellen McCarthy

Robert Epstein believes that someday, in the not-too-distant future, many Americans will share his philosophy on relationships. And his philosophy is this: You can build love deliberately and choose whom to do it with.

All of this “falling” stuff, he thinks, will become passé.

Epstein is a psychologist and author whose previous research has focused largely on creativity and adolescence. He turned his attention to affairs of the heart after his first marriage ended in divorce. “It was personal,” he says. “I’ve certainly failed in relationships and in very much the typical American way, which makes it very frustrating — when you fail in a typical way.”

In 2002, when a young woman came in to interview for an internship and told him she’d never been in love, he had an idea: They set out to make her fall in love. The intern eventually backed out of the experiment, so Epstein decided to do it himself. After meeting a woman on a plane who agreed to be his partner in the endeavor, he began to employ strategies and behaviors that relationship experts have found increase feelings of intimacy: sharing vulnerabilities, touching each other affectionately and seeking adventures together.

The good news? They fell in love. The bad? It didn’t last. She was from Venezuela, and the logistics were too difficult to overcome.

Still, Epstein, former editor of Psychology Today, has been shaping his theory that love can be orchestrated ever since. It may sound strange to Western ears, he realizes. But Epstein’s come to think it’s the American way that’s really absurd when it comes to love: “We grow up on fairy tales and movies in which magical forces help people find their soul mates, with whom they effortlessly live happily ever after,” he wrote in a recent issue of Scientific American Mind. “The fairy tales leave us powerless, putting our love lives into the hands of the Fates.”

To gain insights into another way of cultivating love, Epstein has begun to study arranged marriages. Some studies have found that over time the affection between partners in arranged marriages can surpass that of couples who chose each other because of love.

Epstein, 56 and remarried, taught a course at the University of California at San Diego last spring in which students could earn extra credit by employing affection-building exercises with friends and strangers after class. Almost all the students who tried the techniques — including trust falls, synchronized breathing and prolonged gazing — reported greater feelings of closeness with their partners. (The psychologist has sworn off talking about his own relationship, but he will say his wife sat in on several classes that semester.)

The seed Epstein is hoping to plant in people’s minds, through lectures and a book he’s writing, is that we may have greater control than we think over this wily thing called love.

And if that doesn’t sound particularly romantic?

“All I can say is there’s nothing romantic about failure,” Epstein answers.

Source: Washington Post

By Hazel Davis

You love a good knees-up - but HE hates socializing and just wants to stay in and read a book. Can your relationship survive the party season?

‘We’re having a Christmas bash at our house,’ says a new friend. ‘Lovely,’ I say, ‘I’ll be there.’ ‘It will be great to finally meet your other half,’ she says, and my heart sinks. Oh dear, it’s one of Those Parties. Parties where you have to take your partner. My brain works fast to engineer an excuse. ‘Well we couldn’t really stay long as there are no trains that late and one of us has to be there for the dogs,’ I say.

It’s a familiar pattern. I make a new pal, we get on like a house on fire, they ask us round to dinner and I start rolling out the pathetic excuses. And during party season it’s even worse.

Anti social partner: Does the idea of going to a party or out for dinner fill your other half with dread?

It’s not that I’m ashamed of my partner, far from it. He is kind, generous, funny and thoughtful. He makes lovely food, walks the dogs and cleans up after himself. To all intents and purposes he’s the ideal man. But when it comes to socializing, we couldn’t be more unsuitably matched.

The idea of going to a party or out to dinner in a group for him is about as enjoyable as eating a pair of shoes. In fact he’d probably agree to the latter so long as it was in his own house and he’d cooked them himself.

It’s the same even on special occasions. Earlier this year, a couple of days before my birthday, I had a dinner, just a small celebration in a Leeds restaurant with some friends and their other halves.

It was such a lovely evening, with presents, cards, cake and a rousing chorus of Happy Birthday. My partner? He was at home, reading a book. ‘Where’s Bob?’ my friends enquired. ‘Oh he was working too late to get the train in,’ I said, one of my usual standard lines. ‘Could he not meet us later for a drink?’ came the usual helpful response. Gulp.

Bob, meanwhile, is bewildered by everyone’s need to include him in such parties. ‘Just tell people I don’t like socializing,’ he says. It’s always been like this. When we met at university 13 years ago, I knew my guy was a loner. He was smiley and pleasant but he wasn’t what anyone would describe as a ‘people person’. If you saw him around campus he’d be the one in a hat, sitting under a tree reading a book.

Work parties are a no-no: ‘Every year he is invited, every year he declines. I have never met his colleagues’

During our courtship he told me about the best day of his life, when he was 17 years old, working in a hotel in Derbyshire and he woke up at 7am started reading a book and finished at 7pm without speaking to a soul all day.

Meanwhile, I adore meeting new people. I thrive on it. The prospect of a room full of new folk, all of them potential new friends, is positively thrilling. The idea of going out in a large group, sharing an activity with them or even going on holiday - I can think of nothing better. I make friends easily and I go to the opening of an envelope.

And so it continued into our relationship. When we graduated (he very nearly didn’t go to his own graduation and had to be persuaded) and he found his dream job working with a wholefoods co-operative, I moved 250 miles to the county he grew up in, expecting that I would make new friends. But he hadn’t kept in touch with anyone from school (’why would I do that?’) and he sure as hell didn’t want to socialize with anyone from his new workplace (’they’re my colleagues, not my friends’).

So I made my own entertainment. I joined a local choir and started a masters degree, gathering friends along the way. My new friends would occasionally pop over for coffee and then they’d drop the bombshell that perhaps we’d like to go to a party they were having that weekend.

And then the excuses would start. Bob and I would argue initially and I would stay home or we’d ‘compromise’. Which usually meant us not going at all. Eventually, at the end of my tether, I began going on my own, hooking up with single friends or taking along a platonic ‘date’ instead.

I developed a whole other sociable life away from him. So now, together we go to the cinema and to concerts and out for dinner and we have a lovely time at home. We play Scrabble and we read together. Essentially anything that doesn’t involve Other People. And without him, I go to parties, for meals, to festivals and weddings.

Socially mismatched: ‘The idea of going to a party or out to dinner in a group for him is about as enjoyable as eating a pair of shoes’

Ah, weddings. When we hit our late 20s, old friends inevitably started to get married. Cue an excruciating few years of awkwardness, leaving early and - on occasion - downright lies to avoid going. ‘I just don’t understand why they need me there,’ he’d say, ‘you go on your own if you care that much.’

On the few occasions I have managed to drag him along to a wedding (usually by use of emotional blackmail or the promise of not staying too long), the whole experience has been so traumatic that I return determined not to bother next time.

As a naturally sociable animal my instinct is to flit around talking to new people, but every time I look over he’s sitting looking dumbstruck or bored and I feel obliged to rescue him.

Or, worse, his awkwardness renders me unable to speak to people because I fear introducing him and him having nothing to say, so we stand in the corner talking to each other.

I recently came under some criticism from my family for not staying long enough at a large family party started at midday and continued into the small hours. We arrived late afternoon and left around 7pm. When we left the party I had nearly cried with pride that we’d made it at all.

When my relatives later complained we hadn’t stayed so long I wanted to jump up and down and scream about how they were blooming lucky we came at all, so much effort had I put into getting us there in the first place.

Bob’s defense is clear and logical and makes complete sense as he explains himself. ‘I don’t like talking in groups,’ he says. ‘You either end up listening to a loudmouth or it becomes a butting-in game and not a conversation.’

Weddings are objectionable because, ‘they are forced jollity and an ostentatious display of money’. They are, he says, ‘a complete waste of a day and you’re usually there to make up the numbers and make people feel popular.’

He doesn’t like restaurants because ‘If you go out to a restaurant you’re bombarded with canned music and blather and noise and you can’t hear people properly,’ and, he adds, ‘I don’t like drunks and I don’t like shouting at people in loud bars.’

He was apparently like this as a child, always preferring books to people. What’s surprising is that most people think he’s shy but he’s actually very self-assured. As he says, he just doesn’t enjoy socializing and he prefers the thoughts in his head to those of other people, and always has.

When I complain that sometimes you just have to put up with things for the sake of friendship he counters with, ‘OK, then, well make them all come out on a 20-mile walk.’ How can I argue?

Work parties are a no-no, of course. Every year he is invited, every year he declines. I have never met his colleagues, apart from in town by accident or when I have collected him from work.

Last year his work had their annual Christmas lunch and he waited until it was over until going down to eat because ‘the crackers and extra plates got in the way of my newspaper.’

His argument against going to the work Christmas party is that it would spoil his working relationships. While most of us gladly grab the opportunity to get sozzled and make inappropriate suggestions to our colleagues, my partner finds the whole idea tiresome.

‘What I really value is a decent professional relationship with people,’ he explains. ‘In order to preserve a good professional relationship, I want to keep the personal relationship on the lowest possible burner.’

Compromise? ‘I began going on my own, hooking up with single friends or taking along a platonic ‘date’ instead’

He gets on well with his colleagues and he is well liked but to explain his unwillingness to socialize with them outside of work he produces the following laborious explanation.

‘I see them for 40 hours a week. I have around 80 hours a week when I am not sleeping. Forty hours of that are spent at work, ten hours are spent traveling to work. With the remaining hours, why on earth would I want to extend my working week?’

What do his friends think of this? Well, I think you can guess what I’ll say to that. While I make friends left, right and center, my partner’s unsociability does make the idea of having friends difficult.

There are a chosen few (mainly my friends and their partners) who have doggedly hung on and who are now tolerated at the homestead dinner table without struggle but they know better than to issue an invitation to a party or expect us to attend a dinner party together.

We met up for a rare coffee with a good male friend of mine some months ago and while there Bob passed on some books that he thought my friend would like. A week or so later my friend broke the cardinal rule and texted him to say how much he was enjoying one of them.

You’d have thought he’d asked to borrow £1,000. ‘Why did he need to text me?’ came the response, ‘why can’t he just read the books?’ adding, ‘I just don’t understand why he would want to waste his and my time sending me a text saying something we both already know.’

But- you know - I have spent 12 years trying to change him, trying to make him into a party animal (or at the very least a party-goer) and finally I think I might have given up.

When I rock in at 2am, party-hat on sideways, the worse for wear on pink fizz and he’s there, book in hand, with a cup of milky coffee and a kind word, I know things could be worse, far worse.

Source: dailymail.co.uk

Technological gains may render one person extinct in adultery: The blindsided dupe

By Monica Hesse
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Cheating scenario, 1989:

There were errant signs. Like the times you phoned the office and it rang and rang (”I was in the conference room,” he said), like the matchbooks from places with names like the Candlelight Inn, where you’d never been. There were always plausible explanations. Work lunches! Work trips! Work lipstick! You wondered if you were crazy. There was so much wondering. Months, maybe years of uncertainty.

Cheating scenario, 2009:

I found your text messages, Jerk boy. Pack your bags.

* * *

There are so many questions about Tiger Woods’s reported affairs. (A cocktail waitress? Really? Have you seen his wife? And who knew Swedes could get so angry?!) But perhaps what’s most vexing is related to the saucy missives waitress Jaimee Grubbs claims were sent to her by the professional golfer.

Specifically: What kind of nitwit celebrity would still leave an e-trail?

Did he not learn from Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.), whose affair was apparently discovered because of a text message? Was he not convinced by the career annihilation of Kwame Kilpatrick after the revelation of naughty notes between the former Detroit mayor and his chief of staff? If only Woods had watched a recent episode of “Glee” — Quinn catches Puck sexting — he would have realized the technology that enables you can also destroy you.

This raises a question: In an age of iPhones, TMZ and standard-issue personal GPS devices, is technology killing the affair?

Here’s a potentially apocryphal anecdote, submitted via e-mail to game forum GoNintendo.com: The e-mailer, a soldier, came back from Iraq and settled down to play some Nintendo Wii. He found an unfamiliar avatar lurking in his console. It was the Mii created by his wife’s lover.

Schadenfreude-by-Google, as related in a column written by a London attorney: His client was apparently tooling around on the Google Maps Street View option and looked up a friend’s house. Parked outside was her husband’s Range Rover, identifiable by its custom rims. He was supposed to be on a business trip.

We’re not talking the end of cheating altogether. There will forever be opportunities for hook-ups in bars or incidents of ex-sex. The social scientists who research infidelity say that the Internet is good for adultery. Sites such as cheating portal AshleyMadison.com have made it easier than ever to find some sleazy person whose interests include long walks on the beach and home-wrecking.

And yet maybe technology is doing in the long-term dupe, the dangerous liaison where no one gets caught and no one pays.

Everyone pays these days, Tiger. Everyone pays.

“The first thing my partner and I said,” Mike Russell says. “We said, ‘Wait, he’s got all that money and he doesn’t have a bat phone?’ ” — the secret cell kept just for booty calls.

Russell is a private investigator in Alexandria. He uncovers cheating, or verifies what the wronged parties usually already know. “I just finished talking to a lady a few hours ago,” Russell says. “She sees 300 texts going to the same number on her husband’s phone, she knows what’s happening.”

Because the cheaters never have a bat phone. They never seem to realize how nakedly traceable their actions are. (It’s like sex tapes. Post-Paris Hilton, post-Eric Dane, post-Carrie Prejean, why do people still make sex tapes? Have they never heard of YouTube? Do they think they still have zones of privacy? Ha ha ha, that’s cute.)

But those who try to go bat phone, who try to be smart about their duplicity, still get tripped up in the end. Tasha Cunningham is the founder of DontDateHimGirl.com, a site on which women share their bad-relationship stories and talk about how they totally caught the cheating snakes disguised as boyfriends.

In one of Cunningham’s favorite stories from the site, a guy thought he was being crafty by creating a secret Facebook profile in addition to the one his significant other knew about. He used it to amass dozens of friends, most of them pretty women. Unfortunately, one of those friends turned out to also be a friend of his lady’s. “Or maybe it was a friend of a friend,” Cunningham says. “Often, it’s a friend of a friend,” but what’s the distinction, really? Do degrees of separation even exist anymore, when everyone is connected with everyone else?

“It’s amazing, the people we find are cheating because of their Facebook photos,” says Ed Hruneni, president of the Private Investigators Association of Virginia. “Or . . . we’ll go with Twitter stuff. The wife might be wondering, was he at work on Friday night?” and meanwhile there’s the phone number she’s noticed her husband calling all the time.

Hruneni can find a name to go with that phone number, and within minutes he has subscribed to a Twitter feed. It’ll say something like ” ‘I was with Bulldog on Friday night, and boy did we stay out late.’ There are no photos.” There’s no full name, but then we go back to the wife, and what was her husband’s nickname? Oh, it’s Bulldog? Hunh.

And what about “GPS trackers. We can stick them on cars, real time, and know where you are. . . . we can find passwords you deleted seven years ago,” and do everything legally, Hruneni says.

Let’s ring up Sandy Ain, one of the District’s most prominent divorce attorneys, and ask him how many of his adultery cases involve technology.

“It’s the majority,” Ain says.

And how many involve cheaters being caught by their own technology?

“It’s very often.”

Isn’t it so typical of the way we engage with technology? Always thinking of the benefits, of the way we could tappa-tappa notes to mistresses while sitting innocently next to the girlfriend — never thinking of the times when we’re in the shower and the girlfriend might glance at the BlackBerry.

UR busted.

Source: washingtonpost.com

Date / Time:  11/24/2009 7:00 PM EDT

Category: Romance

Call-in Number: (718) 766-4680

Show Page: SaferDates Blog Talk Radio Show

Join SaferDates.com on November 24th at 7 PM as we interview Nancy Laine. Nancy is an expert Numerologist who began her matchmaking career as the founder of a popular online singles community based on Numerology. The Soulmate Connections Forum was launched in 2006 on the official forum for the hit movie The Secret. Using Numerology to introduce potentially-compatible partners in pre-assigned Meeting Rooms, it quickly became one of the site’s Top 10 forums and was responsible for the birth of many new romances during its time. Today Nancy continues to have a deep passion for philanthropy and connecting people with their soulmates for the “Greater Good”, both personally and professionally. Nancy believes that Numerology is a shortcut to discovering our true heart’s desire and life purpose as well as our partner’s, and that’s why it’s so helpful in choosing the right partners. “Teaching about Numerology is my favorite way of promoting humanitarian projects around the world”, she says. “They can’t help but succeed when these powerful new alliances are formed. There’s just something magical about doing our dreams TOGETHER!”

By Thomas Dewick

Lehigh’s very own professor of love, Quiana Daniel, met with students in the Peak Performance Center of Johnson Hall on Wednesday to discuss how to maintain a healthy relationship in college.

Daniel, of the Office of Residence Life, covered the importance of communication, trust and mutual respect.

“Really happy relationships are based on deep friendship,” Daniel said, who is the resident coordinator for the McClintic-Marshall and Trembley Park dorms.

Students tried to figure out what they brought to a relationship. People conform to one of three coping styles at different times: the people pleaser, controller or avoider, Daniel said. People pleasers need approval to dim the threat of rejection while controllers resist other’s wishes and avoiders keep people at bay, she said.

Knowing which style one gravitates toward can help people understand their partner’s or their own mindset.

One key to a healthy relationship is paying attention to things one’s partner loves. People in a relationship do not necessarily need to have the same interests. They should, however, be curious about what is going on in the other’s life, Daniel said.

Daniel explained the importance of accepting one’s partner for who he or she is.

“No human being is going to be Prince Charming or Cinderella,” she said.

People seeking to change fundamental aspects of their partner’s personality would be better off reconsidering whether they are a good match in the first place.

It is important to remember that one has to think about someone else in how they spend their time, Daniel said. Sharing daily activities, even something like studying together, greatly strengthens a relationship.

Decision-making also becomes a shared process.

“If a couple doesn’t share power, there is an 81 percent chance that the relationship will become self-destructive,” Daniel said. Men often have a harder time letting partners make decisions for them.

Once a couple falls into a routine, the goal of the relationship should be to “create a story together,” Daniel said. In a healthy relationship, partners grow together and shape each other through shared experiences. It is also important to remember the good times, such as a first date.

Disagreements are inevitable, and most couples will fight, Daniel said. People should focus on how fights start. If a partner is aggressive, it may be a sign of deeper animosity. A softer approach towards disagreements is better for making a point.

“You will never know the honesty of a person,” Daniel said. Relationships are about taking a risk and placing trust in a partner. This process does not happen overnight, she said.

Source: The Brown And White

Friday, November 20, 2009
By Yvonne Fulbright

The long-awaited breakthrough in women’s sexual dysfunction may be here. German drugmaker Boehringer Ingelheim (BI) GmbH claims to have made a pill that will awaken female sexual desire.

This Prince Charming of investigational compounds promises to arouse Cinderella by decreasing inhibitions. This experimental desire drug plays with her mind literally, working on the brain.

Known as Flibanserin, this magic pill has sexual medicine bracing itself for a Viagra-like reception of this first of its kind pharmaceutical treatment for her. With women likelier to report sexual problems than men, sales for the U.S. market alone are projected to surpass the $2 billion Americans spend on erectile dysfunction treatments.

Before the money starts rolling in, however, it will take the U.S. Food and Drug Administration 6-18 months to decide whether it will approve Flibanserin.

Still, should you be more concerned than hopeful over its promise to transform women’s sex lives?

Flibanserin was originally researched as a possible treatment for depression and not as a possible contestant in the race for a “female Viagra.” While it didn’t lift users’ moods, researchers noticed that sexual appetite was rated consistently higher on measures of well-being. This prompted BI to conduct three separate, 24-week clinical trials investigating its potential to treat hyposexual desire disorder, which in laymen’s terms translates to a low-libido.

The more than 5,000 female participants recruited in the U.S. and Europe were mostly professionals in their early 30s to mid-40s in stable, monogamous, communicative, heterosexual relationships with a sexually functional partner. They were concerned, bothered, or frustrated with their low desire or its negative impact on their relationships.

Upon starting the treatment, they were asked to gauge their “satisfying sexual events.” They were beeped once daily and asked to rate their desire, as well as note whether they had been sexually active that day and if it was enjoyable.

Findings revealed an increase in the number of satisfying sexual events and sexual desire while distress due to hyposexual desire disorder decreased. These satisfying events included sexual intercourse, oral sex, masturbation, or genital stimulation by one’s partner.

Sounds great, right? Before getting too excited, though, consider the controversial issues at hand.

Even prior to its press blast Monday, BI was finding itself in the middle of the debate on how to deal with low or no libido. Can it be as simple as popping a pill? Or do the often multiple and complex issues involved require a more thoughtful, holistic approach?

Regardless, is a lack of interest in sex a true medical condition? Is there even a disorder to treat to begin with? Decreased desire may serve an evolutionary purpose, for example, enabling females to take care of their offspring.

Female sexual dysfunction has been criticized for being a “disease” created by pharmaceutical companies to make healthy individuals believe they have a problem requiring medicine. Who is to say that it’s dysfunctional, especially when there can be other factors at play?

A person’s relationship, beliefs, values, feelings, comfort level, and motivations, as well as a host of other issues, may be to blame — not the body or brain.

Proponents for the drug argue that decreased female desire is all in her head — a brain dysfunction of sorts.

Regardless of which side you’re on, there are other unavoidable issues that must be attended to, like:

BI researchers don’t know how Flibanserin works. They don’t know why it failed as an antidepressant. They’re guessing on why it helps female libido. Relying on a model of sexual excitatory and inhibitory structures in the brain, they’re unable to pinpoint how or where Flibanserin acts.

What we do know is that Flibanserin is a serotonin drug, with the same 5-HT1A chemistry as Buspar (buspirone), an anti-anxiety drug that functions differently than traditionally anti-anxiety meds like Valium and is said to be nonhabit-forming. Flibanserin works by blocking the release of serotonin, a brain chemical which regulates mood, memory, sleep and appetite.

After 3-6 weeks of daily 100 milligram use, the brain’s production of the neurotransmitter dopamine should increase, stimulating desire. While that sounds fancy and seems to make sense, nobody knows what this drug is treating exactly. We also don’t know the implications, including the brain altering effects, of this psychoactive drug.

The difference in research findings between continents hasn’t been explained. While significant differences were found between those taking the drug versus those using the placebo in North America, the European trials found no significant increase in sexual satisfying events between its two comparison groups. Answering this question stands to open a whole can of worms, including how an individual measures desire.

Even the researchers involved in the studies admit that sexual desire is difficult to define. What is “normal” sexual desire? Right now, there is no baseline by which to define low desire disorder.

Why didn’t sexual desire diminish post-trial? BI has yet to explain why participants who took the drug reported that sexual desire didn’t diminish after the study concluded. This begs questions like did Flibanserin permanently affect participants’ brain chemistry? Or was brain chemistry not a significant factor in most low desire cases?

The drug’s long-term safety and potential withdrawal problems are unknown. Right now, we don’t know the safety of the drug beyond 6 months of use. Side effects in the first two weeks of trials included dizziness, fatigue, anxiety, nausea, daytime sleepiness, dry mouth, and insomnia. The majority of these were resolved with continued treatment, though it’s worth noting that 15 percent of participants discontinued treatment because of the side effects.

Despite studying the drug for over a decade, BI has yet to publish clinical test results proving the drug’s effectiveness. It does, however, need to wrap up its research, and may be able to respond to the red flags being raised.

With most women in the study stating that low desire had “crept up” on them over time, you or your partner may want to keep that in mind if chronic low desire is ever experienced.

Instead of reinforcing the “it’s all in her head” stereotype about females, consider drug-free strategies to get to a better place. These may include becoming more sexually informed, evaluating one’s contraceptive use, therapy, and/or cultivating better communication and a healthier relationship (or getting out of one).

Dr. Yvonne K. Fulbright is a sex educator, relationship expert, columnist and founder of Sexuality Source Inc. She is the author of several books including, “Touch Me There! A Hands-On Guide to Your Orgasmic Hot Spots.”

Source: www.foxnews.com

Matt Mosher, Life Editor

Sex is arguably the most physically satisfying part of any relationship. But with sex comes great responsibility.

It is also important to understand what type of relationship the couple is part of, be it a one night stand, friends with benefits or a genuine attempt at a working relationship.

“A healthy relationship is, at its core, where two people are authentically themselves with one another, giving and receiving respect for who they are,” said Jane Fischer, Director of SBI health education.

Fischer said the amount of sex in a relationship depends on the comfort of both people involved and that neither partner should be pressured, forced, or coerced into doing anything with which they feel uncomfortable.

“People have needs, but sometimes those needs are different,” Fischer said. “If two people care about each other at the core - without sex… open, honest conversation can happen… the key is honest, respectful communication - expressing needs, wishes, fears, etc. If one partner is having more or less sex than they would like, they need to express that [and] the other partner needs to truly hear the other, and base their decisions on their own comfort, as well as the comfort of their partner.”

Mary Jo Fay, the author of Please Dear, Not Tonight, a new book about sex in relationships said in an article on webmd.com that couples should sometimes try to plan ahead for sex. Adding, “when sex is on the calendar, it increases your anticipation.”

Fay says that mixing things up a bit can increase your sexual enjoyment as well. Partners can try “doing it” in a kitchen, a classroom or even try it while standing up.

“Sex brings us closer together, releases hormones that help our bodies both physically and mentally, and keeps the chemistry of a healthy couple healthy,” Fay said in the article.

For partners feeling uncomfortable talking about the dirty deeds, SBI offices have trained student and professional staff who meet one-on-one with students, or meet with them as a couple, to talk about how to communicate respectfully, honestly, and how to listen to one another, according to Fischer.

“If a couple has had sex once, it doesn’t mean that either partner should feel compelled to have sex again,” Fischer said. “This needs to be spelled out at the beginning, and throughout the relationship - a sort of ‘checking in.’ One person may think, ‘Since I haven’t said I want this to be an exclusive, romantic relationship, then he/she knows its not.’ The other, at the same time may think, ‘I haven’t said that I want this to be a casual, no-strings-attached relationship, so he/she knows its not.’”

She added that having sex too early can have different meanings and depends on what each partner expects and needs to get out of the relationship, and what they expect and need to put in to the relationship.

SBI also offers workshops on healthy relationships, Fischer said. They’re interactive, they can be fun, and they allow people to ask frank questions, and hear real responses. Anyone who would like to learn more can contact SBI at healthed@buffalo.edu or call 829-2584.

“Sex should not be the core of the relationship - respect is,” Fischer said.

Source: The Spectrum, The Independent Student Newspaper Of The University At Buffalo

Two Marie Claire writers weigh in with male and female perspectives on whether or not they feel a woman who brings home the bacon is a good or a bad thing.

By Diana Vilibert and Abraham Lloyd

Source: Lifestyle.msn.com

She Said: I grew up in a single-parent home with my mother who, by default, was (and remains) the breadwinner. She went on to date and marry, and in every relationship, she brought home the bacon and fried it up, with no complaints from the lucky men she was with. For me, the breadwinner wife “trend” (according to the New York Times) is just the norm.

That’s not to say that I’m ignorant to the fact that some men would have a problem with it. Money is not just money, after all, and to many it represents success, power, and strength … all qualities that, I must add, are not exclusively male ones. Am I being naive? Perhaps. But I’m not sure I’d want to date someone who would squirm uncomfortably every time I brought home a paycheck. I want someone who celebrates all of my successes, monetary ones included.

When I asked a select few ex-boyfriends for their opinion, they enthusiastically agreed that it’s completely acceptable for women to be breadwinners. Granted, their answers were perhaps a bit self-serving considering my streak of dating not-exactly-employed struggling musicians, but even my most alpha-male breadwinning ex, when questioned, asked, “Where can I find one?”

Like the New York Times article pointed out, the unemployment rate for men is 10 percent, compared to 7.6 percent for women, so whether it’s “okay” or not, reality is in favor of women as breadwinners. Now is not the time to let ego get in the way of paying rent and putting food on the table.

He Said: Let me start by stating that I am about to reveal one of the dirty little secrets men have and lie about constantly. The reality is that it takes an exceptionally confident and self-assured man to be comfortable with a woman being the breadwinner in a relationship. As a gender we don’t admit this. “Of course!” we say. “I wish my wife was so that I could stay home,” we boast. “How great would it be to not have to work?” we ponder smugly, as if having a partner who lived up to this would solve all our problems. But most of us who say these things are lying through our collective grinning teeth.

The truth is that, while most men are attracted to women with power (and money is a vehicle for power), we do not want powerful women for partners. The idea of a woman who desires, earns, and achieves more is scary. Most men simply do not want to compete with their partners for power. Our partners can earn, do, and achieve slightly more than us and we’re fine with it. It’s a fun and friendly competition, and it helps keep us honest and focused. If, however, you eclipse us to the point that we can’t out-earn or success you, we’ll lose interest faster than you can say “corner office.”

For those of you who watched Sex and the City, remember Steve breaking up with Miranda because she wanted to buy him an expensive suit for an event at her law firm? He said, “No way. I’ll start to think of you like my mother … You need to be with someone more on your level.” Now, I realize this is horribly unfair. The reality, though, is that most men would rather reach down than up economically. It’s safer, less stressful, more comfortable, and ultimately sad.

This is why it takes an exceptional man to be in a relationship with a breadwinner. Exceptional men don’t measure themselves solely against their partner’s income or success. They measure themselves by knowing who they are, understanding the difference they make in their partner’s life, and by celebrating their partner’s success instead of being jealous of it.

September 16, 2009

Source: cbsnews.com

Tips For Couples Feeling Stressed

(CBS)  Stress on the job - or stress from not having a job - can put strain on relationships. Mary Jo Rapini, a Psychotherapist, discusses keeping relationships healthy during tough times.

In order to understand where stress at home is coming from, you need to understand that males and females relate to money differently. “Money is symbolic, and for men, it’s a symbol of them being in control, of them being able to provide for their family… It helps men feel good about themselves,” says Rapini. When it comes to women, “We’re secure, we feel taken care of. It makes us feel like our partner really loves us when they’re a good provider,” says Rapini. When there isn’t enough money to go around and families are living paycheck to paycheck, people in relationships feel stress because the symbolism that money had is gone.

No matter how stressful things get, don’t panic. Drastic moves - like draining your savings account or selling all your stocks - can backfire in the long run. “As a couple, start looking at [the problem] together. Don’t put blame on your spouse,” says Rapini. “Start thinking what you could cut back on.” Work as a team to come up with a realistic budget and stick to it. “When you have teamwork, it embraces the marriage,” says Rapini.

Don’t cut back too much, though. Set realistic goals. If you tell your partner to never buy anything unless they truly need it, Rapini says the goal is too drastic. You’re setting yourself up for failure and the guilt that may follow. Instead, “If you say, every week, we’re going to give up one thing that we don’t really need, and then we’ll treat ourselves every month with something small… the couple is a team and they’re working together for the good of the relationship,” says Rapini. Team work builds intimacy, which strengthens a couple’s bond.

Find comfort in each other and practice spirituality together. Even interfaith couples can be spiritual. “What a couple should do… is they should look around and try to help [others],” says Rapini. She says spirituality is about helping other people; that notion doesn’t have to be tied to a specific religion. By helping others, you’ll be taking the focus off of your own problems and working together at the same time.