Boredom kills marriage. But it need not be fatal.

Seems this Cougar Lady who I follow on Twitter has put the cat among the pigeons with her blogpost and assertion that boredom kills more marriages than infidelity does.

Read full post at http://www.therealcougarwoman.com/2011/04/infidelity-isnt-what-breaks-up-marriages-its-boredom.html

I think she's dead right. I even left a comment on her blogpost. The only exception would be that I think there is a condition like serial philanderer - among both males and females- but this is a special case of emotional handicap.

But it begs the question...did people not get bored in previous generations also? And if so, why did they not end their marriages? Or did they simply have affairs? I think its easy to conclude that they simply had affairs, and maybe that was the case for men, but I don't think it was that easy for women of past generations to have affairs. Not socially, morally, economically, emotionally or physically ( the pill wasn't around!)

Even in today's scenario of relative economic, social, moral equality....if you believe that....I still don't think it's easy for a woman to have an affair because of emotional reasons. We are simply wired for bonding with one mate....the father of our children, or the potential father of a future child (eg a lover) . All the pheromones triggered by sexual intimacy is designed for attachment. So even if a woman should have an affair, it's usually about forming a new attachment, as opposed to just a roll in the hay for a physical release.

Beyond physiology, economics and chemistry, there are significant environmental, social and technological changes that compound the challenges of keeping relationships intact.

Today, the biggest "quick fix" for boredom is at people's fingertips. The World Wide Web and the mobile phone puts instant gratification in the palm of your hand.

Sites full of other "bored" people in search of a bit of spice- something better than they've got- are everywhere. It's easier than EVER to spice up your dreary existence, virtually or in person. Excitement and "forbidden thrills" are a mere few clicks away. The files of relationship counsellors are bulging with great relationships destroyed by internet dalliances - some fleeting and once-off, others a downward spiral of addiction.

See images below. Even these scenarios can be boring....if they become a pattern! Online porn and serial dating is BORING when its just a repeated pattern of one-dimensional flesh stripped bare of mystery, intrigue and rich and meaningful interaction.

But boredom need NOT be fatal nor permanent. It's not a reality if you choose to replace it with a new reality. It's simply a pattern that people get trapped in.

I repeat: Boredom is a pattern, not a fatal reality!

So, if patterns and predictability are a recipe for boredom, then there must be a way to pattern-interrupt?

Yes, the anti-thesis to boredom lies in nurturing the opposite. Nurturing mystery, uncertainty, curiosity, unpredictability, seduction.

""Uncertainty and mystery are energies of life. Don't let them scare you unduly, for they keep boredom at bay and spark creativity.”- RI Fitzhenry

Men and women of the world....keep the mystery alive...have separate bathrooms, don't reveal all, play games, write letters, light candles, book hotel rooms, do dress-ups, be mischievous, make effort, pretend you are having an affair...with your own partner. Lure them into a fantasy world.

Ignite those flames. It can be done if you don't leave it too long. By the time you have to bridge the Grand Canyon it may be too late, so start when you spot the first crack!

Slow sex and baby boomer variations on a theme

A Facebook friend, Reese Jones- a man with the vastest reading list in the universe, shared this with me tonight....and its of course not suitable material for my work related blog, and purrrrfect for this one!

Here's the thread grabbed from Facebook:

I am both amused by it all, not only the variations on a theme.....but how other trends, eg the "Slow Food" movement, seeps into the sexual zeitgeist. Must be the ageing population in America. Them wild baby boomer hippies from the 60's have too many backaches and buggered knees for fast and furious sex so they re-invent the genre...again!

Then again, the Orient has been teaching tantra for years!

Bring it on...fast and furious, slow and sensual ...I think its all just part of healthy playfulness!

If you are in San Francisco and have time for what promises to be a raucous night, hop along to the Commonwealth Club tonight. You may get lucky! ;-)))

http://nicoledaedone.com/2011/03/30/sex-dating-in-san-francisco/

Would you rather wash your hair than go on an uninspiring date?

There was a time when I was quite active in the online dating scene and it became so tedious to eat my way around Sydney's restaurants that I even thought of starting a blog called "Blokes with Style" - so I could help guys out with a bit of creativity!

I work in innovation and creativity and what I do day in and day out is to champion and create unordinary events, experiences and unusual approaches to break monotony, routine and dead-end relationships at work.

My own marriage failed largely because I married the world's most unimaginative risk-averse person- a good man but hopelessly wrong for me.

But I am not alone in valuing the creative effort above all else in the romance department. Every Christmas and birthday, let alone Valentine's Day, millions of women wake up to an after-thought or a poorly thought through gift, or none at all....just Happy Birthday- go pick your wn present and I'll pay for it scenario.

So, when I saw this story, despite the fact that its late after a long day and I have another long day ahead of me tomorrow, I simply had to capture it in this blog!

To quote from it: Psychologists Jens Förster, Kai Epstude and Amina Özelsel from the University of Amsterdam concluded that love literally makes us think differently. Our creative faculties are triggered, not just our analytical thinking. The opposite happens when we simply think about sex: Our analytical capacities are increased as our creativity diminishes.

I think when men realise that women read the degree of passion that a man feels for them in the degree of effort he makes to be creative and artful in his wooing and courtship- just as the woman expresses her degree of passion through the trouble she takes over her appearance, dress, hair, figure etc....

When both sexes get this connection between creativity and love, maybe then we will see more relationships saved.

The eligible bachelor paradox: Game Theory explains it

The problem of the eligible bachelor is one of the great riddles of social life. Shouldn't there be about as many highly eligible and appealing men as there are attractive, eligible women?
Advertisement

Actually, no—and here's why. Consider the classic version of the marriage proposal: A woman makes it known that she is open to a proposal, the man proposes, and the woman chooses to say yes or no. The structure of the proposal is not, "I choose you." It is, "Will you choose me?" A woman chooses to receive the question and chooses again once the question is asked.
The idea of the woman choosing expressed in the proposal is a resilient one. The woman picking among suitors is a rarely reversed archetype of romantic love that you'll find everywhere from Jane Austen to Desperate Housewives. Or take any comic wedding scene: Invariably, it'll have the man standing dazed at the altar, wondering just how it is he got there.

Full story here: http://www.slate.com/id/2188684/

Happy Valentine's Day...to the decisive ones! I am decisively single....and never been happier!

The future of love and the New Monogamy: Forward to the Past

The New Monogamy: Forward to the Past
An author and anthropologist looks at the future of love. This article was written by Helen Fisher and published in The World Futurist Society's magazine.

Marriage has changed more in the past 100 years than it has in the past 10,000, and it could change more in the next 20 years than in the last 100. We are rapidly shedding traditions that emerged with the Agricultural Revolution and returning to patterns of sex, romance, and attachment that evolved on the grasslands of Africa millions of years ago.

Let’s look at virginity at marriage, arranged marriages, the concept that men should be the sole family breadwinners, the credo that a woman’s place is in the home, the double standard for adultery, and the concepts of “honor thy husband” and “til death do us part.” These beliefs are vanishing. Instead, children are expressing their sexuality. “Hooking up” (the new term for a one-night stand) is becoming commonplace, along with living together, bearing children out of wedlock, women-headed households, interracial marriages, homosexual weddings, commuter marriages between individuals who live apart, childless marriages, betrothals between older women and younger men, and small families.

Our concept of infidelity is changing. Some married couples agree to have brief sexual encounters when they travel separately; others sustain long-term adulterous relationships with the approval of a spouse. Even our concept of divorce is shifting. Divorce used to be considered a sign of failure; today it is often deemed the first step toward true happiness.

These trends aren’t new. Anthropologists have many clues to life among our forebears; the dead do speak. A million years ago, children were most likely experimenting with sex and love by age six. Teens lived together, in relationships known as “trial marriages.” Men and women chose their partners for themselves. Many were unfaithful—a propensity common in all 42 extant cultures I have examined. When our forebears found themselves in an unhappy partnership, these ancients walked out. A million years ago, anthropologists suspect, most men and women had two or three long-term partners across their lifetimes. All these primordial habits are returning.

But the most profound trend forward to the past is the rise of what sociologists call the companionate, symmetrical, or peer marriage: marriage between equals. Women in much of the world are regaining the economic power they enjoyed for millennia. Ancestral women left camp almost daily to gather fruits, nuts, and vegetables, returning with 60% to 80% of the evening meal. In the hunting and gathering societies of our past, women worked outside the home; the double-income family was the rule, and women were just as economically, sexually, and socially powerful as men. Today, we are returning to this lifeway, leaving in the “dustbin of history” the traditional, male-headed, patriarchal family—the bastion of agrarian society.

This massive change will challenge many of our social traditions, institutions, and policies in the next 20 years. Perhaps we will see wedding licenses with an expiration date. Companies may have to reconsider how they distribute pension benefits. Words like marriage, family, adultery, and divorce are likely to take on a variety of meanings. We may invent some new kinship terms. Who pays for dinner will shift. Matriliny may become common as more children trace their descent through their mother.

All sorts of industries are already booming as spin-offs of our tendencies to marry later, then divorce and remarry. Among these are Internet dating services, marital mediators, artists who airbrush faces out of family albums, divorce support groups, couples therapists, and self-improvement books. As behavioral geneticists begin to pinpoint the biology of such seemingly amorphous traits as curiosity, cautiousness, political orientation, and religiosity, the rich may soon create designer babies.

For every trend there is a countertrend, of course. Religious traditions are impeding the rise of women in some societies. In countries where there are far more men than women, due to female infanticide, women are likely to become coveted—and cloistered. The aging world population may cling to outmoded social values, and population surges and declines will affect our attitudes toward family life.

Adding to this mix will be everything we are learning about the biology of relationships. We now know that kissing a long-term partner reduces cortisol, the stress hormone. Certain genes in the vasopressin system predispose men to make less-stable partnerships. My colleagues and I have discovered that the feeling of romantic love is associated with the brain’s dopamine system—the system for wanting. Moreover, we have found that romantic rejection activates brain regions associated with profound addiction. Scientists even know some of the payoffs of “hooking up.” Casual sex can trigger the brain systems for romantic love and/or feelings of deep attachment. In a study led by anthropologist Justin Garcia, some 50% of men and women reported that they initiated a hook up in order to trigger a longer partnership; indeed, almost a third of them succeeded.

What will we do with all these data? One forward-thinking company has begun to bottle what our forebears would have called “love magic.” They sell Liquid Trust, a perfume that contains oxytocin, the natural brain chemical that, when sniffed, triggers feelings of trust and attachment.

We are living in a sea of social and technological currents that are likely to reshape our family lives. But much will remain the same. To bond is human. The drives to fall in love and form an attachment to a mate are deeply embedded in the human brain. Indeed, in a study I just completed on 2,171 individuals (1,198 men, 973 women) at the Internet dating site Chemistry.com, 84% of participants said they wanted to marry at some point. They will. Today, 84% of Americans wed by age 40—albeit making different kinds of marriages. Moreover, with the expansion of the roles of both women and men, with the new medical aids to sex and romance (such as Viagra and estrogen replacement), with our longer life spans, and with the growing social acceptance of alternative ways to bond, I believe we now have the time and tools to make more-fulfilling partnerships than at any time in human evolution. The time to love is now.

About the Author

Helen Fisher is a research professor in biological anthroplogy at Rutgers University and chief scientific advisor of Chemistry.com. Her most recent book is Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Love (Henry Holt, 2010).

From now on...I'm DATING MYSELF!

I discovered slam poetry accidentally at about 2 am one morning several years ago while doing online  research on entrepreneurship/ start-up competitions. I stumbled into the winning Business Case of a Microsoft-sponsored competition- written and recorded as a "slam" poem by the Mayhem Poets outlining a plan to create a slam poetry teaching and "spoken word" performance centre for youngsters in New York City. It was the cleverest thing I had ever seen.

I kept digging....and then I found him. Taylor Mali. I fell in love on the third line of his first poem that I watched on YouTube. It was called: "What Teachers Make"

I had to have more of it. I wrote to Taylor and a few months later met up with him in New York, but alas, he was too expensive to buy and keep for myself. As a poet-in-residence, of course! (He has a very lovely wife whom he loves very much and writes the most beautiful poetry for.)

I have visited the well-known New York Slam Poetry clubs, The Nuyorican Cafe in Alphabet City, The Bleecker St and Cornelia St Cafe in Greenwich Village and the Bowery Club in the East Village, and even the Green Mile Club in Chicago- birthplace of Slam Poetry. I have books and CDs and I have even tried to get a chapter going at work. (Watch this space!)

Now and then I dip back into YouTube and it always delivers just the right poem for the occasion. Here's one on finding happiness through dating yourself!




So what did you think? Like it?

Meeting his / her kids

In mid-life, most people we will meet come with families. And, if you think its hard to make a first marriage work with 1 pair of inlaws, try 2 ex partners and four sets of in-laws, not even counting the kids!

My last serious relationship broke up ...over children. His, and mine and different values and approaches to how to deal with our children. And it was horrible. If this article can help anyone avoid this kind of pain, then I would be a very happy woman.

Our children are an extension of ourselves and it's not possible to maintain a "secret life" dating someone you care deeply for and keep that away from the children. What message does that in itself send to your kids? That you are ashamed of your partner? That you are in a sordid affair? That you cannot be trusted and are doing something behind their backs that you don't want them to know about? And how does that make your partner feel? Not very worthy - for sure.

When I don't know how to tackle a situation, I research it from many angles. Whilst I seldom find a silver bullet, it gives me confidence in my intuition. Intuitive wisdom and emotional intelligence is not so widespread, and some blokes just don't have much of it - especially if they are impatient in a new love affair. And note - teenagers are much more tricky than younger children.

So if you are intent on making the relationship work, is it not worth taking a bit of time to think things through? It's not a guarantee of success, but at least you can't blame yourself for blundering about like a bull in a china shop and fracturing delicate things needlessly, and it demonstrates your own maturity to your partner!

Kids are smarter than you think. Act from your Fourth Chakra- an open heart! Treat both your partner and kids with the respect and the honesty you espouse in all other relationships, and that will give you the best chance at future happiness.

While many of these articles deal with re-marriage, I believe the same care and approach should be taken in all serious long-term relationships. So here are a few good articles for further reading:

http://www.ivillage.com/making-healthy-stepfamilies/6-a-127706?p=1

http://www.suite101.com/content/meeting-your-partners-children-for-the-first-time-a304752

Have you ever dealt with this scenario before? What tips or experiences could you share?