Posted in Caregiving, Children, Cohabitation, Expectations, Family, Happiness, Love, Marital plan, Men, Needs, Relationship contract, Relationships, Romantic relationships, Women on Dec 11th, 2018
When Mandy Len Catron wrote about her relationship contract with her partner in the New York Times’ Modern Love, it get a lot less love than her earlier and much-read Modern Love essay on the 36 questions that can lead you to fall in love with anyone, which led to her charming and insightful book, […]
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Posted in Caregiving, Children, Expectations, Family, Fathers, Gender, Happiness, Marriage, Men, Millennials, Mothers, Needs, Relationships, Romantic relationships, Wife, Women, Work on Dec 4th, 2018
When I wed for the second time, my hubby and I knew we wanted to have kids. We agreed that we wanted someone to be at home, and since he was older and much more established in his career than I was, we decided he’d be the breadwinner and I’d be the homemaker. Still, I […]
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It’s almost Thanksgiving, the beginning of the holiday season and the kick off of “engagement season.” The pressures around the holidays make many of us unhappy, and even if we’re generally OK with our situations — partnered or not — it’s hard not to buy into the whole “most wonderful time of the year” thing. […]
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Posted in Children, Expectations, Happiness, Love, Marriage, Needs, Politics, Relationships, Wife, Women on Nov 13th, 2018
On the surface, it would be hard to find a more picture-perfect healthy, happy marriage — especially an uber-public marriage — than Michelle and Barack Obama’s. Despite the temptation to compare our romantic relationships with the curated happy relationships we often see on Instagram and Facebook — and some of us are guilty of that […]
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Someone loves you — in a romantic way — and you love that person in return. Do you have an obligation to try to stay alive as long as possible because it would be painful for your partner if you die? That’s an issue brought up in Free Solo, a new documentary about Alex Honnold, […]
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#MeToo stories have been dominating the news for the past year, and many men are exploring their own behavior toward women and what masculinity means to them — all necessary discussions. Women, men are finally beginning to understand, have sexual agency. But based on a discussion I had with a 52-year-old man I had just […]
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I don’t know about you, but watching Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony before Congress about how Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh had sexually assaulted her when they were in high school, and his subsequent confirmation nevertheless, has made me furious and wondering, why. Why are women considered second class when we clearly are just about half — […]
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Beautiful Boy is hitting the movie theaters next week, a film based on the best-selling books by father and son David and Nic Sheff. It’s a heart wrenching look at addiction — extremely timely, as overdoses are now the leading cause of death of Americans under the age of 50. But the back story is […]
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For many years everything I read and heard, and thus believed, is that women aren’t good at casual sex, only have affairs for love, eventually become disinterested in sex and do best in monogamous relationships. OK, but my lived experience proved otherwise. True, I’ve been a serial monogamist, which I interpret as being pretty good […]
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Posted in Beta marriage, Divorce, Expectations, Happiness, Live Apart Together, Love, Marriage, Needs, Relationships, Renewable marriage, Sex on Sep 11th, 2018
A few weeks ago, I heard from Christina Hoff Sommers and Danielle Crittenden, creators of the Femsplainers podcast, who kindly asked me to join them for Season Two and talk about reshaping marriage a la The New I Do: Reshaping Marriage for Skeptics, Realists and Rebels. And so I did. Sommers, the author of five […]
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