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June 17

Every single thing that’s wrong with you: Q&A with Karin Anderson

Filed under: books,issues,media,Psychology — posted by Paula @ 1:21 am

anderson0751_v2The trusty formula found in many self-help books aimed at single women is:

A) You’re single–because there’s something very wrong with you.
B) But don’t worry, here’s how to fix it!

What sets apart Karin Anderson’s new book, It Just Hasn’t Happened Yet: bogus, ridiculous, absurd explanations as to why you’re still single and how to deal with them plus a few silly things we do to ourselves, is a glorious lack of blame, accompanied by a daring refusal to fix anyone’s problems.

Anderson, a Chicago-area psychotherapist and professor, strenuously resists the idea that single women are by definition doing “something wrong,” and in fact advocates a healthy acceptance of whatever relationship status a woman happens to find herself in.

To those readers who are unhappily single, she repeats the title of her book, mantra-like, and assures them it’s not because they’re “too picky,” or not trying hard enough, or trying too hard, or any number of questionable pieces of finger-wagging advice leveled at them from friends, magazine articles, TV shows, and, most egregiously, other self-help books. We caught up with her to hear more:

Did you have any specific self-help books in mind when you wrote this?

I wouldn’t say there was a particular book, but definitely the tone of the genre in general was what I was responding to, and [I was] responding with what I believe to be a counter-message that I think is equally plausible and empowering.

I just didn’t like the suggestion [promoted in other self-help books] that there’s always something amiss, or something that needs to be fixed in order for single women to find happiness. There’s one book that talks about, you know, “what your friends would tell you if they’d be honest with you.” It occurred to me that I know plenty of women who are married who are very happy but very flawed. They didn’t need to fix anything about themselves to get married.

But we have this bias in our society that marriage is good and singleness is bad, and so we feel compelled to come up with some explanation for why single women aren’t married. This need for an explanation is all about control.

You mention the concept of control several times in your book, and how it’s easier to blame someone, or dole out advice, than it is to just sit with the discomfort of not knowing–not knowing how to help, or not knowing the solution to a problem. I’m wondering how you’d counsel a person to be more supportive of a friend who may be unhappily single and looking, without falling into “control” patterns.

In this society, women are very much valued for their relationship status—not by my judgment or your judgment, but that is what we’re dealing with in our culture as a whole, this idea that a single woman is “less-than” because she doesn’t have a husband. Since that’s the case, I would put a lid on any unsolicited comments about relationship status unless the single woman brings it up herself.

So, number one, don’t bring up the subject unless it’s brought up.

Number two, I would really lay off the advice-giving. Just listen, and empathize.

A third thing is: just be a buddy, a wing man. If your friend wants to go somewhere and doesn’t want to go alone—go with her and keep her company. That kind of purely physical support can be really helpful.

What I like about your book is that, while it is very positive and encouraging, it is not blindly optimistic, either. In one of the final chapters, you answer a question from a woman who says, “Well, I’m 45, I never had a kid or got married, and I feel like I’ve missed the opportunity for these things” and your response to her is that, hey, sometimes life doesn’t work out the way we wanted. There’s an attitude of acceptance in your answer, rather than regret or shame, which I find quite rare in a relationship book.

I didn’t want to have a downer message, but I want to be realistic. It’s not easy for women in our generation, who were told we could have it all, when we find that sometimes we can’t. We all expect this linear trajectory, with checkpoints and accomplishments—perfect career, check; perfect mate, check; two children, check—that arrive at certain times.

It’s time for us to realize that, for some women, life can be a linear trajectory, but for some of us it’s a path that twists and turns and goes off on tangents that you didn’t anticipate…but if you take a step back and relax the energy of “It’s supposed to be this way,” and look at your life—it is beautiful in ways you never could have planned for.

That is not easy to do and requires a bit of detachment from our own desires, but at times it’s important to relieve ourselves of that pressure of our desires and timelines and just see the beauty of what is.

To say, “Okay, this isn’t the way I wanted it to be, but when I look back at the last five years at the things I thought I wanted, compared to the things that actually did happen, and if I’m on the path of remaining positive and excited and living life to the fullest, I bet some really cool things will happen.”

What kind of effect do you hope your book will have on people?

I have high hopes that, number one, I can encourage single women who are walking a path they didn’t anticipate and plan for, and who, in my belief system, through no fault of their own, are feeling stalled and thinking, “What happened?!”

Also, if it gets in the hands of some sympathetic friends or family members, I would love to think that it could inspire a moment of enlightenment, for someone to say, “Wow, I wonder if I’ve tried to offer advice, or some ‘cogent’ explanation for why my friend or daughter or cousin hasn’t arrived at where she wants to be in the area of marriage. Maybe I could learn something from this.”


June 16

“The Boyfriend Myth”

Filed under: issues,Psychology — posted by Breakup Girl @ 1:10 am

Here’s an overdue and essential shoutout to Tiger Beatdown‘s supersmartie Sady Doyle, who here in the Atlantic nails precisely what’s cluelessly, even callously, off the mark in Caitlin Flanagan‘s recent anti-“hookup culture” screed. Unencumbered by sociohistorical accuracy, Flanagan suggests that today’s  girls pine for boyfriends — nu? this is new? — as a welcome source of escape from the disappointing, depressing, even damaging wham-bam of casual sex. But can a shining-armor boyfriend really take them away from all that? Doyle: not necessarily. “Flanagan’s biggest error is in suggesting that the Boyfriend Story, or boyfriends in general, are of necessity healthier than hook-ups: safer, kinder, less risky. This isn’t an issue of opinion; it is actually, and demonstrably, untrue,” she writes Boyfriends — like marriage, BG might add — are not magical. They are not a panacea. Sometimes they hurt worse.

Doyle [with emphasis added by kowtowing BG]:

If the facts backed Flanagan up — if withholding sex for boyfriends could actually solve the problem of girls being hurt by sexual partners — I would join the crusade against the hook-up culture tomorrow. But boys aren’t treating girls badly because they have sex; they’re treating them badly because we live in a culture that encourages disrespect toward girls. A man who dislikes women as a group does not change simply because he becomes intimate with one particular woman, and telling girls that love is the key to ending a man’s hurtful behavior plays into many of the most pernicious myths about abuse. If we tell young women that having a boyfriend is the way to stay safe and be respected, what do they do if their boyfriends become unsafe? Most stay. Most believe in the Boyfriend Story long after it starts to hurt.

June 15

We totally care what people think

Filed under: Psychology — posted by Breakup Girl @ 6:15 am

New research at Indiana University — based on participants’ observations of speed-dating interactions — suggests that humans (like birds and fish) engage in “mate choice copying,” where an individual copies the mate selections of others, even perfect strangers. I guess we sort of knew this, even though we tend to assume we’re most influenced by friends and family. Study author Skyler Place, Ph.D., suggests that choice copying may make evolutionary sense: “We might think that searching for mates is a process best done individually, that we can best gather the appropriate information by ourselves,” he says. “But humans, like many other animals, also pay attention to the preferences of others, to make for a more efficient search process. Who others like might also be a good choice for ourselves.” Right, but that’s assuming the others have good taste, which is an assumption that has not always been borne out by, e.g., the American electorate, the gods who choose the popular kids, Idol voters, etc. So maybe mate choice copying is something we should evolve out of?

June 11

Reason #2347 why BG is co-ed

Filed under: Psychology — posted by Breakup Girl @ 6:33 am

A study at Wake Forest University of more than 1000 unmarried young adults ages 18-23 has found that the emotional roller coaster of romance has an even greater effect on the mental health of men than of women. “Surprisingly, we found young men are more reactive to the quality of ongoing relationships,” said sociology prof Robin Simon, who found that men experience both greater stress when things are rocky and greater “emotional benefits” when things are rocking.

“Surprising?” Maybe, but only against strong, silent stereotype. For one thing (as Simon notes), men are more likely to rely on their galpals as their primary source of intimacy; gals, meanwhile, have their own galpals.

Simon also notes that (paraphrase) “strain in a current romantic relationship may also be associated with poor emotional well-being because it threatens young men’s identity and feelings of self-worth.” While men are more affected by the quality of an existing relationship, women are more affected by whether they’re in a relationship or not. From a summary: “So, young women are more likely to experience depression when the relationship ends or benefit more by simply being in a relationship.”

What this says to BG:
1. These results jibe with the letters we get/got.

2. Chicken vs. egg/nature vs. nurture? These results might do away with some stereotypes, but to what degree are the findings caused by stereotypes — or at least cultural assumptions, proclivities, etc. — to begin with? That is:

(a) women are “supposed” to be the emotional CEOs of relationships; are young men not raised with the same tools to manage them?

(b) Women, arguably more than men, get the message that they’re “supposed” to be in a relationship, no matter what; this, at least as much as internal factors, could explain why the study found breakups leaving women more bereft. (This also explains a lot of this.)

All of the above speaks to BG’s emphatically co-ed mission. Even though men represent 5o% of the partners in straight relationships, romance is  — still — usually considered WomensStuff ™. That’s dumb. Men — obviously — have questions, not to mention feelings. Let’s work all this stuff out together, according to what we need, not what we’re “supposed” to want or have. K?

April 29

No peakin’! Sex after the 30s

Filed under: blogs,Psychology — posted by Paula @ 8:29 pm

Do women reach their sexual peak in their thirties? That’s what folks say, often employing a saucy reference to (SPEAKING OF OLD) Sex and the City.

But an upbeat post at Your Tango begs to differ. Outing the original source of that old young wives tale (Kinsey, we’re looking at you!), it explains that actually each stage/decade of a woman’s sexual life offers a different set of advantages.

Although columnist/sex expert Dr. Trina Read oversimplifies the post-menopausal stage a bit, recent studies in both endocrinology and psychology (especially the work of Dr. Rossella Nappi) suggest that post-menopausal women do have problems with lowered desire and higher dysfunction, but can take measures to overcome these problems and enjoy good sex for the rest of their lives.

April 21

More on dating vs. hooking up

Filed under: Psychology — posted by Breakup Girl @ 10:06 am

Some smart observations from Echidne on the study we were annoyed by* a few days ago:

The study defines dating as a traditional male-initiated process: The man invites the woman, he picks her up, he treats her, he takes her back home. He can ask for sex and she can refuse it. Hooking-up, on the other hand, is defined as a fairly egalitarian process about necking or kissing or intercourse or whatever. Either party can initiate it.

Note that there is no third alternative, such as some kind of egalitarian dating with going Dutch. It’s important to keep that in mind in evaluating the study findings. We have no idea how the study participants would have ranked egalitarian dating.

4. The checklists of items the study used (for the subjects to agree or disagree about) were not identical for men and women. An example about the possible benefits of traditional dating:

For the benefits of traditional dating, we listed 36 possible benefits for men and 34 possible benefits for women. Twenty-seven of these benefits were identical for both genders (e.g., “Traditional dating is romantic”), with the remaining possible benefits gender specific (e.g., for men, “You can ask anyone you are interested in on a date”; for women, “You have the power to reject a date”).

Similar gender differences were applied to the checklist covering the possible risks of traditional dating. The checklists for the benefits of hooking-up were identical for both sexes but the checklists for the risks of hooking-up were not:

Two items were gender specific. (“Risk getting pregnant” vs. “Risk of getting partner pregnant” and “Can get a bad reputation for being ‘easy’ or a whore” vs. “Can get a bad reputation of using women”).

Why would such differences matter if they are not about the questions discussed in the above summary? Because the overall experience might affect the answers one gives. For instance, men get reminded about their responsibility in the concept of traditional dating this study used, and that reminder is different from the reminders women get.

That’s why my point about the two choices is an important one. The study did not ask how students would have felt about egalitarian dating.

*In that post, by the way, I should have specified that by “traditional dating” I didn’t mean boy-always-takes-lead dating; I just meant going-on-DATES-dating.

April 19

It’s not you, it’s my avatar

Filed under: Advice,Comedy,media,pop culture,Psychology — posted by Mia @ 1:10 pm

If only everyone on Twitter followed Nerve’s Nine Essentials of Twitter Etiquette! (Twitiquette?) Hilarious and helpful. My favorite:

Ask yourself if you’re tweeting something out of love, or to be loved.

While you’re there, check out the cautionary Five Ways I’ve Sabotaged My Relationships With Technology. It rings skeerily familiar for a rampant, heretofore unrepentant texter/emailer/chatter like me. Yikes!

April 15

Men are from hookups, women are from dates?

Filed under: Psychology — posted by Breakup Girl @ 6:32 am

A new study at James Madison University (based on a limited sample) suggests that “more women than men continue to prefer dating whereas more men than women rate hooking up above dating.” At least that’s the way Science Daily describes it. And that’s not wrong in terms of the study, but how come it takes a whole bunch more paragraphs to get to this part? “Overall, both genders showed a preference for traditional dating over hooking up…On the whole, men and women agreed on the benefits and risks of dating and hooking up.* It’s not that gender differences are never interesting, or worthwhile to note. But maybe if we paid more attention to what we actually — demonstrably — have in common, there’d be, well, even more traditional dating.

April 13

Oral: sex?

Filed under: News,Psychology — posted by Kristine @ 8:02 am

Is it or isn’t it? In an article set to appear in the June 2010 issue of Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health, researchers found that oral sex is … not.

Only about 20% of university students participating in a 2007 survey agreed that oral-genital contact constituted sex, yet the majority believed that penile-vaginal and penile-anal intercourse did (98% and 78%, respectively)…

While I agree that demoting oral sex to, say, just “fooling around”  doesn’t quite work either, I am most disturbed by:

a) The 2 % of university students who don’t believe penile-vaginal intercourse constitutes sex, and

b) The 22% of university students who don’t believe penile-anal intercourse also constitutes sex.

Um, then…what does? Sex obviously feels good — and is, arguably, essential — to many humans of all orientations, but if we want to get biological and scientific, it is essentially about reproduction, propagating the species and all that. Therefore, one would think, college kids, who have had at least high school biology — and social lives — would be 100% certain that penile-vaginal intercourse is mostly the way that happens. The fact that even 2% of them don’t know that makes me hope there is some margin of error with the study’s statistics or there are some smart gay students who are subversively protesting the common perception of vaginal penile sex as normal. Most likely, we seriously need to revamp sex education.

Apparently, the authors of the study also suggest that sex education may be to blame for this oral “sex” business as abstinence-only education as well as more comprehensive sex education programs focus on penile-vaginal intercourse. There is indeed danger — sexually transmitted and otherwise — in disassociating oral sex from “SEXsex.” Oral sex can spread disease more easily than, say, a back rub or a hi-five. So, why don’t we, as a society, recognize that education and making facts available to our young people is the best preventative medicine for both teen pregnancy and STDs? Oh wait: because — as at least the grownups known — addressing even the matter of oral sex is, yes, talking about SEX.

March 25

Spinster stigma alive and well

Filed under: books,issues,pop culture,Psychology — posted by Mia @ 3:49 pm

Single women are still feeling the “stigma” of spinsterhood, a new study of middle class, never married, women over the age of 30 has found. In fact, single women between the ages of 25 and 35 reported feeling both highly visible in certain social situations — like, God help us all, bouquet tosses at weddings — and highly invisible when it came to social status, in almost every situation from consideration by political representatives to expectations in office environments.

Despite the fact that 40% of all adults in The United States were single in 2009, it is women who often feel pressure to explain or justify their single status.

Pandagon goes into more detail about the humiliating catch-22 of the bouquet toss,and also explores the potentially harmful situations the pressure to be married can foster. That is: “men can make higher demands on women in exchange for their validation of women. Sometimes a woman’s devalued position in a relationship merely means she does most of the housework and emotional work, and her sexual satisfaction is a secondary concern. But in the worst case scenarios, culturally created female desperation can be used as leverage by domestic abusers to keep their victims in place.”

A new book by social scientist Bella DePaulo, PhD, Singled Out: How Singles Are Stereotyped, Stigmatized, and Ignored, and Still Live Happily Ever After
addresses all these issues and more. (The  fabulous bullet list she includes in her post about the book had me yelling, “sing it, sister!” at my computer screen.)

And here’s another antidote for all the single ladies, all the single ladies — and anybody who loves a great self-published comic: the amazingly funny and philosophic story, “My Every Single Thought” by Corinne Mucha. This comic chronicles the author’s attempt to get over an old relationship, and come to terms with a — yes — saucy new label: Single.

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