Doree Shafrir at The New York Observer recently described, ruefully, the slacker boyfriend who totally got his act together — a little too late. “Maybe, I realized, I had seen him as someone who had potential but just needed a little tweaking,” she writes. “But it was sort of annoying that he managed to do all the tweaking after we’d broken up.”

Ah, the Butterfly Effect, as Shafrir calls it it: “One day he’s a pot-addled caterpillar barely hanging on to his barista job, begging off brunch because he’s only got $37 in his checking account, spending his nights ‘playing music’ (his band is going to start playing shows again really soon) and eating cheese fries, and then, six months after the breakup, he’s turned into a Monarch: lost 20 pounds, has a job as a graphic designer, his band is playing the Bowery Ballroom and he has a new girlfriend (tall, blond, wearing what appears to be the $282 Vanessa Bruno sweater you eyed longingly at Stuart & Wright) who, he casually mentions when you run into him at brunch, is the heiress to a paper clip fortune.”
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Opposites attract (sometimes), right? You are the yin to your partner’s yang. But what happens when your yin is a vegan diet and your partner’s yang is a love for baby back ribs?

Munch on this from The Washington Post:

Disagreements about food probably wouldn’t make a counselor’s top-10 list of couples issues. But in today’s food-conscious culture, what and how a significant other eats is becoming one more proxy for couples’ deeper conflicts about control and respect. Food obsessives divide the world into two kinds of people: those who seek out truffles, sea urchin and single-estate chocolate, and those who don’t. And when an avid food lover falls for one of the others, it can get complicated. Unlike fly-fishing or knitting, what to eat is a question that comes up three times a day. The result: Romantic dinners are ruined. Tempers flare. And though some couples find ways to make compromises, in extreme cases, relationships fall apart.

Has your picky palate ever come between you and the person you are/were dating?

A seriously inspiring story for V-day: BG’s alter ego had the pleasure and privilege of getting to know Lindsey Nebeker and Dave Hamrick, who both have autism — a diagnosis that makes conventional relationship skills particularly challenging — and getting to tell their love story in Glamour Magazine. The moral of their story is not that “love conquers autism.” It’s that two deeply committed and passionate people can, with a great deal of work, have both.

Falling in love is kinda like coming down with a fever: it creeps up on you, makes the cheeks run red, and the best remedy for it is to spend lots and lots of time in bed (hummina hummina). Then the fever breaks. In fact, for a long time running scientific wisdom has been that the fever might run its course in a mere year; after that, it’s dunk yourself in an ice bath, get a pacemaker to calm those heart flutters, and settle into a more platonic, less charged life with lovey.

Now a new study suggests that for a lucky few, that bloodsugarsexmagik passion is more akin to a really, really fortunate case of herpes for which there is no cure.

“Brain scans have proved that a small number of couples can respond with as much passion after 20 years as most people exhibit only in the first flush of love. The findings overturn the conventional view that love and sexual desire peak at the start of a relationship and then decline as the years pass.”

Only about 10 percent of the couples studied were found to pump equal amounts of dopamine through their systems when shown a pic of their betrothed as they did a couple decades prior. The researchers dubbed these couples “swans” because swans mate for life, but I mean, gag me.

No word from the study on the why and how of all this, but this primer on how to pucker might prove helpful.

Fer rills, yo, that’s what a booty-call buddy once said to me late at night when I was already in his bed and awaiting our usual pillow romp. In fact, he used that sexcuse (I just made up that word) for a good week and a half, until I finally decided this guy was either a) kinda gay, b) hellbent on annihilating my self-esteem, or c) a full-on, French royalty hemophiliac.

How do you think that one compares to these lame-o sex dodges guys use?

Via Wired Science:

How do a science writer and a UC Berkeley obstetrician explain how the ability of humans to turn off their empathy and organize for war?

By looking at chimpanzees and bonobo monkeys of course! Chimps are the only species besides humans who form social groups and attack rival groups, while bonobos, whose DNA also closely resembles humans, are peaceful, have a matriarchal society, and use sex as a form of greeting, conflict resolution, and post-conflict reconciliation.

Alexis Madrigal interviewed Malcolm Potts, Thomas Hayden, the authors of Sex and War, who share their thoughtful reflections on the whys and hows of modern warfare, terrorism, the disabling of empathy, and a uniquely human trait: free will. This book sounds like a fascinating read, and more than just a barrel of monkeys.

Ever since the Duchovny news broke, we here at breakupgirl.net have been addicted to sex addiction stories! Now, Lynn has written a review of two memoirs dealing with the subject — Desire: Where Sex Meets Addiction by Susan Cheever and Love Junkie: A Memoir by Rachel Resnick — posted this morning at Barnes & Noble.

Last August, in a remarkable example of art imitating sex life, it was revealed that David Duchovny — who stars as a randy writer on Showtime’s Californication — had checked into rehab for sex addiction. The former Fox Mulder’s disclosure opened up a psychological X-file: is “sex addiction” modern pop-psych folklore, complete with a handy excuse for caddishness? Or is it for real?

Continue reading at the bn.com review page!

Reasons why it’s not that surprising that I teared up at Cody Linley‘s Dancing with the Stars departure Tuesday night:

1. It felt like a breakup. Or rather, two breakups in one: No more Cody and Julianne cutting it up while cutting a rug like the king and queen of the prom; no more, in my wildly dancing imagination, of our weekly threesomes.

2. Hey, I cried when Boner Stabone bid adieu to bestie Mike Seaver on Growing Pains. (I distinctly remember dashing to my bedroom to hide my tears from my family.) I also cried when Garfield said goodbye to his mother in “Garfield on the Town.” Yes, I have a problem.

3. Or do I? According to this recent study (sponsored by me, you’d think) about the health benefits of crying, it’s not a problem at all, which is great news for me.

Almost nine out of ten participants in the study reported improved moods post-weeping, and researchers found that emotional tears (as opposed to emotion-neutral, chopping-onions tears) contain stress-related hormones. So when we cry over stressful situations, such as a breakup, we really are “crying it out.”

Unfortunately, by “we,” I mean mostly women. The report states that men cry an average of seven times per year. For women, it’s a whopping 47 times per year. Also: men who cry out of sadness were “more positively rated” by women, while women’s sad tears made them less attractive to men.

For the record, Cody cried in a previous episode of DWTS while declaring his (platonic?) love for Julianne, so I know he’s the right man-boy for me.

Amazingly, these researchers aren’t quoting Breakup Girl when they say, “serial cohabiters are less likely than single-instance cohabiting unions to result in marriage.”

Anecdotal evidence suggests that last night, for millions of euphoric liberals, moderates, and sane Republicans, “Not tonight, honey, I have to blog,” became “YES WE CAN! YES! YES! YES!”

Take me, for example. As I watched Obama’s acceptance speech, heart — and loins — swelled alike. My loving man gave my hand a squeeze, and I was filled with a wondrous, deep and primal desire to embrace him and celebrate life. And even — now that we have a prayer of creating for them a worthy world — to make life, to make babies!

I know I’m not alone: Twitterer after Twitterer was whooping in the same lusty way. And whether or not there’s a resulting O-baby-boom in July, we can say this with some certainty: Inspired, united, ignited, we have officially replaced the terror sex of 2001 — that end-of-days groping for closeness — with hope sex, celebrating the true, transporting possibility of coming together as one.