I just got an e-mail with the subject line: “Who’s sleeping with your husband?” But before I could say, “That bee-yotch!”, or remember that I don’t have a husband, I realized it was just a press release — a really depressing press release — for a Web site called MomLogic. Witness:

The other woman wants you to know–your husband is cheating and she’s loving it. Find out why. (more…)

Fear not, Xbox widows (and widowers) everywhere! There is now proof that your next video game experience could not onlybe fun, but could also save your relationship. Rachel Shukert’s hilarious new article on Salon.com (it’s Premium, so you’ll need a subscription or day pass; of course, I’ll summarize here too) tells the story of a frustrated wife and her video game-addicted husband in a marriage. He spends his time shooting things in a video fantasy world; she fears the man she married has become one of the very aliens he’s always trying to blow up. (“…[N]oise-canceling headphones,” Shukert writes. “You could lock Rush Limbaugh, Phyllis Schlafly and Mullah Omar in a room together with a stack of Hustlers and 10 ounces of meth, and they couldn’t come up with anything more misogynist.”)

The solution? (more…)

Apparently it’s not just wine that gets better with age. According to a study by Yang Yang, a University of Chicago sociologist, the happiest Americans are the oldest Americans — and one thing those happy seniors are not is lonely. Yang believes that’s because older people have, in general, learned to be more content with what they have than younger folks.

As a case in point, Florida’s Highlands Today featured Lou and Dottie Mingacci, who have been married 62 years. Lou’s Wednesday morning Bingo outings represent his rare moments of separation from his beloved, the World War II vet tells the paper. When asked what keeps him happy, Mingacci quickly replies: his wife.

Isn’t it nice to have something to look forward to?

Maybe it won’t surprise any of you to find out that roughly 50% of Canadians — reputed to be the politest people in the Northern hemisphere (the Minnesotans being too polite to challenge them) — break up in private places, mainly their own homes, so as not to embarrass the other person. (Or, um, because it’s cold outside?)

The Vancover Sun article bearing the news — based on a recent poll by Ipsos Reid — quotes psychology professor Guy Grenier as saying, “I suppose that’s probably a good indication of relationship etiquette.” I suppose. But just because a breakup happens in private doesn’t mean it feels private. I mean, the most humiliating place I was ever broken up with was in my own bedroom. Would have been private, I guess, if there hadn’t been a PARTY going on downstairs. I’ll cry if I want to, thanks!

By the way, call me an impolite New Yorker, but aren’t they focusing on the wrong half of the respondents? I mean, where are all those other people breaking up? Gretzky’s?

(By the way #2, the comments section here would be a good place to share your own good/bad/ugly breakup-location stories. Especially you, our neighbors to the north.)

Having once seriously dated a fantastic, and fantastically ugly, guy, I have developed the following fugly-guy philosophy: You have to feel in your lusty places that your man is, like, the hottest guy in the world. In your head, however, you may acknowledge that he is perhaps the hottest guy in the world only according to you.

A recent study about the relative physical attractiveness of spouses seems, at first glance, to bolster my theory, stating that hot-wife/not-so-hot hubby couples often feature the most mutual encouragement and support.

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An image stuck in my head since last week: Cardinals vs. Brewers, bottom of the fifth, Cards down 7-1. Evidently frustrated Cards catcher Yadier Molina throws a verbal hissy about the ump’s latest call. Right quick, the two start jawing at one another nose-to-nose, like they do in movies about baseball or commercials for chewing gum.

Molina gets ejected, natch, at which point Cards manager Tony LaRussa saunters over to take Molina’s place up the ump’s nostrils. While Molina makes a big show of tossing his catcher’s gear at the umpire’s feet, LaRussa is likewise ousted from the game.

I cringe to admit that the scene reminded me of some knock-down-drag-outs I’ve had with exes. I’m sure at some point, I’ve tried to pull off some histrionic bit like Molina’s aggro-sarcastic gear-shedding. And yet? I’m oddly jealous of him and LaRussa.

Why? Because Molina and LaRussa will get to keep their well-paying jobs as professional sports guys. Even though what they did was counterproductive to the task at hand (you know, winning a baseball game) nobody on their team is going to hold a grudge, as even guys who play baseball for a living recognize that it is, after all, just a baseball game, just a bad flare-up in a season that’s 120 games or so long.

Being in a relationship, by contrast, pays zero dollars, can take an awful lot of work — and, at those unfortunate times when you do work yourself up into a bat-hurling moment, there’s no third-party commissioner to assign you a measly wrist-slap of a fine before everybody just moves on.

Can anyone tie that all up into a nice love/baseball metaphor for me? I’ll be over here with the Cracker Jack.

For those of you in a re-relationship like mine, it turns out we are not the freaks our friends try to make us out to be. In fact there’s an entire subset of relationships — with their own TV role models, of course — that have risen from the very ashes of their own breakups. (Again, and again, and again.)

According to a recent article in the Contra Costa Times, the cycle of breaking up and making up with the same person — you know, in the inimitable words of Charlene: “That man you fought with this morning, the same one you’re going to make love to tonight” — has a lot to do with our biological makeup, our fears of being alone, and, in some “extreme” cases, an addiction to the “I love, I mean hate, I mean LOVE you” drama.

Lisa Gray, a marriage and family therapist, says: “[These couples] get addicted to that up and down of emotion. The more quiet, stable love is not really cultivated as something to be respected. Just watch the common TV shows. These loud breakups-and-get-back-togethers are what get the attention.”

If that’s the case, I, for one, would be perfectly happy to spend the rest of my life never getting any attention ever again. Quiet, stable love, where are you?