I have been dating a girl for two and a half years now. We are unofficially engaged, I guess. I bought her a small diamond ring last year as a gift and she like to tell people it is an engagement ring. We have been living together for about five months now. I have come to the conclusion that I don’t want to marry, much less be with her anymore. But due to the lease, I am not sure on how to go about breaking up with her? Any suggestions?
— Torn
Dear Torn,
You do realize that the lease is the least of your worries. Couples don’t consult each other about the best time for a breakup, much less their landlords. (Though Breakup Girl’s landlord does threaten to reclaim her apartment if he and his wife ever split up. But that’s another story for another day.)
Anyway, that ring’s the thing I’m worried about. Guys, even in this funky day and age, where women propose and men take their wives’ names, you just don’t just give your girlfriend a “small diamond ring” and think to yourself, “Well, she knows it’s not THAT kind of ring!” You just don’t. So if you want to break up with her, you need to break up with her the way anyone does. Gently, firmly, clearly. I don’t want you — either of you — writing back to me saying, “We are unofficially broken up, I guess.”
Music can have an overwhelmingly strong hold on the human mind, dramatically swaying our emotions and evoking memories. How come? The new issue of Scientific American Mind surveys recent research on music and the mind. For example, the power of music may come from its influence on regions of the brain responsible for language, feelings, movement, and other unrelated systems. It could also be an important vehicle for emotional communication and connection from which societies emerge. The article looks at studies supporting such theories. From SciAm Mind:
The musical tongue may also transcend more fundamental communication barriers. In studies conducted over the past decade, cognitive psychologist Pam Heaton of Goldsmiths, University of London, and her research team played music for both autistic and nonautistic children, comparing those with similar language skills, and asked the kids to match the music to emotions. In the initial studies, the kids simply chose between happy and sad. In later studies, Heaton and her colleagues introduced a range of complex emotions, such as triumph, contentment and anger, and found that the kids’ ability to recognize these feelings in music did not depend on their diagnosis. Autistic and typical children with similar verbal skills performed equally well, indicating that music can reliably convey feelings even in people whose ability to pick up emotion-laden social cues, such as facial expressions or tone of voice, is severely compromised.
Recently, in a clever experiment, acoustics scientist Roberto Bresin and his co-workers at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm garnered quantitative support for the idea that music is a universal language. Instead of asking volunteers to make subjective judgments about a piece of music, scientists asked them to manipulate the song—in particular, its tempo, volume and phrasing—to maximize a given emotion. For a happy song, for instance, a participant was supposed to manipulate these variables by adjusting sliders so that the song sounded as cheerful as possible; then as sad as possible; then scary, peaceful and neutral.
The researchers found that the participants—expert musicians and, in another study, seven-year-old children—all landed on the same tempo for each song to bring out its intended emotion, be it happiness, sadness, fear or tranquility. These findings, which Bresin reported at the 2008 Neuromusic III conference in Montreal, bolster the idea that music contains information that elicits a specific emotional response in the brain regardless of personality, taste or training. As such, music may constitute a unique form of communication.
Filed under: Treats — posted by Breakup Girl @ 8:09 am
Who says a ring doesn’t go with … handcuffs? Marvel at this while-being-arrested wedding proposal, along with a few amusing others. The heartbreaking ones, I couldn’t watch. But this one? BG said yes!
Marriage, as it turns out, is an extremely good predictor of happiness. Married people make more money per capita, eat better, live longer, have more sex and enjoy it more. In terms of comparisons of happiness, you’d need to be making $100,000 more as an unmarried person to be as happy as a married person. (On average, and your mileage may vary, of course. And please, keep in mind, this is Gilbert talking, not me.) Is this a causal relationship? Maybe happier people are simply more likely to get married? That’s true, but studies over time reveal a very common pattern — people are less happy before marriage, experience a happiness peak shortly after marriage, and become slightly less happy a few years into marriage, though remain significantly happier than before marriage.
Well, that’s better news than something about marriage, after all that, making you less happy. But please keep this from the folks who are happiest of all when they’re bugging singles to shack up.
Filed under: Psychology,Treats — posted by Breakup Girl @ 8:15 am
We already know that yogurt is the official food of women. (Dessert: Fling Bar.) And that real men don’t eat the savory egg tart that dare not speak its name. A.K. Whitney over at Siren (via The Frisky) has even been told — by the waiter she just ordered from — that Beef Stroganoff was “a man’s dish.” So tell: have those stereotypes — steeped in lame, undercooked notions of masculinity and femininity — made their way onto your plates? Are you a guy who gets a look for ordering salad? A gal who asks for regular…and gets served Diet?
OK, now I’m hungry. And not, it should be noted, for a rice cake.
“A spectacularly campy ‘Scopitone‘ music number featuring Joi Lansing from 1965 which appears to be a cautionary tale about the perils of online dating, or spiders, or both.”
Whereas a lot of ladies want you to be rich, nerdy women just want you to be interesting. Do you have a comic book collection that spans decades and rests in a vault somewhere untouched by human hands? That’s kinda cool. Are you learning how to do animation so you can one day post the adventures of a hobo cat online? That’s kinda cool too. Maybe you build houses for the poor on weekends or spend an afternoon teaching creative writing to high school kids? Awesome and more awesome. It doesn’t matter what you do, just do it well.
I have been celibate for six years. Why? The one-night stands got old a long time ago (I’ve been sexually active since age 16), and the chance of AIDS is simply too great to risk my life on a piece of plastic. My buddies ask me, “Why don’t you just get a girlfriend? At least you’d get laid.” However, I can’t justify dating someone solely for the purpose of having sex — it would be an empty relationship at best, and ultimately doomed to failure.
Also, most all of the women I meet nowadays, in my age group (late twenties), quite often have morals lower than the average college jock. I simply can’t imagine that type of woman one day becoming the “mother of my children.” My friends tell me my standards are too high, and that I’ll never find anyone who will “fit the bill.”
Should I lower my standards? Am I being unrealistic? Is wanting a reasonably attractive and intelligent woman, with morals, a sense of humor, and not of baggage too much to ask these days? Right now, my focus is on developing my future so that if/when I meet “Miss Right,” I’ll be financially prepared to provide a comfortable life for ourselves and our children. In the meantime, it’s difficult not having anyone with whom to share things. It can become quite lonely at times. I’ll admit, my standards are high. I may expect a lot, but it’s only because I have just as much to offer. What’s your opinion?
I’ve been dating my neighbor for two months now. We were both in pretty bad situations to have started a serious relationship. I just moved to the area, know no one, and have a stressful job. His mother recently passed away, and he is dealing with other issues as well. I became completely dependent on him and lost all sense of myself. We have acknowledged my neediness, and have attempted to work through our obstacles, because we truly do share something special. I realize that I am in love with him, but problem is we just broke up this past weekend because I flipped out on him (again). We decided to talk things over in a week. I really want him back, and have taken steps to become more dependent on myself. I know now that I don’t need him to survive — I have a lot going for me on my own. I want us to have the loving, caring relationship we started out with, and that both of us deserve. I’ve always been a strong, stable person, but the slew of changes I’ve faced over the past months have exhibited themselves in some truly loathsome behavior and childish antics. I am embarrassed and ready to start anew. Help. How do I prove this to him?
Sincerely,
Sane, Sober and Secure
Dear Sane,
Say: “I really want you back, and have taken steps to become more dependent on myself. I know now that I don’t need you to survive — I have a lot going for me on my own. I want us to have the loving, caring relationship we started out with, and that both of us deserve. I’ve always been a strong, stable person, but the slew of changes I’ve faced over the past months have exhibited themselves in some truly loathsome behavior and childish antics. I am embarrassed and ready to start anew.”
I recently watched Twilight for the first time and I couldn’t understand why Bella (Kristen Stewart, who I will always identify as the little boy in Panic Room) was attracted to Edward (Robert Pattinson) at all. But then, I’m a guy. I guess there was that saving-her-life thing. That’s sexy. But otherwise? He was kind of a mess of creepy affectations. And let’s not forget he’s really an old man.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer always did a good job of punching a hole in this kind of epic brooding, so maybe that ruined it for me. In fact, my reaction to the movie is perfectly captured in this well edited video mashup of Buffy Summers meeting Edward Cullen:
Cree-pee. I would stake him too. (And, boy, does he do a LOT of walking away.) And yet this is what passes for female-fantasy? Edward doesn’t seem any less creepy when Vicki Iovine at the Huffington Post tries to explain his appeal (in the books) in a vacuous and only barely self-aware piece on what she’s calling “mommy porn”:
I’m in the mood to see more people punched in the nose by a handsome hero. Perhaps the evolution of 21st century men into laptop toting, UFL-lit frequent fliers to further self-importance leaves many women hungering for a man who can cut down a tree, rebuild an engine and catch and gut a fish. And I want one of those kinds of guys handing out a few shiners to the girly men on my list: Bernie Madoff, Bill Clinton, Rush Limbaugh to name a few. Admit it, it felt good to see someone punch Perez Hilton, didn’t it?
To all those guys — myself included — asking “why do women date assholes?” I think her piece inadvertently holds the answer.
Breakup Girl
is the superhero whose domain is LOVE or the lack thereof!
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He’s probably single, ladies … February 16, 1998…
We already know that 
