Throw Your Arms Around Me

Of all the motivations that keep couples together, I suspect that love - in the sense of romantic love - is the least important. Anyone who has lived through at least one love and falling-out-of-love cycle understands the temporary nature of heart-pounding irrational obsessional love. It's a trick of nature to get us to breed, asap.

So what does keep people together? Despite media hysteria, lots of people find, marry, mate, and stick with one person for many years, if not forever. The secret must partly revolve around choosing the right person in the first place. That choice can naturally be driven by emotion, but relationships so founded require lots o' luck to last longer than their season.

Choosing well means asking difficult questions. All the love in the world won't overcome disagreements over all the other stuff of life, a partial list of which might look like:

~ religion
~ money
~ children
~ politics
~ morality
~ work ethic
~ physical fitness
~ recreation
~ socializing

And so on. No two people will ever agree completely on everything - knowing what are not, and what are deal-breakers is the most important part of all this. That requires clarity on the self-knowledge front, which is quite another field of exploration.

Presuming you choose well and find someone with whom the day-to-day stuff is close to frictionless, there's one more factor that I've learned, and it's this: Happiness and longevity in a relationship occur when folks wake up in the morning and ask themselves how they can make their partner's day better. It might only be making them a morning cup of tea, or sending a chirpy upbeat text for no reason, but the very act of placing someone else's wellbeing ahead of your own creates the right framework.

I think.



Bottoms Up, Huggers.

To Protect and Provide

 Melinda Clarke

Whether it's a tipping point, a turning point or simply a point of inflection, there's something in the wind out there. Not that it's an overnight shift nor even noticeable year-to-year, but I smell a sea-change.

Specifically, men want to protect and provide for their women.

And women seem to neither want nor need either service.

If true, this means more change to relationships, marriage, child-rearing and old-age. Whither men if we're needed only as suppliers of DNA? 





Bottoms Up, Changeagents.

You're Such a Dirty Bitch

 Manuela Arcuri photo credit.

You're such a dirty bitch.

God you're so wet, I love it.

Oooh, yeah, that feels great.

Your pussy feels so tight. 

Mmmmm, I could do this forever.


Guess what we're doing here? Yes, I'm talking during sex, and now that it's written down, it's kinda lame - unimaginative, even. But  when I start thinking about improving my sex-talk repertoire, the right words elude me.

My working theory is this: If a woman is sharing her mind and body with me in heavenly congress, she wants me to be as close to her ideal lover as possible. I guess women have the two extremes of men in mind - the worst possible and the best. The worst kind of lover sticks it in, wiggles it around for a bit, ejaculates and remains silent throughout. (Although under some circumstances I can see some women wanting precisely that. Tricky creatures.)

The ideal lover is skilled at making her feel beautiful and sexy; understands just how to help her mind and body stay horny; exerts the right amount of authority; talks eloquently and sexily; and fucks her long and often.

Frankly, that doesn't seem like such a big ask, especially in a loving marriage or committed LTR. Still, the right kind of talking during sex looks to be the most elusive element. From personal experience, men should avoid:


~ laughter. Women seem to take this personally, rather than as an expression of joy.

~ filth-talk if she's not in the mood. Best to discuss this beforehand.

~ comparison to other women, even if positively. Duh.

~ explicit functional chat if she's not prepared for it. Body parts have distinctly unsexy names.

~ anything that makes her feel self-conscious. Until she's comfortable with admiring honesty.


That's a start. As with much surrounding sexual preferences, it's best discussed away from the heat of the moment. Start when fully-clothed, and over dinner, ask:

Darling, when we're making love, do you like it when I tell you how hot you are in Latin?

With luck you'll be able to capitalize on the feeling and try your sex-talk immediately. Practice makes perfect.



Bottoms Up, Woman-Whisperers.

But Then Again, Too Few to Mention

Maria Grazia Cucinotta pic. 

Choosing the right partner.

I don't know, if there is some secret to making this happen, it's surely not in my possession. The answer is tantalizingly close, like she's so almost there...but she's not.

Or is she?

I am unmarried because I have yet to meet the right person. Well, maybe I've met her, but all the folderol surrounding dating is a barrier. Some people are ready, some people are not, and so the world turns.

Maturity matters. Some people I know married early in life, but they had it together enough to make it work. On the other hand, there are perpetually lagging souls who only present as decent prospects after a few years in oak barrels. Everyone's mileage varies.

If there is magic to be learned, maybe it is just that - that we're all different, and you knowing when you're ready for decanting is paramount.



Bottoms Up, Vignerons.

BTW, here's how to choose a wedding day limousine.

Digital Love Analogue

 Stephanie Gateshet.

We're clearly moving from centuries of an analogue world to lives defined digitally. The changes are easy to see - we no longer measure, we count;  infinite shading is now thin slicing; perhaps is either on/off.

If this isn't the revolution of all revolutions, I don't know what is.

But, like, whatever. My interest lies in whether we're changing the nature of love. Is love analogue or digital? Do we look at love like a Caravaggio or a PDF file? Is the answer as obvious as it seems?

Digital love sounds awful. A bunch of ones and zeros on a wafer of silicon won't get anyone's heart racing, let alone inspire them to write a song or pen poetry. However, those ones and zeros are canny things; they understand that they're neither warm nor sexy, so they present us with a more lovable facade. The photo above, for instance. Or blogs. Or iTunes. Somewhere along the line, the digital gods found themselves a first-rate PR firm, and followed its advice.

The problem is that all their solutions are good at describing love but hopeless at actually being it. The look that melts your heart, the feeling of her touch, the invisible communication of minds in synch - I guess a robot will eventually simulate these things, but it will still be reproduction of love, not the core.

So I think we're safe for now. Love will be analogue for a long time, probably until your DNA has sex with an iPad, at which point we're all screwed. Or apped. But at that point it won't matter: we'll all be too busy shopping at Amazon for a lover to notice.




Bottoms Up, Microprocessors.

Getting To Know You

Photo credit.

How long does it take to know another person? If you're dating with a view to marriage, the magic time appears to be around the eighteen month mark. If accurate (or even close) that leads to a few unavoidable truths.

-> If you have been dating someone for longer than two years, and marriage isn't explicitly on the horizon, it probably won't happen.

-> After dating for longer than two years, if the question of marriage appears obliquely or indirectly, you probably shouldn't marry that person.

-> Excessively speedy marriages ie: those within six months of meeting, are likely to founder because you really don't know the other person.

-> When you're dating and learning about your possible long-term partner, often the only way to smoke out problems is to ask pointed questions eg:

~ do you or any of your family have a history of depression or other mental problems?

~ do you have any addictive traits, for instance alcohol, drugs or gambling?

~ do you want children or not, and how many if so?

~ do you think you can change me (other than perhaps my wardrobe)?

~ will you need me to be with you all the time, or will I have some independence?


Too often we float along in a cloud of denial, thinking that when the time comes, it'll all work out.

No it won't.

Life will throw sufficient variables at you - deliberately taking on stuff that doesn't jive with your own life-story is asking for heartache multipliers beyond that which will test any relationship.

Better to face the difficult questions, then say NO, even if your dreamboat appears to be the One. Leave the fog of fantasy and get tough. Relationships don't survive pussies.





Bottoms Up, Tough Guys.