Celebrating Halloween is like going to the opera: some people hate it, some love it, some people hate it but pretend to love it, and everybody’s dressed like an Italian swashbuckler. Halloween and the opera are also alike in that they’re both journeys that couples seldom embark upon separately. (Who spends girl's night out savoring the libretto in Don Giovanni?) The couples who enjoy Halloween tend to do so because it’s a chance to show off bilateral creativity while hanging with friends and maybe getting wrecked. At this very moment, legions of couples are anticipating this coming weekend with greater fervor than the Snickers-craving rugrats for whom the holiday [...]

"Doubt," Starz "On Edge," ABC "The Heartbreak Kid," TBS "The Soloist," HBO

Zero minutes after incident (a.i.) Pain. Ow. That’s real pain. I move her off me and roll onto my stomach. Miscalculations have happened before; a few seconds of discomfort and then it's go time again. I roll back over and look down to see if it’s go time again. I rise up off the bed: "Yeah, this… this isn't right." I sit back down. The woman beside me looks so horror-stricken, I try to sound especially calm when talking to 911. I don't tell the operator it's so swollen and purple that I'm afraid it'll burst at any moment. Instead I say, in an even, measured tone, “My penis is [...]

Have you started dating someone recently? Have you noticed that in the rush of your new relationship and finding out all the cute things about your new squeeze and the dates and the fun and the lovey-dovey social-networking proclamations and omg the sex that some of your closest friendships have run a little, well, cold? Well, OK, you probably didn't notice. (Because omg the sex!) But that's all right, because once you come up for air and/or breakup drinks, Science will be here to remind you why certain people haven't been returning your calls as quickly as they might have mere months ago.

You will probably have seen this "Styles" piece on the difficulties of breaking up in the digital era already. It is pretty much what you would expect: There's plenty to mock, plenty to feel smug about, just enough to evoke a small bit of pity, etc.; you'll all have your own favorite parts. Here's what surprised me.

This will come in handy later: "Therapists say the emotional stages after a breakup parallel the well-known stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance, rebuilding. In general, the more meaningful the relationship, the longer it will take to move through the stages after a breakup. Figure a couple months for a short relationship, six months to a year for one that lasted a few years, and two to three years to recover after a long-term marriage, says Tina B. Tessina, a marriage and family therapist in Long Beach, Calif." Of course this cycle is more difficult for men, but either way it's not easy. At least [...]

While the lackluster courtship rituals of the overclass may not be box-office gold these days, they do exert endless fascination for the proprietors of luxe magazine brands. Witness, for instance, Melanie Berliet's Vanity Fair online testimonial, "Desperately Seeking Sugar Daddies." The conceit of the confessional piece is to combine the writer's impatience with her stalled day-job prospects with her willingness to undertake a "social experiment"-registering as an enterprising gold-digger at a dating site called "Seeking Arrangement" ("the elite sugar daddy site for mutually beneficial relationships"). Berliet makes a pro forma show of ethical introspection as she prepares her profile. Sure, she may be "walking the line between [...]