Posts Tagged: Relationships
19

Ask Polly: Why Is My Boyfriend Addicted To Internet Sex Chats And Why Won't He Stop Lying About It!

Appearing here Wednesdays, Turning The Screw provides existential crisis counseling for the faint of heart. "Because he's just not that into anything, really, except himself."

Hi Polly,

I met this funny, quiet, artistic, and all-around wonderful man shortly after I had escaped from an abusive relationship. We hit it off and started out a casual (albeit, exclusive) thing. I saw from the beginning that he was a bit of a flirt, in a self-deprecating, sarcastic kind of way that made women go "Oh youuuuu!" but hey, that's what drew ME to him in the first place, so what the hell.

Fast forward 2.5 years. We've moved in together, [...]

19

Ask Polly: Should I Make The First Move On My Dream Girl?

Appearing here Wednesdays, Turning The Screw provides existential crisis counseling for the faint of heart. "Spare change for when your stock hits a 52-week low."

Dear Polly,

I'm a 26-year-old guy who has been most flatteringly described recently as "not unattractive" (I'm relatively short and quite skinny). I've been "enamored" with this 20-year-old friend of mine, who is on the opposite side of the sexual appeal scale. Not only is she very beautiful, she's also very charming and fun, and has plenty of suitors due to these particular qualities. To put it bluntly, she's way out of my league.

The problem is, I've been interested in this girl for [...]

18

Ask Polly: Should I Divorce My Perfectly Good Husband?

Appearing here Wednesdays, Turning The Screw provides existential crisis counseling for the faint of heart. "Because bitterness becomes you!"

Dear Polly,

As Neil Gaiman astutely pointed out, you often don't realize you have a migraine until it's way too late. I have now been with my husband for more than half of my life, and a couple of years ago I realized that I don't actually love him. Or even really like him very much.

Our relationship has never been easy, but for years I had blamed it on Things That Could Be Fixed—lingering distrust from long-ago infidelities, the typical working family's imbalance of housework, a mismatch in [...]

15

Ask Polly: Why Can't I Leave My Ex Behind For Good?

Appearing here Wednesdays, Turning The Screw provides existential crisis counseling for the faint of heart. "Because suspending your disbelief burns 78 calories per hour!"

Polllyyyyyyy.

Relationship. 3.5 years. 2.5 of those years spent cohabiting. 1 year into the relationship, my brother died, and my family fell apart before my eyes. Around this time, the major, major conflicts in the relationship began. Fighting. Constantly. Me taking it out on him. Him letting me because he’s a good guy. Drinking too much. Having the most epic, awful fights. Things got better, gradually, with time, us giving each other more space, and him finally realizing that he needed to be in [...]

5

Baby, I Will Handle Your Food All Night

"Preparing a meal — not just the eating that follows — is a multisensory experience that can expose many behaviors, from creativity and generosity to control issues and messiness. Cooking with someone who knows his or her way around the kitchen can be a kind of foreplay — or, on the flip side, it could send up deadly red flags. Pay attention to everything: not just kitchen skills but how he or she reacts in preliminary discussions about the meal, shops, handles the food and the bill and more. There may not be clinical evidence, but as a professional chef who has shared my kitchen with countless friends and [...]

30

The Incident Report. Or, The Time I Broke It

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 [...]

7

Scientists Prove Existence Of "Relationship Black Hole"

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.

43

In Praise Of Editors, Or In This Case, Editor

When editors and sponsors demanded changes to his copy, the legendary absurdist comedian and radio star Fred Allen used to reply: "Where were you bastards when the pages were blank?"

This joke is about the common misconception about what really happens between writers and editors, which is a kind of alchemical collaboration, provided that the collaborators in question are in sympathy and closely attending to the matter at hand. Granted, that doesn't happen every time, on either side, but at its best there is no hostility, and no jockeying for an advantage in this symbiosis: no ego, no performance, just an intent shared focus on making something good together for [...]

12

Ask Polly: I'm In Love But My Best Friend Is Slipping Away!

Appearing here Wednesdays, Turning The Screw provides existential crisis counseling for the faint of heart. "There's nothing out there but cold space."

Dear Polly,

I'm a straight 20-year-old woman. I was in love with my best friend, Ben, for three-and-a-half years, since the end of my senior year of high school. Ben is gay, so that was problematic, but even when it was at its worst, I was self-aware enough about the whole thing to understand that it wasn't healthy for me, and it wasn't sustainable.

Anyway, about 6 weeks ago, I started dating someone. I'm really excited about Noah, to put it lightly. He's my first [...]

4

Everyone Equally Annoying

"New research suggests the way in which we think of things and treat other people depends on whether we are single or in a relationship. In a new study, researchers discovered that people like to believe that their way of life — whether single or coupled — is the best for everyone, especially if they think their relationship status is unlikely to change."

31

My Superpower Is Being Alone Forever: Newly Single

Planning the end of a relationship is probably the closest many of us will ever get to knowing what it's like to plot a murder. Will they see it coming?, you wonder. Some of us are careless, impulsive relationship-murderers, and so the breakups happen spontaneously, the time and place as random as Clue cards. Others plan it all out, postponing, buying time until the perfect opportunity, thinking over the most humane method. Maybe you'll wait for the vernal equinox on account of your partner's Seasonal Affective Disorder. But then he or she might forever associate the sadness of the breakup with cherry blossoms and freshly graffiti'd "Nurse Jackie" posters, [...]

1

Move In, Do Sex, Move On

"Quickly moving in with your honey may be the kiss of death for some couples. New research indicates that couples who move in together before they get engaged or married are less happy and less likely to stay together than couples who wait…. The responses showed that the couples' frequency of sex increased for a short time after they moved in together, but the responses also showed overall declines in relationship quality and commitment." So… trade-offs.

10

How Long You'll Feel Bad After A Breakup

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 [...]

37

Trading the Purse for the Purse Strings

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 [...]

5

Ask Polly: How Do I Stop Faking Orgasms With My Boyfriend?

Appearing here Wednesdays, Turning The Screw provides existential crisis counseling for the faint of heart. "Concrete, explicit instructions in the time of emotional cholera."

Dear Polly,

My problem started innocently enough, a little white cLIEmax that rolled along and gained momentum until it became a large-scale inescapable avalanche of deceit-gasms.

Paradoxically enough, I met him at a bar on a girls' night out that a friend had organized for me as a "screw men" celebration following yet another breakup in a string of less-than-great short-term relationships. When we started dating, my expectations were down to zero and I was more interested in casual fun than a meaningful relationship. [...]

22

Ask Polly: My Roommate's Boyfriend Is Twice Our Age And Practically Lives with Us!

Appearing here Wednesdays, Turning The Screw provides existential crisis counseling for the faint of heart. "Because someone out there is better than you, at pretty much everything."

Polly!

I am a few years out of college and living with a close friend. We get along great, both as roommates and as friends. I truly care about her as a person and believe that we will be lifelong friends. About one month into our 18-month lease, she began dating a man twice our age. Problems quickly became apparent—he is controlling and anxious about her whereabouts and activities. He routinely accuses her of lying about very inane things and punishes her [...]

21

Not OK Cupid

A series on the stuff that delighted us on the Internet this year.

I grew up in Massachusetts but at the other end of the state from Boston, so I never really got into the Boston Globe. Not that I imagine my friends who grew up near Boston were all obsessed with the Boston Globe or anything. God, I am being so boring right now, aren't I? This boringness is not something I would indulge in on a blind date. But what I am trying to do—and this is a segue I would never use on a blind date—is talk about my absolute favorite thing on the internet, which [...]

9

Love Among the Mismatched

How can an atheist and a theist build a relationship?

6

A Space Alien's Guide To Dealing With Roommates

57

Halloween: It's Doomsday for New Couples

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 [...]