Straying partners can now claim their inclination to stray is in fact genetic. I wonder how that sort of "defence" would hold up in court, or elsewhere, so to speak... Hasse Walum at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, and colleagues looked at the various forms of the gene coding for a vasopressin receptor in 552 Swedish people, who were all in heterosexual partnerships. The researchers also investigated ... Read full entry

Spilled Coffee #1 by Jeff Ventura, and the beginning, by the looks of it, of another episodic writing series at clusterflock. She had just moved into his house, and it was weird. Not weird because he had been Mr. Happily Single or HBO primetime I'm-afraid-of-commitment fodder or anything like that, but because they weren't partners at all. They even had an awful sex life, where ... Read full entry

Am I in a toxic relationship? Let me count the red flags... "After about three months of trying to deal with breaking up with what seems to be a total psychopath, from ‘I hate you’, to ‘I love you’ all within a matter of hours, to calls from Europe saying she misses me, to calling me after we had decided that we weren't going to talk for a while ... Read full entry

A man attending a wedding for a union that was slated to last two years, was then told by his (now ex) wife their marriage would reach its expiry date within three years. At the reception, the bride and groom danced to "our song", a saccharin Ben Folds ballad about the sort of love that lasts beyond the grave. I fled outside for yet another breath of ... Read full entry

Are office romances a development of the last couple of years? I don't think so, yet the line "these days it is unusual to find someone who has never had an office romance", would suggest that is the case. Put single (or, yes, even attached) people together in just about any regular setting, such as a workplace, and romance will bloom. There's nothing new, or "these days", about it. After ... Read full entry

Romantic love, which has made no "scientific sense" to date, has been found to serve an evolutionary function... to, in case you haven't guessed, stop us playing around. It seems to work... most of the time anyway. "Psychologists have long had a problem explaining the functions of romantic love: a very strong emotion that sometimes seems to take over our lives and lead to what appear to be irrational ... Read full entry

I'd do it more often if I could afford to pay the "hourly charge out rate" 24/7. Sure I would. Others seem to have it down to a fine art. How does one pick up a prostitute? I mean, I'm all for women's rights... but I know there's a lot of guys that just aren't getting any huba huba without money or a hit album on their resume. Some guys ... Read full entry

5 sure fire ways to make yourself look like an idiot How not to build good relationships with your clients... making them a better offer on something you know they've already purchased has to be the pick of the crop here: Talk about rubbing your customer's noses in it. These days people are aware that offers change over time. How many of us have bought a TV, only to find it ... Read full entry

Trophy wives a proven prize Contrary to popular belief it's not just rich and powerful men who marry women far younger than themselves, with recent research showing men who marry after age 40 tend to tie the knot with a "significantly younger" wife, regardless of their income, level of education, or social status. Less clear from the data is how lower-income, less educated older men are successfully marrying younger women. "We ... Read full entry

I didn't intentionally look her up, or attempt to cyber-stalk her, or anything creepy, honest, but there she was, I just stumbled upon her, an ex-girlfriend on Facebook. In my defence she uses some sort of nick name (that I never knew her by) as her screen name, so the discovery of her profile was completely coincidental. Not that I'm the least bit insecure about finding her page. No way, ... Read full entry