Category Archives: Dating Advice
TV THIS WEEK: The Orville returns, Z Nation finale, and Christmas specials over slow holiday week – SYFY WIRE
Happy Holidays! With plenty of folks traveling and spending time with family — or gearing up to watch college football games — a whole lot of shows remain on hiatus this week. But, there are still a few gems to check out, including some deep cut genre movies.
The big story this week is the Season 2 premiere of Fox’s Trek-esque action-comedy-drama The Orville. Yeah, this show is a lot. The first season started off rough, but by the end of the year it really found its stride. It has a ton of heart and a lot of laughs. Here’s hoping Season 2 keeps things going in the right direction. This week also brings the season finales of Z Nation and Van Helsing on SYFY. ABC also has a special event celebrating Mickey Mouse’s 90th anniversary.
There are also some holiday stalwarts, such as The Grinch, Happy New Year, Charlie Brown, Elf and a few others. As far as general new episodes, NBC is dropping a fresh Midnight, Texas, STARZ has new episodes of Counterpart and Outlander, and there are a few others lingering around.
Check out our full rundown below and let us know what
HIGHLIGHTS
Harry Potter Christmas marathon (SYFY), Monday 8:30AM
Looking for some fantasy comfort food, or finally wanting to dive into the Harry Potter world over the long Christmas break? We have you covered.
Happy New Year, Charlie Brown (ABC), Thursday 8PM
While other members of the Peanuts gang plan a holiday celebration, Charlie Brown struggles with “War and Peace”; a bonus cartoon is “She’s a Good Skate, Charlie Brown.”
Z Nation (SYFY), Friday 9PM – “The End Of Everything”
SEASON FINALE: The gang breaks into Altura in an attempt to bring Pandora and Estes to justice, when Cooper reappears, shocking Warren.
Mickey’s 90th Spectacular (ABC), Saturday 8PM
Superstars from music, film and television join the festivities to celebrate the birthday of the internationally beloved character Mickey Mouse; scheduled performers include Josh Groban, NCT 127, Leslie Odom Jr., Meghan Trainor, and Zac Brown Band.
The Orville (Fox), Sunday 8PM – “Ja’loja”
SEASON PREMIERE: As The Orville heads toward Moclus for a unique ceremony, life aboard the ship heats up when Kelly gives Ed some startling news; Gordon asks John for dating advice; Claire turns to Isaac for parenting advice.
MONDAY
Harry Potter Christmas marathon (SYFY), Monday 8:30AM
See more in our “Highlights” section above.
Elf (AMC), Monday 8:30PM
Adopted as a baby by one of Santa’s elves (Bob Newhart), a man (Will Ferrell) leaves the workshop to search for his family in New York.
TUESDAY
Futurama marathon (SYFY), Tuesday All-Day
There are few shows better for geeky background music, so just toss this one on and let it run while you enjoy the holidays.
How the Grinch Stole Christmas (NBC), Tuesday 8:30PM
A curmudgeon (Jim Carrey) living atop Mount Crumpit sets out to quash the yuletide preparations of the Christmas-loving Whos of Whoville. Anthony Hopkins narrates.
The Goonies (Paramount), Tuesday 8PM
Coastal Oregon kids (Sean Astin, Josh Brolin, Jeff Cohen) follow the treasure map of pirate One-Eyed Willie past his deadly traps to gold.
WEDNESDAY
Vikings (History), Wednesday 9PM – “Hell”
Ivar the Boneless insists his leadership over the Great Heathen Army. Meanwhile, Lagertha reigns Kattegat.
THURSDAY
Unbreakable (Vice), Thursday 8PM
The sole survivor (Bruce Willis) of a horrific train crash, questioning his existence, finds counsel in a mysterious stranger (Samuel L. Jackson).
Happy New Year, Charlie Brown (ABC), Thursday 8PM
See more in our “Highlights” section above.
The Dead Files (Travel), Thursday 10PM – “Revealed: Satan’s Revenge – Leslie, Mi”
In an enhanced episode, Steve and Amy travel to Leslie, MI, to investigate chilling reports of extreme paranormal activity at a family’s home. During her walk, Amy encounters a shadow creature that mentally torments the home’s occupants to the brink.
FRIDAY
Midnight, Texas (NBC), Friday 8PM – “Yasss, Queen”
With Midnight now under the rule of Dark Witches, the surviving Midnighters must band together in one last, desperate attempt to save their town.
Galaxy Quest (Discovery Family), Friday 9PM
Aliens, believing actors to be real heroes, enlist cast members (Tim Allen, Sigourney Weaver, Alan Rickman) of a sci-fi TV series to help save their people.
Z Nation (SYFY), Friday 9PM – “The End of Everything”
See more in our “Highlights” section above.
Van Helsing (SYFY), Friday 10PM – “Birth Ritual”
SEASON FINALE: Vanessa and Sam face off to find the Last Elder, with Scarlett, Axel, and Mohamad caught in the crossfire. Julius fights the Sisterhood, while Doc unlocks the secrets in the Dark One’s blood.
SATURDAY
Mickey’s 90th Spectacular (ABC), Saturday 8PM
See more in our “Highlights” section above.
World War Z (FXX), Saturday 8PM
When a zombie pandemic threatens to destroy humanity, a former United Nations investigator (Brad Pitt) is forced back into service to try to uncover the source of the infection.
SUNDAY
The Orville (Fox), Sunday 8PM – “Ja’loja”
See more in our “Highlights” section above.
National Treasure (A&E), Sunday 8PM
An adventurer (Nicolas Cage) must steal the Declaration of Independence and use its hidden map to find a legendary fortune.
Outlander (Starz), Sunday 8PM – “The Birds & The Bees”
As Brianna struggles to compartmentalize the trauma she suffered in the wake of the tragedy that befell her in Wilmington, she refocuses on finding her parents.
Counterpart (Starz), Sunday 9PM – “Point of Departure”
Howard Prime, Quayle and Clare must unite against a common enemy; Emily Prime turns her investigation toward her other; Yanek probes Howard’s past.
*TV listing information via TV Guide, and Zap2it.
This ‘friend’ is on a break – with a vengeance – Detroit Free Press
Dear Amy: My roommate and friend, “Rand,” recently decided to take a break from his girlfriend of three years. He has been seeing other people and has had casual sex with a few different women in the short time since his breakup.
He asked me if I or my girlfriend had any friends who we could set him up with, and my girlfriend jumped at the idea to set him up with her friend.
The four of us went out for drinks and the pair hit it off. They ended up sleeping together, and have since been exchanging texts and making plans to hang out in the future.
He does not want this to be anything more than a short fling; he sees himself getting back together with his longtime girlfriend, and is moving to Boston for a new job in two months.
However, he did make it clear he wants to see her often before he goes (though this is most likely primarily for sex).
Although she understood he was just on a break with his girlfriend, she believes there may be a deeper connection. She does not know that he will continue to see other girls.
My girlfriend and I feel responsible for this because we set them up; we see a heartbreak waiting to happen, and we feel guilty that we didn’t fully disclose the extent of his promiscuity before setting them up.
We are thinking of telling her, but are not sure what to say. We would like to preserve our friendship with her. What should we do?
– Worried Pal
Dear Worried: Let your girlfriend handle this. She may have strong feelings – guided by friendship, as well as the somewhat undefinable dictates of “girl code.”
At the very least, your girlfriend must convey to her friend that “Rand” played the field with impunity just before they met, and – if his pattern holds true – he will continue to be sexually active with various women now. Condoms, people!
Whatever love delusions she may harbor, however, are her business.
Read more:
Presumably this friend knows that Randy Rand is moving soon. If she wants to hear some hangover lies, she can ask Rand directly.
Surely Rand realizes that because you and he room together, you have an awareness of his behavior. But you are not responsible for his behavior (or its consequences). He is.
Dear Amy: For eight months now I have been taking an 87-year-old friend to ALL of her medical appointments.
We used to work together and have stayed friends for years.
She has a daughter and granddaughter in our town who “can’t” take her anywhere because they work. I am essentially her Uber.
Frankly, I am tired, depressed and want out of this responsibility. There are transportation alternatives, which she does not want to use.
I am 75, and my husband passed away barely a year ago. I can’t imagine I will ever get over his loss. I don’t want to end the friendship with my friend, and I feel guilty about deserting her.
On the other hand, if I were not available, would someone else step up and pick up the slack?
What should I do?
– Exhausted
Dear Exhausted: My late mother had a blunt (revealing) statement she used to make when she didn’t want to do something/lend something/pick up someone’s dry cleaning: “Pretend I’m dead.”
If you weren’t there to be so responsible for your friend, what would happen? She would have to find another way.
You could preserve your energy and the friendship by drawing a firm boundary around what you are willing/able to do. Don’t abandon her abruptly, but wean her toward alternatives.
You should pick the appointments you are willing to drive to, and tell your elder friend: “I’m only able to take you to your appointment on the 20th – no others this month.” That’s it. She will have to call her family members.
Dear Amy: I was the distant son described in the letter written by “Wayward Dad,” the older man who realized he had missed his son’s childhood because he was always working.
If I had received a letter like the one you suggested Wayward Dad write, I would have bawled my eyes out and hurried to his side.
Fortunately, my dad and I grew close in my middle years and I was there for him in his declining years and his passing. I wouldn’t trade any of that time for anything.
– Fortunate Son
Dear Son: There is simply no substitute for spending time together.
You can contact Amy Dickinson via email: askamyamydickinson.com. Readers may send postal mail to Ask Amy, P.O. Box 194, Freeville, NY 13068. You can also follow her on Twitter askingamy or “like” her on Facebook.
Read or Share this story: https://www.freep.com/story/life/advice/2018/12/24/dating-friendship-casual-sex/2304333002/
Archdeacon: Advice for Dayton’s Cunningham from WNBA girlfriend? ‘Work on your free throws&rs – MyDaytonDailyNews
Before he gets his Christmas present from his girlfriend, he figured he’d almost certainly get some advice from her.
Likely it would be a postgame text getting right to the point:
“Work on your free throws.”
Then again Josh Cunningham’s romantic interest isn’t just someone watching basketball from the stands.
She’s roundball royalty.
A’ja Wilson, the 6-foot-4 power forward for the Las Vegas Aces, was the WNBA’s Rookie of the Year this season.
She was the No. 1 player taken in the WNBA draft last April after a career at South Carolina where she was the National Player of Year as a senior, led the Gamecocks to their first ever NCAA crown as a junior and was a three-time first team All American who scored 2,389 points in her college career.
Before that she was national high school player of the year.
Until a recent injury, she was playing this offseason for the Shaanxi Red Wolves in China. Now back home she’s become the first women’s pro player ever to join her NBA counterparts and sign a lucrative endorsement deal with Mountain Dew.
And Saturday – just before the Dayton Flyers were to tip off against Presbyterian at UD Arena – she finished up a Nike photo shoot in San Francisco and was headed to the airport and a flight back home to Columbia, South Carolina.
Yet, even with all that, Cunningham, UD’s 6-foot-7 redshirt senior captain, knew what was coming.
“I figure I’ll hear something from her about that,” he said as he stood outside the locker room immediately after the Flyers’ 81-69 victory.
For him, it had been an untypical game. The team’s leading scorer (16.2 points per game) and second-leading rebounder (6.1 per game), he had finished with just five points and three boards.
Unfortunately what had been typical — at least to the early part of the season when he was under 50 percent – had been a pair of second-half misfires from the free throw line.
After the first one, which he seemed to know was no good from the time it left his hand – he took a couple of quick steps toward the basket as if to pull it back before it clanked off the rim. He then missed his second attempt.
Out in San Francisco, as she was making her way to her gate, Wilson talked about her relationship with Cunningham and the free throw advice she’d given him in the past.
“He’s probably tired of hearing it from me,” she laughed. “But that’s the hard part of having a girlfriend who’s a basketball player too.”
At South Carolina she played for Dawn Staley. And when the UD team visited the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Massachusetts on its trip to Connecticut to play Tulsa last Sunday, Cunningham found a photo of Staley there and posted it to social media.
He said Staley saw it and promptly messaged back: “They have a gym in there. Go practice your free throws.”
He laughed at the needling:
“Yeah and I did go to the gym there and shoot some free throws.”
Wednesday night he went 8 for 8 from the stripe against Western Michigan.
Wilson knows her former coach and teammates are following Cunningham’s season this year.
“When you’re a close team, they know who you’re dating and everything like that,” she said. “And people think they know Josh because they know me. So yeah, I know they’ve been on him and he’s been getting better.”
The UD players all know Wilson, who has visited several times, Cunningham said, and seen three Flyers games in person over the last two season, including the Purdue-Fort Wayne game at UD Arena in early November.
“Yeah they’re always joking that she’d beat me one on one,” he said.
They’ve never played against each other he said. Because of their own basketball careers, they see so little of each other in person that they’re not going to spend a chunk of that time on the basketball court together.
“We’re very relaxed people and we don’t do much,” Cunningham said. “We’ll go eat. We’ll watch movies at home and if we both agree, we might go bowling or see a movie out.”
Junior guard Trey Landers is one of Cunningham’s best friends. “They kind of act the same really,” he said. “They’re both real good people. It’s not a surprise they’re together.”
Cunningham said when he was being recruited to South Carolina out of his high school in Chicago, he got a message from Wilson, who was being wooed by the Gamecocks’ women’s team.
He said she wanted him to consider South Carolina. “When you’re going to be freshmen coming in, you just want to make the class as strong as it can be,” he shrugged.
She said she reached out to him, not only to get him to consider the school, but “just to find out a little bit about who he was.”
Now makes her laugh: “Josh is a man of few words though. So as we messaged back and forth and there were some awkward moments.”
While she went to South Carolina, he first went to Bradley, then transferred to Dayton, sat out a year to meet NCAA transfer requirement and then missed most of a second season with a severe ankle injury.
The pair continued to message each other now and then and last year Cunningham said: “We finally started to realized we have a lot in common.”
Wilson agreed: “We have soooo much in common – even our birthdays. Mine is August 8th and his is the 11th.”
They began to date last season and the bond has remained strong, even though they are both entrenched in their own careers right now.
“Look I can’t tell you how many people I meet in a day, how many people I run into and talk to,” she said. “But there’s just something about Josh. It’s his personality and who he is as a man that I just really enjoy. I enjoy having him as a boyfriend.”
Cunningham – raised by his mother, LaTanya – has shown he knows how to treat people since the day he stepped on the UD campus. That’s why he’s been voted a three-time captain of the Flyers.
And in Wilson he sees something special, as well: “She’s just a great person. She very understanding – just a great girl.”
He’s seen her play in WNBA games in Chicago and Indianapolis and been to three games in Las Vegas, he said.
“We really, really FaceTime a lot,” she said. “We’re on the phone all the time and we text all the time, too. The only difference is that I’m not ‘seeing’ him in person. But we‘re finding a way to make it work.
“I’m definitely living my fifth year of college through Josh now. He’s in a great situation. The people really support basketball there. I’m just so proud of him and Dayton, as well.”
She said she’s seen about every UD game via the Internet.
And with that she excused herself: “I’m trying to get to the gate so I can pull up his game on my phone. And I just got off the phone with my mom back home. She’s set it up to tape it. I won’t miss a thing.”
And that’s why, as he stood outside the locker room afterward, he was sure he would get that postgame message:
“Work on your free throws.”
Travelers use dating apps to find recommendations in new places – Bend Bulletin
Us
When Daniela Castillo was planning a recent vacation to Mexico City, she opened her Tinder app.
She wasn’t looking for a romantic date at Chapultepec Castle, or even a quick hookup while in town.
She wanted travel advice.
Like other solo travelers, Castillo, 27, who writes a travel blog, has increasingly found dating apps like Tinder and Bumble a convenient way to meet locals, see the sights and get recommendations on where to eat and where to go when visiting an unfamiliar destination.
There are the obvious risks.
“You need to make very clear from the beginning what you are looking for,” she said. “Most people do want the romantic aspect, so it is hard and takes a bit of time to find the profile of someone who is OK being friends.”
Dating apps can be an interesting way to learn about local culture, said Craig Johnson, who works for a real estate company in Seattle.
“You’re looking at the city through the lens of its dating pool and how people describe themselves,” he said.
He uses Tinder and Bumble when he travels abroad. Johnson said he was interested in connecting with people from other countries.
Link Salas, the creative director for a small technology company in New York, said he used Grindr, a social networking app for gay, bisexual and transgender men, to learn about the places he’s traveling to and to meet men there.
“I change my profile to say I am in town and looking for someone to show me around,” he said. “Some guys suggest a gay neighborhood to check out or a club,” he said.
Some offer to meet in person.
“The way you phrase your paragraph affects the responses you get,” he added.
The gay dating app Scruff recently started a service, Scruff Venture, in which travelers can search more than 500 destinations, and then contact local “venture ambassadors” for advice on where to go and what to do.
While many solo travelers may indeed be single, and thus potentially open to romantic encounters, others are on their own because their spouses or partners are back at home, unable to make this trip. That’s one factor that in 2016 led the dating site Bumble to expand its offerings to friendship (Bumble BFF) and, in 2017, to work-related connections (Bumble Bizz).
Jess Carbino, a sociologist working for Bumble, said the company’s research showed that more of its users were using the app to meet local residents when traveling solo.
“People in their 20s and 30s are in different places in their lives, so it can be hard to find someone to travel with,” she said.
Personal safety is always a concern for solo vacationers.
“When you don’t know the area and don’t have friends there, it’s even more important to be cautious,” Castillo said.
She said she always shares with a close friend the name and phone number of the person she is going to meet, where they are going and when she expects to be back at her hotel.
Other dating app users say they stay safe when meeting strangers abroad by meeting during daylight hours, in busy parts of town, or in places that do not serve alcohol.
They state clearly their intent is platonic.
If someone tries to push past these parameters online or in person, they advise cutting off the interaction.
Sharing your location with a friend is another precaution.
Grindr, Bumble and Tinder supply advice on staying safe when meeting strangers.
To dissuade people from creating false identities that could be used for nefarious purposes, Bumble moderators ask people setting up new accounts to follow a set of prompts on camera, to ensure they are submitting an authentic photo for their profile and not copying an image from the internet.
Emily Wright, a company spokeswoman, said reports of inappropriate actions are dealt with “swiftly and seriously,” and users who break the code of conduct can be banned from the app.
While some travelers may not be looking for romance, sometimes, it just happens.
In 2016, Castillo met a man through Tinder while she was traveling through Europe and ended up in an 18-month relationship with him.
“I guess it’s not the most romantic app in the world,” she said, “but it does bring you some interesting possibilities and the opportunity to meet people you would have never met otherwise.”
