Relationships Talk

DEAR ABBY: I have guardianship of my 12-year-old grandson. He has recently fallen head over heels for a girl in his class and wants to date her.

I am out of touch with the younger generation, and I’m not sure how to answer his questions, like, “Does the boy or girl initiate the kiss?” I would appreciate knowing about any pamphlets or brochures you have for sale on this subject. Thank you. — MARGARET O. IN MASSACHUSETTS

DEAR MARGARET: Kids are maturing at younger ages than when we were growing up. Part of the reason may be that television, movies and the internet have exposed them to subjects we were not when we were their age.

That said, not all of the information they receive from the media and their friends is accurate. I’m glad you asked because I have a booklet that may be helpful.

It’s titled “What Every Teen Should Know,” and it’s filled with information on subjects such as, “How to know when you’re ready to date,” “Are you ready for sex?” “How old must a boy be before he can father a child?” and “Can a girl get pregnant the first time she has sex?”

A section on sexually transmitted diseases is also included. Because STDs need to be treated right away and ignoring or not recognizing the symptoms can have lifelong consequences, there is a list of the various STDs and what to do if you have one.

You can order a booklet by sending your name and address, plus check or money order for $7 (U.S. funds), to Dear Abby Teen Booklet, P.O. Box 447, Mount Morris, IL, 61054-0447. Shipping and handling are included in the price.

The teen booklet has been distributed in doctors’ offices and used to promote discussions by educators and religious leaders, as well as parents who find it hard to discuss these topics with their children. Review it BEFORE giving it to your grandson, so you can prepare beforehand to answer his questions or guide the conversation. The more information you can give him, the better prepared he will be to make intelligent decisions in the important years that lie ahead.

DEAR ABBY: I am in my 80s. From time to time, when I have tried to contact a dear old friend or distant relative, I find they have recently passed away.

Don’t you think it would be a good idea for older people to make a short list of people we want contacted in case of serious illness or death? So many times our survivors have no idea who some of our friends are or how to contact them. — GARY G. IN GEORGIA

DEAR GARY: I think your idea is a sensible one. The list should include not only names, but also contact information. Thank you for sharing this with me and my readers because — let’s face it — nobody lives forever.

Dear Abby is written by Abigail Van Buren, also known as Jeanne Phillips, and was founded by her mother, Pauline Phillips. Contact Dear Abby at http://www.DearAbby.com or P.O. Box 69440, Los Angeles, CA 90069.

‘Guys are really useless until they’re 33!’ Jennifer Lopez reveals her best dating and relationship advice as she helps a stranger navigate Tinder for the very first time

• Jennifer Lopez, 48, met with a woman named Brooke Ansley about dating
• She offered up dating advice as Brooke navigated being on Tinder
• In the end, J.Lo found a man named Levi who she was impressed by because he bragged about his two-step skills on the dance floor 
• J.Lo has been dating former baseball player Alex Rodriguez since February 2017 

By

Danielle Zoellner For Dailymail.com

Published:
16:34 EDT, 17 July 2018

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Updated:
16:51 EDT, 17 July 2018

Jennifer Lopez has been around the block a few times when it comes to dating, so it only makes sense the singer would offer up the relationship advice she has learned over the years.

In a video with Tinder’s Swipe Sessions, the 48-year-old sat down with a woman named Brooke Ansley to offer pointers on what to look for in a significant other.

The chart-topping singer did not hold back on the valuable advice after a man named Maurice, who is 29, came up on Brooke’s profile. ‘Guys, until they’re 33, are really useless,’ J.Lo said.

Scroll down for video 

Helpful: Jennifer Lopez, 48, sat down with a woman named Brooke Ansley to help her while she navigated the online dating world 

Committed: The singer was unafraid to offer her opinion about what type of men Brooke should be swiping right on 

More descriptions: Brooke revealed her Tinder bio, which said she is interested in ‘Yoga and Wine’ 

Before swiping through Tinder profiles, J.Lo reviewed Brooke’s profile to make sure it was up to par before she tried to match with any men.

Brooke revealed she only recently started dating online and was looking for a ‘manly man’ to do chores like ‘chop wood’. 

But J.Lo was quick to point out that it wasn’t often when Brooke would need a guy to ‘chop wood’ for her. 

‘What do you really need?’ J.Lo asked before looking at Brooke’s profile. 

In Brooke’s bio, all she had to describe herself was ‘Yoga and Wine’, which J.Lo appeared unimpressed by because it didn’t offer the men any information about who they were potentially swiping right on. 

‘This is more my kind of guy,’ J.Lo said about one potential match. ‘He has a baseball hat on. He’s outdoorsy. He looks like he chops wood.’  

Not worth it: J.Lo candidly said that men before the age of 33 were ‘useless’ 

Swipe left: One man’s bio said he was only interested in people who kept ketchup out of the fridge. J.Lo was unimpressed

Relationship goals: J.Lo, who has been dating baseball player Alex Rodriguez since February 2017, had some valuable advice for finding someone 

Love: J.Lo, who is pictured with her boyfriend, encouraged Brooke to go for a guy who bragged about his two-step skills 

J.Lo was unimpressed by another potential match who said in his bio that it would only work with someone if they didn’t put ketchup in the fridge. 

While his bio was one of the more original descriptions out there, it also significantly narrowed down who would be interested in swiping right. 

In the end, a man named Levi who bragged about his two-step skills out on the dance floor won over J.Lo. 

She encouraged Brooke to send him some of her lyrics, to which he responded with a GIF of the popular singer dancing.

J.Lo has experienced the woes of dating herself but is now happily dating former baseball player Alex Rodriguez, 42.  

The pair first got together in February 2017 and have been inseparable since.  

In a previous post, I discussed common dating advice that is misguided or just plain wrong. In this post, I’ll tackle bad relationship advice. There is no shortage of books, magazine articles, blogs, and talk shows telling people how to have better relationships. But there are certain common bits of advice that research suggests are not true. So here are 6 pieces of bad relationship advice:

1. You should have sex with your partner every day.

There is plenty of evidence documenting the benefits of frequent sex, including greater relationship satisfaction, lower stress, and greater happiness. This has led some people to claim that more sex is better, so couples should aim to have sex as much as possible, even every day.

However, other research suggests that more sex isn’t necessarily better. In a study of thousands of couples, Amy Muise and colleagues found that while people who had sex more frequently were happier, there was a limit. Having sex more than once a week didn’t provide any additional happiness boost. In an experiment where couples were asked to double their sexual frequency, this change had no impact on happiness — likely because these couples were already having sex about once a week to start with. What seems to matter more than sexual frequency is sexual satisfaction. People who are happy with their sex lives tend to be happier and more satisfied in their relationships. Sexual satisfaction doesn’t necessarily mean very frequent sex.

While there is no harm in couples having more sex, deliberately trying to have sex every day, as is sometimes recommended, could backfire. Does it really make sense to have sex more than you want to, as a way to improve your relationship? You might exercise more than you want to in order to improve your fitness, but that will work because it has a direct impact on your body. But your mindset going into a sexual encounter affects how satisfying it is. So if you’re having sex when you’re not in the mood, the experience will not be as pleasant. For example, couples trying to conceive tend to report lower sexual satisfaction because they have to schedule sex and because they start to view sex as a means to an end, rather than a spontaneous expression of their feelings.

2. Men and women are so different they might as well be from different planets.

Source: TheDigitalArtist, courtesy pixabay CC0 Creative Commons License

Many popular dating advice books rely on broad generalizations about gender, like “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus.” On average, there are many areas, where men and women differ. Some of these differences are quite large, like physical differences in upper-body strength and height. Other differences are smaller, like differences in personality. With all of these differences, especially the smaller ones, there is substantial overlap between men and women. Even with large differences, like height, it’s easy to see that some women are taller than some men. With personality and behavioral differences there is even more overlap. So when it comes to understanding one person—your romantic partner—judging that person’s actions based on their gender is a lot less helpful than trying to understand them as a person. In fact, the belief that men and women are fundamentally different has been identified by researchers as a maladaptive relationship belief that has a negative impact on relationships.

3. You should be 100% focused on your partner.

Source: PublicDomainPictures, courtesy pixabay CC0 Creative Commons License

Of course, you should be focused on your partner and work on your relationship. But it is possible to focus too much on your partner.

It’s good for couples to spend time with other couples. In studies where couples discussed personal topics with another couple, they experienced greater closeness and passion for each other, compared to couples who just engaged in the same type of conversation with each other. Interacting with others and sharing your relationship can strengthen your bond and remind you why you love your partner.

It’s also good for you to do things on your own and to cultivate other relationships with friends and family members. Expecting one person to fulfill all of your social and emotional needs can set you up for disappointment. As I discuss in more detail in an earlier post, life stress, poor interpersonal skills or problematic personality traits can all make it harder for people to have that perfect relationship. Sky-high relationship expectations can motivate you to work on having the best relationship possible, but if you lack the ability to make that happen, it will leave you disappointed. So it’s not a bad idea to look to other areas of your life and other relationships for fulfillment, rather than relying only on your partner.

4. All date nights are created equal.

Source: Bruce Mars, courtesy Pexels CC0 Creative Commons License

Plenty of research backs up the notion that couples should have “date nights,” where they spend quality one-on-one time together. But this advice often fails to make a distinction between different types of date nights. So you might assume that anything you do with your partner will be equally beneficial for your relationship, whether that’s vegging out on the couch together, going to your favorite restaurant, or going hiking. While all of these dates are likely to benefit the relationship, some might have a larger effect than others. In particular, engaging in new and exciting activities tends to bring couples closer together.

According to self-expansion theory, passion in relationships comes, in part, from their ability to allow us to “expand” ourselves—to take on new qualities, learn new things about ourselves, and pick up new interests. New relationships help us do that. But more established relationships can do that too, if we engage in novel activities with our partner. The new and exciting activity doesn’t need to be grand. It can simply be trying out a new restaurant, taking a cooking class together, or checking out a neighborhood you haven’t been to before. So make the most of your date night by trying something new.

5. Fighting is bad for your relationship.

Source: Tina Franklin, courtesy flckr CC0 Creative Commons License

Many people believe that fighting is necessarily bad for your relationship. But this belief, like the belief that men and women are too different to truly understand one another, is a maladaptive relationship belief associated with lower quality relationships. In fact, fighting can be constructive, when done properly. If there are problems in your relationship and you don’t discuss them, those problems will go unresolved. A good relationship is not one that is free of conflict, but rather one where conflicts are skillfully managed.

This does not mean that you should embrace every opportunity for conflict. Sometimes you do need to let the little things go. A useful strategy to use in close relationships is something that researchers call accommodation. Accommodation means tolerating the occasional bad behavior from your partner. So if your partner makes a snarky remark in anger, forgets to do a chore, or criticizes you, let it go, rather than responding in kind. This enables couples to avoid having useless fights. As I discussed earlier, fights can be useful and productive if they involve tackling a real problem. You shouldn’t just let things go when it involves an important issue in the relationship that is bothering you. But you also shouldn’t turn every unpleasant behavior by your partner into a fight.

With seven minutes to go before doors open on his Melbourne live session with fans on July 16, Matthew Hussey – billed as the world’s No.1 dating expert – is all business.

Casual in jeans, a white shirt and brown suede jacket outside Myer’s Mural Hall, Hussey expertly greets strangers and slides into a photo shoot for Channel Seven’s new show The Single Wives, on which he is dating coach.

He looks relaxed before speaking for nearly three hours to 500 women, but Hussey is a perfectionist businessman who once told a UK newspaper that if he did one-to-one client sessions, he would charge $10,000 an hour.

“I spend years crafting messages in a way that is going to land,” he tells The New Daily.

“The key is to avoid clichés at all costs.”

According to his PR machine, Hussey has helped more than 100,000 people find love via his dating programs and seminars and reached more than 40 million online.

With no formal training or qualifications, the 31-year-old Englishman has built a romance empire with Tyra Banks and Eva Longoria among his more than 2.6 million Facebook acolytes.

Every Sunday, he delivers a new five-minute how-to video to his one million YouTube subscribers, with topics like ‘Three Man Melting Phrases That Make A Guy Fall For You’ and ‘The Number One Flirting Mistake Women Make’.

He’s on song at his $25-a-head Melbourne show, giving tough love to his fans with the signature style he calls “candour with charm”.

He tells them “don’t tolerate anyone who doesn’t adore you” and “invest in someone based on how much they invest in you, not how much you like them”.

The next morning, lounging in a booth at a South Wharf hotel, Hussey explains how he got to be the world’s foremost dating expert – but baulks at the title.

“It seems to me an incredibly arrogant and narcissistic assertion,” he tells The New Daily.

Inspired by reading Dale Carnegie’s 1937 book How To Win Friends and Influence People at age 11, Hussey started his career as a life coach when he was a teenager.

He initially worked with men before launching GetTheGuy in 2008, focusing exclusively on women.

Hussey gives dating advice to four divorced women in new show, The Single Wives. Photo: Channel Seven

“I said to them, ‘I don’t know women but I know men. Let’s talk about a more proactive approach to your love life’, and it resonated.

“It’s got to the point where I now think I can claim to know women a little better than I used to.”

Hussey agrees he is self-taught “to the extent that I did my homework and never studied psychology, but I have borrowed wisdom from people far more intelligent than myself”.

He admits there’s nothing new in relationships advice: “You just have to strive to say it better.”

Hussey lives between Los Angeles and New York, and since January has been in a relationship with Cuban-American singer Camila Cabello, 21.

“The best first date I ever had was with the person I’m with now,” he says of Cabello, who has 22.3 million Instagram followers and on July 17 scored five 2018 VMA nominations.

“I’m very happy. It’s a special feeling.”

Hussey used to be “somewhat agnostic” about the idea of marriage – “the rebel in me thought, ‘I don’t need someone to officiate a ceremony to tell me I have a pact with someone” but is less so now.

“I find the older I get, the more romantic I get about marriage and kids.”

What sort of boyfriend is he? “God, that’s a tough question. I try my best to live up to the values that I hold dear, whether it’s to be less selfish or curb my ego,” he says.

“I try to be there for the other person. To be the right amount of jealous. I really have tried to be the best version of myself and I fail that several times a week.”

So what is the secret to a great relationship?

Hussey suggests being happy in life makes you a better partner, and says to work out what your partner needs, not what you think they need.

“Don’t be the guy who is buying things for his wife when she needs time or new adventures together or to be desired.

“The best relationships I see are when people are constantly staying curious about each other.

“There’s that wonderful line, ‘Marriage is a 50-year conversation’, and part of that is choosing the right person in the first place. Choose someone you want to have a conversation with for 50 years.”

Never stop flirting with life or your partner, he recommends. “Desire is just as important as love and you’ve got to keep doing things that stoke desire.

“You growing as a person creates desire because your partner then still has that sense of having to keep up with you.”

The Single Wives premieres on Seven on July 18 at 7.30pm.