According to this study, women’s judgement is impaired when they are most fertile. This clouding of judgement literally makes them incapable of seeing the potentially disastrous results of a relationship with a ‘bad boy,’ leaving only the positive aspects – being adventurous, exciting, etc.

I’ve been thinking about this for a while now, but people don’t tend to make the most rational decisions about relationships. Not that it should be 100% cold logic, but don’t we all know of some people who got into or out of a relationship based on their emotions in the moment, which later proved to be wildly inaccurate? Perhaps people should learn to make decisions beforehand, when we are not having irrational moments, and stick to them in the heat of high emotion. The catharsis of doing what we really want may not be worth the aftermath.

If the research is accurate, it will prove especially important for women to learn this skill.

There is an interesting comment I saw on a blog recently. I know that people bred on Hollywood romance utterly despise the idea that love and marriage is work; instead they want to see it as their right to find someone awesome and into them for zero effort. I’m not convinced that this is a realistic expectation. At any rate, here’s one from the other side of the aisle:

Hope wrote:

The fact is, commitment-minded men are A LOT more sensitive to cues of promiscuity than other women are. They can’t afford to make a mistake, especially in today’s climate (written about extensively in the manosphere). They certainly don’t want a woman who is going to have any association with the words “loose” or “slut.” The expression “fun-loving” sounds fine to us girls, but to guys it raises huge red flags. It’s not really anything new under the sun either. Men have always valued chaste and pure women with morals and self-discipline.

I was no saint myself in my past, and I’m not a virgin. How I proved my long-term worth to my husband is by being good just about every step of the way. From the beginning I told him I don”t party, go out to clubs or bars, drink, smoke, or use drugs. We were in the same social circle, and I never flirted with or even really talked to any of the other guys in that circle. I changed my style of dress as soon as he said skirt length above the knee is not good. I stopped frequent contact with former male friends, and began associating with only other women in stable LTRs at work. Men see me and know just from my dress and body language that I’m taken. It was not worth the risk of being seen as a less than faithful and loyal girl to do these things, and it was worth the effort to be with an amazing man.

. . . Incidentally, dominant men can afford to be the most choosy about the virtues and faithfulness of their women. My husband was very choosy, and he is definitely a fairly dominant man. He never told me what I should or should not do, never forced me to do anything against my will, and always told me it was my choice. But I knew that if I had been a more flirty girl who showed less loyalty and wanted to “date around a bit” instead of showing him my devotion and love, he would have just let me go. He wouldn’t have tried to change me or control me, but he wouldn’t have gone through with asking me to move in with him and later marry him.

So what do you ladies think – is she trying too hard? Did she give too much away? Did she change herself for him? Would you take those sorts of actions if you KNEW it would lead to a successful marriage?

Would it gall you to have to prove yourself to a man, even though a man has to prove himself to you?

The juxtaposition of knives, maids, and power over time.

Shavanna has a long post about what she terms “butthurt.” I submit that the fundamental issue she wrestles with is, “Does everyone have to make such a big deal out of everything?”

I think especially in American culture, we are bred to acquire pity when we are a ‘victim’ of anything.

Well yes, if soliciting pity is the easiest way to demand agency and change, and everyone else has a thing they get pity for, and you don’t, you are the new second class citizen. You can’t play the game everyone else is playing. Doubly so if the majority is hated and reviled. So everyone scrambles to find a pity-shaped shield to not be hated.

Even in honest discourse, the main problem is that people can’t agree on what does or doesn’t deserve righteous fury. The only way to settle it is to let everyone who is a victim decide for themselves, but then (as she pointed out) some victims are way more affected than others, and make the other victims/survivors feel guilty for not being 100% affected the way they were.

People are looking for justice in an unjust situation.

“Trying to pull 5 bucks from me is like trying to pull 5 molars.”

That’s just genius.

Everyone knows of the idiom, “It’s like pulling teeth,” but Eminem takes it to a whole new level when rapping about his trust issues and fear of women, which combine to make him an utter cheapskate.

I find that negativity is everywhere. Despite all I’ve done to cull it from my mind and eliminate it from my friends, it seeps in through the media, through our turns of phrasing, through the thousand small anxieties and fears for the future that each of us has.

“Life isn’t a sprint,” a mentor told me. “It’s a marathon.” How true. 100 days of small but constant effort are sure to beat two days of intense productivity – unless those two days were the only two that really mattered. But life isn’t usually like that. New doors, new horizons open constantly, even as old ones close.

Just keep your chin up, and your head above water.

So apparently the Insecurities made a music video for ‘Me and Mona Lisa.’

Some peoples’ needs aren’t being met. This is a social problem that has existed as long as people have existed. It is a reality that we must face if we are to have any aspirations of being compassionate beings.

However, I’m not okay with the concept that we should identify some groups as being OK to care about and other groups as “no, you had your turn, so we won’t allow ourselves to respond to your suffering anymore.” The idea that you must qualify for or earn compassion is backwards. That’s not compassion at all. That’s politics.

Maybe, just maybe, the solution to problems caused by labeling is not more labeling. Just a thought.