Tag Archives: relationships

Why Online Dating Is a Nonstarter

  So I’m not a big hit with men. Just putting that out there. I had my first date, American-style, at the age of 32. And yes, I’ve been married, but it was for political and legal reasons. No rings. No reception. Most importantly, no cake. Most of my oldest friends still don’t know it everContinue reading “Why Online Dating Is a Nonstarter”

You Need to Stop Reading Those Dating Advice Sites

Seriously, people. Especially all you ladies out there. This one’s for you. From Cosmo to Marie Claire, columnists are happy to inform us straight women what men really want. And how to sculpt our behavior and personality to be more that. And less ourselves. As if that isn’t bad enough. But it gets worse. What most men want,Continue reading “You Need to Stop Reading Those Dating Advice Sites”

Just Walk Away

And keep on walking. In the end, it’s easy to say sociopaths don’t really matter. The rest of us go on with our lives. We fall in love and marry and have children. We see our friends through the deaths of loved ones. We plant gardens. Life goes on. It’s comfortable to say that. ButContinue reading “Just Walk Away”

Encounters with the Conscienceless: Learning from Sociopaths

Sure, sociopaths are unpleasant, even evil, people. They don’t abide by a moral code because they lack empathy. They only understand the emotional damage they inflict in an anthropological sort of way–through observation–because they lack emotions themselves. And their manipulations are primarily motivated by a desire for power and superiority. Psychologists recommend steering clear ofContinue reading “Encounters with the Conscienceless: Learning from Sociopaths”

On Love, Autonomy, and the Limitations of Feminism

Recently, I’ve been reading Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch (1970). And she strikes a nerve with me when she writes, “Our society encourages the substitution of addiction for spontaneous pleasure and specifically encourages women to foster dependencies which will limit their mates’ tendencies to roving and other forms of instability” (176). Men in turn, she argues, areContinue reading “On Love, Autonomy, and the Limitations of Feminism”