GUY-LADY RELATIONSHIP TALK

How do you get over her sexual past? This should be a simple question to answer: Just grow up and get over it – that’s the answer. But somehow, some people aren’t willing to just cowboy up and accept the world the way it is. So let’s talk about it some more. Your girlfriend has a sexual past. You weren’t the very first person she was ever interested in, nor were you the very first person she ever loved, or kissed, or had sex with. In fact there may have been several other people before you, or dozens, or an unknown number. Those are the facts. Millard Fillmore was President of the United States from 1850 to 1853. Why am I telling you that? Because if you understand that Millard Fillmore was President of the United States from 1850 to 1853 and that it’s impossible, given the laws of physics, for you or anybody else to travel back in time and change that historical fact, you will also perhaps begin to understand that you can’t travel back in time and change the historic...

Love is not an easy thing to define – it’s one of those you-know-it-when-you-see-it kinds of things. When you’re in love, you feel all sorts of things, and they are often overwhelming and confusing. You may feel giddy and dizzy with delight and desire, but then moments later you may find yourself plunged into the deepest depths of despair. Much of our understanding of love comes from the media, by which I mean Hollywood, and from much older sources of propaganda like fairy tales, stories like “Romeo and Juliet,” and love songs and so on. From what we see and hear in these fantasy stories, we form some kind of idea about what love is, about being “swept away,” “losing control,” about being struck by a “thunderbolt.” Love, it seems, is like a drug that seizes us and causes us to lose all control. Nothing else seems to matter, or at least nothing else seems to matter as much. Love, we are told, trumps all other things in our lives – our careers, our families, our finances...

“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” So the old saying goes. But it is a lie. Words can hurt . They can really hurt, like knives cutting into you. And words from a trusted loved one can hurt worst of all. A stranger yelling that you’re an idiot on the freeway is easy to ignore and forget about. But when your boyfriend or girlfriend or your spouse says you are stupid, that is a devastating blow that may hurt for the rest of your life. Think Before You Speak The best advice is to stop and think before you speak. Use common sense and observe the golden rule – treat others the way you would like to be treated. If you get into a fight with your partner, if you lose your temper and can’t control what comes out of your mouth, then walk away. Go to another room and take a break, even if it’s only for a minute or two. Give yourself a chance to calm down. Sometimes you can’t control what you say in anger. And you can always apologize and make amen...

It is a normal relationship concern to be worried about being taken for granted. And, in some ways, over the long term – if you stay together for years or longer, get married, have kids – you can’t avoid being taken for granted on a certain level. After all, your spouse will quite reasonably expect you to be there tomorrow morning when they wake up, and they’ll expect you to pick up the kids at school, fix dinner, or do whatever chores you have in the relationship. But on a more short-term, immediate level, you may worry about the other person taking you for granted. How can you avoid this? We take people for granted when we think we’ve got them all figured out. When you’ve known someone for a while, been dating for a certain period of time, when you’ve become more intimate with each other, you can both get a bit lazy and take the other person for granted. To protect yourself against being taken for granted, the first thing is to stop taking yourself for granted. By tha...

As the saying goes, too much of something, even a good thing, is not a good thing. That certainly applies to spending time together in a relationship. It’s quite natural to want to spend a lot of time with your beloved, but that’s not always a great idea because you can smother them, or feel trapped and resentful yourself, and burn out your passion before your relationship really gets going. So be careful. Maybe you’re worried that you might be spending too much time together. How can you tell? Here are a few things that you should pay attention to if you are concerned you are overdoing it. How New Is Your Relationship? How long you’ve been together is important to consider. It’s best to take it slow at the start. New relationships often burn out quickly if the partners overwhelm each other with exciting, but exhausting, levels of attention. This is especially true if it is their first ever major relationship, or if they haven’t been in a relationship for some time. ...

Relationships are about intimacy. Any relationship is about increasing intimacy. Even your relationship with your auto mechanic, the person who bags your groceries, or a casual friend, is one of greater intimacy than with a total stranger. These people know your face, and probably your name, and you engage in everyday conversation with them about the weather, sports teams, politics, whatever. They know a little more about you than a stranger does, because you’ve let them into your life a little bit. Continue this process of letting someone in and you eventually cross a line into new territory – this person becomes a boyfriend or girlfriend. You tell them things that you wouldn’t share with many other people. There’s also more physical intimacy, as you undress in front of them, kiss them, have sex with them. They get to see you naked, both physically and emotionally. About That Intimacy Train Intimacy continues to increase as your relationship deepens, heading towards...

One of the most frequent causes of divorce and breaking up is money. How can you settle your relationship on a firm financial foundation to keep from fighting over money and possibly splitting up? There are several factors about money that you must consider. First, you have to go out and earn it, which takes hard work and often keeps you away from each other, and away from your family. This can lead to resentment and guilt, depending on whether you feel your partner isn’t working hard enough, or whether you suspect you may be working too hard and not spending enough time at home. Another aggravating factor is the weird obsession with money that we grow up with in our society. Both money and sex are surrounded by cultural taboos and fetishes that frequently cause people to grow up feeling weird about them. We brag about both money and sex, and we are bombarded constantly with messages in movies and music about making lots of money, showing it off, and having lots of se...

We modern humans put an awful lot of pressure on love, expecting it to solve all of our problems and even to make our lives perfect. Love, romance and coupling are seen as having the magic power to fix any of our other troubles, and to give us that elusive holy grail of the fairy tales – living “happily ever after.” To be fair, it isn’t necessarily our fault. Nobody tells us the truth about love and marriage while we are growing up. Instead, we are constantly brainwashed by Hollywood and the popular music industry to believe that finding the perfect person is the most important goal in life. Sometimes the only goal. Even in early childhood we hear hundreds of fairy tales where the prince kisses the princess, or vice versa (if he happens to be a frog), and the couple live happily ever after. Everywhere we go, we hear song after song after song about love, about its dizzy delights and its anodyne ability to cancel out any of the other difficulties or problems we have in...

It’s an old story – relationships tend to be exciting, dynamic, creative, romantic and full of life at first. Then, as the partners settle in, life gets in the way. Jobs, finances, housing, children and a myriad other important issues come up and interfere with a relationship. At some point, the partners may realize, “Whoa? What happened to us?” They find themselves scratching their heads. “How did we get into this rut? How did we let our relationship get stale?” If this sort of thing has happened to you, don’t despair. Most couples go through this at some point. Realizing your relationship is a bit flat and needs new life is a good step . Not realizing it would be worse, because you’d likely just keep cruising along obliviously until some sort of emotional explosion happened. Here are five fun ways to breathe some much needed life, laughter and love back into your relationship. You don’t need to spend a lot of money or even a huge amount of time. But you do need to pay a...

There’s an old saying that goes, “If you meet one jerk in a day, that’s just bad luck. If you meet two in a day, that’s a coincidence. But if you meet three of them in a day, you’re the jerk.” This adage contains an important lesson. If you’re having problems in your relationship for a short time, that may just be bad luck. But if the problems persist for too long, perhaps it’s time to take a hard look in the mirror. Maybe you are the problem. Of course, even if you are willing and humble enough to admit that maybe you are the problem, or at least a significant part of the problem, how can you tell? What are some signs that you are causing the breakdown in your romance? Here are five telltale signs that will help you figure out whether you’re the one rocking the boat: 1. Say What? What do you do when your partner talks to you, particularly about some troubling or significant subject? Do you tune out, or check your phone (either overtly or covertly), try to change th...

Dear LoveLearnings, I fell in love with someone and been with her for more than a year now. At first everything is cool but lately we are fighting a lot. I think this has something to do with culture because as she’s very traditional and very stubborn. On top of that, her parents do not approve of our relationship. Help please? One of our important myths is “Love conquers all.” It’s a great idea, and it’s sometimes true – everyone knows some uplifting story about people from two completely different worlds meeting, falling in love, and building a rich, enduring relationship despite the odds. Yes, this does sometimes happen, as love is indeed a very powerful force in our lives. Couples are formed by people from enemy nations, even nations at war, and they manage somehow to love each other despite adversity and difficulty. I myself once attended a friend’s wedding where a rabbi and priest presided together, and a chuppah was put up inside a Catholic church. Sometimes p...

Some men don’t understand how to handle a girlfriend who is moody or unpredictable, and this can lead to lots of fights or even breakups. Of course, there are plenty of moody men out there, too, and they aren’t always easy to get along with. But dealing with a particularly moody girlfriend can be quite frustrating. What’s the best way to handle such a situation? First of all, it’s very important to accept that you don’t have any control over your girlfriend’s emotions, or over anybody’s emotions at all. Many of us struggle to even control our own emotions, and we have no hope at all of ever controlling somebody else’s feelings. The Complexities of Emotions Emotions are complex things, caused by interaction between the outside environment and our own particular internal environment. And they can’t just be changed by throwing a switch. Think about it. Was there ever a time when you were unhappy, but your friends kept telling you the opposite, telling you why you should ...

Sex is extremely important in a relationship, and knowing how to rock your guy’s world will not only make the two of you feel close, but it’ll also keep him satisfied and loyal. I know it’s sad to say that if you aren’t sexually satisfying your man in bed then he may leave you or look elsewhere for this sort of fulfillment, but it’s true. Just like you have your needs in a relationship, so does he. 1. Frequency How often you fulfill your man’s sexual desires plays a huge part in his overall satisfaction. So, take some time to think about how often you and your man engage in sex. Is it once a week, once a month, every day, or next to never? This may or may not be something your man has communicated to you, but if he has told you that he wants more sex, or would like to turn up the heat and get intimate on a more frequent basis, then make a point to do so. Him telling you this is a huge advantage – he’s telling you exactly what he wants and needs from you. If he hasn’t...