The New York Times Magazine recently sat down with the Obamas to discuss the State of the Union—the union between Michelle and Barack that is. In this extensive interview with the president and the first lady, writer Jodi Kantor tries to capture the strengths and weakness of the "first marriage." And regardless of which side of the political spectrum you fall on, we believe the Obamas have got a couple of timeless, bi-partisan policies when it comes to keeping a relationship healthy.  4 Obama-Inspired Date Ideas

1. Personalize Your Nicknames. Barack likes to call Michelle, "Flotus," short … Read More

Nicole Williams uses dating advice to improve your career.

For more on Nicole Williams and her book, Girl on Top, visit: http://www.girlontopbook.com

Since their wedding in 1991, John Travolta and Kelly Preston have long been seen as one of the few Hollywood couples who stay together in good times and in bad.

But in times that are really bad, Celebitchy reports via Star magazine that the pair is struggling. Since the death of their 16-year-old son Jett on January 2 of this year the pair have been said to be coping very differently with their mourning. YourTango: How To Help A Partner Grieve

John is said to be resting in seclusion at their Florida estate—in … Read More

Those who read this column know that I’ve been writing very personally about how the downturn has affected my relationship. In all honesty, I'm starting to fear that by focusing on what’s happening inside relationships, we may be losing sight of larger contexts—what could and should be happening in the structures that govern our lives.Read: Is The Recession Changing Men's Values?

Whoever invented the notion that a wife who earns less than her husband has a career that is, by definition, "expendable"? The ubiquity of this sentence—"she has an expendable career"—was brought home to me once again when … Read More

A man allowing his lady to pay for dinner? Cute. A man living with the fact his lady makes more money? Eh, slightly emasculating. Warning: may cause a brief sensation of boxer brief twisting. Career And Family: Can We Really Have Both?

Or so says The Wall Street Journal. Or rather, the study "The Impact of Relative Earnings Among Dual-Earner Couples on Career Satisfaction and Family Satisfaction" a research experiment conducted between 485 middle-class married couples in New York State between 1999 and 2002.

Within each couple, the man and woman's income was analyzed and broken down into … Read More

Love Bytes:  Six must-click  sex, love and relationship links.

4th of July Date Ideas. [Cosmopolitian]

Date Night...At Ikea? [Mom Logic]

Parents admit they go to IKEA to ditch their kids at IKEA's in-house daycare ervice in order to have an actual two-way, unmolested convo with their Significant Other.

Vibrators...More Popular Than Marriage. [Betty Confidential]

Should Married Men Have Single Female Friends? [Yahoo! Shine]

Juggling Love And Career. [FNC iMag]

Indian Court Decriminalizes Consensual Gay Sex.[AP]

You may not realize this—but you and Carrie Bradshaw owe Helen Gurley Brown big time! If it wasn't for Helen, the fearless founder and longtime editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan magazine, and author of the earth-shattering bestseller, Sex and the Single Girl, you might well be TRAPPED!

TRAPPED in a world filled with now absurd-seeming ideas. Ideas like: you're a slut if you've had pre-marital sex, or if you've had sex with more than one partner, or if you're not married... by the age of 21.

So thank God for Helen, her once-revolutionary ideas and her bold determination to relentlessly articulate … Read More

"Let's go over this again: you're going to spend our life savings on dried fruit?" I asked my wife, Noha, in 2004 when she first pitched me the idea of starting Peeled Snacks, a fruit and nut snack company.

Earlier in the year we'd both quit our jobs to go traveling before I started a stint as a public school teacher, but I'd assumed that she'd get back to work with a position lucrative enough to offset the modest teacher's pay I'd soon receive. Instead, she decided to become her own boss and make negative money.

Though those first … Read More

While you may know that love usually doesn't come with a guaranteed fairy-tale ending, you probably are still holding out for, or trying to have your marriage live up to, the idea of truly passionate and romantic love. Elizabeth Ford and Daniela Drake, M.D., authors of the new release Smart Girls Marry Money: How Women Have Been Duped Into the Romantic Dream -- And How They're Paying For It, are here to change your mind, or at least tell you why "happily ever after" hasn't quite happened to them. Read: Marrying "Up"

AOL Health: Can you explain … Read More

Not everyone sees Helen Gurley Brown as a great feminist. Some, in fact, see her as completely the opposite of that. As the editor of Cosmopolitan for 32 years, she celebrated sex and consumption. And in her interviews and bestselling book, Sex and the Single Girl, she advocated for men footing the dinner bill and women using their feminine wiles as a weapon.