Love Bytes: 10 must-click love and relationship links.

This week, Gossip Girl's third season premiered. Do you play games to keep your relationship alive? Blair and Chuck do. [TrèsSugar]

Whitney spilled all this week about her tumultuous relationship with Bobby Brown...Or did she? [Cosmopolitan]

Patrick Swayze and Lisa Niemi survived 34 years of blissful marriage. How does one do it? DivineCaroline discusses how to sleep with the same man for over 30 years and not get tired of it. [DivineCaroline]

Have a hot date this weekend? Guys, don't mess it up by wearing the wrong thing. [marieclaire]

September 19 … Read More

As if dating shows couldn't get any worse, there was a new addition to the primetime lineup this summer called Dating in the Dark. Maybe you've heard about it. Three men and three women court each other in a pitch-black room to find out if love is, in fact, blind. While I'm not racing to the next casting call, I do think I've figured out what my secret weapon would be: an accent. Who, I wonder, has never melted like chocolate in a warm hand at the sound of an exotic voice? Give me a nice Scottish brogue and … Read More

Most of us think we know the telltale signs of a liar—shifty eyes, sweating, a long, winding story that seems highly improbable. The stereotypes are even cross-cultural: a 2006 study done at the Texas Christian University found that similar perceptions of liars exist in over sixty countries.

In reality, however, there is not one behavior all liars exhibit and some behaviors we associate with lying could mean something else entirely. Because of this, few people are very good at spotting liars. Even the so-called "experts"—body language professionals, customs officials, etc.—are only right about half the time.

Deciphering a liar from a … Read More

After Governor Mark Sanford abandoned his state and his family to be with his mistress in Argentina, people applauded his long-suffering wife Jenny for kicking his lying butt to the curb. Yet even as she denounced his affair, she gave him a big gift … she called his cheating "an addiction." These days, people love characterizing everything as an addiction, from the frivolous to the frightening. In pop culture parlance, you can be a rage-aholic, a shop-aholic, and a choc-aholic. Addictions are serious things, but is cheating seriously an addiction?

Addicted to … Everything

Addiction is the inability to … Read More

We all know at least one person who always has a significant other, even immediately after a breakup. Lately I’ve noticed that serial monogamy—leaping from one exclusive relationship to the next—has become a more popular and accepted dating trend among my friends and acquaintances. Why?

According to Psychology Today, serial monogamists usually believe in some kind of ideal love and in the importance of commitment to one partner, but keep a safe distance from the idea that true love should happen only once in a lifetime. Why chain ourselves to one Prince Charming when we can find a new one as … Read More

I am a woman. I have all the biological requirements to have a child. Yet, I do not have the instincts or rational desire to do so. Does that make me less of a woman to not want to have a child either by using my body, my eggs, or my money to adopt?

My parents are the only people who, when I said I didn't want to have kids, responded with, "Sounds like a good idea." They married because I was on the way and … Read More

A funny thing happened on the way to a party recently. It was a work party for my friend Dave's venture capital firm. He was going with Mary, his longtime girlfriend who, just a few weeks earlier, he had asked to marry him.

As the couple was about to enter the party, Mary stopped, turned to her fiancé and asked, "Do you think what I’m wearing is okay?"

Dave gave her an appraising look and said, "You look great. But you probably could have worn different shoes." (Insert collective gasp here.) 

This is not the funny thing that happened. The … Read More

He's twice been named the Sexiest Man Alive. He makes more money in memorizing ten lines than my husband makes all year. In another century, his ravishing good looks and muscular physique were undoubtedly the criteria that all Greek Gods set for themselves. Still he remains the boy next door that every woman in the world would love to call her very own. I'm talking about George Clooney—the Buttery Hotness himself.

Nevertheless, I turned him down, even though he never asked. I turned him down, straight as an arrow.

I turned him down for all of it, everything from the … Read More

Pecking, smooching, Frenching, and playing tonsil-hockey—there are as many names for kissing as there are ways to do it. Whether we use it as an informal greeting or an intensely romantic gesture, kissing is one of those ingrained human behaviors that seems to defy explanation. Its many purposes—a blow and peck for good luck on dice, lips to ground after a rocky boat ride, kisses in the air to an acquaintance, and the long slow smooches of Hollywood—have different meanings yet are similar in nature. So why is it that we love to pucker up?

A Kiss Isn’t Just … Read More

If you want to enliven your next dinner party, bring out this question: what was the subject of your last sexual fantasy?