SBK writes: “Bad boys tend to have lots of positive traits that come along for the ride of the badness such as good looks, confidence, creativity, humor, charisma, high energy, and good social skills– all things women find attractive.”
He also found that for men “one striking direct path to mating success stood out… low agreeableness; the lower the agreeableness, the more sexual partners.”
.. “[Bad Boys] don’t really ever commit to you, therefore you’re always chasing after them. The challenge!
.. These guys weren’t bad boys; they were just emotionally unavailable.
Non-committal, not ready for a relationship, whatever you want to call it– that’s it! That’s where the allure comes from. Not the bad boy himself, but his inability to commit.
.. Maybe for me, it boils down to this old saying, you always want what you can’t have.
What Romance Really Means After 10 Years of Marriage
After a decade of marriage, if things go well, you don’t need any more proof. What you have instead — and what I would argue is the most deeply romantic thing of all — is this palpable, reassuring sense that it’s okay to be a human being. Because until you feel absolutely sure that you won’t eventually be abandoned, it’s maybe not 100 percent clear that any other human mortal can tolerate another human mortal. The smells. The sounds. The repetitive fixations on the same dumb shit, over and over. Even as you develop a kind of a resigned glaze of oh, this again in, say, marital years one through five, you also feel faintly unnerved by your own terrible mortal humanness.
.. That is the very definition of romantic: not only not being made to feel crappy about things that are clearly out of your control, but being quietly cared for by someone who can shut up and do what needs to be done under duress. That is the definition of sexy, too. People think they want a cowboy, because cowboys are rugged and macho and they don’t whine. But almost anyone can ride a stallion across a beautiful prairie and then come home and eat a giant home-cooked steak without whining about it.
.. Our dumb culture tricks us into believing that romance is the suspense of not knowing whether someone loves you or not yet, the suspense of wanting to have sex but not being able to yet, the suspense of wanting all problems and puzzles to be solved by one person, without knowing if they have any time or affinity for your particular puzzles yet.
‘Autism in Love’: Dating and Courtship on the Spectrum
What should you know about dating someone on the autism spectrum? This is one of the many questions Matt Fuller’s new documentary, Autism in Love, seeks to uncover about how people with the disorder pursue and manage romantic relationships. Finding love can be hard enough for anyone—but it can be even more challenging when things like communication and social interaction, core characteristics of a successful relationship, are compromised. In these interviews, we meet Dave and Lindsey, who share their experiences flirting and falling in love.
Why Some People Take Breakups Harder Than Others
Research by the psychologist Arthur Aron and his colleagues shows that when people are in close relationships, their self becomes intertwined with their partner’s self. In other words, we begin to think of a romantic partner as a part of ourselves—confusing our traits with their traits, our memories with their memories, and our identity with their identity. In a measure designed to capture the closeness of a relationship, Aron’s team ask people to consider themselves as one circle, their partner as another, and indicate the extent to which the two overlap.
.. To an extent, this overlap of the two selves can be a very positive part of relationships. As people get to know a new romantic partner, they often go through a rapid period where they immerse themselves in the interests and identities of their partner, adopting new perspectives and expanding their worldview. One of the greatest pleasures of being in a relationship is that it can broaden a person’s sense of self by exposing them to things outside of their usual routines.
But this also means that when a relationship ends, the loss of a romantic partner can, to some extent, cause the loss of the self.
.. In our study, some people drew much weaker connections between rejection and the self, describing rejection as an arbitrary and unpredictable force rather than the result of some personal flaw. One person wrote, “Sometimes girls are not interested. It’s nothing to do with yourself, it’s just that they’re not interested.” Another noted how rejection wasn’t a reflection of worth: “I learned that two people can both be quality individuals, but that doesn’t mean they belong together.” Other people saw the rejection as a universal experience: “Everyone gets rejected. It’s just part of life.”
Yet another group of people saw the breakup as an opportunity for growth, often citing specific skills they had been able to learn from rejection. Communication was a recurrent theme: People described how a rejection had helped them understand the importance of clear expectations, how to identify differences in goals, and how to express what they wanted out of a relationship