by yoursl | Feb 26, 2015 | Dating/Relationships, Just For Fun |
My partner Dutch and I were running errands in late January when Dutch asked me between stop lights if I would like flowers and a romantic dinner once a year on Valentine’s Day or if I would prefer to receive love and affection every single day. Seeing how Dutch shows affection for me by keeping the refrigerator stocked with Canadian bacon, I much prefer consistent affection over a once-a-year to-do. Dutch was struggling with the desire to NOT give me a Valentine’s Day gift because of personal dislike for what Dutch describes as “an overly commercial holiday that gives people a pass on showing love and affection the rest of the year.” Dutch’s friends predicted not giving me a gift would be relationship suicide. I am pleased to say those predictions were false. Dutch is just part of the 66 percent of American adults who believe “the consumerism of the holiday has ruined the romance,” as discovered by a recent Harris Poll of 2,232 American adults surveyed online between January 14 and 19. This poll revealed that 68 percent of American adults “view the time-honored tradition of Valentine’s Day marriage proposals as cliché” with 48 percent of American adults seeing “Valentine’s Day as an opportunity to communicate more with their significant other.” Let’s pause for a moment. Are the other 364 days of the year not “an opportunity to communicate more” with a significant other? Dutch and I communicate every day, be it via facebook, email, text messaging, phone calls or in-person conversations. We listen to National Public Radio in the car while running errands and talk about the...
by yoursl | Feb 19, 2015 | Just For Fun, Taboo Topics |
Last week, I had the nervous pleasure of giving a four-minute inspirational talk to around 167 people at a networking event. I began to work on my speech in October, shortly after I was asked to present. I chose a topic that I felt would resonate with the majority of the audience and that would allow me to inject some humor into the speech as this was the first time I would be speaking to more than 10 people at once. I talked about life lessons learned from online dating. Or, rather I tried to talk about this topic, as the technical difficulties of a non-working microphone left me shouting at all those people. I wrapped my four-minute speech up at 3 minutes and 15 seconds because shouting is simply not my thing. Neither is sexism and dealing with double standards, which are two things most women in American cannot seem to shake. An hour prior to my inspirational talk, I met with the founder of the networking group during an audio-visual check. The 10-minute speaker, a woman, was there with me on stage. We were dressed in the same professional manner, except our choices in footwear. The other four-minute speaker was a male and running late to the sound check. The founder of the group questioned my choice in footwear, which that day was a pair of pink Adidas. February in the Midwest is generally a miserable cold. That night the weather was frigid, with gusts of wind and freezing rain. I wanted to wear my Adidas so I did not get frost-bitten toes from my open-toed heels...
by yoursl | Feb 12, 2015 | Dating/Relationships, Just For Fun |
I can admit that I went on 32 first dates in the 16 months before I met my partner, Dutch. Thirty-two first dates is a great deal of work. There were times when I had to do some fancy footwork to avoid an awkward, unwelcome kiss and when I had to dig deep into my patience reserve to stop myself from screaming, “STOP TALKING! You are being such an ass!” or “Keep your hands to yourself!” For my search for a mate, I utilized online dating. Where else was I going to meet someone upscale, intelligent and successful? Definitely not at my local laundry mat or grocery store and certainly not at work. I didn’t want to meet anyone exactly like me, who is just beginning to get life figured out. I wanted to meet someone with some life experience who could show me remarkable and amazing stuff that was still unknown to me. Online dating taught me some important life lessons during my search for a mate. I want to share some of those lessons in this blog. Honesty really is the best policy. Users of online dating forums fill out questionnaires about their physical appearance and personal likes and dislikes. I checked that I like “sci-fi” thinking that meant the Star Trek character Captain Piccard or the card game Magic. After a long day at work, I went out on a date and fell asleep watching the 50th episode of Dr. Who with an overly enthusiastic Dr. Who fan and was dumped the very next day. Apparently, the Devil really is in the details. I probably should...
by yoursl | Feb 5, 2015 | Dating/Relationships, Sexual Discussion, Taboo Topics |
On the night of June 23, 2013, a 21-year-old female Vanderbilt University student was drinking at a local bar. Her boyfriend of just a few weeks, Brandon Vandenburg, who was a football player at the college, had given her a blue drink, which was laced with a date-rape drug. This female student doesn’t remember anything between drinking the blue drink at the bar and waking up in an unfamiliar room at 8 something the next morning. Several people stood by and watched while Vandenburg, who was driving the victim around Nashville in her own Mercedes-Benz, pulled the unconscious woman from the vehicle and he and three of his teammates, Cory Batey, Brandon Banks and Jaborian McKenzie, dragged and carried her into Gillette House, into the elevator and then down a hallway to Vandenburg’s room. Sadly, this young woman was victimized, sexually assaulted, and raped for 30 minutes in Vandenburg’s dorm room while she was unconscious. According to court testimony, as published by several media outlets, Vandenburg dragged the young woman out of an elevator, dumped her on the floor and took several photographs of the unconscious woman. He and one of the players carried the young woman to Vandenberg’s dorm room and, within minutes, Batey began sexually assaulting the woman with his fingers. One of the men penetrated the woman’s anus with a water bottle while Vandenburg cheered on his fellow teammates with lewd comments and, as testimony proved, handed out condoms to the other players, slapped the woman’s buttocks, and claimed he could not have sex with her because he could not get an erection. Vandenburg filmed the...
