( WSRZ.COM) 14 July 2008

Authorities in North Carolina are examining the deaths of four men who were once married to 76-year-old Betty Neumar. Betty Neumar has actually had five husbands die on her, but they are only investigating four.  She’s currently being accused of hiring a hit man to kill her fourth husband, so authorities decided it would be a good idea to re-examine the deaths of her other husbands as well as her first child.

Neumar’s grandson got suspicious when she wanted to buy a life insurance policy on him with her as the beneficiary.  Al Gentry, one of the dead husbands’ brothers said of Neumar, “You can’t trust her. You can’t believe a word she says.”

(DETROIT FREE PRESS) 22 June 2008:

Well, that’s the headline, although that’s not quite what they mean: the ratio of marriage ceremonies to married couples is still pretty much one to one for both lesbians and gays. What they mean is that women in a committed relationship are more likely to marry than gay men in committed relationships.

Which shouldn’t come as all that much of a surprise: we see in heterosexual relationhips that women are more eager to marry than men.

It’s compounded here by the way that lesbian couples are much more likely to have and raise children than gays are (there’s the comparable ease and difficulty of the basic mechanics to consider along with desires), so much so that in states where there is a mechanism to register same sex partnerships (marriages, civil partnerships, whatever) the ration is usually 2:1, lesbian to gay.

An old English euphemism for “gay” was “not the marrying kind”: interesting how that seems still to be true, long past the time that the eupehimism is still in use.

(SYDNEY MORNING MAIL) 10 June 2008:

File this under: Duh.

In what must be one of the least surprising relationship columns ever, the writer reveals that men are indeed willing to have sex with a woman simply because they’d like to have sex, not necessarily because they love that particular woman.

She goes on to point out that for a woman, having sex can  be one of the things which triggers feelings of love for a man.

The second part is both true and interesting, but is it really necessary in this day and age to point out the first?

Vancouver Sun 4 July 2008:

But women seem to be rather better at it. That’s the message from new research from Florida Atlantic University. Men and women will both attempt to use their looks and subtle flirtation to get what they want from people of the other sex. However, women seem to be more successful at doing so than men.

It’s not for want of trying, the behavior happens at the same rate in each sex. However, the women’s greater success seems to be down to evolutionary factors. In that delicate dance of picking a mate it’s the women who usually do the deciding: the decision is, in genetic terms, vastly more important for them.

It doesn’t seem unreasonable then that flirting (mimicking availability rather than actually being available) works as a negotiating technique for women better than it does for men.

(REUTERS) 29 May 2008:

In what might be the most mindbogglingly obvious result in all of social research, an Ipsos Reid survey in Canada found that men and women are not quite on the same page when it comes to romantic feelings.

For example, 78 percent of the women surveyed said they were in love while only 64 percent of the men did. It could be of course that this is in fact true, that men are less worried about being in a relationship without love.

Or it could be that as Sean Simpson, the research manager said, ” There may be some lack of communication going on…”

Well, yes, isn’t that something that women have been complaining about for eons?

(UPI) 28 May 2008:

A couple who got married on April the 27^th are ordered to court on June 25^th. They are to answer a number of charges related to a fight with another wedding party.

Disorderly conduct and assault are among the charges, as well as public intoxication. Although the fight involved people from the other wedding party, it started as a marital tiff between the newlyweds.

I know getting married is a rather stressful time, but I would have thought that getting over the first argument could have waited a little longer. Maybe they have decided to get the worst of the marriage over and done with, and spend the rest of their married lives making up.

(ABC NEWS) 27 May 2008:

Did you know that not only do men find long legs attractive in women, women also find them attractive in men?  Interestingly, most people prefer legs that are 5 percent longer than average for a given height, and less people prefer legs that are 10 percent longer than average.

I had to stop and think about this – being female, I had not consciously thought about it.  But I do remember a particular date who was over 6 feet tall, and had an inside leg measurement of 36 inches who I still have a particular fondness for, not based on his personality….

(MSNBC.COM) 22 May 2008:

The American Idol audience brings posters and signs for the show tapings with names of their favorite contestants. One such sign at a recent taping read “Cougars for Cook.” Yes, that’s right, Cougars. Think Demi Moore and any woman of a certain age that would rather be with a man of a much younger age. Think May-December romance except the woman in the relationship is the December.  Soccer moms love David Cook, the latest American Idol winner.  42-year old Linda Sharp from Texas voted 473 times for Cook after his final performance. She said, “The biggest thing: He’s legal, and that goes a long way. He’s 25. That’s old enough that we can openly ogle him, and we can drool over him, and it doesn’t make us feel like we could be his mother.”

(UPI) 19 May 2008:

Men of most nationalities prefer pale skinned women, according to researchers in the University of Toronto.  Apparently they associate pale color with “innocence, purity, modesty, virginity, vulnerability, and goodness.”

Women prefer their men to be associated with “sex, mystery and danger.”  They go for darker skinned men, according to researcher Shyon Baumann.

This study was based on images in advertising.  It found that the images of darker skinned men were most likely to have women with less clothes in the advertising items, and paler skinned women would be more conservatively dressed.

Guess which women are more likely to be having fun?

(THE MERCURY NEWS) 7 May 2008:

We’re all too aware of the way in which rich and famous men tend to marry women somewhat younger than themselves. We’re also aware that the apotheosis of feminine beauty is thought to arrive when the woman is in her twenties, while women are less worried about men’s looks and tend to go for successful men, rather than just good looking ones.

However, researchers have shown that this isn’t limited to rich and or successful men: it happens right across the income groups. The older a man is when he marries the larger the likely age gap between him and his wife. One possible explanation:

“The 12th Marquess of Huntly married a nurse 40 years his junior: “I still have my own teeth. Why should I marry some dried up old bag?”"

Maybe?