(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?

(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) April 2008:

Apparently more women over 45 are seeking younger men according to a London based dating service.  The numbers have increased by 20 percent over the last year.

Well, this doesn’t seem unusual to me.  There are any number of reasons that I can think of, including the fact that internet dating means that you can create a relationship with people you couldn’t otherwise meet, and that you get to know something about the other person before you actually meet them – so there is some predisposition towards them.

But most of all, as an older woman myself, younger men tend to be more liberated – Women’s lib did more than inform my generation.

(THE AGE) 23 March 2008:

Most of us experience the trials and tribulations of the dating game at one point in our lives. Many women can attest to the fact that it’s difficult to find Mr. Halfway Decent, let alone Mr. Right. Deborah Frances-Wright, a British comedian, wants you to know that it is all actually very easy.

Just about any man is willing to have sex with just about any woman, she says. Thus the power in any relationship is actually with the woman.

True as all this may be, Frances-Wright doesn’t seem to have cracked the part of the problem that many women do want solved: how to get the man to stick around and be attentive afterwards.

(NEWS.COM.AU) 20 March 2008:

An Australian study has found that depressed women have more sex than content women, whether or not they are in a relationship. Results of a study presented at an international mental health conference concluded that depressed women who are depressed have a third more sexual activity than those who are not. They also had more sexually liberating thoughts, a larger variety of sexual experiences, and were more likely to engage in casual sex if they weren’t in a relationship. One of the study’s authors thinks that depressed people, “…feel more insecure about their relationships and concerned that their partner may not care about them or find them valuable. Having sex helps them feel that closeness and security.”

(EARTH TIMES) 14 March 2008:

…and so are short women and tall women.

Researchers in Spain and Holland looked at sexual jealousy: who is most protective of the people they are in a relationship with? The study found that both short and tall women are jealous of medium height women, those that men find most attractive.

Further, that short men, most especially those who were not muscular or were heavy, were jealous of taller and slimmer men: precisely those that women tend to prefer.

It’s amazing what you can find out with science these days, isn’t it? The more difficult you find it to find a sexual partner the more jealous you are of those who find it easy.

(INDIANAPOLIS STAR) 28 January 2008:

According to one confirmed and self-confident bachelor, there’s no point in falling in love. You can simply listen to country songs if you want to know what being in a dysfunctional, co-dependent relationship is like.

Most don’t agree, but it is true that the marriage rate is falling. For men in their early thirties, 33 percent have never been married (as opposed to 29 percent of women). That difference tells us something about the way in which there is usually a (small) difference in ages between partners in a couple.

What no one knows quite yet is whether this is a delaying of marriage or of listening to too many country songs.

(DAILY MAIL) 14 January 2008:

It’s no news at this point that Britney Spears is dating a member of the paparazzi that only weeks ago stalked her trying to get the money shot.

Word has it that she’s now made her new boyfriend, Adnan Ghalib, her new driver and assistant, paying him several thousand dollars a week and buying him a new Mercedes.

According to sources, he is looking to profit as much as possible from his relationship with the fallen pop star. He even tried to sell photos of the two together for almost a million dollars. He ended up getting only $40K.

And now the stalker is the stalked. He’s begun lashing out at…the paparazzi.

(CNN.COM) 17 December 2007:

Newly single French President Nicolas Sarkozy was spotted with supermodel/singer Carla Bruni at Euro Disney this past weekend. While l’presidente has refused to comment on his relationship with the lovely Carla, they’ve made no effort to hide their relationship. It’s hard to imagine a United States president canoodling with a supermodel at Disneyland.  The French are fun.