MetaFilter posts tagged with relationships

Data Science of the Facebook World

reenum — Mon, 06 May 2013 09:03:58 -0800

Stephen Wolfram used the data provided by Facebook users to do some demographic analysis.

When your abuser or estranged relative dies

nickyskye — Sat, 04 May 2013 14:10:12 -0800

When your abuser or estranged relative dies - funerals, obituaries, & condolences. This is a practical, thoughtful and informative website created by two Christian women who are knowledgeable about dealing with pathological narcissists and sociopaths within a family context, in particular the topic of "Silent Partners". Hoovering defined as a concept. The Silent Partner is any relative who stands by silently while you are victimized, or who takes the abuser's side against the victim.

Queer African American Women and the History of Marriage

liketitanic — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 15:16:36 -0800

"Two women, Edna Knowles and Peaches Stevens, were wed in Liz's Mark III Lounge, a gay bar on Chicago's South Side, before a host of friends and well-wishers."--JET Magazine, October 1970 The Pop-Up Museum of Queer History offers a terrific post on the public rituals queer African American women have used to celebrate their partnerships since the 1920s.

Dear Valentine, I Hate It When You...

AceRock — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 13:06:29 -0800

Save your marriage... with a writing workshop. Link to paper: (PDF)

The Ben Franklin Effect; both not, and totally Rule 34 applicable.

quin — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 09:18:15 -0800

The entertaining youtube channel Vsauce takes an interesting look at The Science of the Friend Zone. [via]

Love 2.0

cross_impact — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 11:13:14 -0800

There is no such thing as Everlasting Love. Apparently all we have are "micro-moments of positivity resonance." Deflating the Love Myth, just in time for Valentines Day? Psychologist Barbara Fredrickson hopes that her newer, streamlined version of love, "Love 2.0," will give lovers and love-lorns alike more tools and more realistic expectations of romance. Oxytocin, Mirror Neurons, and Vagal Tone might make for some interesting science reading, but definitely seem to be a buzz-kill for rom-com devotees.

"Don't you see? If no one were watching, I would not dance at all."

zarq — Sat, 09 Feb 2013 08:46:16 -0800

The Old Man at Burning Man. "When I mentioned to friends that I was going to Burning Man with my 69-year-old father, 'Good idea' were the words out of no one's mouth."

Intent counts here.

davidjmcgee — Mon, 28 Jan 2013 09:09:47 -0800

Right now, though, you can google “polyamory” and get a whole lot of nearly-identical polynormative hype articles, and you can meet up with locals who’ve read the same articles you just did, and you can all get together and do polynormative poly exactly the way the media told you to. And if that’s all you ever bother to do then essentially you are selling yourself short. You are trading in the monogamous norm for polynormativity, which relatively speaking isn’t all that much of a stretch, and stopping there because you may very well think that’s all there is (and you already racked up a whole bunch of cool points anyway). You aren’t encouraged to really think about this stuff without any imposed models at all, which means you never get to figure out what actually might work best for you. As such, the most fundamental element of polyamory—that of rejecting the monogamous standard, and radically rethinking how you understand, make meaning of and practice love, sex, relationships, commitment, communication, and so forth—is lost in favour of a cookie-cutter model that’s as easy as one, two, three. The deepest and most significant benefit of polyamory has become increasingly obscured by media representation, and as a result, is getting farther and farther out of reach for anyone who’s just starting out.

the problem with polynormativity, at Sex Geek

It's a Samoan Thing. You Wouldn't Understand.

jonp72 — Wed, 23 Jan 2013 11:03:54 -0800

Ilana Gershon is a professor currently researching how people use the Internet to break up with their romantic partners, but before that she wrote an anthropological study about "strategic ignorance" in Samoan immigrant communities, all of which is just a complicated way of showing that she's the most unusually qualified person on the Internet to comment on the Manti Te'o hoax. (previously)

Sex and surveys

Brandon Blatcher — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 19:03:13 -0800

"Men across all cultures reported higher sex drives and less restricted sexual attitudes than women, but women were consistently more variable than men in their sex drives. Another important, if not entirely surprising pattern, suggests that these differences are not entirely biological, and are due in some part to social and cultural ideologies." An io9 article looks at the results from a number of sex surveys.

How I Fell in Love with a Schizophrenic

winecork — Tue, 01 Jan 2013 12:39:09 -0800

Kas Thomas writes about his "all-in" relationship with Sally, a woman diagnosed with schizophrenia. Yesterday, my true love, Sally, had a psychotic break and went into the (mental) hospital, where she'll probably be for the next two weeks. Today, I'm writing as a means of therapy. Therapy for me. I knew going into this relationship that it would entail ups and downs, and hard work... Our meeting was the fluke of the century. I happened to be scrounging around on Craigslist one day looking for a furniture item. Sally happened to be on Craigslist looking for pet supplies. On a lark, I posted a personals ad, something I'd never done (on Craigslist). It was a short ad, maybe three or four sentences total. The heading was something goofy like "Intelligent guy looking for sharp gal."

Old Hansa

infini — Sat, 29 Dec 2012 08:15:06 -0800

Networks of the Hanseatic League - The Hanseatic League was a late-medieval network of economically largely independent long-distance trade merchants which was based on trust, reputation and reciprocal relations. The informal cooperation among its members kept transactional, informational and organizational costs low, allowing the Hanse merchants to make good profits from the long-distance trade between the Baltic and the North Seas. Thanks to personal and institutional links with confederations of towns, the Hanse merchants were initially able to strengthen their international position of power. Since the late 15th century, however, the transaction costs of long-distance trade increased as a result of growing exclusivity and formalization efforts in the Hanseatic league. Moreover, changes in the European economic structure, triggered by the discovery of America, and internal conflicts ultimately led to the disintegration of the Hanseatic networks.

“I have a tremendous amount of love and support in my life”

smammy — Wed, 26 Dec 2012 07:20:33 -0800

A remarkably non-sensational report on polyamorous families. Bookended by 50 Shades of Grey and Gigolos, this 20/20 "special report" on Sierra, Martin, Molly, David, Aaron, Romy, Mark, and J provides a lovely counterpoint to the usual moralizing hand-wringing one finds in media coverage of open relationships.

webs woven

infini — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 12:08:54 -0800

The master map of all game companies and their connections

"challenging Casanova"

flex — Mon, 19 Nov 2012 09:02:46 -0800

Guys don't want casual sex: "This stereotype 'tells us that guys are primarily interested in sex, not relationships... This contributes to the notion that guys are emotional clods who are incapable of connecting with their partners because, hey, they’re just guys, and guys are only interested in sex.'... the Wake Forest University professor lays out the current data on young men’s sexual desires and behavior to make a case against this insidious stereotype." Salon interviews Andrew Smiler, author of Challenging Casanova: Beyond the Stereotype of the Promiscuous Young Male. More from the interview:

...When we interview adolescents or undergrads, the girls really have the impression that guys are just interested in sex, that they’re not interested in relationships. What we know is that most guys do get into relationships, they enjoy relationships, they do a lot of things in relationships that are not about sex and they’re not doing them just to put up with them in order to get sex. Guys get something out of relationships; they like relationships. If you add in the fact that average age of first marriage is something like 28 for guys, a lot of guys have the sense that this girl they’re starting to date at 17 or 19 or 21 probably isn’t going to be the one — and yet they are choosing to date. They could easily choose to just hook up — or instead of spending that money in a bar you could get a prostitute — but they’re consistently choosing to be in relationships. ...One of the ways it impacts girls and women is they get the wrong proportions. They’re told that most guys, if not all guys, just want sex, that they don’t want relationships. So we have a lot of stories and evidence that girls are putting their bodies out there and doing things sexually in order to entice guys into relationships. We’re giving girls the wrong percentages which makes them perhaps behave in ways in which they wouldn’t behave otherwise — starting your contact with somebody sexually instead of relationally, for example. [Some have argued] that because we give girls this image of boys, girls are taught to not attend to their own desires and own sexual wants. So girls’ whole sexuality is really about both enticing desires from boys and also controlling that desire. That introduces some real issues around duplicity and intention. We’re not doing girls any favors here either.

NYT: Inside the Mind of the Boy Dating Your Daughter

The stereotype of the 16-year-old boy is that he has sex on the brain. But a fascinating new report suggests that boys are motivated more by love and a desire to form real relationships with the girls they date.

NYT: follow-up to "Inside the Mind of the Boy Dating Your Daughter"

Researchers said the findings show that teenage boys really are motivated by love and a desire for meaningful relationships. But many people still don’t buy it, including, it seems, many former teenage boys... Such skepticism about boys in their teens isn’t surprising, say researchers, but it reveals more about what’s going on in the minds of adults, than of teenagers. ...None of this is to say that teen boys aren’t interested in sex. Of course they are. But adolescence can often be a lonely time, and for many boys, girls represent needed companionship, Dr. Thompson said. “Many boys are yearning to talk to somebody, but they can’t talk to their boy friends because it’s all teasing and a lot of competitiveness,” he said. “For many boys who have been a little bit lonely in the boy group, finally meeting a girl and talking to her is a huge relief.” But the widespread skepticism about teenage boys is worrisome, some psychologists say, because it may mean that boys ultimately will fulfill our low expectations of them.

*Smiler on HuffPo: Why So Bleak?

What we're missing is an understanding of why relationships are a mess. The answer is both simple and complex: we give young people very little guidance in developing healthy relationships. In common culture -- the world of the media and popular Internet content -- we get a very singular depiction of a good couple, or at least good courting, in a million variations. He makes the moves, she guides the relationship and they eventually get married and live happily ever after. Yes, there are misunderstandings and the couple almost -- or does -- break up before they come to their senses. That realization is accompanied by an (often grand) apology, acknowledgement of misunderstanding or fear and the couple lives happily ever after. In most segments of common culture, the work it takes for couples to stay together is invisible. We don't really see the efforts to identify one's own wants and the difficulty in balancing one's own needs with a partner's needs. We rarely see crises whose resolution requires more than an episode or two, and certainly not the same problem occurring over and over. We never see the resentment that builds up when one person always puts their partner first and rarely, if ever, gets their own needs met. The places where that content appears with some regularity are aimed squarely at girls and women... So what's the message? Girls talk about relationships, almost exclusively with other girls or women. Boys get to figure it out for themselves. As a result, boys and girls have very different levels of knowledge about relationship dynamics. It's no surprise some people think they're from different planets!

*Smiler on The Good Men Project: Are We Afraid of Men in Love? *an article and a discussion of Smiler's lecture on Young Men's Sex Lives: "...the sense is that the majority of young men cite emotional reasons for engaging in sexual behaviors - Smiler suggests that this runs counter to our view of most young men falling into the "Casanova" role." *Smiler on the "Secret Lives of Men" radio show: Young Men's Sexual Lives (audio, ~25 min.) *his book's website *an excerpt from the book - Chapter 5: Masculinity, Peers, and Identity

I will do everything in my power to help him through the transition process

New Frontier — Wed, 07 Nov 2012 21:34:53 -0800

"We discussed the danger of partisan division, and the need for us, all of us, to come together and find common ground after a very rough and divisive couple of weeks. ... It is no secret that Brad and I had two very different visions for you and whom you date. Tonight, you have spoken, and Brad has prevailed." --- The American People Have Spoken About Our Relationship

Like a vagina booger!

Brent Parker — Tue, 06 Nov 2012 14:41:36 -0800

It happens after you've ran out of things to talk about with your partner, after you get your sh*t together and have talked about plans for a family. It is time to get engaged, send out the invitations, and start planning the wedding. NSFW audio

the intersection of social media and sharing political opinions

flex — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 11:10:18 -0800

I Want To Talk About Politics On Facebook vs. Get Out Of My Facebook, Politics: two arguments for and against using social media to share political opinions (presented on Thought Catalog) From the first piece ("for"):

This is why the whole grand exasperation with the discussion of politics on Facebook absolutely baffles me. People telling others to shut up about their political views on Facebook are legislating how others use the service, yeah. Abstain from the dialogue or hide it if you’re not interested, but handing out dictums through image macros or impassioned essays is weird, dude. It’s especially weird given that we’re all self-governed in our use of this platform — it is all voluntary. And yet I’m supposed to allow access to myself, my whims, the pictures of me hugging my friends and pets, my often-personal interactions with my real-world friends, my boyfriend, whatever, to people who are so offended by my values that they don’t even want me to talk about them in my own domain? Really, dude? You’re “friends” with someone such that you desire this voyeuristic access to their life, or assume they should desire to see yours — yet you disagree so deeply with them expressing their feelings on issues of national and international concern that you want them to shut up? If their views on core human issues stand in such offensive polarity to yours, why are you going to be “friends”? It’s considered impolite to discuss controversial issues in a casual public setting without invitation. You wouldn’t attend a professional event or a birthday party and begin a debate, it’s true. But social media is designed as an individualist platform where people are allowed to represent themselves for an audience of presumed allies, and you don’t get to tell them how to do it...

From the second piece ("against"):

“Facebook is the perfect platform for constructive political discourse,” said no one ever. Like, EVER. Even Taylor Swift agrees. But really, the only political thinking Facebook was made for is the kind you do when wondering whether or not to de-friend someone. The only thing I really want to know from your Facebook is who you’re dating, where you went to school, and whether or not you got fat. I’m not interested in your paraphrased version of some article you read in The Atlantic last week… because Facebook is just not the place for it. ...“Liking” a political figure or someone’s comment is not the same as voting or forming an opinion about something like healthcare in real life. Facebook was made for broadcasting and disseminating likes and generalities… not discussing them at length. Everything from the small size of the status box to the caption under your photos is meant for brevity. Facebook is meant for generalities, not specifics. And unfortunately, politics is nothing but messy specifics. Facebook just isn’t the place to spout long-winded arguments and opinions. Logistically, it’s almost a misuse of the site, and aesthetically, it just looks bad to the eyeballs. In this same respect, Facebook reduces peoples’ opinions to dichotomies. Left or Right. Liberal or Conservative. Care or Don’t Care. With such limited space, it’s difficult NOT to sound politically extreme on Facebook. And to me, this is dangerous. Because, in real life, is anyone really 100% Left or Right? I think people and ideas are too dynamic. Not that we should all become moderates, or that I want to make a statement about party politics, but in terms of Facebook, this extremism makes it difficult to respect others’ opinions (especially those on the opposite end of the spectrum). Rather than emphasizing commonalities, I think Facebook highlights our differences with very little room for real conversation and explanation. And this makes it hard to have the kind of discussions necessary for positive change and improvement.

A story about a peculiar method

Brandon Blatcher — Fri, 28 Sep 2012 17:20:19 -0800

Adelaide is a short movie about a woman who seeks attention in a very particular way.

Take that, Caitlin Flanagan

msalt — Sun, 09 Sep 2012 16:04:09 -0800

Focusing on career -- how hookup culture empowers women

Excuse me, what time is it? I want to be able to remember the exact moment I posted this.

Brandon Blatcher — Fri, 17 Aug 2012 16:19:35 -0800

How to pick a successful pickup line (in two graphs)

Life is a book that we study; some of its leaves bring a sigh

byanyothername — Mon, 13 Aug 2012 18:33:49 -0800

In my unending search for just the right vintage images for our articles, I have looked through thousands of photographs of men from the last century or so. One of the things that I have found most fascinating about many of these images, is the ease, familiarity, and intimacy, which men used to exhibit in photographs with their friends and compadres. Male Affection: A Photographic History Tour

I'm With The Band

bwilms — Tue, 24 Jul 2012 13:45:19 -0800

How I fell in love with a computer nerd and ended up marrying a rock star

The Score on Scoring

reenum — Sun, 24 Jun 2012 09:46:26 -0800

There is a dating guide for Stanford University (PDF file), and it includes a foreword by Philip Zimbardo.

Oh no you did NOT post that picture to Facebook!!!

ThePinkSuperhero — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 10:40:28 -0800

"Relationships are hard enough. But the rise of social media — where sharing private moments is encouraged, and provocative and confessional postings can help build a following — has created a new source of friction for couples: what is fair game for sharing with the world?" (NYT)