In the interest of helping romance, here are some tips for the guys on how to write an eHarmony profile that won’t get closed.

Let’s start with the first question: What are you passionate about? Don’t say nothing. When a guy starts his profile saying he isn’t passionate about anything it is an immediate check mark against him. Nobody is passion-less. But the fact he puts nothing either means that his passion is really terrible (internet porn) or that he isn’t very self-aware. Both of those are turn-offs. So, put something down. Are you passionate about work? Your Pet? Beating Guitar Hero? Put that down. In fact, if you are passionate about guitar hero, comic books, and political debate then email me! But don’t say nothing. Please.

Next, it’s important that you fill out the entire profile. A lot of people skip the questions about books or what would friends notice about you. Don’t do that. I always close profiles that aren’t totally filled out. It makes me think that they aren’t serious or are lazy.

Oh, about that book question… don’t put down something like “How to Please a Woman Every Time” or “The LL Cool J Workout”. I know that you think that we will see that and thing “wow! he must be good in bed and/or likes working out. That’s Hot.” No, we think it’s creepy. Very creepy. It makes us think you are idiots who only think about sex or about looks. Also, the DaVinci Code sucked. Anyone who lists it as a book they enjoyed will be closed instantly by me, and anyone who cares about literature.

Finally, the picture. Wow, people post a lot of bad pictures. Don’t post your high school graduation picture from 10 years ago. We can see your age as 28. The picture is clearly 18. We’re not idiots. Also, no pictures with kids (unless they are your own), with you shirtless (makes you look superficial), or with you drinking (makes you look like a partier). And, finally, please don’t make your eharmony profile picture one of you with your ex-girlfriend. About 10% of the profiles I see have guys in a loving embrace with some other girl. Do you not have any pictures of yourselves? Can’t you take one?

Actually, a male friend of mine said that guys post those types of pictures because they think that by showing that they had a girlfriend before it will make women find them more attractive. It doesn’t work that way guys. It makes us think you’re still in love with the ex, and that’s baggage we don’t need to deal with.

Oh, and if you’re looking for an easy fuck then try match.com or adultfriendfinder.com. The women on eHarmony are there because they are looking for long term relationships. I’ve been disappointed by the guys I meet on eHarmony who are only interested in sex.

Which is probably for the best since I’m addicted to him like Jeff Conway is to pain pills.

But here’s the sitch: those twisters in Atlanta touched down in his neighborhood. And I really want to know if he’s okay. If his house is okay. If the Angel Season One DVD set that he never returned is okay. We were together for 7 years. I do like the idea of him still existing in the world.

I’v sent out some feelers for info through mutual friends. But part of me want to call him. Just to ask if everything is okay. But I’m not sure that’s the best move. If things are okay then the call is pointless. If his house was hit by a tree the last thing he probably wants it to hear from the person her wated most of his 20′s with.

On the other hand, if a hurricane hit Tampa Bay, I would sort of want him to check up on me. But I’m still in love with him, while he has erased all feelings for me from his robot memory.

Not sure. I’ll need to call an emergency meeting of the girls for a survey. Feel free to let me know what you think. I’m not above asking advice from strangers on the internet who found this blog while looking for pictures of women being peed on. (Sorry to disappoint you, I don’t have any of those).

It’s all about betrayed wives and those who have dated married men. It’s not Springer or anything. But a look at both sides of this issue. And watching it I just get more and more upset at those XY’s out there. The ones who place us into this position by deciding to go outside the marriage.

Oh, I know women cheat too. And they shouldn’t. There is no excuse for it. But when women cheat it tends not to be these long romances. They don’t last for seven years of stringing someone along and making them promises your don’t intend to keep.

When men cheat it’s this strange romantic cheating of living a life of new romance and possibilities with the other woman while going home every night to a comfort of a wife. And telling them both that you love them. And meaning it.

Men are able to compartmentalize these things in ways most women can’t. They can divide their heart up and keep their lies straight without ever feeling bad about it.

I have some experience. I’ve been on both sides of this at one point or another. And I can’t say that one side was better than the other. Both are paths towards pain. The other woman will never have his whole heart, but at least they know that fact. The wife is unaware she is being neglected, although a part of her secretly nags that something is wrong.

But my real question is why do we let men do this to us? Why do we put up with being second in someone’s heart? Why do we beg and pleas with the cheater to come back to us again and again?

I know. We’re in love. But love only exists with honesty. What we have with these men isn’t love. It’s fantasy. It’s role play. Except we aren’t let in on that fact.

Why do men cheat? Because we let them. Because no matter how big an asshole a man is, there will always be some broken woman who will take him into her life.

So, here’s the agreement. We’re not fucking married men. Not unless we have their wives permission. And wives/girlfriends… we aren’t going to take the guy back who is fucking around on us. Not until they can prove they have changed. But wives/girlfriends, we also aren’t going to punish a guy for being honest with us. If he tells us “hey, I wanna watch porn” we aren’t going to have a hissy fit and yell at him. We’re going to find a way to meet that need in a way we are comfortable with.

It’s simple. Know your sexual boundaries. Express them to your partner. Know his boundaries too. Then negotiate inside of them.

It’s easy. It’s honest. And if the guy still manages to fuck it up, you can walk away knowing that there was nothing more you could have done.

Having just watched suffered through JJ, I have to wonder how this could come from the same person who did a beloved show like Gilmore Girls. The characters are all so shrill and deadpan that it felt like a middle school production of Death of a Salesman.

With fewer laughs.

The cast is great, on paper. You have Parker Posey as a children’ book editor who is divorced, bitter, tightly wound, but… lovable? I think that was what I was supposed to get from the character. It never quite translated. Parker’s character wants a baby, but can’t have one herself. So she seeks out her hippie sister (Lauren Ambrose, looking NOTHING like Posey) to be her surrogate. They fight and bicker but then bond.

Except, they don’t I don’t think I’ve ever seen a show where the actors seemed at such odds with the script. Parker Posey is supposed to be playing a harried everywoman with a big heart, but she reads her lines with a monotone worthy of Ben Stein. No inflection. No warmth. Even the laughtrack seemed unsure where the jokes were supposed to be.

Ambrose tries to make up for Posey’s underacting by constantly reacting with big eyes gasps, as if she’s trying to be an anime character come to life.

On the old Whose Line is it Anyway (the Brit one, natch) there was a game where two contestants were given different scripts to read. They had to go back and forth, one line at a time, trying to make it seem like they were in the same play. TROJJ was like a strange reverse of that. Two actors reading from the same play, but making it seem like they are in totally different movies.

I don’t know if the problem is the script, which has far too much backstory and far too few jokes, or the actors or the direction. But it was a mess.

Jezebel wasn’t likely to make it to the fall sched anyway, especially since the episode order was cut and the show is buried on Friday night. The real question will be if it can make it to next week.

Dan’s point is that some sexual needs are so kinky that it could be considered more loving to have them met by a hooker than to burden the wife with them.

And while I see his point, I don’t really agree. Because, in the real world, guys don’t suddenly wake up with a fetish. He wasn’t into vanilla sex when he got married and then, 20 years later, decides he needs to be dressed up like a little girl and pegged by a lady with a strap-on. No, he had that fantasy all along, but kept on trying to ignore it in an attempt to fit into the ideal of what people are supposed to find sexy.

If you want to shit in your wife’s mouth, then marry a chick who is into scat play. If there are no women who are into scat play then at least marry one who understands your needs and doesn’t mind if you get them met somewhere else.

Yes, these women do exist. We’re the ones who are told “you’re not the type of girl you marry.”

So, if it’s still on the TiVo DON’T READ ON!

Let’s start with the good stuff – ANSWERS. Sweet answers. Let’s go through what we know after last night.

1. The Oceanic 6 are Hurley, Kate, Jack, Sun, Aaron and Sayid. At least that’s what it seems like. Yes, Aaron can be one of the O6. That is the term that the media coined them with, and they don’t care that Aaron wasn’t on the plane (remember, everyone thinks that he is Kate’s). The Oceanic Five plus child doesn’t sound right.
2. We know the man on the boat! It’s Michael. At least, it seems to be Michael. This is Lost, and I suppose evil twins are always possible. And there is that wild spec that it’s actually Walt all grown up. But I think that might be overthinking it.

Now, onto the new questions raised after the episode.

1. How is Ben communicating with Michael? If Michael is the man on the boat how is he able to communicate info to Ben on the island.
2. If Windmore didn’t fake the 815 crash, who did? and why?
3. Why did Regina kill herself? And why was a higher profile actress like Zoe Bell cast in a part that ended up being nothing?
4. Is Jin Dead? Or is he still on the island?

I’m sure there are more, but I just watched the episode this morning before work and haven’t had time to fully process it.

Discuss away in the comments!!!

No, they think it’s because the lovely Mrs. Spitzer wasn’t doing enough at home.

Dr. Laura was the first to bring up this twisted idea on the Today show, when she suggested that because the Gov wasn’t getting what he needed at home, he needed to get is somewhere else.

His wife just should have started charging him 1,000 dollar an hour and negotiate future price discounts with him. That would have fixed everything!

Bill Maher jumped into the fray with his own version of victim bashing in a blog on The Huffington Post where he points out that sex doesn’t happen when you’re married.

Studies show (OK, I’m making that up, but its true nonetheless) that people married 20 years only have sex on Valentine’s Day, their anniversary, and their birthdays. You can hate me as the messenger, but its true — how can anyone be expected to still want to score with someone you’ve been having sex with for a score?

Of course, sex is boring when you know what somebody likes and doesn’t like. When you have learned each others bodies so perfectly that you know exactly when to touch them and how much pressure to use. It’s not fun to have sex with someone you love and care about and have a life with.

Is that what he is trying to get me to believe?

I was in a 7 year relationship and things only got kinkier as we reached a level of trust with each other. Sex in year 7 was much better than at the start. But we weren’t married. I guess that marriage has the power to suck all the joy out of a relationship. At least that seems to be the point that most of these people blaming the wife are making.

And I have to wonder if they are right.

Look, I know there are good men around. Guys who view love and sex as intertwined emotions instead of separate events. I know they are out there. I’ve met a few… and their lovely wives.

I would have thought that Spitzer was one of those good guys. He was a straight arrow who stood up for women’s rights and against all crime. He glowed when he was shown with his wife, and his eyes lit up when he looked at her. They met while working at the same firm, where she was considered the better attorney.

It was the perfect modern power couple. But it wasn’t enough to keep him from straying.

Is Bill Maher right? Are all men wired to cheat? Is sex with the same person destined to be boring for men?

We don’t know the inner workings of the Spitzer marriage, so maybe it was the type of relationship where they only had sex once a year. But that doesn’t excuse cheating. That is the type of thing that leads you to couple’s therapy or divorce court. Not to the Mayflower Hotel.

Of course you have. Everyone has. It’s the top story in every paper (my fave headline: “Ho No!”).

The main question I keep hearing people ask is “why?”. I mean, on one hand we all know why, the question behind the question is why a guy like this would need to pay for sex?

He’s married, to a really cute wife. Seriously, don’t judge her by the way she looked at that non-resignation resignation press conference. She’s actually quite cute, and has a great shape.

And even if he was tired of his wife there is no end to the number of aides, interns, and co-workers he could have used for a booty call. As sad as it sounds, an affair with a co-worker probably would have been better for his career than one with a hooker. We can forgive cheating (exhibit A: Bill Clinton) but we can’t get over the hypocrisy of a guy who used to punish hookers now frequenting them.

But he didn’t go that route. He paid an estimated $3,000 for sex, with another $1,500 going towards future visits. And that is what most people don’t understand.

The phrase “you get what you pay for” might be true for shoes, but not for nookie.

So, if there are a number of women he could have sex with, why did he need to pay for it?

I think it all goes back to our old friend the virgin/whore complex.

The virgin/whore complex (sometimes called the virgin/whore syndrome or dichotomy) tries to explain why some men seem to group women into two groups: those you marry and those you fuck.

If you’ve ever been rejected because “you’re too good for me” or “you’re not the type of girl you settle down with” then you’ve been a victim of it. I know I have.

In my case I would date these guys and have a great fun, flirty, and, in one case, deeply loving relationship. I’m pretty open about my sexuality and I don’t mind being experimental in bed. You’d think guys would like that trait, and at the time they do. But when it gets to the part where things are getting serious, they freak out and dump me without any cause or warning. The ex actually told me it was because “you’re not to type of girl you marry”. Although he wasn’t quite able to articulate what that meant. 

I understand it though. It goes back to the mixed messages in society. Love is pure and rarefied and beautiful. Sex is dirty and nasty and wrong. You can just see it in the way that sex is shown in the media. When a loving couple is shown having sex it is all soft lighting, candles, missionary position and gentleness. When a couple is just having sex (like in a porn movie) they are carnal, grabbing, groping, sucking and moving in any position to get off.

Sex and love aren’t connected. You rarely see a loving couple engaging in raw, passionate or kinky sex. This disconnect carries over into the view of women. It follows that the types of women who you would love are not the types you could have nasty/kinky/animal sex with.

I suspect this is what happened with Spitzer. He couldn’t ask his wife to meet his sexual needs, because he loved her and thought she was too good for them. He couldn’t take up with a co-worker or intern for the same reason, these were all good women. No, he had to find a woman who was bad. He had to pay $3,000 for something so dirty that he couldn’t find someone else to do it.

 Keep in mind that when I say dirty, I’m talking about how these guys see it. I know a few strippers and hookers (It’s Tampa, who doesn’t?) and while there is the random freak who wants to be carved on and dressed like a baby, most of what Johns consider to be kinky is pretty dull. We’re talking about stuff like facials or oral sex (both giving and receiving). It’s amazing how many guys pay hookers because they want to go down on them. That’s how out of whack this virgin/whore thing is… it makes men think that giving oral sex is taboo.

Really, it should be mandatory.

So, why does a guy like Gov. Spitzer pay thousands of dollars for sex that he could get for free?

Because, the type of women who would have sex with him are not the type he wants to be around. You don’t pay the hooker for sex, you pay her to leave when it’s done.

The irony is that the mixed messages about sex that led to this are just going to be fueled by this story. People will think this is an indictment on sex, when really it’s about breaking the law.

I have a feeling I’ll be talking more about this as it continues to come out. The sex culture politics of this story are amazing to watch.

I saw Senator Obama when he was here last year. I’m a pretty cynical person when it comes to politics, mostly because of my poly sci degree. I’m sure that biologists aren’t struck by the wonders of the human body, because they know how it works. I am never swayed by speeches or ads, because I know what goes into them.

But Barack Obama was different. Because when he talked, I actually cared. He wasn’t promising me 4 years of rainbows and sunshine. Hell, he wasn’t even selling himself. His message was that I could make a difference. That, as a group, we still had the power to change the world. But it would take work. Each and every one of us.

It was honest. It was motivational. And it sold me completely. It made me actually care. My whole life I’ve been told that we do our part for change when we vote, and then we leave it up to the guys in Washington. But Obama wasn’t saying that. He said that he wanted us to stay active after that. To get out in the community and the world and do good things.

That’s one of the big differences between him and Clinton. Barack is a community organizer. He believes that change comes from the people to the government. Hillary is a politician. She is saying that change starts with government and filters down to the people.

Here’s the one thing I learned from that Political Science degree. The President isn’t supposed to have a lot of power.. He doesn’t make laws (that would be the congress). He doesn’t determine what is right and wrong (that is the Supreme Court). He isn’t a King. His mission is to set the agenda. To set the nation on a course, and then allow us to follow through with the project.

History’s greatest Presidents (Lincoln, FDR, Kennedy) were the ones who gave us high goals to reach and then had faith that we could reach them. The perfect example of what a President is supposed to do is Kennedy and the space program. He set a crazy goal and then let us run with it until it was a reality. He didn’t micromanage the whole thing or come up with a specific plan on how to build the rockets. He just inspired us to do it.

Barack Obama is able to do that. To inspire us, to move us, and to lead us. I really hope that he is able to capture the nomination, if only so that more people are able to hear him talk and get inspired to have hope in this country. American’s are great people. We deserve a great leader.