Men Are EasyMen Are EasyAn author's blog that says love and relationships don't take work and change can be easy. Grounded in the new science of complex systems. Articles
Britney Spears, The View, Dr. Phil, and Life
2008-01-11 18:05:00 I’ve been sick with the flu for a few days (yuck) so I watched The View ’s discussion of the Britney drama. Dr. Phil made a public statement that she’s in “dire need of medical and psychological care.” Shame on him. And he’s not even licensed in California. This is not support. This is PR. No ... More About: Britney Spears , Life , Happiness , Mental Health
On the Best Way to Give Next Year
2007-12-27 21:45:00 I was touched by Nora Ephron’s “First Annual HuffPost Charity Chain.” Her charity of choice for this year is the Innocence Project. It supports the collection of DNA and other evidence to get innocent people out of jail. Readers sent in their wonderful projects. I wanted to give to each one. The problem is always who ... More About: Happiness , Mental Health , Give , Year
Eat Pray Love Oprah 2
2007-12-20 09:49:00 I keep hearing about the second Oprah show with Elizabeth Gilbert. Women are finding their places of peace in their homes. Women are making pilgrimages to Italy, India, and Indonesia. My friend Nancy wants her hair to be like Elizabeth’s. But Eat Pray Love is not the first about a woman finding her way. And ... More About: Happiness , Mental Health
If It Doesn’t Feel Right, It Isn’t
2007-12-13 09:19:00 I was looking through blogs, thinking about what to write about this week and I saw Liz Rizzo’s post headlined on blogher.com:Â Separation Anxiety–What Am I, 5? Interesting that Blogher, with all its issues and topics, chooses this post as a headliner. Liz writes that she is irrationally anxious not being with her boyfriend. He calls ... More About: Feel
A Change Manifesto for Marriage
2007-12-06 16:44:00 I keep thinking about writing a change manifesto for changethis.com. Something about marriage. About committing to the design of a great life rather than to an institution. About how marriage is something that you do, that you are creating in the moment, not a thing that is good or bad and that needs to be fixed. Something ... More About: Marriage , Change , Manifesto
The Danger of Counseling
2007-11-29 12:00:00 It’s raining and it’s so dark that I have lights on in the afternoon. Weird in Hawaii! I drank hot jasmine tea and have a great working buzz going. I’m reminded of a story that I’ve been using a lot recently that was one of the inspirations for Men Are Easy: For a while, twenty-five years ago, ... More About: Psychology , Danger , Neuroscience
Life in Transition
2007-11-23 16:33:00 I’ve let the Easy Weekly go for a month or so for no good reason except that I’m going through some kind of change in focus. Now that Men Are Easy has been out for over 6 months, and after a weekend with some systems friends in Chicago and after a week immersing myself in ... More About: Life , Transition , Tran , Transit
Across the Universe
2007-10-26 07:10:00 My husband Rick/Dick and I saw Across the Universe at the movies the other night and I was struck with how very free–tortured, but free–those kids were. It was the 60s in the height of the drug years and escalaltion of the Vietnam War and the protests. They were struggling but they were struggling together. ... More About: Movies , Women , Marriage , Love
A Twenty-Something?s Dating Story
2007-10-18 10:01:00 A true story from a younger friend: I’ve been dating this guy for about 2 months, and it’s going well. But slow. The other night, we were both beat from the week and opted to do a low key dinner and see a movie. We had a really nice time, he’d picked up ... More About: Story , Dating , Twenty , Went , Some
Eat Pray Love and Oprah
2007-10-12 12:06:00 In the book Eat Pray Love , Elizabeth is nuts, crying on the bathroom floor for months, leaves her husband–the suburbs and babies just weren’t going to work for her–falls in and out of love on the rebound and then takes off (with a big fat book advance) for a year-long trip to find herself in ... More About: Oprah
Bottling Up to Keep the Peace Kills
2007-10-04 11:31:00 According to a NY Times article and a study on PubMed, women who “self-silence” during arguments significantly increase their risk for heart disease. Men don’t. They can suppress feelings and not suffer health effects at all. Maybe it’s because men “fight and fly” when stressed. We women “tend and befriend.” We need to talk and bond. ... More About: Peace
Remembering to HALT
2007-09-27 10:32:00 I ran into an artist friend of mine the other day, who reminded me of a very good tip from Alanon: When you’re losing it, when you snap at someone, or when life seems hopeless, remember to HALT — Stop and ask, “Am I Hungry, Angry, Lonely, or Tired? Maybe the problem isn’t your partner or your life. ... More About: Remembering , Erin
Tell Me You Love Me (Because I?m Angst-Ridden and Needy)
2007-09-20 10:40:00 I watched the first episode of this show twice. The first time, I called my husband in (”You’ve got to see this!”), and we had to replay the hand job scene (”Was that real?”). When I watched the show again, it wasn’t because it was so interesting to me, but because I was trying to ... More About: Love , Tell Me You Love Me , Tell Me
Real Romance
2007-09-13 10:20:00 Earlier this week, I ran across Stephan Miller’s blog post, “What To Do When You Forget What Romance Is” on the smartmarriage.com newsletter. He writes about how he’s sweating it, working nights and weekends, caring for the kids, never making enough, making the wrong moves. I love [my wife] and she loves me. We both ... More About: Real
How Can I Learn to Trust Him?
2007-09-06 09:39:00 I got this email a couple of days ago: Hi, just started reading your book and hoping to put it into practice. Recently got back with my husband after splitting up for about a year, he moved in with another woman & admitted to a previous affair when our daughter was only 1. Any ... More About: Trust , Learn
Are We Happy Yet? Part 1
2007-08-30 17:56:00 Martin Seligman’s happiness movement, “Positive Psychology,” is popping up everywhere: Learn to think positively and optimistically, and you will experience health.Of course, Dr. Seligman is absolutely right, and his ideas are wonderful: Consciously raising your mood opens your mind and expands your perspective to new possibilities. Creating health is an improvement over simply treating illness. You feel ... More About: Happy , Part
Life is Messy
2007-08-23 08:43:00 A post this week from Peggy, 26, who shares an apartment with my daughter and works at myspace.com I used to try to plan everything. Make lists. Following them the letter. Anticipate outcomes. Everything that we’re taught from childhood about dealing with our lives. In this manner, I toiled away at life, constantly worried I was making ... More About: Life , Mess
Middle School But Not Midlife Crisis Revisited
2007-08-22 17:57:00 Last week I got an email from David Ing asking if the incoherency of my last blog entry was due to the same jet lag that he was experiencing. We had just been in Tokyo for the annual International Society for the Systems Sciences meeting. I took a look at that entry again and he’s ... More About: School , Middle , Crisis , Midlife , Midlife crisis
Middle School and Midlife Crisis
2007-08-16 11:22:00 There are times in life when nothing seems right. Midlife or middle school, the “crisis” is the same. On Tuesday teacher and blogger Dan Brown in Huffington Post told why New York’s mayor is completely off track in his approach to middle school improvement: Rather than making school a nurturing and personal experience, kids, as early as ... More About: School , Middle , Crisis , Midlife crisis
When Life Sucks
2007-08-09 17:57:00 Sometimes nothing’s right. Work is wrong. Love is messed up or nonexistent. Life is not what it’s supposed to be. You might be in a college that you thought was right for you, finding that nothing is right anymore. You don’t know your major. You don’t know who you are anymore, and no one else does either. You ... More About: Sucks
Keep the Honeymoon Going
2007-08-02 09:12:00 Living in Hawaii, I see vacationing (read: honeymooning) couples all the time — at the beach, the drugstore, restaurants. While it used to surprise me, I’m now accustomed to seeing the same scenes play out over and over. Like this one: In the K-Mart check-out line, I see a 20-something tourist, undoubtedly a bride, nagging at ... More About: Honeymoon , Going , Goin
The Quarterlife Crisis and Ugly Coats
2007-07-26 07:29:00 Classic quarterlife, or any time of life, transition. You think life is one way. Then it isn’t. You shed the old. Go through a bit of chaos. Then emerge to a new level of “getting it.” I asked Peggy, who’s 26, to open Men Are Easy to any page and point. She emailed, “I got the ... More About: Coats , Ugly , Crisis , Isis , Quarterlife
Estrogen Drama - Part 2
2007-07-19 10:13:00 The RN in me smells a rat. As I was thinking and writing about estrogens, the NY Times published an Op-Ed piece on the same topic: Final Periods by Karen Houppert. Then yesterday, I saw an ad on TV: Beautiful, hip, intelligent-looking women, bouncing around to deceptively intelligent, reasonable, upbeat talk… “No need for periods. They ... More About: Drama , Part , Dram
Estrogen Drama - Part I
2007-07-12 07:27:00 For the past few weeks, I’ve been telling you all to “get curious,” and today, I’m taking a little of my own advice… I once took birth control pills for five days. I instantly turned into a bipolar, weeping wreck. Every few years thereafter, a new, lower-dose pill would come out, and, being the ... More About: Drama , Part , Dram
Cultural Difference: The Secret to Dating a Congolese Man and Staying Marri
2007-07-08 07:30:00 Yesterday a friend asked me if my book has anything in it about relationships with men of different cultures. She has been divorced for a few years and has recently begun dating a Congolese. Wow. That?s a cultural difference. What an interesting experience it must be! The question of the week: What are the secrets ... More About: Dating , The Secret , Secret , Arri , Stay
Marrying the Right Divorce Partner
2007-06-29 02:38:00 In his recent blog post Shawn has a new theory: You should marry the right divorce partner. He also said: “The important thing to consider is that love is an ideal thing and marriage is a real thing, and that the confusion of the real and the ideal, never goes unpunished.” Shawn’s right, but I’m going to ... More About: Divorce , Partner , Marry , Divo , Marrying
The Myth of Communication
2007-06-21 21:28:00 A few days ago, I met Joe, a good-looking, hard-working, heartbroken guy. He told me he was engaged and the wedding was supposed to be this month, but that his fiancé, Susan, had broken up with him. She said it was because he couldn’t “communicate.” Poor guy. Expressive, confused, and deeply upset, he ... More About: Communication , Comm , Myth
June Cleaver?s World
2007-06-01 20:16:00 Whenever I think about how difficult things are for people now, I remind myself of the past and how difficult it was then. This morning I woke up thinking about how our lives may not be perfect but I wouldn?t go back to my mother’s time for anything. Here?s what I came up with about ... More About: World , June
How To Attract Good Men
2007-05-25 20:35:00 Let’s face it, we’ve all been there, and we all know: When there’s chemistry, it just works. Of course, you want to maximize your chances?we all do! But doing so is all about you: When you get yourself together, chances are pretty good the right guy will come along. On that ... More About: Good , Trac
How to Get Help from a Man by Doing Nothing
More articles from this author:2007-05-15 17:06:00 More evidence that Men Are Easy works: My friend worked out of town through the weekend. Her husband was home, moping a bit that he hadn’t come with her. When she got home, there was no food in the house for people or dogs. Old scenario: “Why didn’t you go to the store? I’ve been working all weekend ... More About: Thing , Doing , A Man 1, 2, 3 |
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