TresSugar

Group Therapy: How Do I Deal With My Friend's Annoying Habit?

Mon, 16 Mar 2009 04:00:00 -0700

One of my best friends has a very sensitive constitution - if her stomach isn't upset, she's got a cold, or the shingles, or the flu - you name it, she has it. She's one of those people who will tell you exactly how she's really feeling when you simply say, "Hi, how are you?"

Her latest thing is that she's been diagnosed with IBS, which explains her multitude of stomach problems and food sensitivities. Today I met her and a couple of other girls for lunch. We were discussing what to eat and she went on to say, "I was thinking of the pasta, but then I'd probably have diarrhea later today because of the wheat." I've learned to just tune her out, but after she left, one of the girls proceeded to tell me how annoying her constant need to complain is. I know she doesn't mean to do it and I want to help her out, but how do I tell her nicely to stop bringing up all her ailments? I don't want to offend her (she's pretty sensitive), but sometimes it's just overkill and I feel like it's my duty as her friend to tell her that she's starting to annoy people. Is it worth saying something or should I just leave her alone?

[EDITOR'S NOTE: To read more GROUP THERAPY, click here or submit your own question here.]

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Relationship Protocol: Have You Picked Up Any Bad Habits From Your Significant Other?

DearSugar — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 12:48:38 -0700

I'm a creature of habit, but the older I get, the more I realize how many habits of mine have been adopted from past boyfriends. Cracking my neck, the way I butter my corn, and having to close every closet door before going to bed are just a few. I think it's only natural to pick up such tendencies, but once you start to pick up the bad ones, it can be hard to let them go. Of course, bad habits are all a matter of opinion but tell me, have you picked up any from your significant other? If so, tell us about them below.

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Group Therapy: How Can I Break My Friend's Bad Habit?

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 03:00:00 -0700

I have a good guy friend I've known for eight years. He's single and intelligent (albeit a bit cocky and conceited). We have some mutual friends, so I invite him to all kinds of events - happy hours, picnics, parties, etc. He's always excited to attend, but then without fail calls me at the last minute to say he's "not sure" if he's coming.

He usually ends up showing up anyway and having a good time. In fact, I think he calls at the last minute just so I'll convince him to come, almost as if he needs to feel like he's wanted - this conflicts with his cocky attitude.
Honestly I don't care if he's there either way. I host a lot of these events so I'm usually too busy to worry about him, but this pattern is getting on my nerves. I just don't understand why he does this. How can I break him of this habit? I've tried not answering my phone but then he calls repeatedly and leaves me messages telling me not to ignore him. Any ideas?

[EDITOR'S NOTE: To be involved in more GROUP THERAPY, click here]

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Grab Bag: Are Rom-Coms Bad For You?

TresSugar — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 12:00:00 -0700

4 bad dating habits learned from rom-coms. - Your Tango
Help! My sister's fiance confessed he wants me. - Lemondrop
Beautiful women with not-so-beautiful men. - The Frisky
Are men hardwired to cheat? - Em & Lo
What might fix the WNBA. - Double X
Pageant mom puts 8-year-old daughter on a crash diet. - Jezebel
5 ways the crappy economy has ruined our dating lives. - Glamour

Say What? Media Leader Says Women Are Better Managers

TresSugar — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 15:25:02 -0700

"In my experience, female bosses tend to be better managers, better advisers, mentors, rational thinkers. Men love to hear themselves talk. I’m so generalizing . . . Men . . . they’re definitely better on the 'whatever' side. Things tend to roll off their back. We women take things very personally . . . And I’m certainly not immune to this. So there’s a downside to women."

- Carol Smith, senior vice president and chief brand officer for the Elle Group, on why she thinks women are better managers and what bad habit women need to work on.

Do You Fight Fair?

TresSugar — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 11:00:00 -0700

Every couple faces that moment when the fairy dust of romance settles, they're in a relationship - and a conflict triggers their first fight. How a couple fights (or if they fight at all) can determine whether or not they will have a healthy and enduring relationship.

The word "fight" has such negative connotations, but in every relationship, disagreements will come up that need to be negotiated and resolved. Studies have even shown that the couple that fights together, stays together. Avoiding conflict, after all, will only create built-up resentment and unhappiness.

The relationship site Longevity has great tips on fighting fair. They include the following no-no's: name calling or hitting below the belt, excavating past grievances, dragging others into the fight, or wandering away from the subject.

We learn how to fight from watching how our parents resolved conflicts, and for some people, that means unlearning bad habits. Do you fight fair?

Ask a Southern Belle: Am I Paranoid or Is He Cheating on Me?

TresSugar — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 06:00:00 -0700

Conventional Wisdom is a different kind of advice column. Your questions will be answered by people from all walks of life rather than by advice experts. To help Sick Sommer who isn't sure if she's paranoid or if her boyfriend really is cheating on her, a Southern Belle will offer her common sense advice today. You can submit questions here.

Today's Question:

I have been in a relationship with this guy for three-and-a-half years. For the most part, our relationship has been pretty good. However, over the past five or six months, I have developed a fear of him cheating on me. Ironically, I never had this feeling at any earlier time in our relationship.

I have come to believe that the reason I have developed this fear is because a couple of times over the past few months, I have caught him lying to me about drinking with his guy friends and dipping (two things that he knows I don't approve of). He told me that the reason he lied about those things is because he didn't want me to be upset with him. Since he lied to me about those things, I feel like he might be lying to me about cheating.

Fortunately, he has never given me any reason to think that he is cheating, and he tells me all the time that he loves me so much and that I am the person he wants to spend the rest of his life with. Even though he tells me all of these sweet things, I still don't trust him and I often accuse him of going behind my back with other girls. He reassures me he would never do that and often becomes very upset that I would think he would hurt me like that. It seems like all day, every day, I constantly think about what he is doing, who he is with, etc. I have literally made myself sick from worrying so much and I am afraid it is going to cost me my health and relationship. I don't know what to do!

- Sick Sommer

To hear what advice a Southern Belle has to give, read more

Dear Sick Sommer:

Well bless your heart!

When I was a young woman, I heard a story about a little girl walking toward a bridge. She encountered a snake who asked for her help in crossing the river. The girl demurred, saying, “You are a snake; you will bite me.” The snake told a sad story about being misunderstood and promised to do no harm. The trusting girl picked up the snake and carried him across the bridge, whereupon he bit her. She cried out, “You promised you would not hurt me! Why? Why?” As the snake slithered away, he said, “You knew what I was when you picked me up.”

In light of this little tale, ask yourself a couple of questions. Have you had this fear of being cheated on with other boyfriends? If so, perhaps you are sabotaging this relationship with your accusations. Or, have you picked other guys whose bad habits you immediately tried to fix? Why, after three-and-a-half years, do you not have trust in this man?

People, as snakes, rarely change, no matter how much their partners want it. The question of trust may only be in your mind, but if you cannot trust this guy after three-and-a-half years and he is still doing things of which you do not approve, one of you might want to slither away.

Signed,

A Southern Belle

Smart B*tches, Trashy Books Unravel Romance Novels

TresSugar — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 11:00:00 -0700

Sarah Wendell and Candy Tan have helped romance readers discern the good smut from the bad for years with their blog Smart B*tches, Trashy Books. And now with their book Beyond Heaving Bosoms: The Smart Bitches’ Guide to Romance Novels, they offer a guide through the heady world of the $5.99 novel and defend it with wit and intelligence.

So we asked these two smart readers about romance novels, and oh how they talked. So much, that we're breaking all their thoughtful answers into a five-part series. What's up first? Who reads these glossy books?

One out of five people read romance novels - who are these people?

Sarah: The truth is, behind the stereotypes, smart, savvy women read romance. It's a 60+-year-old industry of women operating independent businesses writing books consumed by an audience of women who spend $1.7 billion dollars a year. Two romance readers may have absolutely nothing in common except for the books they read, because romance readers are an incredibly diverse audience - no group of readers that supports a billion-dollar industry can be homogeneous. We're found across all ages, education levels, income levels, geographic locations and reading habits - and we all love romance novels.

Candy: The demographics for romance novel readers are all over the place, though there are strong trends. They overwhelmingly tend to be women, for example. They also tend to be voracious readers, period, and to be more highly-educated than the population at large. Other than that, it's hard to generalize.

You say, actually five out of five people read romance novels, what are some romances in disguise we've probably read? To see their answers, read more.

Sarah: Every fictional narrative contains a romance element. Where would Bond be without the sexual tension? What horror thriller in general doesn't contain the romantic suspense to support the plot? Romance is one of the oldest narrative traditions, so it's everywhere.

There are few readers more diverse in their tastes than the women and men who read my site, so I asked them. From the readers of Smart B*tches, here are romances you might not have recognized:

Lois McMaster Bujold's books, like the Miles Vorkosigan series, especially A Civil Campaign; Patricia Gaffney's Mad Dash; Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series; William Brinkley's The Last Ship; Jean Auel's Earth's Children series; many of Philippa Gregory's historical novels; Lauren Willig's Pink Carnation series; and many of the novels you read in English class, including, and especially, Jane Austen - Pride and Prejudice is one of the best romances ever written.

Candy: Sarah's right about romance being an element to a lot of fiction and storytelling, but the modern romance genre is its own beast with a long, tangled past. If you've read Jane Eyre or Pride and Prejudice, you've read books that would qualify as romances if published today. A lot of the sturm und drang (storm and stress) of certain romance subgenres owe a debt to books like Wuthering Heights, for example.

Here's the thing: the plot set-up and conflict dictates the genre the book's most likely to be slapped with. Speculation involving science and technology? Sci-fi. Mystery or conundrum that needs to be solved? Mystery. Mystical other worlds involving magic? Fantasy., etc. And there's considerable bleed-through among the different genres: it's perfectly possible for a book to be both a science-fiction novel and a murder mystery. But what drives the emotional conflict? If it's romantic love, odds are high you're reading a romance novel. Sharon Shinn and Catherine Asaro have written plenty of novels in which the central driving emotional conflict was a romantic entanglement, even though the plot setting was science fiction.

Stay tuned tomorrow to read about what romance novels tell us about women, relationships, society.

Mindfulness: It's Not Just For Spiritual Woo-Woo Types

TresSugar — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 08:30:00 -0700

Imagine taking a morsel of food, say, an almond, and savoring it very carefully, giving it your full attention. If someone told you that doing everything you can with that kind of attention would help reduce your stress level at work, relieve bodily symptoms like back pain, and keep you from bad habits like smoking, you might think they were nuts.

Yet that’s exactly what the practice of mindfulness does say practitioners like Buddhists, and increasingly, there’s clinical research to back it up.

What is mindfulness? It’s the act of being aware of the moment - of what you’re thinking and feeling, both emotionally and physically, from one moment to the next. There can be a spiritual component, but anyone, regardless of their religion, can benefit.

Awareness of the moment is supposed to move us away from both regret for the past and anxiety about the future. And in addition to those thoughts that often cloud our mind, throw in a job full of emails, ringing phones and irritating co-workers and the modern person’s stress levels are sky high. To hear about a study proving its effectiveness in reducing stress, read more

When stressed-out historian and former professor Lillian Waugh at West Virginia University was invited to participate in a study on mindfulness, she was part of the group that was taught techniques to cultivate it - yoga poses, breathing methods and stretches. Waugh's group improved in ways that the other group, who were only handed informational pamphlets on stress, did not. Her group had significantly fewer daily hassles, psychological distress and significantly fewer medical symptoms as a result.

"We taught them how to recognize sources of stress, how stress impacts them, and then what they could do to come out of the vicious cycle of stress reactivity," says lead researcher Kimberly Williams.

I’ve practiced meditation pretty regularly for about year, and although I can still be a stress case, thanks to that simple idea - just to pay attention to the moment without panic - I can get myself out of almost any overwhelming moment if I remember what to do. Just because something is simple, however, doesn’t mean it’s easy. But if practicing mindfulness techniques can relieve all those stress symptoms, it’s definitely better than lighting up, drinking or freaking out.

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Study Reveals Shopping Linked to Periods - Who Cares?

CitizenSugar — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 11:30:03 -0700

A lot of times research studies reveal conclusions that make me say duh. Did you know science proves that men remember the bodies of women clad in bikinis better than those of fully clothed women?

Today the British Psychological Society revealed that in the 10 days before their periods, women are more likely to go on a spending spree. The revelation that women make hormone-induced bad decisions has me thinking: can some "studies" double as useless and detrimental to society?

The study, which surveyed women about their spending habits, concluded that women were more likely to buy on an impulse during the later stages of their menstrual cycle, thanks to a reaction to intense emotions and hormonal changes. More than half overspent by about $50.

Do you need a study to tell you to put the credit card back in your wallet? You don't really want that new pair of shoes, you're just being hormonal! Is this study eye-opening or does it simply further a stereotype?

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