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1.  You’re starting to feel like a telemarketer.

Is he anxious to end phone conversations right away?  If he’s talking to you, but not adding anything to the conversation it’s a sign he’s heading towards the finish line.

2.  He avoids talking about the future.

When next Thursday seems like too much of a commitment, it could be because he’s trying to extricate himself by Wednesday night.

3.  He says, “I need some space” or “I think we should see other people.”

Guys are famous for using “exit strategies.” By telling you he wants to see other people, he’s not technically breaking up with you (so no big crying scene to endure) but he’s given himself a way out. Of course, the second he gets a little distance, he’s going to make a run for it.

4. If he’s looking left, something’s not right.

According to Bill Raduenz, private investigator, a person who looks up into the air and to the left when he speaks to you is “not being truthful.”  The look left is an indication we’re using the “creative” side of our brains and a good indicator he’s telling you a whopper.

5. He gives you that little pat on the back.

Watch out for this one. A person who gives you a hug while patting you on the back is indicating that they are uneasy.  The “hand pat” on the back indicates someone is uncomfortable with what they’re doing. The bigger the pat, the more discomfort they feel.

6. You don’t like what you see in the mirror.

People mirror each other’s body language when they’re in love with similar gestures, voice volume, etc. If you’re noticing the two of you are out of sync, you probably are.

That’s not all. According to body language expert Patti Wood, a person who’s about to dump you will display a lack of open “windows” towards you. “Windows” being his heart, eyes, neck and palms. If your man turns his heart (the center of his chest) away from you as you’re talking to each other, it’s a big sign he’s not interested.

7.   You see the writing on the wall.

According to graphologist Karen Weinberg, QDE, a person who is thinking of ending a relationship will show clues in his handwriting. When writing the word “love” he may begin to drop down the letter “e.” Another sign to watch for is if your partner diminishes the size of your name (a sign of your importance to him.)

8. He used to be a three-blue-shirts-and-four-pair-of-Chinos kind of guy, and suddenly he’s obsessed with Armani.

According to Attorney Mel Frumkes, a person who is about to leave (or is cheating) will take greater care with his appearance – updating his wardrobe, losing weight, working out and even changing cologne. If your sweetie looks like he just finished taping an episode of “A Makeover Story” – Those Chinos might not be the only dud he’s looking to lose.

Lisa’s the author of Stop Getting Dumped! and Fifteen Minutes of Shame. She’s a syndicated relationships columnist, popular media guest, and dating expert for DAYTIME a syndicated morning television show.

What makes a man cheat?  The very same reason that disgruntled office workers steal paper clips and people pout at family reunions: lack of appreciation.

On recent Oprah show, Dr. M. Gary Neuman, the author of “The Truth About Cheating” who surveyed hundreds of cheating husbands to uncover the reason men stray, blew apart one of the common myths about infidelity when he reported that “92 percent of men said it wasn’t primarily about the sex.”

(Yes I know women cheat, but that’s not what the show was about)

Neuman said that, “The majority (of men cheaters) said it was an emotional disconnection, specifically a sense of feeling underappreciated.”

At which point every woman in the audience rolled her eyes and wanted to scream:

“HE feels unappreciated. You’ve got be kidding me. I cook, I clean, I work, I take care of the kids, I do practically everything around here and just because I don’t shower him with compliments for taking out the trash, he thinks he should cheat?”

The women were seething, and frankly I’m surprised Dr. Neuman made it out of the building alive. But in the spirit of don’t-shoot-the-messenger journalism, you have to give the good doctor some credit. After 20 years as a counselor seeing firsthand the devastation of divorce, he decided to “find out what we can do to save marriages and make them better.”

The trouble with his findings is that while the men felt unappreciated, so did their wives, and the last thing they wanted to hear was that they were the ones who should start being more grateful.

However, as much as I empathized with the angry mob of women – I mean really who has time to stroke your man’s ego 24/7 when there’s laundry to be done – I also felt a twinge of guilt as I watched every man in the audience nod his head in recognition as Dr. Neuman, said, “The main thing that they (the cheaters) felt they were getting outside the home that they were sorely missing at home was appreciation.”

Dr. Neuman (who for the record says there is no excuse for cheating) reported that the men were “looking for somebody to build them up to make them feel valued.”

Thus is the catch-22 of marriage. We can’t appreciate them until they start appreciating us.

But isn’t it the same quagmire we face many relationships? Bosses withhold praise because they don’t feel like their employees are treating them with enough respect. Cubicle dwellers pilfer paper products because they don’t think anyone understands how hard their jobs are. And feuding family members pout and whine about who has it tougher and why the person who makes homemade deviled eggs for the reunion should get more recognition than the lazy cousin who showed up with a half eaten bucket of chicken from KFC.

But you don’t have to be an Einsten to see that holding back your praise until you get some from the other guy, just adds up to a big circle of nothing.

I have no idea what to do if your spouse cheats, although murder comes to mind. But I do know that going through life feeling unloved and appreciated is no way to live.

We all deserve to be told how wonderful we are.

So let’s make a deal, let’s all start expressing gratitude even if we’re not getting any.

You go first.

 

Lisa Earle McLeod is a syndicated columnist, author, keynote speaker and business consultant who specializes in helping individuals and organizations create happiness and success. Her latest book is Finding Grace When You Can’t Even Find Clean Underwear – For more info – www.ForgetPerfect.com

Grant now believes his black ass has special powers, and I would never have believed him except for yesterday. But before I tell you what happened, and by the way I cannot wait to tell you what happened, I have to explain that Grant has been saying lately that things happen to him, special things, when he’s wearing his black ass, as opposed to when he’s wearing the white one, even though he bought both from the same online fake padded-ass purveyor.

“Why would your black ass be magic and the white one not be?” I asked.

“I don’t question the magic,” he said. “I just sit back and let it happen.”

But Grant’s definition of magic must be a lot more sweeping than mine, because I don’t exactly consider it magical the fact that he makes more bartending tips when he’s wearing his black padded ass instead of the white one or none at all, and the fact remains that he almost always wears the black one. He simply prefers it – especially now that he thinks it’s magical — so if special things are going to happen the odds are better of them happening during black-ass time.

And let me take a minute to say, also, that you cannot even tell Grant is wearing a padded ass unless he yanks it up past his waistband to show you. In fact, if you ask me Grant would have to wear fifty pairs of those padded underwear for them to have any effect, because Grant’s natural ass is not just flat, it’s concaved.

But maybe Grant is just trying to take it slowly, the building of his ass, maybe he doesn’t want to burst on the scene with a butt where up until recently there was none at all. Who knows, there might need to be some sort of acclimation process. I’m reminded of the passengers on the international flights I used to work, and how they’d plug their ears and pop a handful of Valium to ensure they experienced as little of the journey as possible, so when they arrived they were not prepared. This is opposed to back in the day when people traveled by camelback to the horn of Africa and whatnot. They couldn’t help going from one place to the other without acclimating to the people they encountered along the way.

Anyway, Grant and I are in Beverly Hills, an occasion to which Grant credits the power of his black ass. I personally credit our visit with the fact that I wrote a book and the film rights got optioned and it was, like, hard work and shit, but whatever. We had a meeting at the Polo Lounge in the Beverly Hills Hotel, which is a super nice place that evidently, and surprisingly, has no door policy or discrimination process at all, because they let Grant wade on in wearing faded Vans, frayed cutoffs, a T-shirt that said, “Smile You Empty Soul,” and a trucker hat emblazoned with a picture of him wearing a trucker hat emblazoned with a picture of him. He was also carrying a plastic bag from the 99-cent store.

We had not gotten two steps past the hostess podium when Grant whispered to me, “George Clooney.” And that was all he said, but then that is all he had to say. And I heard Grant say the magic words, I heard him say “George Clooney,” but I could not turn around just then on account of how, you know, the perfection of the man’s visage might cremate my corneas and whatnot. But Grant was wearing his padded black ass, and special things happen, he said so himself, so Grant pushed me on toward Mr. George goddam fucking Clooney, who had gotten up from his table to greet us — okay, not us in general, but our friend Laura in particular, who was with us, so that counts — and Laura like, introduced me to George goddam fucking Clooney, said my name that actually went into his ears and triggered his synapses and everything, and, I swear this is true, GEORGE CLOONEY KISSED ME!!!!!! GEORGE CLOONEY KISSED ME I SWEAR HE DID YOU CAN ASK GRANT HE WAS THERE GEORGE CLOONEY KISSED ME ON MY RIGHT CHEEK I HAVE GEORGE CLOONEY DNA ON MY CHEEK HE KISSED ME ON MY CHEEK KISSED ME KISSED ME KISSED ME.

And right there I was reminded of the passengers I used to serve on the international flights again. Because here Grant and I were, somehow having arrived at the Beverly Hills Hotel, somehow the guests of one movie star and thereby privy to this conversation with another – Grant with his magic black ass and me with my corneas set to cremate, and it occurred to me I missed the acclimation process. I am unprepared. Then George goddam fucking Clooney said goodbye and kissed me AGAIN! I SWEAR IT HAPPENED ASK GRANT GEORGE CLOONEY KISSED ME AGAIN HE KISSED ME TWICE TWO TIMES I MADE OUT WITH GEORGE CLOONEY! THAT’S RIGHT GEORGE CLOONEY KISSED ME TWICE THAT’S PRACTICALLY MAKING OUT WHICH IN THE BIBLE BELT MEANS WE HAD SEX YES I HAD SEX WITH GEORGE CLOONEY SEX WITH GEORGE CLOONEY SEX WITH GEORGE CLOONEY!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hollis Gillespie is a best-selling author and the venerated back-page columnist for Atlanta magazine. She is also a radio commentator for NPR’s All Things Considered and a regular guest on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno (if you consider the one time to be regular). Her third book, Trailer Trashed; My Dubious Attempts at Upward Mobility was recently released and her previous two books have been optioned for television and are currently in pre-production. She also hosts a popular monthly memoir-writing seminar titled Shocking Real-Life with Hollis Gillespie: www.hollisgillespie.com

If you make a living selling skinny you’ll get a killing packing pounds.

In the sex makeover series, The Sex Inspectors, we ran into a lot of women who couldn’t (or wouldn’t) have sex because they felt so badly about their bodies.  One would only do it with the lights out.  Another would only do it in the missionary position–so her boyfriend couldn’t get a full view of her body.

It goes without saying that these women, like Jessica Simpson, were not fat.

My advice was simple:   Move.   Be  more active when you’re making love.   Become a vehicle for pleasure rather than an object to be looked at.  It takes your mind away from how you’re looking to what you’re doing.

It’s advice that Jessica Simpson could use… if she could do anything other than being an object to look at.  And that’s the real problem with the Simpson Saga.  It isn’t about her weight on the scale, it’s her weightlessness on the stage.  She doesn’t have the ability to do anything except get people to look at her.

I know I’m supposed to feel bad that she broke down at a concert, forgot the words and almost walked off the stage, but I can’t.  I have no empathy for people who use their looks and ONLY their looks to get ahead.  If you forget the lyrics (which singer hasn’t?) then you FIGURE OUT a way to keep going.  If you’re sometimes too sad to perform (which singer isn’t?) you do it anyway.   Sandra Bernhard once told me in an interview that the mark of talent is to face all these obstacles and put on a good show.  That it’s talent that carries you over the finish line, not your body.

There are other women who’ve been unfairly attacked (and it’s ALWAYS unfair) about their weight.  But they got through it because their talent prevailed.   Oprah’s yo-yo dieting, Jamie Lee Curtis’ insistence on being photographed without being photoshopped, Kate Winslet’s trashing of a magazine for cropping her thighs--these are women who fought back and flourished because they relied on something other than their bodies to make their mark.

Which brings us to Jess. If you make a living selling skinny you’ll get a killing  packing pounds.  You can’t spend an entire career impressing people with your body and then get upset because you’re well, impressing them with your body.   What, we’re supposed to slobber over the  tits-on-a-stick look and then pretend not to notice when the stick catches up with the tits?

I want to feel sorry for her, I really do.  I have sisters and girlfriends and nieces who struggle against the myth that their worth is inversely proportionate to their weight.  Body shame is so pervasive it leaves almost no woman untouched.  When Kinsey worked on his famous study he found that women felt more embarrassed when he asked them about their weight than when he asked them about their masturbation practices or if they had lesbian experiences.  And that was in 1953!

I believe that what works in the bedroom will work outside of it. If you don’t want to be judged strictly by your body place the attention outside of it.  Be a vehicle for pleasure not an object to be looked at.  If Jessica wants the attention off her body she’s gotta get it onto her talent.  And that’s the rub.   Take a look at this collection of “Before & After” pictures of Jessica Simpson and ask yourself: “Can I think of one movie, one song, one video, one anything (vehicle for pleasure) that could take my mind off the startling difference in her body (object to be looked at)?”

If this were Oprah, Kate  or Jamie, the answer would be yes.

In the sex makeover series, The Sex Inspectors, we ran into a lot of women who couldn’t (or wouldn’t) have sex because they felt so badly about their bodies. One would only do it with the lights out. Another would only do it in the missionary position–so her boyfriend couldn’t get a full view of her body.

It goes without saying that these women, like Jessica Simpson, were not fat.

My advice was simple: Click here

 

He’s 18, posed as a girl on Facebook, got guys to

send him nude pics, then blackmailed them into sex.   Wow.

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Special from guest blogger Mark S. King

We have a winner, ladies and gentlemen, for the Most Resourceful Internet Predator of 2009 (first quarter, mind you!).  As sure as Heath Ledger’s name will be announced on Oscar night, 18-year-old Anthony Stand’s name will be announced at the Internet’s 2009 Predator of the Year award.

According to police reports (click here for news story), Anthony posed as a girl online on the popular social networking site Facebook, and then  sweet talked his way into convincing other young men to send naked photos and videos of themselves au fragrant.  Ever ambitious, Anthony didn’t stop there.  His fake online creation then instructed the impassioned targets to meet “her” male friend Anthony for sexual services, else “she” would expose their incriminating files to the world on the internet.  More than a dozen complied, which is quite a haul for a deceitful Casanova in his first year of legal age.

My mind boggles with a confusing mixture of alarm, envy and adoring admiration.  Never mind that the internet is synonymous with “fake,” “hoax,” and “click here to earn thousands through a non-existent beta test.”  These guys sent explicit pictures to an unverified source!

It is me, or are pictures of our private junk as casually traded as baseball cards and hacking coughs?  Twenty years ago, I let a guy take naughty pictures of me. For weeks I was fraught with anxiety – what would become of them?  Who might see them?  After a tearful freak-out the photographer turned over the prints and negatives, which I smuggled home under the spare tire in my trunk and then chopped them up into bitty pieces and burned them in my fireplace under a watchful eye.

Today, you better have shirtless pics in your profile, but even that may not warrant a date without private pictures at the ready that expose regions never meant for a Polaroid camera or a bright, unforgiving flash.

But Anthony the Great did it all without subjecting himself to pictorial exposure.  I figured I had foiled the efforts of fakes like him when I discovered web cam sites, where you interact live with others through their cam. 

There I would sit, naked and happily engaging in my favorite pastime with Rolf from Berlin, say, until it occurred to me that clever hacks could upload continuous video loops of another naked man to replace their actual camming selves. (“Why is Rolf scratching that same spot on his thigh in the same way every fifty seconds or so,” I would muse as I beamed my naked noodle to Berlin.  “Oh. My. God!”).

Less surprising is Anthony’s talent for inhabiting the persona of a straight guy’s dreamboat.  Just make her slutty and willing to accommodate his every adolescent desire.  Don’t for a minute doubt the ability of a gay man to appeal, however anonymously, to a straight dude’s baser instincts.  We are your unfettered sexual underbelly, my brothers.

And we know you like the palm of your hand.

Author Mark S. King’s latest video blog addresses the death of his sex pig lifestyle.  He says he really means it this time.

For more about Mark click here.[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]

Try mouthwashes that neutralize odor-causing Volatile Sulfur Compounds (VSC).  They’re hard to find.  Try sites like www.dentist.net. 

From a reader:  

My paint-peeling breath is seriously affecting my sex life.  I brush, floss, use mouthwashes, and pop Altoids but nothing works.  My chances with people go from Game On to Game Over in one exhalation.  Help! 

 

—  Wilt

 

Dear Wilt:

I know what you mean.  At one point, my breath was so bad my dentist would only treat me over the phone.  Fortunately, he introduced me to special mouthwashes that neutralize odor-causing Volatile Sulfur Compounds (VSC).  They’re hard to find so check with your dentist or sites like www.dentist.net.  Make sure they contain chlorine dioxide, zinc ion or sodium chlorite.   They’ll do to VSC what you’re breath does to your hookups:  Make them wish they’d never gone home with you. 

Gargle with the mouthwash and make that “aaaaahh” sound — it extends your tongue, letting the rinse cover hard-to-reach places where VSC like to hide.  Next, scrape your tongue like there’s a hottie’s phone number under it.  Tongues trap millions of microscopic food particles that eventually become VSC. 

Also, lose the Altoids.  They don’t stimulate the body’s most effective weapon against bad breath:  Saliva.  Try hard candy, instead.  Better yet, sugarless gum.  Epic may be your best bet since it has the heaviest concentration of xylitol, a sugar substitute known for saliva production.  Or Big Red.  Recent studies show cinnamon has an ingredient that decreases bacteria in the mouth.  By the way, there’s a reason your morning breath makes your dates lose their short-term memory:  Sleep dramatically slows down saliva production.

One more suggestion:  Water.  You remember water?  It’s a mixer for whiskey.  It flushes out bacteria so drink lots of it (the water, not whiskey).  Finally, don’t forget to brush, floss, scrape, rinse and drink *daily* or you’ll go back to starting forest fires every time you sigh.