Man Vs Date

Here’s a fun fact to share at parties this weekend: The shape of a woman’s lips may predict the likelihood of her having an orgasm. (Seriously.)

Stuart Brody, a psychology professor at the University of the West of Scotland, is famous among researchers of sexual behavior for some of his studies, like ones linking a woman’s finger sensitivity to partnered sex behavior, and most especially a 2008 doozy that linked a woman’s gait — “fluid, graceful,” “free of blocked or distorted pelvic rotation” — with a greater chance of having so-called vaginal orgasms. In other words, he said, you can tell a lot about a woman by the way she walks.

Now, in a paper published last week by the Journal of Sexual Medicine, and called “Vaginal Orgasm Is More Prevalent Among Women with a Prominent Tubercle of the Upper Lip,” Brody has come out with another marker for female orgasm; the little spot just at the midline of the upper lip. Called the tubercle, it poofs out a little more in some people than in others. (Brody stresses he’s not referring to puffy Angelina Jolie lips, just to that one tiny spot.)

According to the results of an online survey featuring 258 mainly Scottish women with a mean age of 27 years, having a prominent tubercle means a woman has a greater chance of ever having had a vaginal orgasm.

A note to single dudes: If you’re looking to pick up a woman at a bar, whatever you do — don’t smile at her.

Women are actually less sexually attracted to smiley, happy men, suggests a new University of British Columbia study, published online today in the journal Emotion. If that’s surprising to you — it was surprising to lead researcher Jessica Tracy, too. “I wouldn’t have believed it if we didn’t go out and replicate it three times,” says Tracy, an assistant psychology professor at UBC.

Researchers asked more than 1,000 volunteers to rate the sexual attractiveness of hundreds of images of the opposite sex. (All were heterosexual, ages 17 to 49 years, with a median age of 21. Fifty-two percent of participants were Asian, and 48 percent were Caucasian.) In the images, the men and women pictured were demonstrating one of three emotions: happiness, pride or shame — plus a “neutral” image thrown in there, too. They found that women ranked the smiling guys as less attractive — but they were into the prideful and ashamed men. But the male participants were most attracted to the smiling women, and least attracted to the ones who seemed proud.

More research is needed to determine why this might be, but Tracy has a few hunches. Past research has shown that smiling increases perception of femininity, so that might be one reason smiles worked on women, but not on men. Also, “smiling indicates availability, or interest. For men, that’s a really important thing to know about a woman, so it makes sense that men would find smiling really attractive,” Tracy says. “For women, that’s not as important. There’s the general assumption that men are more generally receptive.”

Here’s a study on circumcision that got my attention right away. The subject is the effect of male circumcision on women’s sexual enjoyment. This article comes to us from the BJU International,a British urological publication.

This is the first study to look at what women said in comparing sexual experiences with sexual partners who were circumcised versus intact sexual partners.

Researchers recruited women through magazine ads and an anti-circumcision publication and sent the women respondents 40 written survey questions.

The 139 women respondents were overwhelming in favor of sex with intact partners.

With circumcised partners, women were less likely to have a vaginal orgasm or multiple orgasms and were more likely to experience sexual discomfort, the report says. “During prolonged intercourse with their circumcised partners, women were less likely to ?really get into it? and more likely to ?want to get it over with,?” the authors, Drs. K. O’Hara and J. O’Hara, report.

The authors continue, “respondents overwhelmingly concurred that the mechanics of coitus were different for the two groups…73 percent [of the women] reported that circumcised men tended to thrust harder and deeper, using elongated strokes, while unaltered men thrust more gently, to have shorter thrusts and tended to be in contact with the mons pubis and the clitoris more.”

Was traffic really that bad, or did he just leave late (again)? Did her phone battery truly die, or did she forget to call? And do you actually look as fat in those pants as you suspected?

Overly suspicious people, meet R. Edward Geiselman. He’s a professor of psychology at UCLA — and he’s spent the last several years studying the best ways to catch a liar. Geiselman and three former UCLA undergrads believe that — after analyzing 60 studies on detecting deceit and conducting their own research — they’ve pinpointed the best ways to catch even the most fabulous of fabulists.

Their findings were published this week in the American Journal of Forensic Psychiatry. Geiselman’s work is tailored for law enforcement officers, but “anyone … could use our techniques,” he says. We spoke to the human lie detector about the best ways to spot the liars in your life. (Geiselman would like us to note here that these are all simply red flags, not surefire indicators that someone isn’t telling the truth.)

Wedding season is upon us, and while it may be too late for this summer’s brides and grooms to trim their wedding budgets too severely, there is still time for next year’s couples to start thinking about ways to spend less while still having a storybook ceremony.

Over at SmartMoney.com, they spoke to wedding expert Anja Winnika from The Knot to put together a list of 10 ways to save money on your wedding. The full video is below, but here are some highlights:

You hear it all the time: “He was such a NICE Guy, and she’s such a Heartless Bitch for dumping him.”

I get letters from self-professed Nice Guys, complaining that women must WANT to be treated like shit, because THEY, the “Nice Guy” have failed repeatedly in relationships. This is akin to the false logic that “Whales are mammals. Whales live in the sea. Therefore, all mammals live in the sea.”

If you have one bad relationship after another, the only common denominator is YOU. Think about it.

What’s wrong with Nice Guys? The biggest problem is that most Nice Guys ™ are hideously insecure. They are so anxious to be liked and loved that they do things for other people to gain acceptance and attention, rather than for the simply pleasure of giving. You never know if a Nice Guy really likes you for who you are, or if he has glommed onto you out of desperation because you actually paid some kind of attention to him.

Nice Guys exude insecurity — a big red target for the predators of the world. There are women out there who are “users” — just looking for a sucker to take advantage of. Users home-in on “Nice Guys”, stroke their egos, take them for a ride, add a notch to their belts, and move on. It’s no wonder so many Nice Guys complain about women being horrible, when the so often the kind of woman that gets attracted to them is the lowest form of life…

Self-confident, caring, decent-hearted women find “Nice Guys” to be too clingy, self-abasing, and insecure.

If you have any semblance of common sense, you know how to make a reservation at the best restaurant for a nice, romantic meal with your honey. It can be a place on the water, or a perfect corner table at a trendy bistro or classic Italian restaurant. You also might know how to call for the perfect takeout, knowing what her favorite meal is. But to really impress her, you have to know how to cook the meal yourself. And guys, if you learn how to cook one complete meal, make this one it. Now, I don’t mean “this” as in a specific meal I’m going to tell you about or show you how to make. Instead, I mean one meal that you learn how to make that suits your abilities and her taste in food. Also make sure that if you’re this much of a novice, that you change up the meal for each lady you’re entertaining. But hopefully if you took the time to do something romantic, you’re thinking of her as more than a one-night stand.

So let’s see. Most guys are not real organized, and even if you are, you might find it difficult to juggle having her over, cooking the meal and paying enough attention to her. And let me tell you right now, this is all about her and making her feel special. If you keep that mindset, you can’t really screw up, right? Right? Anyway, the key to being sure you can pay attention to her is to do as much in advance as possible. So that means planning your menu, going shopping for food and some good wine, and then prepping what can be prepped ahead of time the day before or morning of your meal.

One of the easiest and sexiest things to make is pasta, and in a column on Bullz-Eye’s Grub for Guys a few years ago I outlined making a bistro-quality tomato and basil pasta that I believe is the perfect romantic entrée. I also included a quiche recipe that a guy shouldn’t be embarrassed to make, and that could either make for a nice appetizer or (if you’re feeling frisky and confident) breakfast the next morning. But here are some other ideas:

It’s part of our natural endowment to be attracted to the beauty around us. But even thinking seriously about having an affair can bring stormy weather into a smooth sailing, loving marriage—especially when a couple has been together for some time. Having an affair more often than not shipwrecks the love boat. If affairs do so much harm, why are they so popular? Here are six instances that can trigger an affair and how you can relinquish the urge to carry one out.

1. Romance Fades: There is nothing more exciting than the promise of a new love. Poets wax eloquently; the music on the screen makes your heart beat faster as the new lovers approach one other. You dream the best about this wonderful person who miraculously has been brought into your life. In marriage, excitement fades with familiarity, and unless you learn how to transfer it into true love it’s difficult to keep the romance going in your marriage. To keep romance vibrant, plan a regular date night together and be on the lookout for new activities to embark on together. Romance can be a healthy addiction when you discover how to keep it in the family.

2. Addiction to Beauty: What do you do when the person you love wrinkles and that flaming red hair that pulled you in like a tractor beam turns to a dull gray? There is an answer if you dig deeper into the treasure chest of your relationship. Pull out old pictures, look deep inside of what attracted you to that person and find the inner and outer beauty you feel in love with.

Anyone who’s single and dating knows it’s a numbers game. All it takes is one person to set you on the path toward happily ever after – or to give you another dating nightmare story.

But how many dates do you have to go on to find “the one”? And how do you know for sure that once you do meet Mr. or Ms. Right, a more attractive, more compatible prospect won’t pop up right around the corner?

Science can help us streamline the process. Cognitive science all-stars Peter Todd, Ph.D., of Indiana University in Bloomington, and Geoffrey Miller, Ph.D., of the University of New Mexico, used advanced computer simulations to determine the best approach to find lasting love.

Todd and Miller applied a well-known system of hypothetical decision-making called the “secretary problem” to dating. In this situation, a person must pick the best secretary from a group of applicants who appear in random order, drawn from a pool whose quality is not known. Once rejected, applicants cannot be recalled. It’s all about moving forward and making smart choices.

Todd and Miller found that the solution to the secretary problem – and potentially your dating problem – requires sampling a certain proportion of people, remembering the best of them, and then picking the next person who is even better.

Everything’s going great, and all of a sudden, the energy changes.

How many times have you gone out on a first date? You like the woman. Everything’s going great, and all of a sudden, the energy changes. It feels like she’s been deflated. She tells you she’s tired, and the next thing you know, you’re driving her home in silence. And you wonder what happened.

Why Her Mood Changed

You kept wondering what you did wrong. On the drive home, you actually call a friend up, and you give him a recap of the date. And then you put to him a question that he will never be able to answer. At this point, you’re making your friend become what I call a “dating speculator.” You want your friend to speculate on what happened; you want him to tell you why this woman’s energychanged at that moment. Your friend has no idea. He’s never met her, and you’ve barely known her for two hours — but you still want your friend to give you the answer on why the date changed.