Newest Blog Entries
RSS

For some, romance may be much easier to tend and mend than a friendship, if you consider that it’s a different kind of commitment—sharing your heart, bed, and finances. When you love someone, if it’s for keeps, you say what you need to (hopefully, but not always with kindness), even duke it out metaphorically, or go to a counselor when you can’t resolve issues on your own. Long-standing, and even shorter-term, friendships that go awry for whatever reason can be tougher to fix. In most cases, you never promised until death-do-you-part. However, if you’ve invested time and heart, you don’t...

Read more

You’re Thelma and Louise (Susan Sarandon and Gena Rowlands), female buddies and societal outlaws in the movie by the same name; C.C. Bloom (Bette Midler) angling to become BFFs with Hillary Witney (Barbara Hershey) in “Beaches,” or Elise Elliot (Goldie Hawn), Brenda Morelli (Bette Midler), Annie MacDuggan (Diane Keaton), and Cynthia Swann (Stockard Channing) plotting to get back at their husbands who dumped them in another movie, “First Wives Club.” “Let’s be friends” may be among the three most important monosyllables in our female lives. Of course, you can have good guy friends, but here we’re talking about female bonds,...

Read more

Everyone says little truisms like, “you can’t go home again” or “you should drink eight glasses of water a day.” But some truisms aren’t always true, or at least not true for everyone. I think you can go home again as long as you don’t expect everything to be exactly the same, like a needle stuck on the groove of a venerable vinyl record that keeps playing the same tune over and over. Tempus fugit. Yet, going back can stir sweet memories of how things once were in happy times. This is what I experienced during a recent getaway to...

Read more

It hit me late one night when I was enduring an ugly bout of insomnia. While my new guy friend was snoring in syncopated sound with this dog (who was snoozing and snuggling between us), I came to the realization that I was the third wheel in our relationship. How do I compete with his furry friend? Ideas started swirling in my head like some frenetic slide show. Do I have to wag my tail to grab my guy’s attention? Better than wagging my finger, I reasoned. Grow two more legs? Play submissive to let him know that he’s the...

Read more

After meeting someone new in my life two years after my husband died and dating for almost a year, we decided to take our first trip together to New York City. The impetus was to hear my younger son, a musician, perform and also visit my two sisters who live in the Big Apple. What better way we decided to test our relationship than travel a deux. This would be a close, personal look at how each of us handles the stress of travel, dividing expenses, potential conflict from crowded airlines, rude taxi cab drivers, brusque wait staff, the discomfort...

Read more