The love stories of others

By |2022-05-30T00:09:08-04:00May 30th, 2022|Categories: Real Life, Relationships|

I’m on a cruise where, at 61, I’m relatively young. One of the things that has been lovely–besides all the stunning views–is hearing the love stories and meet cutes of others on the ship. My favorite thus far is that of Gayle and Ken who are celebrating their 50th anniversary. Gayle said, “We were 20 and wanted to live together and, back then, the only way our parents wouldn’t disown us was to get married.” I am still laughing about Bridgit and Bob’s story–they’d grown up together in a small English town and Bob was mad for Bridgit but, as she says, “I was very popular.” When she finally–at 19–accepted Bob’s suit, his mother told her, “You can do better. Marry Chris instead instead.”

I love asking couples how they met although my niece tells me that just means I’m nosy. What do you think? Is it still OK, in 2022, to ask people how they met and fell in […]

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Are people ruder?

By |2022-03-06T15:47:23-05:00March 7th, 2022|Categories: Real Life, Relationships|

I’ve had two friends in the past week say they think people are becoming “more self-absorbed,” “ruder,” and “less empathetic.” A close family member said she feels like she needs to lower her expectations for others, even those she feels close to. I have recently a few exchanges with friends/family that have kinda shocked me–not a lot of seeing the other’s perspective sort of thing. What’s up with that?

And it’s not just my world. In December the NYT wrote about this. They said: […]

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the ask@AAR: Who are the best parents in romance? Why?

By |2021-07-29T10:33:28-04:00July 23rd, 2021|Categories: Relationships, the ask @AAR, Wendy AAR|Tags: , |

Peeps–my kids are driving me just a little bit nuts. Two of my adult children are temporarily living with us in our three bedroom condo–and one of them has an extremely energetic dog. And while both are, in general, lovely young men, it’s abundantly clear to me that parents in their 60s should not share living quarters with their 20 something children. I confess I’ve found myself occasionally dreaming about all those Regency heroes who were forced out of their homes by stern fathers for… reasons. […]

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Thank You, My Friend

By |2017-06-23T08:30:19-04:00July 1st, 2015|Categories: Dabney AAR, Relationships|

eric and time got marriedI was born in 1961. I grew up in a time and place where sex, drugs, and rock and roll were things all the cool kids did. So was psychoanalysis. When I was in junior high, the adults in my town were divorcing, doing est, and using an alarming amount of slang. My church youth group performed Jesus Christ Superstar . We were the “hey, it’s cool” generation; our parents listened to Simon and Garfunkel, and kept their copies of The Joy of Sex on a high shelf.

And yet, despite all this open mindedness (or what I thought was open mindedness) no one I knew well was gay. In high school, I didn’t think much about it and in college, when I did wonder, I didn’t feel comfortable asking and no one was telling.

Then, in 1985, after a rather aimless year spent trying to figure out who I […]

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Romance in Real Life: Personality and Love

By |2017-06-23T08:30:19-04:00June 22nd, 2015|Categories: AAR Blythe, Book news, Relationships|

MyersBriggsTpesSo I’m still not reading much (though I did manage a re-read of my favorite romance novel of all time, Mary Balogh’s Slightly Dangerous). I have, though, been paying a lot of attention to real life romance because that’s where I am at right now.

Believe it or not, I spend a decent amount of time bonding with my ex over how much better we work together as friends and how much happier we are with other people. And this despite the fact that he’s back to dealing with young children again (our youngest child is fifteen) and I am dealing with a significant other who is often away. Both of us have done a lot of thinking and analyzing of why we didn’t work as well together as we wanted to. Part of it, definitely, is that we married so young. I’m not sure anyone knows exactly what […]

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“Not tonight, dear. I have a headache.” Or not.

By |2017-06-23T08:30:19-04:00June 10th, 2015|Categories: Dabney AAR, Relationships|Tags: , , |

I’ve been thinking about what turns women–OK, me–on. And by turns me on I mean interested in engaging in getting busy with my main squeeze.  I’ve been pondering this for two reasons.

The first is that earlier this week an advisory committee recommended that the FDA approve Sprout Pharmaceuticals’s drug flibanserin to treat low libido in women. (Disclosure: My husband knows the founders of this company.) Unlike Viagra, the go-to drug for male sexual dysfunction, flibanserin doesn’t treat a clear cut physical problem. As Cindy Pearson, the executive director of the National Women’s Health Network, writes this week in the Washington Post:

Viagra addresses a physical problem by easing blood flow in men who desire sex but have difficulty functioning. Flibanserin, on the other hand, addresses arousal in women who lack sexual desire by targeting neurotransmitters in the brain, our most complex organ.

Flibanserin has been rejected twice before by FDA advisory committees. Previously the agency’s studies showed the drug isn’t very effective (only 10-12% […]

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A Few of My Favorite Scenes

By |2017-05-24T17:08:37-04:00March 13th, 2015|Categories: Characters, Dabney AAR, Heroes, Relationships|

There’s been a lot in the media lately about women and desire and what it is, exactly, that flips the female switch from watching “The Bachelor” to wanting to do the bachelor (or the husband or the friend with benefits). Recently, in the New York Times, Sheryl Sandburg (the CEO of Facebook) and co-writer Adam Grant posited that men who do their share of household chores have more sex. They coined the term choreplay which does have a nice ring to it. It’s a myth, though, says a well-known and respected study published in the American Sociological Review. That study showed that “husbands and wives in couples with more traditional housework arrangements report higher sexual frequency” which, in layman’s terms means men who vacuum get laid less.  Other sexual scientists believe that many women have responsive sexual desire–what turns them on is to be desired. One thing almost everyone agrees on […]

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Writing a New Love Story

By |2017-06-23T08:30:24-04:00November 21st, 2014|Categories: AAR Blythe, Relationships, Romance, Romance reading|


How good are you at reading in between the lines? If you’re better than me, maybe you saw my impending divorce coming before I did. When I blog, I tend to take inspiration from what’s going on in my own reading and in my life. A few months ago I wrote about the romances that mirror your own romance, and in a roundabout way discussed my newfound disenchantment with heroines who marry too young. […]

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Grown-Up Reading: Why Romance and Happy Endings Matter

By |2017-06-23T08:30:25-04:00October 24th, 2014|Categories: Guest Posts, Reading, Relationships, Romance, Romance reading, Romancelandia|Tags: , |

QRMI heard George RR Martin on the radio the other day. Asked about the Game of Thrones body count he said something like (this is a paraphrase): “I used to read stories that had happy endings, where people did good things and nobody got raped…then I grew up.” Meanwhile, in an article on children’s fiction, author Robert Muchamore observes, “While a childish thirst for happy endings satisfies and entertains us, the real world is so complex that unambiguously happy endings hardly exist.” […]

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