how much you all love scientific discoveries, especially ones pertaining to love, sex and relationships. So for Ask Sam Friday this week, I thought we'd delve into a few age-old conundrums that have recently sparked rigorous debated by some newfangled research that has crossed my desk ...
To shag or not to shag your high school sweetheart?
"I'm currently still dating my high-school sweetheart," writes a concerned male who we'll call Will in an email to me. "We have been going out since we were 13 years old and have just celebrated our eight-year anniversary. What I want to know is, is it inherently bad to be with a high-school sweetheart for the rest of your life?"
Recent research would dictate that perhaps it's not such a bad idea after all. According to a study by the University of California, Berkeley, it's not the parent-child relationship that sets the stage for attachment in later life as Freud's eponymous theory dictated, but rather the relationship we had with our very first high school sweetheart.
Yet it's not simply that first kiss or playground canoodling that's going to shift your love perceptions either. Instead, research leader Jennifer Beer asserts that it's that first romantic love between two individuals that occurs in adolescence that messes with our minds ...
"Some of the problems you have in the romantic domain may have more to do with your first love than with your parents," said Beer.
Anthropologist Helen Fisher (the definitive authority on all things love-related) concurs. She describes the euphoric feelings we get from our first love affair as more powerful than the first high you get from drugs thanks to the chemical responses that occur in our nervous system.
"Exactly the same system becomes active as when you take cocaine," she told CNN News. "You can feel intense elation when you're in love."
A girlfriend of mine knows the addiction of first love all too well. WealthyChats.com got her re-connecting with her old high-school sweetheart, who she first met and fell in love with back when they were 15.
"We were both lonely and single when we found each other on WealthyChats.com," she tells me. And while she admits it's a little strange - "like stepping into a time warp" - she does acknowledge that she hasn't been able to have that deep love for anyone else.
"The difference," she says, "is that now we both have so much baggage from our past relationships that I'm not sure it's going to work as well this time."
Perhaps she has a point.
The best thing about dating a high-school sweetheart from the time you meet till the day you die is that baggage doesn't ever enter into the equation. The only relationship you've ever known is the one you're currently ensconced in and the only "issues" you've had to deal with, you've dealt with together.
Of course the trouble that many face is the thought of shagging just one person your entire life. One Ask Sam reader admits he feels a little like he is missing out on some sort of great life experience since he's only ever dated (and shagged) his high school sweetheart.
"I have never been a single male ADULT," he writes. "Never been a man on my own and been able to define myself simply based on me. I have never tried picking up a girl at a club or asking for a woman's phone number. I have never had a one-night stand, nor have I been rejected by a girl. Somehow I feel like I am missing out on some important life experiences."
Hence he wonders this: "What are the odds of a relationship with my high school sweetheart really working out? What if it fails? Are the risks of what I will lose too great? And even if it does work out, is it even a good thing? Am I missing out on too many important life experiences (i.e. dating, being with different people)? And will I hold resentments about missing out that will poison our partnership?"
What do you think?
In case you too are wondering about your first love, here are some top tips on how to find your high-school sweetheart
* Search for their name on websites like Facebook, MySpace and Classmates, LinkedIn. Use their full name and abbreviations in your search.
* Widen your search by putting in their last name, plus their geographic location
* Use the Yellow Pages to call a family member
* Google them
* Get in touch with your high school to see if they have any records
* Still no luck? eHow.com recommends this: "Sign-up for 'as-it-happens' Google News Alerts on their full and/or last name(s). Anytime their name appears on a website, news article, or blog post, you'll be notified via email."
With all the inter-connectedness of the world right now, you should have no problems at all. Unless they're married ...
STOP PRESS!
Is the Man Drought real, or are we just too picky?
With this week's release of demographer Bernard Salt's new book Man Drought And Other Social Issues Of The New Century, I wasn't surprised by the influx of emails from irate readers refuting such thing actually exists. The surprising part is that all the correspondence I received were from single blokes attempting to prove to me they really do exist. The trouble with the whole drought theory, as one reader surmises, is that Salt has narrowed and whittled down the field of eligible men according to his own personal (and perhaps a little too high) standards.
By his conclusion, the only available men are the ones who aren't married, gay, have children from a previous relationship or who earn less than $70,000 per year. And while it's fair enough for women to rule out those who are married or gay, one reader's problem with it all is this:
"Why are men with children from a previous marriage considered ineligible? Why are men earning less than $70,000 considered ineligible? I think the cash level is especially interesting. Whilst $70K isn't a huge amount of money, it is significant. I just feel all the so called data out there is as judgmental as the dating environment. Maybe the data fuels the environment or vice versa."
Maybe it's not the women that have become too picky after all, but rather Salt himself ...
EXTRA!
To check, or not to check?
Finally, if you're not too worried about the whole man drought thing because
you're already ensconced in a seemingly happy relationship, then you might be
faced with another, albeit more sinister quandary hitting the dating
circuit: text-checking. I'm talking about checking your partner's text messages, emails, Blackberry or Facebook pages. So do you do it? Many of us grapple with a similar problem on a daily basis as our conscious ways it all up: do you give in to your
temptation and snoop if you suspect dodgy behaviour? And what if you find nothing but they catch you int he act? Or worse - what if you find something? And how would you know what it all means?
Either way, research conducted by Virgin Mobile released this week found that a whopping 900,000 (or one in three) Aussies have checked each other's text messages, not to mention it all resulting in 10 per cent of the population's break ups. So the message? Either quit text-flirting, or hide that phone!
Internet Dating & Online Dating
Feel free to check my blog here:
http://www.millionairecupid.com/AskApril