Painting by Jean Baptiste Santerre. In my last blog entry, I revealed what Jack and I have been doing during quarantine (baking cookies, sewing masks and walking). A cursory glance at the internet reveals how the rest of you are spending your time. According to the Los Angeles Times, retailers of sex toys are enjoying a 30% jump in Internet sales. And one luxury brand in Stockholm has had a 60% jump. The Jerusalem Post reports that sales of sex toys in Denmark more than doubled after Danes were told to stay home. "It makes me happy that we are doing something good during this difficult time, [...]

Madelbrot made from scratch by Judi and Jack Schindler. In spite of 55 years of marriage, Jack Schindler and I have almost nothing in common.  We don’t like the same movies, television programs, books, music, food, etc. For example, he likes movies where things blow up, while I like movies where people talk to each other. I often say the multiplex saved our marriage.  We each go to the movie of our choice then meet up afterwards. You might think that the past four weeks of our captivity would have resulted in an escalating battle of will. But the opposite is true. The quarantine has actually [...]

Does your husband forget: your birthday? where he put his keys? dinner plans with friends? the couple you met in Puerta Vallarta? Turns out, it may not be his fault.  Numerous studies show that women, in general, have better memories -- particularly when it comes to names, faces and events. A 2008 study in Sweden indicated that women excel in “verbal episodic memory tasks” such as words, pictures and everyday occurrences. That’s why we outperform men when it comes to  remembering the trivial (what we wore to our grammar school graduation) as well as the not so trivial (the necessity to stop at the cleaners on the way [...]

Have you seen “Marriage Story” yet?  The Scarlett Johansson/Adam Driver film, currently streaming on Netflix, demonstrates how an amicable divorce between caring partners can quickly disintegrate into vindictive hostilities, which strip the couple of their assets and turn children into weapons of war. The film is no exaggeration. The Internet is teeming with appalling divorce stories.  If you’re curious, take a look at “10 Divorce Court Horror Stories,” from HuffPost; “8 Divorce Horror Stories from People Who’ve Been Through it,” in BusinessInsider or “Dirty Divorce Tricks” on WomansDivorce.com. Reading these articles, myself, I discovered a long list of the brutal tactics that divorcing parties and their lawyers routinely employ [...]

Regular readers of this blog know I am keenly interested in the behavioral differences between men and women. So, imagine my excitement at the opportunity to discuss the Mars/Venus dichotomy with someone who’s been on both sides of the equation.  I’ve written about the fact that most men can’t distinguish between coral and pink and most women can’t read a map. I’ve also explored gender divergence in shopping, packing, and illness as well as the critical issue of outdoor peeing. Fran is a transgender management consultant in her 60s, who has periodically presented as female since the age of 14. She fully transitioned some 10 years ago, but [...]

Photo Credit: Brandless on Unsplash I think I’ve stumbled on an unheralded, but highly contentious, battleground in the ongoing war between the sexes – packing. Men and women think differently about packing. We approach it differently, and we have different standards by which to measure our success. But who does it better? Packing a trunk is one area area where men seem to have an edge. “Myth Busters,” a television program that aired on the Discovery Channel from 2003 to 2016, tested the validity of this assertion. The show brought in volunteer couples and gave each 15 minutes to pack similar cars. The men not only [...]

The wedding of Pryanka Chopra and Nick Jonas was a two-day affair estimated to cost $584,000. In the 1960s, when Jack and I got married, most brides and grooms were in their 20s. They went directly from their parents' home to the proverbial honeymoon cottage. So, the virginal white gown made sense (at least in theory). Marching down the aisle with a parent "who giveth this bride" seemed symbolically appropriate, if not altogether PC.  And gifting the young couple with household goods was a matter of necessity. Today's bride and groom are at least a decade older, have been living together for a while and already [...]

Photo courtesy "Cosmopolitan" Magazine. Are you tired of Tinder? Maxed out on Match?  Has the search for Mr. Right, turned wrong? Maybe it's time to take a new look at an old-fashioned solution -- the arranged marriage. I follow a number of Instagram accounts on dating.  They have names like datingmrwrong, datingafter50, datingafter40, datingappgargbage,dating_nightmares. Some of them post funny dating observations, like: "Sorry we haven't spoken in a while -- I've not been drunk." "We broke up for religious reasons. He thought he was God. I didn't." Or "My prince isn't coming on a white horse. He's riding a turtle and obviously lost." And some publish head-snapping [...]

Lucy Liu, Ginnifer Goodwin and Kirby Howell Baptiste seek revenge on cheating husbands in new TV series, "Why Women Kill." Cheating steps into the spotlight this August when CBS All Access launches a new series, "Why Women Kill,"starring Lucy Liu, Ginnifer Goodwin and Kirby Howell Baptiste.  It's about three women, in three different decades, who discover their husbands are cheating and how each seeks revenge. The trailer looks like plain, old fashioned fun! Check it out. Revenge is always fun, if you aren't the recipient, of course. There's a perverse pleasure in evening the score. The internet is filled with hilarious examples. I thought I'd share a few. [...]

Elliot Gould, Natalie Wood, Robert Culp and Dyan Cannon in the 1969 movie "Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice." Today I'm writing on a topic I know nothing about (as if that ever stopped me): "wife swapping" -- also known as "wife sharing" or the more PC, "swinging." I regularly get emails from a social media site called, "Quora," which posts a question from one of its subscribers and then publishes answers provided by other subscribers.  Many of the questions are relatively bland, i.e. "Have you ever walked out of a restaurant after you were seated by a waiter or waitress?" Yeah, so what? But [...]