love out loud: taking your relationship (status) for granted
One week ago tonight, I sat down to watch the Australian Open final with my mum (my dad gave it a miss because of his high blood pressure), reverting to my old habits of getting things done with my Mac on my lap and a glass of red in hand. As I was cracking open [...]
love out loud: the hellcat dream girl
We’re all pretty familiar by now with the Manic Pixie Dream Girl: the term coined by the AV Club’s Nathan Rabin to describes characters such as Natalie Portman’s Sam in Garden State, and pretty much every character played by Zooey Deschanel over the past few years. They’re essentially designed to catalyse a male protagonist’s development, [...]
cracking the code of confidence
Dan Brown’s ability to crack a Da Vinci code may entitle him to bragging rights amongst many social circles – me on the other hand, not so much. I am a modest soul – will admit to having the mathematical aptitude of a newt, and a mechanical understanding that stops at changing a tyre. Cracking [...]
love out loud: silence is worth 1600 words
A few days ago, a friend correctly assumed that I would enjoy reading this, documenting a neurotic email sent by a NY banker to a woman with whom he went on one date. Even if you’re the slowest reader in the world, I assure you that reading said email is time well spent, but here [...]
love out loud: you’re hot then you’re cold, you’re yes then you’re no, you’re in…termittently reinforcing
The laws of operant conditioning and its methods of shaping behaviour have been applied to numerous situations and purposes in our ever-changing world since the reward/punishment model was pioneered by Burrhus Frederic Skinner many moons ago. One such situation is the quest to find a romantic partner – a task that continues to be one [...]
advice from ms lip: i’m religious and he’s not
Dear Ms Lip, I’m a Christian and my boyfriend is an atheist and we get into fights about it. Not all the time and I know he doesn’t want to upset me, but he does because he says he thinks religion is stupid. I love him and he loves me too but he can’t keep [...]
why having a boyfriend has made me a better feminist
Recently, I was slut-shamed. I was slut-shamed by someone whose facebook comments I questioned when they showed ignorance or a fundamental misunderstanding of the inequality that has propelled feminism, and he predictably got sick of me taking issue with the things he was saying, and deleted me on facebook. When a friend jokingly asked him [...]
love out loud: the third wheel gets the grease
Becoming one half of a couple opens up whole new avenues for judgment from your friends. The most obvious one is that they will judge your partner, the most common (and possibly most important) dichotomy being as to whether they are a d-bag or are not a d-bag. Less obvious is that you will not [...]
love out loud: the maintained man
Sometimes, I feel like giving myself a pat on the back for being such a feminist. I am such a feminist that not only do I not subscribe to traditional gender roles, but I reverse them. That’s right folks. My boyfriend is a kept man. Except that I never agreed to this. Aforementioned boyfriend got [...]
love out loud: i’ve had the time of my life
I first saw Dirty Dancing at the age of 10, courtesy of my aunt (when I think about it, this is actually a bit of a cliché; my aunt is gorgeous, awesome, happily unmarried, and probably the reason why ‘spinster’ being used as an insult completely flew over my head). I loved it from the [...]

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