Zen and the art of cheating, February 16, 1998…

Dear Breakup Girl,

I am currently single after three and a half long years (and proud of it dammit:). Well, I have a long time friend of ten years who just got married and has a newborn child. After flirting for all this time, we finally did the deed and slept together. It was so good that we just can’t seem to stop. My question is, should I be the mature one and say “hello! You’re married?” or should I just go eith the flow, I mean, I’m not the one cheating! Or am I?

— Friendly Luva

 
Dear Friendly,

“I’m not the one cheating!” Nice try, Luva. The “sound” of “one person cheating” is a concept far too Zen for Breakup Girl. If you’re so “friendly,” do no more deeds. Instead, help the new mom find someone to talk to about post-partum blues.

Love,
Breakup Girl

Via Tango: 21 Twitter pickup lines, including the less than coy “Wanna go back to my house and #?” Just a punny diversion, I guess, given the less-than-intimate design flaw: @ kerfuffle notwithstanding, um, everyone can, of course, see your direct messages. Yo, geeks: is there a future for some sort of workaround app called Flirtr?

Speed dating may seem like a waste of (tiny microcosms of) time, but some researchers at Indiana University recently found a way to put it to good use: By having subjects (male and female) watch tapes of numerous speed-dating interactions (male-female), they measured which gender seems to be more adept at picking up on flirting cues, both come-hither and get-outta-here.

Turns out, it’s a draw.

“… [M]en and women were shown to be equally good at gauging men’s interest,” says the study, “and equally bad at judging women’s interest.”

So apparently it’s hard to get when women are playing hard-to-get. Score one for feminine mystique!

“‘The hardest-to-read women were being misperceived at a much higher rate than the hardest-to-read men. Those women were being flirtatious, but it turned out they weren’t interested at all,’ said lead author Skyler Place, a doctoral student in IU’s Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences working with cognitive science Professor Peter Todd. ‘Nobody could really read what these deceptive females were doing, including other women.’ ” (“These deceptive females?” Sounds either coldly anthro-scientific, or the opposite, like he’s gonna go on to say, “YOU made me do this study, Linda, YOU did!”)

Here’s something else I’m having a hard time getting. Behold this little nugget:

“Researchers expected women to have a leg up in judging romantic interest, because theoretically they have more to lose from a bad relationship [ital mine], but no such edge was found.”

An icky amount of such cavalier sexism has been coursing through the “scientific” studies I’ve read of late. This one’s so broad I’m not even sure which presumptions are being referred to: That women don’t have time on their side? That they often wind up financially lesser-off post-divorce? That they’re all just, y’know, thisclose to tripping over the line into full-blown nutso?

If you’re as worked up as me, unwind by playing your own Meta Match Game.

Guys who wear shirts with BUTTONS, that is.

Not exactly sure what I’m s’posed to do with this maple-bacon-flavored lollipop, courtesy of artisanal treats purveyor Das Foods, suggestively dubbed “Man Bait.”

Is the point that if I lick away at one, I’m giving off a seductive visual — kinda like when you’re in a cartoon and your friend is really hungry, and suddenly you look like a pork chop?

Or do the lolly’s “real smoky bacon bits” unleash an irresistible aroma which, with humanlike fingers, lures the object of my confection by the nose toward my swine-scented pucker?

Or or, is it he who is meant to ingest the pop in the first place? (And then I guess he gets the hint, so we go out for pancakes start making out?)

A final conundrum (why must I overcomplicate candy?): Just what kind of man am I baiting here? Because it seems a maple-bacon lollipop’s targeted demographic, as of late, is a manorexic hipster who somehow manages to spend an afternoon sampling bacon while still fitting into his skinny jeans.

In an act of ultimate woo-pitching, your male luv-uh seduces you on the beach, on a hot summer night, under a full moon… pinch me, I’m dreaming? No, but you are about to get pinched in all the wrong places by a horseshoe crab.

That’s just one of the nifty, species-specific mating rituals outlined in this food-for-thought post over on Wired’s science blog. Collectively, they sound an awful lot like, well, dudes.

“Some of these rituals are designed to convey reproductive fitness. Others are meant to trick reluctant mates into a one-night stand. And — hermaphrodites withstanding — it’s nearly always the males who try to catch the attention of ladies,” says the piece.

The animals listed engage in acts of attraction that sound either dizzyingly romantic (oh, to find an elephant of one’s own!), oddly gender-flippy (it’s the male grouse that shakes his caboose to catch the gal’s eye) or eerily reminiscent of the worst Saturday-night meat market ever (skull-butting, peen jousting).

Or would you rather be a fish?

Via The Frisky:

Sure, the Web has made many aspects of our lives easier, but it’s also complicated a few things—specifically, how we date, flirt and meet potential love interests. And while the date movie du jour, “He’s Just Not That Into You,” may seem a few years behind, we’ve pulled together a helpful up-to-date guide to Flirting 2.0.

Click here for excellent graphic flow chart.

Looking for love in the wrong place, circa January 19, 1998…

Dear Breakup Girl,
I have a crush on a guy who is my brother’s friend and has a girlfriend. We get along great, and always have a good time when together. There is alot of teasing, and sexual innuendo, but also some serious moments. Thing is, he and his girlfriend don’t act like boyfriend and girlfriend, and some of his comments make me think he likes me. So what do I do? Nothing and wait for him, forget about him, or go for it?
— Waiting and Wanting

Dear Waiting and Wanting,
No poaching. Ever. End of story.
Love,
Breakup Girl