We have all, at some point, watched a close friend vanish into the hurl-dorable vortex that is love. I know I have! And, of course, many of us have entered that vortex ourselves. One that may include (for instance) repairing one’s beloved’s only flaw — “You’ve never seen Buffy?!” — with an intensive marathon that also, necessarily, includes Angel. Then she/he is all, “You’ve never seen The Wire?!” and poof, you emerge months later into the sun, glassy-eyed, watching your back for vamps, and wondering where all your friends went.

Well, Buffy or no Buffy, the friend attrition that comes with love is definitely a thing, according to new research at Oxford University. In fact, they counted:

Oxford University researchers asked people about their inner core of friendships and how this number changed when romance entered the equation.

They found the core, which numbers about five people, dropped by two as a new lover came to dominate daily life.

“People who are in romantic relationships — instead of having the typical five [individuals] on average, they only have four in that circle,” explained Robin Dunbar, a professor of evolutionary anthropology at Oxford.

“And bearing in mind that one of those is the new person that’s come into your life, it means you’ve had to give up two others.”

But it doesn’t have to be this way, does it? On the one hand, you know, your friends don’t come on your honeymoon: even grudging single friends should allow their newly smitten compadres and compadrinas a grace period. It’s a thrilling, fizzy, heady time, and we need to give them that, just as we’d want them to “let” us have ours. On the other, folks, even if you find that special someone who “gives you everything” and “meets all your needs,” well, they don’t. They may be wonderful in every way — even a wonderful friend to you — but they’re not a full-on swap-in substitute for friend-friends. The bestest love relationships are those that enhance your lives and sense of connection to people and the world, and those in which you each have space and time to nurture your own, separate, friendships. So once you stop seeing those early-in-love stars, make sure you keep seeing your friends.

You’ve heard of Alaska bachelors trawling the lower 48 for love. Now this, via the BBC:

More than 100 unmarried villagers in India’s Bihar state are working flat out to build a 6km (3.7-mile) road to help their efforts to get married. The village of Barwaan Kala, in the west of Bihar, is located high in the Kaimur hills and is known locally as the “village of unmarried people”. Some 121 villagers aged between 16 and 80 remain bachelors, they say, because of the remoteness of the village. The last wedding in the village was reportedly 50 years ago. “Even those who have managed to get married have done it surreptitiously by taking temporary shelter in the less remote villages of their relatives,” Ram Chand Kharwar, a 50-year-old bachelor, told the BBC.

Read more here.

The BBC reports that while a woman is naturally attracted to men who smell like a good genetic match (this, to me, would be a musky mix of garlic, teen spirit, and his excellent dog), the hormone havoc wreaked by the birth control pill may turn her on to the wrong guys. “Wrong” here meaning too genetically similar for species diversity, not (necessarily) “that unbelievable douchebag I can’t believe she likes.”

(more…)

You may remember the AskMen.com survey finding that 77% of men had cried over a woman, and not just on the day they heard about Natalie Portman and what’s-his-name. Now, the BBC tells us that their peers across the pond (or maybe, like, all sentient beings) aren’t so different. Here’s what makes those blokes well up:

• Making parents proud
• Birth of first child/grandchild
• Tribulations of a loved one
• Letting a loved one down
• Letting yourself down
• Saying “I’m sorry”
• Winning/losing a hard-fought game
• The farewell scene in Weekend at Bernie’s < KIDDING

I have a feeling that if we keep making TOO big a deal out of the “news” that “real men cry!” BG herself will burst into tears. But come on fellas, do tell: what turns on your waterworks?

The wisdom of Greek courts prevailed in a case in which three residents of the isle of Lesbos attempted to ban use of the word “lesbian” to describe gay women, the BBC reports. Those who sought to ban non-geographical use of “lesbian” claimed that the other use “disgraces them around the world” and causes social hardship in the lives of its citizens. Interestingly, neither “it’s all Greek to me” nor Grecian Formula seem to have incited similar protests. ‘Cause obvi, it’s homophobia thatcauses the “disgrace,” not the word itself. “This is a good decision for lesbians everywhere,” Vassilis Chirdaris, lawyer for the Gay and Lesbian Union of Greece, told Reuters. Opa!