… sometimes even at the bottom of an empty glass:

Men remember their first car better than their first kiss, their first girlfriend or their 18th birthday? Maybe that says something about the quality of first kisses, first girlfriends and 18th birthdays?

Although, if you can remember your 18th birthday, you probably didn’t celebrate it properly…

Photo: © mad-max/PIXELIO

Building connections or relationships with strangers, whether online or offline, is hard enough. Then imagine skipping the socially accepted steps of relationship-building and cutting straight to the chase? Artist Lilly McElroy takes that idea and runs with it in “I throw myself at men”: She throws herself at men and captures the moment on camera!

Fotos: © http://lillymcelroy.com/

We all know about mad love, it happens to the best of us. But only the very best find reason in the madness.

“There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.”

- Friedrich Nietzsche

Singledom is no longer as stigmatised as it used to be, especially for women. It used to bet hat the only single women were those who couldn’t snag a husband. Their social standing wasn’t great. Today women can decide to be single, temporarily or permanently, without being treated like outcasts. There are even those women who claim to be single and… wait for it… happy!

One British psychologist begs to differ. According to her, women claiming to be single and happy must be lying!

You…WHAT? The author comes to this conclusion from patients who play happy singles fort he world to see, but deep inside they crave a strong man to hold them. All single women are lumped into this category as either being unhappy or - worse – self-deceiving. Sure they pretend to be satisfied with a great job, lots of friends, a supportive family, but surely any woman would give all that up to find Mr. Right. Never mind the pettiness that becomes apparent in this strategy of labelling the life story of every happy single woman a lie. Surely she would at least have to concede the possibility that such a thing as a happily single woman might exist.

At be2, we see how many women want to escape singledom, and we do our best to turn unhappy singles into happy couples. BUT singles should join a matchmaking agency for the right reasons: Because they’re ready for a relationship, not because they fear the stigma of being single. A psychologist who denies singles their own happiness doesn’t help.

True love can strike at any age - sounds perfectly logical. Whether your first romance is the love of your life or if you fall in love again later in life – feelings don’t care about numbers.

On the other hand, love at any age might mean sex at any age, and society finds that difficult to handle. This touching report about love and sex in old age homes narrates the true story of a couple who not only rediscovered true love, but also their sexuality, at a very late stage in life.

On the one hand, it’s a tragic romance, because the lovers are separated. On the other hand, it’s a beautiful testament to love and its power to knock you off your feet, no matter how old you are – it can make an 82- and a 95-year-old as happy as a couple of teenagers.

Deciding on your perfect match is not always easy. Especially when you’re online dating you often feel like there’s more than one good match. It’s tempting to keep those options open, for fear of making the wrong decision. A Massachusets Instituts of Technology study has shown that this type of behaviour is not only typical of online dating – it’s also exhibited by people making decisions in an abstract computer game.

Each player had the possibility to earn money by clicking on the right doors. They could click the doors as they wished, but the clicks were limited to 100, so a quick decision paid off. Still, players kept returning to less profitable doors for fear of losing that option.

That sounds very abstract, but the initiator of the study draws the parallel to relationships. It makes sense to decide on a partner once you have found a great match. Instead of keeping your options open, you should then close all other doors. This makes you more satisfied with your choice and helps you move on to new decisions.

So, if you think you might have found your perfect match through online dating, make your decision and close those other doors!

We were thrilled to discover that the mixtape genre has been revived online, no doubt to the joy of young lovers. Now we’re even more thrilled about a new blog dedicated to a subcategory of mixtapes for lovers: mixtapes from ex-boyfriends. Okay, some of them are mixtapes from girlfriends, but generally it’s boys who make mixtapes.

Unlike most blogs of this type, the style of writing is beautiful, almost literary, and the posts bring back that feeling of being young and in love, complete with goosebumps from listening to the mixtape from your lover for the first time. The music selection is also pretty fantastic - no trace of Celine Dion - and you can listen to each tape in its entirety.

Seeking a good wife? Then build yourself a time machine, because the demands on a good wife obviously used to be a lot higher. Boing Boing found a questionnaire from the 30s which rates a good wife according to her behaviour, made up of positive and negative scores.

Hardly surprising: today, not even a “good wife” passes the test. But then most men probably wouldn’t consider it a major drawback if a woman doesn’t dress for breakfast (!) and most could probably deal with a woman who wears red nail polish (that CHEAP hussy!).

Actually, cancel the time machine, just try seeking a good wife who is also a modern woman and you’ll be fine

Jewellery is a typical gift in relationships – from cheap charm bracelets to diamond engagement rings, jewellery is traditionally a gift of love. But while you could dump the charm bracelet in a shoebox when your first love dumped you, it’s a lot harder to deal with more valuable gifts. Most people don’t want to wear gems that remind them of a failed relationship. On the other hand, it’s a shame to let them gather dust at the back of jewellery box and flushing them down the toilet doesn’t seem like the best idea once the initial anger has evaporated. Then what to do eith expensive, unloved tokens of love?

You could sell jewellery from a failed relationship on a new website, which specialises in jewellery from ex-lovers. Each piece gives you the article description, the price and the back story of the failed relationship. This gives the sellers the possibility to not only rid themselves of these reminders of love gone wrong, but also to get closure on the failed relationship.