Everywhere you look, people are gobsmacked. I thought they were solid. We all did. I was quoted just recently in an article, citing their dedication to each other as something to look up to.

They renewed their marriage vows every year, they are doting parents to four children, they always seemed so clearly – so obviously – in love.

All of a sudden it’s like we’ve all been told Santa doesn’t exist.

Seal himself is surprised by the news, as he told Ellen DeGeneres. He is still wearing his wedding band and says he still has the deepest respect and love for Heidi, but:

“These things happen.”

Do they? Is that true? It terrifies me that one day a relationship can seem fine and the next it’s a separation that shocks even the active participants in the relationship.

Whatever the reason, who on earth can we look to now to be role models when it comes to love?

Your parents are your first examples of how to conduct yourself in a relationship.

They teach us so much. How to talk and walk, brush our teeth and ride bicycles.

And even as tiny children, we glean clues from them on what it means to be in love, many of which we ourselves carry into our own relationships when we grow up.

What we don’t learn subconsciously, we learn because our parents out-and-out offered verbal advice about love, particularly through our teenage years when we were trying to figure it all out.

How did your parents handle conflict? Were they affectionate in front of you? Did each have defined roles in the household or was the workload shared?

Think about your relationships now: how much of that have you carried with you into your own life?

I was fortunate enough to have parents who set me an incredible example. They really did stick with each other through better and worse, and in sickness too. They stuck by each other and loved each other right up until the day my father died. I could not have asked for better role models in love.

Don’t think it’s all over for you though, if your parents didn’t get it right. You can unlearn destructive mindsets and habits.

My own parents, though their marriage was wonderful, didn’t have good examples growing up. But it made them more determined to not carry those bad behaviours into their own marriage. They made a conscious choice to be the exact opposite of their parents. And it paid off.

Forgive your parents if they have not taught you well. They did the best they could. Then decide for yourself what kind of relationships you want to have and set about learning the skills you need to make that happen.

And lastly, let’s all choose to still have faith in true love. Regardless of what’s going on in the headlines or even our own houses, if we lose hope altogether, then the world will be a much sadder place.

Both give us hope.

Hope that there’s something magical going on out there. That fairytales really do exist. And that true love is real.

Let’s start with princesses. So rare, kids can be forgiven for thinking they’re make-believe.

When I was a little girl, Disney ran through my veins.

This isn’t unusual. Aurora, Aerial and Cinderella still capture the attention of wide-eyed princesses-in-training everywhere, despite some parents’ best efforts to stop it.

Even now, when I know they’re not amazing role models for women – even when I aspire to be more than just some hot prince’s damsel-in-distress arm candy, the small flicker of fantasy still sits somewhere in my stomach.

Why do so many of us, even in our modern, evermore republican society, still hold out secret hopes of becoming a princess?

Well, princesses do have many great things going for them. They are universally (well, in Disney’s universe) kind and generous. They have shiny hair and standout vocal chords.

Despite their tarnished brand (Set against our modern world, princesses can look a little lazy and incompetent, perhaps a little lacking in ambition) there is a lot that can appeal about being a princess.

More than anything, the fantasy seems like an easy ticket to joy. Princesses get to live Happily Ever After without a care in the world, right? Someone else makes all the hard decisions for them. Waits on them hand and foot.

What high-level management female or stressed mother wouldn’t fantasise about that every now and then?

Usually these princesses get all this right after they marry their One True Love – the handsome prince.

Which brings us to weddings.

When I wasn’t watching my graceful heroines get whisked off on white horses, I was submerged in wedding plans. I have a picture of myself, age 4, in my normal clothes with the addition of a bouquet and a veil.

When I wasn’t marrying my imaginary princes, I was making my Barbie dolls to walk the aisle and say their vows too, usually forcing them into an arranged marriage with a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle.

As far as I was concerned, being a bride was the closest I was ever going to get to princessdom. You get to play princess, if only for a day.

Even as an adult, that instinct remains. Bridezillas everywhere stake their claim to be princess for a day and aren’t letting anyone get in their way of having their moment.

Ladies-in-waiting, tiered cakes, waltzing on the dance floor with a handsome prince in a schmick suit. A storyline Walt himself could have written.

I still love the idea of a wedding.

If a bride anywhere passes me by, I stop to gawk. There really is nothing more radiant than a bride on her wedding day. It’s that look of love on a wedding day that keeps us believing in true love.

It’s almost like finding out the Easter Bunny is real after all.

Is it any wonder, then, that the entire world is captivated right now by Kate and Wills?

What’s better than a wedding or a princess? A princess wedding of course!

This wedding is a real life fairytale that is awakening hope in every red-blooded female across the land.

Gorgeous, normal girl-next-door Kate, who captured the attention of the most eligible bachelor in England (and possibly the world) and who tonight will become Her Royal Highness Princess Catherine.

And while we might not all become royalty, it does give us hope that one day we may find our own personal prince to wait for us at the end of the aisle.

But don’t be deceived. Living a charmed royal life will not necessarily spell an automatic Happily Ever After for our prince and princess. While it’s tempting to believe that being a princess will magically eliminate all the hardships from your life, the reality won’t be quite so easy for our Catherine and Will.

It’s still a marriage, after all.

Originally published in mX Newspaper, April 2011

To be exact, women like a man more if they’re unsure about whether he’s interested in them or not. They thrive on it, in fact.

A recent study, titled “He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not…” and using only women as the test subjects, had two findings.

First, they confirmed the already-existing principle of reciprocity – we tend to like men if we know they like us too – moreso than if we know the same men think we’re average, anyway. Not much of a surprise there.

The twist came with the third control group of women, who were not set up at all by the researchers to think these men either liked or disliked them. These women were told the men they were ranking could have either “liked them” or thought they were “average”.

When the women were uncertain about how they were graded by these men, the response scale went through the roof. We respond much better to uncertainty and mystery.

We’ve all observed it firsthand in the dating world. Girlfriends of mine are known to obsess over the men that give mixed messages, and quickly dispose of the ones that are clearly into them.

And we say we hate it when people play games. Pfffft. Seems like games are necessary, ladies, if a man is to get anywhere with you.

One character featured heavily in pick-up manual The Game is onto it – so much so that he even resorts to calling himself Mystery (a little screamingly obvious if you ask me, but hey. Each to their own.)

Mystery notes that what women say and how they actually react are often two different things entirely. We may say we would prefer it if we knew a man liked us, but judging by this new study, we’d be lying.

So strong is this hardwired urge, that cult dating book The Rules has to spell it out for us in no uncertain terms: You want him to like you, ladies. If he’s paying you attention, if he’s obviously into you, then don’t let it put you off.

That’s half the battle – finding another person that actually likes you.

Don’t throw it away in favour of chasing a little excitement. I wonder why we’d prefer to play roulette with our hearts than go for a sure bet.

You may have noticed that certain type of girl who obsesses over a man when she’s not sure how he feels about her – and then, once it’s clear he’s into her, she reassesses and decides she doesn’t like him so much after all.

Be clear about what you want, and be careful that you don’t overlook the nice guys, because despite hardwired attraction, almost every single female I’ve ever asked says she wants the nice guy.

Mr. Mysterious may turn out to genuinely like you in the end, or he may just lead you down the garden path and then disappear to Wonderland, never to be seen again.

Image Source

Like everything else, the PDA has adapted with our tech-savvy world and what we now also have is the original PDA’s pixellated cousin – the ODA (Online Display of Affection).

Listing status updates like “I love my pumpkin pie” on a public forum like Twitter or Facebook is the digital equivalent of dry-humping in a café.

Announcing to your entire network: When he’s not around, I feel empty, sad. I can’t wait for the weekend to hold my love does not inspire the reaction you think it might from your friends.

More than likely, instead of getting misty-eyed at the magic of love, they’re dry-reaching over their keyboard.

It’s a phenomenon that was once saved for the annual love classifieds, published every Valentine’s Day in papers around the world. I used to gleefully read out the dedications to “Smoochy-bear”, written tenderly by “Your Little Turtle” and giggle. Now it’s in our newsfeeds and getting harder to take!

STFUCouples.com (Sometimes NSFW) is a website dedicated to logging couples’ soppy online antics, complete with cutting commentary. Their thousands of regular readers joyfully log on every day to get a good giggle from such gems as:

The smell of your bare skin, the touch of your fingertips, the sweet taste of your lips, your eyes that pull me in… posted on her boyfriend’s wall. For everyone to read. I’m not joking; I couldn’t make this stuff up if I tried.

Another entire bedtime discussion between two lovers ends in:
Sweet dreams, babygirl. I love you. *throws you a kiss*, followed closely by “babygirl”, who: *catches it*

You get the feeling they may even be in the same house while posting.

To me, any of the above is an instant defriending offense.

But don’t try and cross a couple who want to play their relationship out in public like this. Though they want you to see how desperately in love they are, they don’t want you to comment on it.

STFUCouples.com gets a lot of people telling them they’re just “jellus” of true love.

Unfortunately, it’s not so. The owner of the site is married herself, as are many of the regular followers.

They just know how to keep it in their inboxes, not on their walls.

M made the mistake of commenting on a loved-up wall post with the classic “Oh, please, get a room you two.”

She was then bullied to bits in follow-up comments by Cupid’s Army: Defenders of PDA Everywhere.

Leave them alone they whined They’re allowed to sho their luv.

“Yes, and I’m allowed to be repulsed when they do it publicly.” Says M – who is happily in a long term relationship of her own, I might add, despite commenters telling her she was boring and didn’t know anything about love.

“The saddest thing was that one called me naïve… but she misspelled the word.”

The point is, you can show your partner some love online, but, just like in real life it’s all about how you do it.

Sure, give them a shout-out on special occasions – especially if you received a gift worthy of showing off to your friends.

Post photos of yourselves kissing but only if they’re from your wedding – and even then, you’re probably pushing it a little.

But for the most part, keep your soppy, love-poem graffiti off my wall, thank you very much.

The date idea has been sitting innocently in our date ideas generator for years now. I see it every now and then and resolve to go along. When the Y date idea in our alphabet dates arrived, I couldn’t resist any longer.

I didn’t tell Den about it ahead of time – I find that if he has a preconceived notion of a date, he’ll bag it right away. It’s part of him hating to leave his comfort zone. I’ve made the mistake before of telling him where we were going when I knew he wouldn’t like it – it doesn’t bode well for a fun date. He gets all negative about it before he’s even had a go (Ten Pin Bowling and Strawberry Picking leap to mind). Usually, once we’re there and in the midst of it, he loves it.

We rolled up to Federation Square, Melbourne CBD. The middle of the city on a Sunday morning. Lots of people around to witness the ridiculousness (and yes, it is purposely ridiculous) of our little Laughter Yoga group.

The concept is simple: Laugh for no reason. The laughter leader takes you through a series of exercises incorporating breathing, rhythm and fake laughter. Pretty soon, the laughter stops being fake and turns to real laughter. You move around the group during your exercise, making eye contact with other members in order to contagiously spread the mirth.

I always laughed hardest when I caught Den’s eye – him too. Mostly because we were, I’ll admit, slightly mortified at what we were doing acting like lunatics on a Sunday morning in the middle of the city. It was hilarious. I caught Den wiping away tears of laughter at one point.

The practice goes for about half an hour, then you regroup and decompress – an important part of the process.

Straight afterwards, I felt light and happy and great. Then I crashed a bit – a common side effect if you don’t “ground” yourself enough following the session. I felt wiped out, frustrated, angry and sad all at once. There were a few tears. I wasn’t myself the rest of the day. I’m an emotional person at the best of times, and this had clearly stirred something up. Looking online, I found it was normal to clear away some bad emotions. I’m sure with more frequent practice, you can get to the feeling good bit.

Regardless of that, it was still a fun date. It met all the requirements we need – under $30 (free, in fact!), something we’ve never done before and something that pushed our comfort circles.

We made a little video for you to see. Find a laughing club near you and try it out!

Friends with benefits. We’ve made no secret of it – that’s how the Den and Emma story started. Great friends, then, for the better part of a whole year, friends who knocked socks occasionally (okay, it was a bit more than occasionally. More like a couple of times a week. You can see how we got ourselves in trouble).

Is there a more fun and satisfying arrangement for a couple of single young things who don’t want to be tied down? Probably not.

Now the thing about casual sex? It’s not always casual. I’ve written about this before:

“Having sex (casual or otherwise) drives up the levels of dopamine, the romantic love hormone, leaving you primed to fall head over heels for your bed-buddy. On top of that, every time you orgasm, you’re delivered a surge of vasopressin and oxytocin, the attachment hormones that bond mothers to their babies.

So even if you just tell yourself it’s casual sex, you’re in real danger of becoming attached.

Is it any wonder hook-ups often end in complication, confusion and tears?

Anthropologist Helen Fisher even thinks that men and women continue to casually hook up to unconsciously trigger those feelings of romance and bonding.

Tread carefully – you may end up more attached than you think.”

Read that article in full here: Casual Sex? Not Always Casual.

This fun new movie, called (aptly enough) Friends with Benefits stars Mila Kunis and Justin Timberlake. Mila is a comedy genius (big fan of her work as Meg Griffin. Huge) and I’m excited to see her in a lead role for a new-generation rom com.

Sony Pictures says: A young female head-hunter (Mila Kunis) in New York convinces a potential recruit (Justin Timberlake) to accept a job in the Big Apple. Despite an attraction to each other, both realise they’re everything they’ve been running from in a relationship and decide to see what happens if they leave emotion out of it and keep it strictly physical.

We’ve got 10 double passes to see Friends with Benefits up for grabs.

To win, leave a comment below to enter and tell us what you think about having a bonk-buddy. Like it or loathe it? Ever gotten too attached?

Passes valid in Australia only. 10 commenters will be chosen at random. Competition closes midnight Monday 15 August, winners announced on Tuesday 16 August.

Kind of makes you want to rethink your next invitation to a dinner party, doesn’t it?

In all seriousness, I’ve had a busy couple of days acting as spokesperson for the Electrolux Passion for Food Survey – and having a ball!

The research findings have been fascinating, with 53% of respondents voting a home cooked meal is the best way to get in the mood for an intimate night in, above sharing a warm bubble bath (29%) and being surprised with a gift (38%).

Food and passion has gone hand in hand for centuries. Ancient cultures knew the power of aphrodisiacs, and so do modern Australians, it seems. A decadent chocolate pudding was voted the number one dessert to cook when wanting to wine and dine your sweetie – and for good reason!

When you eat chocolate, your brain chemistry and heart rate matches that of when you’re engaging in a passionate kiss – excitement, euphoria, attraction… what better way to get in the mood at home?

Nine in 10 Australians want a partner that has some kitchen skills. I don’t blame them. There’s something very sexy about a man that can cook. Six in 10 women agree.

For men, I’m sure it’s still (all these years later) still almost mandatory that a woman can cook (though I do know a few exceptions to that rule myself) – 74% of the male respondents confirm my suspicions.

On the menu for main course was a traditional roast (27%) followed by seafood (23%) and a juicy steak (14%).

In my opinion, seeing as the kitchen seems to be such a damn sexy place, you should both get in there together. Couples spend an average of about two hours a day together, and one third of that is in front of the TV. Switch of the box, get into the kitchen with some good music and open a bottle of wine while you prepare the night’s meal – even better if you’re cooking something you’ve never tried to before. Injecting novelty in any form is good for your relationship.

Do you cook together? What’s your favourite meal that your partner makes for you?

I need you to do something for me, please. Well, it’s really not just for me, it’s for all of Australia, and indeed the world.

We need you to legalise gay marriage in Australia.

I’m not a gay woman. But that doesn’t matter.

You’re still cheating me out of something that’s very important to me – attending the wedding of one of my best friends.

You see, he’s not allowed to get married. It’s illegal for him to do so.

No matter that he’s in love. That he owns a house with his partner. That they have been a part of each other’s lives for just as long as my own husband and I have been.

No matter that they care about each other’s families and that they are just as ‘married’ to each other as any heterosexual couple I know – perhaps even moreso than some.

Yes, they are married in every sense of the word, except one. The important one.

It’s incredible to me that I even have to write this letter to you.

I know for a fact I’m not the only one writing to you this week. Calls have gone out all over the internet for others to do the same. It’s on everyone’s mind.

New York, Western Australia… they’ve started the ball rolling and we’re determined to finish it. There is true momentum behind the movement for equality not and we want to see this blatant discrimination abolished from our society.

There can be no half measures here. Full equality is the only acceptable solution.

If we call it anything but ‘marriage’ then we have to rewrite years of laws.

The bond of marriage carries a host of rights with it – next of kin and power of attorney in a crisis are particularly powerful ones that fall under only the word ‘marriage’.

It must be all, or it might as well be nothing.

Gay men and women need to be able to confidently and legally say: ‘That’s my wife’ or ‘That’s my husband’. And they deserve the right to be able to do that, should they choose to.

Ms Gillard, you don’t need me to rebut every argument that you continue to throw down against same sex marriage. Plenty of others before me have done a wonderful job of that.

You strike me as a progressive and thoroughly modern woman, which makes it seem even more inauthentic when you spout the same, senseless line – I suspect you actually don’t believe it yourself.

You leave us wondering why you remain so stubborn about it when there are no good reasons left.

Without equality, you, as a woman, wouldn’t hold the position you hold right now. And I, as a woman, would never have been able to even vote in the last election.

It’s only fairness that we’re seeking from you. Surely you can see that.

Your own party is almost unanimously in favour – five of our states have passed their own motions supporting equality.

The opinion polls are showing that a majority of Australians support same sex marriage. Three quarters of us think it is inevitable that it will be legalised.

The only question is when.

With that in mind, be decisive, Ms Gillard. If you do nothing else as our first female Prime Minister, do this.

In December, you will have a huge chance to make a difference.

I urge you, along with the majority of Australians: Listen to your publics. Listen to your party. Legalise same-sex marriage.

Leave a legacy we can all be proud of and be the Prime Minister who wouldn’t stand for inequality and discrimination in our country. It’s time.

A funny thing happened to Den after we got married.

He noticed that when out with friends in bars or clubs, women were more flirty with him. They would be more open, talk for hours rather than fobbing him off and spout cliches like “All the good ones are taken” (cue flirty eyelash-batting) and “Well, if you’re so happily married where’s your wife tonight?”. Luckily he’s a trustworthy guy.

Anyway, I’ve written before about the women with a penchant for married men.

Women like married men for a reason. It shows they can commit. In another recent study, a man’s attractiveness was rated more highly by women when they were told he was married rather than single.

So it’s no wonder some men lie about it to get women interested. A wedding band is a great prop, up their with cute babies and fluffy puppies for getting women interested.

Just Go With It is about to be released at the movies on March 31, starring Adam Sandler as a plastic surgeon, who, romancing a much younger schoolteacher, enlists his loyal assistant to pretend to be his soon to be ex-wife, in order to cover up a careless lie he told about being married.

Our friends at Sony Pictures are giving our Australian readers the chance to win one of 10 inseason double passes to see the new romantic comedy Just Go With It for your next date night – it will be in cinemas from March 31.

The movie looks like a barrel of fun and stars Jennifer Aniston and Adam Sandler… who have each made some great date night movies in the past… 50 First Dates and The Wedding Singer are two I rate very highly. As for the divine Jennifer Aniston, well if you want a movie your man will love you can’t go past Derailed. She gets points from me for The Break Up too, but not so sure that’s the best movie to watch with your sweetie on a date!

Anyway, check out the trailer below to find out more…

So if you’d like a date night on us (which means you’ll have money left in your own budget for dinner!), comment below to let us know what you think the best pick-up line ever is… We’ll judge our favourites at our discretion and winners will be announced here and contacted via email on Monday 21 March, 2011.

Please note: Prizes are only valid for Australian cinemas.