For a spurned ex-fiance, is there any better revenge than hitting your former partner in the wallet?

I almost laughed through my bleary eyes Thursday morning when I woke up and saw Lemondrop.com link to this story about a Chicago woman suing her former life partner-to-be for almost six figures to recover costs from a wedding that was cancelled at the last minute. It’s not the first tale of its kind, but the dollar amount close to $100k drew my attention.

Without a doubt, Dominique B is doing the right thing. Nuptials are serious business with major financial ramifications for those footing the bill. If her man was getting cold feet, he owed it to her to end the relationship before expenses mounted and Dominique’s monetary investment grew to a level close to her emotional one. You’ll be hard pressed to find a better argument in favor of small, quaint ceremonies (read: inexpensive ones).

These kinds of situations should go both ways. If a woman pulls the ‘Runaway Bride’ act, men should drop the legal hammer if they see fit. It’s important for people, regardless of gender, to hit the brakes long before the big day spirals out of control. If their feelings are in doubt, they probably care more about the dollars anyway.

Tags: his & hers, money by Glenn Giangrande
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My mother grew up in a farm town in Illinois. She had an older brother and a younger brother, and her parents had double standards. She could only go so far into the woods, she could only swim so far out into the lake, she had to be home before dark — that kind of thing. Her brothers did as they pleased and she was informed that girls were not allowed the same freedom.

I wonder if that’s why she never complained about raising me alone. And I mean alone, no support system whatsoever, no help from my birth father. I wonder if she just decided to prove to everyone that she was strong, and fully capable of being both parents. She was strong, she was capable, but of course she couldn’t be two people. Neither can I.

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Tags: family & parenting, square one by Van McCourt by Van McCourt
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It is a clear indication that you are ridiculously happy when your friends post a link to Wikipedia’s definition of vomit on your facebook status updates. I wasn’t super pleased with the posting of the link itself, but I’m so happy. So happy in fact, that people can poop on my parade all they want. I will just keep smiling. Like the Orbitz gum girl. It’s raining poo, but man is there good stuff to smile about.

Of course, being who I am, and having dealt with what I have been through recently, all this smiling scares me a little. Can I really keep this up?

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Tags: his & hers, square one by Van McCourt by Van McCourt
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Sometimes someone is obvious. You take one look at them, and you know just who they are, what they will be to you, how you will handle them. That’s pretty rare, I think. Mostly we misjudge. Or, we are hopeful, so we lean toward an opinion. We make the call on how we respond based on the outcome we want, not really what we expect. And, sometimes, we just don’t get what we expect at all.

Time and again I have met a guy, thought he was amazing, and then discovered through a kiss that there was no real substantial attraction. Conversely, I have met lots of guys that I wasn’t so sure about, and then have been blown away when they just kiss me into oblivion. This is making me sound like I have done a lot of kissing, which I think maybe I have. But, I also think there is a real lesson here. One that I started learning early on, to which I probably should have paid better attention.

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Tags: his & hers, square one by Van McCourt by Van McCourt
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Ines Sainz, former Miss Spain and current TV Azteca reporter, is at the center of a harassment controversy featuring the New York Jets.

No one touched her, or put a pubic hair on her soda can. According to CNN.com, when Sainz showed up to interview Jets quarterback Mark Sanchez, a couple of fat coaches acted like fifth-graders intimidated by a pretty girl and threw balls near her so they could get a better look at her, and some players enthuasiastically expressed their appreciation when she entered the locker room. That is the extent of what is known about the harassing behavior.

How did Sainz feel about this attention? [Read more →]

Tags: his & hers, sports by Scott Stein
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When I was 29, and single, dating went like this: See a guy at a party, make eye contact, if he walks up chat a bit, find out some stuff (who his favorite band is, if he likes the Coen Brother’s films, if he had ever bothered to finish undergrad), make out, start dating. Just like that. I didn’t care about getting married, so I didn’t care if we got serious. Nobody I met had kids (or rarely had), no one had relaxed into a job they once hated. We just wanted to be hot for each other and have some things in common. Bonus if we liked each other’s friends.

Sigh… doesn’t that sound nice? Now at 39, and single, dating goes like this: [Read more →]

Tags: his & hers, square one by Van McCourt, technology by Van McCourt
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I don’t know why it would be shocking to anyone that Hugh Hefner thinks that women are sex objects, nor do I see what is controversial about what he is saying in this Showbiz Tonight video. But perhaps what is shocking is the show put on by the blonde anchor at Showbiz Tonight with her faux mild outrage that a woman’s appearance matters and that women want to be attractive to men. If she were ugly — no, if she were even average-looking or just mildly attractive — even if she had the strongest journalistic credentials to ever grace Showbiz Tonight’s illustrious newsroom, even were she the greatest investigative reporter they’d ever met — she wouldn’t be on television.

Tags: his & hers, television by Scott Stein
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I put people in boxes. I have been doing it for a long time. The first time I did it, and did it well, was when I was seventeen. I have not spoken to that person in 22 years. Which is mostly what it means to be put in a box by me. I cut off contact entirely. I mean, it’s an imaginary box, but it works as well as a real one for me (perhaps with fewer legal ramifications.) Before you judge too harshly on how I judge, what I should have done to that first person was have him sent to jail.

When you go into one of my boxes, it isn’t just a matter of cutting off contact. [Read more →]

Tags: ends & odd, his & hers by Van McCourt
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Via dlisted, there is an interview from Vanity Fair in which Lady GaGa confesses that she believes the seat of her creativity can be found in her wondrous loins.

Lady Gaga tells Vanity Fair contributing editor Lisa Robinson that she tries to avoid having sex because she is afraid of depleting her creative energy — “I have this weird thing that if I sleep with someone they’re going to take my creativity from me through my vagina.”

Sex is a creative act in itself, if not procreative. It fans the creative spark; it does not deplete it. But how does a man take the creativity of a woman through her vagina? Copulation between a man and a woman involves penetrating the woman’s orifice with his penis. Does Ms. GaGa’s creativity travel into the hole in the tip of the penis, and up into his urethra, from there to his liver and eventually to his brain? [Read more →]

Tags: art & entertainment, his & hers by Ricky Sprague
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A man has been convicted of rape by deception. Let’s leave aside the specifics of this case. It’s from Israel. A Jewish woman had sex with a man who had ”introduced himself as a Jewish bachelor seeking a serious relationship.” Introducing himself this way caused them to have “consensual sex in a nearby building.” It turns out that the man was Palestinian. Not so much Jewish. He’ll now spend 18 months in prison. The issue of rape by deception in this particular case can’t be separated from Israeli politics and the unique situation there, so let’s put this particular case aside and consider rape by deception generally.

The judges in the Israeli case said that the sex was “obtained under false pretenses.” We might wonder how often it is obtained any other way. [Read more →]

Tags: his & hers, on the law by Scott Stein
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