Don’t suggest she’s an alcoholic if she has a second glass of wine, especially as you are in the process of downing a double martini.

Don’t tell her how upright and kind you are then lie, snip sarcastically at people and put them down for no apparent reason except to build up your own ego.

Don’t eat just before going out to dinner so that you’ll order less food, particularly if money is not a problem for you.

Don’t look over into her empty plate after finishing dinner and exclaim excitedly about her healthy appetite.

Don’t stare at your plate the entire time you are eating dinner. Try to look her in the eye and converse. It is part of the romantic experience.

Don’t tell her your ex-wife cheated on you and that you were loyal and devoted throughout your thirty-year marriage. This story is a cliche but, if in the off-chance it happens to be true, wait a while before you spring it on your new love. She has to trust you before she’ll believe it.

Don’t tell her you were a good husband and father and yet, have no idea why your wife walked out on you. Think about your participation, and be honest.

Don’t pretend emotions are only for women. Everyone has them. If you’ve managed to suppress yours, you will find your relationship stuck in a boring groove.

Don’t demean the women’s movement because it makes you feel manly. All it does is show your insecurities.

Don’t put down good dramas that develop characters and evolving relationships. It is an area where we all can learn. If you deny the seriousness of it because you consider it “girl” stuff and refuse to listen, you will be on the wrong side of enlightenment.

Don’t give your ex-wife names or addresses of the women you’re dating (or even a hint) if you owe the ex money.

Don’t invite a woman for a romantic liaison and then ask her to pay the hotel bill – especially if you’re married. And remember to say you’re married upfront!

Don’t ask her what size dress she wears and then tell her your ex-wife wore a size four. She is, after all, your ex-wife.

Don’t talk about yourself for three hours and then encourage the woman you’re with to speak about herself if you are in the habit of interrupting after the second sentence.

Don’t tell me you divorced your wife because she strove desperately to be as smart as you (and, of course, didn’t succeed).

Don’t try to convert me if I say I’m not the least bit religious or belong to any organized religion. And especially don’t lecture me about the subject.

Don’t answer my questions with a long-winded lecture, especially if it is totally unrelated to the subject.

Don’t give a rundown of all your activities for the week and then pencil a woman in on the most undesirable day and time, especially after dating for several months. It’s obvious you want to keep the woman in her place, keep her guessing. It’s just another bad example of game-playing.

Don’t be afraid to be the real you, warts and all. It’s a turn on to many women.

Don’t call and say, “What night this week do we have a date? I forgot.”

Don’t say you can’t get involved in a relationship until your old mother dies (she might live to 110).

Don’t look away when a woman speaks to you.

Don’t play loud music or turn on the TV when she says we have to talk.

The next blog will detail the positives, the actions that make for great, fun relationships.

The sexy grandmom
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Don’t kiss goodnight on the first date and suddenly plunge your tongue down your date’s throat. A little soft, tender buildup is much better.

Don’t break wind repeatedly during sex. Have the smarts to take Beano.

Don’t ejaculate in a woman’s mouth without asking permission.

Don’t jump all over a woman on a first date, and then insist that it’s your enthusiastic personality rather than annoyingly, overly aggressive advances.

Don’t kiss with a drippy nose.

Don’t have the TV on during sex. (Honestly!)

Don’t say in the middle of making love that you only take out women who are wild in bed. Why would anyone want to know that at a time like that?

Don’t talk about other women you have loved in your life immediately before or after making love.

Don’t talk about other women you are presently taking out immediately before or after making love. That’s enough to watch the door hit you on the ass on the way out.

Don’t idealize your dead wife or past loves, especially during foreplay.

Don’t feel free to open envelopes in your date’s home and read the contents without permission.

Don’t lie — especially about your children. No doubt, they are good kids without, ahem, embellishing. Once caught in any type of lie it’s hard to earn back trust.

Don’t be emotionally unavailable. That means you attempt to talk about what’s inside your head and heart instead of insisting you’re a terrific guy with no problems, no issues and no self-exploration.

Don’t kiss a woman’s hand and then wipe your nose on her fingers as a joke. That wasn’t funny in elementary school and is not funny now.

Don’t belittle.

Don’t say the opposite just to be arbitrary. Contradict, disagree, even yell, but don’t be oppositional as a matter of habit.

Don’t announce that you left your stool softener at home when in the middle of a lovely dinner.

Don’t come an hour late without calling, especially when your date has cooked you dinner.

Don’t whine about everything — such as minor physical ailments, your ex-wife and never about your mother.

Don’t tell a woman you’re dating that she ought to be grateful to you because you always take out much younger women.

Don’t be blind to life around you. Observe, participate and share.

Don’t lack a sense of humor. Dark humor is great – let yourself go.

Don’t give sarcastic jabs with a soft voice and say you didn’t mean anything hurtful because you didn’t yell.

Don’t say mean things or criticize and then say you were just being funny. When you’re funny at someone else’s expense, it’s nasty.

Don’t take a date to a casino for dinner, rush through dinner and drop her for two hours or more at the bar while you gamble. And don’t tell her she was or wasn’t your good luck charm.

Don’t drive away before she’s entered her apartment building, especially late at night.

Don’t suggest going out to eat when she’s in the middle of cooking dinner. You already know the answer. Why not just pitch in and enjoy yourself.

This is a partial list. In the next blog I’ll finish these negative suggestions, and then go through the positive behaviors that turn a woman on. Writing about the upbeat is more fun, anyway.

The sexy grandmom
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I’d like to continue exploring what goes wrong in a marriage, but a bit more in-depth. We all know that the divorce rate is enormous. So, is it true that marriage ruins a good friendship? It’s not uncommon for couples to date or live together for a very long time, and then divorce shortly after getting married. What happens to expectations and romance when we put our signatures on that little piece of paper? We’ve all heard it said that getting married should be made extremely difficult while divorce should be easy.

I’ve quoted Harville Hendrix, Ph.D. before who wrote, Getting The Love You Want. I think much of what he says makes good sense. For starters he says, “It appears that each one of us is compulsively searching for a mate with a very particular set of positive and negative personality traits.”

Hendrix likes to refer to “new brain” and “old brain.” “Your new brain is the part of you that is conscious, alert, and in contact with your daily surroundings.” My own oversimplification of this theory is – the new brain is absorbing information, abstracting it and making logical conclusions.

And here’s something I quoted in the last blog that Hendrix said, “In sharp contrast to the new brain, you are unaware of most of the functions of your old brain. Trying to comprehend this part of your being is a maddening task, because you have to turn your conscious mind around to examine its own underbelly.”

I take this to mean that your “old brain” is your unconscious mind, a place few of us dare to enter. BUT, it is a necessary territory to explore if we want to have a good relationship.

Not many people can explain what comprises this mysterious thing called romantic chemistry. We do know that it overwhelmingly influences our choices in selecting mates, and determines the direction of our future. We go with it willingly because it pumps us up, makes us feel good. Is it to be trusted without question?

Helen Fisher, Ph.D., anthropologist and author of a notable book, Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love, has conducted a study to find out the chemistry of romantic love. She said in an interview dated February 4, 2004, “I wanted to put people who were madly in love into a brain scanner to see if I could find out which parts of the brain become active when someone feels romantic passion.”

This is one of the conclusions from the study: “We found activity in two very primitive brain regions, the ventral tegmental area and the caudate nucleus. Both are part of the brain’s “reward system” and are associated with focused attention and the motivation to win a reward. In fact, we discovered that dopamine, a powerful stimulant in the brain, is most likely central to the feeling of romantic love. And I suspect that we will some day discover that high levels of norepinephrine and low levels of serotonin are also involved.”

My basic interpretation is that an internal neon sign lights up, pointing to the person who has aroused our romantic chemistry. We are excited, stimulated and intensely aware of this person. Our senses are heightened. What more can you ask for? When this initial rush diminishes, as it inevitably does, you should be asking for a lot more.

So many times I’ve heard people say that their husband/wife reminds them of one or both of parents or guardians. If you had difficulty with your parents, you might be dragging all the old baggage into the present – and into the bedroom as well.

Hendrix address this issue like this: “Many people have a hard time accepting the idea that they have searched for partners who resembled their caretakers, positive traits – people who were, among other things, kind, loving, good-looking, intelligent and creative. In fact, if they had an unhappy childhood, they may have deliberately searched for people who were radically different from their caretakers.”

The unexamined unconscious may well play tricks on us. What seems to happen is that we can be attracted to people are not radically different from our caretakers. As Hendrix continues, “The part of your brain that directed your search for a mate, however, was not your logical, orderly new brain; it was your time-locked, myopic old brain. And what your old brain was trying to do was re-create the conditions of your upbringing, in order to correct them.” WOW!!

So, if we have not self-examined the past and how it affected our present-day behavior, we might be attracted to a mate with the worst negative traits that your caretaker had. You may well have duplicated your early childhood to get, in the present, what you missed getting as a child. Most times, your mate is unaware that he/she is being looked to as the rescuer. And, more than likely, your mate is doing the same thing to you. IT IS A RECIPE FOR DISASTER!

When this happens, very soon, two people are banging head. Neither is able to achieve the emotional fulfillment that they crave. Should we refuse to get married? I don’t think that’s necessarily the answer, but if two people decide marriage is not for them, that’s perfectly fine. Tthey have made a conscious decision to work it out without the traditional trappings.

What we need to do is question and examine why we’re getting married and to whom? Why is this man/woman compelling. This person and your romantic chemistry must be examined with a fine tooth comb. After that, the two should discuss the conclusions each has come to. Since romantic chemistry can lead you astray and is very complex, you might choose to do this with a qualified therapist.

Partners must be honest about family backgrounds. I’m not saying reject someone if they’ve had an unhappy childhood. But you have to discover what those early traumas were in order to free yourself from trying to recreate and change them with a mate.

If we don’t approach marriage with good insight, the results may well be divorce or misery in a contentious relationship. The word divorce rolls out of our mouths easily, but is associated with enormous pain. It’s up there on the list as one of the most stressful life events – as painful as losing a loved one.

When considering a potential mate, we should ask a simple question. Why this one? Why is the attraction so strong for me? Selections have to be made with both the heart and the brain. After all, who wants to go to bed with someone who unconsciously reminds you of your parent/caretaker? That has to be the biggest turn-off, bigger than even, shall we say, older folks having sex. An explored inner life leads to the kind of maturity that gives a relationship a much better chance for happiness and great sex.

From the sexy grandmom
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