THE LOVE LAB

Le Bain @ The Standard Hotel with DJ Fame Cohen

Happy Friday People! As you have noticed – I am BACK. To celebrate my return to society after a long grad school induced hiatus, I decided to celebrate this Memorial Day weekend at a Le Bain’s opening of Ete D’Amour – a day party from 4pm to 2am on Summer Sundays.

After coming there the previous Friday and seeing that there is an actual le bain inside Le Bain – I was intrigued.

Today is the first official day of Summer and the start of a new season is a great time to regroup and revamp. With much of my grad school coursework behind me and no presentations until the Fall, I have finally emerged from The Dark Ages that my friend Fame (in the top picture) had predicted in a tarot card reading for me right before I began the PhD program.

Whether you believe that sort of thing or not – she was quite on point. I had to prioritize school over almost everything else in my life, including my friends/romance/family and side projects (The Love Lab included). There were months where I must have studied 90 hours a week and slept on average 3-4 hours a night. During the most intense weeks, I had to institute the Delusional Positivity Project, which was a morning mailing between a couple of friends where we would list the 10 things we were thankful for that moment and 3 things we were excited about. I cannot stress how forcing your brain to search for the positives can have a major impact on your mood. Towards the end of the Winter, things started to calm down since I had passed my oral and written Qualifying Exam (a 2 hour exam where you are orally quizzed by a Committee on your general and project related knowledge) but I still had a slew of presentations to get through before I could take a breath.

Then, about 2 weeks ago, Fame had done another tarot reading for me (it was the first time I had seen her in a long time due to my schedule). I was thrilled to be relieved from The Dark Ages, as this reading was a positive one. There was one caveat in the card spread – my romantic interest at the time did not show lasting power. Things were actually going pretty well, so I wondered if this time around the cards were all wrong. However, since only a week after I had a bad dream about him and the following week the dream came true, I decided that this was a sacrifice I am willing to make to the universe in exchange for all those other awesome predictions. I know this last paragraph doesn’t sound very scientific, but one thing that I took home with me in these last few years is that you have to trust your intuition. Our mind subconsciously collects information that we may not be actively analyzing; an individual’s micro expressions and body language, as well as subtle but telling behavior, are all being collected as data/evidence by our brains to give us a burst of intuition once there are enough puzzle pieces to make out a picture. Although negative intuition need not be expressed to your partner as it comes, it is a reason for caution and vigilance.

Now, I am ready to embrace the exciting opportunities that the next there months have to offer and indulge my passions. I begin everything (the year, the season, the day) with a good old fashioned to-do list. My broad goals for this summer?
1) Make headway with my thesis project
2) get traction on a couple of my start-up projects
3) work out like a ninja
4) and have a blast connecting with my friends and family…and new people of course

Happy Summer of Love to everyone and stay tuned for more posts!

High Status Female Kate Moss photographed by Mario Testino

Social prowess gained through advanced degrees, competence, ambition, and creativity has allowed a woman in her prime to bring a whole new set of tools to the dating scene. And yet, in New York City, 66% of the women ages 20-34 (basically the reproductive years) have never been married.

This begs the question of whether being a high status female has an actual advantage in the dating landscape.

Evolutionary biologists insist that the age-old strategy is for men choosing attractive and fertile women, while women prefer men of status and resources.

Do men really consider a woman’s social rank as an unimportant or irrelevant dating quality?

One website I found created a ‘dating market value’ quiz for men and women, with a woman’s market value being determined largely by physical factors. Generous points are given for youth, beauty, and a low body mass index and points are actually taken away for an above average IQ (this test was written by a man).
In fact, here is the insightful note the blogger writes at the bottom of his quiz:
“I hope everyone noticed what was missing from this test: Your job. The amount of money you make. Your accomplishments.Your social status and number of friends. Your deep and profound worldview.”

Hmmm.

I decided to get to the bottom of all this and found some empowering facts for the ladies looking for success in social rank AND in romance.

Although it is true that men covet attractive and young females, the factors that are even more important in the actual unions that result (and particularly those that are happily maintained) are:

being close in time/distance
social class background
racial/ethnic/religious/political affiliations

Note how all these factors can be impacted by the social position of the woman.

And the big factor leading to divorce? The woman having a low status! In fact, the least educated women and those that marry very young (and thus tend to be more low status at the time) are the most likely to get divorced.

On the other hand, it was shown that college educated women who, although marry later, enjoy the following benefits:

- they are less likely to view marriage as “financial security” and can marry for love
- they are happier in their marriages and with their family life,
- they are the least likely to divorce

The point I am trying to make is that having a high ‘dating market value’ as perceived by men may not necessary mean you will have high dating success.

High status women don’t come out on top because of who chooses THEM, but because of whom THEY choose.

note: I originally wrote this post as a guest on guest of a guest (pun intended during Social Media Week last year. Although, they wound up going with another article for publication, I wanted to give them a shout out since they inspired me to think about it.