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laura sessions stepp

March 9th 2010

Prego Scare By Text Message

- Laura Sessions Stepp

The first text message my young traveling companion got stopped her in the middle of our conversation.

It read: Hey. I have a big secret I cant tell u til monday tho. But its huge girl nd im scared.

My companion typed:

Ur prego??? Ahhhhhhh

My companion’s friend, whom I’ll call "Worried", came back: They tested me today nd they r gunna call to tell me if it was positive or negative on monday. Im sooo scared!

And so began a saga for my companion, a college freshman, that started last Thursday in my car and continued until late last night.

The first text from Worried arrived as we were driving south on I-95, headed to a conference to talk about, of all things, young people and sex.

3.08.10

How Married Are You?

Laura Sessions Stepp interviews Hannah Seligson, author of A Little Bit Married: How to Know When It's Time to Walk Down the Aisle or Out the Door. [10 min 2 sec]

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March 3rd 2010

Oxytocin: The Pseudoscience of the Hook-Up Hormone

- Lena Chen

As a now-monogamous former sex blogger, I'm living proof that hooking up doesn't make you crazy or unable to commit. But if mainstream media reports of the past few years are to be believed, I'm the exception, not the rule.

March 2nd 2010

What We Can Learn from this Year’s Olympians

- Laura Sessions Stepp

Ashleigh McIvor, Canada's Olympic ski queen, told a reporter last week that the ski cross techniques that won her a gold medal were learned by "chasing the boys down the hills" of her native Whistler and Cypress Mountains.

Last week, the Canadian boys were chasing her and other amazing female Canadians who competed in the 21st Olympic winter games. Canada fielded 43 women and 206 men this year. For the second winter Olympics in a row, the women out-medaled the men.

Canadians are crowing this week about their men’s gold-medal hockey victory over the Americans on Sunday. But for the preceding two weeks, their female athletes were the ones dominating the Canadian media.

(What does this have to do with intimacy? Plenty. Keep reading.)

February 22nd 2010

Dating Violence: Not Just “Their” Problem

- Laura Sessions Stepp

Last week, the University of Oregon’s highly-touted running back, LaMichael James, was charged with strangling, assaulting and harassing his girlfriend.

Misdemeanor charges.

That’s all?

Pushed her down in a public parking lot.

Didn’t anyone see it?

We don’t know. Because from what I can tell from news clips and blogs, no reporter asked.

2.22.10

Confronting Dating Violence

Sometimes a relationship can turn violent. How can you get out of it? Are there signs you should have seen? What can friends and family do to help? Is there anything you can do to avoid an abusive relationship in the first place? In honor of Teen Dating Violence Awareness and Prevention Month, we talked to two young women who experienced dating violence beginning in their teens - and to one expert with good advice for all of us.

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February 16th 2010

Fantasy Match-Up: Delilah Rene and Hannah Seligson

- Laura Sessions Stepp

I’d pay good money to see Delilah Rene, 50, and Hannah Seligson, 25, sit down over a bottle of Bordeaux and talk about love. Here’s why:

Delilah, whose nightly radio show by the same name is heard by 8 million listeners a week, calls herself the “Queen of Sappy Love Songs.” Her world, said Ellen McCarthy in last week’s Washington Post, is “a schmaltzy, airbrushed place where love is all that matters….”

February 8th 2010

Science and Sense in the Abstinence Wars

- Laura Sessions Stepp

News organizations carried a story last week about a successful, experimental sex ed curriculum focused on abstinence. What follows is my blog post about the study, which ran in The Huffington Post, and a short sample of reaction to the post.

*****

When I read the lead paragraph of last week’s news story on the success of an experimental, abstinence-only sex ed curriculum, my first thought was: “Yes, but…”

2.07.10

Relationship Obituaries

Looking for closure after a break up? Write an obituary…

For Valentine’s Day, we decided to explore what happens when Cupid abandons us. Laura Stepp talks to author Kathleen Horan about her book, Relationship Obits: The Final Resting Place for Love Gone Wrong, born of a website to help people mourn dead relationships and move on. [12 min 40 sec]

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February 1st 2010

Just Friends: Thoughts on “Cross-sex” Friendship

- Laura Sessions Stepp

A female reader named Marian emailed me recently to talk, in part, about close, non-romantic friendships with men.

“I know the men I have in my life, that I relate to with no sexual pretense, have played a huge part in how I see myself and the world at large,” she said. “They have helped me to put myself back out there after some really difficult times both with hooking up and just life in general.”