GIVEAWAY: Maybelline Volume Seduction Lipgloss

Ok. I have thirty of these babies to giveaway on my blog…

and I’ve been trying to work out what I’m going to get you women to do to earn it… (i figure you boys won’t want one unless you want to enter on a partners behalf.

So…..this is the challenge- just post the top three qualities you look for or found in a partner….

First thirty responses get a lippy  (so make sure you have a vaild email address for contacting

oh and as I’m posting these out, this is restricted to NZ people only 

GO FORTH AND COMMENT!

You can’t stop coughing. is it swine flu or?

Is it a condom stuck in your lungs? Ok so this 27 year old couldn’t stop coughing for six months, then they discover a condom in her lungs.

All I want to know is how does a condom go missing during fellatio? Wouldn’t at least ONE of the people particiapting notice? And surely swallowing it would all feel weird?

So many questions…

How come every guy I date cheats on me?

I get asked this question or one similar alot. Why are all guys cheaters? Why do I date players? or Why can’t I find a normal guy?

It’s tempting to look at the guys you’re dating and put it all on them, but if you’re going out with the same type of guy over and over again it is not a coincidence. It’s actually more about you than them. It starts with you. if you have dating patterns you are attracting the same type of guys over and over again because you are giving out signals they find attractive.

How do you stop the cycle? Well the best way is to stop. Completely. Take a break and stop dating. Find out about yourself, and enjoy your own company. And take some time to think about what it is that you found so attractive about those guys in the first place.

Break the pattern. It’s one of the reasons we can’t rely on chemistry alone. Chemistry only works if we’ve got our heads and hearts sorted. if we’re hurting and damaged the chemistry dynamic is also faulty and going to give us the wrong connection every time.

Once you’ve taken a good break form dating date a wide selection of people, including guys you wouldn’t normally go for. This helps you see aspects of healthy relationships across a wide range of people to help you work out what you could have and find

Stop dating cheaters, stop blaming them for cheaters, and get yourself sorted. Who wants to be stuck in a ground hog day of crappy partners? It’s worth making a few changes to stop that from happening.

Getting Back on the Dating Wagon

Ok, it might not be perfect- but the above is my very first you tube video- all about getting back on the dating wagon after coming out of a long term relationship.

Making your body move.

Yesterday I posted a link to my spot on sunrise and blogged about a man has said to his girlfriend “You need to lose 20 kg before I’ll marry you” I talked about my feelings on it there, and have already been touched at some of the comments I’ve received from people on the blog and in emails and texts.

I do think that what ever your size however, you need to look after it well for your own well being and enjoyment. I’ve not only found eating right and moving is great for your physical health- it’s awesome for your emotional health too.

It took me a long time to find exercise I loved. I’ve always loved swimming, and walking- especially on the beach, and I think part of the enjoyment of both is the sheer sensuality involved with both. Which is why I also find yoga, pilates and tai chi so appealing as well. There is something very powerful in knowing how your body can move, and feeling that all important mind body connection.

You cannot expect someone else to know your body if you don’t know it first. Using exercise such as yoga, pilates or tai chi helps you to focus on your breath, your movements and your sense of control. And the best thing is any size or shape can do it.

Making your body move isn’t always about losing weight, or becoming muscly. However a body that moves how you want it to will give you confidence. And as I’ve said before- confidence is the sexiest thing anyone can wear.

Is it love to ask someone to lose weight?

I spoke on Sunrise this morning about whether a boyfriend’s request his partner lose 20 kilograms before he’ll marry her was a good thing, and how to manage a conflict of parenting issues when a teen is frittering money.

You can see what I had to say on the TV3 website or read below for the text version 

1. My boyfriend and I have been together 3.5 years and living together for 2 of those.  I’m a self confessed cuddly chick and have been a plus sized girl for most of my adult life – including the duration of my relationship.  I’d love to marry this man and stand up in front of our friends and family and declare my love for him and he says the same and will propose…if I lose 20kgs.  He says he loves me just the way I am yet any engagement comes with a condition attached?  I know it’s not reasonable but what do I do

 

Having struggled with weight all my life, this is a story I can understand- though i’ve never experienced it. There are a few things I’ve learnt about my own successful weight loss journey- it doesn’t matter how much your external pressure tells you to lose the weight- it HAS to come from inside you.

Having the main person in your life make a deeper commitment to you conditional on your weight loss will only serve to increase your struggle with your weight and your confidence in yourself. Wrongly or rightly the way we see ourselves is to some regard mirrored in how the people around us see us. If a guy is telling you in one breath he loves you, and in another saying you need to change to be what he wants- it’s taking you to a very conflicted place that will undermine your confidence. That alone can keep the weight around you like nothing else.

I say that loving a man who doesn’t love and accept you as the person you’ve always been, means maybe you are short selling who you are, and how you would be with someone who doesn’t make love conditional.

If you lose the weight, then marry, what happens if you put it back on again at a later date. Does that make the marriage null and void.

By the way- that’s not saying us plus size chicks shouldn’t lose weight. I’ve lost 38 kilograms myself, and will continue to lose weight, to ensure I’m healthy and feel confident about my body. But it will ALWAYS be because that decision comes from inside me, not because it’s going to make someone accept me more.

 

1. My daughter is turning 21. She lives at home, and we pay for all her board, food, and fees. She receives a school allowance and spends it on parties, clothes and entertainment. We’re in a really difficult position financially and I want her to start paying board, but my husband disagrees. She’s about to throw a party- whereas I barely have money to put petrol in my car. I don’t think it’s fair. Am I being unreasonable?

 

One of the best things we can do for our children as they grow is let them make their own mistakes, being the safety net in case they fall, rather than the protecter to stop them from failure. It’s the same for parents of a two year old, a fifteen year old, or someone in their twenties.

 

If you and your husband have reached an impasse about the money situation, that is actually a separate issue from your daughters management of money. Of course she’s going to blow the money if she’s got nothing essential to spend it on. However perhaps you could sell the benefits of charging her bond to your husband by saying the money can be used in the main as an enforced savings plan for your daughter. Even a nominal sum of fifty dollars a week can really help her learn to see the value of what you are providing, and give you a sense she is looking after the money. It will help to teach her to manage money better. I know the fact I had poor money management as a teen, with several well paid jobs and nothing specific to spend it on developing some fairly bad spending and lack of savings habits.

 

Suggest to your husband that he and you have a choice- to either charge board or to up her responsibility at home. There are often 21 year olds doing less than the average eight year old to help out around the home- and that isn’t loving your child, it’s setting them up to be a person unprepared for the world. Love is as much about healthy limits and responsibilities as it is about warm hugs and loving words.

 

Oh hang on a bit- I’l just go check my dating rules…

When I left my marriage three years ago (the anniversary date is next week sometime.) I really had no idea how dating worked anymore. Being out of it for ten years, and not even thinking about how the world may have changed during that time, let alone me, meant I often felt I had arrived on a planet of people who lookd and spoke the same language but never made any sense at all.

I didn’t date for quite  while after I left- I needed to look at my own life and sort a few things. I invested in me, going to the gym, learning to enjoy my own space, finding out again who I was. 

But when I did, I thought I might need a little help- and so I started to read from a wide variety of different books and sources.

let me tell you, it’s all so bloody confusing. And most if it is wrong, because the key is to become whole, and happy, and sorted, and then you don’t need rules anymore- it’s all an internal dialogue that’s automatic. Be happy in yourself, back yourself and everything else falls into place.

Which is why i laughed at this blog post from a fellow dating blogger where she lists TWENTY SEVEN DATING RULES  she’s following!

Funny but just a teeny bit extreme? 

These are my dating rules:

1. Like yourself and know your own worth. 

2. Date people you feel immediately at ease with.

3. Remember dating is about finding out if you are suited. If they don’t call, or aren’t interested, at least you found out early

That’s pretty much it. Easier to remember than twenty seven!

I will try to fix you

I’ve consistently found songs will flare up in my life, and they fit exactly the mood of who I am and where I am at. i’ve had whole relationships that have emerged as the album has, each song progressing the torturous but exciting start, the glorious middle, the broken end.

I’ve always loved Coldplay’s Fix you song, but I’ve long not liked the lyrics. Because we can not and should not ever be the one trying to fix someone. It doesn’t mean we don’t try, and often we think it’s what is needed and best. But a sound relationship is not about one endlessly fixing the other- it’s two strong oaks standing alongside each other- rather than one endlessly holding the other one up.

It doesn’t mean we don’t support each other, we just do it frm a place of strength- rather than from a place of need. if we are always up for fixing, we are no less needy than the them for needing us.

I definitely used to be a fixer. I’d spot them – called them ducks with broken wings. But I’ve learnt alot in the last three years about how much that was about me- not them. I was feeding off the energy you get when you help someone.

I still love helping people- after all it’s what I do for a job. But I’m pretty much cured of recusing people in my private life- not because I don’t care, but because I’ve learnt that real care, real love is a more balanced act than that.

No matter what we do for the external, unless a person wants to change, anything you manufacture as change around them is wasted. It has to be something they find inside themselves.  I think the biggest thing that continues to help me not rescue is knowing that if I don’t, that person will invariably (unless they go find someone else to rescue them) work out how to do it themselves. Which is the very best kind of fixing.

It’s been xxx days since my last confession….

I have found planned celibacy and me are not the best of friends. in fact last year, after a particulary unexpected relationship break up I decided to take a full year off from relationships, sex and men to completely renew and refocus myself.

You know it felt like a really long year. Sure I got my head right, and I enjoyed the lack of focus on men and sex, but near the end it all felt a little difficult. When I told a few friends I had finally made it, and had celebrated by “breaking my fast” in an appropriate fashion they all laughed. 

“But Rachel,” one of them said as the tears of mirth rolled down her cheek. “It has actually only been ten weeks!”

TEN WEEKS? I swore right then and there I would never put myself through so much torture again. And the interesting thing is it ‘s a little like dieting- if you focus on not having it it’s all you think about- if you’re just focussing on being happy in who you are you don’t tend to notice if it’s been a few weeks, or months…

Do blondes get more action?

I had a really interesting conversation last night at the Vodafone launch party. One of the girls there has gone brunette after being blonde. Actually she looks hot, but she was saying the level of pick ups and chatting up has really dropped off since she went from blonde to dark tresses.

The guy in the group admitted that while he often prefers Brunettes, he said he does see blondes as a little more naughty and fun, and brunettes as a bit more serious and perhaps harder to chat up.

I was talking about it was a tv producer this morning who said they had run a filmed experiment with the same woman going into the same bar- first with a blonde wig, next with a brunette one. She got alot more approaches with blonde hair.

So guys and girls- what’s your feelings on this? Are us brunettes (I just got my hairdresser to take me darker again!) destined to a life of less pick ups? Is there a difference between the types of things you’d say to a blonde verses a brunette?

Am I going to have to break out the bleach????