Lifestyle Choices

It’s common for the boy to try again, right away or later. He hopes that the girl was just pretending to be reluctant, so as not to seem too easy. He thinks she is perhaps wanting and expecting him to persist and that she will look down on him as a mouse if he doesn‘t. Her cue is to be as definite at the second try as she was at the first. But she can still be friendly, as if appreciating his attention.

Another common manoeuvre of the male is to begin arguing : ‘But you said you liked me…. What’s the harm?… Don’t you have any feelings? … Isn’t it abnormal not to want to? … All the other girls do…. I don’t want to date a person who doesn‘t like this side of me…. A boy has strong instincts that have to be satisfied….’ There are thousands of arguments that have been used since (more…)

Roughly speaking, there are two kinds of dates, at least from a boy’s point of view. In one he feels drawn to a girl primarily by her physical attractiveness (which includes a certain seductiveness of personality) and will go as far as he has the boldness to try or as the girl will permit. In the other he is attracted by a girl’s whole personality, including her physical appeal, and wants to know her better; somewhere in the front or back of his mind is the thought that this might possibly turn out to be the exciting relationship of his life.

In a girl’s feelings also there are the two kinds of dates. But there is lots of evidence that a girl doesn’t distinguish so sharply and calculatingly as a boy; she tends to hope that any kind of dating relationship will turn into true love. (more…)

If you have a history of depression in your family, statistically the chances are higher that you may be prone to periods of depression. How much of this correlation is hereditary and how much environmental cannot be answered quantitatively. Although there has been some dogmatic insistence on hereditary factors by geneticists, and on environmental factors by psychotherapists, most will at least agree that susceptibility to depression is affected by both heredity and by early environment, whatever the proportions. These influences weave a complicated and inextricable pattern: a depressed parent may pass on hereditary qualities of susceptibility to the children, but the children will also learn by copying the behaviour of their parent. Depression occurs much more frequently in certain types of personality, and personality is affected by hereditary factors, by copying parents and by reactions to the family environment. The family environment is affected by the general culture, which may be more or less depressive. (more…)