Because you know what he’s talking about right ladies? C’mon, admit it. You hear yourself say it to your girlfriends: “He’s a reeeally nice guy, funny, considerate, a real sweetheart. I don’t know what it is, but I’m just not attracted to him.”

Am I right?

Why go for funny, sweet, considerate when we can go for indifferent, self-centred and manipulative? So much sexier.

So, why do women love bad boys? For some women it’s about the challenge and the excitement. Nice guys are too predictable. They want to love them, but the good girl in them wants to rebel. And since society doesn’t like bad girls, they let bad boys bring out the rebel in us.

“I want to be comfortable but not bored,” a bad-boy addict girlfriend tries to explain. “I’m not sure that exists so I go for the thrill instead.”

One could also argue that going after guys who are clearly lousy long-term relationship material is like the female version of “commitmentphobia.” It’s less scary to long than to genuinely love.

Some women latch on to the naïve belief that she’ll be the one to turn him around. Of course, one could also argue that being attracted to people who make us work a little harder for it is simply human nature. Just as many guys are drawn to indifferent, rebellious “bad girls” who keep them guessing, we all like a bit of a challenge when it comes to relationships. It’s not that you have to turn into a lout to get a date. But the problem with some nice guys, is that, well, they’re a little too nice.

Women do like to be treated nicely but they also appreciate a guy who’s willing to stand up for himself. It’s very hard to respect a guy and believe he likes himself enough for us to like him if he’s willing to take whatever a woman dishes him.

So you can be nice without being a doormat. And you can be self-confident without coming across as an arrogant, well, jerk. And hey, if you ride a motorcycle, it might not hurt.

Josey Vogels is a sex and relationship columnist and author of five books on the subjects. For more info, visit joseyvogels.com.

But I’ve always maintained that a less-than-perfect body carried with self-confidence is way hotter than a flawless body carried self-consciously.

If you carry yourself with sexual confidence, no matter what size or shape you are, people buy into it.

It’s like advertising — you know that miracle cream isn’t really going to erase wrinkles and make you look years younger immediately but, the way they sell it, it’s darned convincing.

You are your own best marketing machine

Also, if you put your sexual life on hold until some undetermined time in the future when you’ll lose 20 pounds, you are denying yourself pleasure now.

Like my favourite makeover stylists Stacy and Clinton of TLC’s What Not to Wear always say, “Buy clothes for the body you have now.”

Stop criticizing your body and focus on what you love about it. It’s gotten you this far in life. It deserves a little appreciation. Embrace and focus on what is going on between you and your partner, not what’s wrong with your body.

To help boost your sexual self-confidence and improve your body image, get naked with yourself.

Pour yourself a glass of wine (or two) and strut around your house or apartment when you’re alone (probably best to draw the curtains).

And just because guys don’t sit around and whine to each other about their saggy thighs — “Oh God, Doug, I just hate my gut.” “Oh c’mon Steve, you look great!” — doesn’t mean body image isn’t an issue for them too.

The best way to make your partner feel like you love his or her body is to send out a steady message of acceptance.

We tend to slow down the compliments as we get more comfy in a relationship, when they’re really most important. No need to lie. Just focus on things you genuinely like about your partner and mention them often.

Help your partner accept the things they don’t like by complimenting them and making them realize you’re in love with them as an entire package, which means you love the wobbly bits too.

Though you might want to find a better way to phrase it.

Josey Vogels is a sex and relationship columnist and author of five books on the subjects. For more info, visit joseyvogels.com.

But when your idea of health is getting to the gym five days a week and eating a diet of fresh veggies and lean protein while your partner’s idea of living healthy is not to “biggie” their fries, it can cause friction in the relationship.

With Olympic Fever still in the air and Spring Fever right around the corner, it’s the perfect opportunity to try and get your fitness goals in sync.

Of course, “Honey, get your fat butt off the couch and come to the gym with me,” is not likely to motivate your partner. In fact, the word “fat” should never be uttered, according to Tina Tessina in an article on thatsfit.com. Tessina, a psychotherapist and author of How to Be Free and Still Be a Couple says the best way to raise the weight issue is to approach it from a health perspective. Instead of telling your partner they’ve gained weight (duh, honey, really?), gently bring up the topic by saying, “I want you to be around for a long time and I’m worried about your health.” ?

Yeah, I know, they’ll know you’re just finding a nice way to say they’ve packed on a few, but it may make them more open to doing something about it if you’re at least nice and supportive about it.

Nagging your partner or criticizing them will only send them straight for the nearest bag of potato chips. Instead, influence by example. Prepare healthy snacks for yourself and keep healthy snack options in the house.

Rather than radically changing your diet and eliminating all your partner’s favourite foods, make subtle changes. Switch out the hamburger for ground turkey in the chili, for example. Go grocery shopping together so you’re both involved in meal planning and food choices. Also, while not exactly a candlelit dinner, it’s still an opportunity to spend some time together.

Research shows that up to 94 per cent of couples stick with their fitness programs when they work out together. Just make sure the activity is something you both like. If you’re a gym bunny but your partner would rather eat glass than get on a treadmill, find activities you’d both enjoy, like bike riding, hiking or, I don’t know, nude mud wrestling.

Hey, don’t laugh. Regular exercise may make you want to get naked with each other on a more regular basis. Studies show that people that exercise regularly feel better about themselves, perceive they are more sexually desirable and experience greater levels of sexual satisfaction.

Technology has certainly helped to bridge the gap. But while things like webcams and Skype, texting and email can literally keep you connected when school, work or even war separate you for long periods of time, these new technologies don’t always make long-distance relationships easier.

In fact, sometimes they can even make things worse.

“One of the problems with email when you’re in a long-distance relationships is that you can’t express tone and it’s easy to misread things,” explains 32-year-old Lisa, who’s boyfriend of two years is in Australia for a year for work.

“Emoticons help a bit, but there are limitations. Once in a while we deal with bigger emotional stuff by email, but we try to avoid it,” she continues.

“It can be tempting to write things in email you wouldn’t say to each other in person and, once it’s in writing and you hit send, you can’t take it back.”

Texting can be great because you can send each other quick “hits” throughout the day just to let the other person know you’re thinking about them. But, because technology has trained us to expect constant and immediate communication, if you don’t get a returned text immediately, it’s hard not to fill the empty space with doubt about why you haven’t heard back.

In some cases, communicating more often can even push long-distance couples apart.

Gregory Guldner is the director of the Center for the Study of Long Distance Relationships in the U.S. He also spent four months as an emergency physician in Iraq.

In an article in Forbes magazine, he says that, in the military, for instance, tools like satellite phones have broken down some barriers that would have better been left standing.

“Technological communication can interfere with the separate worlds that people are trying to maintain,” Guldner is quoted saying.

“When a soldier is pinned down in combat and his wife is at home trying to deal with a broken dishwasher, they can’t really relate to one another.”

And communication technology can only take “that long-distance feeling” so far.

Lisa and her boyfriend have regular video conferencing “dates.”

But, says Lisa, “While it can be fun to watch a movie together on a Saturday night while we’re both on webcam, sometimes, the experience just makes me miss being physically together even more.”

I tend to agree. And every time another political sexual scandal comes to light, I can’t help wondering how all of us would stand up if our ability to do our job were based on how we conduct our private romantic lives.

But his privacy isn’t the issue, many other media columnists and commentators cried. The issue is that he lied about it when confronted by the media.

How can we put up with a politician who lies? Right, because politicians have such a great reputation for not lying. Would we have been happier if he’d simply come right out and said, “Yes, I’m a big old cheater”? 

No, of course not. That would be political suicide. Giambrone knew this. He admitted as much in a text to Kristen Lucas, the young university student with whom he was having an affair, when explaining why live-in girlfriend Sarah McQuarrie and not Lucas would be by his side during the campaign: “It is important for the campaign … I had to have someone political,” he wrote.

So, while the rest of us run around wrestling with the realistic challenges of finding, keeping and maintaining love in a social landscape of constantly shifting and expanding sexual mores, we still expect our politicians to project a 1950s sitcom image of family stability. 

In other words, we want our politicians to be human, relatable and accessible but still morally and ethically less flawed than the rest of us.

Ultimately, I don’t care about the sex life of my politicians and, yes, I do care about their honesty. But, maybe if we didn’t expect our politicians to come across like Ward Cleaver with June at his side, they’d feel less pressure to lie about their perhaps-less-than-perfect personal lives.

By the way, Hugh Beaumont, the actor who played Ward Cleaver on Leave It To Beaver — the ultimate 1950s family sitcom — had an absent father and his own real-life marriage ended in divorce.

“This wretched day of massive expectation and zero appreciation needs to be destroyed,” he states in the press release announcing his plot to destroy this “disgraceful holiday.”

Cataldo doesn’t explain exactly how he plans to off Valentine’s Day — take Cupid out with his own bow and arrow? Lobby for a ban on scratchy lace? — but his cynicism about what is increasingly referred to as the “Hallmark Holiday” is becoming all too common.

Sure, I understand the “I’m single and thanks for reminding me how loveless my life is” resentment and the “God, please don’t let me fail the test of proving I love you because I bought you lousy carnations instead of roses” pressure.

And yes, I agree that it’s a bit of a goofy, made-up holiday designed mostly to keep the consumer wheel turning. I’ve received hundreds of emails from companies reaching to come up with a Valentine’s Day angle to pitch their product.

How about a free strawberry recipe iPhone app courtesy of the California Strawberry Commission? Hey, strawberries are red.

I’m not saying you have to fall for some idealized, unrealistic notion that your love can be neatly expressed once a year with a heart-shaped box of candy or a strawberry recipe iPhone app.

But “gathering a large amount of sympathetic malcontents together and declaring February 14 as a Day of Hate,” as one anti-VD internet campaign encouraged people to do, is a bit of a cop-out.

This year, instead of spending all that energy resenting the unrealistic romantic ideals shoved down your throats by the greeting card and candy companies, use the day to stop and appreciate the love in your life.

The other day my brother — who is single by the way — said that if they cancel Valentine’s Day, they might as well cancel Christmas.

And, as with Christmas, you can choose whether or not to get caught up in the commercialism.

For me, Christmas is less about shopping and more an opportunity to spend time with friends and loved ones — to eat, drink and be merry.

Similarly, Valentine’s Day is an opportunity to stop, take a good look at your honey, preferably across a candlelit table adorned with some good food and a nice bottle of wine, and say, “Hey, you’re really special to me and I’m glad you’re in my life.”

And, if you’re single, take the same opportunity to get together with friends, take a good look at them, preferably across a candlelit table adorned with some good food and a nice bottle of wine, and tell them, “Hey, you’re really special to me and I’m glad you’re in my life.”

Happy Valentine’s Day.

First of all, I doubt the kid “stumbled” upon the definition. It’s pretty much a rite of passage to look up “dirty” words in the dictionary when you’re a kid. I’m sure kids today are not different.

And while the parent who complained may have found the definition — “oral stimulation of the genitals” — to be “graphic,” I’m not quite sure how else one would define it.

In fact, I’m pretty sure the definition of the word “genitals,” which this kid no doubt immediately looked up after “stumbling” upon the oral sex definition was equally, if not more graphic.  

But luckily, the children of Riverside County will soon be protected from “stumbling” upon any graphic definitions as the district spokeswoman Betty Cadmus told the local paper that while “it’s hard to sit and read the dictionary, but we’ll be looking to find other things of a graphic nature.”

Are they serious?

These days, any kid with access to a computer and the ability to type the words “oral sex” into a search engine can get a lot more than a simple definition. In fact, they can get definitions of it in Spanish, Italian and/or German as well as instructional videos on how to do it, pornographic images, and videos of it being done to information on how to protect oneself from STDs when doing it.

Still, banning books for their sexual content goes on all the time. In fact, while the kids of Riverside County were being protected from definitions of oral sex, students at a school district in Virginia were being protected from young Holocaust victim Anne Frank’s innocent description of her vagina in a 1995 version of The Diary of a Young Girl.

Recently, it’s been reported that teen pregnancy is on the rise for the first time in years. Some say this is no coincidence that this is happening after 10 years of mandated abstinence-only until marriage sex education in schools that has excluded or prohibited educators from teaching about contraception and condoms to young people in high school.

Keeping information about sex and sexuality doesn’t help kids. Giving them solid, realistic and accurate information about it does. And frankly, I’d much rather my kid find out the definition of oral sex from a credible source such as the Merriam Webster dictionary than a really seriously graphic porn website like oralsex101.com.

Frankly, given the unapologetic and blatantly provocative response from the site’s management, I think the whole thing reeked of a publicity stunt, so I don’t care give them any more free publicity by naming the site.

But, stunt or no stunt, it did raise the question about how honest we are when it comes to the importance of looks when it comes to meeting people.

While most guys in my own very unofficial survey admitted that looks matter, most at least tried to pretend that what attracts them physically to a woman went beyond the superficial, with several citing “a woman’s eyes” as the first thing that draws them in. Hands came in a close second.

“They’re lying,” countered one of the many women I asked who cited “sense of humour” as what turned her crank. That’s right, because looks are only more important to men. “Oh, and a developed upper body, of course,” she added. Bingo.

Another male respondent pointed out that both eyes and a sense of humour are ridiculous answers. “What am I going to say? ‘Man, look at that woman across the street, great eyes, and what a funny hat, she must have a great sense of humour.’”

Okay, so maybe we’re all lying to ourselves. Looks do matter. Still, when pressed, most people will tell you that, when it comes to attraction, looks might get your foot in the door, but if they don’t like what greets them once they get inside, they’re just as likely to turn around and walk back out.

As American first lady Michelle Obama told Glamour magazine when they asked her for dating advice, “Cute’s good,” she said. “But cute only lasts for so long and then it’s, ‘Who are you as a person?’”

Ultimately, when it comes to lasting relationships, having similar morals, values, worldviews and goals in life play a way bigger role than physical attraction.

In fact, given the importance of all this other stuff, physical attraction seems like a pretty misguided and unreliable starting point when it comes to finding a mate.

Maybe I should start should start my own exclusive dating site for the rest of us. What do you think? averagelookingpeoplwithlotsofothergreatstufftoofer.com? No beautiful people allowed.

According to a recent survey by FindLaw.com, married women between the ages of 18 and 34 today are more likely to know about and manage a couple’s finances.

“We found that younger women, in many ways, are the most money-savvy among married couples,” said Stephanie Rahlfs, an  editor with FindLaw.com, a website that provides information on marriage.

One might argue that this is simply another domestic responsibility women have taken on in order to maintain control. Women today are better educated than previous generations.

I certainly know that when my husband assumed we’d pool our finances when we married almost five years ago, I was just a wee bit taken aback. Okay, I practically snapped his head off at the suggestion. This can become especially acute when the post-Christmas spending hangover creates more than the usual relationship tension around money.

I’ve since mellowed and recognized the benefits of working together as a team to reach our financial goals and we’ve found a way of handling our finances that works for us.

Frankly, I couldn’t imagine not having a major role in managing our finances as a couple as my mother was. And yes, I do handle our finances for the most part.

Partly because I have been handling my own finances since I was 18 and partly because, oh hell, okay, I’m a bit of a control freak…and he wouldn’t do it right anyway.

Seem like a lot? Well, that’s nothing compared to thinking about it every 52 seconds as Dr. Louann Brizendine claims they do in her book The Female Brain. Other results through the years have placed the frequency of men’s sexual thoughts everywhere from “every three minutes,” to “every 15 seconds” with “every seven seconds” topping the heap.

In their book Don’t Swallow Your Gum: Myths, Half-Truths, and Outright Lies About Your Body and Health, pediatricians Dr. Aaron Carroll or Dr. Rachel Vreeman point out just how ludicrous this latter seven-second claim is.

“If we assume that the average male is awake for 16 hours a day, each man would have to think about sex more than 8,000 times a day. That’s about as many times as a person breathes while awake,” they write.

It’s not just the math that makes these claims ridiculous. How can you accurately calculate how often someone thinks about sex in a day anyway? After all, if a poll asked you to keep track of how often you think about sex, wouldn’t you then be thinking about how often you think about sex, and therefore be thinking about sex constantly, thus skewing the results? Which raises another problem with these claims: What exactly constitutes a sexual thought?

So what’s the point of our constant obsession with how often men have who-knows-what-kind-of-fleeting thoughts about sex?

The only thing these sketchy statistics ever seem to want to prove is that men have more who-knows-how-fleeting sexual thoughts than women. By comparison, in the onepoll.com poll, women think of sex just five times a day or 1,825 times per year.

And compared to once every 52 seconds in Brizendine’s book, women only think of it once a day.

Instead of constantly perpetuating this ultimately unfounded idea that all men are walking around with nothing but sex on the brain while women —with their dearth of dirty thoughts — are clearly more sexually repressed, wouldn’t it be a lot more helpful to have more quality-over-quantity analysis about the nature of men’s and women’s sexual thoughts?

Then again, if that were the case, what would lame comedians and sitcom writers come up with as a premise for all their jokes?

MORE SEX DRUGS
Thanks to the huge popularity of erectile dysfunction drugs like Viagra, the race is on to develop drugs to treat other sexual problems such as premature ejaculation and “female sexual dysfunction.” Eventually they’ll come up with a drug that will simply simulate sex entirely, taking the performance pressure off everyone.

CELEB SEX CHANNELS
Thanks to our continuing fascination with the sex lives of our politicians, sports figures and celebrities, we’ll no longer be satisfied with the occasional scandal or “leaked” sex tape. Entire specialty channels will be devoted to airing the sex lives of the rich and famous. 

MATCHMAKING MEETS SCIENCE
Pseudo-scientifically based matchmaking will be the next big rip-off, I mean trend, in matchmaking. Scientificmatch.com claims to be one of the first online dating sites to use DNA testing in creating dating matches using a cheek swab test. The site says a better biological match means “better sex, less cheating, and perhaps even healthier children.” Hey, and if you actually like each other, bonus.

NON-HUMAN DATING
First there was the Japanese husband who confessed to his wife that he had a virtual girlfriend, a character from an addictive Nintendo DS game called Love Plus. Then, another Japanese guy married his Love Plus girlfriend in front of a live audience, an emcee, the bride’s virtual video game girlfriend — who made a speech — and a priest (a real, live, human one). He even took her on a honeymoon to Guam. Well, he took his Nintendo DS to Guam, that is. With the sophistication of robot technology on the horizon, expect to see plenty more non-human “dating.”

THE RETURN OF OLD-FASHION DATING
In reaction to the rise of more technology-driven approaches to dating and matchmaking, expect to see a movement back to good old-fashioned courtship and romance. In fact, Vancouver-based slowdancenights.com has begun holding single’s events where they play nothing but slow dancing music all night long.

Stairway to Heaven anyone?

Happy New Year.

First of all: no actual duking. Second, according to a new study out of the University of Texas at Austin, couple fights are best diffused through the careful use of “analytical” key words. Words like “think,” “understand,” “because” and “reason.”

By “careful,” I’m pretty sure they don’t mean telling your sweet, honey, darling, binkie-poo that you “'Think' the reason he never 'understands' anything you tell him is 'because' he has no sense of 'reason' and must have been dropped on his head when he was a child.” That isn’t going to diffuse anything. In fact, you’re more likely to achieve the opposite and spark an atomic-level explosion.

Using insults and condescending language rarely wins an argument.

Neither does badgering your partner into talking. You know what I mean: “What’s wrong?” “Nothing.” “C’mon, what’s wrong?” “Just forget it.” “C’mon, talk to me.” “I don’t want to talk about it.” “Fine.” Silence. Of course, that’s when you really kick in. “I have ways of making you talk,” you glare.

Needing to always be right is another useless tactic. If you’re one of these, ask yourself what’s really more important: being right or being happy and getting along with each other?

Also popular and less than productive is the old sweeping blame game. If any phrases that begin with “you always,” “you never,” or “why are you such an utter and complete dumbass” are about to come out of your mouth, bite your tongue and count to ten. Then try rephrasing your comments in ways that express how you feel rather than what what’s wrong with your partner. “I’m feeling frustrated…,” “I’m trying to understand…,” you get the picture.

Of course, despite your best efforts, sometimes a fight escalates before you both even know what hit you and you suddenly find yourselves overwhelmed by if-you-say-another-word-my-head-is-going-to-explode frustration. If this happens, the best and only solution is to walk away, calmly, (that means no running after him out the door in your underwear) and regroup.

You can both cool off and deal with whatever was there in the first place — if it really was anything — later. More often than not, stress, exhaustion, or too much Bailey’s-laced coffee turns up as the underlying culprit.

Happy Holidays. Hope you survive!

– Josey Vogels is a sex and relationship columnist and author of five books on the subjects. For more info, visit www.joseyvogels.com.