How to Find Your Ideal Guy: 8 Traits to Look For

July 2, 2013 at 11:21 am , by

When searching for that special someone in the dating world, it’s always good to have an image of what he should be like. I didn’t start out by coaching women in their love lives; I started out coaching men. It’s funny when I think about it, because what women want from a man is what I was trying to teach them all along.

In any case, there are quite a few qualities that make a man great. In reality, looking for a guy who has these qualities is not as hard as people say. But if you want to have a higher chance of finding love, identify the ones that matter to you most and stick with them. In my personal opinion, all men should have these qualities and I don’t associate with nor respect ones that don’t.

1. He’s a gentleman. A great guy needs to be polite, respectful, considerate, and attentive to a woman’s needs. This includes classic gentleman behavior such as pulling out a woman’s chair, walking on the car side of the street and taking her coat. I personally believe that if all men were gentlemen, we would live in a better world. Today, this is far from the truth, so guys who do have this quality stand out. It’s also worth noting that great guys never cross the line of being inappropriate.

Read 7 more ideal-man characteristics at YourTango.com: Finding Mr. Right: 8 Qualities That Define A Great Guy

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— By Alex Matlock for YourTango.com

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25 Creative (and Fun!) Date Night Ideas

June 25, 2013 at 11:29 am , by

Getting bored of the usual dinner and a movie date? Us too. There are plenty of other ways to get to know each other and strengthen your bond. That’s why we came up with these fun date night ideas you and your guy will both enjoy.

Sex: Expert Advice & Tips

From wine and beer tours to volunteering, these are exciting adventures you and your guy will remember forever.

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From getting silly (and in touch with your inner children) to volunteering together, see all the creative ideas to spice up your date nights at YourTango.com: 25 Date Night Ideas That Aren’t Cheesy

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Yep, Your Marriage Can Be Saved

June 1, 2012 at 11:52 am , by

The Journal has a long history of helping women save their marriages. That’s why we’re excited to announce that we’ve teamed up with therapist, author, and Can This Marriage Be Saved? contributor Dr. Susan Heitler to bring you the Power of Two, a cool new online coaching tool that helps teach couples how to communicate and resolve conflicts. So many couples enter marriage in love, but lack some of the important communication skills that will help keep their bond strong after years — and the inevitable strains that come with kids, work, health issues, you name it. Dr. Heitler focuses on helping couples learn these crucial marriage skills to turn bickering couples into loving teams.

For instance, she recently worked with a couple who had been in traditional therapy for eight months and were on the brink of divorce. It might sound too good to be true, but by the end of the second session using Dr. Heitler’s techniques for tactful talking, attentive listening, and collaborative conflict resolution, they were recommitted to staying together—and making romantic gestures that would never have happened just months before. “They still have more learning to do,” says Dr. Heitler. “But their love returned because they can both recognize when they’re falling back into old, counter-productive habits now.”

Dr. Heitler has worked with hundreds of couples over the years, and she created Power of Two to share that expertise with all of us who can’t see her in person. Maybe you’re wary of professional counseling—of the time or money required, or of what people might think. Or maybe your relationship is just starting to show signs of strain and you want to prevent future problems. Check out Power of Two. It’s not traditional couples’ therapy: The whole process takes place online and on your own time—it’s accessible, affordable, and private.

“When couples don’t resolve their conflicts the right way, it creates anger, depression, and anxiety — but we can prevent that,” says Dr. Heitler. “These learning materials mean that more couples can have a great relationship and marriage.”

If your marriage is in need of a little TLC, check out Power of Two. And come back soon to read Dr. Heitler’s 5 favorite ways to keep your marriage strong.

Country Spotlight: Thompson Square

May 18, 2012 at 12:09 pm , by

Shawna and Keifer entertaining the troops here at LHJ. Be sure to watch their performance clip, after the jump.

They may have just been crowned the Academy of Country Music’s Vocal Duo of the Year, but Thompson Square certainly flexed some potential Entertainer of the Year muscle when they visited us here at Ladies’ Home Journal a few weeks ago. Shawna and Keifer Thompson not only impressed the room with an intimate, stripped-down set of their hits (be sure to check out the video after the jump), but they also earned an instant, easy rapport with the staff and kept us all in stitches with their hilarious stories and banter. (One coworker enthusiastically emailed me her review after their performance: “It was like a 2-for-1 show—music and comedy!”)

Still, when the husband-wife act landed in Las Vegas last month for the ACMs, they were—to hear them tell it—feeling like long shots. “You’re going up against Sugarland and they’re kind of like the new Brooks & Dunn,” explains Keifer, giving props to the two acts that have dominated the Vocal Duo category since 1991. “We’ve been around a couple of years, but it’s really just been a year and a half that we’ve been in the thick of things. We figured it might take us four more years to even get close.” But luck proved to be a lady—and her husband—that fateful night: T2 hit the country music jackpot and became the first new act to take top honors in the duo category in 20 years.

“It’s hard to process all that’s happening. Just hearing you introduce us in there and saying we’re the Vocal Duo of the Year, it’s weird. It’s a strange feeling,” Shawna admits. “I kind of compare it to getting married,” Keifer adds. “You think you’re gonna have this amazing feeling come over you, like, ‘Oh, we’re married, and this is what it feels like when you’re married.’ But it doesn’t work that way. It probably took us 10 years for us to finally feel like a married couple. And that’s how all of this feels. None of it feels real. It’s truly a dream come true.”

While Keifer and Shawna remain incredibly humble, the award is far from being undeserved. Their breakthrough single “Are You Gonna Kiss Me Or Not” was the most played song on country radio in 2011 and they’ve taken home three American Country Award wins plus multiple Grammy and CMA nominations in the past year. And in a few weeks they’ll be vying for two CMT Music Awards, with a double nomination (for both “I Got You” and “Glass,” their latest release) in the Duo Video of the Year category.

“We don’t have any kids but I’d imagine it’d be harder to say that one’s better than the other,” says Shawna, finding it difficult to play favorites with her video creations. Keifer is equally as torn, but ultimately does reveal a preference. “I thought ‘I Got You’ was a brilliant video. [Director] Wes Edwards did a fantastic job of putting that whole thing together and it was so different,” he says. “ ‘Glass’ is our new single and you want that one to win, too, but from an aspect of what deserves to win? ‘I Got You.’ Hands down.”

Whether they come out on top at the awards show, a win is definitely headed fans’ way when the duo heads back into the studio later this month to work on new music for their next CD. “We actually got about 16 things demo’d and we’re going to start to put some tracks down in preproduction,” Keifer says, noting that there will be a more diverse range of material on the new album than on the first. “We’re gonna have some really beautiful ballads, which we don’t really have on the current album—except for ‘Glass.’ We were just really scared about being pigeonholed with that whole ‘hokey married couple’ thing on the first record.”

The CD will still be rockin’, though, Shawna promises, proving she’s learned some lessons on the road from all of the extensive touring T2 has done. (Currently, T2 is opening for the red-hot Lady Antebellum Own the Night tour.) “It’s hard when you’re a new artist to go out and play new songs for people that aren’t familiar with you,” Shawna explains, “so it’s important to have some energy. When fans come to our show, they’re going to hopefully have a good time and rock out with us.”

For now, you can rock out with Thompson Square by viewing their fun-filled LHJ performance after the jump. You’ll also find some highly entertaining bonus interview moments, in which I get their he said/she said take on everything from KISS-ing on the ACM red carpet, what drives them nuts about each other and why Keifer may start following Blake Shelton’s lead on Twitter.

Read more

Book News: Playdate … for Adults Only

March 20, 2012 at 3:24 pm , by

Entertainment journalist Thelma Adams’s novel Playdate, just out in paperback, explores the minefields of modern marriage with humor and sass. But Playdate is no empty romp. In addition to parenting precocious pre-teens, the protagonists—couples Lance and Darlene and Alec and Wren—are dealing with complex issues. Lance, an unemployed weatherman, is married to Darlene, a restaurateur, who maintains an inappropriate flirtation with her restaurant’s financier, Alec, who is married to Wren, a yogi, who is having an affair with Lance. Got that? If that love quadrangle weren’t dizzying enough, a fierce forest fire is menacing their comfortable upper-middle-class California enclave. We asked Adams to talk about the game plan behind Playdate.

You’ve been a film critic and entertainment writer for almost 30 years. How did that experience inform your first novel, which is about marriage and relationships?

I am a married film critic and entertainment writer with relationships. Some of which, I confess, are a little convoluted. This novel began as an idea for a screenplay: What if we melded Warren Beatty’s handsome rootless philanderer in Shampoo with Michael Keaton’s overwhelmed dad in Mr. Mom? It seemed like a funny concept. However, as it turned out, I’m a prose girl. The movie idea morphed into a novel.

With his sensitive nature and commitment to parenting, Lance is the heart and soul of the book. But he’s also having an affair. Was it hard to construct a sympathetic cheater?

Making Lance sympathetic without demonizing his wife Darlene was one of the great challenges of the book. Personally, I am the daughter of a relatively sympathetic cheater. My dad was no saint, but he was no demon either. I was a daddy’s little girl who adored her father, and growing up we had this kind of very easy, affectionate, unconditional love. And then, when I was in my early twenties, I discovered that I’d lived in a house where a pattern of infidelity on my father’s side gutted my mother. Being daddy’s little girl was suddenly a difficult position to have within the family politics. And, on top of that, when I found out about my father, I was still crying over a post-college live-in relationship with a serial cheater with whom I was crazy in love. That’s a long time ago, but fidelity, and understanding how infidelity molds a family, and a relationship, has been central to a lot of my writing. In the end, I came to understand my father, which is not exactly the same as forgiving, through my love for Lance and [his daughter] Belle. Read more

Ladies’ Home Journal Goes to Pot!

March 13, 2012 at 10:43 am , by

Today, the April issue of LHJ hits newsstands, and with it comes reefer madness! In the “Can This Marriage Be Saved?” column, everyone’s favorite since it launched back in 1953, the problem in the marriage is that the wife, a successful working woman, gets high on pot every day. In the margin at the top of the page, we show the results of a poll that we did on attitudes toward medical marijuana: the majority of our readers (60 percent) approve.

We’ve just done a dramatic redesign to make Ladies’ Home Journal much more cutting-edge and fun. But have we gotten, uh, a little too groovy? In short, what were we smoking?

Actually, this is hardly the first time we’ve covered illegal drug use. Way back in 1963, we ran a feature in which Cary Grant talked about the amazing experiences he had on LSD. It was before all the risks were known and it was part of a medical experiment, but still! LHJ? Who’d a thunk it?

The reality is, Ladies’ Home Journal has a long history of covering the reality of women’s lives and current trends, even when it’s controversial. Back in 1906, we endorsed sex education as a way of preventing sexually transmitted disease—an idea that some people still disagree with. Since then we’ve covered everything from housewives struggling with drug addiction (1971) to moms struggling with raising gay teens (2010). Our readers have always been plugged-in, modern women, and we’ve always provided them with content that keeps them informed and up-to-date.

So, yeah, we’ve come a long way since the “Can This Marriage Be Saved?” of ’53 in which one husband’s quote was, “Nancy could learn a lot from some of the secretaries in my office. They know how to be sweet and feminine.” Yikes! Very Mad Men, while the “Can This Marriage Be Saved?” for April 2012 is admittedly closer to Weeds. Still, it’s very much in line with our editorial tradition.

Reactions to our March issue, the first of the current redesign, have been positive: “Looks fabulous and reinvigorated. Love it!” one reader tweeted. “Great job, y’all,” another reader wrote us via email. “Was thrilled to see my old favorites were still in there,” she said. We seemed hipper, yet still the LHJ she loves. The real story is that we were always pretty hip. Your grandma probably did subscribe to Ladies’ Home Journal, but we’ve never been a grandma magazine. We are up-to-the-minute and ahead of the curve—and have been, for a very long time.

Watch A Special LHJ Episode of Life Dare With Liz Nead

March 8, 2012 at 11:37 am , by

We love the show Life Dare: Host and life coach Liz Nead helps women tackle challenges big and small to—as she says—”put some life back into your life.” Amen, sister! So we knew we had to team up with her for our April story on mental flexibility, “Go With The Flow.” Our story is all about trying to relax and be less rigid about the little (and big) things in your life, so Liz found a woman who needed a little help loosening up and produced a special episode for us. Guest Lisa isn’t a big fan of foods with weird (to her) textures and flavors–slippery, raw, and spicy foods were just not her thing. But she was ready to break out of her habits—with a little help, of course.

Watch Lisa as she faces her food attitudes on camera. They explore raw foods with chef and nutritionist Sheree Clark (can you really put sweet potato with pineapple in the juicer?), slippery foods at Django in Des Moines (Lisa doesn’t want to gag on oysters in front of you!), and spicy food with Chef Brandy Lueders (spicy Indian food can be really hard on your stomach). Slippery, raw and spicy—will Lisa make it through all three food experiments and leave her old food routine behind? Watch now, above (or see it big here).

But wait, there’s more! (Because if you watched that fun episode, you probably want to tackle your own challenge, right?)

 

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