Yes, it has been a while and I have been a busy bee. So many of us have been touched by the ugly finger that is the horrible state of the economy, and I have been blanketed with requests for advice on how to survive romantically in such times.

Once you put the stress in check and are able to focus on being romantic there seems nary a spare dollar around to spend on flowers or fine dining. Men are left without their comfortable go-to devices for quick fixes when the romance is waning and ladies can’t shop for the little things that help so many of us feel even sexier. So, what are we to do?

Poetry. There it is. It is the stuff of minstrels and knights in shining armor, and when there is a knight in shining armor afoot there must be a fair maiden near. Write some love-laden words ode to the person for whom your heart years. Or if the chemistry that is love dost become misguides on its journey from heart, to head, to hand, to tip o’ the quill, go to the library (yes, the library) and take out some books dripping with someone else’s take on it.

Here are a few examples:
Passionate Hearts : The Poetry of Sexual Love, by Wendy Maltz
Between the Cracks : The Daedalus Anthology of Kinky Verse, edited by Gavin Dillard
The Best American Erotic Poems From 1800 to the Present, edited by David Lehman
Intimate Kisses : The Poetry of Sexual Pleasure, by Thomas Moore
The Nation's Favourite Love Poems, by Daisy Goodwin
Surrealist Love Poems, edited by Mary Ann Caws
New Faber Book of Love Poems, edited by James Fenton

One of my columns recently went live on a great new Philadelphia-based Web site. Broke Up.com (http://brokeup.com/) is a community of people who have recently, well, broken up. They are ready to go out and party, meet interesting others and they know that they already have something in common – (no, not being recently broken up) – their love of all of the exciting things to do in the City of Brotherly Love.

The column can help any guy or woman from any city in any country; so, don’t not go if you are not from Philly. (Did that come out right?) However, if you are from the Philly-metro area, be sure to visit the rest of the site and join the community. It is free. You don’t necessarily have to be broken-up, as BU is a great resource for getting in-the-know.

http://www.brokeup.com/component/myblog/Letty-Livingston-Is-Philadelphias...-163.html

Check out the column and send any comments and dating and relationship questions to me at help@letlettyhelp.com. I will send the advice directly and discreetly, to your inbox. All names are kept in the strictest of confidence and all submitted material is considered for publication.

Lots of Love

LL

Yes, I am about to get all biblical on yo’ ass! I recently received an email from a repenting party-guy. Now, don’t get me wrong, he was a no-regrets kind of man, though he was aware of needing a life change. So, as part of his turning over a new leaf process he decided to start going to church again. And that is where the drama ensued.

The man expected churchy type folks to be all saintly and therefore he figured he’d be able to change his barfly ways and find a good-girl wife type woman. He was knocked on his barstool calloused backside when the women whom he dated from church were wicked in the sack.

He figured writing in to me to find some answers was the right thing to do. So, I gave him something to think on, and went all biblical (no, really!):

 http://www.datespaces.com/blog/2008/12/08/letlettyhelp-born-again/

Are you churchy? Or temple-y? Do you hold religious type folks to a higher set of morals than other people? Would you date someone who was religious if you were not? Have you ever? Has religion ever helped or hindered a romance? Let us know --- on the DateSpaces page PLEASE. Just click the link, read the DS column, and leave your comments there. Thanks.

And keep your questions rolling on in. I will send my advice directly to your inbox. Send them to help@letlettyhelp.com. Please include your age. All submissions will be considered for publication.

Less than two weeks of holiday shopping left. So, keep hydrated and be polite. Yeah, I said be polite, damn it! 

Keep it real and of course, keep it sexy y’all!

LL

There are quite a few ways in which love or lust can turn into anger or violence. One way is that you get romantically involved with someone who is so damn sexy that you can't help but want to fall for them; then a year into the relationship that same sexiness makes you scared that there is a line around the block forming to get with it. This drives you mad. Another twist on that is you get your heart broken by someone who cheated on you and every relationship you have after that is wreaking with mistrust and tension, to the point of paranoia.

A different way would be that your esteem is super lacking and you can't stomach the thought of someone actually wanting to be your romantic partner; they'd simply have to cheat on you. So you lash out at them in spite of their doing everything under the sun to show you how much they care.

Then there is when you become involved with a person who has a few idiosyncrasies that are quirky at the beginning but simply drive you up a wall in the matter of a few short months.

There are so many ways in which a loving relationship can turn volatile. Now, the question is how does one get out of the relationship and away from the potentially violent person?

Read what one DateSpacer is going through and what I advised: http://www.datespaces.com/blog/2008/11/17/letlettyhelp-anger-management/

After you read it let us know if you've ever been there, what happened to make it go sideways and what you did to get out of it.

Please, please, please, leave your comments on the DateSpaces page. NOT HERE on Myspace. Sure, you can leave the kudos here, BUT LEAVE ALL COMMENTS ON THE DATESPACES PAGE.

Thanks!  And, of course, send your dating and relationship questions in to me at help@letlettyhelp.com. Include your age. All names are kept confidential and all submitted material is considered for publication. No matter if it gets published, I will send advice directly to your inbox.

Keep it sexy!
LL

"No, thanks. I don't want a drink, but you can leave the eleven bucks." OMG! If I actually said that and it really happened every time a pesron that I just happened to glance over while out at a bar or a club asked if they could buy me a drink; I'd have that ski-in, ski-out chalet in Aspen! AND what about the people who send way too many emails or leave oh-so-many comments on your Myspace page; UGH!

Flirting is a two-person sport. It can be done by one or both of the players, but both have to be invested in the activity for it to work. Now, if a person flirts and the other person is not interested, do you keep on? A lot of people won't. But, (yes, of course there's a but) there are those who just don't get it.

It happens in real life and in Cyberspace. There are men and women who can't, or refuse, to read the clues that are sent, avoidance being a big one, from someone that they flirt with, who is not interested.

Personally, I don't ask for the money when a guy, or a woman, asks if they can buy me a drink. I do tell them that I am happily married, appreciate the gesture, but would rather not waste their time or mine. Some guys get mad and call me a lesbo. Some lesbos get mad and call me a breeder. But hey, they leave and that's all I wanted. When it comes to being hunted on the Internet, I am a blocker. I will block a stalker faster than you can read themoonismadeofgreencheese. I have no qualms about it.

Now, there are those who don't have such matter-of-fact ways of dealing with people who keep trying to get their attention. Some people like being noticed and will deal with the predatory ways of the person who is trying to win their interest. I know lots of women who never buy their own drinks, and these are the same women who never date guys that buy them drinks, some of them don't even date guys. Bitches. (Yes, I said it, and I know the friends who are going to be blowing up my Blackberry. But, if the Manolo fits…)

There are also the people who get hunted on their social or dating site. They simply do not know how to get that pesky person to quit trying to get past their inbox and into their, well, other box.

I am in the process of sending out my pre-winter newsletter. It is chock-full of interesting web sites , littered with links to helpful columns , bursting with articles that will keep you healthy , and dotted with places to go on dates .

Sounds like something you may want to read?

If so, email me your email address. Send it to help@letlettyhelp.com.
As soon as I get it, I will shoot you a brand-spanking-new copy of my newsletter.
Keep it sexy!
xo
LL

Imagine: You are attending a neighborhood meeting, half listening, half scanning the room for interesting eligible others, when suddenly there is a tap on your shoulder. You see a person that is dressed the way you like, has a tone of voice that is appealing to you and looks very interesting. That person quips about how the meeting seems to be tapering off and asks if you'd like to grab a bite to eat sometime. You think, "I could eat right now." But say, "Sure" and punch your digits into that person's mobile phone.

Later that evening, as you are washing the lone dish that was your dinner, your cell phone vibrates and you flip it open; there's that voice again, asking how your Friday night looks. Your heart skips a beat, you say it is beginning to look better and you agree on a time and place.

The restaurant was everything that you'd heard and the food was dreamy, even better --the conversation was effortless. That person asks if you'd like to go for drinks and maybe some dancing. You sit back, sip your wine, smile, nod in agreement and then the check comes. What do you do?

You were asked out. Or were you? You sort of agreed that your night was free.

Do you pay half? What if that person offered to pay? Would you owe them a little something extra at the end of the night? Or what about this:

http://www.datespaces.com/blog/2008/11/03/letlettyhelp-coupon-coupling/

You've gotta read it and then leave me your insights (on the DateSpaces page) on what you'd do. I will be checking in and we will see where people stand on who pays what and how - when on first dates.

xoxo

LL

No, I am not referring to that…

Listen, we all have been through breakups; some are so incredibly painful and others are unbelievably liberating. But no matter the condition in which your heart is left when that person finally is out of your life, how long does one wait before going on another first date? (That sounded very Sussian!)

They say that we are all a bit narcissistic and that is why we pursue romantic partners who look a bit like us. But what about people who go against that belief; so much so that they purposefully strive to date and mate with members of a specific race, religion or color that is different than their own? Is that okay? Is there something intrinsically askew with thinking that you can find love within a specific race; that the person matters less than the culture they belong to or the color of their skin?

I received an email from a reader that asked me to guide him through his dealing with having a severe case of Yellow Fever. I proffered my advice, sent it to him and then discussed it with a table full of friends at Rogue, a local upscale restaurant here in Philly that serves killer martinis. In my group of friends there were two Asian guys and three Asian women. They all had strong views about it. And they all were familiar with men who had it [Yellow Fever].

Yellow Fever is when a man will only date Asian women. He dates them because culturally Asian women are supposed to be docile and subservient. He may have come down with "the fever" due to watching too much porn where Asian women were the subject, or to watching hentai or manga cartoons where the illustrated women have dramaticized Asian features and some are drawn with especially large breasts. The cartoon women also tend to look very young, in fact schoolgirlish is common.

The guy in question, I deduced, had his heart broken by an Asian woman and never got over her. It is generally the man who will come down with Yellow Fever. One of my Chinese guy friends swears he knows women who only date him because he is Asian. (His family is worth millions, so we all think there is more to it than that.)

In 1991, director Spike Lee shot the movie Jungle Fever, where Wesley Snipes played a man who fell for a white woman, played by Annabella Sciorra. At that time it was a very controversial film that brought the subject of intercultural relationship to the masses. With Jungle Fever it can be either the man or the woman who wants to date a person of the other culture or color.

Back to the discussion with my friends: there were also a few Latinos in the mix and they too were familiar with people from their cultures that only dated whites or blacks, and knew whites and blacks who only dated them because they were Latinos. In case you didn't know, Latinos are supposed to be "hot-blooded" so there are certain expectations that some people who date Latinos come into the relationship with. I have never heard of a term for it, so I coined it Caliente Fever.

The black women and men who were there knew people who dated only whites, Asians, and Latinos. In fact, one black guy who was there only dated women from the Middle East. We said he had Masala Fever.

We counted and found that we have seven distinct cultures represented at our table at Rogue. Five color groups were made of us: browns, olives, whites, blacks, and yellows. The people who were of mixed heritage were put into the group in which they most resembled. We found out a lot about each other that we hadn't known before. Some things were surprising.

Me, I am mixed. My mother is from Venezuela but her lineage has at least three cultures in it. My father is from Italy. So, my mother's side is brown and black, and my father's is olive (most Europeans will fall into the olive group). So, I was put into the brown category. My husband is olive.

Some of our friends date people only of the same religion or the same color, preferably both. Some will date outside of their culture but plan only to breed with someone of the same heritage and religion. Then there were those who dated exclusively outside of their culture. We had never brought the subject up before and there were a lot of raised eyebrows and some hurt feelings.

See what the guy who wrote in was going through and read what I told him: http://www.datespaces.com/blog/2008/10/17/letlettyhelp-race-relations/

I'd love to know what you think. Leave your comments about it on the DateSpaces page. Do you know where your friends stand on the subject? Where do you stand on it? Would you do a round-table discussion about it? Tell us what you think.

And send your questions in to me at help@letlettyhelp.com. Please include your age. All names are kept confidential and all submissions are considered for publication.

Go Phillies!!

Lotsa Luv

LL