Busted Halo » Pure Sex, Pure Love

Lost and Found

Christine B. Whelan — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 04:25:31 +0000

I went to Mass every Sunday with my father throughout my childhood, and even said evening prayers with him until I was a teenager. Then I went to college, and promptly stopped all of it. Sure, when I was home I’d attend regularly but, on my own, my faith — which had never really matured [...]

Making Time For Love

Christine B. Whelan — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 07:05:07 +0000

If you asked my husband, I think he’d say that my most irritating quality is my desire to just do “one more thing” before bed, trying to squeeze in one more errand into an already packed day and generally just being resistant to all unstructured downtime. I’m a go-go-go kind of gal. Sitting and “relaxing” [...]

Who Are You? (an excerpt from Generation WTF)

Christine B. Whelan — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 08:05:27 +0000

What are your values? And do you live them every day? These may seem like simple questions, but some honest introspection can lead to big changes in your day-to-day choices about work, volunteering, money and relationships.

Generation WTF

Christine B. Whelan — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 08:05:20 +0000

How do I stop procrastinating? Where do I find a meaningful relationship? How do I ace a job interview? What do I do with a roommate who hates me? And what am I really working toward in my life — what’s my purpose? If you are between the ages of 18 and 25, then chances [...]

Cold Cash and Values

Christine B. Whelan — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 08:05:17 +0000

Relationships experts often tell young couples that as things get “serious” it’s important to have some conversations about money. But what exactly should you talk about during that conversation? Are you going to lay down your W-2s and 1099s to compare numbers? Are you going to have amorphous discussions about money that are really more [...]

Catholic Singles Revisited

Christine B. Whelan — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 08:05:31 +0000

Is being single a vocation within the Catholic Church? Can one be called to a single life — not the Sacrament of Marriage, not the Sacrament of Holy Orders — as a vocation in and of itself? Last month I wrote a piece asking and answering these questions, and Busted Halo readers had a lot [...]

Are You A Little Bit Married?

Christine B. Whelan — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 01:40:04 +0000

Matt, 29, and his girlfriend, Kelly, 28, have been dating for four years and living together for two. They were both raised Catholic, attend Church occasionally, and joke about “living in sin” and being “semi-married.” Kelly told me she was OK moving in with Matt because she just assumed that this was a step in [...]

Honest About Honesty

Christine B. Whelan — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 08:05:04 +0000

Is being polite honest? Young adults aren’t quite sure. And as Christmas and New Year’s parties abound this time of year, there are lots of opportunities to ponder this question as you smile and glad-hand your way through the holidays. We young folks are a generation raised in the therapeutic culture, readily turning inward to [...]

Catholic Singles

Christine B. Whelan — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 08:05:12 +0000

Recently, Jill, 29, a long-time Busted Halo reader finishing up her medical school residency, emailed me to ask if there is such a thing as a vocation to be single in the Catholic Church. She’s open to a relationship — indeed, she longs to meet the right man and marry — but because she is [...]

Happily Never After

Christine B. Whelan — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 07:05:54 +0000

There’s a widening gap between the haves and have-nots in America — and this time the fault line is marriage. Educated young adults are marrying and thriving in their unions, while those with less education are more likely to cohabit, less likely to ever marry, and more likely to divorce if they do wed. The [...]

I Told You So!

Christine B. Whelan — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 07:05:03 +0000

While it’s probably not very Christian to say “I told you so” and do a little victory jig, I kinda can’t resist: New research came out this week that proves my demographic predictions about education and marriage from 2006 correct. In addition to some good-news data for college-educated young adults, there’s also a lesson to [...]

Sex, Christians and the Internet

Christine B. Whelan — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 07:05:41 +0000

Is it always wrong for unmarried people to have sex? Do you think sex toys are acceptable for use within marriage? Is it ever OK to use contraception? Do I have your attention now? For more than five years the Pure Sex, Pure Love column has asked Busted Halo readers for opinions about the intersection [...]

SMS vs. The Language of Love

Christine B. Whelan — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 07:00:15 +0000

The phone call is dead, say tech-savvy social commentators. With the increasing popularity of text messaging, who needs to actually talk to someone anymore? While text messaging may be an immediate and direct form of communication, good for flirty messages and quick hellos, I’m wondering if those instant, impersonal communiqués are hurting our dating lives [...]

Whose Role Is It?

Nathalia Ortiz — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 07:00:57 +0000

The Bible may advocate the idea that the man is the head of the household, but how does this generation of Hispanic-American singles view this concept? Where does this leave women who make more money than their husbands? Are we mistaking typical Latin “machismo” for church teaching? My Cuban mother once told me it would [...]

How Not to Marry the Wrong Guy (or Girl)

Christine B. Whelan — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 04:00:43 +0000

Within three months of dating a guy, I could always tell why the relationship should end. But most of the time, I’d keep dating him anyway. We were having fun. I thought he might change. I didn’t want to be alone. Some of these relationships lasted for years, but finally that voice deep inside of [...]

Breaking the Unwritten Latina Rules

Nathalia Ortiz — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 00:00:54 +0000

Nathalia Ortiza and her friend Lisa Fernandez discuss the perils of being single, Latina and over 30. If you’re over 30 and you’re single, Catholic and female, there’s only one more ingredient that could make for a combustible “cosmo-mojito” cocktail: being Latina. I was born and raised in the U.S. but when it comes to [...]

Virtue/Vice

Christine B. Whelan — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 07:00:17 +0000

Vice and sin are sexy. Character and virtue… not so much. But where’s the line between them? What exactly is a virtue? Can it be taught? Are good, and bad, behavior hard-wired in us? Loyal Busted Halo readers know me as the author of the Pure Sex, Pure Love dating and relationships column. And while [...]

Is Getting Married Later in Life a Problem?

Christine B. Whelan — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 07:10:45 +0000

Today, the median age of marriage is 26 for women and 28 for men. Is that too old? An increasingly vocal group of social commentators are concerned that by delaying marriage until our mid-to-late-20s or early 30s, we’re encouraging behaviors like premarital sex and cohabitation that are undermining the success of our unions. In a [...]

Conflict Over Hook-Up Culture

Christine B. Whelan — Mon, 17 May 2010 07:00:02 +0000

What is a hook up? As a not-that-old, not-that-out-of-touch college professor who teaches classes on the sociology of marriage, family and gender, this is one of my favorite questions to ask a class of undergraduates for three reasons: It wakes ‘em up; everyone is interested in the answer; and it stirs up quite a debate. [...]

Our Readers on Reading the Coffee Grounds

Christine B. Whelan — Mon, 03 May 2010 07:00:22 +0000

If a woman insists on paying for her $3 coffee when she’s on a first date with a guy, does that mean she’s probably not that into him? Longtime Busted Halo reader, Phil, wrote in with that question a few weeks back — read the original piece here — and you replied with some great [...]

Reading the Coffee Grounds

Christine B. Whelan — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 04:49:40 +0000

I recently received this note from long-time Pure Sex, Pure Love reader, Phil, a 26-year-old in Iowa. In a previous column, I’d suggested to readers that simple body language is a good way to tell if someone is interested in you. Phil took that test to the next level and asked: If a woman refuses [...]

Converting for Love

Christine B. Whelan — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 08:00:54 +0000

A few weeks back, a reader wrote in with a powerful question: She had been drawn to the Catholic Church because of her boyfriend. Should she convert without a promise of marriage? Rakti has been dating her boyfriend for five years, since she was 19 and he was 21. Rakti is Hindu, and her boyfriend, [...]

Working Women

Christine B. Whelan — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 08:00:00 +0000

If I told you that “relationships take work,” you’d roll your eyes. That’s so obvious to all of us in 2010 that it barely counts as advice. Right? With thousands of relationship self-help guides in print, daytime talk shows featuring advice on achieving better sex, compatibility and romance, and government funding for marriage preparation and [...]

Love Advice in 59 Seconds

Christine B. Whelan — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 08:00:01 +0000

If you scanned the bookshelves in my office, you’d think I have a lot of problems: I’ve got books on how to find a date, have a good relationship and save a failing marriage. I’ve got guides to losing weight, overcoming anger, learning how to pray and finding one’s inner child. There are manuals for [...]

A Little Bit Married Sparks Discussion

Christine B. Whelan — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 06:40:00 +0000

Two weeks ago I wrote a column based on the book A Little Bit Married, a guide for couples in long-term relationships. In it, I hoped to offer some practical real-world advice for spiritual seekers who have been dating for years, and those who are living together or considering cohabitation as a trial run for [...]

New Years and Still Single?

Christine B. Whelan — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 19:31:03 +0000

A new CatholicMatch.com poll has given us some data to prove what we already know: The holidays are a tough time to be single. Among more than 3,700 online CatholicMatch users polled in the December survey, 40% said that Christmas was the roughest time of the year to be unhitched… with New Year’s Eve a [...]

Does the Internet Know How We Feel?

Christine B. Whelan — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 05:00:41 +0000

Feel festive, cheerful and blessed around Christmas — but then slide into the doldrums in the first weeks of the New Year? Financially illiterate — and then suddenly started blogging about how the ups and downs of the stock market impacted you emotionally? Felt patriotic — or depressed — when Obama was elected? The internet knows.

Talk about following the zeitgeist: Computer programmers Sep Kamvar and Jonathan Harris have spent more than four years collecting some 12 million emotions posted on internet blogs. Turns out we're a pretty predictable bunch: Patterns of the calendar, news events and even the weather influence how we say we feel. And as an increasing number of bloggers worldwide share their lives publicly, we're developing a new relationship with computers, our fellow bloggers and ourselves.

And this Christmas season, you can track your emotions in their strikingly beautiful, glossy gift book, We Feel Fine (Scribner), that uses sophisticated computer science to underpin its findings about modern human emotion. The brainchild of Kamvar, a professor of computational mathematics at Stanford University, and Harris, a systems designer, the program scans scans all blogs every few minutes and extracts the sentences that contain "I feel" or "I am feeling." Since blogs often have public profiles, the duo was able to determine the gender, age, and location of the people expressing these emotions, to boot.

Which makes it particularly cool for young adults — and spiritual seekers. You can find out what people your age and faith background are thinking. Who is more likely to feel blessed? What states are most likely to have bloggers talking about religion? It's all in there — in a really pretty layout that will make you want to flip through the pages time and again.

Defining the Hook-Up Culture

Christine B. Whelan — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 05:00:55 +0000

As a young professor at a big university, I’m able to talk to my students about rather personal issues like hooking up, relationships and sex. In one class, I asked students to diagram, on a large whiteboard, the evolution of a relationship — from first meeting to marriage. This was a fascinating exercise, and highlighted [...]

Dying for Spiritual Enlightenment

Christine B. Whelan — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 04:00:49 +0000

What would you do for spiritual enlightenment and personal success? Would you agree to spend 36 hours alone in the desert without food or water to help clear your mind and find your true potential? Would you follow a trusted leader into a dark, hot tent to experience a version of a centuries-old Native American [...]

Conquering the Daisy Complex

Christine B. Whelan — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 05:00:08 +0000

Call it the Daisy Complex: So many of us worry ourselves sick — think of that silly game where you pluck the petals off a daisy: "She loves me... she loves me not..." seeking an arbitrary answer — and our fear of rejection keeps us from taking the first steps to happiness.

In his head, Thomas plays out the negative scenarios: He asks her out, she says no, and the friendship is ruined — he's lost her entirely.

Or, he asks her out, she says yes, but then things don't work out, and everything is weird after that.

Or...

The scenarios of doom are endless. But one scenario is nearly guaranteed: If Thomas doesn't ask her out or show his interest, she'll never know he cares about her that way. And that, to me, is the saddest of all possibilities.

"I know it's a problem," Thomas told me. "I just don't know how to fix it."

Conquering the Daisy Complex

I gave Thomas two bits of advice... and told him I'd share his story with other young adult readers who might be struggling with similar fears. Here's my advice. What's yours?