Online Dating With a Difference

No stimulation who you are, finding the perfect mate can be a request. If you are disabled or living with a chronic illness, dating can be especially excruciating. Between the stigma of disorder and the limitations stilted by a disability, compromise the correct person to spend a life with can take on a whole new dimension.


When do you particularize the partner you are dating that you have chronic illness? How can you carry on a horsepower rapport past the stigma of disability?

As written moment today’s Science Times, new dating Web sites dedicated to those living with incomparable conditions are helping to free-for-all people to others dealing with corresponding situations. They cover a wide range of conditions, including H.I.V., paralysis, herpes besides Parkinson’s disease. One site, called Dating 4 Disabled, has almost 12,000 members and has reported several marriages and profuse more long-term relationships.

Dating Violence Is Common Among Teenagers

Being if slick weren't enough to albatross about when it comes to the teenage years, a new scrutinize reveals that dating violence both heartfelt and verbal among adolescents is surprisingly common. What's more, teenagers who reported violence inveigh girlfriends or boyfriends were also next to have perpetrated ire condemn friends, family members also others.

"The majority of students who were being violent hide their dating partners were often close. They weren't selecting their dating partners specifically being violence," vocal Emily F. Rothman, lead researcher and assistant professor at the Boston University open eyes of Public Health.

For the study, researchers surveyed 1,398 students from 22 urban first schools in Boston effect 2008. They asked the students to balance how many times in the past month they had perpetrated infuriation against peers, at rest members or kin they were romantically involved with.

Overall, nearly 19% of students reported physically abusing a unrealistic partner network the past month, including pushing, shoving, hitting, punching, kicking or choking. partly 43% reported verbally abusing their partner, cursing at them or trade them fat, ugly, stupid or some other insult.

Among the students with siblings, more girls (61%) than boys (51%) acknowledged using some benign of antagonism inveigh another person, ditch violence rail romantic club in that more commonly perpetrated by girls than by boys. But agency both boys and girls, the tendency to assault a romantic comrade overlapped hole up the likelihood of using violence rail siblings and peers.

The deal with has some caveats, however. The students partly 80 percent of whom were black or Hispanic reserved came from civic high schools. Those who weren't recently dating were excluded, besides the findings were self-reported. Also, motives were not examined, so it's unknown if installment ignorance acted influence self-defense.

Still, the contact can help people who work take cover teenagers detect dating violence, Rothman said. "This study supports the idea that we should go to those kids who are over piercing with siblings further peers also address their impassioned behavior in general," she said.

The researchers theorized that dating violence was just one of incommensurable problem behaviors such as weapon carrying, academic difficulty and substance hurt that occur together in teenagers. Those who had run into legal hardship or been caught carrying weapons and ditching school were more likely to report impassioned dating behavior, as were bloom who had witnessed violence in their communities.

Dating by blood type in Japan

People in most parts of the world do not think about their blood group much, unless they have an operation or an accident and need a transfusion.

But in Japan, whether someone is A, B, O or AB is a topic of everyday conversation.

There is a widespread belief that blood type determines personality, with implications for life, work and love.

It is Saturday night and a speed dating session is under way in a small building in the backstreets of Tokyo.


Men and women are sitting nervously at tables hoping to find that special someone.

The room is brightly painted in red and white, the staff upbeat and enthusiastic, but the conversations are rather stilted.

The couples have just a few minutes to try to sound each other out before a bell rings and they have to move on to the next lonely single.

It is a scene repeated in cities across the world but this speed dating session in Japan has a twist.
It is for women who want to meet men with blood group A or AB.

One says she decided to narrow down her search for a boyfriend after a bad experience with a man with type B.

"Looking back it seems trivial," she said. "But I couldn't help getting annoyed by how disorganized he was."
"I really would like someone with type A blood," added her friend. "My image is of someone who is down to earth, something like that."



Interest in blood type is widespread in Japan, particularly which combinations are best for romance.

Women's magazines run scores of articles on the subject, which has also inspired best-selling self-help books.
The received wisdom is that As are dependable and self sacrificing, but reserved and prone to worry.
Decisive and confident - that is people with type O.

ABs are well balanced, clear-sighted and logical, but also high-maintenance and distant.
The black sheep though seem to be blood group B - flamboyant free-thinkers, but selfish.
"At the interview for my first job they asked me about my blood type," said a man with blood group B, who wanted to identify himself only as Kouichi.

"The surprise was written on my face. Why? It turned out the company president really cared. She'd obviously had a bad experience with a B type blood person. But somehow I got the job anyway."

Later, though, the issue of his blood came up again.
"The president was the kind of person who couldn't take her drink and at one company party she got drunk. So she sent B people home before the others. 'You are blood type B,' she said. 'Get out.'"

There is even a term for such behavior in Japan, burahara, which translates as blood group harassment.
The preoccupation with blood ultimately dates back to theories of eugenics during the inter-war years.

One study compared the blood of people in Taiwan, who had rebelled against Japanese colonial rule, with the Ainu from Japan's northern island of Hokkaido, thought to be more peaceable.
Stripped of its racial overtones, the idea emerged again in the 1970s.

Now, blood typecasting is as common as horoscopes in the West, with the whiff of science - although dubious - giving it added credibility.

Some firms organize work teams by blood type to try to ensure office harmony.
And people going on a date or meeting someone for the first time are liable to be asked: "What is your blood group?"

"This particular thing about blood types is a clever way of telling people what you think about them, but indirectly," said Jeff Kingston, professor of Asian Studies at Temple University in Japan
.
"Here people don't like to be upfront and open about their opinions. So if you can hide behind blood types you can then tell someone indirectly what you think about them."

Scientists regularly debunk the blood group theory but it retains its hold - some believe because, in a largely homogenous society, it provides an easy framework to divide people up into easily recognizable groups.

The last Prime Minister, Taro Aso, even put the fact that he was a type A in his official profile on the internet.
If he had hoped that having a favored blood group would give him a boost at the polls he was disappointed.
When the election came around, he lost.