In Between Relationships; 10 Antidotes to Loneliness | eHarmony Advice.

Desperately lonely but not quite ready for another relationship? Here are 10 things to do.

I know of a woman who so longed to be loved, held, and not feel lonely that she gave her lover, a man she hadn’t known long and knew to be a criminal, all of her life savings—some forty-three thousand dollars to be exact. He promised, along with his abiding love, that he would give her back her money with interest in only two short months. When she told her friend what she had done her friend pointed out that she had a small child to feed, and reminded her she had just lost her job—and, incidentally, two other boyfriends just like this one. She quickly replied in her defense that he believed in Karma.

Several months passed, having heard from him only once, when she began to inquire about his whereabouts. Hoping to reclaim her inheritance and self-respect, she learned that he had died in an automobile accident and had left behind a young widow and three small children. When she told her friend what she had discovered, her friend asked her what she had learned. To which she replied, “He died in the car he bought with my money.”

For some of us, being internally referenced or taking responsibility for all you experience is a foreign concept. I know it was for me. I, like so many of us, believed that my circumstances were designed or slated by some dark fate, bad luck or perhaps my difficult childhood. And I didn’t have to look far to see many of my role models and contemporaries following suit. Failed marriages and relationships that fell apart like a strand of dominos over the years, all to the Western tune of: “That rotten, no good, cheating son of a, and he even took the dog!” song.

While you’re busy trying to sort out who really did what, whose responsibility your life actually is, and healing your heart, I offer you some “here and now” antidotes to feeling desperately lonely. (So you don’t go and find another relationship just like the last one, or just like our friend’s.)

10 things you can do when you feel lonely:

Feel. I say we gotta feel it to heal it. And if we don’t know what we feel, we don’t know what we need. Get a pillow, sit on the floor and bring it on. Facing our fears sometimes is the perfect answer. Two and three o’clock in the morning are when they hit me the worst. Whatever time it is, facing the boogeyman is ultimately what we all have to do if we want to be free and choose a relationship out of love rather than need (or desperation). If I was gentle, waited and sat with myself long enough, I would begin to feel and heal. I spent many nights (and days) just letting the floodgates loose and seeing what was underneath all my anxiety.

Move. Release what’s inside. Let it out. Oh my, can I just tell you that moving saved my life?! Sometimes I had so much energy, so many feelings welled up in me, that I stood in my kitchen barefoot on the hardwood floor and gyrated around spastically flailing my fists at God and everyone, like James Brown on crack. I screamed and cried and danced and collapsed until I was empty. Running, hiking, swimming, dance classes—you name it, I did it!!

Read. Yes, it is not easy to quiet that restless mind, so pick books that are inspirational and that will engage you every time. Ones that have exercises and great “if I can do it, you can, too” stories. I always had a stack of self-help books and autobiographies nearby, still do. Check out my suggested reading list in the back of Hindsight, or email Anila at anila@maryannelive.com for a copy.

Write. One of my single girlfriends told me she writes herself love letters. One every night, and they get longer and longer. Then when she wakes up she reads them to herself. Whatever you have pinging around up there, put it on paper. Doesn’t matter how you do it. Journal, write letters to God (he/she will answer back). Who knows, maybe you’ve got the next NY Times bestseller in there!! I wrote copious amounts of dark, intensely feeling poetry in words from the 13th century, channeling my “DNA gone bad” from the past. It was so great to get it out of my body!

Collage. I love to collage, as I am very visual. Pulling pictures out of new magazines (great way to recycle) of people, places, and things that made me feel happy or inspired always worked for me. Sometimes I was surprised at what I learned about myself, what I really liked or longed for.

Talk. I must say I had a list of folks who would talk with me in the wee hours of the morning if I needed to be “talked down”… if you know what I mean. Not men, but friends that cared about me, knew my history and were devoted to my heath and well-being. Honestly, I have never been a big phone talker, but when I got lonely sometimes it would take the edge off—just hearing someone’s voice was comforting enough to get me to the next place!

Play. Anyone who knows me knows that this has traditionally been a hard one for me. It conjured images of silly people running about doing things I would never do. That said, I needed to find my version of what healthy fun was. Things that had positive consequences. I started dancing the Five Rhythms (http://www.movingcenterschool.com/), took salsa lessons, ice skated w/ my son, played cards with friends, played ping pong, trained for the Avon Walk (okay, for me training is fun), painted with watercolors, took classes at City College, went to open-air markets. There are a ton of things to do and a million online resources in your area for what I call “clean living,” fun things to do.

Get a pet. I love cats, have two (Chloe and Leila), a dog named Bella and a fish; the current one’s name is Donald. (My niece and nephew named the last three Sparkles One, Two and Three.) I cannot tell you how many times my cats have come and cradled me in the midst of some of some of my most intense loneliness. And I let them. I was learning how to comfort myself when I had only known how to reach to someone else before (most of the time not the best someone, either). And yes, they respect me in the morning, all of them, every time—and best of all, so do I!

*Note from Renee:  If you get a pet, make sure it is a life long commitment for the pet’s ENTIRE life.  *

Laugh. I have always been the type of person who said, “If I am not capable of mustering a laugh, I know something is really wrong!” and then I revert to the above items. Because I genuinely, regularly love to indulge in gigantic belly laughter. I love to laugh at myself and when I am not busy laughing at myself, I seek out opportunities to find the humor in just about everything. I am easily entertained. (My mother once said that if you are bored you are boring.) Comedians on DVD are fab and I recommend getting a library of them—my current fave is Orny Adams, he’s available online. OR a great alternative is funny movies, and my list is long. If you don’t have a library already, it is inexpensive to build, and way less expensive than a one-night stand or bad relationship choice.

Pray. Oh yes, never underestimate the power of prayer. I have said prayers over and over, hoping someone or something out there would hear me, and then one day it happened. I found my Divine connection to…well, The Divine, of course, and have never looked back. It was like coming home, and now I find great comfort in prayer and meditation, as corny or simplistic as this sounds. I know, I know, you are desperately lonely— then I say to you, pray like it!!

For more info about my daily practice, how I found the love of my life, check out my CD series “Thrive, 7 essential truths for revealing your secret, sacred self.”

People who turned their dreams to reality – CNN.com.

We love Oprah.com.  So much great advice and great articles!  – Renee

(Oprah.com) — The Quilter: Kyra Hicks

Twenty years ago, a friend and I were visiting the Taft Museum of Art in Cincinnati and saw an exhibit of African-American quilts. I’ll never forget one particular piece by the artist Faith Ringgold — a family sitting at a Thanksgiving table, with their thoughts sewn into the fabric. I just knew right away: I wanted to tell stories with cotton.

It’s exciting to start on a quilt. I tape paper to my wall and sketch patterns and notes. Going to the fabric store for the right colors or prints feels as important as the actual sewing. And then I clear out a huge empty space in my family room, and I get busy. I don’t know how to draw, so it amazes me that this magical, creative part of me comes out.

Here’s an example: A few years ago, when I was yearning for a date on a Friday night, I asked myself, “How can I capture this feeling in fabric?” So I made a quilt that reads “SBF praying for a SBM to share my quilt.” The image is of a black woman, and if you look really closely, the background pattern is filled with couples. I love layering the story like that.

I probably couldn’t make a living quilting, and I’m glad of that. My 9-to-5 job as a product manager means I don’t have to make quilts to sell. There’s a freedom to being pure to the art, to not being motivated to pay the mortgage with it. My quilts are motivated only by my need to tell my story.

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The Coach: Jennifer Smith

As a kid, I was a horse nut, a real barn rat. I would spend every Saturday at the stables, grooming horses, mucking stalls — anything for extra rides. But when I went to college, my obsession fizzled out. I got a job in book publishing and started spending my days in front of a computer, stuck in my head. I like what I do, but as time passed, I just began to crave something wildly different.

Then, three years ago, I came across a video about horses helping children with disabilities. I felt like it was speaking directly to me. On my first day as a volunteer, I was paired with a 9-year-old girl who had severe developmental and physical disabilities. My job was to walk alongside her for support. When she got in the saddle of a big brown swayback, her face lit up. She couldn’t stop laughing! I saw other kids in wheelchairs — kids who spend all day looking up at people — sitting in the saddle and grinning like they were on top of the world. It felt magical. There’s no office equivalent, no matter how much you enjoy your day job.

I’ve since become a certified riding instructor. For six months a year, I’m at the stable on Saturdays from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. It’s something I don’t technically have time for — I’ve missed weekends away with friends, and I schedule “summer” vacations for March because the program starts in April — but you make time for things that matter.

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The Cheese-Maker: Elena Santogade

My family is from Wisconsin, so I’ve always liked cheese, but my interest didn’t get intense until a few years ago. I felt antsy at my desk job, so I started a club: Each week a coworker would bring in a few cheeses to share. For my turn, I visited a cheesemonger in a specialty shop. We shared a piece of Appenzeller — sort of like a Gruyère — and I could taste hay and onion. He said, “Oh, the cow must’ve gotten into an onion patch.” I was standing in this busy, fancy shop in New York City and tasting a connection to a cow in Switzerland — it blew my mind.

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I started talking to other cheesemongers. They can be a grumpy group, but I’d visit again and again and ask for offbeat offerings. The more I learned, the more I wanted to try crafting simple ingredients into amazing flavors. Making cheese turned out to feel like a big brain stretch. You focus on basic things, like watching milk change, and your mind gets quiet.

My apartment is tiny, but it has become something of a workshop. A kitchen hook drains soft cheeses into the sink. Two small fridges age my wheels of Cheddar and Manchego. I make cheese every week, and I’ve been teaching mozzarella classes as well, so huge pots and bowls are perched on shelves. Anyone who walks in can tell who I am: I’m a cheesemaker.

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The Pianist: Ria Dawn Carlo

The first time I saw a piano, I was in first grade. My teacher played “When the Saints Go Marching In,” and that was it: I wanted to play. When the others ran to recess, I would practice scales. My parents didn’t go to church, but I went with my art teacher, to play piano there. I begged for lessons and finally began at age 9. At 11, I told my teachers that I wanted to be a concert pianist. They said the odds were slim, and that I’d have to win the Tchaikovsky Competition — a one-in-a-million shot.

That was pretty discouraging, and as time passed, I grew away from music and instead pursued mathematics. For years I worked as an astrophysicist and had time for little else. But three years ago, when I switched jobs, I found myself thinking of the piano. At age 34, I decided to begin again.

As soon as I sat at the keys, I felt as if I’d entered a room made just for me. In the beginning, I used an electric keyboard and pretended I was on a grand piano. Buying a used Yamaha last year was a real commitment. It makes such a booming sound, my husband and I moved to a bigger apartment so I can play for an hour or two every day. Since I started practicing on my concert grand, I’ve won an international competition and performed at a fund-raiser at Carnegie Hall. Onstage, I could feel myself filling with light. These are the best moments of my life.

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The mysteries of love – CNN.com.

(Real Simple) — Ten things to know about love and romance, from why we fall hard to why we cheat.

What Rules Attraction?

In general, you gravitate toward people like you. Good-looking people tend to go for similarly good-looking types, and those from a particular socio-economic background favor their own. Experts believe this happens because perceived equality contributes to a stable union. Well-known actresses pair up with rock stars, for example, because such men tend to be as rich and famous as they are. But once you get past the bone structure and bank account and into personality attributes, opposites often attract.

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“We’re apt to fall in love with those who are mysterious and challenging to us,” says Helen Fisher, a professor of anthropology at Rutgers University, in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and the author of “Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love.” “This pull to another biological type could also be adaptive,” says Fisher. “If two very different people pool their DNA, they’ll create more genetic variety, and their young will come to the job of parenting with a wider array of skills.”

How Much Do Looks Count?

Physical features are important to both sexes, but a bit more so to men. “During attraction, the parts of a man’s brain associated with processing visual information are more active,” says Louann Brizendine, a clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco, and the author of “The Female Brain.” “That’s true for women too, but they also show activity in the brain regions that integrate decision making, which suggests they’re thinking about a little bit more than just how he looks.”

Is Love Blind?

Not exactly, but once you’re hooked, your vision gets cloudy. “When you’re in a relationship, you’re aware of the other person’s flaws, but your brain is telling you it’s OK to ignore them,” says Lucy Brown, Ph.D., a professor of neuroscience at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, in New York City, who specializes in the brain’s response to love.

Studies at the Wellcome Department of Neuroimaging at University College in London found that when romantic partners look at each other, the part of the brain associated with social assessment and negative emotion is relatively dormant and critical judgment is dulled. According to Fisher, this mechanism may have evolved to help people stick together through early, sometimes stressful child-rearing stages.

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Can Love Be Addictive?

Love plays havoc with your body chemistry, causing you to act like an addict bent on scoring her next fix. Studies have found, for instance, that serotonin levels decrease by up to 40 percent in the newly smitten, causing some to show signs of obsessive-compulsive disorder, a condition associated with low serotonin — which is why you can’t seem to get the other person out of your head. Additionally, cortisol, a stress hormone linked with the fight-or-flight response, is released, so you’re constantly on high alert. Sound familiar?

Research published by a team that included Brown and Fisher found that people who had recently fallen in love showed strong activity in the area of the brain that produces and receives dopamine, a neurotransmitter associated with addictive behavior whose activity increases when you expect to receive a reward. Gamblers and drug addicts experience similar dopamine activity. “You’re not supposed to be satisfied,” explains Fisher. “You’re supposed to be driven so that you can win the person and eventually stabilize your internal chemistry.”

When a relationship ends, you experience symptoms that are similar to an addict’s withdrawal. Your dopamine levels go down, so your mood suffers. Your serotonin levels remain low, so your obsessive-compulsive disorder symptoms may not go away. In response to these imbalances, some scientists believe, risk-taking tendencies go up. “When you can’t have someone but you’re not willing to accept that, you try harder and become more extreme about it,” says Fisher. Paradoxically, she says, this compulsive behavior may help you move on faster: “Either you win the person back or you drive him away.”

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What Makes People Commit?

Humans are hardwired to stick together. Intimate relationships trigger the production of oxytocin and vasopressin, chemicals that scientists have nicknamed “cuddle hormones.” A mere touch from a loved one can elevate their levels, and after sex they flood the system. “We think of these hormones as playing an important role later on in the relationship, when you really know the person’s flaws,” says Brown.

Why Are Some More Reluctant to Commit Than Others?

Gene variation may be partly to blame. Scientists at Emory University, in Atlanta, looked at the effect of vasopressin in two closely related kinds of rodents — the prairie vole and the meadow vole. Like humans, the prairie vole is one of the 3 percent of mammalian species that form monogamous pair bonds. The meadow vole doesn’t. But when male meadow voles were injected with a gene responsible for releasing vasopressin receptors, they immediately lost their wanderlust, paired up, and settled down.

The study’s researchers think the number of vasopressin receptors an individual has could lay the foundation for his propensity to commit. “There’s something at work with a couple that stays together for 50 years, bad years included,” says Melvin Konner, M.D., a professor of anthropology and behavioral biology at Emory, who wrote a commentary on the experiment. “It’s hard to imagine that it’s just a question of compatible personalities or strict beliefs.”

Does Love Make You More Trusting?

Lovers do tend to see the world through rose-colored glasses. In one experiment, researchers devised a game in which subjects were given a sum of money to invest with a trustee, either in a lump sum or piecemeal. Anything given to the trustee would triple in value, but it was up to the subject to decide how much to turn over. Half the participants used a nose spray before the experiment that was a placebo; the other half used one with oxytocin.

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Subjects who took the oxytocin were nearly twice as likely to turn all their money over to a trustee. A subsequent experiment at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), in Washington, D.C., found that subjects who inhaled oxytocin before looking at pictures of threatening faces had markedly lower activity in their brains’ fear centers. “These results suggest that oxytocin increases trust,” says Thomas Insel, M.D., director of the NIMH.

Why Do People Cheat?

Attraction, romantic love, and attachment involve three overlapping but separate brain systems. “It’s not hard for somebody to sexually desire one person, be infatuated with another, and still want to spend the rest of his or her life with a third,” says Fisher. Because each kind of love serves a unique need and exists in a different context, cheaters are able to divide their emotional resources.

What makes one person more likely to cheat compared with another? The answers are both inconsistent and varied. Fisher suspects the propensity to stray may be stronger in people who have novelty-seeking, dopamine-sensitive personalities. But factors unique to the relationship — a need for attention, a desire to get out of the situation — are just as likely to fuel infidelity.

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Can Love Affect Your Health?

Research has found that couples in good relationships tend to be healthier and happier. “Happily married couples report lower stress than single people, in part because they provide each other with emotional support in difficult times,” says Janice Kiecolt-Glaser, a professor of psychiatry at Ohio State University, in Columbus. “Lower stress translates into better health and immune function.” For example, people who are in conflict-ridden relationships might see cuts and bruises heal more slowly — by as much as 40 percent, according to a 2005 experiment at the Ohio State University College of Medicine.

And breakups have been shown to cause physical pain. A 2003 study looked at people playing a virtual ball-tossing game. Those people rejected during the game showed activity in the pain area of their brains. “In evolutionary terms, exclusion can be as bad for survival as a real injury, and our bodies automatically know this,” explains the study’s author, Naomi Eisenberger, a postdoctoral scholar at the University of California, Los Angeles.

What Keeps People Together?

Hormones and hard work. Restlessness sets in one to two years into a relationship, according to new research from the Universities of Pavia and Pisa, in Italy. That’s the period in which the chemical activity associated with new love (high dopamine, for example) dies down.

Fortunately, there are ways to keep the spark alive. Sexual contact drives up dopamine levels. Novelty does, too, which is why you tend to feel so good about somebody after taking a trip or going through an unusual experience together. Frequent physical contact is most likely to maintain elevated oxytocin levels, which is why holding hands, stroking your partner, or any other kind of touch can create feelings of attachment.

Less Stress With Meditation: 3 Easy Steps | The Dr. Oz Show.

Psychic readings by phone are extremely popular. With our company, you call, book an appointment, and call the psychic at your leisure. Phone readings are popular because of convenience. It can also be a little more comfortable getting a phone reading because you can sit at home and talk over the phone, versus face to face sharing personal issues.

Many people wonder if a phone reading can be as accurate as a face to face reading. We believe both types of readings can be beneficial. In phone readings, the reader can not actually see you in person. Therefore, the reader has no way to judge you by how you look and only can pick up on vocal vibrations and your energy. Seems the best readings are where a psychic can pick us on energy, a phone reading is very valuable.

Many people are skeptical of psychic readings. Actually, being in this industry for over 15 years, I am also a skeptic. It is good to be skeptical when getting a reading. You should question the advice given by a reader. Readers are human and do make mistakes. There is no such thing as a 100% accurate psychic reading. But, it is fun when you have a trusted reader give great insight into your issues.

Many people like to use their cell phones for readings. This is not uncommon. Being able to get psychic advice at the moment when you need it most is critical. So don’t hesitate thinking that you need a land line. The only thing we DO NOT recommend is getting a reading while driving. If you need to get a reading from your car, please pull over for your own (and, everyone else’s) safety.