I was raised by my mom, grandma, and two older sisters.  Growing up, never did I ever take any interest in the girls at school who tended toward exposing more skin. I always treated them as I would my female family members -- with the utmost courtesy and respect.  And anytime I suspected that a male friend or acquaintance of mine adopted a hump-and-dump attitude toward women, I nixed them from my life. I held men who treated women as objects in very low regard, and still do to this day. If women feel empowered to show off their bodies because they love and work hard on their physique, more power to them. In other words, if they're doing it to please THEMSELVES and no one else, good for them.  However, those who do it specifically to curry men's favor are making a big mistake. It sends the wrong signals and actually makes it less likely that a man will want to stick around for a committed relationship (if that's what you want as anyway).  Granted, if you're not lookin...

Your toxic boss treats you with visible disdain, but you can't quite put your finger on why given you're a hard-working, dedicated employee. The end to the honeymoon phase of your relationship has ushered in a transformed boyfriend of yours who suddenly seems to take you for granted. Dissatisfied with his own life, your friend tries to project onto you the misery he's experiencing, constantly lashing out and accusing you of wrongdoing. For far too many of us, a common thread runs through each of these scenarios: Not knowing what to do and afraid of losing our job or jeoparding the relationship, we just bite the bullet and press on.  But we can't live in constant fear. We cannot allow other people to run over us like an 18-wheeler does a plastic bottle.  You can stand up for yourself in a civil, if firm, manner, sans name-calling and expletives. Even if you sense some hostility building up on the other end, do not gift them the satisfaction of seeing you brought to their...

...eventually find their way back to them. And the same goes for good deeds. In other words, what comes around goes around. Let me give you an example. Five years ago, I decided I had outgrown my job at a travel start-up and began applying for other opportunities. Eventually, I received a great job offer from my current company, a large corporation also in the travel sector. I gave my boss my two weeks' notice, and everything seemed okay -- as far as I could see, he took it very well. But on my last day, things took a decidedly different turn. Instead of getting a warm sendoff (as most employees do when they're leaving a company where they've worked for some time and built good relationships), my boss treated me as if I were getting fired. Out of nowhere, he told me to grab my stuff, leave everything as is, and exit through the front door. I wasn't permitted to say goodbye to anyone. He escorted me to the parking lot, where he said it wasn't personal...

I've observed -- on a number of occasions I might add -- that certain women in the building where I work don't hold the door for someone walking behind them when entering or leaving a room. You might ask, "Well, how can you be so sure they know there's someone behind them?" I purposely cough to alert them to the fact. Still, they refuse to show common courtesy. And this isn't just a one-time thing: I have caught the same women doing this on multiple occasions. On the other hand, men seem to be a little more polite. I would say they hold the door 99.9% of the time. Why the difference between the sexes? I think that many men are accustomed to doing the chivalrous thing and holding doors for women. You might be surprised to find that most of them will also do this for other men. I get the sense, however, that some women think holding doors for others (especially for men) is beneath them. They might reason that women have fought so hard for equal right...