7 Tips To Date a Coworker

It goes without saying that today’s business world is different from what it used to be twenty years ago. We spend most of our time at the office and we interact with colleagues just as much as we interact with the outside world and maybe more. The amount of hours you spend in your office may vary accordingly to your job, your seniority and your company. However, you would at least be spending 8 hours within your work environment interacting with others outside your family, close friends and agreed upon comfort zone. You work groups will be diverse and you may make friends from work. You could also be seeking something more than a friend at work; you can meet an emotional partner. Where does all of this take us?

To date at work or not to date at work?



The answer is not with me, it is all yours! The most important aspect to begin with would be to double-check your employee handbook, and check to see if your company has a policy on this! It may sound humorous, but many companies are instituting explicit written policies either prohibiting or expressing they do allow work/dating relationships. Some companies I have heard of permit peers to date, but not those in a direct boss/subordinate relationship with you. Therefore, you can date those who are laterals to you in the organization, but not those above you who report to you or you report to.
Next, I encourage you to consider, “How will you feel if it doesn’t work out?” While we like to give people the benefit of the doubt, let’s assume the worst here. Will you feel awkward being around this person in staff meetings, embarrassed because he’s seen you in love and could share very intimate details with other co-workers and worse, management, or angry or sad if it turns out “he’s just not that into you?”



Let’s say you have considered the odds and would like to go ahead with this step, it would eb best if you consider the below tips:



1 Recognizing a strong attraction: You must be genuinely convinced that your co-worker is interested in you. He or she may be sending signals, like taking detours to be near your cabin, singling out your reports for compliments, trying to share lunch and coffee breaks with you, staying near you during office parties and making inquiries about your personal life. She may even send flirty e-mail messages to you. You must try to watch, learn and think before expressing your interest to him/her.
2 Keeping it discreet: One of the most important lessons, which people have learnt, is to keep an office romance discreet. Rumor mills and grapevines thrive on the grist of possible- ongoing-failed romances. Your office may contain many people who are inimical to you and waiting to speak ill of you. It’s a dog-eat-dog situation and an office romance is the best way to feed the rumor mills. Especially if a romance sours, it may be very unpleasant and embarrassing for both of you at the workplace if you have had a very highflying public romance. Your decisions, motivations, actions, all may be weighed in terms of your romantic interest in a co-worker. Be prepared for co-workers to be talking behind your back. So the best policy is to keep your romance low key and quiet until it turns really serious. It will avoid complicating relationships with other co-workers.

3 Try to date someone in a different office or a floor: You may work in the same company but your romance has a better chance if you work in different offices or on different floors. For one, you are not always bumping into each other the whole time. You can keep the romance discrete and avoid feeding the rumor mills. You are also not likely to bore yourself with full time interaction. Because if you are in the same office, you may have nothing very different to share with each other on the daily goings-on and intrigues and you may lose the spark in your romance. As someone said, familiarity breeds contempt. But more important, you may escape being the target of office intrigues, accusations of favoritism, and character assassination.

4 Avoid public displays of affection: Even if you don’t want to be too discrete, it is better to avoid public displays of affection in the office. Save the handholding and caressing for after-hours. Cloying displays of affection spoil the office atmosphere. Also the habit of sending electronic messages or e-mails containing love declarations is best avoided. Most office employees have access to all office e-mails on the excuse of checking for suspected pornographic content and illegal material. And in the process, all your intimate letters will be the joke of the office.

5 Keep your quarrels at home: Being discrete also means that you do not carry to the workplace your disputes and quarrels. Shouting and abusing each other at work destroys the peace of the work-place and affects negatively the productivity of individuals. Co-workers can mess up work because they have had a lover’s tiff, and vitiate the atmosphere by setting up rival camps in the staff. It results in back-biting, stalling of work and confrontation.

6 Come clean about other affairs: Before you start a new romance with a co-worker who happens to be the partner of your dreams, you must confess to them about previous romances in the workplace, if any. This is the problem with the work-place. Dating co-workers seldom escapes anyone’s attention, and remains in everyone’s memory to haunt you forever. The details maybe exaggerated by back-biters, so it is important that you come clean with your partner before others try to spoil things between you.



7 Develop a strong personality: Only those with a strong personality can successfully date a co-worker, as you encounter a sea of troubles once you start an office romance. You must be ready to fight the odds - company policy, office gossip, fear of blackmail, and the general tempest of affairs. There is the possibility that she will accuse you of harassment or blackmail, or the office will question your every decision as a sign of favoritism. Either way, you must be ready to face the flak.



Truth be told: It is a RISK! But sometimes we are willing to take it. Sometimes we just haven’t met that special someone outside our work environment and we are willing to look inside. And some other times we just have to get out of our comfort zone to get a taste of something special that we craving for.

Easy ways to attract women

Sometimes the dating game can be a bit of a minefield. According to popular belief, to attract women you need to earn a lot of money, have a torso that ripples like an oversized sheet of corrugated iron and spend half your salary in the men's department of any well-known but overpriced department store. The remaining half should go on getting that buff six-pack at an expensive gym, naturally.

Well, that's not the way we see things here at MSN Him. We're all about making the most of what you've got and the good news is there are easy (in some cases, so easy they're actually accidental) ways to attract women. And it's not us that says that, it's science. Here's a few that will bring hope to any man's heart.

Daddy's home!


Have a think about all the women you fancy. Do you happen to look like any of their dads?

If you do, you might just be in luck. Strangely enough, psychologists at Durham University have discovered that women who had good relationships with their fathers were more attracted to men who resembled them.

Now that sounds a bit weird and Freudian, but it kind of makes sense. Ultimately, women seem to be looking for men who will make good fathers, and if they're on good terms with their own dads, that's the best model they have.
Mirror mirror


But if you don't look like any of your female friends' fathers, don't despair. Instead, try to find someone who looks just a little bit like you.

That doesn't mean you should imitate your female friends' appearance. But research by the University of St Andrews found that women are most attracted to masculine versions of themselves. Nobody's quite sure why that should be, but previous studies have shown that, while women can go for masculine faces, they're also a bit suspicious of them. Masculine men might be seen as overly aggressive or likely to play the field and therefore unwelcome.

The researchers theorised that a masculine face that is also a bit familiar cancels out the suspicion. So all you need to know is that, if there are three female friends standing at the bar, start talking to the one who's got your mouth or eyes. She won't know it, but she may well be drawn to someone who resembles her - you.
Average chance

So you don't look like her dad and you don't look like her. Darn. But hang on a sec, you could still be in with a chance - that's if you look completely and utterly average.

We're not joking (much). In 1990, a pair of boffins called Langlois and Roggman came up with what they called the "averageness hypothesis", and more recent studies seem to confirm that people like symmetrical, regular and rather average faces.

Of course, women like good-looking men, too. But when images of faces are digitally manipulated to make every feature (nose size, the distance between eyes, the heights of foreheads etc) equal to the human average, viewers tend to prefer the 'averaged' face to the original.

Apparently, that's because subconsciously we like to see things we are used to seeing, and we've all seen thousands of faces so we take an average as an ideal. So if you're not Brad Pitt, don't despair. A pleasant and average face is perfectly good enough.
Sniff and select

A good way to attract women is to whiff a bit. Let's be clear - you probably shouldn't actually smell, but don't entirely conceal your natural, manly aroma.

Because what science is increasingly finding is that women have an acute sense of smell, and they use it to help pick out a suitable mate. You might think that after a couple of days in the same shirt you smell just like any other pongy guy. But subconsciously, women are using your smell to gather all sorts of interesting information about your genetic inheritance and the strength of your immune system.

When researchers have asked women to smell men's worn shirts and rate the attractiveness of the aroma, they tend to go for men with a particular genetic code (one that is involved in our immune systems) different from their own. Choosing a mate with a different immune system makes sense, because the offspring are likely to be protected from a greater range of illnesses.

Of course, your immune system won't be attractive to everyone. But by going easy on the underarm deodorant and aftershave, you're at least giving suitable partners a chance to sniff you out.
The right moment

We don't mean the exact moment her friend has nipped to the bar. No, we're talking about the mystery of the female cycle. If you're lucky, you may well coincide with the 12 to 24 hours every month when she might be feeling a little more outgoing and more receptive to conversation with you.

Because whether she consciously wants one or not, the body of an ovulating woman is attuned to wanting a baby. Why's that important? Well, because studies have shown that surprisingly, women have more sex when they're ovulating and they're also more likely to cheat.

In a study published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, researchers found that ovulation makes women more likely to wear revealing clothes.

And there's more. As well as more skin on display, ovulation makes her pupils dilate, her voice increase in pitch and her breasts swell. In other words, it makes her yearn for a man. Which is exactly where you come in...
Source: MSN

Five Ways to Ruin Your Feet

We'd like re-introduce you to some folks you may not have seen for while. And you many not like what you see.

Fashion friend: Meet your feet. You know, the ones that have been wrapped up in socks and boots all winter. The ones you have neglected, ignored and abused. How have you been hurting them? Let us count the ways, and offer some help:


1. The wrong shoes
Cheap shoes, uncomfortable shoes, or shoes that don't fit won't just give you aching feet– they could create serious medical problems that last a lifetime. So choose your shoes carefully – the wrong footwear can leads to stress fractures, plantar fasciitis (swelling of the tissue at the bottom of your feet), or hammer toes or bunions.

Some ground rules: the heel should be firm and the shoe shouldn't bend or twist. "Look at your foot, look at your shoe. If they don't resemble each other, you shouldn't be walking around in them," says Dr. Johanna Youner, a New York City-based podiatrist.

Bad news for ladies who love their Louboutins: Five-inch heels may be okay for a party or a date, but they're certainly not for every day. "Stilettos are gorgeous and everybody loves the way they look in them, but to wear them to walk around is not the best way to go," Dr. Youner says.


2. Perils of the pedicure
A pedicure may be relaxing - and a great way to get winter feet looking presentable again -- but an ingrown toenail will certainly stress you out. Germs picked up during a pedicure can lead to an ingrown toenail or an infection.

If that happens, don't go back to the salon, says Dr. Youner – see a podiatrist before it gets worse. A good rule of thumb is to choose a salon where the foot-soaking tub is either disposable or removable, says Dr. Youner, because a lot of infections may originate in the plumbing.

It can't hurt to bring your own tools, either – and even if they're yours, clean them before you head out. And when in doubt, apply some Bacitracin to your feet when you get home.

3. Yoga mat yuck
Forgetting your own mat when you go to yoga may cost more than a $1 mat rental fee – yoga mats are notorious for spreading plantar warts.

Sweat creates the humid atmosphere in which warts flourish, and that combined with a shared mat can add up to plantar warts or athlete's foot.

"I would be reticent to take my own socks off in a yoga studio, not because I'm accusing anyone of being dirty, just because it's very human to transmit warts," says Dr. Youner. So bring your own mat, or pick up a pair of yoga socks – Gaiam's No-Slip Yoga Socks are a popular choice – and lose yourself in your practice.

4. Beware of moisture
Foot scourges like athlete's foot and plantar warts thrive in water – so you should do your best to keep your feet protected and dry. If you take a shower after your workout at the gym, try to remember to bring flip flops with you.

But even if you don't, don't despair: You can wipe your feet down with a little alcohol to make sure all is clear, says Dr. Youner.

When you're wearing shoes, make sure your feet stay dry, she urges. "The best protective thing is just to put some cornstarch in your closed shoes," says Dr. Yourner. "It protects you from all sorts of things that can break down your skin." This is especially important with boots.

5. Running a risk
Yes, exercise is good for you; but repetitive actions can hurt your feet, especially if you're not wearing the best footwear. Dancing – particularly in ballet toe shoes (See: Black Swan) is particularly hazardous for your feet, so dance with care.

Running, too, which causes the foot to be repeatedly pushed into the heel and toe, can cause bleeding under the nail. If that happens, the toe won't grow back normally – ever.

This is a common problem podiatrists see around marathons, says Dr. Yourner. If this (or any of the above foot problems) does happen, she urges, see a podiatrist as soon as possible. "Don't let your injury get to the point where the nail falls off," she warns.
Source: stylelist

Couple Sex in the 21st Century

Having a partner can be an exhilarating and bonding experience. An active and loving sex life is an essential part of any relationship. How your sex lives begin together can shape your whole relationship and be a rich source of wellbeing. Over time, it is easy to fall in a rut and take couple sex for granted. This is increasingly true today, when there are so many distractions and demands on our time.

New couples may have an initial discomfort at revealing themselves naked before their partner. Perhaps the first few times there is such a flurry of activity that this goes unnoticed. A short while into a sexually active couple's time together, there will be moments of standing around completely naked. A transformative sex life together allows and welcomes this naked time. It is easy to fall in to a sense of shame and desire to cover up. Being able to stand, revealed, before your lover is a liberating experience and charges the air with a new bout of sexual passion.

This confidence fosters a greater sense of wellbeing in yourself and is extremely energizing to your partner as well. The freedom to be naked together feeds your creativity and allows you both to explore sex together more deeply. Move past the images of unattainable beauty as shown by advertising and tv. Being naked together lets you see and appreciate the splendour of your partner's body. Loving and being sexually attracted to your partners body for all its shapes and uniqueness enriches the loving bond between you.

Keeping the mobiles out of the bedroom declares that this is serious you time. Couple sex can transport you both into your own little world, outside of time. This is the freedom of being, not doing. Sex is a form of communication and together you can open up whole new ways of getting to know and love each other. Avoid distractions that draw you out of your collective bliss.

Sex can be so enjoyable that we rush into repeating the same variation every time in order to return to those sensations you both loved. At times, this can be great as you practice your own sexual moves and learn new ways for your bodies to talk. But other times, it can detract from the joy if it becomes soul-less and just a way to go through the motions until release. Being available for sex with your partner spontaneously, using toys, dressing up, or changing locations keep things spicy. Our brains are used to a richer set of stimulation outside of the bedroom, so having a range of ideas and aids helps keep a sex life fresh.

VALENTINO GARAVANI

Valentino Garavani was born in Voghera, a town just north of Milan, Italy, on May 11, 1932. As a young boy, Valentino had an eye for the finer things in fashion. He had custom shoes made and loved to wear cashmere sweaters. At age 17, he moved to Paris and began his first job working in the design department of Jean Desses. In the early 1960s, he started his own company in Rome.
In the fashion world, Valentino is a well-known and respected designer. He designed the wedding dress for Jacqueline Kennedy's marriage to Aristotle Onassis in 1968. He was chosen to design the Italian athletes' uniforms for the 1984 Olympic games. Valentino received a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2000 American Designer Awards in New York. Valentino's style signature is one of lavish elegance, often marked by his love of the color bright orange-red. Followers of his designs, called "Val's Gals," are usually very wealthy women who desire to showcase their status. Thanks to his "Gals," Valentino is now a multi-millionaire and is celebrating his 40th anniversary in the fashion business.
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