About

Welcome to my investigative journalism experiment!  I am a thirty-something Manhattanite relationship counselor (think way, way uptown, where a lowly counselor can almost afford to live), and I hail from 5 very recent and very consecutive years of fruitless dating in NYC.  Nearly 30 guys, some 50-odd dates.  Boyfriends?  Zippo.

While I like to think I am reasonably cute (see evidence above) and clever enough to keep up my end of witty repartee, I just didn’t seem to be meeting the right guys.  Either I didn’t want to see them again, or they didn’t want to see me again.

I got to wondering–am I missing something?  Making bad calls?  What do intelligent sources beyond my gut feelings and past experiences have to say about dating and long-term relationships?

I know relationship research is occasionally bandied about in the news, and I drink those articles up just like the next person.  But, what if the media is skipping the guts in favor of zippy conclusions?  Surely they are burdened by deadlines, overbearing editors, word counts, and whatnot.  I have no such pressures.  I can really dig in, spend as long as it takes.  Plus I never have to switch topics.  What if I could uncover a new pattern, posit a new theory, turn cinnabar to gold?  You know.  Nothing overly ambitious.

Luckily, I have an educational leg-up on this sort of investigating.  I earned my B. S. in Human Development and Family Studies at good old Penn State (formally, they prefer to be called The Pennsylvania State University, but c’mon, it’s Penn State), and went on to get a Masters in Clinical Social Work from Columbia University.  I am, therefore, more familiar than most people will ever want to be with our field’s research methodology and professional journals.  I’ve also been in practice as a counselor for over five years in NYC, so I like to think I have book smarts and street smarts when it comes to couples and their issues.

Thus, drum-roll please, I give you the Where Is This Going? blog:   a space dedicated to exploring the science of romantic relationships.

My job:  I comb through journals, stacks, newspapers, and the online world to answer the kinds of love-life questions curious people have always wondered about.

Your job:  follow along, enjoy the ride, share with friends, and send me more questions!

Let’s see if we can’t unravel the puzzle a bit together, eh?