The XX Factor: What women really think.

The Feminist Roots of Polyamory

A guest post from Newsweek writer Jessica Bennett:

I've never been in a relationship with two people at the same time, but I've spent the last two months talking about it constantly. Not because I'm obsessed with the idea—though, um, increasingly I am—but because I was writing a piece for Newsweek about one particular multi-partner family ... (Read more in Double X.)

So Your Mother Married a Convict, Get Over It

My relationship with my mom remains tentative and strained. I worry that it may be damaged permanently,” writes Double X contributor Anna Balkrishna, who goes into great detail about her mother’s exuberant attempt at happiness in an ultimately doomed second marriage. “In 1996, my mother met and later married a man incarcerated in a New Mexico state prison, an inmate who began as her pen pal and ended up as her lover,” she writes. Balkrishna shares her Modern Love-style tale of a second chance gone predictably wrong, titled "My Mother Married Her Prison Pen Pal." The author tells us that 13 years ago, when she was launching her college life, her mother, now in her 50s, “would prod me and my sister to take photos of her in the backyard wearing slinky slips from Victoria's Secret” to send to the mother’s inmate boyfriend, and of her own resentment of the mother who emotionally abandoned her in favor of the unworthy new love... (To read the rest of this post, visit our new website DoubleX.com!)

Tell Us Your Awkward and Wrong Internet Tales

Scott Anderson's Modern Love Revenge column about a woman who wrote in the New York Times about how she Googled him before their first date, raises interesting questions about online etiquette. The piece that Scott reacted to ran less than a year ago, but already the concept feels dated to me. Embarrassment about Googling someone? As a journalist, I'd be embarrassed to go on a date without having Googled the potential suitor first—and looked him up on Lexis-Nexis and Facebook and (if he's older) Friendster, and tried... (To read the rest of this post, visit our new website DoubleX.com!)

Archie Pops the Question

Communicating Despite Technology

Burned By Modern Love? Here's Your Chance For Revenge.

Love, Full Stop

In a column today on the famous Harvard Study of Adult Development, which has followed the paths of a group of graduates from college to old age, David Brooks quotes lead researcher George Vaillant's conclusion about what matters in life: “Happiness is love. Full Stop." It's a somewhat odd conclusion since... (To read the rest of this post, visit our new website DoubleX.com!)