Hiya Hazel,

News flash! I’ve been married for a few years, and it has taken me this long to learn an important secret to pleasing my HMM. He simply wants to BE with me. It’s not enough to sleep together at night and spend every evening together. This past week I’ve been on vacation, and I’ve spent three days doing nothing but being with him. I put my own errands and plans on the back burners, and I’ve accompanied him on various errands. I’ve sat in his office and read a book while he handled business phone calls. I’ve chatted with the workers in his office while he took care of business, and I’ve gone with him on business calls. We’ve eaten sushi together, visited clients together, talked and laughed in the car on the way to and from those errands. I told him - quite truthfully - that I wish I could spend every day with him. And he is a happy man this week. Very happy, if you get my drift.

In the past, I’ve felt that there was no sense in going with him on his errands because I had my own errands to handle. You know - the laundry, the dishes, going to the market and handling things related to my own job. This week I decided to just put being with him first on my list of priorities.

I have a good time being with my husband. However, it’s true that men are just little boys trapped in adult bodies.

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• HMMs High Maintenance Men

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My husband is a HMM (high maintenance man) and sometimes that can be a royal pain in the ass. I always thought he was simply “difficult” until I learned his true definition recently.

Last week some of my single friends were talking, and one described a first date she’d had the weekend before. The guy was good looking and fun, but when they ate in a restaurant, he complained repeatedly to the wait staff about the food.

“Are you going out with him again?” I asked.

“No way would I get involved with someone like that,” my friend declared. “He’s a high maintenance man. I don’t have time for that shit. If he can’t enjoy a simple restaurant meal without complaining, he’ll complain about everything else, too. His expectations would be unrealistic and unobtainable. I’d never measure up. No one would.”

What do you think? Can one act of rudeness in a restaurant truly be an indication of a major personality defect?

According to that definition, my spouse is definitely a HMM. I can’t even begin to count the number of restaurants where he’s had confrontations with the wait staff and always with the manager involved - and occasionally with phone calls to national headquarters over food he doesn’t like - which he is certain was deliberately prepared incorrectly - and over insults that only he can perceive. There’s no way to count the number of times he’s asked to speak with a business manager because he’s certain that a clerk has purposefully mistreated him.

He’s hot or cold - never warm. A few weeks ago we ate in a restaurant where the server was extremely bubbly and helpful. He gave her a $50 tip - for a meal that cost less than $30. That server didn’t deserve the $50 tip anymore than most of the servers he’s complained about deserved the complaints he lodged.

Yep, I’d say he is definitely a HMM. There are worse things, though, and I happen to be crazy about my spouse - even if he does drive me nuts at times.

Adeline, I understand that COMPLETELY! I’m also married to a HMM. I now have a new word for it. In the past I’m had other words for it, the nicest I can think of now is a**hole. He doesn’t do the restaurant thing, but he has other ways to assert his power and control. But I’m crazy about the man. He drives me crazy sometimes, but I’m crazy about it. hazel

Live Science is reporting on a study that concludes that aggressive, warm, cold, antagonistic and/or dominant people tend to have more sex partners.

So Patrick Markey, a psychologist at Villanova University, and his wife Charlotte Markey, a psychologist at Rutgers University, asked 210 adults to take a test to measure their interpersonal characteristics. They also asked the subjects to indicate with how many people they had engaged in certain sexual activities.

When they compared the subjects’ responses, they were able to confirm that dominance is a key trait of people who have a lot of sexual partners. They also found that people who are either extremely warm or extremely cold toward others tend to be promiscuous — and that people who are just moderately warm have the fewest sexual partners.

Antagonistic people might prefer to have multiple sex partners in order to avoid being in a monogamous relationship, out of fear of being poorly treated or being later rejected by a committed partner, the authors noted in their study, which is to be published in the Journal of Research in Personality.

Lets see. That’s people who are afraid of commitment or people who are overly needy. It’s also people who are very warm or very cold or people who are very aggressive or dominant.

Maybe it’s just me, but that seems to cover just about every Jack and Jill. Is it just me?

More from Live Science here and here.

Hiya Hazel - I started to comment that HORNY people sleep around, but I’ve known lonely and angry people who sleep around. For them, sex isn’t the reason. Do you think it might sometimes have anything to do with wanting variety? curiosity? Uhhh - in other words - what you said. TTFN, Adeline