How to forgive someone who has done the unthinkable

THERE’S a lot of lightweight twaddle out there about forgiveness, but if you really listen to people who’ve made sense of both small and big tragedies, you’ll hear stories of forgiveness that are as rich and dense as a proper chocolate cake.
Forgiveness isn’t a decision, a single act or a feeling. It doesn’t mean forgetting what happened or making excuses for it. It doesn’t wipe the slate clean, it’s not weak and it doesn’t let anybody off the hook.
Forgiveness never happens overnight.
Forgiveness is a practice; it’s the work of finding what there is to learn from a truly awful situation, so the road you walk along doesn’t keep leading you back to your pain over and over again.
If you’re interested in forgiveness, here are a small number of big steps that can help with the practice of making sense and letting go.

Belle Gibson’s mother likens 60 Minutes interview to ‘suicide’, says program made her daughter look like a fool

Just months after slamming her daughter’s “rubbish” account of her life, Natalie Dal-Bello says Ms Gibson is being bullied and should be left alone.
“Nobody complained about Belle when she was helping people and now they want to put her under the microscope,” Ms Dal-Bello told the Herald Sun.
“When you mention the word cancer, then everyone turned like piranhas on her, like they wanted to eat her alive.
Ms Gibson, whose tall tale of eating her way back to health after falsley claiming she had terminal brain cancer saw her The Whole Pantry wellness empire collapse, faced a further public pasting last month when she appeared on 60 Minutes.
She told the program she had been tricked into believing she was sick by doctors, a claim that was widely disbelieved.
Ms Dal-Bello, was accused by her daughter of making her run the household as a five-year-old and care for her “autistic” brother, said Belle’s decision to appear on the program was “suicide.”
“That was like committing suicide — she should never have done that interview.
“(They have) really shown her up to be an absolute fool.”
Ms Gibson told Australian Women’s Weeklyshe blamed a troubled childhood on her problems, triggering an angry response from Ms Dal-Bello in the same magazine.
“Her brother is not autistic and she’s barely done a minute’s housework in her life,” she told the magazine in May.
“I can’t tell you how embarrassed we are about what she has done,”
Now Ms Dal-Bello says she’s open to reconciliation with her daughter.
“Belle is allowed to tell little porky pies. Who the hell doesn’t tell a lie in their life?”

Why we boast about our most tragic stories

WHEN you’re battling with a loss, the last thing you need to hear are stories of unspeakable tragedies meant to remind you that “you’ll be right”.
When my Nanny entered palliative care recently, my mum, myself and many of our relatives took turns keeping a bedside vigil, holding her hands, playing music and whispering our love.
As she entered her final hours, phone calls and texts flooded in from wellwishing family and friends, letting us know they were there for us if we needed to talk or cry or hug. These kind gestures warmed our hearts in such a heavy period.
But among the well-intentioned messages also came the odd commiserating story of people’s own similar experiences with cancer and dying loved ones and horrific grief.
I know they meant well, but when you’re in the throes of your own grief, you often don’t have the faculties to cope with somebody else’s. Sometimes you’re even left gobsmacked as they almost “one up” your grief with a story of something “worse”.
Amanda Lambros, counsellor and executive director of The Grief Recovery Method, says it happens all the time because we’ve never been taught how to respond to grief.
“People turn it around to themselves because they think, ‘If I provide an explanation of what I’ve been through, it’ll help them get through it’,” she says.
“In reality, that doesn’t work at all.”
Part of it, Lambros says, is about demonstrating that you understand how somebody is feeling. But in reality, every loss is unique and has its own complexities, such as whether you feel you have communicated everything you wanted to say to the person who died.
“Really you have absolutely no clue,” she insists. “You may have experienced a similar loss, but you would have no clue how I would be feeling about my loss.”
In most cases, the people contact you with best intentions, not realising they’re holding onto their own unprocessed grief.
“They might be thinking, ‘I’ll give them a call because I would have really liked it if somebody called me when I was going through a similar thing’,” she explains.
“But that might have been the first time they’ve ever really discussed their own loss and how it emotionally impacted on them. They’ve opened a can of worms that they didn’t even realise was a can of worms.”
In fact, what most people going through grief actually want is to be listened to, not spoken at.
“You need to sell yourself as a ‘heart with ears’,” Lambros says.
“Usually people who are experiencing loss just want to be heard. Offer a hug — the power of a hug is priceless.”
But she cautions against pulling away too soon. “Remember the hug is for them, not you,” she says. “You should hug them with all of your might until they let go.”
And if you do find yourself at the receiving end of a tearful acquaintance blubbering about their own loss, Lambros says you ought to be upfront if it’s upsetting you.
“You could stop the communication and say, ‘Listen, it’s not that I don’t want to hear this story about your mum, but I’m really feeling bad about mine and I just don’t feel I’m in the right frame of mind to listen to you. I just need a hug’,” she says.
I’ll be taking on Lambros’ parting message next time I’m doing the consoling: “Remember, you don’t need to say a damn thing”.

When your high school bully becomes famous

IT’S been 10 years since I was horribly bullied in high school, but it’s all come back to me like a slap in the face.
As any teenager will tell you, around the age of 12 tight cliques of friends tend to form among girls; even more so in single sex schools, like the catholic all-girls school I attended from years seven to 12. The world of Mean Girls wasn’t too far off of my experience growing up, with tribes forming and bullying commonplace.
This isn’t groundbreaking. More than a quarter of students in years four to nine experience regular bullying.
But my bully has recently become famous, featuring on a reality TV show. Her face keeps popping up in my Facebook feed, and the feelings have come flooding back.
She was the self-declared leader of my group of friends in year nine. Tall and loud, she could be more brutal than you imagine is possible for a 15-year-old girl. We were a large group of friends, and one person in the clique was always out of favour with her. It was inexplicable why she would turn on someone; she seemed to pick on those who didn’t worship her as much and isolate them.
With me it started small. First, a weekend movie afternoon at her house where she invited all of our friends but me. Next, snide remarks about my appearance or personality at lunchtime, putting me down publicly. Then the rumours; that I was a ‘slut’ and had slept with number of guys (never mind that I hadn’t even had my first kiss yet).
The whispers spread and girls would give me looks in the hall, or call me names. I stopped being friends with her clique, but the bullying didn’t stop; she pushed me into my locker so hard that my head hit the metal and gave me slight concussion. Other friends from the same group weren’t allowed to speak to me, or they risked facing her wrath. I was in tears almost daily, a combination of the isolation, fear of further assaults, and incessant rumours.
Eventually she moved on to another victim, and I was able to go to school and not dread what would happen in the corridors. But here I am, 10 years later and still feeling angry and upset over the events of those six months in year nine.
The problem is, of course, that many bullies don’t ever realise, or care, about the effect they have on their victims. There are many tragic stories about young people bullied to the point of taking their own lives, and each time there is an outcry by not a lot of change. Even for those who do not commit suicide, the psychological scars left by years of playground taunts can be immense.
Bullies often never experience any consequences for their actions, while their victims are left trying to recover. A Psychology Today paper in 2013 outlined how children who were bullied were more likely to have physical and mental health problems as they got older than those who did not experience bullying. Many childhood bullies continue their bullying behaviour as adults as well; a parliamentary report into workplace bullying found that one in three adults had experienced some form of bullying at work. It’s a problem we can’t seem to properly acknowledge or address, and the victims are suffering from it.
My bully never apologised, never showed remorse; she just moved on to her next victim. And while I am happy and whole now, working in a dream job as a journalist, with a great group of friends and an amazing life, the echoes of being bullied sit with me a decade on when her face unexpectedly pops up in my Facebook feed.

Was cheerleader’s Gold Coast balcony death really suicide?

THE family of a 21-year-old cheerleader who fell to her death from her boyfriend’s balcony is facing the possibility they will never know what happened that night.
Breeana Robinson died after plunging to the ground from the 11th-floor Gold Coast apartment belonging to her partner Dan Shearin, 42.
With the coroner’s report into her January 2013 death due in weeks, her aunt Janine Mackney says the family is desperately hoping this won’t be the end of the road in their battle for the truth.
“We’re hoping it’s not ruled suicide, that will devastate us all,” she told news.com.au. “I don’t know how we’ll fight on.
“We don’t have the legal capacity. It’s all foreign to us.”
Breeana, who suffered from a vision problem that meant she was legally blind, had moved in with Shearin just over a month before her death.
In October last year, he was given a six-month prison sentence, of which he was to serve two months in jail, for using a carriage service to menace and harass his girlfriend. But the former cruise ship entertainer only ever spent 11 days behind bars, and last month his jail sentence was overturned on appeal on the basis that the original sentence was “manifestly excessive”, the Gold Coast Bulletin reported.
In the lead-up to her tragic fall, the Titans cheerleader had been on the receiving end of a barrage of abusive texts from her boyfriend. Shearin’s expletive-laden 1439 messages in the month before Breeana died included texts calling her a “complete f***ing moron” and telling her “I don’t want a stupid, dumb c*** in my life”.
Shearin, who met Bree through Facebook, also posted comments on social media calling an ex-girlfriend a “jealous b****” and mocking the mother of his child for putting on weight. But the judge said he couldn’t be punished for a “bad personality” and the defence lawyers in his appeal case argued that the texts had been “unfairly linked to her death”.
A fourth-floor neighbour who discovered Breeana’s body, Gina Hadid, told A Current Affair in November thatshe was certain she had heard Breeana scream “no” or “oh no” as she fell.
Mrs Hadid’s husband Buddy and a security guard were the first to reach Breeana, with Mr Hadid calling an ambulance and taking it in turns with the guard to administer CPR.
Mr Hadid said he had seen Shearin within a minute of emerging from the building. “We were trying to work out who she was and he just turned around and said ‘oh that’s my girlfriend’,” said Mr Hadid.
Ms Mackney, who has dedicated herself to trying to uncover exactly what happened to Breeana, said through tears that despite how hard it was going over and over her niece’s death, she couldn’t give up while there was still a chance that she could find answers.
“It’s been two-and-a-half years of our lives,” she said. “The stress has been enormous.
“My sister [Breeana’s mother Elaine] hasn’t been to one court appearance, she just can’t. I think about Breeana daily but I have to put it to the back of my mind or I’d go crazy.”
She described her niece as a “sweet, naive girl” who had struggled with her vision problems, but had grown in confidence enormously after starting work as a teacher at the dance school her mother set up. “Elaine did anything and everything for her,” added Ms Mackney, who also worked with Bree at The Arts Centre Gold Coast.
On the night of her death, Breeana had been to cheerleading practice with her cousin Bianca, who had driven her home to the apartment.
“They were excited about getting a new uniform,” said Ms Mackney. “It was a midriff top so we were doing a fitness thing at work, and our team was winning, she was excited.
“Things don't add up; 150 million per cent she did not suicide.”
Ms Mackney is reluctant to blame the police. “They say their hands are tied,” she said.
“My biggest thing is getting justice. It’s never going to change the fact we don’t have her, and that she suffered.
“I’m sick of hearing people say it was suicide. In our heart of hearts, there’s no way she did that. She wouldn’t want to leave us.”

Why high school is about survival

THERE is a special little person in my life struggling at school. Girls are mean, and she just doesn’t quite fit.
During those awkward years in high school, I wish someone could have told me to hang tight — your tribe is coming!
I would consider myself one of the lucky ones and I still struggled.
High school is a time when you feel like your insides are exposed for the world to see, you constantly doubt yourself, and you follow a pack around a lot of the time. You may even have nights where you cry yourself to sleep. There is an aching feeling that the world is going to close up on you.
While granted my head wasn’t being smashed into a locker, they weren’t my best years. I went to a private girl’s school and my family didn’t have the money the other kids had. I survived by making my way to the cool group and rebelling against my teachers to look tough, but inside I felt that sense of not belonging.
Most kids knew it was hard for us at times to pay the rent. They saw my single Mum working a gazillion jobs and the world of power play began. Girls are manipulative. But mostly, I think it was me that doubted my place in the ranking position more than anyone really making me feel that way. It’s just a really tricky time.
So many questions, doubts and uncertainty! Who do you play with? Who is your best friend? What subjects do you choose? Should I play netball even though I want to dance? Why I am being taught about God again? Will anyone even look at me today? Why is she not talking to me? (God I spent A LOT of time with my diary on this one).
At the time, it seems like 18 and freedom is an eternity away, but I want to say to my favourite little teen hurting, it’s such a small time in the big picture, I promise you. You need to know that EVERYONE is finding it awkward and un-comfy too. Everyone is experiencing things differently yes, but even the bullies are bullying because they are protecting or hiding something.
I want to say to my magical little teen that hurts — dream big about your escape. Dream about finding your people. Because they are out there and they are most likely not in your high school. I want to tell her about the most amazing feeling of finding those special souls who make your crazy and weird feel normal. When you stumble across your random special peeps maybe through uni, work, travel or even house sharing, it can feel like falling in love — friend style. They might not look like you thought they would, they may not even have the same lifestyle or hobbies, but something just starts to feel right. You get a click.
Are you getting your hair pulled, do you, like me, have parents who can’t afford Taylor Swift tickets? Is there a loud person in class intimidating you? Maybe, you have no friends and you are sitting in the toilet eating your lunch while reading this on your phone. (Wait. You have a phone — trust me — YOU ARE WINNING ALREADY! Jokes!)
Without trying to simplify your experience, I want to promise you; you just gotta get through this bit. I bloody promise you.
You will find a job, a uni course, a hobby, a travel experience where life brings you the people that make you feel yourself.
And until then. Find a class you like. Find a teacher to talk to. Write your feelings in a book / diary / journal, NOT JUST FACEBOOK. Talk to ANYONE who will listen. Don’t hate your siblings or parents so much and hang on tight. It is hard for most. But it doesn’t last forever.

The importance of gender equitable attitudes

Raising boys to have a “gender equitable” (equal) attitude to men and women’s value and rights will help produce a generation more likely to prevent violence. Mr Linossier has this year reiterated the importance of the following messages:
* Men’s violence against women is the responsibility of men.
* Girls and women have the right to live in safety.
* Victim-blaming underpins the idea that it’s women’s responsibility, not male perpetrators’, to prevent violence against women.
* Challenging gender inequality is “crucial to preventing violence against women”.
In White Ribbon Week, perhaps his most important messages for parents of boys, like me, is to remind us and our men in the making that “we must eradicate aggression from the story of what it means to be a boy/man, NOT teach girls/women to be tougher so they can handle it”.
If we succeed in this, life for our children of both genders will be a richer, more stable, safer place.

Placing the blame on the perpetrators, not the victims

Former Victorian Police Chief, Ken Lay is one of many authorities to have emphasised the importance of fostering anti-violence, and pro-respect attitudes towards girls and women among boys and young men. He has stressed the importance of placing the blame for violence against women on perpetrators, and not on victims.
“When it (violence against women) happens we might think, ‘Well, why did she marry him?’ just as we might think of a rape victim, ‘Well, why was she wearing a short skirt?’
“When we imagine this sort of complicity for the victim — when we essentially blame them — we are congratulating ourselves for our superior judgment, a judgment that will ensure it never happens to us.
“When we do this, we come up with the wrong answers about why violence happens.”
He wants everyone to help bust the myth that victims of family or sexual violence are complicit in their own abuse, and reminds all of us — including parents — that disparaging attitudes towards girls and women are at one end of the “continuum of violence against women”. While the connection between attitudes kids don’t even know they hold and violent behaviours later in life may seem difficult to grasp, it’s been found to be real.
In the US, anti-violence educators have suggested having “the domestic violence talk” with boys and girls is up there in importance with “the sex talk”, and the earlier the better.
According to Our Watch CEO, Paul Linossier, teaching children to, “reject the stereotypes that seek to define and pigeonhole men and woman, boys and girls into limiting gender categories, roles and behaviours” is extremely important.
“Boys and men are socialised to believe that being tough, emotionless and aggressive are the hallmarks of masculinity,” he said. “Girls and women are continually sexualised and undervalued … restrictive stereotypes ripen the conditions for men’s violence against women to occur and to be tolerated.”

Their findings are shocking

The Line ambassador, former AFL footballer Luke Ablett, said the findings shocked him. “That’s borderline rape. So that is a really concerning thing that that’s how young boys and young girls are entering into their first sexual experiences, where they think its normal to pressure or force someone into that,” he said.
Our Watch chair Natasha Stott Despoja said the findings showed parents were not talking to their children about relationships and sex. This is despite the fact that whether parents like or want to acknowledge it or not (and who does?), boys were being exposed to porn, some of it hardcore, at far younger ages than in previous generations.
Thankfully, no one is pressuring parents to take young boys aside and lecture them about subjects that will be far beyond the developmental level of many. But we are being strongly urged to instil in our sons a respect for female peers that is lacking in some sectors of older generations (as reflected in The Line research).
We’re not being told we have to turn our boys into feminists by force, but we are being advised to teach the kind of values that will give their generation of men the best chance of healthy and strong relationships with women, and hopefully reduce community tolerance for acts of violence against women — large and small.

Shifting the focus

As the national discussion about how to reduce violence and sexual violence against women finally starts to shift from questions such as “why didn’t she leave” or “what was she doing in that situation” and towards discussing how to change attitudes among men that foster a climate in which violence seems acceptable, parents are being enlisted into the anti-violence struggle.
We’re being asked to address the issue in a very meaningful — and age-appropriate — way.
As groups such as the new national anti-violence and advocacy group, Our Watch, have shown through 2015 research, attitudes towards girls and women among men and boys are a key factor in reducing tolerance of abuse and violence — and the younger healthy ones are formed, the better.
Earlier this year, research done for Our Watch’s youth arm, The Line, revealed some disturbing views about what young people think is justifiable violence or sexual violence: one in three 12 to 24 year-olds thought “exerting control over someone is not a form of violence”, and one in four young people did not think it was serious if a man who is normally gentle, slaps his girlfriend while he is drunk.
One in six of the young 3000 young respondents thought women should “know their place” and one in four thought it was normal for men to pressure women into sex.

Want to end violence against women? This is how

IT’S TIME for the age-old cycle of violence to end. Because two dead women a week is too much. And because we — all of us — are better than that.
It’s a terrible statistic and one many children know about thanks to overhearing the news — in 2015, two women a week are reported to have been killed by partners or ex-partners, doubling our already bad annual family violence toll.
As parents, it’s difficult enough to explain a story about a tragic death on those occasions when you haven’t reached the TV or radio fast enough to try to turn it off to protect little ears. It’s even harder to know how and when is the right way to raise the issue of violence against women without potentially traumatising girls or making boys feel bad about their gender.
Neither outcome is helpful or desired, but given one in three Australian women aged over 15 will experience violence; parents are being encouraged to join the wider community campaign to educate girls — and especially boys — about what is and is not OK.

Domestic violence: “I’ll never get over my daughter’s death, my aim now is to save one woman’s life”

Even after reading the findings of a NSW coroner’s report, which made the tragic end of her daughter’s life sickeningly official for Wendy Malonyay, it’s still so hard for the Central Coast mum to believe the vivacious, trusting and caring soul she created could be taken out of this world in such a brutal, heinous way.
Bashed and strangled to death by her ex-boyfriend, naval officer, Elliott Coulson, Kate’s naked and lifeless body was only discovered by police five days after she’d been killed when her murderer used her mobile phone to send fake text messages to her mother, friends and workmates reassuring them she was still alive.
In a final act of cowardice, Coulson would later take his own life, leaping from a high-rise balcony on the Gold Coast, as detectives investigating the homicide tracked him to the Marriott hotel room he’d booked using his victim’s credit card.
In Kate’s case, the abuse was largely verbal, with Coulson bombarding her with threatening text messages, hacking her emails, and launching into explosive fits of rage when his habitual and elaborate web of lies were challenged and exposed.
Mrs Malonyay would only learn about the explicit and horrific nature of the messages Coulson used to terrorise Kate during the inquest into the 32-year-old’s death — requesting they not be reported again out of respect.
“You just can’t treat another human being like that,” she told NewsCorp Australia.
“Kate was tormented by this abuse, just his controlling nature and the lying. He just wanted her all to himself. It’s just very sad.”
Coulson had also allegedly attacked and threatened to kill a previous girlfriend, Anne Thoroughgood, who gave evidence she was beaten unconscious two years before he would meet then murder Kate.
Despite ending their tumultuous 13-month relationship in January 2013, Kate continued to be so frightened by her former partner’s erratic and aggressive behaviour, she sought advice from a police officer cousin, who urged her to take out an AVO (apprehended violence order).
Coulson was treated to an honourable funeral service by his Royal Navy Australia peers, a decision which caused even greater distress to Kate’s family and friends.
A Defense spokesperson said while the force did not tolerate domestic violence, “in supporting the (Coulson) family, others may have misinterpreted our actions.
“Defence regrets any distress this may have caused to others. Coronial findings in relation to the death of Kate Malonyay were not made until August of 2013, four months after the incident and, as such, could not be considered at the time of the funeral.”
In the classic, but cruel recriminations which can follow these tragedies, Mrs Malonyay said “people were saying, ‘why didn’t she see it coming?’ or ‘why didn’t she just leave him?’ Well, she did leave him. Then they’d say, ‘well, why didn’t you see it?” - a lingering question, she says, she has wrestled with during hours of trauma counselling.
Educating herself about domestic violence since losing her daughter, she is now a campaigner for White Ribbon and the Homicide Victims Support Group, taking “any opportunity I have to tell people what a beautiful person (Kate) was ... she was just a beautiful, beautiful girl.”
“I’ll never get over it. Never, ever. There’s not a day goes by that I don’t think of my daughter, but I have turned it around. My aim now is to save another woman’s life and to try to tell them how subtle these signs are ... and that’s actually helping me.”

How teens are hiding their real lives with ‘fake’ Instagram accounts

WELCOME to the “real” world of Instagram. No filters, no fabrications.
It’s called Finstagram, and is defined as a secondary Instagram account where a user shares real, unedited and humorous photos between a close circle of friends. These accounts allow a user to reveal their “real life” without damaging the flawless facade that’s followed on their “Instagram life”.
Finsta, a mashup of “fake” and “Instagram”, lets users reveal themself in their most unedited form. That ‘I just woke up — literally’ photo you send to your best friend after a night out? Or the gluggy frozen meal you have for dinner 90 per cent of the week? Yep, that’s what makes the Finsta cut.
Created mainly by teenagers and young adults, Finstagrams are intimate platforms where the user posts images intended for specific friends only. They are locked accounts, so users are able to screen their followers. In an age where 14 million Australians are on Facebook, 2.8 million on Twitter and over 5 million on Instagram, it’s hard to imagine who has the time or the energy for an additional account.
In an interview with the New York Times, 18-year-old college student Amy Wesson revealed her reasons for developing a secondary account to her already 2,700 strong following on Instagram.
“Finstas are private accounts that you only let your closest friends follow,” she said.
“You post things you wouldn’t want people other than your friends to see, like unattractive pictures, random stories about your day and drunk pictures from parties.”
Amy’s Finstagram account has a grand total of just 50 followers.
The desire for an ‘unfiltered’ account that eliminates the #blessed and #ilovelife attachments to photos has become more and more in demand. This type of account is for the friendships that froth on your flaws, but love you all the same, #nojudgement.
But getting real didn’t work for model Stina Sanders, who learnt first hand what happens when you take down the filter and get honest with your followers.
Traditionally posting photos from shoots and tropical locations, Stina decided to change up the way she posted photos on her Instagram. The London model decided to post photos of her facial hair treatment regimen and even Irritable Bowel Syndrome treatment sessions.
According to People magazine, the Instagram beauty lost thousands of followers after posting a string of unedited, out of character images.
“To see a photo of my bowel movements and not me in a bikini must have annoyed a lot of them,” Stina told Tab Magazine.
“It’s the kind of ‘I didn’t sign up for this’ attitude. Perhaps sharing my real life was too much for them. It’s interesting to see that real life is not to everyone’s taste,” she said.

When you’re pressured to find a husband in your teenage years

AT 14, I was battling acne, obsessed with sport and trying to find my fit in a swarm of 800 students at school.
I would go to the movies with friends on a Friday, followed by a sleepover or a birthday party on the weekend. No commitments, no pressures — a relatively ‘normal’ upbringing.
What I didn’t know, was that this lifestyle would be considered absolutely unacceptable for other girls my age.
Anna*, who grew up in a Lebanese-Christian household, had her teenage years bound by strict rules and regimes. The thought of staying over at a friend’s house would remain just that — a thought. She didn’t bother asking to go to the school dance, because the answer would be the same as it always was: ‘no.’
“It was seen as having too much fun — too many boys, bad things, bad influences, late at night,” Anna told news.com.au.
“Basically, going out at night was a big no-no in my teenage years.”
In an age where young girls are seen as growing up too quickly, influenced by social media and magazines, Anna said the pressure to start thinking like an adult started in her early high school years.
“For me, marriage pressure was on from the age of 14,” she said.
“Now that I’m 26, I’m on the ‘shelf’ and they [family] think I’ll never get married. I get asked everywhere I go.
“They just want you to get married because then you aren’t their responsibility any more.”
Anna, who has been in a relationship with her partner Nick for three years, said until they tie the knot — every social outing — day or night — must be approved by her parents.
“Being in my mid-twenties, I try and stand my ground, but they still manage to make you feel guilty about doing things at night outside of the house,” she said.
“They think you’re doing something wrong. They always think you’re lying, maybe out with a boy, so you just don’t bother.”
With both of Anna’s parents growing up in Lebanon, she has become accustomed to living under a strict roof her whole life.
“When you’re growing up it’s hard, but you form a group of friends that have the same culture as you, because they have the same rules as you. Not saying you don’t have Anglo friends, it’s just being with people of the same culture is easier.
Being in love isn’t enough to be able to live together. With both Anna and Nick growing up in religious families, the only way they will ever be able to share the same bed is if they get married.
“In order to have personal space, we might go and book a room to stay in for a few hours but we can’t stay the whole night. We check-out at midnight. It’s a big financial and emotional commitment.
“My parents are strict compared to my friends’. You grow up under strict conditions, but in comparison to my sisters I get away with a lot. But put me next to my friends, and my parents are as strict as hell.”
Anna isn’t alone.
Mary*, a 31-year-old social media producer in Sydney, recalls a strict set of ground rules from very early on in life.
“Sleepovers at anyone’s house growing up was a no-go. For whatever reason, whether it be a best friend or school camp, my siblings and I were never allowed to sleep anywhere except our own bed,” Mary said.
“This lasted well into our late teens. My mother believed it was a sign of bad manners and upbringing to sleep at another person’s house. ‘You have your own bed, why would you sleep in someone else’s’ was her reasoning.”
“I think it’s very different with men. It’s a very different,” Anna said, in regards to her cousins’ upbringing.
“Men can go on holidays. Parents are just a lot more strict on the women. I can’t even tell you why, it’s just the way it is.”
Working fulltime, Anna admits she is able to have a little more independence, but there is always a sense of ‘guilt’ for spending time away from the family home. Despite the restrictions she has dealt with growing up, Anna says she’ll adopt some of her parents disciplinary measures when she has children of her own.
“It’s a cultural thing and you accept that’s the way it is and it’s OK,” Anna said,
“I won’t do everything the same when I have kids. I think it’s nice to have a cultural balance, but in this day and age you can’t say no to things [like parties and sleepovers]. It’s important for kids to go to certain things.
“I don’t think I’d let my kids live with someone before marriage. I like the idea of starting something new after they are married. I feel like they would need to do things, like go on holidays, but I don’t think it’s a must that they move in together before getting married.”

Investigation reveals rare details of private lives of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s daughters

Little is known about the Russian strongman’s daughters, Maria and Katerina, born in 1985 and 1986 in Dresden, where President Putin worked in intelligence.
The news agency revealed Katerina now goes by the surname Tikhonova adopted from her grandmother and is married to Kirill Shamalov — son of Nikolai Shamalov, who is a close friend of the President and senior shareholder in Russia’s elite Bank Rossiya.
The couple is thought to hold an estimated $2.83 billion worth of shares in petrochemical company Sibur Holdings. That’s on top of a four-storey property in the French seaside resort of Biarritz estimated to be worth around $5.24 million, according to the architect who renovated the property seven years ago.
Katerina also holds a senior position at Moscow State University where she has quickly climbed the ranks of the Mechanics and Mathematics facility, publishing scientific papers and authoring chapters in books. She was appointed deputy vice rector in March 2015 and directs two major foundations; the National Intellectual Development Foundation (NIDF) and the National Intellectual Reserve Centre (NIRC).
A joint project from the two called Innopraktika, concerned with developing young scientists in the country, includes advisers who are close associates of the President from his days working in Russia’s intelligence agency the KGB. Outside of work, she chairs the All Russian Acrobatic Rock‘n’Roll Federation.
Much less was revealed about Putin’s other daughter Maria, who also studied at Moscow State University and is now thought to be married to a Dutch Businessman and going by the name Maria Faassen.
University and company executives would not comment on the findings however Russian Federation Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov said they have “no information” about Katerina Tikhonova, her personal life or family connections.
“In recent years there has been an enormous quantity of gossip on the subject of the family ties of V. Putin, and, in particular, his daughters. The proportion of accurate information in all these publications is laughably small,” he said.
The fascinating insight provides a new perspective on Russia’s elite and how it operates. It’s at odds with the President’s carefully cultivated image of himself as a modest man of the people born to a soldier and housewife who grew up on a diet of soup and pancakes.
“I come from an ordinary family, and this is how I lived for a long time, nearly my whole life. I lived as an average, normal person and I have always maintained that connection,” he recalls on his personal website.
The student with an “agile mind” grew up to study law and work in counterintelligence and state security for the KGB but has disclosed little about his private life. His wife Lyudmila said he loves his two daughters very much according to a statement online.
“Not all fathers are as loving with their children as he is. And he has always spoiled them, while I was the one who had to discipline them,” she said.
The President’s official earnings show he earned a salary of just $168,000 and public records show he owns just two apartments. That’s despite constant speculation he is one of the world’s wealthiest men with a Black Sea resort known as “Putin’s Palace” partly funded by Nikolai Shamalov — the father of his daughter’s husband.
Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny told Reuters the rise is typical of the new breed of elites that are emerging in the country.
“Today in Russia, it is absolutely normal that the boards of directors at state banks are headed by children of security service officials, who aren’t even 30 years old when they are appointed,” he said.
“It is more than just a dynastic succession. Children don’t just inherit their parents’ posts, but also the right to choose any other post they fancy. The danger is that very soon all key resources will end up in the hands of five to seven families.”

Young women live with mum and dad like it’s 1940

THE percentage of young women in the US living at home with parents or relatives has risen to its highest level in 75 years.
A Pew Research Centre analysis of US Census Bureau data found that 36.4 per cent of women between the ages 18 and 34 lived with parents or relatives in 2014, the most since at least 1940, when 36.2 per cent lived with family.
It is a very different world for women now, though, despite the “return to the past, statistically speaking,” says Richard Fry, a senior economist at Pew.
Fry says young women are staying home now because they are they are half as likely to be married as they were 1940 and much more likely to be university-educated. Other economic forces, such as increasing student debt, higher living costs and economic uncertainty, are also playing a role.
Casey Ballard was living away from home in Portland, Oregon, but rent ate up roughly two-thirds of her wage and she was ready for a career change. A September move back with family in California allowed her to try out teaching as a substitute and to pursue teaching fulltime.
“There was that element of frustration and feeling like a failure,” she says about returning home. “But then the logical side of me kicked in and said ‘It’s just fiscally responsible.”’
Young men have historically lived with parents at higher rates than young women, and similar economic and cultural forces are keeping an increasing number of men at home too in recent years. But the rate young men are staying home with their parents and relatives, 42.8 per cent, remains below the 47.5 per cent level for men in 1940.
The percentage of young men and women living with family fell after the 1940s as more women joined the workforce, the overall workforce expanded, and marriage rates increased.
But while marriage was once the life event that triggered a move out of the family home, it is now coming later with each generation, if it comes at all. The median age of marriage for women is now 27, up from 21.5 in 1940. For men, it is 29.3, up from 24.3 in 1940.
Young women and men began staying home or returning there at a more rapid rate after 2000, a trend that sharply increased with the economic uncertainty brought on by the housing collapse and recession in the late 2000s.
While the retreat home for young adults it is also clearly a result of economic pressures, it is not, according to Fry, an employment issue. For example, more young adults are living with their family now than in 2010, even though the job market has improved since then.
“The job market has gotten significantly better (for this group),” Fry says. “Unemployment has come down, more have jobs and some are even getting paid a bit more.”
Another factor in the change, Fry says, is increased ethnic diversity across this age demographic, which in turn has introduced cultural traditions of living with parents and relatives longer into life.
“I don’t think it’s as bad as people think it is,” says Stacey Sholes, 26, who moved back into her parent’s house in Fresno, California eight months ago after leaving college in San Francisco and working in Los Angeles.
Sholes is still a few credits shy of graduating but isn’t sure if she will return because her private school was very expensive and she’s not confident she’ll be able to find a job in the film industry even with a degree.
She is living with her folks while she figures out her next step and has taken a holiday job at the same retail store she worked when she was 18 to bring in some cash.
There are bumps, like when she fails to tidy up or check in with her parents regularly. But otherwise it’s a comfort to be with her family. Still, she hopes to find a new place soon with a roommate.
“I have a very loving, supportive family, they don’t give me a hard time about it,” she said. “It’s a good place to crash while I figure my life out.”

Twin Strangers gains 500,000 users in six months helping strangers find doppelganger online

Los Angeles actor Samantha Futerman looked familiar — identical if she was being honest with herself — so she decided to send a message via Facebook.
Since that day in 2013, the pair discovered they were born on the same day in South Korea and were adopted to families living 8000 kilometres apart.
Their discovery is now the subject of an Oscar-nominated documentary Twinsters, which follows their journey from the US to London and South Korea as they uncover the shared history they never knew they had.
While the fact they are related makes the story remarkable, it seems not a day goes by without someone discovering their doppelganger and sharing it online.
Earlier this week, Scottish man Neil Thomas Douglas of Scotland sat down on a Ryanair flight to Ireland when he realised he was virtually looking into a mirror. Sitting next to him was Londoner Robert Stirling who had the same red-hair, ginger beard, complexion, dark shirt and taste in budget airlines.
Understandably, the two took a selfie, which was shared on Twitter by Lee Beattie, a friend of Douglas, and it made headlines around the world.
Their story comes hot on the heels of students Ciara Murphy and Cordelia Roberts who met on a study program in Germany and couldn’t believe how similar they looked. The previous month, US women Ambra, 23, and Jennifer 33, were united within five minutes of signing up to Twin Strangers — a website that specialises in finding your identical doppelganger from anywhere in the world.
It’s no surprise, according to the website’s founder Niamh Geaney, who is certain there is at least one lookalike out there for everyone.
“Oh (I’m) convinced,” she told news.com.au from Dublin where she is based. “There’s a myth that there are seven people in the world that look like you. Now I don’t know if that’s true or not yet but I would love to try and prove it or disprove it. I’m still on the search for my five other doppelgangers. I definitely believe there’s at least one for everybody.”
The presenter and journalist made headlines earlier this year when she embarked on a search with two friends to find their doppelgangers within a month as part of an experiment ahead of a TV show on the subject.
The trio posted their pictures online and enlisted the media for help. Within two weeks she had met her own twin Karen, three years older who lived an hour away, but said it was the response to her quest that really blew her away.
“If I left my phone down for 10 minutes I would be coming back to 1000 emails from all over the world. A couple of them were people helping me but the majority of them were people asking us to help them to find their twin strangers before we had even found our own,” she said.
“That’s kind of where twin strangers the website came from … because there’s such an overwhelming interest.”
Since it began six months ago the site now has 500,000 members from Albania to Russia and Madagascar, and is growing daily partly down to the explosion of social media.
“I just think it’s like this weird kind of natural phenomenon,” she said. “It’s something that was always probably happening. Throughout history people have had doppelgangers but it’s only with the age of the internet and the age of social media that we’re beginning to see these stories.”
So what’s it like seeing your face on someone else? Ms Geaney said it’s a very “strange and surreal thing” to see another person walking around with your features.
Moments before meeting her doppelganger Karen she was questioning her decision and trying to find a reason not to go through with it until curiosity got the better of her.
“About 10 minutes before meeting her I was completely ... questioning it. Kind of thinking ‘what am I doing? Why do I want to meet someone who has my own face?’ I met her and I couldn’t believe it. I just kept staring at her and awkwardly looking,” she said. “I gave her a hug and we were chatting but for that whole day that we spent together the both of us were just staring at each other.
“If I laughed in a certain way she was like ‘oh I laugh like that’ … or I would be like ‘oh my god that’s my face’. [You’re] discovering things about each other that you see in yourself or the way you are which is quite freaky.”

Sydney woman Mobinah Ahmad develops friendship test to rank friends

BEFORE Facebook most of us would probably have said we had a few dozen friends, and a handful of very close friends.
But these days the term ‘friend’ is used so loosely it even applies to people that we haven’t met.
Curious who out of her 537 ‘friends’ on Facebook were actually genuine, Sydney woman Mobinah Ahmad developed a test to rank them.
“What I define as a friend is what most people would define as a best friend,” Ms Ahmad told the ABC’s 7.30 program. “So someone who you talk to regularly, you have a very close connection to, you can turn to. If you asked me how many friends I have, I would say maybe one.”
Based on the test, the rest of Mobinah’s ‘friends’ found themselves bumped down the list to acquaintance.
“I asked people questions like would you make the effort to drop me to the airport? Can we sustain a 20-minute conversation?” she said.
The test is called the Friendship and Acquaintance 6 Stage Theory and divides ‘friends’ into six categories; pre-acquaintance, acquaintance level one, acquaintance level two, acquaintance level three, pre-friend and friend.
Relatives, partners and workmates were excluded.
After Mobinah carried out the experiment she found that she had less closer friends than she originally thought.
Of the people she counted as a true friend, there was only one, her friend Iman.
Under her theory a true friend is someone you care immensely about, can give honest opinion and thoughts, notices when you’re upset through subtle changes, you see them regularly, have lots of D&Ms (deep and meaningfuls) with, someone you share mutual trust, respect, admire, forgive and will make sacrifices for the friendship.
She discovered that 14 per cent of the people she knew were ranked in the pre-friend category, that a quarter of the people in her social circle were ranked acquaintance level 3, that 30 per cent of the people she knew were ranked in Acquaintance level 2, that one fifth were acquaintance level one and that ten per cent were in the pre-acquaintance category.
Since she posted her theory online, it has gone viral, with some positive feedback.
“It feels great to know there’s someone else out there in a totally different culture really likes the theory and uses it,” she said. “I think everyone already has a social hierarchy in their head. Who they’re closer to, who they call on if they had a problem.”
So, how do your friends stack up?
Pre­Acquaintance
• We don’t know each other.
• We know their each other’s name only.
Acquaintance Level 1: To know of someone ­
• We know of each other through mutual friends/acquaintances.
• We met briefly at a party/social event/uni.
• You’re a work colleague or business client (who I haven’t spent much time with)
• We run into each other now and then by coincidence
• Convenient Interactions Meeting up is not planned, and only because it is
convenient and easy.
• Details about each other are superficial.
Acquaintance Level 2: Liking & Preliminary Care ­
• We went to school/uni together, or have known you for a long period of time.
• We usually meet in groups, rarely one on one.
• If you needed my help, I would actively participate in helping them to the best of
my ability.
• I can handle a 20 minute small­talk chat with you, any longer and I will get bored.
Acquaintance Level 3: Significant Connection & Care ­
• We have a really good connection.
• We have some very meaningful talks
• We care a lot about each other.
• We don’t see each other all that much, just now and then when we plan to meet.
Pre­Friend (AKA Potential Friend) ­
• Someone I wish were a friend (as defined below and NOT as society currently
defines it)
• I want to spend more time with this person and establish a proper friendship with
them.
Friend: Mutual Feelings of Love ­
• I care immensely in every domain of their life (academic, physical, mental
wellbeing), how their relationships with their loved ones are. I also care about their
thoughts, ideas, elations and fears.
• I can easily give my honest opinion and thoughts.
• This person notices when I am upset through subtle indications.
• I see this person regularly and feel totally comfortable to contact them for a deep
and meaningful talk.
• Someone who takes initiative and makes sacrifices to work on this friendship.
• Mutual trust, respect, admiration, forgiveness and unconditional care.
Note: If it’s not mutual, then you’re not friends.

This is the worst kind of breakup you’ll go through

BREAKUPS are tough. But you didn’t need me to tell you that. I’m sure you’ve experienced heartbreak first hand, most likely a few times over too. It’s awful.
Missing someone so much your stomach aches, that heavy disappointment of all the things you’ll never share together, the embarrassment of failing to make things work. How do you readjust when you can’t really remember a day without the other person in it?
Life feels weird for a while, like you’re walking around with one shoe on. Unbalanced, partly naked. At times you think it’s hard to imagine feeling any worse. But allow me to provide you some perspective … you can. Feel worse that is. There is one type of breakup that’s a thousand times more traumatic than any dude I’ve ever split with: a bestie breakup.
It plays out in the familiar ‘breakup’ kind of way, just WAY, WAY WORSE. Mainly because you never see a friendship breakup coming. When you make a commitment to a best mate, you assume that the relationship is lifelong. You plan on being each other’s bridesmaids, having kids at the same time (then plan your kid’s wedding together so you can become sister-in-laws. #LifeGoals.) You mentally-note hilarious adventures you can recount when you’re both old and adorable sitting in matching rocking chairs together like “remember the time when …”
So when it all comes crashing down, your heart breaks. You mourn the things you never actually shared together (and also the ‘best friends’ jewellery that’s now too weird to wear. It looked really cute on you too).
I’ll never forget a bestie breakup I had shortly after high-school. I’d been drifting from this friend for a while, pretending not to notice because that might somehow make it real. Sometimes that happens though, you go through stages within relationships. Things aren’t always perfect or always easy, but the ones you stick out regardless are special. And I thought that’s what we had together … something special.
Turns out she didn’t agree. Because in my mailbox without any warning, she delivered a two page, handwritten letter explaining why I was no longer ‘someone she wanted to be friends with.’ I had been broken up with via letter. VIA LETTER! Who even writes letters these days … beyond lawyers and the elderly?
And if that wasn’t enough, the reasons for her ending it stung almost as much. I ‘made her a bad person’ and she ‘didn’t like who she was becoming around me.’ She instructed that ‘we could continue to say hi at parties, but nothing more.’ Not only had I been dumped, I’d been humiliated and slapped with a self-made restraining order!
If I’d hooked up with her boyfriend, aired her dirty laundry in a drunken maid of honour speech or even stolen a baby name she’d had dibs on since we were teenagers, then I could understand. Then there might be grounds for such a formalised, aggressive end to an otherwise beautiful three years of friendship.
I almost wished I’d done something definitively wrong so when family kept asking me ‘what’s happened to you two?’ I could answer with something other than ‘I’m a terrible human being that doesn’t deserve mates.’ Because for a little while I believed that.
Bouncing back from that loss is hard and it takes a while to put yourself out there again.
If only there was a ‘Tinder’ for friends, where you could swipe right on potential replacement BFF’s. It sounds a whole lot easier than striking up friendships with chicks in nightclub toilet queues … because let’s face it, that’s where I started looking.

Why you should never kiss a stranger on the cheek

New research shows when it comes to greeting strangers, people are generally only comfortable shaking hands and don’t like to be touched on any other body part.
The study of 1300 people from the UK, Finland, France, Italy and Russia, suggests you should err on the side of caution when it comes to greeting new acquaintances.
“I would guess that kissing a stranger on the cheek would still make a lot of people uncomfortable”, lead researcher Oxford University’s Professor Robin Dunbar told The Telegraph of the research findings.
“But with modern life it has become as conventional as a handshake and so no longer seems overly-familiar, especially if you have been introduced by a friend.”
The study published by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in America (PNAS) asked people to indicate on a “body map” where they were comfortable being touched.
Researchers found the more emotionally close you were to someone, the more access they could have to your body.
As expected, people were most physically comfortable with their romantic partners. Women also generally enjoyed being touched on their arms and some parts of their head by friends and family, but men were not as comfortable with this.
As could be expected the main “taboo” area for women was their genitals, which they were not comfortable with other men or strangers touching.
In contrast, men categorised genital contact with female strangers as “least comfortable” but not “taboo”. This generosity did not extend to male strangers though.