6 Ways to Know You're a Side Chick

By Kiri Blakely

I've noticed a startling trend in the dating world: Something I'll call the "faux-girlfriend" phenomenon. That's when a guy treats you like a girlfriend in a lot of ways -- you spend holidays together, you've met his parents, you have your own clothes drawer at his place. In fact, things are so girlfriend-y that it seems the next logical step would be fiancee-y and then wife-y. But something insidious and underhanded is going on. There are men out there (and women too, I imagine) who treat you like a girlfriend -- but not really. That's usually because while he wants the regularity and companionship of a real girlfriend, he doesn't want the responsibility, the downsides, or the idea of cutting off his options.

How do you know if you might be the faux-girlfriend? Here's 6 bigtime clues.

Facebook status. Yes, no matter that you spend six nights out of seven together, and he calls you crying whenever he needs a pep talk, he still has not changed his status from "single" to "In a relationship." I know this sounds cliche, but it's a big one -- if you ask him to do it and he comes up with reasons why he can't. He might say he's a "private" person and doesn't want anyone knowing his personal life. What he really means is that he doesn't want the various cute women he's friended knowing his personal life.

You don't know where he lives. While this seems laughable, it's actually pretty easy to fall into a routine of meeting strictly at one person's place -- especially if that person is closer to where the action is. Maybe he constantly comes up with brilliant excuses as to why you can't see his place, like his roommate is messy or a psycho. The real reason? He wants to be able to safely retreat there if you break up and have you not know how to find him!

Pregnant Kate Middleton and Old Wives Tales

So the Duchess of Cambridge is fully showing these days and the buzz is about whether it's a boy or a girl. I tried to predict Kim Kardashian's belly using the old wives method that says round tummies are girls and longer tummies are boys. But it seems there are many old wives.

Word from the Frisky says, when one carries a low pregnancy tummy, like Kate Middleton, it is going to be a girl. Nowadays, it's easy enough to find out the sex of the baby but some women and couples choose to wait like Kate Middleton.

So who knows of other old wives pregnancy predictions? For those who have had children, did you find out by scanning? If not, did you play guessing games and how did it turn out?

Dear Myne - I am Bisexual, Should I Get Married?

Hi Myne, I know this is not the type of mails you usually receive, and I hope you and your readers will not judge me. I will be 25 years old later this year, and I’ve been engaged for almost a year now to my wonderful fiance and we live together and are sexually active. We live in the UK. We were both born Christians but not really overly religious or anything, so that’s not a factor. However, he does not know about my sexuality, that is, that I'm also attracted to women.

When he proposed to me, I accepted it without thinking too much about it. I"ve done a lot of growing up in the past one year, I graduated Uni, we moved in together six months ago, now I understand more what it means to make a lifetime commitment. Don't get me wrong, I love my fiance very much. He’s my best friend and knows me better than anyone else.  He would make an incredible husband as we get along very well and rarely fight.. But at the same time, I don’t feel I should go ahead and get married to him, especially if he doesn't know I'm bisexual.

How do I know I'm bisexual? I'm sure some people reading can guess. It is the usual, I went to an all girls boarding school in Nigeria and before I completed secondary school, I had two female lovers. The first was a senior who taught me all about it. I won't say she corrupted me because I was already sexually attracted to some other girls in my school before she made her move. The second was my classmate, we drifted together, or I toasted her, and we were together till we graduated. We lost contact when I moved to the UK.

POLL - What is your Love Language?

Dr. Gary Chapman wrote a book titled The 5 Love Languages: The Secret to Love That Lasts and it became and still is, one of the go to books for counselling couples on how to keep their relationship fresh and nurtured. The love languages go both ways, the ones you like to receive and the ones you like to give.

Adventures of a Miss!! Episode 9

I’m all sorts of confused right now, ok let me run this through my head again. Ok, Bolaji saw Zainab and Kola kissing, asked her why she was kissing another man. Yes that happened; I rub my head while trying to remember exactly what I saw. Then Zainab started crying begging Bolaji but she was calling him baby. Then she asked Kola to leave, tried to kiss Bolaji but he resisted after the kiss had gone on for about 10 seconds.

He asked her gently to stop and said they would talk later because Muhammad was inside the house. I am not sure what to make of this scenario; there are two things that are baffling me. Why is Zainab calling my fiancée baby and why does she think she can kiss him? It means that they have definitely kissed before. My mind is painting me so many pictures of Bolaji and Zainab in every compromising situation and it just gets me more and more upset.

Ok, I’ll run through it one more time; Ok I was hiding trying to text Dele while watching Semi explain to him that I had a family emergency. Zainab walks in with Kola, I figured it won’t be long before she runs into Muhammad. I’m walking back towards the house when I hear Bolaji ask Zainab why she’s kissing Kola, then they end up kissing. This is what I have been doing in my head for the past hour while watching Bolaji and his interactions with Zainab.

An Easy Way To Soften Naturally Kinky Hair

By Chioma Iwunze-Ibiam

I wish I’d learned about the wonders of apple cider vinegar much earlier. All those years of groaning about hard it is to manage natural kinky hair would have been different. Last week, after I’d watched a How To Grow Beautiful, Softer and Shinier Hair video on Youtube, I decided to do something different.

First, I went to a department store. I bought 50cl of honey, 50cl of Aqua Rapha yogurt  and a bottle of Safari apple cider vinegar (and the ACV was so cheap. It cost less then N200 naira).  And I made my own conditioner.

First, I put a glop of yogurt in a cup. Then, I added a few spoons of honey, two tea spoons of apple cider vinegar, one table spoonful of mayonnaise (because it contains eggs and vegetable oils) and two spoonfuls of my Henna deep conditioner. I whisked these into a thick paste and proceeded to shampoo my hair. Again, I had put a few drops of the apple cider vinegar into my bucket of water.

Then, I parted my very think full head of hair and proceeded to wash and rinse. I wrapped a towel round my wet hair, just long enough to get excess water off my hair, before I brought in my homemade conditioner.