Posted by chicagomedia.org on December 08, 2008 at 09:28:05:
Writer delivers basic training for...: The Frontlines of Love
NEW COLUMN | Lavin's dating advice, once a Tribune fixture, moves to the Sun-Times
December 8, 2008
BY MISHA DAVENPORT [email protected]
We all know love is a battlefield. We just didn't think coverage of the war would ever be a casualty.
Earlier this year, the Chicago Tribune stopped carrying "Tales from the Front," a popular syndicated relationship and advice column written by Cheryl Lavin.
Lavin says she was shellshocked. The Trib dumped her battlefield coverage, she said, without so much as an e-mail, phone call or message sent by carrier pigeon to its embedded reporter.
"It would have been nice if after 25 years they allowed me to at least pen a goodbye," she says.
Things are looking brighter for both Lavin, a hopeless romantic who has spent the last quarter of a century doling out advice and dishing on her own dating experiences, and for her fans. Beginning today, the Chicago native's column will appear Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays in the Sun-Times.
Like most good columns, "Tales" was born out of Lavin's own experiences. "I was divorced in the '80s and dating as an adult with children," she notes. "This was a new phenomenon, and my girlfriends and I would regale each other about the guys we wanted and didn't have and the guys we had and didn't want," she says with a chuckle.
One night, while commiserating with her friend Laura Kavesh in a restaurant on Lincoln Avenue, she came up with the concept for the column and even sketched a logo of a heart behind barbed wire.
Kavesh co-wrote the Tribune column with Lavin for the first couple of years and then moved on to other things (she's now a child psychologist). Lavin kept the column as well as the sketch -- now framed and hanging on the wall of her office.
For 20 years, she's been married to her second husband.
"I know relationships from both sides," says Lavin, now based in Scottsdale, Ariz.
She also marvels at just how much the rules of dating and relationships have changed since she first began documenting her "Tales."
"Back when I first started writing the column, there was no such thing as the Internet," she says.
Advances in technology can become dating hazards, she warns.
"Facebook is the devil's workshop," she advises. "We all have those moments where we think 'I wonder whatever happened to ...,' and in the golden olden days, which was five years ago, that would have been the end of it. Now, thanks to Facebook and Google, 'whatever' is just a couple of clicks away."
Lavin says she's heard from readers who have abandoned current relationships for so-called nostalgic flings, usually with tragic results.
"The Internet has opened up such a can of worms," she says. "Yes, the Internet has made it easier to cheat, but it's also made it easier to get caught," she says.
Another common pitfall is the emotional affair.
"I'm not a big fan of the 'When Harry Met Sally' thing with members of the opposite sex being friends and sharing secrets," she says. "It's kind of looking for trouble."