Blog Posts by Cosmopolitan.com

Wow your future employer through the phone!Hold the phone: You nabbed a job interview, but instead of meeting in person, you've been asked to chat up your potential employer via phone. These days, more hiring managers are vetting job candidates by phone prior to arranging IRL meetings. Since handling a phone interview requires a specific skill set, we got Paul Bailo, author of The Essential Phone Interview Handbook, to talk essential phone interview tips.

By Molly Triffin

1. Turn on the Radio
In a phone interview, your voice will make your big first impression, so get a head start on prepping your pipes a week pre-interview by tuning into talk radio. Whether it's Cosmo on Sirius XM, NPR, or the Red Sox game, notice the words and tone the hosts use to create a mental picture for listeners.

2. Dress the Part
Even though you're probably doing the interview in your living room, ditch the rumpled Ramones tee shirt and messy hair and dress as though you were meeting the manager in person. Bailo's research found that people's voices change

Your most steamy dreams get decoded here.Dreaming about sex can be totally mind-blowing-or really effing creepy. According to research performed by the University of Montreal Dream and Nightmare Laboratory, eight percent of our dreams contain sexual content (though men reportedly dream about doing the nasty more frequently than we do). To help you find the meaning of your nighttime sexy-time, we've consulted the experts to decode the most common themes of x-rated dreams.

By Natasha Burton

1. The Mystery Lover
Dream expert Lauri Quinn Loewenberg, author of Dream On It, Unlock Your Dreams Change Your Life, says the most common steamy dream involves some kind of faceless dude totally ravaging us. Interestingly enough, this guy isn't some mysterious soul mate: His presence in your dreams actually signifies that you need to enlist some stereotypically masculine traits in your waking life-i.e. be assertive and speak your mind.

2. The Big O
According to analysis on DreamMoods.com, dreaming of climax-or maybe

Here's what to do when you get a confusing text from a guy.Sometimes deciphering men's texts can be like translating ancient Greek. Is he reall "LOL?" And when should you stop sending him that floating question mark after he is-or isn't-ignoring you? Enter HeTexted.com, a site where users upload screenshots of their maddening man texts for community commenting. HeTexted.com co-founder Carrie Henderson-McDermott breaks down the top nine man texts that confuse and enrage us.

By Carson Griffith

1. The Send-A-Pic Text
A common gateway to sexting, this is when your crush asks you to send a picture of yourself, sending you into a panic looking for good lighting, cute angles, and indecision over whether or not you should go the R- or G-rated route.

Example: "Your outfit sounds hot. Send a pic!"

What to do: Consider the recipient and make sure it's someone you really trust. "This is the text that guys send to see how far they can get you to go," says Henderson. "It rarely ends well. Our rule: If you wouldn't send it to your mother, don't send it."

These tips could help you keep your relationship healthy.Truth be told, keeping him happy in the sack isn't the (only) key to a healthy relationship. It takes some serious communication, openness, and-shout-out to Ben Affleck-work (!) to have a happy life with another human being. Consider these 10 tips from certified sex therapist Sari Cooper your healthy relationship bible.

By Jessica Herman

1. Express Yourself
"One of the foundations of a healthy relationship is being able to express your feelings to your partner and learning how to listen," says Cooper. "Witnessing or mirroring [basically saying 'I get you'] is a good basic form of communication." But saying 'I get you' doesn't mean 'I agree with you.' In other words, hear him out, but don't just agree to keep the peace.

2. Schedule Quality Time Together
Particularly as you get further along in your relationship-moving in together, having kids, the whole shebang-you'll have plenty of logistical conversations that need to happen. Who's making sure the kids aren't stranded at soccer

Forget tossing the bouquet.A recent poll showed that more women are changing their last names after getting hitched, and I plan on following the crowd after I get married next summer. But there are a ton of other outdated traditions that my man and I need to figure out about before the day comes. IMHO, these are totally old-fashioned…

By Natasha Burton

1. The bouquet toss
I used to think the bouquet was the most exciting part of a wedding. When I was 12. As I got older, and the crowd of women around me hungering for the bride's flowers thinned out to a handful of tweens and me, I realized how awful this tradition really is. Plus, I'm selfish and want to keep my bouquet to myself, m'kay?

2. The garter retrieval
There's nothing less sexy than your guy burrowing his head under your wedding dress while your dad-and his-watch. Not to mention your mother, your mother-in-law, your friends…need I go on? My groom can put his head between my legs all he wants on our honeymoon, but not in front of our

Unless your dad is a retired CIA agent, kidnapped women are rarely found alive.Here's a disturbing thought: What if some of our everyday habits were actually compromising our safety? We know women aren't to blame for tragic assaults and kidnappings, but we nevertheless want to make sure we're doing everything in our power to stay safe. Candice DeLong, a former FBI criminal profiler and host of Deadly Women on Investigation Discovery, has 21 safety tips every woman should know. Share them with the women in your life today.

By Dara Adeeyo

1. If walking by yourself, get off your cell phone. A lot of people think that being on the phone is safe because the person on the other line can call 911, but that rarely works out. Chatting can distract you; it's better to be aware of your surroundings. That said…

2. If walking by yourself, hold your cell phone and be ready to make an emergency call. Many phones now have a button on the screen to dial 911 immediately. Go one step further and preset one of the buttons on your phone to call the emergency number.

3. Look

One of these is never enough.If your eating habits are anything like mine, they might look something like this: Healthy breakfast, hurried lunch, afternoon boredom-induced unhealthy snack, healthy dinner, candy, candy, cookies, more candy…and then, sadness.

By Natasha Burton

Try as I might, I'm still a bonafide binger when it comes to sugar. (My fiancé-and roommate-on the other hand, has no interest in the sweet stuff, which is super annoying.) But it turns out that I may not able to help myself: According to new research, women might simply be wired to binge eat. Which sucks, but also kinda makes me feel better about my lack of self control. (Hat tip to Jezebel for finding this cool study.)

Related: The Truth About Late-Night Snacking

Studying rats, researchers at Michigan State University observed that females were six times more prone to binge eating than their male counterparts. (To test this, scientists did a two-week feeding experiment in which they systematically replaced food pellets with delicious

A wedding without Bridesmaids. Would you do it?When I pictured my wedding as a young girl (okay, okay in college), I always imagined standing at the altar flanked by my and my unknown husband's closest friends, all of whom dressed in color-coordinated attire.

By Natasha Burton

But now that I am planning my wedding for reals now, I feel like a total asshole asking people to be in my wedding. First of all, it's time-consuming: Your friends feel forced to commit to things like invitation stuffing and ceremony rehearsing. Plus it's just not necessary-does it really matter if your pals stand next to you or sit two feet away? So, I'm pretty sure that my fiancé and I are simply not going to do it.

Related: 7 Wedding Traditions That Need to Die

A new poll by American Express reinforces another reason why we're forgoing this wedding tradition: Because it's damn expensive. According to the company's recent survey, bridal party members are expected to spend more money than ever to be part of their pals' special days, with the