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Watching the way people interacted with each other this year was not always the most uplifting experience. From cyberbullying to celebrity bump watches, 2007 seemed to bring out the worst in some people.

But there were also stories that introduced us to new kinds of love, broadened our understanding of human behaviour and made us think about the true nature of friendship. Here, a roundup of some of 2007's relationship trends: the good, the bad and the one that involves Alec Baldwin.

I Heart Robot

I'm sure there are all kinds of socio-political, post-9/11 reasons why people have begun talking about doing it with inanimate objects. Maybe we're lonely and afraid of human contact, or perhaps our new video iPods are just too gorgeous not to fondle. In the surprisingly touching film Lars and the Real Girl, a character played by Ryan Gosling is so traumatized by his mother's death that he begins a relationship with a life-size sex doll.

But artificial intelligence expert David Levy believes that relationships between people and machines are not just a reaction to the frailties of the human soul. His book, Love + Sex with Robots: The Evolution of Human-Robot Relationships hypothesizes that it's only a matter of time before our interaction with machines gets, well, physical. By 2050, Dr. Levy believes we'll be seeing human-robot marriages, so I guess it's just a matter of time before the Apple store starts a wedding registry.

Hung up on you

If Alec Baldwin had called one of the characters on his sitcom 30 Rock a "thoughtless little pig" it probably would have been funny. But hearing the gravelly voiced actor issue the insult to his 11-year-old daughter's voice mail was decidedly less comical.

Cellphones were instrumental in the demise of several high-profile relationships this year, demonstrating that wireless communication is not necessarily your friend. Zimbabwe-born socialite Chelsy Davy found naughty text messages on boyfriend Prince Harry's phone, which, while perhaps the least of his misbehaviours, ushered in the end of their romance. Mobile communication was supposed to make our lives easier, but maybe it just helps us say more things that will get us in trouble.

Friends 2.0

Never before has the word "friend" meant so little. It's hard to ignore that 2007 was the year of Facebook as the social networking site signed up millions of users, with Canada as its largest demographic. Are we really that desperate to touch base with our grade-school crush? Is updating your profile photograph with an even sexier bikini shot the best way to procrastinate at work?

Social networking sites told us that Rudolph Giuliani's daughter is a Barack Obama supporter, that Tila Tequila is not actually a cartoon, and that high-school keg parties can get really out of control if you advertise them on the Internet.

But the popularity of these sites also opened the door to abuse and emotional trauma. People have been contacted by their high-school bullies, harangued for their opinions and attacked by anonymous masses. In one tragic case, a New Jersey mother set up a fake MySpace account that she used to psychologically torture a 15-year-old girl who eventually killed herself in despair. I know we're all friends and all, but it may be time to replace Facebook with a little face time.

Rats, they're just like us

It has become something of a cottage industry to psychoanalyze the behaviour of Hollywood starlets. What does Jamie Lynn Spears' teenage pregnancy tell us about Christian morals and the influence of older siblings? Is Lance Armstrong's relationship with Ashley Olsen really a desperate cry for help?

But it seems that if we really want to learn something about ourselves, we should be watching a different set of adorable creatures: rats. Nafissa Ismail, a graduate student at Concordia University's Centre for Studies in Behavioural Neurobiology, discovered this year that male rats prefer to mate with females who are less sexually available to them. Her findings, which also showed that prudish female rats displayed hostility to the "slutty" rats, was part of a growing field of research that attempts to explain human relationships on a biological, neurological or even genetic level.

From "love at first sight" to "absence makes the heart grow fonder," almost every romantic cliché now has a scientific rationale. The DNA of prairie voles, which mate in monogamous couples, contains an element missing from their furry cousins montane voles, creatures that tend to play the field. When researchers injected the missing gene into montane voles, the promiscuous animals instantly settled down. This kind of research suggests that some of our sexual behaviours may be changeable, which is good news for the Spears clan, at least.

Boys will love boys

Do you remember when male bonding conjured up images of shirtless stock brokers on woodland retreats, beating their chests and spilling their guts? Today's men take a somewhat less testosterone-induced approach to their man-on-man action, but have demonstrated that they have no problem doing just about everything together, from going on vacation (or mancation) to discussing their emotions.

The gentler side of male friendships was celebrated this year by Hollywood producer Judd Apatow, whose gang of lovable oafs pride themselves on liking each other more than they like girls. In the words of Superbad's Seth, "I just wanna go to the rooftops and scream, 'I love my best friend.' "