Why is that women stay with their abusers? A little less than two years ago, I certainly couldn’t have told you the answer to that question. Now I can. And that’s because I did.

I’ll never be able to pinpoint the exact moment when my relationship with Chris started to become unhealthy. It could have been as early as the moment I met him. It could have been the first time he criticized my weight. It could have been when he started controlling who I could hang out with. It could have even been the very first time he called me a “stupid slut.” Really, at this point it all becomes a big blur full of screaming, name calling, and suicidal threats, not to mention one very unhealthy pattern of fighting and making up.

With each fight, the emotional abuse became worse and worse. With each honeymoon period that followed, he’d tell me things would be different this time around and I would always believe him because I thought that our love could conquer anything. Eventually, I became convinced that I was just lucky to stand in his presence. I did anything that I possibly could to prove to him that I was worthy of his love. I gave him every single penny of the mere $100 biweekly paycheck that I earned at my student job. I stopped talking to people he didn’t want me to talk to. I ditched classes to drive an hour so I could bring him lunch at work, just to turn around and drive straight back home to school. No matter what I did, it never seemed to be enough. I was always too fat, too loud, too needy, too slutty, too something. Read More »

Steve Jobs and Apple held a press conference earlier today regarding all the controversy surrounding  the defects found in the iPhone 4. If ya’ll remember correctly, I was the geeky nerd who stood in line on June 24th at the Apple store and waited for two hours (with the rest of the Apple fanatics) to get my hands on the new iPhone. Undeterred by the heat or long lines, I felt as if Steve Jobs had made the world a better place with the newest iPhone. In my review, I wrote about how much I loved the iPhone 4 and how (seriously) my life had changed since I’d gone “Apple.”

Well, close to a month later, I am sad to admit that though I have been entirely satisfied with “Jose” (my delicious techie partner-in-crime), there are some bad qualities about Steve Jobs, Apple and the iPhone that I just can’t ignore. First things first, yes, the reception is entirely sucky. I can’t even hold my phone “correctly” without the bars going down significantly. And even when I have full reception (which is rare, btw) I get so many dropped calls that I don’t even want to call people. My flash is way too bright, making all the photos that I take all night look ghostly and scary. Plus, even though Facetime is awesome (no, seriously, really awesome), it’s so shaky and unreliable on Wi-Fi that unless I’m using it to talk to my friends in other rooms under the same network, it rarely gives me the video chat experience that I had previously envisioned.

Which sorta defeats the purpose, yes?

But still, just like with that bad boy who keeps treating me like crap, I keep making excuses for Steve, Apple and “Jose.” I tell all my friends, “Who makes phone calls nowadays? It’s all about texting!” and “I don’t care if the pictures look funny, Jose’s got an amazing flash!” I just can’t walk away. I know Jose isn’t perfect and that I can’t fix him, but I keep hoping and praying that my love is enough to get us by. That he’ll change, that he’ll become the functional phone I know he can be.  Read More »

[The following post is courtesy of our homegirls over at YourTango. They’ve been through it all and know just about everything about love, so we thought we’d bring their expertise to you. Enjoy!]

Rihanna may think that she’s back to making sweet music together with her battering boyfriend, but she is sadly mistaken if she thinks he will never hit her again.

Men who batter rarely do it once, even if they are rich and famous. So if you’re in a relationship with a guy who has pushed, hit or slapped you once, take it as a warning sign. You can expect him to do it again and again.

Here’s everything you need to know about batterers, from domestic violence experts Diann Ackard, a PhD psychologist on the board of Break the Cycle, an organization specializing in the treatment of domestic abuse, and Candice Hopkins, director of Love is Respect, the National Teen Dating Abuse Helpline. Read More »