In the last year, it seems as though being single has been my specialty. While flings and hookups have come (pun intended) and gone, and dates have left me with some less than desirable memories, my current single status has remained loyally by my side. I’ve learned a lot in the past year and I’ve discovered that single girls around the world are all in the same fabulous pair of shoes.

So if you’re sick of sitting at a table for one, eating a meal portioned for two, I cordially invite you to join The Single Girl Society, where being single is more than status; it’s a lifestyle. Of course, with everything in life, the single girl lifestyle comes with rules and I’ve picked up quite a few along the way. So kick back, grab a drink and let the lessons I’ve learned serve as your very own roadmap to transitioning to and enduring the single life.

Lesson 4: Single girls don’t let other single girls drink and text.

This past weekend I did something I can never take back. After a record-breaking year-long drunk texting hiatus, I committed my first TUI (texting under the influence) with the help of my old friend SoCo. Liquid courage in one hand and phone in the other at a bar that I used to frequent with my ex, I texted him (typo-free, might I add). Groan. A year into my no-drunk-texting campaign and just like that, all of it gone over one slip-up.

We’ve all been there. It’s Friday night and you’re supposed to be having a girls’ night at the bar, riding the mechanical bull and dancing the night away, making your friends take a shot every time they mention their ex’s name.

Instead, you’re looking around wondering if your ex will magically appear with a drink and a dance with your name on it. When you realize you probably won’t be running into your ex that night, you start to scroll over the old text messages from him. You begin reliving the feelings behind each message, the ones you spent all day sending to each other, giggling and running each text by your girlfriends before you sent it.

When the bar closes, you head out with your friends, laughing and stumbling into your cab and even though you had fun with your girls, you still miss your ex.  So you figure “What the hell, I already lost him, what else could I possibly have to lose?” and you text him. Read More »

If a milkshake brings all of the boys to the yard, I know a way to keep them out. So far past the perimeters they’ve taken a three-mile long-cut just to avoid walking on your grass.

What’s this guaranteed boy repellent?

The un-relenting light of day.

Call this a vampire conspiracy theory, but from my experience, suggesting afternoon coffee to a college guy is the equivalent of asking for their hand in marriage or to father your future child. I’ll meet one at a poorly lit bar, by the green glow of a lava-lamp at a ’70s themed party, or under the dimmed fluorescent lighting of the common room, and we’ll hit it off. He’ll ask if he can call me. He’ll “call” the next Saturday, in the form of a lackluster text message at around 9 p.m., approximately the same time we met the week before. Too early in the night to write it off as a booty-call, but too late that I shouldn’t have plans already.

“What r u up to?” he’ll ask, and I’ll wonder why a college-educated person would deliberately choose to downplay their spelling abilities.

Though small in word count and light in consequence, “what are you up to” is a loaded question. “Not much, you?” makes you sound boring or lacking a social life. Telling them what you are actually doing, “eating spaghetti with cheese,” or “walking home from the drug store” seems like an over-share. And you both know where this little text-dance is leading—“Do you want to hang out?” Read More »

There’s so much I love about drinking: it helps me forget about stress and schoolwork, it makes everything that happens so much funnier, and it’s fun to do outside when it’s nice out. (…and inside when it’s crappy out. And in the morning. And in the night. And on Mondays.) And those crappy Black Eyed Peas songs you usually can’t stand? Total fist pumpers! Not to mention the hilarious piecing together that happens the morning after.

All your problems seem to melt away when you’re on the dance floor with your girlfriends, double Long-Island in hand, but all that goodness doesn’t come without a price. And I’m not talking about the $65 bar tab you discover in the morning. Us experienced college gals know that sometimes the fun doesn’t last past last call. Alas, the downsides of drinking… Read More »

Let’s face it: we’ve all done some pretty ridiculous things in our lives. Things we think are totally logical in the moment, but make us cringe when we think about them later on. Like that time (OK, many times) that we pretended to be drunk to text the guy we’re crushing on. Things that we’d only tell our best friend over coffee on a Sunday morning, but only after we remind her of all the sloppy photos we can blackmail her with. Things that we hide from the people who love us (and judge us) most.

Things that even we, ourselves, wish we didn’t know about. But things that our friends, family, and fellow CollegeCandy readers are probably doing all the time, too.

So here is our chance to let it all out. To share our secrets and find that maybe we’re not so crazy, so weird, so abnormal, after all. We’ll spill the beans every Tuesday and invite you to share your own similar experiences below. Just think of it as therapy. Or a really hilarious way to spend a Tuesday afternoon. Read More »

[Got a Dude itch you just can’t scratch? Sick of getting the pity-eyes as you sift through the Self-Help section at your campus bookstore? Over wondering what those boys are thinking?  We got your back, girlfriend. Send your question over to askthedude@collegecandy.com. The Dude won’t sugarcoat it, beat around the bush, or any other weird cliche that means lie to you. Like a nice, juicy hot dog, he’ll be 100% real beef, 100% of the time.  So bring it on, ladies.]

Dude,
Okay so I have this one guy friend that I’ve totally hooked up with before and it meant nothing. Honestly, sometimes a girl has needs that need to be fulfilled just like guys do. So for me our hook up was just something fun that was better than me just hooking up with some random person for a one night. Ever since that hook up homeboy has either texted me or called me EVERY time that he has been drunk. A lot of times if I don’t answer his texts he will call me multiple times throughout the night until I answer, wanting me to come over and I have respectfully have refused.

I have also told him countless times that I know that there are plenty of other girls that he should call besides me and he has never listened until tonight when he started texting me again drunk, and for the first time he admitted that he needed to stop and that he was sorry and for me to ignore anything else that he sends me. He also said that he would promise to never drunk text me again, which is great. I want this to end because it is so embarrassing, especially when I am out with friends or other guys and he constantly calls.

However that is not the reason why I felt the need to send this. I have noticed that he has recently being trying really hard around me. He has been texting me during the day, blowing up my phone, inviting me to come over and literally just hang out and chill with him and friends and watch movies and other little things. We are friends so usually this wouldn’t seem out of the ordinary but lately I have been feeling questionable about his invites. Something just seems off with him. He is known for being quite the player when it comes to girls and usually I am one of his few friends that will put him in his place about that. So I guess what I am asking as homeboy had a change of heart? Has my friend gone from being the player for life now to Mr. Right and am I in his crosshairs?

Signed.
Girl With Guy Friend Issues Read More »

Today, as I went about my daily business reading all my usual blogs, I came across this post on YourTango, listing off 25 really bad excuses to call him. Many of the reasons making up the list were a ridiculous, absurd and totally crazy…

And as I read them off, one by one, I realized I’d probably used all of them at one point or another in my dating history.

This got me thinking about how pathetic I am all the embarrassing things that we’ve all done in our lives. Particularly, in our love lives. Things that we reason are totally normal at the moment, but cringe about when we look back on them later. Things that we’d only tell our best friend over coffee on a Sunday morning, but only after she swore on her shoe collection she’d never tell anyone. Things that we hide from the people who love us (and judge us) most. Things that even we, ourselves, wish we didn’t know about.

But things that our friends, family, and fellow CollegeCandy readers are probably doing all the time, too. Read More »

We’ve all done it.  We claim that we are the best of friends, but the truth is that we are all guilty.  We sit and listen to our friends complain about their breakups, lend a shoulder to cry on, and then offer consoling words:  “You can do so much better” or “he’s the one missing out, not you.”  The sob-fest concludes and what do we do?

We immediately call our other friends to vent about just how annoying it is that Jill still isn’t over Jack.  After all, their break up was three months ago!  Can’t she just get a grip?!  We vow to never act so desperate, and we wouldn’t of course, because our breakups happened around the same and we are so, totally over our ex.

But wait, are we really?  Before we throw Jill down the hill for holding on too long, maybe we should read the signs to see if we aren’t exactly “over” our ex’s either:

Read More »

It’s Thursday night, 8:00 PM. Most kids on my campus are pre-gaming in their rooms watching the new episode of The Office, but I am sitting half-comatose in a giant lecture hall, taking notes on Neo-freudians. It’s my own fault for picking such an unfortunately scheduled class, but I still silently curse my Ben Stein-clone of a professor as my phone vibrates for the tenth time since class started. Expecting another “where are u? we’re drinking at Kim’s apt, come!!” text, I glance down at my phone, instead seeing a blinking message: CANNOT RECEIVE MESSAGE. MEMORY FULL.

Frantically, I scroll through my texts, looking for one to delete. I keep scrolling… and scrolling… and then I’m at the end of the list, unable to delete even one. It’s weird, but there are just some texts I can’t bring myself to get rid of. And I know I’m not the only one. Read More »

Dear El Dude,

Help!
I’m quite the cynic when it comes to love, almost as a defense mechanism to avoid getting hurt. A few weeks ago I meet this boy out at a bar. He was cute, funny, and talked and danced with me the entire time. We exchanged numbers, hung out at my friend’s house, and ended up going back to his house for the night.  I spent the night but all we did was make out.  Throughout the next weeks, we texted a decent amount. He always made it seem like he wanted to hang out, but then when it came down to it, he always seemed to have some legit excuse as to why he couldn’t. For example, he had a hospital visit, which I know for a fact was true.

In my head, I kept thinking “he’s just not that into you,” but every time I talked with him, it was a different story. We stopped talking for a while, until I recently drunk texted him. He texted back, we talked for quite a while, with him mentioning he missed me, apologizing for being out of the picture, and saying he really wanted to see me.  Now I’m just confused, because I feel like if he wasn’t into me, he wouldn’t have texted back and he wouldn’t have cared.   I just don’t get it; is he into me or not?  Please help.

– The Cynic Read More »

Let’s be honest here for a second: books like “He’s Just Not That Into You” exist for a reason. And that reason is that women, as a collective, are really good at convincing ourselves of feelings and relationships that just aren’t there. We get so caught up in luuuurve that we don’t let ourselves see what’s really going on.

You know you’ve been there. You get a drunk text from a guy you heart at 3am and think, “Awww, he’s thinking about me!” You’re giddy and excited (and secretly start planning his birthday gift) and when you don’t get a text the next day (or 3 days after that…) you reason that he’s busy, he’s stressed out, or he has a knack for flushing his phone down the toilet when he’s drunk and he did party pretty hard last night. And your friends totally agree.

But, no matter how delusional we get (and, home girl, you know you get delusional), there comes a time when the signs are bright and flashing and undeniable: this kid is over it. Done. Dunzo. See ya never, biatch.

For me, it was when I made plans to go camping with my boyfriend, only to meet him at his house and see him leaving with another chick. (Yeah, it was rough, but I had the can opener, so I’d like to see how that turned out for him!) Or the guy who told me he was moving home for the summer…and then I saw him at the bar later that week.

For the CollegeCandy writers, there were equally obvious signs: Read More »