You date, you learn. And you’d think that the people you date will just vanish of the face off the earth, because it’s only polite, right? You dealt with the waves of nausea and anxiety during the end-phase, and so they should bother you no longer.

“Should” being the key word.

I’m a fan of amicably parting ways, sure, but when you pointedly don’t is the guaranteed time that son of a bitch will come back to haunt you. So as a preventative measure you weed them out. You try to be proactive and delete them from your phone—number, email, all of it, and even those text messages and voicemails you like to listen to.

Have faith, you’ll find a new distraction, let down your guard because this one’s different, and the cycle can repeat itself all over again. Joy. In any case, you make moves and move on, and the ex, or pseudo-ex, or whatever you called him is but a distant memory.

If you haven’t guessed by now, the weeding out can bite you in the ass. Please, dear readers, learn from my mistakes. Read More »

I would have never dated me three or four years ago. Sure, I was lovely in most ways and I was a catch in most ways, but there was one little thing about dating that I just didn’t get: being friends after the breakup.

When my heart was broken before, I knew exactly how to manipulate the story to victimize myself and follow up with passionate vengeance. I never even gave a guy a fair chance to break up with me without it being ugly. And looking back on that, it makes me thoroughly sad.

These days, I understand relationships as more than ultimatums or pending doom and broken heartedness. Now I get it.

If I was that close to a guy before, close enough to let him be the only boy I would even kiss, he must have had something to contribute to the world and my life more than sex, right? Right. So why would I cut all of those positive things out of my life just because we made a decision to end the intimacy?

Upon realizing just how much I was giving up when I cut off all ties with my exes, I began changing my ways. I am now friends with all of my exes; yes, every last one. I have rebuilt the bridges I burned and, in fact, just hopped on a plane last month to go visit my most recent ex. As a FRIEND. And we had a great time!

When you are of the mentality that you can’t be friends with a dude after you break up, you are already hindering your relationship. You are already screwing up its natural course of growth and making aspects of the relationship ugly that don’t need to be. Damning your post-breakup relationship to Hell is not only immature, but it’s sad; if you liked a guy enough to date him, you should like him enough to be there for him when you’re done dating one another. Read More »

Sometimes you fall in love. And sometimes you get your heart broken because you fell in love.

You recollect the pieces of yourself that the relationship scattered all over and eventually, you become stronger and you move on. You start to like other guys and you begin to wonder what it was that possessed you to the point of tears over ‘that’ guy before…

He treated you like crap.

He made you cry.

He was the one always screwing up and then the whole thing finally ended — exploding, despite your efforts to make it work.

You get over it.

And then he comes back. Read More »

1. YOUR FRIEND’S ROOMMATE

In this wacky age of co-ed cohabitation, it’s common to spot a likely young man in your friend’s apartment. At first, it can seem natural to make out with him. You have so much in common! For example: you both spend a lot of time in his apartment! There is nothing more erotic, for two people, than seeing each other ALL THE DAMN TIME. Am I right?

I am wrong. Face facts: you are going to stop sleeping with this guy. I don’t know what you do with people you’ve stopped sleeping with, but I, being Amish, shun them for life. It is the only way. Unfortunately, this gentleman’s proximity to your friend means that, when you call a ceasefire on the boning – or when he calls it, which can happen – you’re going to have to stay friendly.

It’s going to suck.

2. DUDE YOU MET ON CRAIGSLIST

There is only one dude you meet on Craigslist. He has many disguises – horny lawyer, horny accountant, horny ice cream truck man – but he is the same dude. He’s a magical shapeshifter!

He’s also a shady perv. Dude You Met On Craigslist thinks that a perfect date would consist of tying you to his radiator and making you watch the puppet shows he performs with human organs. Some of them would be yours.

This may seem like a radical assumption, but I’ve had my fact-checkers look into this, and they concur: that dude you met on Craigslist is creepy.

Also, they are all dead. Read More »

Judging from last week’s CC poll, a lot of you feel confused about your exes.

Join the club.

I think a lot of us fear that there might be something wrong if we still have feelings for an ex, even years later.

Society tells us that we’re supposed to kick it and move on, that we should say “tough luck” if somebody dumps us, and that we should never again be tempted to kiss somebody we’ve ended a relationship with.

…For real?

Even though I’ve been with my boyfriend for almost two and a half years, and I can’t imagine any scenario in which I would break up with him, I still feel a little wishy-washy about a few of my exes. Doesn’t everybody? Sure, there are a couple I’d just as soon never talk to again, but that doesn’t mean I don’t think about them every week or two (even if it is just in passing). Read More »