Gots a question?! Aunt Tuffy gonna ease your pain (or maybe cause more.) TuffyLuv@collegecandy.com for maybes some answers.

To unnamed questioner from VTEXT: I wanna help you out, but I need a little more information. Mo’ details, pleez.

Dear Tuffy Luv,

I have a close friend in college who is seriously concerned about her likelihood of getting married. She’s never been in a relationship and constantly worries that at the rate she’s going, she’ll never get married before she’s 30! She’s under the impression that she needs to start seriously dating now (at age 20) in order for her to have a family by the time she’s 28. Her mentality seems ridiculous to me since we’re so young still, but she just doesn’t understand that we have plenty of time. I think she’s mostly worried because she doesn’t want to end up like her 25 year old brother who can’t get into grad school, lives at home with their parents, and doesn’t date.

Recently, a close mutual friend of ours had a surprise romantic encounter with this amazing guy and it happened without her even expecting it. This made my other friend feel down that she wants a relationship so badly and can’t make it happen with anyone while my other friend has had smooth sailing.

So Tuffy, what should I do or say to this friend of mine? Should I try to set her up with someone or let her find somone on her own? She’s the most considerate person I know, and I know some lucky guy will see that in her someday, but she thinks that she’s running out of time. She’s been really harsh on herself lately and I can’t stand to see such an amazing person feel so low. Any words of wisdom that I can share with her?

Sincerely,
Helpful Friend Read More »

For the longest time, Cosmo was my bible of choice. It helped me sustain my reputation as all-knowing sex goddess among my circle of friends in high school (nevermind the fact that I didn’t even have my first kiss until the end of my sophomore year…of college). However, at some point, I found myself slightly disenchanted with Cosmo’s absurdity, and felt I need more mature, more refined literature. Alas, I didn’t know about Ms, so I surrendered to Glamour.

To me, Glamour was elegant. It was sophisticated. It was legitimately cosmopolitan. They only featured 68 ways to please your man, in stark contrast to Cosmo’s 168, and I’ve always valued succinctness. Their cover ladies were more erudite and high-class than the typical B-listers that graced Cosmo’s covers. It took a fairly ridiculous amount of time to realize that Glamour’s articles can be just as tacky and misguided and silly as Cosmo’s.

For example, take this month’s article “What No One Ever Admits About Marriage.” Apparently, once you commit to infinite monogamy (but let’s be real, in this day of age, that means, like, 5 years, tops), all conceptualizations of open communication go out the window, and it’s like you’ve entered Fight Club. Thankfully, Glamour decided to uncover Read More »

I’ve never been the girl to think about my future too much or obsess over meeting Mr. Right. I’ve met a whole lot of Mr. Wrongs lately so I’ve been happy hanging out with Mr. Right-Nows instead.

Even when I was little, unlike many other girls, I never ever fantasized about my future wedding… until now.

I’m 21 and I’ve got the bridal bug. It’s all I can think about! I don’t know if it’s all the “Say Yes to the Dress” episodes I’ve been watching (I’m obsesssssed) or if my biological clock is fiercely ticking faster, but all I can think about is weddings, weddings, weddings. Read More »

This will make you happy.

Meet Lori Gottlieb. She’s a 40-year-old single mother—she got artificially inseminated because she wanted to have a baby but didn’t have a boyfriend—who has discovered the secret to why more women aren’t married: their standards aren’t low enough.

No, seriously. Gottlieb recently expanded this 2008 article from the Atlantic into a full-length book called Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough. Her basic premise? Modern women all have “checklists” for their potential life partners, and we’re too quick to dismiss guys who don’t necessarily satisfy all of those requirements. So in order to avoid being single and, therefore, miserable in our 40s, women in their 20s like you and me should forget searching for Mr. Right and, instead, make do with Mr. Good Enough.

Don’t worry if this advice sounds ridiculously retro—Gottlieb freely admits that she’s telling women to ignore modern ideas about male/female relations because, as she says at the beginning of her book’s third chapter, “feminism has completely f*cked up my love life.” All that talk about “freedom” and “choice”—yes, she actually puts those words in quotation marks—is a bunch of hooey because, as opposed to what Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan would have you believe, women really do need to get married and have lots of babies in order to be fulfilled: “The truth was, every one of my single friends wanted to be married, but none of us would admit how badly we craved it for fear of sounding weak or needy or, God forbid, antifeminist,” Gottlieb writes.

Excuse me for just a minute—AAAARRRRGGGGG!!! This crap is so ludicrous that I can only express my anger in capital letters and multiple exclamation points. I can immediately think of about fifty things that are totally wrong with Gottlieb’s thought process, but I’ll spare all of you and just mention what I think are her most glaring errors: Read More »

"So....Emmy....where's your boyfriend?"

Like nearly every other college student on the face of the planet, Thanksgiving Break is something that I am eagerly anticipating. The dorms are always busy and fun, but everyone appreciates a little break now and then. There’s nothing quite like going home, eating my dad’s brownies, watching movies with my sister, and taking my dog along on runs.

I do love the holiday of Thanksgiving as well. Turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, pie, and my little cousins dressed up as pilgrims, all my extended family gathered into my Grandma’s kitchen to say grace. I am blessed with a crazy bizarre extended family, the best kind to have in my opinion, and they are always the highlight of my holidays.

But as much as I love them all to death, sometimes their questions can be a bit too much. While I appreciate their interest in my life, I don’t feel the need to explain the details of the break up with my long term boyfriend to my uncle while waiting in line for cranberry sauce. Similarly, having my conservative aunt question me about boys that I might marry while she calmly serves out pumpkin pie just takes away my appetite!

Now, I understand that my aunt grew up in a very different culture than I do. Yet it truly does make my stomach full of turkey turn to hear this woman I am related to tell me that the most important thing for me to do in college is to meet the man I am going to marry. I love my aunt, but this idea of success disgusts me.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I definitely picture marriage eventually in my life plan. And I have nothing against people in long term relationships. Up until recently, I was one of them myself! Read More »

Originally, I was going to write an empowering and witty article about all the physical and mental benefits of being single.  Then I started my research and found…there were none.  Seriously.  Every study points in exactly the opposite direction.  Apparently, the healthiest thing we can do is get married.  Like, immediately.

Not gonna lie, I was kinda disappointed when I found out.  But then I reconsidered…maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to get married right now, especially considering all these health benefits.  I could even print out the list and slap it down on the desk of that gorgeous guy in my photography class, saying “Eh? Eh? C’mon, it’s healthy.”  He won’t be able to resist, obviously.

In case you plan on executing a ninja-style attack on a cute guy like I do (that is, in fact, how I pick up all my boyfriends), I’ve made you a handy-dandy list of reasons to print out and share with your friends and crushes.  So here you go – all the reasons and benefits of getting married NOW! Read More »

Got a question for the Tuffster? Email her at TuffyLuv@collegecandy.com and get that shiz answered!

Dear Tuffy Luv,

I’ve been with my boyfriend – let’s call him P – for three and a half years. We graduated college together and have been dating since senior year. We moved in together right away – our college was in a town that neither of our families live too near – and we both have decent jobs with salaries. My question is, I really want to get married soon, or at least get engaged, but he doesn’t seem like he has any plan to do that. I don’t want to ask him to marry me so please don’t suggest that, because I want it to be traditional and because HE wants to! What should Ido?

Clare Read More »

[We'd like to take this opportunity to welcome our favorite love, sex and relationship blogger - Lena Chen - to the CollegeCandy team. Lena is smart, funny, and her perspective on all things relationship is incredibly thought provoking. We're so pumped to have her here, so be sure to let us know in the comments what sorts of things you'd like Lena to discuss!]

Marriage isn’t a right; it’s a privilege. Depending on the time, place, and partner, getting married could be harder than getting into Harvard, if not downright impossible. As recently as fifty years ago, miscegenation laws would have forbid me from marrying my boyfriend (or any man not my race) in certain areas of the United States. Before that, the legal and social benefits to getting married were denied to minorities, immigrants, and the poor for centuries. Marriage is, for lack of a better analogy, membership into the biggest country club in the world.

For me, getting married would be a personal endorsement of some of the worst societal norms in existence.

The supposed “right” to marry has never been much of a right at all, and our understanding of marriage as a basic liberty is unique to contemporary times. Thanks to my predisposition for heterosexuality, it’s a liberty I could easily exercise, but I’d much rather march in a rally than down an aisle, because I find it difficult to take part in a practice that is denied to others (plenty of them my friends). Even with the best of intentions, I can’t imagine that my own wedding will serve any purpose but to reinforce existing norms, such as the idea that a relationship is only valuable if recognized by a third-party institution. Read More »

There’s no doubt about it – we all want to fall in love eventually. Of course, some of us want it just a little more than others. Take Neenah Pickett, for example. She wants to find her man, badly. She wants to find him so bad, in fact, that she’s given herself a deadline to get her ass in gear. She’s given herself 52 weeks (1 year, for you slow thinkers) to find her husband. And, trust me, this ain’t no half-assed New Year’s resolution biz.

She’s so serious that she has actually made her own website to get her name out there.

Before you throw things at your screen and start talkin’trash about what a crazy bia Neenah is, take a moment. This isn’t much worse than what many of us do in relationships. Ok, maybe the website thing is, but still; there is a wide spectrum of ridiculous deadlines we put on ourselves to find a relationship. Here is just a smidgen of some of the…interesting…declarations that I’ve heard thus far… Read More »