Every girl deals with heartbreak differently. Some prefer mourning the relationship by staying in and watching The Notebook and others prefer going all out and celebrating their newly single status with shots of tequila and a Rihanna dance party. Though there’s no one right path to overcoming the first pangs of heartbreak and its inevitable aftershock, but I can tell you what I’ve done in the past to get past heartbreak and its annoying friend, pain.

Lesson 37: Tricks of the trade when it comes to breakup heartbreak.

Closure can be treacherous territory. My go-to advice for my girlfriends and for myself is to create your own closure. Too many times I watch my friends go into post-breakup coffees and lunches with guys, using the veil of closure as a chance to talk things out and get back together. Closure is one of those great concepts in theory but not so much in practice because it’s so subjective. What seems like closure to one person could become a quest for more answers for another person. You have to ask yourself if you really want to know the reasons somebody didn’t want to be with you and if so, you need to be prepared for the feelings that could come with that.

The danger lies in relying on someone else to give you a feeling of security. If you’re serious about seeking out closure, start with yourself. The sooner you accept that sometimes relationships just don’t work, the easier it’s going to be for you to put down the breakup ice cream and pick up the pieces of your life and move on. Trust yourself enough to be on your own so that you can rely on yourself for security and not the guy who just walked away from you.

Next, you don’t have to forget a relationship to get over it. Still fresh from a breakup, blocking a guy out of your mind can be the hardest thing in the world, partially because you’re not ready to imagine your life without him but also because you’re stuck in that “remembering to forget him” phase. Stop stressing over whether or not you’re thinking about him too much, and allow your mind to go there if you can’t help but think of the memories you have of your relationship. At the risk of sounding cliché, time really does get you over a breakup. But at the same time, make an effort to go out, focus on new things that have nothing to do with your ex, be it school or your friends or your hobbies, and in time, the heartbreak that you thought you’d cling onto desperately will slip through your fingertips.

As much as you can’t fathom the thought of never thinking of him, over time, you will think of him less and less, even if it’s gradual. Believe me, if the relationship is something worth being heartbroken over, you’ll never fully forget it, but you can move past it. You can grow and learn from a past breakup, and even though it doesn’t seem like it now, you may even be able to look back on it fondly.

Breakups, whether you feel them coming or they catch you totally off guard, can really shake up your entire life. They remind us that at any point in our lives we can feel lost, rejected, and miserable. While the initial pangs of heartbreak make me the epicenter of a storm perfectly capable of complete destruction, I’ve found a sense of stability in knowing that heartbreak, as awful as it seems, is a pretty small problem to have considering the amount of pain out there in the world. There’s nothing more grounding than remembering that there are people in the world who wished that heartbreak was the worst of their problems.

I’ve been active in volunteer work almost my whole life and I’ll be honest that most of the volunteer projects I’ve picked started as a result of heartbreak. And even though this goes without saying, the time I’ve spent volunteering post-breakup never falls to the wayside once I’ve gotten through the heartbreak. Look, I’m not proud to admit that it sometimes takes me going through pain to realize that others feel worse pain, but I’m very proud of the person my breakups have molded me into. Heartbreak keeps me grounded and reminds me that even if the world throws heartbreak my way, I can peel myself off the couch, away from that sixth pint of ice cream and I can do my best from preventing pain in another person’s life.

So if nothing else you try seems to work, give paying it forward a chance because as much as heartbreak has the potential to be cyclical, so does happiness.

Got it? Feel empowered? Good. Now get the first 36 rules of the Single Girl Society

Lesson 19: Get Your Mind Off Heartbreak

Just like your mother told you to get your mind out of the gutter, this week, I’m spitting the same advice with a little single girl twist, of course. It’s time to get your mind off the single world version of the “gutter,” heartbreak. So much of our time as single women is spent wondering about heartbreak, whether it was in the past or whether it’s a potential outcome.

Every time we so much as meet a guy, without fail, we routinely pause to consider all the causes of potential heartbreak before we’re even dating him. We sit down with our girlfriends, keep his Facebook profile on standby and analyze the situation, coming up with reasons why it could never work before it has the chance to even become something to begin with. All of which would never be possible if our minds weren’t so clouded with this looming threat of heartbreak.

Dating is a gamble – sometimes you win, sometimes you lose and sometimes you find out he’s only dating you to steal your identity (oh wait, so that’s just me then?). If everyone knows dating is a wildly unpredictable game then why play if you plan to lose?

Most of the single girl society rules come from a foundation of empowering yourself before you involve a guy in the mix, and this rule is no exception. Don’t cheat yourself by assuming everything is going to end in a heartbroken hot mess leaving you rendered in your apartment with 13 boxes of Cadbury eggs and six cats you didn’t know you had.

One of the best ways to empower your self is to release the thoughts of heartbreak. Remember and learn from heartbreaks of the past, but don’t assume that they will come back to haunt you. If you convince yourself that your future relationships will end the same way that your past relationships did, then chances are they will. By trapping thoughts of heartbreak in your mind, you are creating a vicious cycle of relationships that end because you made them and let me tell you, the post-breakup weight loss is so not worth it.

The best way to approach heartbreak? Acknowledge that it happened in the past, learn from it but don’t assume it’s out to get you in the future. Keep brokenhearted thoughts in the back of your mind as a possibility but only on the condition that you remember it’s also a possibility that a relationship could work out.

Got it? Now get the first 18 rules of the Single Girl Society right here.

Question for Tuffy? Email TuffyLuv@collegecandy.com and get it answered, girl!

Dear Tuffy Luv,

Tuffy, I am so sick of men. I mean it. I just can’t take it any more. They all just break my heart. I’m in college–isn’t this supposed to be a time when it’s fun to just meet guys? Dating is horrible and I never meet anyone good anyway, unless I do and then they always just ruin it somehow. I seriously thought about experimenting with women but my lesbian friends say girls aren’t any better. I think I’m just going to swear off love forever. Please tell me I’m wrong.

Out of Love

Dear Out of Love,

You’re wrong.

No, for real, though. Honey, you are WAY too young to swear off love. When you’re old and you only eat prunes and have no teeth, then, and only then, if you’re alone, give me a call.

The question you should ask yourself is–why? Why does every relationship, every date turn out so awfully? Are you dating the wrong kind of guys? Lots of girls date craptastic guys because they feel like they deserve it or because they think they can fix them. Girl, ain’t never been no one can fix a bad man. Period.

Or maybe, and I know you hate this answer, honey, but they don’t call me Tuffy Luv for nothing–maybe there’s something you’re doing that’s either hurting their feelings or making them upset in some way? Maybe you’re telling them too-personal information on the first or second date (sexual abuse, extreme religion, illness—these things should all be reserved for someone who already cares about you, not someone you barely know). Or maybe you’re either coming on too strong, or not strong enough.

That said, you should NEVER change yourself so some guy likes you. You should just adjust your behavior–if you’re hurting someone’s feelings or if you’re being inappropriate, you should take an honest look at yourself and reevaluate your actions. Think of a date as a job interview: Be the best version of yourself that you can be.

So my advice is to swear off dating–but just for a month or two. Work on you, girl. Do things you like to do. Treat yourself to things you like. Go out with your friends and don’t even look at the guys in the room. You just need a little break. I promise that after a couple of months of this, you’ll be refreshed and get back in the game.
You know you never can find things when you’re looking too hard

Hearts & Skulls,

Tuffy Luv

Last night’s GG episode was pretty freaking juicy. Within the first 30-seconds, we knew what party (the Senior Snowball) would be the scene of all of the cut-throat drama, and the snowball just kept rolling from there.Here’s the rundown (of the first 5 minutes):

Blair doesn’t know who to bring the Snowball, Serena meets Aaron’s ex-slash-Dan’s-instant-Snowball-date (who wants to bang Dan… go figure), and Vanessa is acting shady… could it be because after stealing Nate’s letter to Jenny, she’s been creeping with Sexkitten Archibald? After that spiel to Jenny about friendship coming first? Oh, snap. You know Gossip Girl is going to spill that news.

In other news, one of Blair’s cliquesters, Penelope, gets a lot of screen time in this ep, as she commissions the out-of-work Jenny to make her dress for the Snowball. Penelope, I know you and Jenny aren’t friends, but you should take the stick out of your a** before asking someone to do you a last minute favor. Just saying. (Editor’s Note: And didn’t Jenny get back at Penelope by designing the ugliest dress of all time? Seriously? That sh*t was nasty.)

After GG publicizes a smooch between V and Nate, Penelope serves as a driving force behind J’s revenge scheme…because, after all, “Vanessa shouldn’t be fishing in ‘her’ pond.” Apparently Penelope didn’t get the message that Nate is over the Rich Clique, after being on Blair’s tight leash since pre-school. Also, she kinda sucks.

Though Jenny and Vanessa deserve credit for their brief catfight, Blair and Chuck steal the show (yet again) when they make a bet and agree to find each other dates to Snowball. If Blair wins, she gets access to Chuck’s limo for a month. If Chuck wins, he gets Blair’s maid. Wasn’t slavery abolished a few hundred years ago? Not in Waldorf world? Okay, just checking.

The Snowball finally arrives, and Blair and Chuck have set each other up with the most Chuck- and Blair-esque kids in school, respectively. How ironic when their pawns end up falling for each other? Vanessa dons a see-through dress to the ball, courtesy of Jenny Humphrey’s bitchy side. And, just as planned, the whole school sees right through it. And the world ends.

Seriously? I don’t think that’s that bad– I mean, for one, it’s not like Vanessa decided to skip the skivvies, and she happens to have a hot bod. How is barely a semi-flash to the school comparable to a Janet Jackson experience? Was there a nipple slip that I missed while spooning the last of my ice cream out of the carton?

So, Vanessa cries, and Nate is disappointed in Jenny. Vanessa and Nate get a couple of heartfelt monologues, fueled by plenty of tears, and sealed with an almost sexy smooch (there was dripping snot/tears, which sorta ruined things for me).

Meanwhile, Chuck asks Blair to dance:

“What’s the point, Chuck? We’re never going to be them.”

“I don’t want to lose what we have.”

“What do we have, Chuck? Tell me.”

“Tonight.”

Now that is the shizz GG is made of. Where were the Chucks of the world when I was in high school?

Also getting their moment of sap, Dan and Serena have a sex talk about moving on from their long-dissolved relationship. Just in case anyone out there actually cares about Dan’s pathetic sex life. Yawn.

Can we get back to Chuck? After Lily confesses to Rufus that she’s going to divorce Bart, Chuck has yet another moment when he tells Lily that she was good for the family, and that he always liked her, no matter how she acted.

Speaking of Bart: just as someone was rumored to die tonight, Lily gets a phone call. Mr. Bass has been in an accident. And we won’t find out what happens for another whole week. But when we do, it’s gonna be even juicier.

I cheated on my last boyfriend.

No, it wasn’t a long, torrid love affair. It wasn’t kinky sex with a Jeremy Piven lookalike. In fact, there was no sex involved. All I did was make out with a co-worker. But still, cheating is cheating, so tonsil hockey still counts in my book. It also counted in my boyfriend’s book. And it counted in his sister’s book…and she was the one who witnessed the fiasco.

It was innocent enough; I didn’t intend to cheat. I wasn’t emotionally attached to my co-worker. We just got blackout drunk at a bar and swapped saliva for about half an hour.

The next morning, I woke up feeling like I’d done something wrong. Yup, I had. My boyfriend’s sister asked me if I remembered making out with “Frank.” Immediately, my heart sank. I got dizzy. I wanted to throw up. My mind started racing a mile a minute, as is standard anxiety-attack protocol. Why would I do something like that with Frank, a guy I had absolutely no interest in, when I was happy and in love with her brother?

A lot of people will disagree with me for saying this, but cheating can be hard on the cheater. I was ashamed of myself, I cried, and I regretted doing so many shots the night before. What’s a cheater to do when they’ve crossed the line with someone else?

1. Ask yourself if it meant anything. Did you cheat because you like the other guy? Do you want a relationship with him? Did you cheat because you aren’t happy with your current boyfriend? I think in my case, deep down, I was scared, because I was in the most serious relationship I’d ever been in. Things were moving fast, and I wasn’t sure if I was ready to be shackled down and on the fast track to Housewifesville. I think that’s why I dabbled with a guy who meant nothing to me. But that’s my own conclusion. If you’ve cheated on any level (and there are some people out there who believe in emotional cheating as well), you need to get to the root of your own behavior before you can move on and deal with it with your man.

2. Weigh the options: To tell, or not to tell. I pretty much had to tell my boyfriend, because I am the dumbass who decided to cuckold her man in front of his sister. She probably would have told him if I hadn’t done it myself. That’s not to say that I wouldn’t have told, because my conscience gets to me if I snap at a telemarketer, and I probably would have been guilt-ridden for the remaining duration of my relationship if I’d kept it quiet. On the other hand, to what degree does “What he doesn’t know can’t hurt him” apply? Like I said, I wasn’t into my cheating-partner AT ALL. It never happened again, and Frank and I never talked about our random makeout sesh. So even though it meant nothing to Frank and me, it meant a lot of pain for my boyfriend. That said, you have to seriously consider all of the consequences and do what you think is most fair to your man. I’m not saying “Don’t tell him, and avoid being dumped,” because sorry, cheater, you brought this on yourself. But I do believe that there may be some instances where your man might be better off not knowing. That part’s up to you.

3. Talk to him. If you do decide to come clean, the “Hey, sweetie, I collected a DNA sample from another dude” talk isn’t going to be pretty. Telling the truth might be the moral way to go, but you have to realize that when you tell him you cheated, you are putting the ball completely in his court. From here, it’s really his decision as to whether you two work things out, or whether he kicks your ass to the curb. He might need some time to think about things, or you may have to have several discussions to work it out. You have to be patient with your guy– after all, you made the decision to cheat in the first place, so you’ll have to reap what you sew.

4. Prepare for the future. If you have the talk and decide to work things out, you have to commit to NOT cheating again, ever. If your guy can forgive you once, that’s great, but don’t test him a second time. Also, even if he does forgive you, it might be difficult (or even impossible) to get back to the way things were before. He might have difficulty trusting you, and, if he knows the guy you cheated with, he probably won’t want you hanging out with that guy again.

While it’s normal to have a few bumps in the road as you try to work things out, don’t let your guy guilt-trip you forever. Remember, you were honest enough to come clean and work things out, but you don’t deserve to have your mistake hanging over your head for the rest of your life. If you can work things out as mature adults, good for you. If you can’t, and he leaves you, it might suck for a while, but in the end, it was probably meant to be. Another guy will come along… and hopefully you will have learned your lesson and be more faithful the next time around.

What?! But everything was going so well!

“I’m sorry,” he explains. “I just got out of a bad relationship, and I don’t want to get involved.” Read: he was tainted by a crazy chick.

Since the beginning of time, bad boys have been toying with women’s emotions – playing us, and hurting us. Well, guess what ladies — this isn’t the suffrage era, and some girls out there think they have the power to level the playing field. Unfortunately, these crazy girls ruin the perfectly nice boys for the rest of us perfectly nice girls.

You might think you’re in the clear, but are you? Read on to make sure you don’t fall into the “Crazy Ex Girfriend” category. And if you do, thanks; you’re the reason I’ve been single for so long. Well, at least part of the reason.

The Cheater

This ex-girlfriend broke the guy’s heart, maybe more than once. Perhaps they were together for years, and he walked in on her and his friend one night. Maybe she had multiple “flings,” and confessed them all, in tears, and he forgave her time and again. No matter what, cheating hurts for girls and guys. This girl probably made your guy weary of being cuckolded again and wore down his trust in women. He thinks you’ll cheat, and he’s not ready to be played for a fool again.

The Bitch

This is the girl who takes out her frustrations on her man, picks fights in public, and reprimands him for the little details. He buys her a thoughtful Valentine’s day present; she throws a temper tantrum because he didn’t spring for a pair of earrings from Tiffany’s. He makes a joke at dinner, and she storms away from the table, leaving him alone and waiting for the check, embarrassed. Yet, for whatever reason, he put up with it for months, or even years. (Maybe it was the make-up sex.) Mean guys get a bad rap for being “emotionally abusive,” but these mean girls often slip under the radar because their behavior is chalked up to being a high-maintenance diva. Now that your crush is finally single, free, and thinking for himself, he likes it, and he’s not sure if he emotionally or financially ready for the drama he associates with being in a relationship.

The Clinger

We’ve seen these girls parodied in movies– see Wedding Crashers‘ term, “Stage-Five Clinger.” The clinger might not have even been a long-term girlfriend: even a one-night stand turned Fatal Attraction vixen can make the guy cautious of returning a girls’ affection. If it was a long-term relationship, the Clinger behaves like Kate Hudson in How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, except she’s not putting on an act to win a bet, she really is that clingy. After either having a casual hook up try to plan a wedding or going for months without being able to have a day with the boys over football on Sundays, the guy is now so happy to make his own plans that he’s willing to choose freedom over sex.

The Girl Who Went Psycho After the Breakup

Everything was going well for the guy, until he gently tried to break it off with his girlfriend. She snapped, and may have turned into The Clinger post-breakup. He tried to date again, and she was waiting to scare his new prospects away every time. This girl is personified by Miranda Lambert in her song “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend.” Thanks to her, he’s not only afraid to commit to a potential nutcase, but he fears that getting close to you will instigate another confrontation and that she’ll scare you away and ruin his chances anyway.

The False Alarm Liar

As the relationship begins to fizzle out, this girl takes drastic measures to keep the guy. What does she do? She lies about getting pregnant. It’s the perfect way to keep a guy, right? Wrong! Eventually, she has to come clean, and the trauma from thinking he’s going to be a father followed by the news that he’s been had is going to keep him off the market for a while.

Any of these girls can ruin a perfectly good guy for the rest of us. Why do girls behave this way? There’s a million answers for that. But the bottom line is, ladies, treat your man the way you would want to be treated. Don’t ruin him for the rest of us!

It hurts enough to sever ties with someone who knew every intimate detail about you, but imagine those private moments, discussions and pictures becoming public knowledge at the hands of someone you loved.

Men.Style.com recently ran a story in its Details forum concerning the topic of revenge porn, defined by UrbanDictionary.com as “homemade porn uploaded by an ex-girlfriend or (usually) ex-boyfriend after particularly vicious breakup as a means of humiliating the ex.” While the writer, Richard Morgan, cautions against revenge porn lest anyone involved (usually the boyfriend) suffer legal consequences, the casual manner in which he describes revenge porn does not fully clarify just how damaging this growing trend can be.

An influx of lawsuits concerning variations of revenge porn (homemade sex tapes posted on internet porn forums, nude pictures uploaded to MySpace accounts, distribution of homemade DVD’s) has sparked interest and concern in law-makers, who feel that new laws should be established to regulate the final legal frontier: the Internet. Details questions the necessity of criminalizing revenge porn, ignoring the long reaching effects it could have on a victim and, therefore, trivializing the entire issue.

Revenge porn, argues Morgan, shouldn’t necessarily qualify as a crime because it simply serves as a sign of the times. It’s just the product of our self-obsessed, celebrity crazed, over-exposed and digitally adept generation: the 2008 equivalent of petty slander, right? Wrong. It is not, as the article put it, “the contemporary version of writing ‘Jenny gives good head’ on the bathroom wall.”

Chances are Jenny’s friends, family, boss, and professors are not going to happen upon the exact stall of the exact dive-bar where her drunk-ass ex managed to get his hands on some Jaeger and a Sharpie. That bathroom stall doesn’t say Jenny’s last name, and unless said ex has some scotch tape and a picture of her in his wallet, Jenny is faceless. Comparing scribbles above a urinal with the emotional damage, public embarrassment, and potentially career ruining effect of compromising someone’s online identity is completely inappropriate.

Revenge porn is just as–if not more– invasive, cruel and immoral as any other form of slander or libel and should be punished in exactly the same way. Of course the smartest way to avoid becoming a victim of revenge porn is to not do, make or say anything explicit with a partner, but that is slightly unrealistic, not to mention takes away a major perk of being in a relationship in the first place.

Having a partner who you know well, love and trust allows women to really open up and…let loose. Unfortunately, that blissful relationship doesn’t always last forever and sometimes there’s no telling what revenge will drive a person to do.

Think about this next time you pull out the digital camera in a moment of passion. Would you want your Facebook friends seein’ that?

Sometimes, I think finding out that your mate has cheated is a blessing in disguise, because you can sidestep the entire “this isn’t working” discussion and end things in an explosive fight instead. Of course, for those of us who just had to choose nice, faithful boys, it can be hard to let the poor guy down. So, we make up excuses. Sometimes we even lie.

If you don’t think your man can handle the truth (“You’re obviously not going to get any better at foreplay,” “If I have to waste one more Sunday watching football with you and your frat boy buddies, I’m going to slit my own throat,” or, simply, “I can’t wait to bang Johnny from Journalism class, as soon as I get out of these shackles,”) you may want to/be forced to fabricate a reason for ending your exclusive relationship.

Junior year of college, I was in a dead end relationship. I had chased my boyfriend, and won, and within six months, I was bored. I tried so hard to instigate a blow-up, but it never worked. Instead of the ever-dramatic, uber-conclusive “Get out!”/ doorslam combo, my ex started crying and pacing around the halls of my dorm room, where a concerned RA took pity on him and returned him to my doorstep.

I considered a plethora of lies to catapult me back into the singles scene. “It’s not you, it’s me” is too generic an excuse, and when I tried to play that card, the guy started promising to change. I tried to use money as an excuse, arguing that I needed to pick up more shifts at work and spend less money on nights out. That one blew up in my face, since we worked together, and he thought that more work for me would also mean more time we could spend together; he also suggested saving money by staying in and watching movies. By this point, cuddling with him was making my skin crawl, but of course, I bit my tongue and sat through Quentin Tarantino’s Four Rooms. Since he was a pothead, I considered using narcotics as an excuse, but, as a partier myself, I would sound hypocritical, unless I vowed to cut booze out of my life.

How was I ever going to end this one?

Truth be told, it took an ambulance ride and a percocet prescription to get back into the singles scene. I kid you not.

My blessing-in-disguise came in the form of a dislocated knee. I had to take a leave of absence from my waitressing job, where my ex was a cook. Bonus: no awkward post-break-up interaction! I ignored the guy for a couple of days, and then told him that since I was incapacitated, I thought it would be too difficult to continue with the relationship. He was working full-time, after all, and I had to hobble around campus on crutches and crash, exhausted, at the end of the day.

I pretended I was more upset than I really was and said I was going to throw myself into my schoolwork for the rest of the semester. In reality, I was at the bar most nights, crutches and all. But at least I was single at the bar on crutches. It is sad that it took bodily harm to end my relationship, but sometimes there are no other options.

Am I alone on this one? Anyone else ever have some ridiculous story to get out of a relationship?

To preface, I’m not talking about the person you dated for a month who you kind of cared about but never enough to commit and / or introduce him to your friends. If you want to look through that guy’s Facebook or Myspace, go ahead. Seeing him with his arms wrapped around another girl will probably do nothing but make you kind of glad you’re no longer seeing someone who thinks weird neck tattoos of skulls are cool.

But look, if you loved the dude (or chick), and it kind of ripped your heart out when things ended, do yourself a favor let them remain a mystery. Don’t try to find them on Facebook if you’re not already connected, unfriend them if you are, don’t ask mutual friends about who they’re dating, and for the love of god, DON’T GOOGLE THEM.

I am a naturally nosey person, but after The Big Ex and I split up years ago, I refused to seek out information on the girl he started dating a mere few weeks after our 4 year stint ended. I knew my friends had info, I could tell by their eyes whenever they tried to jump away from the subject, but I never pressed them. And when information was accidentally spilled to me, I made a conscious effort to change the subject and told people “I really don’t care to know”. It was hard, because I did care to know, but I knew that need for knowledge was coming from a macabre place in my brain that loved to torture the rest of me. He was happy with someone else. That was painful enough. I didn’t need to know if she was prettier, thinner, or more talented than I was, and I certainly didn’t need to see any pictures on Facebook of them making out on the streets of NYC.

If you’re still smarting from a breakup, even if it’s years later, the more information you find out about your Ex, the more crippled you’re apt to become. So you find out he or she is living happily in some small town in California — you probably won’t be able to travel the entire state without schizo-ing out a little that you’ll run into them. If you find out they’ve moved on to a new partner while you’re still single, those lonley nights are apt to become a little lonelier — because what are you doing wrong that you haven’t found someone else too? And what if their name pops up on a Google search next to some crazy award or accolade? Even though you’re awesome…watching someone who hurt you continue to prosper just don’t feel good.

Since there’s an exception to every rule, most likely there are people out there who can read the Encyclopedia Britannica on their Ex and feel fine about it. I have never been one of those people, and I’d wager there are a few people like me out there. So look, to all of you sensitive types, I know you want to know what the Person Who Kinda Broke Your Heart is up to, but for your own health — do something else instead. You’re a good person, you’re doing great things, and someday you’ll find someone else. Don’t waste your time soaking up the sucky, soapy water of heartbreak all over again.

[Agree with these thoughts? Have rentching examples? Share!]

I wasn’t planning to go to the prom. With no date and a recent heartbreak, what was the point? Instead, I was going to dress up and have dinner with some single friends. Except… at dinner, one of my friends and I decided that we kind of wanted to go to the prom after all.

The only problem was that it seemed impossible—you needed to have a ticket to get in, and tickets had been selling all week for $50/pair. Advance tickets were the only tickets, and you couldn’t buy them at the door.

My friend and I complained to each other about how $50/pair was an exorbitant price for prom tickets (something I still believe). “Screw that,” she said. “Let’s just sneak in.”

To put it mildly, I am a goody two-shoes, and that didn’t sound like the greatest idea ever to me. But I was so bitter from the recent breakup that she was able to convince me before too long.

We planned out some major stealth moves, but as it turned out, it was pretty easy to sneak into the prom. The door attendants weren’t even checking tickets, and we were already dressed up, so we were good to go. I was of such high morals, though, that I wouldn’t touch any of the fancy desserts there because I hadn’t actually paid for a ticket (even though they looked SO GOOD!). Instead, I strolled into the dance area.

Well, you can probably imagine what I saw there.

Even though Nicole and Eric were dancing a little too close to each other for comfort, they still both vehemently denied that they were seeing each other. All of my other friends denied it, too, and told me I was crazy for thinking so. Believing I was going insane, I couldn’t stand much more than a half-hour at the prom, and my friend and I left after just a little while.

Believe it or not, it wasn’t until two years later that my suspicions were finally confirmed. I was working with an old high school friend of mine who decided to start a conversation with me using the line, “Hey, you remember when Eric was going out with Nicole?”

She pretended to be shocked that I had never known during all that time.

I confronted my best friend about it (she and Eric had broken up about a year previous to when this happened), but she just acted like it was no big deal. “I don’t see why it bothers you,” she said.

For real?

I still consider her my best friend, but we’re really not as close as we used to be.

Moral of the story: trust your gut, and remember that your prom wasn’t the only one that sucked.