I’m not exactly proud of it. Not exactly. But I will proudly say that it’s the best decision I ever made. Now before you start calling me names and reciting the seventh commandment in my ear, hear me out. Cheating on my boyfriend may not have been right, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t necessary.

Like most freshmen, I came to college with relics celebrating my high school life. Picture frames of my friends cluttered my desk while my best-guy-friend-turned-boyfriend stayed stitched into my heart: we had started dating weeks before our senior prom, and I felt like I had been living in a fairy tale ever since. He was funny, romantic, encouraging and close to his family, he was everything I ever wanted. And even though my parents didn’t approve and we were accepted to different universities, we decided to continue our relationship into college. I mean, he was only a hundred miles away, a distance easily diminished by a weekend train ride.

It worked out wonderfully. He drove down on Friday afternoons for dates that lasted until Monday mornings; he got along with all my new friends and we all frequented my college town’s hotspots together. We were both glued to our phones throughout the weekdays and we Skype’d at night while we fell asleep alongside our laptops. Against so many external odds, I was successfully maintaining a long-distance relationship. It was “perfect,” and I couldn’t remember a time when I was happier. Read More »

[I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not the epitome of prim and proper- heck, who really is nowadays? But looking around at the misguided youths of today *ahem drinking buddies*, I’m starting to think that Miss Manners might have been onto something.

While you may never need to know how to greet a duke or how to tell which fork is REALLY the oyster fork, knowing how to deal with people whom owe you money, how much to tip, and how to address the ever annoying licorice-in-teeth conundrum without being rude might actually come in handy in the real world. I'm not trying to be your mother - oh goodness, no - I'm just here to help you out of those little etiquette dilemmas. So here goes: a quick lesson in etiquette. The sh*t you might actually need to know.]

I’m going to be honest: my last break up was over four years ago. So when my editor suggested I do a Miss Manners piece on break ups (“because we all suck so badly at that”), I really had to rack my brains for “polite” ways to conduct a break up. What I found was:

There is no polite way to break up with someone.

Yes, the cold, hard truth is, breaking up with someone is dirty business and – unless the relationship really wasn’t that serious – one of you is bound to end up looking like a mess. While there is no set in stone way of saying, “Hey, it’s over,” or “Sorry but I’m leaving you for your brother,” there are some more or less common sense rules to abide to: Read More »