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Question?! Answer: TuffyLuv@collegecandy.com. Annnnnd go.

Dear Tuffy Luv,
I’ve been with my boyfriend for about six months now. When we first got together it was because of a drunken hook-up and I wasn’t really into him. He pursued me for a couple of months until I decided to give in and give the relationship thing a try with him. He is the first guy I’ve ever been in a relationship with, and I’m the first girl he’s ever had a serious relationship with, and after a while we developed deep feelings for each other. Told each other we loved one another and all of that. Things were going great until we got into a big fight over him being inconsiderate, he made me wait for three hours at a place that I was supposed to pick him up at but turns out he was already home sleeping the whole time. Instead of just getting the argument out of our systems, all I wanted was for him to apologize for not calling me to let me know, he went back to sleep mad and I went home mad. The next day he called and broke up with me because he just doesn’t feel he belongs in relationships. When I went over to his house to talk about it with him we ended up getting back together, the breakup lasted a whole 8 hours. He told me it was because he’d never been in a serious relationship before and the whole idea freaked him out but that he realized he truly does love me and wants to be with me.

Well, ever since then I’ve been scared to death that he’s going to break up with me again. I’m paranoid of his ex-girlfriend, whom he still speaks to occasionally, and his friends that are girls who I know he’s had feelings for in the past. We’re two really different people and I’m afraid he’ll realize that maybe he’d be happier with someone more like him. I was a virgin when we got together, he was not, so I’m obviously not as sexually experienced as him or the other girls he’s slept with, so I’m also afraid of not keeping him sexually satisfied. Though we do have sex at least once a day, I’m not scared he’s lost interest, just that maybe his exes are better, they’re into the same things as him, and that he’d go elsewhere for that satisfaction.

I told him how I was scared of losing him and that I felt like at any second he would just change his mind again. He just rolled his eyes and told me if he didn’t want to be with me, he wouldn’t be with me. He told me he loves me but sometimes when I say it to him he’ll say “I like you, too.” He says that it’s because he doesn’t think it should be said too much, that the word freaks him out and that I know he loves me so it shouldn’t bother me. He always wants me to give him reasons why I love him and I tell him. However whenever I ask him he replies with “I don’t know how to explain it. I just do.” I just need a little reassurance from him but I’m not sure how to talk to him about it because I don’t want to appear needy and psycho. What should I do?

– Paranoid girlfriend 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 »