"Ok, so I'm on top. What do I do now!?"

Losing your virginity is huge. It’s been built up since the birds and the bees talk, and everyone you know gives you a different description of what it’s actually going to be like.

Grandma preaches about how she waited for marriage and how the only man she ever slept with was your grandfather, which kept her from getting those dirty diseases the youngsters are getting these days. Your parents just beg you to wait for college when you’re out of their house, and protect yourself so you aren’t bringing home their grandchildren on your winter break. Then there’s your slutty friend who boasted about how great it was and had all the boys following her through the halls of high school.

But when we sit down and look back on how it actually was when we decided to lose our virginity, it isn’t easily summed up into one simple tip or anecdote. It was more like a 30-minute (if you were one of the lucky ones) progression into womanhood.

After reading The Frisky’s perspective on the stages men go through when losing their virginity, I was not only enlightened (seriously, who knew guys thought so much?!), but it got me thinking of my own first time and the stages I went through as it was all goin’ down.

Perhaps you can relate…

Apprehension
I’ve been planning this moment forever and the day is finally here. My hands are clammy and I’m going back and forth between clenching my vagina as if trying to ward off the impending penetration and dreaming about how romantic it will all be (based solely on my weekly viewing of The Notebook). When the time comes, I’m wearing my sexiest pair of undies but, ugh, why do my boobs flop out to the side like that when I’m laying on my back? And am I doing this right? Should I be making more noises? Does this position make me look fat? Suck it in. SUCK. IT. IN.

The Decline
About 15 minutes into it, I am blindsided by a flood of emotion that comes out of nowhere. Am I…no wait…that is NOT a tear! Omg, it is a tear. I’m crying. This can’t be happening. It’s okay, he doesn’t notice. Just pretend it’s sweat. But why should I be ashamed? It’s not my fault I have a surge of estrogen that suddenly reminds me of the magnitude of the situation. It’s momentous and life changing. Do I love you? Should we get married? Omg, did I just say I love you out loud!? I don’t think he heard me. Say something dirty to cover it up! Wait! Do I love him? No! Maybe? No. Okay, maybe I do. Damn you, emotions. Okay, sanity regained. Let’s just do this.

Mass Chaos
Is this how it’s supposed to go? This feels…weird. Wait, what am I doing? OW! Did something just pop? That did NOT feel good! What are my parents going to think? They’re totally gonna know. My mom’s going to tell grandma; I’ll never be able to show my face at Christmas dinner. Why the hell am I thinking about grandma right now? EW! Is the condom still on? I don’t feel it. Omg, I’m going to get pregnant. I really have to pee. I think I am going to pee. I cannot hold it in. This is a nightmare. Oh wait, that doesn’t feel half bad… Hey, I kinda like this. Keep doing that. Make noises so he knows you like it. Mmmm.

Triumph
I finally did it. I’m no longer “the virgin” of the group, which automatically disabled me from every girl chat about sex, men and late night rendezvous’. I’m not going to deny it, I feel great. I’m a real woman now! Perhaps there is a little physical damage, I’m almost positive I am going to be walking like I spent the night horseback riding come tomorrow morning, but mentally I couldn’t feel better. Oh wait. Go pee. But cover up; he doesn’t need to see your cellulite. Wait. Stop being crazy. You guys just had sex. OMG. I just had sex! My friends are totally gonna freak when I tell them. They need to know immediately. Ok, he’s facing the other way. Is he sleeping? WTF? Whatever, just grab the Blackberry and bring it to bathroom. Mass texting is in order!

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Dakota Fanning wins the big prize.

What’s wrong with Elton John!?

Is fear preventing you from finding love?

Mel Gibson’s got another baby.

Robert Pattinson opens up to Vanity Fair (and looks really hot doin’ it).

Question for Tuffaleh?! Email her at TuffyLuv@collegecandy.com and get that shiz answered!

Dear Tuffy Luv,

I have a wonderful, sweet boyfriend who I’ve been with for over a year. We were friends at first, and I always liked him from the moment we met freshman year (I’m a junior now) when we hooked up a few times casually but then seriously got together a year later. Things have been great so far but there’s one big problem: I’m very dependent on him. I try to spend as much time as I can with him, and although I have a close group of friends and get good grades, I put him as my number one priority. He doesn’t do that. He is involved in a lot of stuff outside of me, and even his friends have expressed that they want him to spend less time with me and more with them.

But Tuffy, I get anxious when he leaves me. We sleep together every night and I have gotten upset to the point of crying when I have to say goodbye to him in the morning. If he goes on vacation with his family or is away for long periods of time, I miss him terribly. I’m seriously attached, and I know it’s unhealthy. Help!

Separation Anxiety Girl

Dear SAP,

Honey, on the one hand, I want to say this is very sweet. You obviously really love this guy (and if he’s sleeping with you every single night of college, he probably loves you too) and it’s always nice to see.

BUT! Like you said, this ain’t healthy.

The good news is, you’re very, very close to a great relationship. You guys already get along, you’re happy, you’re loving, and you’re glowing with love and all that crap. All you have to fix is this one little issue and you’re set.
So here’s what you do: Make a list of things you like to do. Cross everything that he also likes to do or that you do with him off the list. What’s left?

Take the activities that are left on your list and schedule yourself to do at least one of them every week. Set aside time (say, Tuesday nights and Saturday mornings, or whatever works with your schedule) where you do one of the activities on your list, or you go have time with friends, or you even just have some lil’ ol’ date time with yourself. Boom, you’ve found your independence again. And I promise you will soon realize how much you missed it.

But if there’s nothing on your list after you’ve crossed him off it, you got bigger problems, my friend. In this case, I would advise you to take a little time off from your relationship. It sounds harsh and awful and you would never want to do it but, honey, you have to.  It’s not worth losing yourself in someone else. That’s not love. That’s obsession.

The point is to distinguish yourself from him. See? You can have fun without him. And Tuffster bets that the time you have WITH him will be even better for it.

Best of luck, SAP! Do this for a month and I bet you guys will be better than ever.

Hearts & Skulls,

Tuffy Luv

Me. Crying. For the entire scene.

Call me a sap all you want, but there were tears this week. Real ones.

First they were tears of frustration and anger – crying because the scene that I have been anticipating for weeks, when Rufus and Lily finally discover that Scott is their son, was squished into some 15 second clip where Georgina walks by and breezily mentions it. But then it became tears of happiness as Rufus professed his undying love to Lily and told her to stop getting cold feet and just move them down the aisle already. And then the tears turned to even more happiness and love when Scott and his parents hugged and cried and proved that children given up by their parents at birth really can re-integrate into their previous families twenty years later.

Sounds kind of like a Lifetime movie, but I’ll work with it. Box of tissues in hand.

Sidetrack to Georgina for a second: The only word for her this episode is CREEPY. And I’m not just talking about her whole I-love-Dan-and-I’ll-do-whatever-it-takes-to-get-him-back thing. Is she getting paler and more wide-eyed every episode? I know it suits her overly-involved obsessive personality, but come on, makeup artists – ever hear of bronzer? Maybe if she started reading CollegeCandy she’d learn some much needed makeup tips and how to spot a guy who isn’t into her so she can move on instead of trying to ruin things for him and his superstar, hot, Hilary Duff actress girlfriend. But more importantly, she’d learn a few things about bronzer.

Now back to Rufus and Lily: After tip-toeing around each other, they finally tie the knot at the Brooklyn loft (insert more tears that their perfect garden with perfect flowers in perfect weather didn’t get to happen). Jenny made the gorgeous wedding gown, Serena wore some fabulous frock that made her boobs look ridic and Jenny wore….my grandma’s moo moo. I wept for her stylists.

We all know that no big event on the Upper East Side could ever run smoothly and a Lily Bass wedding is no exception. Even before the big “this is your son” debacle, we finally learned that Carter Basin scammed the Buckleys into paying off his debts. But last we saw, his gorgeous body and that face-so-hot-it-makes-me-tear-up were sandwiched between two very large Texans and about to be used to pay back his bookie fees. Apparently Southern families never forget. And apparently those Southern girls will do anything to help their families, and that includes using one poor Nate Archibald. Poor kid, he really thought that Brie was falling for him. He should have listened to the astonishing, gorgeous, please-let-me-be her Blair Waldorf.

“No girl is that nice.”

And no other girl would get an amazing Chuck Bass massage, a moment I watched with tears in my eyes since my boyfriend doesn’t take cross-continental massage technique lessons.

Well, at least I’m not Carter Basin. Homeboy’s in for some serious pain. We’ll just have to see how it all goes down next week. Until then….

You know you love them.
XOXO.
GGR.
(Gossip Girl Recapper)

I’m a senior in college, single, loving it, and have just as many girlfriends as random sexual escapades (almost). So maybe I’m not having as much consistent sex as I’d like, but I am still getting my fill of lovin.

I am absolutely in love with my girlfriends.

I feel more fulfilled from my friend relationships than I’ve ever had from boyfriends. Maybe that’s not saying too much about my ex’s, but the power of the female friendship amazes me, especially in college.

In high school, I used to be a boyfriend-girl (you know the type). Although I tried to split time between the BF and the BFFs, I definitely ended up sacrificing girl time for the boyfriend. But now, after staying single in college, I never have to make the sacrifice of feeling lonely just because I don’t have a boyfriend. I actually feel more loved, supported, and celebrated through my friends.

I always have someone to laugh with, cry with, and get bagels at 10 in the morning when I’m hungover with. My girlfriends are the perfect boyfriend that doesn’t exist.

Being a single, senior with my chicas is exactly how I want to spend my last year in college.

Besides, who wants to be tied down with a boyfriend for their senior year? Not me, that’s who. I’d rather drink with my girlfriends, hang out with some hotties, and have my nice full bed (and comforter)  all to myself.

What happened to the cutest couple in Hollywood?

Are you a frugal shopper? You could win a $500 shopping spree!

Protect yourself from bank fees!

Guess who’s using drugs again? I’ll give you a hint: LiLo.

Will there be a Gossip Girl threesome?!

Get that boy to love you.

Closure. What does that term actually mean?

From conversations with my girl friends, I’ve deduced that “closure” is when you can finally move on from a failed relationship. My friends have described it as the feeling you get once you can finally put the relationship behind you and say goodbye to an ex for good.

But how do we get there? When does that come? And how do we know? Does closure really mean we have to say goodbye to move on? Does it imply that women must kick someone out of their lives to move on with their own?

Well if so, I’m screwed.

My ex-boyfriend and I have been broken up for years and he is still a sporadic fixture in my life. I met him in elementary school, fell in love with him when I was 16, and now I’m 21 and he is still around. He’s faded into the background a bit, but he’s most definitely still in the picture.

And despite having him around, I am honestly, 100% over him. After a few years of messy friendship and the occasionally stupid hook-up, I finally got over it (hallelujah!) and moved on. I slowly but surely pulled myself together and was happy being single and on my own. After that, I dated and even fell in love again.

However, according to the unwritten Laws of Closure, I am not over him because he is still in my life. My friends are constantly worrying that he’s just trying to get me back and that I need to be rid of him to be truly over him, but that doesn’t seem right or fair to me.

I mean, come on, ladies – can’t we be strong enough to move on from a past relationship without disregarding the ex?

After all, we all learn from every relationship, good or bad, and in some ways are changed by it. It is impossible to be so open with and connected to someone without it altering us. Should we dismiss someone who helps shape who we become? And just because a relationship doesn’t work out, does that mean that no relationship with that person can? Being a boyfriend is a lot different than being a friend; why can’t we get closure and still hold onto the friend?

I’m sure that it’s a whole lot easier to pick up the pieces and move on after a break up without the other person around, but I am proof that it’s possible to move on and have your closure without banishing your ex to the island of failed relationships.

What do you think? What does it take to get a little closure around here?

Oh October Cosmo, how you make me lust for the crisp weather and Fall fashions you print on each page (that I won’t get to experience until mid-October down here in good ol’ humid-ass Florida). I can’t wait to make Katie Lee Joel’s ridiculously scrumptious looking bread pudding, and I found your expose on why Audrina is the new Heidi intellectually stimulating.

Your interview with Megan Fox had me admiring her acting talents (who could forget her as whats-her-name in that one Lindsay Lohan movie ), and getting annoyed with her while she pretended not to know she’s hot. I was beginning to worry about finding material for this month’s Cosmo Says! Then I turned to page 72, so that relationship expert Matt Titus could explain to me “Why He Calls You a Nag When You’re Not.”

Cosmo Says: Because his Mom told him what to do for 18 years, every man will resent doing what their wife or girlfriend asks them to do out of the fear that they will revert back to childhood.

Kari Says: Seriously? I understand that this article is meant to make me LOL (which it did, but I was laughing at it, not with it), however I tend to disagree. It’s one thing when Cosmo’s ladies grossly over-generalize the male population, but dude—you’re throwing your own kind under the bus here! Scientific polling of actual guys (a frat-tastic sophomore and two first year med students) shows that this is BS: guys don’t have a problem doing favors for their s.o.’s (and it doesn’t remind them of their adolescent chore-list).

Cosmo Says: Men know that calling you a nag is hitting way below the belt and will send you straight into mid-life crisis mode.

Kari Says: I don’t care if you call me a nag, but you’re going to keep hearing me repeat myself until you actually do the simple task that I asked of you. Come on, you have to already know this!

Cosmo Says: Yep Kari, you were right. Men totes know “that [they] make your repeated requests necessary in the first place.” Unfortunately, they are physically capable of listening to only 20% of what you say.

Kari Says: Again with the demeaning of the male population. My boyfriend happens to be very attentive and perfectly able to not only listen to 100% of what I say, but comprehend and react to it. Amazing! Please stop portraying all men as semi-developmentally challenged cavemen who respond only to ESPN.

Cosmo Says: Obvi, men can only operate on 24-hour schedules and anything outside of that timeline seems “light years away.” If you really need to get him to do something, compliment his pecs before you ask.

Kari Says: A little flattery never hurts, but a better tactic “to make your request stick in your man’s head” is to write him a Post-it note. If you still feel the need to comment on your boyfriend’s buff-ness, you can emphasize the compliment by patting them and simultaneously slapping your sticky note on there. Much easier to remember.

Cosmo Says: If all else fails and he still calls you a nag, do it yourself.

Kari Says: I’m all for DIY, but if I asked my boyfriend to do something for me, it was for a reason! If it got to the point where he spent so long ignoring my request that I had to start crossing things off his to-do list for him, the end result would definitely be more nagging.

Thank you, Cosmo, for yet another enlightening look into the male mind. I can only imagine what the divorce rate would be in this country if we all heeded this advice.

Wanna be featured in Tuffy Luv’s weekly advice column?! Send your questions to TuffyLuv@collegecandy.com!

Dear Tuffy Luv,

One of my friends is in love with me and I’m having a hard time thinking if I should give him a chance. We tried dating for a month, but I don’t know if I can do it again. The reason why I’m not with him is because he has B.O. He is a wonderful guy but I really can’t see myself being in a relationship with him.  His B.O is really bad that the last time we kiss I wanted to barf. I turned him down once because he can be so conceited and it annoys me, but also because of the B.O. I have told him about how he smells but he just didn’t say anything. I am just so confused whether I should give a chance because I know that he loves me.

Help?
Shadow

Dear Shadow,

Okay, there are much bigger problems here than his BO.

I’m worried, Shadow, that you’re willing to give a chance to a guy you find completely repulsive just because he loves you. Girl, you should NOT be with someone just because HE wants to be with you–you should be with someone because YOU want to be with HIM.

Another issue here, Shadow, is that you throw out there that he’s “conceited.” This is a much bigger problem than the guy’s smell. I mean, smell can be fixed. You can buy him deodorant, or he can suck it up and go to a doctor to see if something is actually wrong (which, by the way, he should do if it’s really that big of a problem). Smell is fixable. Personality flaws that “annoy” you already–not so much. If you notice that already, you’re gonna notice it ten times as much with each passing month. Why start something with a guy who already pisses you off?!

Bottom line: There will be other guys who love you, honey. And some of them–the right ones–will get your love back. Don’t settle for someone you don’t particularly care for. It’ll only end up hurting you both. Especially if he’s stinky.

Hearts & Skulls,

Tuffy Luv