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. Read More »

I am having the best sex of my life. My boyfriend is absolutely amazing. He loves to make me orgasm and is always finding new ways to do it. I’m the luckiest girl in the world.

I’m also the most neurotic girl in the world, so I can’t help thinking: could this be a bad thing? What if I never find a man who can please me like he does? What if I am now completely spoiled and never enjoy sex as much with anyone else?

I honestly wouldn’t mind not having sex with anyone else for the rest of my life, but I know that’s not very practical. It’s unlikely I’ve met the person I’ll spend the rest of my life with at 20 years old. The fact that he’s moving across the country in a week only makes our eventual break up even more imminent. Read More »

Kristen Stewart or Adam Lambert? Go!

Moving on doesn’t always have to be bad.

Gossip is good for your health.

Betty White loves beer pong.

Lady Gaga puts on pants…sorta.

We hate Kristen Cavillari, but we love this look.

We are the Facebook generation.  With this glorious title comes many responsibilities (well, sort of): we must immediately inform our friends of any and all actions we take and decisions we make during our day.  This includes what TV show we’re watching, what we are eating, the status of our relationships and, subsequently, our break-ups.

Now that Facebook is in the picture, there is a whole new slew of issues we must face when dealing with a heartbreaking, make-you-wanna-sit-in-your-room-alone-crying-to-sappy-music breakups.

Before Facebook (BF): You break it off with your lover and tell everyone that you ended it, so you need your besties and Ben & Jerry’s, like, stat.
After Facebook (AF): You break it off with your lover and they change their relationship status first, making it look like it was their decision.  Which it was not. Ok, maybe it was, but did they have to change that so quickly? Now you’re getting 45 FB messages and wall posts asking if you are OK.

BF: You rip up all your pictures, cutting out your ex’s face and even burning the particularly painful ones.  Ah, satisfaction.
AF: You untag the 1,938 pictures of you guys as a couple.  It takes four hours and is in no way satisfying because there is a sad lack of sharp objects and fire. And the pictures are still fully intact.

BF: You carefully orchestrate a plan to “accidentally” be at the same social function as your ex, looking fabulous and with what looks like the next Calvin Klein underwear model.
AF: You post pictures from a bender with your besties, carefully editing out the embarrassing bits (oh, thousands) and making sure to post an appropriate, make-him-jealous Facebook status (“Sooo tired but had the best time EVER last night!! <3 Mike” Note: Mike is not your ex). Read More »

You date, you learn. And you’d think that the people you date will just vanish of the face off the earth, because it’s only polite, right? You dealt with the waves of nausea and anxiety during the end-phase, and so they should bother you no longer.

“Should” being the key word.

I’m a fan of amicably parting ways, sure, but when you pointedly don’t is the guaranteed time that son of a bitch will come back to haunt you. So as a preventative measure you weed them out. You try to be proactive and delete them from your phone—number, email, all of it, and even those text messages and voicemails you like to listen to.

Have faith, you’ll find a new distraction, let down your guard because this one’s different, and the cycle can repeat itself all over again. Joy. In any case, you make moves and move on, and the ex, or pseudo-ex, or whatever you called him is but a distant memory.

If you haven’t guessed by now, the weeding out can bite you in the ass. Please, dear readers, learn from my mistakes. Read More »

I know I’m lucky. Five of my best friends from childhood live within 5 minutes of me in the city. Most of us have been friends for 17 years (wow, that number scares me). I’m not going to lie and say it’s been easy for all of us to remain friends.

We all split up for 4 years of college, sometimes had sporadic contact, and occasionally went months without talking to each other.

Even now, living so close, sometimes a month or two will go by and we’ll realize we haven’t hung out. We’ve all grown into much different people than we were as kids, and if we met today, we wouldn’t necessarily all be the best of friends. But we grew up together and have enough in common that we’ve chosen to remain friends.

Key phrase: We grew up together.

In addition to my close childhood friends, I’ve collected friends from college and from post-college as well. These people didn’t know me as I was learning my multiplication tables, but they got to know me as a person much more like the one I am today. They chose to be friends with me, and not the childhood version of me.

I sometimes think about those friends from my past that I didn’t keep in touch with. Those girls I once referred to as my best friends. One in particular, I was best friends with from kindergarten all the way to 10th grade, when we slowly started drifting apart. We had sporadic contact in college, as in, “Oh my God, we so totally need to hang out!!” but of course we never did. Sometimes I get seriously sad thinking that someone who once knew me better than anyone else has no idea about what I’m like now. Sometimes I wonder why we let our friendship go when we had so much history together. Read More »

You know it’s wrong, but when you see your ex across the room for the first time since the big breakup/clothing exchange, rollin’ around in the sheets seems like the best idea in the world. You convince yourself that it will be fun, just this once, and that you both know what the deal is so there is nothing to lose.

But there is. And even the dudes agree.

If you are considering Ex Sex, read on. No one – male or female – thinks it’s a smart move. And trust us; we too thought it was brilliant at one point, but we learned our lesson and you should learn from it too.

He Said:

When you first break up, hooking up with your ex seems like the best thing possible, a naughty glimmer of hope in a dark sea of suckitude. What was your stupid girlfriend suddenly blooms into a beacon of sexiness. She dresses better, smiles more, never grills you about hanging out with your boys, doesn’t complain about what you’re wearing–even her boobs look bigger! It’s like breaking up was exactly what your mutual sex life—and your relationship–needed.

But it’s a trap.

A number of outcomes are likely. First, if it lasts more than a couple of hot nights, you soon fall back into the same, frustrating routines. Instead of just hooking up, you’re going to dinner with her grandma and shopping for crap you don’t care about. The arguing starts, and she’s once again lost that certain something. Basically, you’re back together-whether you admit it or not–and it sucks just as much as it did in the first place. Read More »

I got fired. It came out of nowhere, like a ton of bricks on my head. I was called in for a meeting with my supervisor and the head of the company on a Thursday morning, and everyone (myself included) actually thought I was getting promoted! I had been doing so well, and my supervisor had just told me the day before how well I was handling the work.

And then? Bam. Fired. Jobless. Let go only 2 months into my very first full-time salary-and-benefits job out of college.

What I didn’t realize about being fired is that it feels exactly like a breakup.

I went home and curled up under my duvet in the middle of the afternoon, and all I could do is replay the breakup in my head. Instead of “I think we should see other people” it was “We are going to have to terminate you, effective immediately”. I could picture my boss’s face in my head, and it brought me to tears each time. Just like a breakup, I couldn’t eat or sleep or think about anything else. In vain I tried to distract myself by downloading and watching episodes of Gossip Girl.

A few days later, when I finally dragged myself out of bed, I came to realize that I probably wouldn’t see most of my ex-coworkers again, kind of like how you never get to see your ex-boyfriend’s cool friends after the breakup. Too awkward. But I loved my co-workers! I can’t believe I don’t get to hang out with any more! And of course I wouldn’t be able to hang out in the neighborhood where my old office was, for fear of running into my ex-boss, or just being overwhelmed with negative memories. This thought affected me so much I almost broke down in tears again just thinking about how I wouldn’t be able to go to the local DELI again. The deli! I was clearly losing it. Read More »

Alfred Lord Tennyson, I wholeheartedly disagree with you.

I was 42 miles away from home on the night that I nearly killed myself.

I don’t remember what time it was; only that it was the very early morning of May 27 and that any warmth that had lingered from the daylight hours into the evening of May 26 had been driven out by the pre-sunrise chill.

I had just celebrated my 21st birthday and I was standing with a knife against my chest eight feet and two years away from the spot where the ex said, “I love you” for the first time. He was in another part of his house telling my friend probably something similar to what he’d once told me.

My life has been all about the experience, whether living them out or encouraging others to have their own — the crazier the better. Because no experience is too small, I feel a certain a sense of achievement in knowing that I have lived through this life of mine so far.

And love itself is crazy – it can potentially lead you to speak, think and act in ways that you once thought unthinkable. It can be atmospheric and humbling all at once. Depending on the type that you have, love can be your foundation or your salvation or it can emotionally and mentally cripple you.

So though I say all of that and despite the fact that I know that regret is a waste of time, even this experience junky feels some regret in remembering the ex whose love I wished I’d never known. Read More »

When I first glanced at the title of a recent article from the UK’s Daily Mirror, I brushed it off and figured that “Think like a man.. and be happier, healthier and slimmer” was another cheesy piece that was not applicable. But, after reading through it and giving the tips some thought, it actually doesn’t sound so bad.

See what you think:

THEY DON’T DIET

“But men don’t really diet,” says nutritionist Carina Norris. “They rarely attach emotion to food and they tend to listen to their bodies. When they’re hungry, they eat. When they’re not, they don’t. And if they fancy steak and chips, they go ahead. Whereas women eat when they’re sad, lonely and bored, and not just because they’re hungry. Women also avoid ‘bad’ foods and stick to ‘good’ ones, then feel dissatisfied, which can lead to bingeing.”

What to do: Don’t make any foods off limits and listen to your body’s hunger needs.

THEY EXERCISE

“Pictures of Posh’s dimpled legs prove that dieting alone won’t keep you toned. Women are more likely to diet to stay slim, than exercise. This means they don’t have any lean muscle, so they don’t burn as many calories as men, and can end up with sagging skin.”

What to do: Make sure you are mixing cardio and weight-lifting. Don’t be scared of “bulking up.” Read More »