One of the hardest parts of being a friend to someone is actually being a friend to someone.

It’s not like when we were little we were taught how to be a friend outside the realms of “sharing is caring.” There are certain sticky situations, like dealing with a friend in a bad or abusive relationship, where no how-to guide can instruct us how to be a true friend.

Standing by as a friend suffering through an unhealthy relationship can be confusing, frustrating, and often scary. How do you support a friend without doing them an injustice? And at what point do you draw the line between supporting and enabling?

One of my best friends is in a horrible relationship that resembles a really bad re-run episode of Degrassi. Read More »

[It's pretty obvious that the average CollegeCandy reader has some very strong opinions. Opinions that she likes to share with everyone on the site. We love a strong woman, so we thought we'd give her a real forum to discuss her thoughts, feelings, and perspectives. Every Friday I'll be featuring a hot topic (like call girls vs mistresses!) and leaving it up to you, the readers, to duke it out. So, read it and get your debate on in the comments section below!]

Ah, the holidays – the food, the lights, the presents, and let’s not forget your family’s warm embrace… of your boyfriend. Yeah, OK, you love the family, and the significant other is a, well, significant part of your life, so it makes sense that at this loving, sharing time of the year to try and bring the two together – or does it?

There are some definite perks to bringing the boy home for the holidays. For one, you get to spend time with your fam without having to give up time with your guy. And why should you have to leave him? After all, he’s a part of your life, which means he’s part of theirs too, and everybody should be grown up enough to get along for a few days. Plus, it’s a perfect time to prove to the family what a great guy he is (if they’re not convinced yet) since spending that much time with him will help them all get to know each other a lot better than over the typical 1-2 hour meet-the-parentals dinner. There’s also the little bonus of having lots of other people around and things going on, so it’s not as much pressure on the guy as a typical trip home might be since everyone’s distracted.

Holiday fun with all the people yo care about, what’s not to love? Read More »

You looove your dog Oliver. He’s your best friend. He is the sweetest, cutest, fluffiest, the most dependable, a cuddler, so smart, so friendly to everyone. He is the best dog EVER!

“You just have to meet him,” you find yourself saying to your newest gal pal.

And so she does. She comes over, excited to meet Oliver, thinking she is about to meet the BEST dog ever. Only Oliver isn’t friendly. He isn’t playful and he isn’t sweet. You fully expected him to do that cute thing he does when he curls up on your lap when you guys are watching The Hills and your BFF’s heart to melt like yours does. Only he doesn’t. He walks to the other side of the room, turns his head the other way and lays there like a blob.

Then he poops in her shoe.

“Wow this is so not like him,” you say to your friend, totally embarassed. “Oliver really is a GREAT dog. He never treats people like this. I don’t know what happened!”

Now take your dog’s name and replace it with the name of your close guy friend.

Because this is what happens (minus the shoe-poop…hopefully) when you try to set your GREAT, fantastic, super cuddley, great-personality guy friend up with one of your great, fantastic, adorable gal pals.

Except when she meets him, although great at first, he turns out to be a total d-bag. Because, he is afterall, a guy. And a guy treats his best girl friends a whole lot differently than he does a lot of the girls he meets, even if she is your friend. Read More »

As embarrassing as this is, I must admit, that during my four years in college I, like most college students, had my fair share of random hookups.

Of course, as this was college, these hookups were mostly–well actually–completely fueled by extreme levels of intoxication and in some cases by peer pressure, with my girls telling me, “Oh you should totally hookup with him, he’s so hot.”

It’s not that I didn’t date in college, I did. It was just that the guys who wanted to date me were well, boring. I went out on fancy dates with guys, many of whom I eventually became good pals with, that were not guys I could see myself with long term (and for me, at the time, long term meant at least three months) and more importantly, were not guys I could see myself having sex with long term. Read More »

There is nothing better than meeting – and totally loving – your friend’s boyfriend. You may not think so consciously, but I know deep down everyone fears that they will absolutely hate the boy their best friend falls for.

Either that he will be totally ogre-ish with a unibrow or chest hair that just doesn’t end, or a total dick with pink popped collars and a bracelet. Or, even worse, just an all around asshole.

So when you finally meet the boy of your friend’s dreams and he is totally awesome, it is always cause for one big giant sigh of relief (followed by a night on the town; he probably has awesome friends too, right?).

Well, not always. Not if, like me, you find yourself not only obsessed with friend’s boyfriend, but maybe a teensy tiiiiiiiiiiiiny bit in love with him yourself. That, my friends, is just one craptastic situation. Read More »