It’s really difficult to be friends with your ex. It’s even more difficult when you had a nasty breakup. Now imagine that nasty breakup inspired a record breaking album…say Adele’s 21. I love this fierce ginger Brit. I rock out to “Set Fire To The Rain” in the shower and throw on “Someone Like You” while I eat a pint of Chunky Monkey. She created an amazing “eff you” album that empowered women to say goodbye to that loser in your life and move on.

Well, Miss Adele has had a little setback and decided to befriend the ex that served as her muse for 21. While we don’t know what went wrong in their relationship and why the breakup was so bad, we do know that it must have been pretty significant to write an entire album dedicated to it. Adele told UK’s The Independent, “We’re becoming friends again. It’s alright, I know what I’m doing. Enough time has gone by. Now with what’s going on with the album around the world, it’s important to be able to share it with him because it’s marvelous what has happened. He changed my life, I can’t deny that. The album helped me get over splitting up with my boyfriend. It helped me forgive and I hope that he has forgiven himself. I’m not boastful but selling 10 million albums for a little girl from Tottenham, I’m very proud of that.”

As someone who has become friends with several exes that I should have stayed away from, I feel that Adele is taking several steps backwards. It’s one thing to forgive your ex in your own heart and mind, but it’s another to make them aware of it. I’ve forgiven this guy after nearly four years, but we’re not friends. I’ve forgiven another ex for being verbally and emotionally abusive, but we’re not friends either. I’m friends with a few guys I “dated,” not with those I had significant relationships with. And especially not with those I had bad breakups with. Read More »

In the last year, it seems as though being single has been my specialty. While flings and hookups have come (pun intended) and gone, and dates have left me with some less than desirable memories, my current single status has remained loyally by my side. I’ve learned a lot in the past year and I’ve discovered that single girls around the world are all in the same fabulous pair of shoes.

Lesson 27: If He Wanted To Be With You, He’d Be With You

So there you are, another Friday night, another Lean Cuisine and bottle of red that you’ve already taken the liberty of gulping down as an appetizer. Content with your night but mostly with your wine buzz, just about to sink into the couch hoping for a marathon of the Real Housewives of Anywhere, your phone’s text message alert rings. Looking at the phone’s screen just long enough to know you should’ve known better than to look, you realize it’s your ex. Of course it is. It’s about that time again right? Every two months or so, he loves to check in with his favorite go-to line, “I’m thinking of you” (or if he’s drunk, “Im thinjing og yoi”) just long enough to make your head spin (on top of your wine buzz).

There will always be that one ex in your life that takes a socially unacceptable amount of joy in confusing the hell out of you. He’ll come out of nowhere and drop bombs about how he misses you but as soon as you call him out on it, he reverts to whatever excuse he’s got in his arsenal. If it’s not an issue with commitment, it’s a new girlfriend or some spiel about needing to “find himself.”

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Jimmy Kimmel has deemed November 17^th National Unfriend Day.  Yes, he’s talking Facebook and he’s insisting that you don’t really have 763 “friends” in real life, so why should you online?  Time to trim the fat, people!

Initially I thought this was a great idea.  Eliminating all those random welcome week acquaintances and sophomore year World Civ group project people would be pretty great.  I mean, seriously, who are these people anyway?  Do I care that your sister just had a baby?  Do I want to know what movie you watched last night with your mom?  Should you be posting pictures of your new tramp stamp?  Hell no.

But upon thinking some more, hitting that “unfriend” button could induce a sort of high.  It would start with people you’ve never heard of, increase to the ones you shared a few classes with, and end when you’ve cut all online ties to ex-boyfriends and old hook-ups.  Holy batman, you can’t stalk them anymore!  You can’t see if their new girlfriend is prettier than you!  You can’t know if they’re posting mysterious song lyrics that may or may not point to the beautiful moment you shared in the back of the bar last Thursday night when his hand was up your shirt!  What have you done!?

While I don’t think you should skip this new holiday altogether, I encourage you to observe it with a modicum of restrain.  Here’s a cheat sheet on who to delete now and who to keep around for a little longer:

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I hate my exes. Mostly because I’m not even sure I can call them my exes. You see, in the world of the eternally single, you rack up a lot of blurry relationships with people. We go on dates, but we’re not dating. We’re dating, but we’re not together. We’re together, but he’s not my boyfriend. We make out every Tuesday, Thursday, and third Friday of the month, but that’s it.

It’s bad enough when it’s occurring, but when the sordid, undefinable tryst ends…you don’t even know how to bitch about them! Man, that “guy who I used to sometimes make out with (and one time I think we went on a date, but it was only kind of a date because we didn’t refer to it as one)… really sucks.” God. It takes up more effort than the half assed relationship ever did.

The worst of it followed me out this week. Earlier in the summer, I had become interested in (obsessed with) a cute, smart, funny dude I had met while I was out. I gave him my number, and we ended up hanging out (making out) a few times. I started to get frustrated when I realized the extent of our hanging out was us making out, so I finally grew a metaphorical pair and told the horny jerk off. And of course with my luck, two days after I stand up for myself by acting like a crazy bitch, I run into him while I’m out with friends. And I thought Chicago was supposed to be a LARGE city…do I need to move to Hong Kong? Read More »

Last Thursday, I was craving a chicken caesar salad. I had half an hour before my lifeguarding shift started, and Sunset Groceries deli-fresh salad bar was calling my name.  I thought, “Hey, I’ll just run in, scoop up one of those pre-made containers with the Parmesan shavings already rationed out, and go to work.” At the time, it didn’t even register that I was rocking my navy blue one-piece, with GUARD embroidered across the chest. Waistband rolled Soffes? Why not, it’s not like I was going to see anyone worth impressing in the deli line. Thursday at 1:30 PM was prime time for soccer moms, not soccer players.

Weaving in and out of the deli displays, my salad search came up empty-handed. Lunchables, guacamole, pineapple chunks, but no grilled chicken-y goodness. I finished a few more unsuccessful laps before surrendering myself to the deli line. Maybe the salads were just so delicious that they hid them behind the counter, I reasoned, a treat for the persistent customers. Besides, I needed to get to work. There were lives to be guarded, flip flop tans to perfect.

“Number 96?”

I looked up. HOLY CRAP. I blinked. HOLY FREAKING HELLA CRAP. There, behind the deli counter, sporting a white apron and what appeared to be an ill-fitting hairnet, stood my Big Ex. The one I had not seen since our drawn-out, emotionally-draining, mentally-exhausting December break-up.  Read More »

Jennifer Aniston is reportedly bringing her boyfriend, John Mayer, as her date to the Academy Awards this Sunday, which has everybody talking about what’s going to happen when/if they run into Brangelina on the red carpet.  It’s the first time Jen, Brad, and Angelina have been in the same room together since Jen & Brad’s divorce, so will it be totally awkward?  Will Jen and Angelina get into a hair-pulling-roll-on-the-carpet catfight?  Or will they totally ignore each other?

We’ll have to wait till Sunday to see what happens, but this whole possible situation got me thinking how any of us could have (or already have) that inevitable run-in with an ex and his new love, and what we should and shouldn’t do when we find ourselves in the same situation:

DON’T run in the opposite direction – Chances are if you saw him, he saw you too. Running away looks pathetic, awkward and could result in injury. Trust me on this one. The stress of the sitch may cause blindness and that poor freshman walking behind you falls to the ground a lot faster and harder than you’d think.

DO look good – What better way to make the guy feel like the a-hole he is than by reminding him what he’s missing out on?  Of course, there’s always the chance that you’re going to run into him when you’re least expecting it, like at Starbucks first thing in the morning before you’ve had a chance to shower and you’re still wearing sweatpants and last night’s makeup.  In that case, just be extra charming and act like nothing is bothering you at all, making him wonder why he let you go in the first place and his new girl wonder why she isn’t as laid back and cool as you are. (Also, hold onto that coffee really tight; your nerves could get the best of you and dumping a scalding hot Mocha on the new girl could not only be seen as a little insensitive, but is also a waste of some damn good coffee.) Read More »

Jennifer Aniston is reportedly bringing her boyfriend, John Mayer, as her date to the Academy Awards this Sunday, which has everybody talking about what’s going to happen when/if they run into Brangelina on the red carpet.  It’s the first time Jen, Brad, and Angelina have been in the same room together since Jen & Brad’s divorce, so will it be totally awkward?  Will Jen and Angelina get into a hair-pulling-roll-on-the-carpet catfight?  Or will they totally ignore each other?

We’ll have to wait till Sunday to see what happens, but this whole possible situation got me thinking how any of us could have (or already have) that inevitable run-in with an ex and his new love, and what we should and shouldn’t do when we find ourselves in the same situation:

DON’T run in the opposite direction – Chances are if you saw him, he saw you too. Running away looks pathetic, awkward and could result in injury. Trust me on this one. The stress of the sitch may cause blindness and that poor freshman walking behind you falls to the ground a lot faster and harder than you’d think.

DO look good – What better way to make the guy feel like the a-hole he is than by reminding him what he’s missing out on?  Of course, there’s always the chance that you’re going to run into him when you’re least expecting it, like at Starbucks first thing in the morning before you’ve had a chance to shower and you’re still wearing sweatpants and last night’s makeup. In that case, just be extra charming and act like nothing is bothering you at all, making him wonder why he let you go in the first place and his new girl wonder why she isn’t as laid back and cool as you are. (Also, hold onto that coffee really tight; your nerves could get the best of you and dumping a scalding hot Mocha on the new girl could not only be seen as a little insensitive, but is also a waste of some damn good coffee.) 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 »