There it was, at the bottom of the tan purse I never wear: a grocery list from another life. Toothpaste Frozen dinners Diet Coke Ice cream Cheez-Its Oatmeal cookies I haven’t thought of buying Cheez-Its or oatmeal cookies since the day I moved out of your house. This list was pre-breakup. A year ago, finding this list would have been
Read moreI broke up with a serious boyfriend last year. Our relationship was really complicated. Our breakup wasn’t. When we ended it, we were both of the same opinion that it was over. With initial reluctance, I acknowledged to myself that I was getting less than I wanted or deserved from the relationship. With the honesty that was typical of his
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So, maybe that’s how it really works:
Women get over their exes by not having sex with them. Because sex involves those creepy love hormones for women.
And men get over their exes by not talking intimately with them. Because talking involves those creepy love hormones for men.
Read moreWhen my friend is going through a breakup, it becomes my personal mission to mend her figurative heart. The quantity of chocolate ice cream at the supermarket diminishes noticeably. The local Blockbuster’s angry-girl-loses-guy-but-then-meets-even-cuter-one genre experiences a huge spike in rentals. I have all the right tools to combat my friend’s newly acquired depression…. Except the verbal skills. Some people are
Read moreReader Jaberkaty made a great suggestion for an article: What can friends and family do when someone close to them is going through a bad breakup? Honestly, I don’t have the answers, and I doubt that any single person can. So, this might be the perfect opportunity to get some reader feedback…. For those of you who’ve been through a
Read moreWe get lots of generic advice when we break up. “You’ll get through it.” “You’re better off.” “Don’t worry, you’ll find the One.” But no one ever tells us how to get through the pain, the loneliness, the emptiness. Whether the breakup is mutual, shocking, brutal, or civil, it sucks. So what do we do? Blast “I Will Survive” until
Read moreI hate breaking up with someone. I really do. Call me spineless, tell me to grow a pair, I get it. I just have this need to be the “good guy” (or at least deceive myself that I am). I feel better when I’m the poor sap who gets broken up with, rather than the a-hole who dumps an awesome
Read moreAs the cliché generalizes so succinctly, breaking up is hard to do. Especially when you don’t know if it’s the right decision…. I would like to announce that I just experienced the most civil breakup in the annals of breakups. Seriously, if Gandhi and Mother Theresa had been an estranged couple, they wouldn’t have done a better job. It was
Read moreI am just one of the hundreds of thousands of travelers stranded by Iceland’s volcano, Eyjafjallajokull, or as I like to call it, “Eyja<expletive><expletive>.” But, I am part of an even bigger fraternity. I am just one of the billions of people who have been stranded, dumped and rejected. You may ask what these two groups have in common. Well,
Read moreFriendship. It’s so many wonderful things. It’s caring. It’s affection. It’s laughter and inside jokes. It’s also the last bastion of the freshly dumped. After all, how many breakup conversations include the phrase, “can we just be friends?” So why do we go along with such a “request”? Are we that desperate? Do we get so attached that we’re willing
Read moreThe sneak-a-break is the ultimate indulgence of the chronically passive-aggressive. It’s the Red Ryder carbine-action, two-hundred-shot range model on the Christmas list of cowardice. The sneak-a-break occurs when the person you’re dating wants to break up, but instead of using a backbone, manipulates you into doing the breakup. The human fillet accomplishes this by turning antagonistic, needy, petty, pernicious, surly, edgy, sleazy, queasy, tipsy, dizzy, remorseful, or whatever it takes to drive you away.
Read moreHave you ever dated someone whose personality suddenly and inexplicably changes? Someone who transforms from laid-back and easy-going to difficult and argumentative, seemingly without reason? Or someone who goes from caring and available to cold and distanced in the blink of an eye? If you have, there’s a good chance that you were the victim of what I call a
Read moreWhen I broke up with the last guy I was dating, I tried to be polite about it. I told him he was nice, cute and fantastic—and he replied with a low blow about my “lack of stability.” Eww. He hurt my feelings, especially since I had tried to be amiable. I reacted by doing what I swore I would
Read moreI felt complete awe when one of my best friends in college, who’d had a distant crush on a law student we referred to as Tattoo Boy, actually went home with him one night after a random encounter in a bar. I was less thrilled when she told me how he’d said good-bye the next morning: “Call me. My number
Read moreStop procrastinating and initiate that difficult conversation with your partner. If you fail to maintain a line of communication, your relationship may be doomed to be unfulfilling (at the very least) or to failure (at the very worst).
Read moreThe next time you consider getting back together with an ex, remember the lesson that your “tough love” friends will likely cram down your throat: There’s no crying the second time around.
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