Think you can stay friends with your ex and still move on after a breakup? Think again. Most people who try to stay friends with their ex are just doing so in hopes of either rekindling the relationship or using the other person as a crutch until someone better comes along. What happens when it’s the other person who moves on first? Ouch!
To successfully survive and thrive after a breakup, savvy breakup survivors know that they can’t heal and move on without a little help from their friends. And that’s where the Boohoo Crew comes in. Part cheerleader, part therapist, your Boohoo Crew should be reliable, patient, and consist of at least three friends for round-the-clock supervision and support.
I love my mom. But I think I’m going to have to cut her loose. Apparently, she’s destroying my love life. Lots of women have mothers who nag them about their figures, wonder aloud why their daughters haven’t found a decent fella or tsk disapprovingly about the way they raise their kids. Not mine. For the most part, my mother leaves me to my own devices. Or so I thought. According to a study by the University of Western Australia, the overt ways mothers try to influence their daughters’ personal lives don’t hold a candle to their more dire biological hand-me-downs. Scientists studied the DNA of 150 college students and found “the more varied [her] genes…the more boyfriends a woman was likely to have,” the assumption being genetic variation leads to attraction.
7 Reasons You Should Believe in Love Even If You're Not In It
Last fall, I had drinks with Kevin, a sensuous though somewhat slippery restaurateur I briefly dated years back in New York. We talked about our latest love interests and while I went on ecstatically about my man’s creativity, his devilish wit, the sexy way his lip curled when he smiled, Kevin was a bit ho hum about his new lady friend. “She’s pretty,” he said. “We have similar backgrounds, our working lives are compatible.” With a casual shrug of his shoulders, he concluded, “she fits.” Kevin said nothing about love, intimacy or how his loins stirred when his gal walked into the room. He only said she fits.
If you’d like to figure out what’s wrong with you relationship-wise, don’t read a self-help book. Get an online bank account. Every time I log into my checking account, I’m asked a “security question,” the answer to which only I’m supposed to know, so the bank can confirm my identity. Thus far, the only question the bank has asked me upon logging in is the name of my first boyfriend. And what a joy it is to be forced to recall that relationship on a regular basis.
What single women hate to hear and what you had to say in response.
“You know what your problem is?” asked Dave. Boy, do I love conversations that begin with this question. Nothing’s more fun than having a know-it-all friend instruct you on the failings of your existence. Fortunately, I wasn’t on the other end of Dave’s question. My friend Kim was. She was complaining about her romantic life and asking our friend Dave for advice. The issue was sex appeal and how Kim simply oozes with it. Men are drawn to her like she’s a hunk of steel and they’ve got magnets in their pants. She has few limits, no fears and porn star levels of experience. On the outside, she’s a minx. But on the inside she’s broken-hearted. Kim feels deeply and wants something real. But few men she meets see her as relationship material. Thus, Dave was educating us over a bottle of scotch. “Your problem,” he said. “Is that men are intimidated by sexually assertive women.”
“You know what your problem is?” asked Dave. Boy, do I love conversations that begin with this question. Nothing’s more fun than having a know-it-all friend instruct you on the failings of your existence. Fortunately, I wasn’t on the other end of Dave’s question. My friend Kim was. She was complaining about her romantic life and asking our friend Dave for advice. The issue was sex appeal and how Kim simply oozes with it. Men are drawn to her like she’s a hunk of steel and they’ve got magnets in their pants. She has few limits, no fears and porn star levels of experience. On the outside, she’s a minx. But on the inside she’s broken-hearted. Kim feels deeply and wants something real. But few men she meets see her as relationship material. Thus, Dave was educating us over a bottle of scotch. “Your problem,” he said. “Is that men are intimidated by sexually assertive women.”
A guy sitting next to me on the bus the other day kept looking over my shoulder to check out the book on my lap. When I stuffed it in my bag, he asked, “what are you reading?” Slightly embarrassed, I told him, “it’s called, Love, an Inner Connection.” “What’s it about?” Self-help books and pseudo-spiritual tomes I’ve always considered hokey. Human beings are fantastically complicated, a lifetime isn’t long enough to discover all the nooks and crannies in one person’s psyche. Merge two of these creatures in a relationship and they’d need at least a couple centuries to figure one another out. For every self-help “rule” about relating, you’ll find a thousand situations that break it. So, when a friend suggested Love, an Inner Connection, my first reaction was to gag. But since the book’s based in Jungian psychology and ancient Chinese philosophy, I gave it a whirl. Here’s the gist: there’s the “essential” self and the ego. The
Divorced men have had the practice of a first marriage—so they're better at the second time around.
Recently, I met up with a couple old friends, a married woman and a single gal enjoying the fruits of a new romance. I told them about all my turbulent relationships, joking about the slackers and bad boys, the commitment-phobes and jerky alpha-males who’d come into my life since we’d last seen each other. “Oh, I’ve been there loads of times,” my married friend said after I described my most recent run-in with a sexy, relationship-shy stoner. She’d been there loads of times? Shocking. Married women, especially once they’re moms, seem to me so organized and fulfilled, it’s hard to imagine any of these poised individuals knocking around with losers. But once I thought about it, I remembered all the other married women I know who’ve admitted to the same sordid pasts. My friend Sonya’s husband is a successful TV producer with a taste for fine wine, classical music, and most interestingly, fidelity. But
A few years ago, I saw a BBC documentary about phobias in which an adult woman was being treated for her lifelong, incapacitating fear of birds. Now, fear of heights, closed-in spaces, lawn mowers, I understand. But who’s ever ended up in a hospital or morgue after suffering an aerial assault from a band of militant pigeons? In Ohio where I grew up, flocks of geese were shot every spring because they crapped everywhere and ate berries out of old ladies’ gardens. Not because of the frequency with which they were implicated in human maulings.
Got a question about dating? YourTango's got your answer. In fact, we have a whole section of the site dedicated to advice and personal stories about dating.
Meghan McCain is in a quandary. Since the election ended her dating life has not been easy. Some dates have voted for Barack Obama and it's awkward. Some dates have man-crushes on her dad, John McCain. And some dates seem to have crushes on her mother, Cindy McCain. Quite a quandary. Plus, dating after college has not been easy. We've put together advice for her.
Many black women are quick to point out that there are no good single black men out here. It turns out, they might actually be right, which also may explain why more black women remain unmarried than white women. Forty-two-percent of black women have never been married, compared to 21% of white woman, according to national statistics. That’s double, chicks!