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By Catherine Gryp, October 10, 2011 6:00 am

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 devastating. Alongside this list would have come tears, regret and hurt. This slip of paper would have been a painful window into a world where I was part of a “we” who were planning to get married and live happily ever after.

Today, this list is simply a reminder of my past. I feel nostalgic, but not sad. Pensive, but not overwhelmed. And I throw the list away.

I’m (almost) over you.

I’ve created this timeline of my life. There’s pre you – the years until I was 18. There’s you – 18-25. And then there’s post-you, my life after canceling our wedding.

I’m realizing that post-you are some of the best times of my life. I like who I am post-you more than I’ve ever liked myself before.

I’m (almost) over you.

I don’t think of you as often as I used to. In fact, this is probably the least in my adult life I’ve thought about you. Since we started dating when I was 18, it was all you, you, you. I liked you. I loved you. I worried about you. I cared for you. I thought about you. With you, I had some of the most romantic moments of my life. You, you, you.

And then it all came crashing down. You hurt me. You lied to me. You caused me pain. I was angry with you. I couldn’t bring myself to forgive you. I missed you. I yearned for you. I wanted you back. But I didn’t want you back. I wanted my old life with you back. You, you, you.

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By Dennis Hong, September 19, 2011 6:00 am

Photo by Stuart McClymont

I am a stoic. In a new relationship, I tend to stay reserved and guarded. I hold back my feelings, and I definitely don’t let myself fall for someone very easily. At least not until I know for sure that the relationship means something.

Some people, on the other hand, are effusive. In a new relationship, they plunge head-first off the figurative deep end. They bask in the intensity of their feelings, and they are able to fall in love quickly and deeply.

And that’s wonderful. To me, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with embracing new relationships with all your passion.

At the same time, I’ve realized that someone who is capable of falling quickly and deeply in love can be just as capable of falling quickly and deeply out of love. Since we’re invoking clichés, I might as well bring up another:

The flame that burns twice as bright burns half as long.

And this is where passion becomes a problem for the stoic….

We met on a Sunday night. And we were together the next five nights. We just seemed to connect in every way possible, and we couldn’t get enough of each other. On Wednesday, as we stood in the darkness at the beach, watching a group of smelly, slumbering seals, she told me that she was falling for me.

At that moment, I had two epiphanies: 1) Instead of getting freaked out by what she had just said, I realized that these same feelings were welling up within me, too. And 2) even the stench of seal poop can be incredibly romantic in the right setting (and if you’ve ever experienced it, you know that “stench” is an understatement).

Something about the way she looked into my eyes told me that this could be for real. And so, my instincts told me to let my stoicism go.

I did, and I felt myself starting to fall—something that I hadn’t allowed myself to do in years. I even confided in a few close friends the next day that I believed I might have met the woman I was going to marry.

Continue reading 'I Fell In Love Too Hard, Too Soon'»

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By Miss Bonnified, September 12, 2011 6:00 am

Bonnie and Clyde

There’s a book out there entitled He’s Just Not That Into You. You’ve probably heard of it.

I once read that book from cover to cover because I needed something to make me laugh while giving me insight into why I let my last relationship die. I was hoping something in there would explain how a relationship that had started off so promising (in my head, at least) warped  into the living nightmare I was plunged into for almost two years.

Well, the book taught me nothing about that. But, I did pick up a few things that helped me recognize what is now going on with the love of my life.

You see, I didn’t get the early signals that Clyde was really into me. I was too busy being nervous about putting myself waaaay out there on that scary narrow plank known as New Relationship. Thanks to Previous Relationship, I now questioned everything I knew about men.

Clyde is very sure of what he wants, and he goes out to get it. But he’s not prone to talking about his feelings. I, on the other hand, thought that was the only way to communicate.

I also kept thinking our new relationship was going to end at any second, because it was anything but the stuff of Hollywood romance. Well, maybe romantic comedy. What happened was a whirlwind of the kind of activity that could scare any new guy away….

First, I had to move out of my apartment. That meant I had to pack. I suck at packing.

Second, I had to find a new apartment. That meant I was frantically searching for places during the day when I wasn’t working and was super tired by the end of the day when we got to talk on the phone.

Third, I had to shop for furniture. I’d never shopped for furniture. When I first moved back to Los Angeles, I just took random pieces that friends no longer wanted and Frankensteined my apartment together.

Continue reading 'How I Know He’s Just That Into Me'»

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By Dennis Hong, September 4, 2011 3:02 pm

Image by Diane Cook and Len Jenshel

In my dream, she’s my best friend, and I am hers. Whenever I get a piece of great news in my life, she’s the first person I want to tell. Whenever something stressful happens, she’s the first person I think of who can comfort me. I hope to be the same for her.

In my dream, she’s the first person I want to spend time with. And I never feel inclined to blow her off to hang out with someone else—not even a dying friend or family member. (But that’s because I’d probably want her there with me.)

In my dream, I love her, and I know without a doubt that she’s the one I want to be with. In return, she loves me back, and she knows without a doubt that I’m the one she wants to be with. Yet, we accept that life is unpredictable. So, while we may never be able to say with absolute certainty that we will always get along, or even that we will love each other perfectly and unconditionally forever, what matters is that we love each other today, we’ll love each other tomorrow, and we’re going to try our hardest to love each other for the rest of our lives.

Because true love is an ideal that we can only strive towards, not an achievable endpoint that grants us complacency once we’ve reached it.

In my dream, I can tell her anything I want, knowing that she’ll accept me for who I am and won’t judge me if I reveal myself to be less than perfect. In return, I will be open to anything she tells me, and my love for her won’t diminish if she reveals her own imperfections. We never need to hide anything from each other, and we’re comfortable sharing everything about ourselves, even the worst baggage that we carry.

Because, hey, I admit that I haven’t quite reached that pinnacle of human perfection. Then again, neither has she.

Continue reading 'My Not-Quite-So-World-Changing Dream'»

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By Jennifer Witt, August 22, 2011 6:00 am

Time magazine recently published two articles discussing new studies regarding sexual satisfaction, marriage and infidelity. While Time played up the “groundbreaking” nature of the results, I was not surprised. Shortly after my wedding, I came to the conclusion that sex is probably the most important aspect of marriage.

That revelation wasn’t the result of any sexual dysfunction in my relationship, but simply the result of adjusting to being married and to the expectations we all subconsciously harbor about marital bliss and the reality of being committed to someone ’til death do us part.

When I woke up one day to find the new marriage smell worn off, I emerged from the newlywed cocoon so many of us get wrapped up in during the early days of forever. I found my way back to hobbies my husband doesn’t have an interest in and to the uncoupled friends I unintentionally overlooked, because inviting them out always seemed like making them the third wheel. I watched chick flicks by myself and ran errands without him. I started shopping with my mom again.

I wasn’t sad or mad or glad. I just rediscovered the fact that there is a world outside our coupledom that is fun and fulfilling. My emotional and intellectual needs could be met without him being the source of all my contentment.

But after all my girls’ nights out and mother-daughter adventures, I still had one need that could only be met at home, within my marriage: S-E-X.

Hitting me rather abruptly, I realized that out of all the relationship needs, sex is the only one that cannot be met by anyone else other than your spouse. At least not in a socially acceptable context, unless you are polyamorous (which is arguably not socially acceptable, but that’s beside the point).

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By Jennifer Hamilton, August 15, 2011 6:00 am

Image by viZZual via Flickr

I am a very effusive person. For instance, I love sushi. I love my rare lazy afternoons when I get to read a book on the couch. I love Harry Potter (the books, not the movies). I love our barber in the small Italian town where we live. I love my dogs. I love my friends. I love my parents. And I proudly and unabashedly state how much I love these things and people.

Yet I remember a time, when I had first started dating my husband, that “I love you” was the last thing I wanted to say….

Well, let me restate that. I desperately wanted  to say “I love you.” But I didn’t want to undermine the first time I said it to him by blurting it out just after I waxed prosaic over the dumplings at my favorite Chinese restaurant. I remember catching my tongue–ironically a mere week before we actually told each other “I love you”–when he said something funny while we were out with a group of friends.

At that precise moment, I loved him. I wanted to tell him, but I stopped my natural impulse. I had the usual reasons for holding back:

“I don’t want to scare him away.”

“I don’t want to seem desperate.”

“He should be the one to say it first.”

“I don’t want to say it for the first time in front of other people.”

I’m glad I waited. Because when we did finally say it, it was magical.

Continue reading 'When Saying “I Love You” Matters Most'»

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By Catherine Gryp, July 25, 2011 6:00 am

Image by Mystic Musings via Flickr

“I’m 95 percent positive that we’ll be canceling the wedding, and I wanted to see if we could get our deposit back,” I wrote that April day.

This was the wedding venue for which I’d searched for months, the address that was printed eloquently on the invitations that were going out in just one week. This is where, in three short months, I was supposed to say “I do” to the man I had loved for seven years. Yet, here I was, about to cancel our reservation.

I was really 95 percent positive that my life was over. I had just spent days being a crazy-eyed sleuth, searching through emails and internet files, receipts and browsing histories, realizing minute by minute that my fiancé was not the man he said he was.

The lies–big and small–started to stack up. I could almost see them in a pile in front of me. He told me that I now knew everything. Yet, the pile got taller. No, now I knew everything, he claimed, but the pile continued to grow. He stood in front of me and told me that he was sorry, that he had changed, that all he wanted in the world was to marry me. What he didn’t know was that the pile of lies had grown so deep, so tall, it was now a mountain through which I could no longer see him.

I couldn’t go through with the wedding. No amount of work on this relationship would prepare me to put on my ivory, sweetheart dress and walk down that aisle. No amount of couples counseling would make me look past the mountain of lies and see the man that I had loved so deeply.

One evening, we invited his parents over, to tell them that the wedding was off. This beautiful couple, who had been married for forty years, were dumbfounded at our decision. We made it clear that he was to blame for the breakup, but didn’t go into the sordid details of what he had done. It wasn’t their business, and it wasn’t my place to ruin their perception of him.

As angry and as sad as I was, I didn’t want anyone else to see him the way I now did. I wanted to protect them from seeing their own son through the mountain of lies I now saw him through.

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By Miss Bonnified, June 20, 2011 6:00 am

Via Esquire.com

When people hear I’m engaged, the most common question they ask is, “How’s the wedding planning going?”

This question usually leads right into the second most common question:

“So, are you going to let your fiance have a bachelor party?”

This, my chiropractor just asked me, as he was cracking my back and popping my bones back into place last week.

Grunting between pops of my back, I replied, “Of course. Why wouldn’t I?”

Maybe it was because of my answer. Maybe it was because of how fast I answered him. Or maybe it’s  because my chiropractor thinks I’m some kind of wholesome angel and thus utterly innocent to the workings of such shady places. I have no idea, but the next thing he asked me was, “Bonnie, do you know what happens during a bachelor party?”

Buddy. Oh, buddy buddy buddy. I pat his hand (somehow, I felt like I had to comfort him) and said, “Of course, I do.”

All was quiet except for the sound of my bones cracking. After a moment of confused silence, he asked me how I was so okay with it all.

I told him that it’s actually pretty simple, and it all goes back to what I learned in kindergarten….

Continue reading 'Bonnie’s Rules For Kindergarten, Bachelor Parties, And Life In General'»

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By Lady Bee, June 13, 2011 6:00 am

Photo by Dan Grebb via Flickr

Imagine the scene….

A balmy February evening with a luxurious yacht skimming along the water. On board are couples in love. To surprise Jane, John has two tickets for this Valentine’s Day moonlit cruise around the harbor.

On the drive to the dock, John remains tight lipped, frustrating Jane. She anxiously clutches the bouquet of her favorite flowers, wondering what he has planned for her, but knowing that whatever it is, she will like it. He just knows her so well.

They board the yacht with the other happy pairs and then settle together hand-in-hand at the railing, leaning out to the waves as they disappear from view in the boat’s wake. The lights of the city sparkle in the distance, and the sea air blows a gentle caress across Jane’s face and through her hair.

John takes Jane’s hand and leads her to the centre of the deck. Then, he gets down on one knee in front of all the passengers, pulls out The Box with The Ring inside and says, “Jane, I love you, will you marry me?”

With a squeal, she cries, “Yes!”

He rises, slips the ring onto her finger, and immediately, she wraps her arms around him and covers him in kisses. A round of spontaneous applause breaks out on the yacht, and the other couples cheer and whistle. She basks in the good wishes and attention of her fellow travelers–the adoration, the love, the romance.

It could not have been more spectacular if she had planned it herself. It was perfect….

Oh, please! Give me a break from such sappy romance!

I can see you rolling your eyes now. It sounds like the absolute worst movie cliché from some cheap popcorn Romcom or a film about a Season in a Famous City that will remain nameless. But incredibly, it’s not. My cousin was proposed to in this exact manner. She really couldn’t have been happier, and for the record, she has been married for three years.

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By Rick Allan, April 18, 2011 6:00 am

Image by MoPo.ca

I met Ramona in Vegas.

We only spent a couple hours together the night we met. Yet, neither of us had ever connected so deeply with another human being in such a short period of time.

We didn’t even have an actual conversation until I called her a few weeks later. I was so nervous, I felt like I was back in middle school calling a crush for the first time. I invited her to come down to San Diego the next week.

All the giddy little school kids in the world had nothing on me the morning she arrived. She went in for the kiss, and I awkwardly hugged her. I stumbled over my words. I couldn’t even hold eye contact with her.

I finally managed to relax, and the rest of the day couldn’t have gone any better. I loved being with her, and yet, I was uncomfortable being myself around her. Her presence made me want to be more than just myself.

A week later, she came to see me while I was in Los Angeles, and we went out to a bar with some friends. I was suffering from a cough, and without so much as a hint from me, she got up and returned a few minutes later with drinks for us. Smiling, she said, “I asked the bartender to make you something for your throat.”

It was such a simple gesture, but it meant the world to me.

Later that week, I went to see her, and while we were lying in bed, those three little words almost slipped out.

Whoa. At this point, I was afraid I might be falling faster than she was, so I backed off. I decided I’d try to get her to chase me. Because back then, I still thought that if a woman were interested in me, she would pursue me, too, right? Continue reading 'If I Chase You, I May Fall For You'»