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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.

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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 Isaac Kennedy, August 29, 2011 6:00 am

Photo by Buero Monaco

For nine months during my first year of university, I was in a casual relationship with two different women.

Right. This is where most people expect macho bragging, but I’m actually not going to do that. It was great… for awhile. But ultimately, I broke it off because I couldn’t deal with being used for sex. As a guy, I feel incredibly weird just typing that out, but it’s how I felt.

Of the few people I’ve told, the result has always been high-fives and pats on the back. Even when I told my mother, her response was a simple, “Good for you son! Glad to see you’re enjoying university.”

The first girl was my girlfriend before the start of university. We broke up with the understanding that university is a time to enjoy yourself and not be tied down to another person, but we somehow ended up living in the same town.

One night, I received a message asking me to come over. I had to muster up a good amount of willpower, but my reply was no. We were supposed to be meeting new people, and I didn’t want to retread the same path.

Several days later, the same thing happened. Again, I said no. Finally, a week later, she was a lot clearer and simply messaged saying, “I only want sex.”

This time, I agreed. Soon, this became a regular occurrence: She would send me a message, and I would go round to her house. It seemed like the best deal on earth at the time (and this was when I was living in a place that had 50-pence drinks and free sandwich parties).

The second girl, I met at a party. We got drunk and spent the night together. The next morning, we parted ways amicably, and I thought nothing more of it until I received a message a few days later. Not wanting to pursue a relationship with this girl, I replied no. But as before, I received a second message stating, “I only want sex.”

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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 Shaun L. Swegman, August 8, 2011 6:00 am

Your douchebag history

Do you know why there are so many douchebags in the world?

It’s because women keep sleeping with them.

Seriously, if you give your dog a treat every time he takes a dump on the rug, expect to live in a very stinky house. Sleeping with someone you know is scum reinforces bad behavior in much the same way.

There are probably volumes’ worth of reasons individual women do this, but I stumbled onto an interesting one last night over drinks with a friend. This friend of mine is hot. She’s smart, and funny, and kind. She has a handle on life in a lot of ways, owns a house, and has a good career. In other words, any guy would be lucky to be with her. Yet, the landscape of her dating history is a minefield of douchebags.

I don’t mean just guys I don’t like. I mean guys who have done magnificently shitty things, like cheating on her with her barely-legal-at-the-time younger sister, stealing a significant sum of money from her, and dumping her for the methed-out stripper he’d been cheating on her with and gotten knocked up. Yeah, all that was the same guy. He stands out, but it’s a bad crowd.

Anyway, my friend told me that the weekend before last, she had sex with one of her douchey exes, this one a garden-variety manipulative cheater. She, of course, professed to hating his guts and didn’t really know what motivated her to sleep with him.

And then last weekend, she ran into the first guy I mentioned above. She said she “was good” this time because she “only messed around” with this guy, instead of having sex with him. She couldn’t resist telling me that she’d blown him, though.

Of course, I didn’t want to hear any of this, mostly because, no matter how self-defeating her actions were, I knew the chances of anything I said actually changing her behavior were abysmal. And who was I to tell her how to live and what mistakes to make? Still, hearing about my friend’s suffering at the hands of these jerks and knowing I couldn’t do anything about it was pretty depressing.

But it was what she said next that inspired this writing:

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By Lady Bee, August 1, 2011 6:00 am

Image by Joie De Cleve via Flickr

Balanced is not my middle name. There are many adjectives that could be substituted for the middle name printed on my birth certificate–friendly, loyal, hard-working, honest, funny, impatient, shy–but “balance” isn’t on that list.

I have an all-or-nothing personality. If I have decided to do something, then whatever happens, I’ll do it. I like to think of this as fortitude and steadfastness, but the reality can be something else. Often I find myself questioning why I can’t let go of the trivial things, especially when my exhaustion levels are at an all-time high (which happens to be most of the time lately).

I don’t think I’m alone, though. We applaud people who “do it all,” especially women. We’re now encouraged to have fulfilling careers and a rich family life. And this is a good thing. No one should have to choose one or the other. For that matter, none of us should be forced to give up anything that provides satisfaction or contributes to our quality of life. I believe striving for what we want and what we hope to achieve is the only way we can reach our goals and will leave us happier when we lay our heads on our pillow at night.

The problem is around the time I actually go to bed. When I am pushing too hard, it’s not just confined to late at night. I look at the clock, and I know that the time I have between that moment and when I have to get up again is just not enough. Sometimes I can feel that I am wearing myself too thin with all of my commitments and the things I do. The same thing happens at work: The hours slip by, and I know that the pile of work on my desk will not get done, and I’ll just be adding more to it the next day. There are too many friends to see on the weekends and at night, too many errands to run. There is just simply too much to do.

My colleagues are experiencing the exact same problems: high stress, crushing workloads, demanding lives, and lack of sleep. However, when the candle has been burnt at both ends down to a puddle of wax, they recognize it and stop. I just can’t seem to identify when to say “when.”

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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 Isaac Kennedy, July 18, 2011 6:00 am

Photo by Tom Grill

I hate myself sometimes–my face, my body, or even my hair when it won’t go quite exactly how I want it to go.

Since I was 13 years old, my weight has remained fairly constant, but my height has changed by around a foot. In a span of a few years, I went from awkward overweight child to awkward underweight teenager. I’m only now just at a healthy weight for someone of my size, and it only took me seven freaking years!

Since I’ve experienced being both overweight and underweight, I sympathise with the arguments for each. I’m often asked which was worse, which I considered the worst to deal with.

The honest answer? When I was “just right.” That perfect moment of equilibrium, when my height and weight were in perfect harmony? That sucked, ironically enough.

Being either side of the “right” weight meant I had a goal to aim towards, some target I was aiming for that would grant me a sense of accomplishment when I reached it. Because when I was unhappy with how I looked, I was damn well motivated to do something about it.

But when I was just the right weight? Well, that was hemlock for my motivation.

When I was overweight, I was around 5′ 4″ and weighed 10 stone (or 60 kilos, for you non-Brits). This put me on the cusp of being obese. For around six months, every meal I ate consisted of junk food, but no one in my family or circle of friends commented on this. Despite seeing me literally killing my insides with junk food, no one batted an eyelid.

Of course, my family’s silence was more than made up for by the bullies at school. Their insults made me turn to food more. It wasn’t until I tried running at a school sports day that I realised that even though the bullies were Class-A dicks, they had a point: I wasn’t healthy.

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By Dennis Hong, July 11, 2011 6:00 am

Photo by Yuri Dojc

Being a guy sucks sometimes.

I mean, aside from having to constantly monitor all these fragile dangly parts that we absolutely positively must keep out of the way of zippers, rogue knees, and hand rails (although that last one really only applies if we’re doing rail slides on a skateboard), we’re also trained from an early age that we’re not supposed to show any emotions whatsoever.

“Be strong!”

“Real men don’t cry!”

What. The. Hell?!? What if I need to let out a good sobbing fit every once in a while? What if I want to bawl when a bleeding, limping Bruce Willis throws the German terrorist who speaks with a thick German accent (even though he can clearly fake an American accent) out a 20th-story window and reunites with his estranged wife?

What am I supposed to do about that?

I have to admit, I was a teenage drama queen. In my angst-ridden senior year of high school, I once punched out our kitchen window. My parents were surprisingly supportive of my emotional outburst, not to mention everything else (I thought) I was going through at the time. Even worse, I actually wore my bandages proudly to school the next day. It was as though I needed to advertise how messed up my personal life was (it wasn’t), and how badass I was (I wasn’t) through my ownage of a set of glass panes.

Seriously, I was Emo 15 years before the term Emo had been coined. I was a miserable wreck, suffering from a miserable life. And I wore my plight proudly, as Atlas must have done when he bore the weight of the world on his shoulders for all those billions of years.

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