Comments (44)

By Dennis Hong, March 14, 2011 6:00 am

For months after Julie and I broke up, we chose to remain friends.

Yes, it was a mutual decision.

No, really.

Stop rolling your eyes.

This is not another rant about being stuck in the Friend Zone.

We still cared about each other, and we still enjoyed each other’s company. We just realized that, romantically, we weren’t all that compatible. We were like peanut butter and bacon: You love ‘em both. Just not together.

We continued to hang out fairly regularly, though. In fact, we joked that we were kind of/sort of still going on dates. Except that they didn’t end in anything physical….

Wait.

Okay, yes. They were exactly like many dates I’ve been on.

I was fine with that. We both knew that muddling the boundaries we’d established wouldn’t be a good idea. So, we continued our platonic dates, going out to dinner, chatting about what was going on at home and at work, slipping into deeper conversations about our lives… our hopes… our fears….

That’s when I had an epiphany.

I was totally getting screwed in this arrangement.

In recent years, scientists have discovered that the hormone oxytocin is responsible for feelings of attachment in women. Most notably, oxytocin is released when a woman orgasms. This explains why women have a more difficult time having casual sex. When they orgasm, their brains release oxytocin, which reinforces their emotional attachment to the man they’re with.

So, it’s not that women don’t want to have casual sex, or that they don’t like casual sex. It’s just that women often have a difficult time keeping it casual.

Continue reading 'We Weren’t Having Sex, But I Was Still Getting Screwed'»

Comments (8)

By Dennis Hong, March 18, 2010 6:01 pm

Image by Clipart.com

Friendship. 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 to settle for friend status just to stay in someone’s life? Take the story of Jackie:

Jackie is a strong, independent woman (usually). She is also the victim of a recent breakup. Robert, her live-in boyfriend of three years, has decided that he needs time to “figure things out.” He still wants to be friends, but he needs to take a break from the relationship.

Jackie reluctantly accepts this arrangement, and the two continue to see each other once or twice a week, essentially at his discretion: she makes herself available when he calls, and only sometimes is he available when she calls.

Months pass, and Robert still hasn’t figured out what he wants. Though Jackie makes a few half-hearted attempts to date other men, not surprisingly, these dates go nowhere. She continues to pine for Robert.

So, why does Jackie put up with Robert’s wishy-washiness? Perhaps a better question is, what is going on inside Jackie’s brain…. Continue reading 'The Bane Of Friendship'»