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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 Danny Braciole, January 24, 2011 6:00 am

Image by deejaynye via Flickr

In the foggy haze of a slightly hungover morning, I heard an earthy voice echo softly in my ear, “time to get up, Danny Boy.”

I buried my face into the strange, pink-fringed pillow I’d slept on while slowly realizing my own nakedness. I opened one eye to see an oddly darkened purple room that wasn’t mine. I realized pretty quickly that the wet lips on my ear and the warm breasts pressing against my back weren’t mine either.

My memories spread over me like syrup over pancakes, slow and sweet. I’d only met Maggie the night before, but here we were, in her bed at 5 AM on a Friday morning. I reached up to stroke her hair.

“Maggie,” I mumbled, “you’re a beautiful girl.” As I grabbed a handful of hair and pushed her face back down into her pillow, I continued, “but you’re a shitty alarm clock.”

She laughed. I grumbled. She pushed. I woke up. She made coffee. We kissed. I went all the way back to my house, showered, and went to work. Later, I gave her the “obligatory day-after” phone call, but it didn’t feel obligatory. Maggie responded with a text that she was at work. We made tentative plans in text conversation that we’d get together the following week.

I’d had plenty of one night stands before, but this didn’t feel like one. I wasn’t thinking about hanging out with Maggie, I was thinking about taking her on a date. I was legitimately excited about a woman for the first time in a while. And that’s exactly why I fucked things up.

How soon after meeting somebody new do we feel totally comfortable? How long does it take before we take off our cool and just be ourselves? There are a thousand different reasons why and when we decide to reveal ourselves, but the one constant criterion is that we need to be comfortable enough with our own feelings to let our guard down. Most of the miscommunication that causes men to think women are crazy and women to think men are idiots happens during that critical period between feeling an initial spark of interest and knowing for sure how we feel about the other person.

For me, dating is less about figuring out women than it is about figuring out myself. Continue reading 'How I Fucked Up My Own Game'»

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By Jennifer Hamilton, February 24, 2010 6:50 pm

Photo by Ed Yourdon

A few months ago, I posted some easy ways to make your relationship stronger. They were simple and not too taxing, right?  But now it’s time to talk about those dreadful things like:

• Introspection
• Personal responsibility
• Seeing past your own anger

Yikes! How un-fun is that? Because, really, how can anyone be expected to do these things when our partner is clearly in the wrong? Hmm, maybe it’s better to see beyond the need to be right and look at how to work out differences?

1.  Don’t be jealous, and if you are, own it. You may not like what I’m going to say, but look at sexy people. They are all around us. On TV, on the street, in the workplace. The day after our wedding, my husband and I took a walk on Mission Beach before we met up with the rest of our friends and family for the post-wedding events. Suddenly, this model-chick with literally the most perfect butt roller-bladed past us. All butts should aspire to look this good. And I know mine does not. But he was still holding my hand, and we had a nice little banter about the perfectness of what had just skated by.

Love yourself enough to know that, despite the fact that we are surrounded by good-looking people, you still have someone who loves you for who you are. Love and trust your partner enough to know that looking is simply that. Looking. Continue reading 'Top 5 Ways To Make A Relationship Last—The Hard Ones!'»