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By Alex O'Sullivan, August 16, 2010 6:30 am

Image by deutscher13 via Flickr

All right, I’ll admit it… I’m into the bad boys. The kind who never lets you know where you stand, who turns his soulful eyes on you months after you’ve broken up, who runs things on his schedule and never yours.

I’ve played the games and alternately loved and hated them, sometimes playing better than the boys and sometimes playing worse. I’ll let them tug on my heartstrings, even if it hurts, just to know that someone sees me. So I don’t have to be alone.

But someone came along who convinced me to stop the games. And it’s a girl, not a boy. My little sister, in fact. I’ve watched her let the same boy walk over her, time and again. And each time, I get so very angry. How can someone treat her like that? Doesn’t he see how beautiful she is? He doesn’t deserve her, so why would she let him do that to her?

It was this line of thinking that led me to see that I can’t blame her for letting him, when I do the exact same thing. How can I expect my sister to respect herself when I won’t respect myself?

She went off to her first year of college last fall, and she’d sit around in the dorm, “just in case he called”… which he only did once a week. She couldn’t spend time with other boys, because that would be almost like cheating… when he could call up her best friend and ask her to come spend the night at his house.

She used to be vivacious and outgoing, with plans with friends almost every night. Now, she holes up in a little dark room watching movies on her computer because, if she can’t hang out with him, she can’t hang out with anyone, and most of the time, he doesn’t want to hang out with her. Continue reading 'Me And Bad Boy McGee'»

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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!'»