Filed under: Advice,News — posted by Chris @ 8:19 am
If a gal realizes she’s in love with her man, should she keep her mouth shut? Over at Salon’s Broadsheet, Sarah Hepola chimes in on the recent CNN/The Frisky post, “Why Women Shouldn’t Say ‘I Love You’ first,” which posits, basically, that dudes can’t handle it. Sarah has a reaction many of us might:
It’s the kind of story that can’t help being irritating: First of all, because it’s a glib service piece in which advice about profound life experiences is shoehorned into a few measly grafs; second of all, because it’s dumb. It’s asinine, right?
Then she emails her guy friends who, with equal doses of articulateness and immaturity, convince her the writer may have a point. One guy friend even looks at the odds:
It’s just statistically less common to hear of girls getting weirded out and bailing on a relationship after the L word, so as a rule of thumb I think it’s fine.
Obviously there will always be special cases — and special guys — but is this basically correct?
Carrie ditches her hits to perform the concert show-stopper, I Know You Won’t, at last night’s People’s Choice Awards. Waiting by the phone never sounded so good! (After a nervous start.)
Nothing says “I’m sorry I exerted artistic control over my previous, disappointing album and it won’t happen again” like the cover of Kelly Clarkson’s next single.
In all the years of working on Breakup Girl — from book, to web, to tv, to oblivion, then back to web and to cell phone — Lynn and I have had a steady, third partner. His name is Mac. Apple computers have helped us write, code, design, animate and, yeah, procrastinate better over the last 14 years. For about half of that time (sigh) I’ve been working on a 867 MHz PowerMac G4 (Quicksilver).
Why am I using such an old machine? Well, to Apple’s credit, it still works! But actually, I’ve been intending to get a new desktop for the past three years — if only they would ditch the ancient G5 “cheese grater” design of the pro towers. Recently I realized I don’t need all that quad-core “pro” power to do what I do, and have had my eye on the Mac mini — but that hasn’t been updated in two years! I follow the mac rumors religiously, ‘natch, and get especially excited around the MacWorld expo.
Despite rumors going into the keynote announcements of a new mini model, Apple “only” gave us new software and a new 17″ MacBook Pro. Frankly, the rumored specs on the next mini were so good, I doubted the absent Steve Jobs would let Phil Schiller unveil it. So now I wait for the next “Apple event,” with only the web’s chief humorists as comfort for my broken heart…
My ex-girlfriend is driving me CrAzY!!! We only went out for two months over this past summer and it was really hard on her when we broke up. It wasn’t easy for me either, but it was tonz harder for her. The reason we broke up is that our friendship seemed to be disappearing, and neither of us wanted that to happen, so we agreed to just be friends.
Well, since we still really liked each other, it wasn’t that easy. She took me to the first Girl’s Choice dance of the year and we had lots of fun, but it led to a major problem. As I already said, we both still liked each other lotz, and we ended up kissing a few times through out the nite.
A long time ago I went out with this boy. It wasn’t a bad relationship, it wasn’t a good relationship…it was an ugly breakup. After the breakup he actually slept with my best friend (whom I also no longer speak to).
Well, while we were dating he introduced me to many people. One of which I married (less than one year after we broke up). I have been deliriously happy for a number of years and want to put the horrible relationship behind me. I want to contact this old boyfriend and thank him for introducing me to the most wonderful man in the world and apologize for being a bit “bitchy” during the breakup. Is this the stupidest idea I have ever had? Am I looking for closure? Or rubbing it in?
Filed under: Psychology — posted by Rose @ 3:45 pm
Falling in love is kinda like coming down with a fever: it creeps up on you, makes the cheeks run red, and the best remedy for it is to spend lots and lots of time in bed (hummina hummina). Then the fever breaks. In fact, for a long time running scientific wisdom has been that the fever might run its course in a mere year; after that, it’s dunk yourself in an ice bath, get a pacemaker to calm those heart flutters, and settle into a more platonic, less charged life with lovey.
Now a new study suggests that for a lucky few, that bloodsugarsexmagik passion is more akin to a really, really fortunate case of herpes for which there is no cure.
“Brain scans have proved that a small number of couples can respond with as much passion after 20 years as most people exhibit only in the first flush of love. The findings overturn the conventional view that love and sexual desire peak at the start of a relationship and then decline as the years pass.”
Only about 10 percent of the couples studied were found to pump equal amounts of dopamine through their systems when shown a pic of their betrothed as they did a couple decades prior. The researchers dubbed these couples “swans” because swans mate for life, but I mean, gag me.
No word from the study on the why and how of all this, but this primer on how to pucker might prove helpful.
Everything is Terrible has been digging up some priceless videos recently. Here’s an ad for “Flirting With Magic” — a course in magic that promises to improve your pickup skills. There’s some solid advice in there somewhere — about building your confidence and easing the pressure of starting conversations with the opposite sex — but those Eighties production values undermine their attempts to look cool.
Great site. I am now going down this road for the millionth time, having just ended a 9-month relationship which was rocky for about half of that time. The man is complex, emotionally damaged, controlling and an intense workaholic. At the same time, we had a lot in common, and had a bond that I have been looking for. He paid little attention to me, but at times we connected very deeply. He started out saying he wanted to make amends for the mistakes of the past (a pickup line I hadn’t heard before!) and that he had been wrong in the past. WOW! I thought I really had found “the one.”
Dear Breakup Girl,
I am stuck in this oh-so-popular position: I have a million guy friends that are guys, but “friend” is all I am to them. I have dated a thousand guys, but all of them break things off saying that they do not see me as a girlfriend. The girls often do not like me either, as I am their boyfriend’s best friend. What should I do? I wish I could find someone to be serious with, but no one wants to be serious with “one of the guys.” HELP!!!!!!!!!!
— Just a Friend
Dear Just a Friend,
SEE, EVERYBODY??? Breakup Girl will say it again: the “nice”/”friend” thing is not only a Guy curse. And I’ll say this again, too: Could be that you’re the kind of person for whom serious relationships start out as friendships. Trust that that’s the case, and the “serious” part will evolve when the time — and the match — is right.
Love,
Breakup Girl
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