Neurotically freaking on December 7, 1998…

Dear Breakup Girl,

Oy! Where to start? Where to start?

I know! I was living with my boyfriend for three and a half years and then he dumped me! HE dumped ME! The nerve.

Things hadn’t been perfect with us for a while. There had been a lot of arguments. He was majorly clinically depressed and wouldn’t deal with it. Everytime I went out with my friends, I knew when I came home he’d pick a fight.

But he LOVED me. And I loved him. When we got together, we had both had crushes on each other for months and hadn’t known it. So when we finally figured it out, there was so much pent up emotion that we moved in with each other within three months.

Granted. Not the healthiest action. We were probably just majorly infatuated. But then we made it work for three years, and I always thought that was validation of our earlier adolescent actions (we’re both mid-twenties.)

But my problem isn’t with the ex. Well, it is, but it isn’t. My problem is with cutie-boy.

Cutie-boy is the older (early 30’s) boy who works in the office suite next door from me. We kept running into each other in the halls. He kept asking me to coffee and I kept forgetting to tell him I had a boyfriend. When I finally told him, cutieboy claimed that coffee wasn’t exactly a betrothal.

So I went and we had a good time, and to cut out a lot of extraneous info, we ended up sneaking into emergency exit stairways at work and making out. Harmless fun. I knew it was wrong, but told myself I was just getting a little attention that my (soon-to-dump-me) boyfriend wasn’t giving.

(more…)

Struggling with the ultimate romantic choice? The one you’ve got vs. the one that got away? Familiar and stable vs. fizzy and exciting? Veronica vs. Betty?

Well, envy Archie.* Looks like our man in Riverdale may get to have it both ways.

As today’s Times reports: “That perennially teenage redhead…made headlines around the world when word leaked, back in May, that he would propose to his longtime love interest, Veronica Lodge, in issue No. 600 of the comic that bears his name. But that issue, published in August, was only Part 1 of a six-part story. Although Archie did marry Veronica, things will take a turn in November, when Archie proposes to the lady in waiting, Betty Cooper. That’s just the latest twist in the romantic triangle that has thrust this nearly 70-year-old character, and his parent company, into the media spotlight.”

How’s he gonna pull that off? Easy: alternate universe! “The wedding story was written by Michael E. Uslan and illustrated by Stan Goldberg, a longtime ‘Archie’ artist. The first half was called ‘Archie Marries Veronica,’ but issue No. 603, on sale next month, is called ‘Archie Marries Betty.’ The end of bachelorhood began in issue No. 600, in which Archie found himself on a road named Memory Lane, which he has often traveled. This time he walked a different direction and encountered a fork in the road. He chose the left path, which allowed him to see his future with Veronica and their twins, and himself working for her tycoon father. At the end of the October issue, No. 602, Archie goes for an evening stroll and encounters the fork again. In the November issue Archie will find himself back in Riverdale High, this time envisioning a future with Betty as his wife. (A set of twins factors into this destiny as well.)”

(Doctor Who fans will recall when this totally happened to Donna Noble, only instead of twins there was a giant bug. And — Halloween preview — let’s not forget Breakup Girl Friday in Ghost Ex!)

But the question remains: who do you think he should wind up with? (“Jughead” would of course be a revolutionary twist, but I don’t think we’re there yet.)

* And talk to The Guy At The End of the Bar.