Pining on December 14, 1998…

Dear Breakup Girl,

I dated this girl in high school for 2 years. We were deeply in love but we broke up under stressful circumstances. Let’s just say we got in trouble with the law, and we split up. Well, it has been about 6 months since and we are at different colleges now. We have recently been talking on the phone and we have put all the bad things in the past. She is now dating someone, but she tells me it isn’t serious, which I believe because she has known him for like a month. I have dated around some but I am still in love with her, and her roommate tells me she is still in love with me and she talks about me all the time. When I see her next at X-mas I want to tell her how I feel and try to get back together with her. Can you help me figure this out or do you have any advice for me?

— Matt

Dear Matt,

Oooh, was she the Mousketeer? No, wait, you’re too young. Also, Christmas is too late. If you’re going to tell her how you feel, do it now (phone is fine), before they’ve been going out for much more than a month — and before they seal a de facto deal with a misty, mistletoey winter- break goodbye. Yes, poaching will get you in trouble with BG Law, but the loophole here is that Major Relationship Severed Mostly by Circumstance trumps One-Month Something-or-Other.

Hope things work out. And no more, like, crime, okay? If anything, what you should get in trouble with next is the distance.

Love,
Breakup Girl

Christmas wishing on December 14, 1998…

Dear Breakup Girl,

I met this really amazing guy three years ago, when I was dating another really amazing guy. AG#1 and I became fairly good friends, saw each other at school frequently and ended up on the one hour bus ride to and from school together fairly often. Sometime in the year that followed, I split with AG#2 (just our lived heading in different directions) at which point I went into dating overdrive. Being young and immature (18) but thinking I knew it all, there was a string of guys which I saw for a few weeks and then tossed aside, none of them were amazing. Meanwhile, AG#1 and I are spending more and more time together, going out for dinner, seeing movies, drinking at the bar after class together and having wonderfully stimulating (intellectually) discussions.

About a year and a half after our first meeting, we get quite inebriated and end up kissing on my front step and discussing the possibility of us getting together. I knew then that he felt more about me than I felt about him, but I went ahead anyway thinking, I should like him, he’s amazing! So what happens? The next day I flip out and tell him it’s not going to work, I can’t deal etc. etc. Being the AG that he is, he is totally cool about the whole thing. A few days later, he goes home for the summer, and the next fall, I leave to go away to school halfway across the country.

Well, it’s been a year and a half now since the whole kissing thing happened between us and we have still never talked about it. Things haven’t been quite the same between us since then either, and I feel totally terrible about my behaviour. Well, after an amazing dinner with him this summer, right before I again left to come back to school, I started to think about him in a different way, seriously this time. And since I’ve been back I sometimes miss him so much that it physically hurts me. The problem, there is no one else in my life right now, but there is someone in his. We talk on the phone and he doesn’t talk about her much, I get the feeling it’s not serious. And recently he totally hinted that he was still thinking about me as more that just his friend. I would like nothing more than to explore this possibility when I get home for Christmas, but am very unsure about whether or not he is on the same page as me. Plus, I want to be sure this time that I want a relationship with him, he’s so amazing that the thought of me hurting him again scares me. I more than anything don’t want to lose him as a friend. Any thoughts?

— Hoping to Change His Mind

BG doesn’t exactly break out the mistletoe after the jump

Put on some hot cocoa and curl up with this tale of Christmases Past and Christmases yet-to-be from December 14, 1998…

Dear Breakup Girl,

Here’s my wish list, with some background and explanation. It all started last Christmas actually… I’m in college, my boyfriend graduated from the same school about a year and a half ago. I went home for Christmas (I’m from about 2000 miles away, so it’s a relative-distance relationship…40 minutes when I’m in school, a couple thousand miles when I’m not). At this time we’d been dating for almost eight months. Our relationship had been going mostly wonderfully, fairy-tale and all. It had been my longest relationship EVER, as before the longest relationship I’d been in had been for about two weeks. When we met, we became close friends quickly. He was smarting from his breakup with a particular psycho-hose-beast.

She was his first ever/serious relationship. Over the summer (while I was home) she called him, yelled at him for a while that he’d gotten on with his life (meaning she was jealous of me) and that was the last I’d thought I’d ever hear about it.

Well, it was the holiday season, so being the sweet sensitive person he is, he decided to send PHB a Christmas card in an attempt to “make peace.” Personally, I would have never attempted communication with someone who treated me that badly. I would have lost their address, everything. So, there I was at home, trying to deal with my family and distant friends (also depressing holiday traditons) and one morning I got a phone call. I had been out all night the night before, so I was still asleep when my boyfriend called. My mom woke me up to tell me that he was on the phone.

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