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Dear Breakup Girl,

I'm writing to you because I feel like getting that love vibe back; it's been gone (or there but unhealthy) for about five years now. No sense hashing out the details of the men that were not the one because I've had the time mostly to get over it! I feel like a confident woman now in all areas but love. Worked on it for years. You know the way you feel when you're 30 and you finally realize all the great things about yourself?! Yahoo! I wish I could sprinkle that feeling on all the teenage girls and 20-somethings out there who need it like I did.

I used to be the kind of selfless girl who dove into my guy and lost my identity. Now I love to dive into my hobbies like snowboarding and dancing, and I just moved to a smaller city where I'm not a workaholic and am making new friends who like to do the same stuff I do. I think I've been pretty patient about the love thing, even though marriage and babies are also big dreams of mine. Maybe I'm too scared of losing the happy self that I've created?

I don't know what it is, but I'm in a horrible love drought, and I think I must appear to be all dried up to men. I've been happily observing my single friends who seem to have a waterfall of men all over them. They say to flip my switch. I feel like the tinman with no oil can in sight, and the more it worries me, the more it inhibits me. I think there is a chemical in your body that helps with flirting, and if you haven't kissed a guy in over a year, then it runs out. I get nervous and can't be myself around single men, even those to whom I'm not even attracted. I've kind of got that Eeyore syndrome, "What's the use in having a crush on him? He'll never like me."

It's possible that I'm rejecting before I get rejected, but how do you stop that ugly habit? I also must be putting some unseen negative energy out to Cupid because there aren't really that many available guys around me that I like. Oh despair! I really need your help BG. I've been carrying a rose quartz; I made a list of the qualities in a man that would make me feel loved; I'm trying to "let go," whatever that means; I've been looking for the beauty in every man. My mantra: I am open to the flow of love. (Okay, sometimes I forget to say it for weeks.)

I'm not turning down invitations anymore. I'm pretty and smart and generous and, now that I figured that out, I thought I'd become unstuck, but it's not happening. Maybe there's a mysterious secret door you can unlock to help all of us lonely lovers? I know I'm working hard, and I have faith that the good stuff is coming, but I must be missing something. My goal at this point is just to feel kissable, attractive and flirty, and be able to act on it. Can you read between the lines of my sob story, work your magic, and offer a new potion, notion or lotion I have not tried?

--Dusty

Dear Dusty,

Well, I see why you're writing me, in the sense that your friends haven't given you all that much to go on. Whence the "waterfalls?" What do they mean, "flip your switch?" Is that like flipping your hair? Really, ask them (keeping in mind that being drenched by boys on the outside is not always an indicator of being happy on the inside -- sometimes, actually it's the opposite). Do they have a psyche song? A pre-party attitude adjuster (not counting certain "potions")? A mantra (yours sounds fine, as long as it doesn't double as an actual ice-breaker). See what they say; allow for contagion.

But you know, no one -- not even your single friends-- is "herself" around single men (Cf. hair flip). Do flirtalicious (or, really, any) boys make you nervous? Well, yay! That is how you know they are flirtalicious boys ... and, yes, also how you know that you've entered the "the more it worries me, the more it inhibits me" vortex.

But still, Dusty, I wouldn't over-pathologize the willies you get from these Harrys. You said it yourself: when it comes to boys you dig, it's just not exactly monsoon season right now. Arguably, that's a matter of supply, not demand/unseen habit/negative energy/the wrong quartz. So don't go chasing waterfalls (the closest that sentence has ever come to making sense). Instead, try and take the "shake things up" advice I gave Figure in Crowd, above. In your case, it's especially because, well, it is hard to flip a switch and feel kissable, attractive, and flirty in a vacuum (that's different from vacuuming in full makeup, pearls, and heels). Not that we derive our identity solely from The Male Gaze, yadda yadda, but hey: a girl can always use some positive reinforcement -- a new guy looking even if you don't care to look back. So: new faces, new places. Get out of the house, walk in a different direction -- and I think you'll find that Eeyore has left the building.

Love,
Breakup Girl

PS No one should forget/underestimate The Flirtation Continuum as rainmaker.

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