Nooooo, boinking Boy+1 is not the best way to get over Boy. Surely you know this...

IMPORTANT BREAKUP GIRL MAXIM: Don't sleep with someone "in order to" get over someone. (Especially if it's that person.)

How come? Well, advocates of safe(r) sex-ed folks say that when you sleep with someone, you sleep with everyone they've ever slept with? Breakup Girl would also like to remind you that -- especially in the context you present -- when you sleep with someone, you "sleep with everyone else you've slept with." As I told Clare, you can toss their stuff off the balcony, but the muscle-memory of sex and intimacy will stay much more firmly lodged under your skin. Which means that getting with / "distracted" by someone new totally does not Biore that Boy out of your pores. More than anything, it makes you think, "Oh, this reminds me of ... the last guy I did this with." "Distraction?" More like a mnemonic device.

What (not whom) to do instead? As our Belleruth says, "Usually the best way to get over someone is to reconstitute yourself before finding someone else." What's in your way? "Methinks Miss Thing has a roaring case of separation anxiety, activated by these breakups. I gently wonder: did you have some issues or nasty events around separation -- mom? dad? -- when you were pretty young and helpless? 'Cause interestingly, what you're describing isn't grief or sadness, it's panic and terror, which is are pretty young reflexes.

Good news is, that's all it is. Terror, while ... terrifying, is, in this case, basically humongo-anxiety. It's just anxiety. It's not life-threatening (which is the way it would have felt way back when, if my hypothesis is correct). You can stand it."

Especially if you can coach yourself to take a moment -- just a moment -- to remember how crappy it feels on the other side...of a bed you really didn't want to wind up in. But how to stop yourself when you don't always even realize you're doing it in the first place? As we told Passionate, some "mindfulness meditation" might intervene -- it's a technique that can help you learn to pay clear attention to precisely what you're doing in the present moment. Kind of like looking under the hood while you're driving. Helps cultivate 'there I go aga-- oh, wait!" self-control and reduce anxiety. Very satisfying, at least in an annoying grownup sort of way. Talking to a pro -- a real, live, maternal smart person -- could also help you make these distinctions.

And while you're at it, here's the part I think you really do have backwards. "He'll think you're not interested?" So what? Are you? Don't cast about for quarry; don't just go with what/who's there. You know? Instead, try to single out (not hurl yourself at) the hotties who interest you first. Like, the ones who put the "interest" in "interesting conversation." This "fine line" between "slut" and Heisman is actually a vast territory, dense with delicious -- even if unhurried -- possibility. Find yourself there first.

Love,
Belleruth and BG

 
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