You meet a really great guy: smart, funny, well-mannered, and good-looking. You seem to hit it off with him when you initiate your first conversation, and realize you have a lot in common. You’re sure this one is a lock, so you ask him out. He declines.

What?! But everything was going so well!

“I’m sorry,” he explains. “I just got out of a bad relationship, and I don’t want to get involved.” Read: he was tainted by a crazy chick.

Since the beginning of time, bad boys have been toying with women’s emotions - playing us, and hurting us. Well, guess what ladies — this isn’t the suffrage era, and some girls out there think they have the power to level the playing field. Unfortunately, these crazy girls ruin the perfectly nice boys for the rest of us perfectly nice girls.

You might think you’re in the clear, but are you? Read on to make sure you don’t fall into the “Crazy Ex Girfriend” category. And if you do, thanks; you’re the reason I’ve been single for so long. Well, at least part of the reason.

The Cheater
This ex-girlfriend broke the guy’s heart, maybe more than once. Perhaps they were together for years, and he walked in on her and his friend one night. Maybe she had multiple “flings,” and confessed them all, in tears, and he forgave her time and again. No matter what, cheating hurts for girls and guys. This girl probably made your guy weary of being cuckolded again and wore down his trust in women. He thinks you’ll cheat, and he’s not ready to be played for a fool again. Read More »

Getting over a guy can be tough, especially if he ended things before you were ready to end them. It’s hard enough to try to slip back into the single lifestyle and get over the boy who hurt you when the breakup cuts all of your ties; however, it’s even more difficult when you do see your ex…and harder still to see him with his next.

When a guy moves on before you do, it can be tempting to cry, throw things, or scream like a banshee, but none of those things will make your man come back to you. If you handle the situation like an adult, you will find yourself on a much smoother road to recovery, and you will maintain your dignity along the way.

1. Don’t Avoid the Situation

You go to a party, feeling single and ready to mingle, and then you see them, canoodling on the couch. Your first instinct might be to leave the party in tears and spend the rest of the weekend in bed, sobbing into your pillow. Likewise, if you and your ex shared a group of friends, you might try to avoid social situations where you might run into them. In either scenario, you’ll make getting over him even more difficult, because you’ll be missing out. Who knows? The party you fled might have been one of the greatest nights in your college career. Tough it out, and try to have a good time. Read More »

After reading this article in Glamour, the only thing I can think is: Why would any woman ever date a baby daddy? (Conversely, I don’t see why a guy would ever date a baby mama, but for the sake of this article let’s just focus on the baby daddies)

I know what you’re thinking, “What if he’s super cute, funny, smart, has a great job—essentially the picture perfect prince charming, except for the fact he already has a kid?” Alright, so what if he’s Brad Pitt? I still wouldn’t date him. And yes, I wouldn’t date him just because he has kids.

While plenty of my friends wouldn’t turn down Brad Pitt, most of them also wouldn’t turn down a baby daddy. The way they see it, if you really, really like a guy and he really, really likes you, why let the fact that he has a kid come between the two of you? This is true. Very true. But let’s not forget that in most cases, dating a baby daddy means not only dating the baby daddy, but the baby mama as well. So, really, your relationship wouldn’t just be you and your man but you, your man, his kid and his Ex (or whoever happens to be his baby mama). Read More »

In high school, I was more or less obsessed with Bright Eyes. I absolutely adored Conor Oberst and all his whiney, scratchy-voiced angsty music, not to mention his sexy eyes & all-around hot emo boy demeanor.

I was also extremely depressed, dropped out of high school (only for a semester!) and spent three hours a week in intensive outpatient therapy.

However, times have changed and I traded in my razor blades for wine glasses and my sorry, pathetic teenage attitude for a much healthier, positive one. I became happy. Baggage-less, I thought. Completely devoid of any negativity from my past.

And then, as all love stories begin, I met someone who I had absolutely everything in common with and with whom I got along flawlessly for the first six months. I thought I was over my years of self-loathing and teenage drama, and if I could hold a healthy, (somewhat) adult relationship, then I was convinced.

Seriously, this relationship was awesome. We were like male and female versions of each other: We were in the same major (yes, boy magazine journalism major!), loved cheap beer and foosball and basically couldn’t keep our hands off of each other….any time, anywhere.

But, eventually my insecurities came to the surface and the relationship became a huge emotional mess, for both of us. I’m talking the whole screaming at each other in public and then pouring beer on each other to even the score kind of mess. There it was again; all that baggage I thought I tossed years ago, staring me right in the face, mocking what I thought was my new life and new super-happy relationship.

I might be an extreme case (in fact, I know I am), but after the failure of this relationship, that was all lovey-dovey, fairy-tale, red roses on the outside, I began to question, quite Carrie Bradshaw-esque-ly, if we can ever really escape our pasts. Read More »

God, it feels good to be single again. I recently broke up with my boyfriend of two years, and I know that this move solidified my future as an old maid. I know I’ll never find a guy more perfect for me than my ex, and that I’ll probably die alone. But, damn, it feels good to be single.

When you’re single, it can be hard to sit back and watch your attached girlfriends in their romantic endeavors. They get flowers from their boyfriends; they always have a date to a party; they have someone to cuddle with in the morning. But they also don’t have the opportunities that you have as an independent woman.

My (ex)boyfriend and I had been doing the long-distance thing for a while. I am currently trying to find my career path, but I had to keep trying to get a job close to him. This eliminated a plethora of job opportunities for me. When you get ready to graduate college, you can move anywhere you want or take any job that’s offered to you.

The girls who are involved have to make their life decisions with their partner. True, they can opt for the long-distance thing, but that still makes moving much harder than it does for you, the single gal with no emotional baggage.

Since reemerging onto the singles scene, I’ve also been feeling less stressed. Personally, I’ve had a lot on my plate lately, and I felt like even the daily “goodnight” phone call was cutting into what little time I have to spend on everything else. It takes effort to make a relationship work. True, it’s great to have a boyfriend to vent to or to seek reassurance from, but when you are trying to balance jobs, school, extracurriculars, and other responsibilities, sometimes it’s nice to be able to focus on you without feeling selfish. Read More »

When it comes to Facebook, you would be lying if you said you never found yourself looking at the pictures your winter vacation hookup (from 2001) just posted… or at the girl that annoyingly keeps writing on your boyfriend’s wall (and at all of her friends). I know, I know, you just randomly, somehow, stumbled upon them; you really, truly, only logged on to check your messages…3 hours ago. And now you are searching for that cute guy you met last night whose last name you don’t know (why did his name have to be Aaron?!).

Let’s face it; we’ve all stooped a little bit lower than we like to admit (logging on to a friend’s account to look at someone not in your network). Posted something for the sake of ONE person seeing it (an ex boyfriend perhaps? This picture totally screams “I am SOO over you”), or for the whole Facebook world to see (Look! I met Vince Vaughn! We sat at his table! This totally validates that I am cool. Take that all you who shoved me in a locker in high school!).

Every now and again, we all do a bit of random stalking or, as I chose to call it, investigative journalism. (The dictionary of my life says an email to my friends reporting my findings completely counts as journalism… “He’s single! Scooore!”) But with all this quasi-stalking that we do, we never really think that we are that important or fascinating enough that total randoms would waste their time looking at our photos from Halloween 2006.

That is, until it happens to you… and you find out.

And then, Facebook becomes really creepy. Read More »

I’m 10 days deep into a summer fling of the best kind.

Him: A good friend (we’ll call him Fred) I’ve had a thing for, for years. He just got back from studying abroad and the ocean air and warm weather treated him very well.

I kind of thought our first encounter in the bedroom was a one-time occurrence. A tipsy romp between the sheets that was very memorable, but a sexual outlier…that is until it happened again the next night.

And again two nights later.

To the untrained eye, nothing is different. No awkward conversations, no weirdness whatsoever and the sex is nothing short of mind blowing. So where’s the problem?

He is my best friend’s ex-boyfriend. Read More »

Often when friends break up with their boyfriends, you have to chose whether or not to remain friends with the Ex. From years/months/beer pong matches together, you have developed a friendship with said Ex…so does the end of the main relationship mean you have to break up too??

Or can you go on as friends?

Flip the situation a bit:
You best friend has broken up with a boyfriend and is now in a very happy and loving relationship with someone else. Meanwhile, you have continued cultivating a relationship with her Ex and have stayed great friends. A year later, he tells you he’s “always wanted to be with you.”

Now, your friend is in a healthy/happy relationship with someone new. Are you allowed to date her Ex or is he still her territory??

Do you date your friend’s Ex?