I was recently sitting with a friend's 8-year-old for an evening, when she brought me to her room to show me a note a little boy in her class had sent her. "I know you have a boyfriend," he'd written in a large, childish scrawl, "but I need to have you in my life." He went on to say that her happiness was the most important thing to him; he'd included a flower, which she had thrown away. Maybe Alec Greven's on to something!

When some of us were in third grade, we were so tiny and borderline feral that romance was not really an issue: such interactions were limited to intense secret crushes, occasional haughty snubbings, and spelling competitions with flirtatious undertones. When one little boy did like me, I was so humiliated that I asked to be moved to a different desk group. One of my out-of-school friends lied about having an older 4th grade boyfriend, which made me very uncomfy. A few couples in my class 'dated,' which didn't mean that they went anywhere or actually acknowledged each other. And I have a very distinct memory of one little girl attempting to impress a boy she liked by bringing all her horseback riding trophies to school and casually arraying them atop her desk; she was regarded with pity by the rest of the class.

So, based on this, a perusal of old diaries and recent interaction with abovementioned babysittee, here is what our inner 9-year-old girl would advise with regards to dating boys:

-Always be nice. Even if you don't like someone back, never humiliate him and try to keep things private.
-Keep all notes.
-If you like a boy, don't bring all your horseback riding trophies to school and put them on your desk, because everyone will know what you are doing and you won't be able to open your desk.

Your turn, belles! If we want to compile something definitive here, we're going to need a lot of child-channeling and, more to the point, as much advice as you can get from real 9-year-olds. Sisters? Cousins? Pupils? Bring it on! We'll compile all the advice we get as a public service.

Earlier: The Book Of Love

Believe me, we're broken up now. But it was one of those super-stoopid, on-again-off-again, drama-filled relationships. I loved him, sure. But when we were fighting, which was often, I hated him. I wanted to stick a fork in his eyeball and kick him in the groin. Instead I just yelled at him, or hung up the phone. I don't know if it's because of my brain's "hate circuit," as Zeki and Romaya call it. I know that passion is passion — be it passionate hate or passionate love. But how is it that some people manage to flip both switches at the same time? And why is it that some people — not me, but others I know, in similar situations — find that they can't help but be drawn to a love that's got more than a little bit of hate in it?

Thin Line Between Love And Hate? - Science Knows Why [Reuters]

Image via Flickr

36-year-old Rachel Sarah explained that the rising costs of dating have forced her and her dates to become more creative and casual. Rollerskating, bowling, and hiking have all been used as alternatives to the standard dinner and a movie approach. Not only does the casual dating save Sarah money, but it eliminates the pressure on her partner to pay up, as well. "It can be so much less awkward than sitting at a fancy restaurant and worrying about the bill and how you can split the bill," she tells MSNBC.

Sarah also admits that she and her friends came up with "The First Date Skirt," a skirt meant to be worn on every first date. Sarah wore hers so often that she had to buy a replacement, admitting that the skirt "got so frayed, I can't wear it on a first date anymore."

Elvert Howard, an ad exec who has been hit hard by the economy, agrees, claiming that he now takes his dates to free museums instead of fancy dinners. ""If you approach them with a good personality and you get excited about the museum … [and] if a girl has the same interest in the museum, she won't mind," Howard explains.

This may sound like a cheapskate's bargaining tool, but Howard has a point: if you can't have fun with someone while running around a free museum, checking out strange and wonderful exhibits, then maybe it's better that you didn't blow a ton of money on an expensive outfit and dinner for two.

One of my best dates was to FAO Schwarz to buy a birthday present for my friend's niece. We were 19 and broke, but we spent the night playing with toys and eating candy out of the giant wall dispensers and had a lot of fun. That was nine years ago, and we're still together today. That's not to say that now that we're older, we don't like to rock the occasional fancy dinner, but the point is this: you don't have to spend a lot to have a good time, as long as you're in good company.

So what about you? Has the economy changed your spending habits, when it comes to dating?

Amid Slump, Singles Cut Dating Costs [MSNBC]

• A woman hunting rats with a rifle on her property in North Carolina caused the lockdown of a neighboring school today after a bus driver mistook her for an armed student. • Two nuns have been branded as terrorists by the state of Maryland after they were convicted of antiwar activities (including painting crosses on missiles with their own blood) in 2002. • This week the first English public statue of a black woman (named "The Bronze Woman" after the poem by Cecile Nobrega) went up in Stockwell Memorial Gardens in South London. • Ugh: A Californian man clapped as he was sentenced to 126 years in prison on Wednesday for sexually assaulting a female family member for 11 years. • A young Nigerian man has hit success by selling booklets for uncreative but lovesick young Nigerians who are looking for the right romantic text message to send to their sweeties. • A new study has found that many American girls (and boys) who show an aptitude for math are discouraged from pursuing math careers or higher levels of math because American culture does not value math skills. • A study of primary students in Northern Ireland found that girls are more happy with primary school than boys. • A recent study in Australia found that the myth of pregnant women becoming forgetful when they are expecting is false.•

[Picture via Daily Puppy.]

• Brad Pitt has donated $100,000 to the campaign to defeat Proposition 8, the California ballot initiative that would ban same-sex marriage in the state. In a statement, he says: "Because no one has the right to deny another their life even though they disagree with it, because everyone has the right to live the life they so desire if it doesn't harm another and because discrimination has no place in America, my vote will be for equality and against Proposition 8." [Variety]
• Hilary Swank is recovering from a "minor" medical procedure; she had a "growth" removed and is totally fine. Except the word "growth" is sorta gross. [ET]
• Amy Poehler is sad about leaving SNL: "I'm on the verge of tears every minute. The cast and writers there are so dear, dear to me. I can't quite imagine not doing it. From now until my due date, we have about six shows and three election specials. I'm so, so sad about leaving." [USA Today]
• Oprah's BFF Gayle King spills on O's 30 Rock stint! "It is a hoot," Gayle tells New York magazine. "It was taped last Saturday. Let me tell you, Tina Fey and Oprah Winfrey together is magic. Oprah and Tina together: Hilarious. H-I-L-A-A-A-R-I-O-U-S." [NY Mag]

• So you know how Lindsay Lohan is all prO-bama, and the Obama camp is like, "Thanks, but no thanks"? Michael Lohan says: "Everyone is entitled to an opinion and so is Obama and his staff. Then again, you know what they say about opinions. Unfortunately, for them, to make such a comment about my daughter was a big mistake… Look at Angelina Jolie and the wonderful things she has done in her life, and now watch how Lindsay does the same." Wait, does this mean that LL is going to adopt a Vietnamese baby? [TMZ]
• Speaking of Lindsay, does she have a crush on Victoria Beckham? At the premiere of Ugly Betty, she was heard saying: "I love her hair. She looks really hot at the moment. It reminds me of Sam." [ONTD]
• Superclassy Joe Francis says: "Lindsay's straight. I think Sam has taken ownership of Lindsay. I think if Sam were to let Lindsay go even that much; Lindsay would revert back to being straight." [E!]
• Will Smith was asked if he was a Scientologist. He replied: "I am not." There you have it! [Perez Hilton]
• Juliette Lewis says Tom Cruise is not the representation of all things Scientology. "I feel so bad for him, because that's the responsibility that's put on him." She also says Scientology is not what you think it is: "It's just really practical, applied religious philosophy. And you'll get lost in the media with these fantastic, fantastical - is that a word? - stories of, like, aliens and, you know, gay cover-ups … the rumours, they're astonishing. And they would be funny, if they weren't so hurtful." [Perez Hilton]
• Here's video of Madonna falling on stage in concert while playing guitar and grinding, "just for the lulz." [ONTD]
• By the by, in Madonna's film, her directorial debut called Filth And Wisdom, a pivotal scene involves a stripper dancing to Britney Spears' "Baby One More Time." [Yahoo News]
• Jennifer Aniston is in Mexico with a mystery man. [The Sun]
• R. Kelly was interviewed for the first time since being acquitted of child pornography charges. When asked if he liked teenage girls, Kelly replied: "When you say teenage, how — how old are we talkin' ... 19? I have some 19-year-old friends. But I don't like anybody illegal, if that's what we're talking about, underage." [Yahoo News]
• Rose McGowan said that she would have joined the Irish Republican Army if she'd lived in Belfast during the conflicts there; producers of her film, Fifty Dead Men Walking have issued a statement that goes like this: "Ms. McGowan's views were private ones, and as such they greatly saddened the film's producers." [Hollywood Reporter]
• Elizabeth Hurley is now like the Jimmy Dean of England and sells pork for sausage and bacon. No, really. [The Sun]
• Jason Wahler's trial is set for November 3; he's accused of roughing up a tow-truck driver. There are also allegations that he shouted racial slurs at the plaintiff, who is black. [E!]
• Gary Coleman has been charged with misdemeanor reckless driving and disorderly conduct after an incident at a bowling alley in Utah. A fan tried to take Gary's picture with a cell phone camera; Gary allegedly attacked him and ran over him with his truck. [E!]
• Actor Thomas Jane (seen in The Punisher, married to Patricia Arquette) has pleaded no contest to drunken driving after doing 120 mph in a Maserati. He's been sentenced to to a year of probation, $1,700 in fines and alcohol abuse classes. Didn't the Medium see this coming? [Yahoo News]
• Those Jerry Seinfeld/Bill Gates ads are ending. Try to act interested. [LA Times]
• John Cleese is making like his James Bond alter ego Q and hosting a new gadget show in the UK. [The Sun]
• Ranae Shrider, aka Verne "Mini-Me" Troyer's ex-girlfriend, says she has no idea who is behind the overseas website that released a sex tape of Ranae and Verne. "I actually found out about the website when a friend of mine from college called and asked, 'Did you know you can have sex with Mini-Me for $9.95?'" Shrider says. [AVN]
• Denzel Washington, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, Martin Sheen, Wesley Clark and Shaquille O'Neal, who attended the Boys & Girls Clubs of America as children, have lent their childhood photos to the organization for a national advertising campaign. Denzel was adorbs. [AP]
• Redmond O'Neal's drug sponsor is Ashley Hamilton. The guy who was married to Shannen Doherty. His mom is Alana Stewart, Farrah Fawcett's best friend. And Farrah is Redmond's mom. Got it? [Janet Charlton's Hollywood]
• The Foo Fighters: On a long break. [Perez Hilton]
• Dita Von Teese claims she has never been an exhibitionist. "I wouldn't be caught dead baring my stomach," she says. "To me, baring my stomach during the day is just wrong. Remember that fashion for wearing super-low cut jeans? I tried a pair on once as a joke. It looked disgusting — I mean pornographic." [Sydney Morning Herald]
• Justin Timberlake isn't working on an album because he has fashion and golf to think about. [USA Today]
• Despite earlier reports that he was gonna get blown up or something, an expert says there is no credible terror threat against Paul McCartney regarding his upcoming gig in Israel. Shalom! [UPI]
• Keira Knightley to star in a modern love story and not a period piece! [Variety]
• "They're a bunch of pasty white, completely non-rock and roll, Christian… I can't stand that shit! I don't even know what they sound like." — Courtney Love on The Jonas Brothers. [MSNBC]
• "Everything that has happened to me, good and bad, I feel has happened for a reason. I've been made stronger from the good stuff and much, much stronger from the bad stuff." — Anne Hathaway. [People]
• "All kinds of Christians are getting mad about my Sarah Palin comments, and it is pissing me off […] If you truly believed in Jesus, you would try to be like him and love us, fags and dykes and feminists all. God bless you, even you. You fucking fuckers." — Margaret Cho. [Perez Hilton]

The way sites like Ignighter.com, TeamDating.com and the Facebook application "Meet New People" work is this: You and your friends form a group. Groups go out with other groups. Any individual in the group can ask another group out on a date, but everyone in the group goes. The thing is, group dating overlooks a huge problem: Some dudes have shitty fucking friends you do not want to hang out with.

If you scroll through the "groups" of men on Ignighter, you'll see a bunch of pictures of "boys being boys." They're making stupid faces, screaming while wearing sports jerseys, looking cocky while holding beer bottles. It's hard to envision a scenario in which a woman would look at these goofy photos and want to date — or even meet these men. Sure, they're probably perfectly nice guys, but there's something about seeing them in "bro" mode. It's just not romantic. Or sexy. Or appealing. (By the by, the pictures I saw of "groups" of women were smiley, classy and cutesy.)

Clearly it's important for single men and women who want to meet other single men and women to get out there and find each other. But what if you're attracted to a guy and repulsed by his friends? Or what if you're repulsed by a guy but charmed by his friends? And what if you do like the guy but suddenly find that the "group date" is just a big cockblock? (Oh, and do you need a website to teach you how to group date?)

All Together Now [Wall Street Journal]

I do not give a fuck what Jennifer Aniston does with her life. I don't think that she needs a husband and a baby, that she will never be content unless she finds love. But! I do think that someone somewhere does think that. If not about Jennifer Aniston then about themselves. And I think poor Jen has become the receptacle for all the single-girl insecurities. She's got gobs of money, a fit body, great hair and possibly, a skilled cosmetic surgeon. Some women seem to think, "If she can't find love, what hope is there for me?"

And not only does Jen represent the fears single women have about themselves, she embodies the irrational terror the rest of the world has about single women. Despite the fact that she has never made any comments supporting these facts, she is painted in the press as a "high-maintenance, desperate, wannabe bridezilla who'd poke holes in your condom with a pin as soon as look at you." (Ms. Hudson's words.) How did it come to this? And why does Ms. Hudson hold us accountable? Plenty of celebrities find love — in as much as two self-obsessed shallow people can love each other. But if Jennifer Aniston really wanted to dedicate herself to getting hitched, she would probably stop dating celebrities. There must be some independently wealthy businessdude out there (that way she knows he's not after her dough) whom she could date. But the truth is, she may not want a husband and a baby. She may want to shag Brad Pitt, models and rock musicians and move right along. Why do people care so much?

We've Made Jennifer Aniston's Love Life The Pitts [Mirror]

"To admit to others that I yearned for a long-term commitment or marriage… sounded regressive as soon as it emerged from my mouth," she writes. "It was atavistic in nature, a throwback to a time when women couldn't financially support themselves. It was a piece of treacherous anathema in the age of strong, independent working women." Ms. Jain came to the conclusion that there was nothing wrong with her: There was something wrong with the system.

"We are told that it's best to meet friends of friends," Ms. Jain writes. "We all think this is a brilliant idea, until we realize that we've already met all of our friends' friends ... two years ago." She lays the blame on Western culture, specifically the American pride in being the best:

For a decidedly unmystical society that seems to have the answer for everything else — the best medical care, cutting-edge technology, superhighways, and space shuttles — it seems odd that people are left to their own resources, casting around for another lonely soul, for what is arguably the most important decision of their lives.

And honestly? She has a point. In busting the retro ideas of what it means to be a wife, we don't seem to have focused much on love. On the easy, natural bliss that can come from two people connecting in a unique way. Not codependence, not socio-economic symbiosis. Love. Are some people just cut out to be in love? Jain writes:

Why do we have to be "perfectly sound" before we can meet someone? Why can't we be desperately alone and unhappy and become much more balanced or healthy after getting involved with someone? We've all seen this happen with friends — "God, Peter seems so much happier now that he's going out with Jessica. He's not drinking as much."

And so, Ms. Jain made a decision: She'd go to India, where men actually want to get married. "People commonly go to India to find themselves or to find god, but I went to India to find a husband," she writes.

I don't know about the other single gals out there, but I applaud Ms. Jain's conviction and I'm in awe of her unapologetic decision to pursue her dream. Guys who move halfway around the world for a woman are romantic, but some would probably brand Ms. Jain desperate. But we're talking about an important, life-changing decision that affects the very foundation of who you are as a person: How you want to live. And if you don't want to live alone, why not do something about it? While some women excel and being single and are fine with whistling the theme song to the Mary Tyler Moore show and focusing on career or friends, some women want to be in a long-lasting relationship. And if you've ever worked in an office for a few years or had a friendship turn into something more or seen the film Blue Lagoon, you know that just being near someone for a chunk of time can foster loving feelings. So why not go where there's a chance that the feeling is mutual?

Looking For The Perfect Stranger [Salon]

*Hate her because you have to Google her literary puns!

The Gallstone Of Rouen
By Tatiana

I would be dropping by today with a jaunty rumination on my work life — I shot a fascinating catalog this week, let me tell you — but I'm afraid I've had something on my mind that has so angered me and colonized my thoughts that I've found myself motivated to rant at length to strangers in bars and to thrash out incendiary e-mails at times when a sensible person would be sleeping. I am afraid this current rage prevents me from mustering the wherewithal to make irreverent fashion commentaries or impugn the good reputation of any of the variety of hardworking artisans I encounter at work.

My problem has a name. A man's name.

My dating life as a model is one of the topics I'm least inclined to broach, but that people seem to take the most interest in. While ordinarily I wouldn't write about my personal life in public, I'm anonymous, I'm prepared to camouflage the identities of the wicked, and fundamentally I think tackling the common assumption that — how was it put recently? "Girls who look like Jessica Alba typically do not get jilted" is worth the airing of dirty laundry.

It is, I regret to inform you all, absolutely no easier to convince a guy to treat you with love and decency and even basic respect when you're 5'10" and have decent facial symmetry. This month has proven to be a horror of horrors.

There was the hipster who tolerated my hand on his knee in three different bars before going outside to make a phone call and inexplicably greeting a woman with a kiss on the mouth. "Uh, that's my girlfriend. Sort of," he explained. There was the funny guy from the party who, as soon as he had my e-mail, started sending irritatingly entitled missives with subject lines like "So: When are you coming to see me, Tatiana?" There was the dashing Serb who walked with me on the shores of a lake, and took my hand while he explained how 9/11 was an inside job. There was the writer in his mid-thirties who, all of five minutes after meeting me at a nightclub, held me close and whispered in my ear, "I wanna put a baby inside you."

Assholes, jerks, and weirdos like these are the reason my father forwards me headlines like Study: 1 in 4 adults in NYC have herpes
with the winning reminder "Let's be careful out there, Tati!"

But above all, there was the guy I'm going to call The Guy. The Guy is the cause of 99% of this indignation; I can't figure out if I'm primarily hurt that he managed to anger me so, or angry that he managed to hurt me so, but I've been some non-shelf-stable combination of the above for over a week now.

The Guy and I had been carrying on a torrid epistolary relationship for the past few months while I traveled to various of the world cities where fashion is practiced. E-mails were sent. Handwritten letters with carefully selected philately were exchanged. Cells buzzed with txt msgs five and ten times a day. Phone bills were obscene; our conversations no less so. [Torrid" is one way of putting it. "Florid" might work better. But you know, context. -Moe]

It was a mistake, I now realize, to ever wager so much on the character of a boy I'd not slept with. And who was 20.

When he and I both turned up in Paris — partly to see each other, partly to work, partly to travel — we promptly remedied that first error. We visited the Musée D'orsay, we took in a concert, we sat in many charming cafés, we went to Sacré Coeur and Sainte-Chapelle and Shakespeare and Co. and then got tipsy with local students on the banks of the Seine. We stayed up all night talking, just like we had done earlier in the summer, when an ocean separated us. And it was wonderful.

It lasted two days before, after a distracted performance at a dinner I'd cooked, he said he was thinking of getting out of town. Just going somewhere; it was summer, he was footloose, he didn't want to be "bogged down" with me and spend more time in Paris when there was the whole of France out there to explore. In fact, maybe he would borrow my laptop and look up some train schedules right now, while I did the dishes? In fact, maybe he would grab his bag and go to the train station and catch that 11:20 departure for a cool-sounding little town in Normandy. Maybe I could meet him at the weekend in Rouen?

I went with him to the station while he assured me that nothing was wrong.

In Rouen, The Guy was half an hour late to meet me at the station — which to my mind, speaks to a certain disinterest, a certain conflict, perhaps even a certain period of talking-oneself-into actually going through with the meeting. He was petulant, spacey, bored-seeming; his every gesture seemed intended to communicate the fact that I was the worst company imaginable. When The Guy wasn't grabbing my hand as we walked down the cobblestone streets, he was telling me that holding hands made him feel like too much of a couple. The second afternoon, he borrowed my cell phone to call the architecture student he'd hooked up with the night before my arrival.

At dinner that night, he remarked, for probably the fifth time, that traveling alone was "really fun." After an opera, he said I had "relationship tentacles" that were reaching out to ensnare him — an old saw about my supposed transference of affections directly from the last guy I dated, a man The Guy never even met. The evening I left for Paris, I had to ask him to walk me to the station; he stood on the platform, tolerated a kiss, commented that the beer I'd had with lunch was still on my breath, and headed back into the melee with a cheerful "See ya!"

Shy and never at my best in person, I did my usual thing and sent him an irate e-mail. "Narcissistic," I wrote. And "Relationship tentacles?!" And "Neurotic. Unable to concentrate. Flighty. Refused to fuck me." Baudelaire had his Spleen of Paris, I was thoroughly in the mode of the Gall of Rouen.

I received back a missive that included a charming anecdote about how he used to fight with his mother a lot when he was a boy. And the line "I have issues with women." And the line "Maybe I'm gay? I should probably investigate that some day."

And then: total radio silence. The Guy who'd sent me dozens of texts a day, e-mails several times weekly, phone calls on the days he didn't e-mail, letters every few weeks, for two months just slunk off into the French countryside. I wish I could say it hadn't so disappointed me, but when the most promising romantic connection you've had in months — seriously, 99% of the guys I meet present a comparable level of interest to the conspiracy-theorist Serb and the writer-creep and the entitled-funnyman and the it's-complicated hipster, which is to say, zero interest at all — is with an extremely intelligent, worldly, funny, hot, good-in-bed dude you can take to the opera who then just up and hightails it, it hurts.

Before he left Paris again for good, I wheedled five hours and a handful of explanations from him. The man who insisted I re-read The Blind Watchmaker the night we met suddenly found me "too intellectual." My favorite author was someone he, personally, found "pessimistic and dry," and it spoke volumes about my personality that I attached a "talismanic authority" to the author's works and persona. ("So," mused a friend, "if you liked Ann Rice, you'd be too much of a bloodsucker?") I have the wrong color hair and I'm an atheist lacking in appreciation for life's mysteries.

Then he borrowed 20 Euro to get a bus to the airport and walked out of my life.

I hate men.

I've been reading some Ann Carson lately, and I came across a quote that made me shudder:

"There is something profoundly uneventful about a man-made lake, like the self-knowledge of a radical skeptic."

As you might have guessed, I am radically skeptical. I consider it one of my finer traits: my mind wants to poke holes, to slaughter cows, to draw back green velvet curtains, and I suppose I find it ultimately satisfying when the inevitable disappointment clicks into place. I felt exhilarated at 13 when I determined the religion whose ritual and canon had given me such solace as a child (so many rules! so many complicated rules with so much at stake! It was like a puzzle challenge, staying holy), rested on the false premise that there was a God and a heaven to aspire to. I felt glad to have engineered my own sucker-punch. Woolly thinking seems to me a failure of imagination, a failure of brains — a failure to do our greatest evolved traits the service of proper use, and I try to root out my own whenever I notice it.

It was actually only on reading that Carson line that I realized it is possible that my woolliest trait of all — my inexhaustible ability for false consciousness, for convincing myself that what I want is actually perfectly expressed in what he wants, my apparent mania for replying in kind when I'm told that I'm loved — is not only annoyingly ineradicable, but, just perhaps, persistent precisely because of my avowed skepticism. After all, a skeptic is always asking, are you sure? The essence of my problem is that I never am. It's tempting to think that maybe he is.

Which I guess is a roundabout way of saying that being reasonably smart and self-possessed and even having had the matter of one's beauty put to a (sort-of) "objective" test and given a Pass! is no guarantee that assholes won't come calling, and that one won't spend far too much time entertaining them and their deep, unsearchable issues.

I'm reduced to do-as-I-say: Next time someone irksomely seeks out your affection and shies away from your arousal, next time someone uses your phone to call another girl, next time someone who seems perfect on paper acts indifferent in person, don't wait for him to have the presence of mind to figure out that the romance is doomed. Just run the other way. Fast. And to the lucky folks who are not just coming out the other side of an asshole entanglement? Next time someone more recently burned corners you at a bar with a half-hour story of slights ("He said sleeping with me was like sleeping with a relative!"), grin and bear it. And then maybe buy us a drink and do a quick visual check to — yes, absolutely — confirm the absence of any relationship tentacles. That would make us feel much better.

Though this article is entirely depressing and mostly pointless, Gold's exploration does beg the question: is it ever productive to reconnect with your exes?

Unless there are specific circumstances, the answer is usually no, it's not productive or at all satisfying. If you're trying to contact an ex because you want to know why he or she broke up with you, you will never get an answer that feels good or useful. For whatever reason, the person just didn't like you anymore. Even if he or she could articulate the reason, it's likely something that you couldn't change, and why should you try? Love yourself the way you are! Not the way some asshat wanted you to be!

If you've reconnected with an ex because you want to enact revenge or show the person how great you are now, that doesn't really work out either, as Gold's essay shows. She did, in fact, meet "Adam" again recently. He's married. But that doesn't stop him from trying to fuck her!

We walk in the park, then go to a gallery. We are behaving like teenagers, trying to impress each other, and we are almost angry at each other for being so excited. We are on a date, and it is much more fun than it used to be, because we are not in a damp squat infested by cardboard furniture and strange bearded men. He walks me to the tube and I clutch his shoulders and hug him. He bends his head and gives me a slightly slimy kiss on the mouth. "When can I call you without being a stalker?" he asks. I feel triumphant. My 14-year-old has beaten his 19-year-old to a pulp; somewhere, my Miss Selfridge skirt is cheering.

Um…yeah. Hopefully, someday Gold realizes this is a Pyrrhic victory. For now, let her be a cautionary tale. No good can come of the manufactured ex-loverreunion!

Remembrance Of Flings Past [Guardian]

Last year Ms. Kraus decided to dedicate their latest novel, "Dedication" to her husband. No, she wasn’t married. But she was hopeful. 'I was creating a place holder,” Ms. Kraus, 33, said. “He was out there. I just hadn’t crossed paths with him yet.' She began behaving as if she was already in love. 'You carry yourself differently when you’re not alone,' she explained. 'I would carry myself at a party or a supermarket or a gym as if I was loved.' Then a month later David Wheir kissed her, and she no longer needed to pretend."

Okay, so clearly something about this is bothersome, but what?

1. So we're supposed to walk the streets in the same yoga pants and busted Chuck Taylors and expressions of total indifference to the male gender we'd be wearing if we had boyfriends who loved us? Because, you know, done.
2. Okay, I know I said "total indifference" but fuck if "Mr. Wheir" isn't totally fucking hot. Check the video.
3. All right, here's how it really happened: they were friends first, he'd flirt with her immaturely but he always had a destructive relationship with some girlfriend with whom he liked to suck face publicly — why do I suspect said girlfriend was working retail at the time? — and then Nicola was mean to the girlfriend the time she came with him to a dog's birthday party, which is totally not something I would generally pull, not that I would have a birthday party for a dog either, but still it's illuminating, to the extent that maybe if she had spent the party yakking with the girlfriend and ignoring David she not only would have secured herself a discount at the girlfriend's boutique but maybe might have hastened the process by which he came to the realization that any woman indifferent enough to his mammoth hotness to chat up his vacuous-ass girlfriend was not only emotionally independent enough to actually date, but sufficiently comfortable around shallow people to date him. Or maybe I'm getting ahead of myself. But seriously, what was she so intimidated by in his ex-girlfriend? Her movie starred fucking Scarlett Johansson.
(OT, but: did anyone else On-Demand Nanny Diaries? I love that Laura Linney and Paul Giamatti both star in that thing. Can't you just hear Linney being interviewed…"Well I loved working with him on John Adams but we couldn't exactly not work together again after the once-in-a-lifetime experience that was Nanny Diaries…)
4. The wedding service involved a reading from the book Eat, Pray Love.

Vows [NY Times]

Tormented? Driven witless? 99 problems but therapy bills ain't one? Welcome to "Save Your Life, Cheap!" in which we write about the dumb things that get America's uninsured through hard times. AA meetings, James Joyce, Ani di Franco, suicide hotlines…anything nonalcoholic can apply, the more embarrassing the better. Which brings me to: self-help. In our first installment, Sephora Spy's Loren Hunt reviews the $1 book that got her through the worst breakup ever.

So, it's probably safe to make the baseline assumption that self-help books are not the kind of thing that anyone reads because they think it's cool. For some reason, self-loathing became more inherently cool than trying to fix problems, which would explain the aura of lameness surrounding self-help books: the corny covers, the corny catchphrases, the corny jacket photos, and the corny titles, which are invariably presented in a corny (and really large, readable) font. There are no cool self-help books. Cool people do not write self-help books. Happy people write them. And they could give a fuck who thinks they're cool. And you know who else doesn't give a fuck who thinks they're cool? A 23-year-old stripper who just used up every last shred of self-regard finally "breaking up" with the three-timing strip club DJ she had been fucking for the past year. And that, friends, is how I came to appreciate It's Called A Breakup Because It's Broken, the second offering from Greg Berendt of He's Just Not That Into You fame.

Have you ever played yourself so badly in a relationship that even years after the fact the salient details are still enough to embarrass you? The kind of situation so inherently unfortunate that, upon its demise, you don't even want to tell your friends it has ended because they'll just snort, "good," and assume that it is so obvious that you are better off without it that there is nothing left to say on the topic? I met him because we worked together. At the strip club. He was living with his girlfriend when we first started hooking up, while sorting out the details of a divorce to a third woman. Our "relationship" only ever seemed to happen on the weekends, after work, where sometimes we engaged in what he liked to call "non-sex." Non-sex was when we did it, but then he denied doing it. I felt sleazy and dissolute, which, at the time, was novel and exciting. He was so nice when it was just us. And passionate. And caring. And secretly really awesome! I encouraged him to get secretly awesome all over me on and off and on and off for almost a year before I was ready to cut off my drama supply at the source and move on to something possibly healthier. But by then, I'd become attenuated to the bombast and obvious chord progressions of his Bon Jovi song style of lovin' and everything else just seemed... too quiet. Or subtle. Or something. Which was finally enough to scare me... strip clubs and nocturnal relationships with strip club DJs were supposed to be more of an interesting digression for me than a permanent lifestyle plan, and I felt in danger of falling through one of my own cracks. So I cut him off and stopped going to work lest he use his DJ microphone to manipulate me back into his good graces (this is the beauty of strip club jobs. You can take a week or a month or a year off and no one even notices). It was around then that I found a typo-ridden galley copy of something called It's Called a Breakup Because it's Broken: The Smart Girl's Breakup Buddy. This would have been almost five years ago. It was only a dollar and I thought maybe it would at least entertain me while I prostrated my unwashed body in front of my window unit air conditioner and flipped wildly back and forth between hating him and hating myself, murderous rage and spontaneous crying jags, fantasies in which his head exploded a la Scanners and tender reconciliation scenes that featured me in a trashy white bridal bikini.

It's Called a Breakup Because it's Broken brings the added component of Berendt's wife, Amiira Ruotola-Behrendt, to the wisdom offered up in He's Just Not That Into You, which is the guide to figuring out what's really going on with all that non-sex. (Namely, break up. Or, more commonly, wait for him to break up with you, which leads to that kind of horrible soul-crushing life-wrecking freshly-dumped angst most of us are relatively familiar with.) (I was proud not to have figured out the He's Just Not That Into You part on my own over the course of a year.) Anyway, the basic premise of this book is that the Behrendts were able to fall in love and build a happy relationship purely because both parties lived through a lot of bullshit before they met each other, namely of the breakup variety. Their co-authorship serves as sort of a built-in source of hope to people who are presumably reading the book because they have just had their heart masticated, digested, and flushed down someone else's toilet. They are, thankfully, not particularly obnoxious about this, choosing instead to stick to practical coping methods that you can use to put your breakup in the past and get on with your life.

Part 1: The Breakup

The first thing I couldn't figure out about my breakup was why it hurt so much. I mean, it had been a bad time for which I had for whatever reason repeatedly shown up of my own volition. I should have known better than to get involved in the first place, I knew the whole time nothing good would come of it, and it seemed to me that ending it would be a relief, like walking away from a car crash with only a few scrapes. And sometimes it did feel like that. But more often, it was the usual, "Whyyyy don't youuuu LOVE meee?" shit. Which would in turn make me really angry with myself, like I was so dumb that I had deserved the whole thing. The first section of this book does a good job of talking you down from taking full responsibility for anything other than making sure the broken relationship stays over and consequently taking care of yourself. They're always asking you what you'd want with a broken relationship. Which is the kind of simple logic I needed after spending the past year twisted into a veritable pretzel of denial and convoluted thinking. Then, just to make sure, after asking, the book repeatedly tells you that you don't want a broken relationship so many times that by the second section, it starts to stick.

Part 2: The "Breakover"
Commandment 1 — Don't See Him or Talk to Him for Sixty Days: Actually, it is that simple, it's just not that easy. If you were quitting smoking, you wouldn't buy cigarettes, hang out with people who smoked cigarettes, go to places where people were smoking cigarettes, or get drunk and call cigarettes at 4 A.M. begging them to come over for one last smoke.

I was all set to argue with this like, "this is exactly what I would do if I were quitting smoking!" Then I remembered that I was still a smoker! They, um, refer to this as "he-tox." I picked up a few phone calls I shouldn't have during this period of time, but for the most part, I stayed away. The thing about my ex was that he was super-charming and looked like an underwear model. I did not stand a chance in the same room as him and I knew it; hence the entire non-relationship. I stayed away like my life depended on it, which, looking back, it kind of did. Not that he was ever abusive or dangerous. It had more to do with the kind of life I wanted to live, a life in which my boyfriend would publicly admit he was my boyfriend and hang out with me during daylight hours. Bare minimum.

Commandment 2 — Get Yourself A Breakup Buddy 'But he was my best friend.' So was that girl who smelled like egg salad in the third grade, but you don't still need her around, do you?

The breakup buddy is like the Alcoholics Anonymous sponsor of broken hearts, dedicated to raising your morale and being on call for commiseration, all the while keeping you committed to your sixty day he-tox. Personally, I was so embarrassed by the fact that I'd allowed myself to be in a relationship so royally screwed up that my non-boyfriend habitually disappeared when the sun came up that I didn't really want to talk about it anymore by the time the breakup happened. A big part of making the break, for me, was to finally admit that the relationship had even happened, since he'd been extremely adamant about keeping it hidden at work. I cried on my friend Tiffany, a fellow stripper who knew him, a few times, and that was pretty much that.

Commandment 3 — Get Rid of His Stuff and the Things That Remind You of Him Be strict about it, but reasonable as well. Let's not pack up all the glasses because he loved orange juice, but the framed pictures of the two of you, his toothbrush and toiletries, and his CDs have to go.

The Behrendts also recommend recruiting your breakup buddy to deliver your stuff back to your ex so that you don't have to break your he-tox period and risk backsliding by doing it yourself. This was probably the most effective chapter for me, because it required absolutely no hard labor: I didn't have any of his stuff. Even after a year. This spoke volumes I was finally ready to listen to.

Commandment 4 — Get Your Ass in Motion Every Day Besides, you've got to have a life, because when you do meet the next guy and he asks you what you're into, you don't want to say, 'My ex-boyfriend.'

That is some real talk. The book predictably advocates exercise as a good way to fill your newly empty days, but it takes into account the fact that when you're truly devastated, getting out of bed counts as an achievement. Then it discusses hobbies, as well as making a list of all the things you didn't do because you were with whoever and doing them all by yourself. When I was ready to get off the couch, I walked into another, better strip club and got another job. It was so easy I suddenly understood why he'd been so clingy even while totally unwilling to behave the way a real boyfriend should: he'd known that this day would come. He'd been wondering what was taking me so long. And the bonus of working at a club that he did not also work at was turned out to be that he wasn't there to distract me. I rearranged my whole work strategy and finally started making the kind of money they tell you strippers make.

Commandment 5—Don't Wear Your Breakup Out Into the World Indulging in messy public breakup behavior only makes those around you uncomfortable and makes you seem unstable. So keep it to yourself and your dearest friends after business hours, and make a pact with yourself to try to live the vision of what you want your life to look like. Every time you step outside, you should make an effort to reflect the person you are on your way to becoming, not the shell of the shattered woman he dumped. Turn that husk into a tamale!

Tamale status begins with dressing cute at all times and refraining from crying at work. Earlier in the book, they reference the Lili Taylor character from Say Anything, the one accompanying herself on guitar to a song called "Joe Lies" in the middle of a party. And here is the thing about that character: what is awesome and hilarious at a party in a a romantic comedy is pathetic and uncomfortable at an actual party, for everyone, except at the time perhaps the one too grief-stricken and wounded to care much about superficial shit like "pride" and "dignity" in the moment, but oh my god that will change. The book recommends that you abstain from this kind of behavior, and I was good at this. Few people who knew both of us even really knew we were dating, and would have been surprised at the level of involvement and how hard I was taking it if they did know. I kept doing like I'd been doing and eventually started believing that it hadn't been such a big deal. In a lot of ways, it began to seem mutually convenient that we hadn't had a "real" relationship. I realized this a few months later when I attempted to be a breakup buddy to Moe and had the distinct pleasure of watching her send a text to her ex that read "I want to shit in your eye." I laughed hysterically. I probably wasn't cut out to be a breakup buddy.

Commandment 6 — No Backsliding! Once you give in to it, you find yourself caught in the worst kind of relationship purgatory—the demotion—because you are in effect telling your ex that he can still have access to you WITHOUT the emotional responsibilities. Backsliding doesn't mean you're getting back together, it just means you've lowered your standards and accepted a demotion from ex-girlfriend with self-esteem to ex-girlfriend whom he can still get busy with if he wants to.

Ouch. The fact that my entire non-relationship was a demotion out of the gate was ample reason for me to avoid backsliding. That didn't mean I didn't want to hear his voice or turn the lights on to inspect his perfect hip ridges up close one more time. But I didn't. Okay, I did, but years later, and when I was totally over him. They really are perfect! But by then, I felt like Jennifer Connelly at the end of Labyrinth, surprising herself by realizing that it's actually true when she says to David Bowie, "you have no power over me." This day will come. You know it will come. So think of it this way; the faster you stop having unsatisfying, emotionally fraught post-breakup sex with your ex, the quicker you'll be able to have hot unattached meaningless sex with him!

Commandment 7 — It Won't Work Unless You Are Number One! You are the prize, the sun, the moon, and the stars. Not him or anyone else. You can love your friends, you can love your family, and you can love every stray dog or stray drummer that crosses your path. HOWEVER, you have to learn how to love yourself, like yourself, and put yourself first before you will ever find the healthy, loving, and lasting relationship you're looking for.

Yeah, this is the hard one. Do I love myself yet? I'm getting closer all the time! I haven't begged anyone to use me as a convenient repository for all of their bullshit quite as flagrantly as I did while dating the DJ, and my boyfriends have become increasingly realer and realer as time has passed, with none of them counting as completely brutally gnarly Bad Ideas. I'd call it progress. While I have not yet found the healthy, loving, and lasting relationship I'd like to have yet, it is also true that I've gotten infinitely better at coping with the resultant breakups and in the process, wasted a lot less of my own time. I'm still not sure that rules are necessarily as ruthlessly applicable to the human heart in the way that the Behrendts suggest they might be, but I do have faith that I will now be able to recognize which rules are made to be broken in a way that I didn't before.

It's Called A Breakup Because It's Broken [Amazon]

I was naive and I was romantic…and I think those are good things, to be naive and romantic and still believe in…love or something.

Yeah, of course, fuck that. I can't hang out with those people. Amusingly, one apparently will only submit to an interview if he digitally alters her voice, and then it turns out he has impotence problems, etc. etc. Here is the trailer.

A Complete History Of My Sexual Failures [Official Movie Site]
Sundance Review: A Complete History Of My Sexual Failures [Variety]

So, Katherine realized a couple of years ago that she was a lesbian, came to grips with it, and told both her parents at once because she didn't want them to think she liked one of them more than the other. She still remembers the day because, like a lot of my gay friends, she approached the disclosure about her sexuality with a degree of trepidation despite being the daughter of one of the politicians responsible for defeating an anti gay marriage amendment to Massachusetts' constitution. This is what she said about watching him speak on that day:

"Because, of course, he didn't know that I was gay then," the 18-year-old recalls. "So, for someone so publicly to fight for something that doesn't even affect him was just like, 'That’s my dad,' you know?" she says with a laugh. "That’s all I could think. I was very, very proud to be part of this family, and this state in general."

"It was great. I'm very glad," she adds, looking at her father. "Don't cry, Dad." Patrick's eyes are brimming with tears, prompting some good-natured teasing from his daughter. "He's done some good things," she says with a laugh, patting his arm. "I appreciate it. Want a tissue? Oh, God. He's a crier."

Shit, I think I might be a crier, too.

Neither of her parents initiated the interview with the paper, though they agreed to it because their daughter asked them to do it and they thought it was a good decision to, as a public family, make this aspect of their lives public on their terms, rather than the terms of a newspaper like the Boston Herald. Said Deval and his wife Diane:

And while Katherine is comfortable with her very public coming out, her parents remain wary. Patrick's misgivings stem partly from the fact that his daughter wouldn't do an interview to announce that she is straight. "But the world is such and my job is such that rather than have someone do a 'gotcha' and our giving the misimpression that this wasn't completely natural in our family, then we thought, 'Alright, let's just say it and move on,'" he says.

Diane's concerns stem from a mother's instinct to protect her daughter and her desire to keep both of her daughters "from the burdens of public life." It's why she doesn't see herself becoming the proverbial PFLAG parent and advocating publicly for LGBT issues. "This issue involves one of my children and I have really wanted them to not have to feel, frankly, answerable to the public and I still don't want it," Diane explains. "As a mother my instinct is to protect my children from discomfort and so that would be the reason why I would not relish [an advocacy] role, because it would be about her."

In that aspect, she's totally right. Who among us straight Jezebels had to announce our sexual preference to our parents? Who had to even discuss it, unless you got caught doing something? The only conversation I ever had about my sexual proclivities with my parents at that age was one in which my mother demanded my father ascertain from me which of my dude friends I was fucking (she was sure it was at least 3 of them), a conversation that ended up with me yelling at him that I was offended that they thought I was such a slut and we never talked about it again. For the record, Dad (since I know you're reading), I was sleeping with Dennis. Sorry. But it wasn't any of your business, anyway.

Anyway, so Katherine has way more courage and honesty than I did at her age, and her parents are way more accepting of her homosexuality than my parents were of my slutty heterosexuality at that age and the whole thing sort of made me tear up because you just know for every lucky Katherine Patrick there's at least one unlucky Maya Marcel-Keyes, whose father, politician Alan Keyes, kicked her out of his house, stopped speaking to her and stopped contributing to her education when she came out.

With Love And Pride, Governor Deval Patrick's Daughter Comes Out Publicly [Bay Windows, picture courtesy of Marilyn Humphries]
Alan Keyes' Daughter Coming Out [CBS News]

Some random acquaintance, like in Doree's piece, gets married after dating someone for a year, and you wonder why you're not married yet. You see your friends who got married and divorced before the age of 25 and were smugly happy that you didn't meet the same fate. You look at the sorority girls you knew who got married young and feel some combination of pity/contempt/envy and then feel bad about yourself for comparing your relationship, which is pure and true and good, to some false idea of what your relationship should be. But, as Doree points out, once you're deeply involved with someone, the niggling question you can't always ignore is "how do you know?" I have no fucking idea. Any guesses?

This Is When You Know [Observer]

Freedom makes you long for fried potatoes, some of which he'll bring you from the MP canteen if you let him win a few rhetorical rounds. "Philosophically, I suppose I am also seeking love," you allow. But that soon becomes irksome. You remind him that he would, were his society less inculcated in materialism, probably take eternal life with 69 virgins or whatever the stupid legend has it. No, he knows he knows nothing of the pain suffered by your people at the hands of his, their tragic marginalization and disenfranchisement at the hands of Dudes like himself, just as you know that, in his position, you would probably be a little rougher about flouting those Geneva Conventions. He used to dream of "cracking" a high-level suspect like yourself; but "cracking" is probably apocryphal; no one in this wing of the prison has ever seen it happen and now everyone's curiosity has receded into a quiet unacknowledged acceptance of the fact that everyone there is seeking the same thing: Death.

(With virgins.)

Alleged 9/11 Mastermind Due In Court [Washington Post]

So here is my question: I was a dork in high school. And sure, that probably helped make me a slut, but never the sort of boy crazy sociopath you'd expect, given my degree of social alienation. Why is Being A Nerd In High School so much more damaging to dudes than girls? Is it just that even nerdy girls get hollered at on the street?

Instant Message, Instant Girlfriend [NYT]

Then, they'll meet one of these thirtysomething guys at work — not one of the real good ones, just one of those single thirtysomething guys who "relates" better to younger dudes and enjoys deluding himself into thinking he's somebody's mentor. Well, that guy doesn't have any money either. But he totally has chicks! What's his secret? Chivalry. It's fun, free, it gets you laid and as a bonus, totally makes dudes feel superior to one another. Just ask Tracie! (She's dating a 22-year-old.)

Disrespect Is The New Chivalry [NPR]

Sometimes the dream would be of losing her, or of desperate searches unfulfilled. The breakup argument in the spotless white penthouse apartment. Recriminations, tears. Running down rain-slicked city streets, locked doors, impassive doormen, and always that perfect angelic face; leaving with someone else, or seen in a blank stare through a limousine window .Even the specter of losing Natalie Portman was better than that; even the memory of imaginary heartache is preferable to the slow feeling of turning into a vampire. Perhaps it is the curse of all men; the sad final truth that the male half of the human race might only confide in one another over a few too many beers: you only truly love a woman when she walks out the door.

He is back now. He has a wife and dog. But the extremeness of the putridness of his actual reality empowers ever-grander and more glamorous wishful delusions? Sounds about right. At home with his Xbox, he's either happy or miserable in the realization that he will "never dance the lambada with Natalie Portman" although maybe she'll read his column in the Times and forgive him the whole "lambada" thing because at least he's being honest that he'd probably fuck it up with them anyway, even if he can't yet admit exactly why.

May I Have This Dance? [NY Times]
Related: A Quilt Of Lost Memories [Newsweek]

The couple also admit to a hands-on physical relationship that they describe as intense but chaste. Mr. Roach compares it to the relationship his mother had with her doctor when she was dying of breast cancer. "The surgeon lay his hand on her breast, but there wasn't any carnal thought in his mind," he said. "He was doing some life-or-death thing. For us it is the same."

"He is a good guy and learned person, but the Bill Clinton question lingers over him," [prominent American Buddhist Lamya Surta Das] said of Mr. Roach. "He is with a much younger blond bombshell. What is a deep relationship that is not sexual? It is hard to understand."

Buddhist Teachers Make Their Own Limits In A Spiritual Partnership [NY Times]

Love finds a way. The teenage girls interviewed for this story are sneaky and clever, as teenage girls are. Some dress up as men and visit men-only establishments. And while unmarried men and women may not speak to each other because Islam forbids a stranger to hear your voice, this is the era of Facebook and cell phones. Instant messaging and text messaging bring some young people together. Not everyone is comfortable with it, however. Sara al-Tukhaifi, 18, says: "One test is that if you're ashamed to tell your family something, then you know for sure it's wrong. For a while I had Facebook friends who were boys — I didn't e-mail with them or anything, but they asked me to "friend" them and so I did. But then I thought about my family and I took them off the list."

While there are penalties for being caught with an unrelated member of the opposite sex (arrest, flogging) — the worst is the dishonor that would be invoked. Explains Enad al-Mutairi, a 20-year-old police officer: "One of the most important Arab traditions is honor. If my sister goes in the street and someone assaults her, she won't be able to protect herself. The nature of men is that men are more rational. Women are not rational. With one or two or three words, a man can get what he wants from a woman. If I call someone and a girl answers, I have to apologize. It's a huge deal. It is a violation of the house." Enad's cousin, Nader al-Mutairi calls himself "a romantic person." He feels that the way things are set up in Saudi Arabia, "there is no romance." Yet his ring tone is a love song; he is engaged to Enad's sister and they text message each other. When she calls, or writes a message, his phone flashes "My Love" over two interlocked red hearts.

Meanwhile, the Times also interviews a 17-year-old girl named Shaden (seen veiled in the photo above). Her favorite DVD is Pride and Prejudice with Keira Knightley as Elizabeth Bennet. "It's a bit like our society, I think," She says. "It's dignified, and a bit strict... When Darcy comes to Elizabeth and says 'I love you' — that's exactly the kind of love I want."

One has to wonder: In a country which offers young men very little in the way of entertainment — no movie theaters, few sports facilities and with shopping malls off-limits — couldn't Love be a worthwhile pastime? If only it were not so difficult to find? As one commenter on the Times blog noted, "[It] is dangerous... to have too many young men in their twenties who have too little to do. They become prey to ideologues of seventh-century political cults, and ultimately, willing cannon fodder." When you don't take Love for granted, when Love is all you need, can Love save the day?

Love On Girls' Side Of The Saudi Divide, Q&A: Love in Saudi Arabia, Young Saudis, Vexed And Entranced By Love's Rules, Love In Saudi Arabia (video) [NY Times]

This was, obviously, a response to his accusation that I seemed "smitten" and wanted a relationship with him, and my assurances that I did not, I just liked making out, and if he didn't believe me he only needed to wait until my workload picked up and I made myself scarce, which is exactly what happened, and, you know, whatever. But I didn't remember how I had become so patient or resigned or how I'd come to enjoy the "Zenlike form of nonattachment" author Marguerite Fields is struggling to perfect because it happened such a goddamn long time ago. And that was depressing; Fuck I am old. (Also depressing: I held my first newspaper job the summer Israel turned fifty.)

Perhaps unsurprisingly, my little sister Christina, who is a year ahead of Marguerite in college, did not find this week's 'Modern Love' as depressing as I did. (Christina is different from me in that she does things like getting her eyebrows waxed and going to therapy.) And she penned some words of advice for people who did find the column depressing — and aren't too old to change their habits — which I will excerpt here.)

I'm Moe's sister who is about to graduate from college. Moe asked me to comment upon this week's Modern Love column, a piece much more enjoyable and insightful to read than I had expected since Moe usually makes such relentless fun of the Modern Love feature I stopped reading it.

Anyway, as someone who has her fair share of one-night stands and fleeting trainstop encounters, yet is decidedly over my relationship angst, if largely due to the absence of any relationships and the discovery of internet porn.... I would like to give some advice to Marguerite Fields and other women like her. Oh hell we're all like her.

1) Trust your instincts. This is the only thing I learned in therapy. Women have great instincts (the women's intuition!) but we never listen to them. Marguerite Fields, at the end of another unceremonious dumping, writes "[I] tried to remind myself that when we first met I thought he was an arrogant, presumptuous little man." She got bad vibes from the start, and yet Marguerite, a talented and sensitive author who should have known better, proceeded to form a relationship with this man. Why? Because of a little thing I like to term "The Mister Darcy Delusion." I am sure some feminist theorist before me has already coined this term, and if so I apologize, but it's ridiculous that this is your job. The Mister Darcy Delusion is the notion, popularized by the early 19th century author Jane Austen, that the smug asshole who calls you fat at the party is really just a misunderstood studmuffin held in by early 19th century social conventions who will turn into Colin Firth if you give him a chance. Well chicas, Jane Austen died a spinster (thank you, Anne Hathaway) and it's the 21st century, and if he looks like a prick and he talks like a prick and he walks like a prick, well, chances are you've had sex with him.

2) Read "The Rules." It's a stupid book, yes, but it's a reminder that you can take control of your relationships at least partially by a) getting a life b) taking a shower and c) not calling back immediately after he calls and going all crazy on his ass.

3) Only go out for guys that you think are hot. Most women tend to chase after guys that they think are physically unattractive under them is guided assumption that said guy will be so grateful to have scored a Hot Chick that he will be true forever. THIS NEVER HAPPENS. Ugly guys always get laid more, and they are often the biggest assholes about it because they are so insecure that girls keep hooking up with them out of pity. This is a time when our human evolution truly runs counter to our own efficient natural instincts. Ladies, right this wronged system and only chase af