Sixteen year old boys are not usually known for discussing their emotions with anyone- especially not their mother. So, I was pleasantly surprised when my son sent me a text message of a personal nature recently.  My son could be described as a late bloomer, and has just recently started dating a young lady.  They went to homecoming together, and, according to his text message to me, he kissed her there for the first time.  When I asked him how it was, his reply brought tears to my eyes: “better than ice cream”. My tears were not only for his innocent romanticism, but also because I can foresee the awful heartbreak that is inevitably coming his way.

 Heartbreak sucks.  I remember my first like it was yesterday (see Dear Thirteen Year Old Me), and it still stings a bit to remember almost thirty years later.  The sad thing is that I know there is nothing I can do to prepare him for what is coming, just as I was unprepared to have my heart broken again recently (see Psycho-Chicks and the Men that Create Them). I know that break ups are part of life, and that enduring them is the only way to grow stronger, but, the mom in me knows that I’m going to have to be restrained from killing this girl when she hurts my boy. (Disclaimer in case she dies in some mysterious manner- I’m not guilty and I’m sure I have an alibi!)

 But, break-ups don’t always have to be so awful.  Here, I list some of the not-so-heartbreaking reasons that my relationships have ended:

So, there you have it. For every heartbreaking reason that a relationship ends, there could be a more ridiculous reason than you have ever considered. And, I wonder why I’m single….

  Cynical would definitely not be at the top of my list when I talk about dating. However, after waking up one morning and finding myself amongst the ‘Top 10 Best Cynical Dating Blogs Of the Year’, I have to admit it got me thinking a lot! Don’t get me wrong, I was thrilled to find myself in that list; however I can’t help wondering: Are we becoming cynical without realizing it? Let’s face it; we are living in an era where romance has already died! Personally I think that if someone offers me their seat on the bus it’s romantic; on the other hand, if someone was waiting for me at home with candles and a bunch of rose petals saying ‘I Love You’ I would probably find it too cheesy, fake, pretentious, and the list goes on and on. Ok, yes that makes me cynical… but can you blame me? How often do we find the knight on the white horse, the perfect guy, our Mr. Dreamy? I’m just being realistic!

  Personally, heartbreak after heartbreak, I learnt not to expect too much from men, because more often than not, I get disappointed! Have a look through my past dating failures: Mat never broke up with his girlfriend (Just sex… or something more? And Will he ever leave hisgirlfriend for you?), Nick is happily married (Can you fall in love with twopeople at the same time ? and  Do we need to change to be in a relationship), Chris ended up dating 9 girls in 3 weeks (When is it too soon to get excited?), and so on. Of course you will probably say ‘that’s because you still haven’t met the right guy’, and you are probably right… but until then, I’ll keep thinking of the person that give up their seats for me as Prince Charming!

 

  

  I don’t know if cynicism is a good or bad thing. On the one hand, I’d say it makes us more realistic, we learn to not trust people easily (and that’s a hard-learnt lesson!), to be cautious before placing our heart in the hands of someone who blurted ‘I love you’ way too soon but on the other hand, we dismiss everything way too soon, and one day we might actually do the same thing with the right person! Maybe I was too cynical when I broke up with Nathan (After how much pain do we become emotionallyunavailable? ), just because he was too nice, because he said ‘I want to make you happy’ whenever I asked what he wanted out of our relationship, but I just couldn’t help it. Maybe we are programmed to think that unless there are some obstacles in our relationship, love life or dating then it is not real. I’m starting to think that we create a certain addiction to the pain we go through when someone breaks our hearts but we still hang on to him and it is that pain that makes us cynical, realistic, and pessimistic.

      

   However, having said all that, I think there’s something incredible about someone who is optimistic about what the future holds, someone who knows that her Prince Charming is out there, even if she has to kiss a lot of frogs before finding him. There are some people like that who brighten up our life and pass on to us their positive energy… if only I was one of them. I do believe that there is a light at the end of the tunnel, I just don’t believe in fairytales anymore, and I don’t trust people easily, which is not a bad thing, in my opinion… So yes, I am cynical after all, and might I add: proud of it!

I would love to know what you think though, am I cynical? Are you cynical? And what do you think of the blog making it to the ‘10 Best Cynical Dating Blogs’ of the year? COMMENT below and tell me what you think! 

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  Love is selfish. I know it’s hard to hear, and you are probably thinking that loving someone is the least selfish thing you can do: you give them all you have, you sometimes change for them, and you compromise and want to make them happy. All this is true, but really, do you do all that for him or for you? You may change everything about you, but you still wouldn't do it for the sake of the other person, you would do it for the way you feel when you are with him. You love him because he makes you feel in a certain inexplicable, unimaginable, magical way – and that is perfectly fine. However, in a relationship, we draw our lines and expect someone to love us in a specific way and love us ‘under some certain conditions’: Don’t cheat on us, love only us, treat us in a certain way, etc etc. And this is all rational…. But what happens when you love someone the way he wants you to love him? Can you love someone so unconditionally that you give him everything he wants, any time he wants so that he can be happy, regardless of your own feelings? Can we put someone else above ourselves?

 My story with Mat is by now very well known (see Just sex… or something more? And Will he ever leave his girlfriend for you?), and even though is towards its end, every once in a while I can’t help thinking: how different things would be if I was willing to love Mat the way he wanted me to? For those of you that don’t know yet, Mat has a girlfriend now, and I asked him to break up with her otherwise we are over. Of course he didn't break up, and Mat and I are history now. However… was I able to love Mat the way he wanted me to love him? Was I able to put him above myself? To do that, it would require to accept him being in another relationship and be with him when he wanted me to and the way he wanted me to. It would mean putting my needs and wants aside to make him happy. I would have to compromise with being the other woman, not complain and still be there for him for when he wanted me to. It sounds harsh on me, but loving someone so unselfishly means that you would be happy just because he would be! Happiness wouldn't be something that you would acquire based on how much the other person gave you (emotionally and/or materially) but based on how much the other person was getting from you –seeing them happy would make you happy and content. It probably sounds completely irrational right now, but pause for a minute and think about it. How many times did you feel bad because your loved one was sad or upset? How many times did that bring you down and upset you? And during those times, you would probably give up whatever you were doing (Even if you were out with friends ) and go to him to make him feel better? That is giving him love without expecting something in return, just because you love them. The kind of unconditional love I’m talking about takes this to a whole different extent. The irrationality of this love puts the other person above and beyond you throughout the relationship.

  Just to make this clear, I was never able to do this throughout a relationship, but for a short while I put Mat above me and my needs and wants. I accepted him being in another relationship and was there the way he wanted me to be there. Mat was going through a rough patch this past few months, regarding a lot of things in his life and the last thing I wanted was to upset him even more with the fact that I wanted him to break up with his girlfriend. So I decided that for those few months I would put him above me and be there for him without making his life even more difficult. I was the first person he would turn to when he needed to talk to someone about something. There were times when he was upset or angry about something and took it out on me, but I knew it would blow away so I was patient. He would come back and apologize immediately of course, but somehow the fact that I could make him feel better, just by being there; talking to him, holding him (even though he didn't belong to me) was enough for the moment. I was content with making him happy and when those feelings of anger and sadness (because I didn't have him for myself) sneaked in, I would hide them well and he would rarely see how upset I was. Now you are thinking: what kind of a relationship was it if you weren't happy but you pretended to be? And you are absolutely right. But a person that is willing to do this throughout a relationship is someone that, in my opinion, deserves to be respected and admired. They managed to put someone else’s happiness above their own; they were happy simply because their other half was. How many of us can say as much?

  Even though I love Mat with all of my heart, I know I will never be able to love someone the way they want me to love them. My love will always have a selfish side… the side where I want them to love me in a certain way and not give up everything for them. But even though I know myself well and the fact that I will never be able to love someone in such a way, I can’t help wondering once in a while: Would I have kept Mat with me if I loved him in such a way?... And if not forever, would I even be able to postpone, or even avoid, the heartache I’m feeling now that everything is over? Could I love him unconditionally? Because if unconditional love does exist, in my opinion, is something very similar to the love I described above.

I would be very interested to read your opinions on this, in the comment section below. Let me know what unconditional love is for you or if you ever experienced something similar to what I have described. CLICK HERE to like my facebook page and never miss an update!! 

I never stopped asking myself: ‘What happens after we break up?’ It seems somehow irrational because the logical answer would be ‘you move on and find someone else to love’… But can we love everyone the same?  To put it differently… Can you love your next boyfriend the same way you love(d) your ex? And this raises an even bigger question… Do we even stop loving someone even after the relationship has ended?

 Most of us have probably lived through a ridiculous, inconvenient, consuming, cant-live-without-each-other love… and for many of us this has ended. For the second time throughout my blog’s history I am going to narrate someone else’s story.  Hannah and I have been living together for a year now and I can say with a lot of certainty that I know her well by now. She is one of the most disciplined people I know, including emotional discipline as well. That’s one thing I admire about her; seriously, how many of us can say as much! When she broke up with her boyfriend of two years (Steve) she said to me: ‘I gave myself one whole day to cry and get over him’… and just like that she was over him! I couldn’t believe my eyes; when I’m going through a break up I can cry for days and days, not get out of the house for weeks and probably the idea of eating the entire content of my fridge would seem inevitable. Even if I give myself some time limit to get over someone I know I don’t work this way; I would probably suppress my tears and then choke on them when I least expect it! Anyhow, that’s how Hannah is and I admire her for that. She didn’t take long to move on, within a month she was with someone else and she has been with him for the past year and a half. She is in one of those kind of relationships that each and every one of us would love to be in: they fight like siblings, laugh like best friends and love each other. Whenever we spoke of her ex she would always say that she cares about him but what they had is over and they would never get back together. All in all Hannah has the kind of relationships we wish we had; but we end up with bittersweet memories, broken hearts that take forever to fall back together and ex boyfriends that become strangers… We never know what happened to the love we had with that person.

 However, one late night somewhere between confession time between the two friends Hannah told me: ‘ I see Steve sometimes… is it weird that I still feel attracted to him?’  Knowing Hannah for the past two years I have to say that this was something I never expected to hear from her.  I recall her asking ‘I’m with someone else, I shouldn’t be attracted to my ex… right?’ This was a question I wasn’t ready to answer for myself, let alone for someone else. How much do we get over someone after we break up? And, dear I say it, do we ever get over our past loves or are we haunted forever by spirits of relationships past? Did I ever get over Nick? (Can you fall in love with two people at the same time? and  Do we need to change to be in a relationship?) Do I love Mat the same way I love(d) Nick? Just like Hannah had to see Steve again to realize that the love she had for him never went away, I had to run into Nick to feel the same thing. When I run into Nick this summer I realized that even though we are over I’m always going to love him and care about him; he would always have a place in my heart and even though he will soon be married to someone else, I sincerely hope he is happy. So I might not be over him afterall, and Hannah might not be over Steve… Maybe we are never over our great loves, but as time goes by we get used to living without them and love them from somewhere afar. I guess getting over someone just means learning to live with the wounds they left you with when they departed and then find the strength to move on. So maybe we are indeed haunted by spirits of relationships past but we choose to move on, because it’s the right thing to do. We give them a part of our heart to keep forever, but learn to survive with what’s left of it.

 After I talked to Hannah again, I realized that the answer she was looking for was simply ‘there’s nothing wrong with still loving someone you’ve been with for so long simply because now you are with someone else’. 

 Earlier this afternoon, while I was contemplating on the subject I asked Kate for her opinion and realized she had a different point of view on the subject: ‘I guess you can stop loving someone, depending on the way the relationship ended. If he cheated on you it’s normal to just move on and get over him’. I, on the other hand, have a completely different opinion on this: It doesn’t matter how a relationship has ended, once some time has gone by and your anger has subsided you realize that even through the betrayal you feel, the love is still there and it always will be. You might never get over the fact that he cheated on you, but you won’t get over him either… it will just be a bittersweet memory. Which one of the two do you agree with? And do you think we actually ever get over someone and stop loving them? Where does the love go… Does it ever vanish? COMMENT and let me know your thoughts on the subject. CLICK HERE to like my facebook page and keep up with all the updates! 

  

 I have to admit that one of the main reasons for not posting so often is the fact that I have been in a mess for the past one and a half months. Frankly being a dating blogger and giving so many advices on dating should mean that I know what I’m saying, but when it comes to this post… I honestly don’t know where I’m standing. But, I realized that I can make my mistakes over and over again, and still learn from them each time… so I’m about to tell you about another of my big mistakes.

  It’s been about a month and a half since I came back home for summer holidays and naturally I had to dive into yet another love-story-gone-wrong.  I hope you remember Mat (if not then see, Just sex… Or something more?), because Mat turned out to be the highlight of this summer’s love failure. Of course he had to call me as soon as I came back, I was expecting that; what I wasn’t expecting was the fact that I ran to him as soon as he called! I should have known better, I’ve been down that road before! And I could sense trouble from the very first time that we met up… once you develop feelings for your fuck buddy things go wrong…. Wait a minute, scratch that: once you develop feelings for someone who is in a relationship things are bound to go wrong! Yes, you heard that one well: Mat is now in a relationship! So what on earth am I doing with him? I guess when you fall in love with someone reason has no part in the whole process. And so meet up we did, but this time I wasn’t going to put up with him being in a relationship… That’s another thing I’ve done before and I’m not willing to go through that pain again… So I chose to give him an ultimatum: "You leave her or I leave you". It wasn’t so simple though: I was going over and over it in my mind for weeks and when I finally said it, it was more like begging than threatening…  The thing is, I’m not one to threaten because when it comes to telling someone to leave their girlfriend: either he lives her and then at every little obstacle he just brings up the topic and you are the bitch that made him leave his girlfriend or he doesn’t, and then you are the bitch that wanted him to leave his girlfriend… either way it’s never a good thing. However, this time I had to tell Mat to leave her, mostly because it hurts me too much…. It’s excruciating imagining that he’s with someone else when he’s not with me, when I know that he won’t go out with me because he’s  scared of someone seeing us together or when we have to meet him in the middle of the night when it’s too late for his girlfriend to show up uninvited. Of course you would think: anyone in their right mind would never get into this mess in the first place… but then again, how many of you have fallen in love and followed what your brain said instead of your heart?

 Even though I did the unforgivable: asking him to leave his girlfriend (honestly what right do I have breaking up two people? But to my defense: a) he’s been thinking to break up for a while and b) I fell so in love with him it seemed like the only possible solution..) I knew how it should be played in order to maximize my chances of winning him over: no pressure, give him time, make him miss you, be positive, show him you care… And actually I did that.. for the first three weeks! After that I started getting impatient, asking him more often, pressuring him… and even though I tried to hide it I used to cry almost every day for him, I would lock myself in my room and just cry my eyes out until my eyes burnt and I had literally ran out of tears. Looking back at it now: Was he actually worth so many tears? Did I let my desire to live with him what I missed all the while I was away get bigger than him? Did he disappoint me, not because of his own fault, but because of my vast expectations? Relationship or no relationship, and regardless his feelings for me, Mat was never available for a relationship with me… and I wasn’t either.

 It’s been almost  6 weeks since I asked him to break up with his girlfriend and he still hasn’t decided… By now I know he won’t leave her, I just can’t bring myself to tell him that I want to ‘break up’ with him once and for all. Mostly I’m just staying here to confirm my suspicion that he won’t leave her… If I back up now and later on he decides to live her, I will be devastated. Even though I know the things he’s contemplating right now, I can tell you with absolute certainty the reasons why he (and most other men) will never leave their girlfriend for me (or anyone else out there that hopes the same as I do):

1.  Habit: even if he’s not head over heels with her, you have to give her credit for the one thing she offers him what you don’t : certainty! Men are creatures of habit, if they are used to her and they can live their life without much trouble with her, then why leave her? Leaving her and starting a new relationship with you (or me in this case) would cost them much more effort than just being with her and having an affair on the side with you as well. He will never leave the certainty of his girlfriend and dive into the unknown with us, no matter how much we want to believe in fairy tales.

2.  He can have you both, why bother changing that: Like they say, he can have his cake and eat it too! If he can juggle you both, why would he leave one? It just doesn’t make sense! Why would he change anything when everything is perfect? He doesn’t feel guilty, he can have his affair and then go back to his girlfriend and his friends! He has everything for granted, he will never dream of changing anything.

3. His friends: In my case this is a huuuuge factor. His current girlfriend is good friends with many of his friends. And the girlfriends of his friends. If he broke up with her and jumped into a relationship with me then he would be the jerk that left the good girl… and of course I would be the bitch that made them break up. This is another issue that I’m not sure I would be ready to deal with (when the time is right I promise to write a post on how to handle his friends). But I know this much: I love him enough to give it a go!

 Even though I know all the reasons he won’t leave her, I am just staying here, in desperate hope that he will find one reason to beat all of the above and choose me over her. I’m reaching for the stars here, aren’t I? (CLICK HERE to find out what happens with Mat when the next update comes up!) I know it’s hopeless, but once again I know I’ll have my heart in pieces and I can’t do anything to stop that. My only choice is to leave him before he does… not that it’s going to hurt any less. It’s like I’m watching a car crash happening in slow motion and I can’t do anything to stop it! Sometimes I have to swallow back my tears when I’m with him and I can feel the air being sucked out of my lungs whenever he kisses my forehead.. And it’s all the little things that drive me crazy.. All the little things that I’m going to have to learn to do without.  All in all, now you know the whole story. I’m not sure what you’ve learn from it and I’m not sure what I’ve learnt either… but I’m not going to lose hope: Everything happens for a reason… right? If anyone has any advice on how to deal with the whole situation please comment and let me know, I’m a bit lost as you can see. Tell me about any similar experiences you may have had as well, and please if anyone out there knows someone who left their girlfriends for the woman he was in an affair with please let me know! I need to know if such men actually exist! CLICK HERE to like my facebook page and learn first how it turns out with Mat. Also follow me on bloglovin’ to read the posts as soon as they come up! 

NOTE: Due to the high popularity of this article, I just published a follow up: 'Being the other Woman'. Click on it to read it if you can relate! 
Comment and let me know what you think and how you feel! :)