Night In

If you've been single for a while, then you might start to get a bit desperate in your hunt for "the one." It happens to everyone. You can say, "I'm not looking" or "I'm just here to have fun."

But then it hits you.

The couples walking hand in hand start to look younger and younger, and this morning you found a wrinkle showing somewhere on your too charming face.

You've hit the wall.

The relationship wall. It's that km in the marathon where you feel like you're going to break and you have to keep pushing through to find them because if you don't find them now... you feel like you're absolutely going to die.

So you increase your search opportunities. Join a dating site, start asking friends to set you up, start facebook stalking friends of friends and friending them if they live in the same city, and going out every single night, hoping, PRAYING that "the one" will come to your bar/club/hangout tonight.

But there's a problem in all this searching you're doing, you're forgetting a very important person. You've spent so much time looking for "the one" you've forgotten the one in the mirror, yourself.

While single it's very important to maintain a level of saneness and oneness with yourself so that you have your individuality in check. SO THAT when you meet a hottie at a bar you'll be able to express your wants, needs, and desires effectively in order to secure a phone number, potential date, or a little fun for the night.

In order to achieve this oneness you need to set aside time, for yourself every single week. It's my recommendation that a night in away from the hustle and bustle of the crowds at a club gives you the opportunity to rummage through the insanity in your brain and calm it down so that you can be open to new opportunities and people that may arise when you are out the following evening. Knowing who you are allows you to know what you're looking for in "the one." I'm not talking blonde hair, blue eyes. I'm talking a deep level of connection that only eHarmony and you know about.

Without a night in, you begin to lose yourself. You stop thinking about you, and instead only begin to focus on the chase. While the chase is fun, constantly searching and chasing is not. The game becomes the only thing in your life and you lose or suppress that part of you that needs an intimate and deep connection with another human being.

If your desire is to stay single, going out every night is fun, but losing yourself in the process takes you back a step in the search for a future. So make sure that while you're looking for happiness in the arms of another you're also finding happiness within.

Flingin'

Oh Summer!

You are a time of great fun: swimming, tanning, and trying to get ice cream drippings off of my seat belts.

But there is another thing that is always on people's minds when they think about summer aside from the beach, the lake, or the hot NYC pavement.

FLINGS.

The summer fling is as old as... well I'm not sure, but it's at least as old as I am and probably goes back long before my time to the time of the last ice age when summer was here to stay for good.

Why are summer flings so enticing?

The mystery?

The knowledge you never have to see them again?

The pheromones pouring out of sweat glands as you stand across from each other in the blazing heat?

I can't say for sure, but I know they're popular.

However, there is a problem that seems to occur more and more with the globalization of technology and the ability to buy plane tickets and bus tickets cheaper than ever before.

The summer fling turned long distance relationship.

You've met the person of your dreams and now you must split ways because cujo lives in california and you live in georgia. So what do you do? How do you make this kind of relationship work.

I'm going to be very very honest with you and it might make you very very mad.

This type of relationship will NEVER work unless there is a very important ground rule set up at the on start of the relationship, COMMUNICATION: Vocal, Textual, or Visual. What I like to call VTV. How this works if you have the Vocal: Phone, Textual: Texting, and Visual: Skype or another Webcam based IM software.

Without communication long distance relationships will never work. They can't.

The basis of every relationship should be mutual desire to interact with another person because you enjoy their company, their drive, and the how they make you feel.

If either partner is not willing to make the dedication to communicate then it wont work.

It's better off as the summer fling where passion unfolded into pure delight or some other poetic bullshit.

Lives diverge and converge an unparalled rates in today's society and the odds are maybe your summer fling will pan out, but unless you live in driving distance I highly recommend you just stay friends.

The Revelation

It's been a few months or maybe a lot of months or maybe a few days, but you've just discovered your ex has just jumped back into the relationship boat and left you stranded struggling for the buoy some poor sap tossed at you from the deck.

Beware, the next few days (if you are still single and searching) could be a dangerous time full of a multitude of feelings and heaven help the poor drive thru clerk who puts mayo on your "plain" hamburger.

How do we get through a time like this, when you still have feelings of hate or love or those confusing little heebie-jeebies that come with exes?

Well you can take the new relationship one of a few ways.

1. Cry - this is my personal favorite that normally makes all the new potential mates come a runnin' (ha, not).

2. Hate and Curse - Anger and denial is a common response. Sometimes this is tied in with a few evenings of heavy drinking and a bag of flaming poop on the new girl's door step (I do not support this).

3. Reach for the Ben and Jerry's - similar to crying but where as you can't eat when you cry, shoving pure sugar, milk and butter fat into you mouth is more than likely not going to have the effects of comfort you originally hoped they would have.

4. Hop into someone new's bed - sex, comfort, kissing all proved to boost endorphins and more than likely guaranteed to keep your spirits high until you have to make the walk-o-shame the next morning.

5. Smile accept the change and congratulate them on finding someone new (this idea actually makes me nauseous).

6. Surround yourself with good friends and lots to do, you're going to need something and lots of something to take this revelation off your mind. (Especially if the new girl is blonde and has a smile that would make hyenas love being around her... )

Go on try a few, personally I recommend 6 or 2, but to each your own!

When to delete an ex from facebook

When do you do it?

The day after the split?

The next week?

The next month?

If they've stopped texting you, and the only reason you were friends with them via facebook was for a little kiss-kiss, do you keep them on your friend-list so that you can see all the girls they're loving on?

Im not saying that every ex you have, you need to shuffle off the plank, but is there a period of time where the people you meet in bars, and then friend, and then get the subsequent slow fade from... is there a period of time where it becomes o.k. to defriend them? When does this occur?

I have recently began noticing a pile-up of people I no longer talk to with whom there are no networking potential on my facebook. It's not like I'm going to ask this person with whom I had a fling to hook me up with a sub par entry level job, so do I keep them? or do I find a way to defriend them without offending them? Do I let them know that I'm dumping their friendship?

I think that the answer comes from the amount of time you spent with that person and the severity of the split. If you spent a short amount of time and got the slow fade, hold on to them for a month or so, at least until you're 100% positive they're never going to contact you again. If you spent a long amount of time with them and had a mutual break up, why defriend them at all? You had a situation where you mutually agreed that you weren't right for each other, but you still have all that history with one another. Why make it petty and childish? You're both adults, and you've made a grown up decision, and with that in mind I suggest remaining their friend. However, should you have a heated fight which turned into a split where neither side escaped unscathed after a lengthy relationship, I recommend immediate defriending after a brief note stating the reasons you no longer wish to be in internet communication with this person. However every relationship is different, so in truth I recommend whatever feels right for you. If you even wish to defriend them at all.

Don't Kill the Bar

I have a problem.

I’m willing to admit it.

I like people in power positions. This includes but is not limited to professors, lawyers, bouncers, and bartenders.

I like when people can help me get things or get into places where I couldn’t go before, but as a good friend of mine keeps telling me, don’t kill the bar.

A lot of people do this, you walk into a bar, flirt with the bartender, get a free drink, and maybe a kiss at the end of the night attached to a phone number. Then you call them. Then you date them or hookup (your preference). Then after a few weeks it ends. Why? Because it had to, and now you can no longer go to your friend Blair’s favorite bar because you screwed the bartender.

Don’t kill the bar.

Don’t kill your grade.

Don’t kill your lawsuit.

A good rule of thumb is to only date someone if you met them outside of a business relationship.

Why? Because at the end of the day your primary relationship with that person is one of pleasure, not one of cold calculating business propositions. Bartenders and bouncers are included in this. You go to bars for a purpose, whatever it might be. You pay them for their service, be it guarding the door or serving you a perfect buttery nipple and at the end of the night, day, week, or year. You will always be that girl(guy) they met at the bar, their bar, their place of work.

I know what you’re thinking, but Laura it will be different with me. I promise. This bouncer really, really likes me. He asked me to have his babies! He promised me the moon, the stars, or a sports car!

I bet he promised that to the girl he met last night, or the one from a week ago. These guys/girls come into contact with more people than you can imagine. As soon as you are out of sight, unless you’re really good in the sack, you are soooo out of mind.

So you need to remember something. You know that bar you like? The one with the cute bartender? The one with the totally awesome DJ and killer specials? As soon as you date and break up with the bartender, you can’t go there until they leave.

And that my friend is killing a bar.

Residual Affairs

Removed

Mixed

IN some cases in life, being nice is typically the best possible thing to do.

If someone trips, it's nice to help them up.

If someone cuts themselves, it's nice to give them a band-aid.

and

If someone puts on a fluffy red shirt with a minx collar, it's nice to tell them to go back inside and change, because you're soooo not going to the bar with them in that outfit.

But,

there are other things where being polite or nice is actually the wrong thing to do. Nice becomes, mean.

For example, take the mixed signal. These occur when one party decides that in order to not hurt someone's feelings they instead take the easy way out and act nice and essentially leads on the other party. At the end of the night they politely ask for the other party's phone number (see previous blog) and politely hug and kiss you goodbye.

All of these are very nice things to do.

Unless you're not into the other party.

People in today's society have established that it's ok to lead someone on in order to allow people to keep their dignity, but at the end of the night and the morning and days following it only succeeds in breaking down the other person's spirits and beats down their established self confidence.

A friend of mine recently spent a couple of weeks entangled in the arms of someone whom she believed to be very much interested in her, but when they separated he neglected contact and succeeded in creating a system of mixed signals which negates all the happy memories previously locked away. It's this idea that mixed signals make people rethink themselves and rethink their style and personality, which is truly the worst part about mixed signals.

From the instigator's point of view, mixed signals are a way of trying to ease the disappointment of the receiver, but instead the instigator is only succeeding in eventually making the receiver feel worse about their self image than they already did.

Nearly everyone is guilty of sending them out. I'm guilty, but there are ways that we can fix the negativity we send out into the world. Honesty. A girl walks over to you, batting her eyelashes, smiling, and touching your arm. She's nothing that you are even remotely interested, well you could be nice and send her these mixed signals or you could tell her the truth, "you're not my type, I've been eyeing up that chick on the other end of the bar, I'm sorry I hope you find someone worth your while."

It's not that we are completely tossing away kindness by saying "I'm not interested." Instead we're allowing the other person to move on and find someone else with whom they could possibly find happiness.