A second chance on November 30, 1998…

Dear Breakup Girl,

First off, I love this place I come back every single week to check it out…you do a fantastic job with advice..and this would be your cue to come in :).

About two years ago, this guy, we’ll call him Adam, and I were together. We were together for about 9 months. We had our ups and downs like any other couple but we managed to get through them and survive as a couple. I guess that can’t last forever though.

To make a long story short, he cheated on me. It was a very messy break up, name calling, bad mouthing, etc, on both our parts (I know, I know, sounds like something little kids do but..well, I did say it was messy). As we went along our ways, things cooled down. About 3 months after we had broken up, his friend, whom we’ll call Jay, called me up because Adam was crying because he wanted to talk to me. He got on the phone and told me how much he loved me still and how he messed up terribly and he was sorry..he wanted to get back together. At this point, I still had feelings for him and I really had to fight myself not to just jump back into a relationship with him. I knew that the feelings were still to raw in my mind and heart so I told him it would be best for us both if we took more time apart to really thing about things.

Well, it’s been nearly two years..we still talk and are good friends..lately I’ve been feeling as though I’d like to try things out again. We’ve talked about why we broke up freely (something we could never really do while we were together with problems we had) which leads me to believe that we’ve both matured while we’ve been apart. That time apart has taught me how to be mature about a break up (I’ll never go back to the name calling and bad mouthing after a break up again; it caused too many hurt feelings), how to be happy by myself (I’ve had time to practice) and realize that I don’t NEED him now, as I often felt then, but would LIKE to have him back in my life on another level. He’s been hinting that he would also like to try things out again and has told me that he’d never cheat again because of the mess it caused. My question is, should I give things a shot? Is it true, once a cheater, always a cheater? The trust has been repaired so I was thinking that it’d be possible for us to give things another go.

— Time after Time

Dear Time,

You’ve done all the right things; you’ve said all the right things — to each other and to me. If I had a Get Back Together List (hmmm…), you’d be at the top this week.

Love,
Breakup Girl

Mr. Perfect’s coming home on November 23, 1998…

Dear Breakup Girl

Found your site when I had just broken up with a guy I dated for 7 years and it gave me some good laughs along with some good advice, so thank you…

Now I’ve gotten myself into this really weird situation and I’m not quite sure how to get out of it…or if I want to get out of it. After this breakup, I was feeling pretty down in general amd wound up taking comfort in the arms of this incredible guy…we had a little bit of a summer fling…which was actually great, my self esteem got a boost (this boy is beautiful) and I had a great time…then he went back to school (he’s 22, has one semester left at an almost Ivy League school, will be done in December and back in town, I’m 24, working in a big city, real life kinda crap).

Here’s the kicker — I’ve known Mr. Perfect for about 10 years…he happens to be my best friend’s little brother…and we chose not to let my friend in on this little fling because we weren’t sure how she’d react…in fact, our parents are friends with each other, and they have no idea either.

So we had this summer fling, that even had a little snag in it when I went up to visit my friend at their family’s summer house and the three of us spent the entire weekend together and we continued to hide the whole thing…well, we just stayed away from each other…then when we got back, we decided we shouldn’t continue the fling because it was too weird (he’s almost like MY little brother –we used to beat each other up…it was weird for him to look at his sister and difficult for me to look his mother in the eye, considering what I was thinking about her son…).

Well, that lasted about a week, until we went out to lunch and scrapped the idea of staying away from each other…it’s just too much fun…that was in August.

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Wanting a do-over on October 12, 1998…

Dear Breakup Girl,

I’ve had an on off relationship with this guy for about year. Finally, towards the end of the school year we have a pretty stable thing going. But then comes summer, filling my schedule until I saw him less than once a month. So I decide to break it off. It made sense at the time but now I realize I really do love him. It’s like not having him makes me want him more. We have no classes together but I see him in the halls and at parties. He’s a big flirt so I can’t tell how he feels about me. How can I let him know how I feel about him without making it obvious to the world?

— Jacklyn

Dear Jacklyn,

Um, tell him, not the world. I know it’s pretty much the same thing, this being high school and all, but still. One friend of BG’s once told someone how he felt by taking out an ad in the college paper. That’s what I’d call “obvious to the world.” (Also, it didn’t work.) Instead, find a place where you can talk one on one (like the phone), and ask himwhat he thinks about a do-over. If he’s into it, great. But if he says no, don’t you dare tell the world he’s a jerk.

Good luck!

Love,
Breakup Girl

Sex with an Ex on October 12, 1998…

Dear Breakup Girl,

Let’s-call-him-Jack and I have been broken up for nearly six months after dating for nearly 3 years. We tried the friend thing for a while and it worked out quite nicely except I foolishly took every nicety as a sign that he wanted me back. But now I know that just isn’t going to happen and I’m fine with it, although I still think about him every day, multiple times a day. However, I sort of have the hots for someone else AND am enjoying being single. My question is, Jack and I started sleeping together again in late June (we broke up in March) and have done it 5 times since then. We are always drunk when this happens but the sex is INCREDIBLE. The first few times he would not kiss me and we would not cuddle afterwards, just roll over and go to sleep. However, I mentioned the no-kissing policy made me feel like a prostitute so the last two times he has kissed me and held me BEFORE and AFTER we did it. The problem is, I know it is stupid to have sex with an ex, but what if it is REALLY good and you aren’t nursing false hopes of reconciliation? Also, what’s up with the kissing thing? Please help!!!

— Confused yet Satisfied

Dear Confused yet Satisfied,

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: of course the sex rocks your world. There’s no aphrodisiac like a breakup. As in, “You look great without … commitment.”

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Reuniting on October 12, 1998…

Dear Breakup Girl,

Help me oBG-Kenobi, you’re my only hope! Okay, a year ago I moved to New York City from California to begin graduate school. I left behind a guy there with who I had a very drawn out, sticky, co-dependent relationship for about 5 years. Here’s the background–we started dating senior year of high school. While we had similar interests, what kept us together was this unhealthy nurse-patient relationship with a constant cycle of fighting and breaking up to keep things interesting. He has a disease that’s making him slowly go blind–it’s sort of like a progressive tunnel-vision. And that was diagnosed when he was 13 (sometime around when he had just seen Top Gun and decided that he wanted to be an Air Force pilot) and then he was declared legally blind when he was 16, right after he’d signed up to get his driver’s permit. So far he hasn’t learned to cope–no disability training and his old room is filled with model fighter planes. Spooky.

But with sheer will and determination he’s pursued interests in athletics and music which you would have never thought possible. The down side is that he always plays himself as a victim and constantly alienates his friends with his “everyone is out to get me” attitude. I’m sure if he would ever consent to seeing a psychologist, a lot of this behavior wouldn’t come as a surprise. So my role in this relationship is that I’m the only one who really understands him and he was incredibly emotionally dependent on me. For me it was a “I needed to be needed” thing. The problem was that he has no ability to handle conflict–arguments escalated quickly, he could be so easily provoked it was laughable, but what wasn’t so funny was how quick he was to say cruel and terrible things to me when he was angry. My way of handling it was to be a peacemaker or avoid conflict entirely–for a long time I had no spine to fight back, and anyway, it was easy to anticipate what would anger him (ie everything). As a result, there were a lot of things I never told him because I knew how he’d react (like that he wasn’t the first person I slept with even though he thinks we were eachother’s first–could it get any worse??). So for 5 years we were on again, off again, each time I would forgive and hope/think that maybe he’d changed. Yes I had low self esteem in my relationships. We were together when I decided to go to New York for graduate school and he was considering coming out here after he finished an extra year of college. But by the time I was ready to leave I had a few epiphanies and realized that enough was enough and now was the time to start over. I told him that I was going to New York and I am on my own now. And that was *supposed* to be goodbye for good. It has been one year and I had not heard from him. The time and distance has allowed me to heal and understand the mistakes both he and I made. But now out of the blue I receive an e-mail from him–HE’S MOVED HERE!!!

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A long one from August 24, 1998…

Dear Breakup Girl,

It’s my first time on your website, and I think it’s great that people could write to someone and get some advice. (I found that my friends have given me pretty biased opinions about my situation!)

I went out with this guy for three, almost four years. We started going out when we were 15, which I realize now was too young. It ended pretty badly . We have broken up and gotten back together many times before. We actually broke up, but kept dragging the relationship on before we really went our separate ways. We had a really close relationship; there was nothing I could keep from him. He was my bestfriend. I lost my virginity to him and he lost his to me. We did everything together and we were inseparable. Towards the end, I had doubts about my feelings towards him. I started to have feelings for another guy that I was friends with. Basically, I ended up telling my boyfriend that I couldn’t see him anymore because of the other guy. He wasn’t too impressed. I wanted to be the one to tell him because people in my school always talked, and I figured it was only a matter of time before he heard. He yelled and cursed at me, and I ended up hanging up on him, bawling my head off. He kept trying to call me back, but I refused to talk to him. He dropped a letter off at my house an hour later.

(Two days before this happened we slept together and it was amazing. I guess he felt more for me than I did for him though) He wrote that he would always love me, but at the same time he would never resent anyone as much as he resented me for what I did. He really lost respect for me when I did what I did, and I fully understood that.

Anyway, I never ended up with that other guy because not too long after that I found out that I was pregnant. I come from a very Catholic and very strict family. There was no way I could keep the child considering the person I needed to be there hated me, and it was my own fault he did. I had to get an abortion and I did. Only one other person knew of this.

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Dear Breakup Girl,

Ten years ago I had a very passionate, very wonderful relationship with a man I’ll call Rex. We were very much in love, and, being in our mid-20s, were also immature and somewhat foolish. I broke up because of something that, from my perspective, was totally his fault. I kept all his love letters (we lived on different islands) and when I re-read all of them recently, I discovered that our breakup was as much my fault as his.

Last year I found out that Rex was moving to an island near mine. Not coincidentally, I moved to the same island. I began to fantasize about him and the possibilities for a relationship with him — a more mature and committed relationship.

Well, we saw each other for the first time since the breakup a few months ago, and the meeting was … electric. The spark was still there. However, what I did not know until then was that Rex is here with a “partner.” I later found out that Rex will be asking this woman to marry him.

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MSN.com, Match.com, HappenMagazine.com: they’re in a healthy and satisfying 3-way relationship. Meaning that you can find MSN/Match.com’s “Ask Lynn” columns –penned by BG’s alter ego — over at Happen now as well.

This week Lynn helps Tired, whose girlfriend keeps breaking up with him without warning, and seemingly without reason…

My girlfriend of four months just broke up with me—for the third time. … She freaks out and breaks up with me… then she misses me, and wants to give it another shot.

WHAT is going on with this girl and should Tired stick around to find out? Read Lynn’s full column at Happen, then come back here and give your own advice!

Caring too much on March 30, 1998…

Dear Breakup Girl,

My live-in boyfriend (who’s 30, I’m 41) of three and a half years told me he wanted to ‘just be friends’ this past September. I moved out. He got engaged New Year’s Eve to a woman (she’s 29) with whom he had a brief fling in college and has heard from or had visit him a couple times a year for the past nine years (each time they met, she was all over him like the proverbial cheap suit). They are to be married in May. I have two questions. Will this marriage work? and Why do I still care?

— Patton

Dear Patton,

Why do you care? Of course you care. Are you kidding me? Even Breakup Girl cares, and she doesn’t even know these people. Dumped you in September, engaged in December?! Yeesh. All I can say is, she may have been all over him like a cheap suit, but oddly enough — as the genuine-article fashion zombies from the 70s and 80s attest — sometimes it’s the cheap ones that last.So this thing could be a flimsy rebound, or it could be some solid perma-crease that somehow never got ironed out. Or, gulp, it could be an age thing. So I don’t know if it’s going to last or not, but I do know that you’re not allowed to obsess about it. Write to Breakup Girl, speculate with your friends — but I can trust you not to pull any “I must stop the wedding” Julia Roberts antics, right? Buy your bad self a pricey suit and find some gent who doesn’t have his past mixed up with his future.

Love,
Breakup Girl