Think Again Thursday: What NOT to Say to Someone Who Just Got Her Heart Broken

First of all, let me preface this by saying that many of you have been absolutely supportive and lovely in the middle of all of this. If you're worried that you said something offensive, most likely that means that you didn't because you are self-aware enough to even be thinking about it.

But, if you're wondering what are some of the most horrible, insensitive things to say to someone going through a break-up, I've made a list of the worst ones I've heard so far (some even from comments on this blog!)

1. "At least you had someone who loved you. Better to have loved and lost than never loved at all." Sorry, it's impossible to feel thankful for anything about my relationship with SCL at this point, especially its very existence. Right now I'm feeling like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind had the right idea. 
2. "Sometimes things in life aren't fair..realize that this guy has moved on several months before you. Pick yourself up and move on. He moved on from you." Perhaps it's getting overused but this one really deserves a big "FUCK YOU." So, basically what you're saying is get over him because he got over me? Oh, why I never thought of that. So glad you enlightened me to the fact that SCL doesn't love me anymore. 
3. "I kinda saw this coming...knew from your blog entry that he wasn't that into you." Another unhelpful "I told you so" and using that godawful line from that stupid book. "Not that into you" is reserved for first dates and three-month undefined relationships, not partners of two years. 
4. "The pain shows you that you are still alive." You know what else does? Me putting my fist into your face. 
5. "[SCL]'s kinda dorky and kind of a pretty boy." Insulting SCL's actual person is really intolerable to me because first of all, I love him and second of all, he was the person I chose to be with. So, insulting him is an insult to me.
6. "You seem to have a pretty negative view of men." Ha! Well, with a shitty father and now this shitty situation, I seem to have a pretty good reason to, don't I? 

Needless to say, any cruel or insensitive comments I receive in response to this or any post will NOT be published but might be featured in subsequent installments of "Think Again Thursday" for future mocking and cursing. So, if you're thinking about sending something insulting, I urge you to think again. 

Think Again Thursday: Jezebel Takes on Cosmo

So, the posts on Grad-Student Girlfriend have been pretty serious lately with all of the self-reflection I'm attempting to do to figure my weird self out, so I thought I'd take a break from that and share this hilarious gem with you from jezebel.com entitled "Cosmo Has Your Men All Figured Out, Ladies." (Posted below) This is in response to a ridiculous article entitled "Decode How He Holds His Drink" (No, I did not make this shit up!) featured in this month's Cosmo. (When I clicked on the Cosmo article, the side ad asked "Would You Do Him Outside?")

I confess there was a time (probably between ages 15-18) that I used to love reading Cosmo. It felt sort of naughty, carrying around what I thought was something along the lines of the female equivalent of Maxim. It was a sexy magazine because duh, if you were carrying it around, then of course you were getting some. Of course, I was not getting any. I was lucky to get a boy to kiss me at that age.

I'm not sure at what point I decided Cosmo was too wacky to even pass as satire. I think I was disgusted how their "articles" were really just composites of reader "surveys"--readers admitting to strange, impossible, and flat-out bizarre sexual things to please their men. I dumped it, and I'm glad I did.


Cosmo Has Your Man All Figured Out, Ladies

Ladies, here's the deal: every single thing your partner does has a hidden message. I know this to be true, because I've just spent a good 5 minutes browsing Cosmopolitan's recent articles on decoding your man's body language.

Because you should always feel insecure about the status of your relationship, or at least insecure enough to continue buying certain magazines that promise to help you trap and/or keep a man (just like bugs in a jar! Romance!) by participating in asinine rituals like wrapping your underpants in your hair or saying subtle things like, "Ooh! I see you went to the gym today. I'd also like to give your muscles a workout, if you know what I mean. Do you know what I mean? Cosmo said you'd get it. It's innuendo. It's right here on page 97, in between the article about how men only love girls who are fresh faced and natural and the article on how guys love it when you apply 17 layers of foundation and 8 pounds of lipstick in order to be sexy," Cosmo constantly comes out with articles that claim to "decode" the body language of men, letting you know that every single move he makes is, in some way, directly related to his feelings about you.

Today's Cosmo decoding piece aims to let women know what their men are really thinking, based on the way their hold their beers. Bono was wrong, ladies. It is not alright when your man moves in mysterious ways. Thankfully, Cosmo is here to drop truth bombs like this one:

If he grips his long-neck loosely...
Lightly encircling the top of his beer bottle with his thumb and index finger reveals that he's confident. Not only does the relaxed gesture indicate he feels in control of the situation, but it's also a bit of cocky posturing - it gives off the vibe that he's too cool to be concerned with the risk of dropping his beer.

Look at Danny Zuko over here, too cool to worry about dropping his beer! That's totally what's going on. Your dude is standing there, holding on to the neck of his beer and thinking, "Look at me. I'm James fucking Dean, all up on his beer neck and not even giving a fuck if I drop it and look like an idiot in front of everyone. I am too cool for school." That is so accurate. Where is the Nobel Prize for Beer Decoding, and why hasn't it been presented yet?

If he puts his bottle by his chest...
That beverage is like a wall he's putting up. If you notice he's holding it in front of his body, he's feeling too guarded for you to ask him a ton of questions or bring up a serious conversation. Stick to superficial topics - movies, sports, etc. - until he lowers his drink and loosens up.

In other words, it's always a good idea to wait until someone is drunk before you spring the serious convo on them. Just blah blah blah about movies until dude-bro is relaxed, and then hit him with the "Why don't you love me, Thomas?! WHY!?!?" conversation. That will win him over for sure. No drama there. A fine plan for an excellent evening out.

Cosmo also wants you to know about your partner's hands: for instance, if he or she is making an okay sign while talking to you, which is a totally natural hand movement, yeah?, it means that they are, in fact, okay. Happy even! And if they flip you the bird without realizing it, it means they probably want to be flipping you the bird anyway, so you're pretty fucking screwed. But you knew that anyway, right? It's why you're looking through articles like this, desperate to confirm fears that you've probably already had for a long time. Or maybe not! Maybe you're just really into the secret meaning behind someone flipping you off right to your face.

Anyway, because I'm such a believer in analyzing every single physical move someone makes in order to continue questioning a relationship that might already been on shaky ground due to serious trust issues or a general lack of self-esteem and openness, I decided to share a few decoding secrets of my own:

1. When He Sneezes: He is possessed by demons and is expelling them across your household. HOT! Is the mucus yellow or green? If yellow: catch a fellow. If green: flee the scene. If there is no mucus, it might be time to have a talk about where this relationship is heading.

2. He Is Rubbing His Eye: This is his way of intercepting messages from the planet Zorgothrax on their way to Jupiter. Try to impress him by learning Zorgothraxian and then talking dirty with it in the bathroom. Here's a primer: "You're so hot!"="11ZZGRRZGYZ17." Sexxxy!

3. He Scratches His Head: He's cheating on you. Please turn to page 118 for a list of products that will surely recapture his attention.

4. He Picks His Ears: He's just trying to open up the lines of communication. He's listening, and doesn't want any wax to stand in his way. However, should you catch him putting wax back INTO his ears, it might be time to break it off.

5. He Puts A Spoon In The Dishwasher: You're pregnant.

So there you have it! Now go out there and solve as many mysteries as you can, ladies. If you don't decode the signs, surely another savvy lady with ear-picking knowledge will.

Read more: http://jezebel.com/5596037/cosmo-has-your-man-all-figured-out-ladies#ixzz0v6lCS6AE

The Good (and Hard) Life

“Life is good. Life is hard. These two truths are unrelated.” Stacy Morrison

I’m not sure why I decided to pick up Stacy Morrison’s Falling Apart in One Piece, a memoir about going through a divorce. For someone like me who is trying to piece a broken relationship back together, it certainly wasn’t inspiring to read about the pain and heartache of dissolving a marriage. I struggled to get through it at times, her tales of disaster upon disaster (some divorce-related, others just plain old life-related) which at times sounded a bit on the melodramatic side, even for someone going through hell.

I waded through nearly 200 pages of sadness and misery until her words began to click. I saw much of myself in Morrison as a young woman—focused on pushing, pushing, pushing to a place that she imagined would be safe, secure, and stable. Only after they divorced did she realize she’d left her partner behind.

When SCL and I first started dating and I realized where the relationship was heading, I remember telling my mom how hard I planned to work to make our relationship last. It was like I was armed and ready for the first conflict to arise, so I could tackle it, identify our issues, work through them, and continue forward. I wanted to anticipate every single problem that we would face and be ready to work through it. I was going to make it work no matter what, damnit! I wasn’t going to be one of the statistics about children from divorced parents. I saw my relationship with SCL as something to be conquered rather than cherished.

And what that meant was that in preparing to combat the future problems and issues, I lost sight of the daily joys, the small pleasures, the being together on the couch, the real stuff that made our relationship what it was. I quickly became so engrossed with creating a long-lasting relationship that I forgot to nurture the relationship I had at the time: a young, exciting, vulnerable, unpredictable love.

What I couldn’t prepare for was rupture. In my mind I was already at the altar, making a commitment to SCL, that it hadn’t occurred to me that I had charged ahead of him, leaving him behind. I didn’t realize that he’d wanted to slow down (in part because he had not told me) when all I wanted to do was accelerate to a place where I thought I’d feel safe: a ring on my finger, a public commitment made, and a life bonded together by marriage. I wanted SCL to grow up—to catch up. Then, I thought, I would be content with where we were and could really start living as partners, as a family. Then his parents would accept our relationship as something real. Then I could really love him the way that I want—freely, generously, and without fear.

In the months since SCL broke up and made up, I have found myself in a constant state of anxiety and fear about our coming back together. Am I just setting myself up for more heartache? Have we learned anything in such a short period of time that would really help in beginning again? I fear SCL’s lack of commitment and what that might mean for the future. I tell myself, “If this isn’t forever, then it isn’t worth it.” My love for him has become tainted by fear, which is a hard place for love to reside. Some of the time my love feels more like desperation, like I’m just clinging to what one day I might lose again—ring or no ring.

There is no way to know if these decisions I am making now—to stay with SCL, to be patient with the process, even to live a few blocks away from him—are ¬wise or foolish. But I know they are heartfelt and risky and out of the love, care, and hope I have for him and for our relationship. I want to love without fear of the unknown. I want to give myself to SCL in spite of him having hurt me and how difficult this time has been. I cannot control him, his actions, or his feelings. I cannot dictate how the next month or year or decade will go. But I can be true to myself in how I love and live throughout this good, yet hard time of uncertainty and discovery.

Think Again Thursday: On Compromise

Writing from the lovely Acela train up to attend my beautiful friend L's wedding this weekend. Very exciting! 


I want to spend some time deconstructing and unpacking the whole "don't compromise" bit of advice that I'm sure we've all given, received, doubted, absorbed, or rejected at some point in our lives. During my short relationship "pause" with SCL, I heard this from many well-intentioned friends and loved ones. Of course at that point I was bemoaning how the relationship hadn't been what I wanted (my, how easy it is to say that in the midst of a break-up!), so naturally the response I got was, "He wasn't right for you, and don't compromise what you want in a relationship."

Now, to a certain degree, I do support not compromising on certain things:

• Key core values (for me that would include feminism, gender equality, and progressive causes)
• Major life goals (getting/not getting married, having/not having children)
• Safety (Obvious, but worth stating) 

Essentially, I support not compromising on what makes you a complete whole human being. The problem is that I think our expectations about what it requires for us to achieve satisfaction and a sense of wholeness are seriously skewed and more akin to Disney films than something we can actually reasonably expect to achieve. 

I am the biggest culprit of this. I don't even pretend not to envy my many friends who are in relationships that are on a sure path to marriage. I have wanted this for over a year with SCL. The desire to marry is a core value for me. What is not essential about that is the exact time, place, and details about how that will occur. But over time I had convinced myself that I needed SCL to commit by this time and in this way with this kind of ring. I had talked to myself so much about that I was convinced that it was true. 

How do I know this isn't true? Because SCL and I together despite a short break-up, not getting engaged, and moving out of our apartment. Granted it hasn't been long since all of this stuff happened, but the fact that we somehow find a way to move through all that crap is an indication to me that we've still got something worth fighting for. And our interactions are more healthy than they ever were when we were talking about rings. He is honest with me about what he wants; I do the same; and we are talking about how to get to a new place where we are both satisfied. 

We can choose not to compromise--to toss aside the relationship that doesn't match up with what we want, when we want it. I could do that with SCL. I've thought about it. I think to myself, "Oh, I just want to find someone older and ready to get married." Maybe that would work out, at least for the time being. But who's to say that this other partner and I would continue to be on the same page for the next five years or ten years or however long? And why in the hell would I turn my back on the person I've loved for two years, who is trying really hard to be the partner I need? 

When we were dealing with the whole couch situation, I was PISSED at SCL. BIG TIME. In a matter of about 15 seconds, I had worked myself up into a fury directed at him. If he hadn't broken up with me, if he hadn't insisted on moving out of our apartment, I would never be living in this new place that was too fucking small for my couch. Therefore, it was SCL's fault that the couch didn't fit, and I wanted to give him hell about it. He finally yelled at me, "Sometimes things don't work out the way we want them to!" Not his fault. Not my fault. Just, c'est la vie. Damn it. It's so much better being able to target my anger at another person. 

I don't want to view my relationship with SCL--the person most precious to me--through a lens of consumerism. I don't want to wake up one day "unsatisfied," assume that this feeling is an indication that something is wrong with the relationship itself (rather than recognizing life's ebb and flow of happiness), convince myself I'm compromising, and walk away from it. I don't want to blame any lacking I feel on my relationship when there simply are times when I will not have what I want, when I want it. 

So, I am compromising. On certain things. Not things that I absolutely need right this second. And I am learning to be alright with being in that place. 

Think Again Thursday: Pick Up Line Fail

Yesterday I was having drinks with a male friend who told me about an incident he'd had on his way back to DC. He was on a train and sitting next to an attractive woman, but he couldn't think of anything to say to strike up a conversation. He asks me, "Would it have been weird if I'd have turned to her and said, 'I've been thinking this whole time of something to say to you, but I can't come up with anything. Do you want to have a drink with me?'"

I think my jaw dropped. I said, "Yes, that would have been TOTALLY awkward! It's too over-thought." In my mind I was thinking whatever happened to "Hi" or a nice smile. I don't know; maybe I'm just too easily weirded out, but if a guy had said something like that to me, I would've been leaping out at the next stop, whether it was mine or not.

What is UP with men thinking women actually like pick-up lines? Has it ever worked on you? Some guys are still hopeful that it will. Check out this charmer from the always astute AskMen.com:

I've had a terrible day, and it always makes me happy to see a gorgeous woman smile. Would you smile for me?

I don't know about you, but one of my biggest pet peeves is men telling me to smile. I fucking hate it. You don't know what my day has been like. I don't have to act happy for some random stranger. So why try to turn that into a pick-up line for a potential date? FAIL.

Life isn't orchestrated like pick-up lines. Life is awkward, random, fun, spontaneous, and not smooth. I'd rather have a genuine awkward hello than some line. But if you're looking to make me laugh at you, not to be mistaken with laughing with you, bring on the line. Tell me my name must be Gillette because I'm the best a man can get.*

*I got this one from my fifth grade crush.

Think Again Thursday: Bad Relationship Advice

To provide some comic relief, I've decided to feature what I would deem absolutely, disgustingly horrible relationship advice as a weekly feature. This week's inspiration: the wonderful world of Twitter.

I've been using Twitter for about a year but just recently decided to have an account for Grad-Student GF. (You can follow me here!) To get the ball on the roll, I decided just to search around for what people were saying about relationships. Let me just say: it's a fucking Tweet disaster.

Here are a few charming 140-character or so pearls of wisdom I have uncovered:

"Guys love you more than you love them if they are serious in your relationships." 

I have no idea where this chica got this idea or why she felt the need to share it with the world, but seriously, WTF does this even mean? What does it mean for partners to love unequally--and for that to be a sign that the relationship is serious?

"Just b/c sum1 isn't Mentioned that Doesn't Mean they arnt important; The BEST Relationships R Kept Private."

Did you get that with all the Twitter talk? And what's up with all of the weird capitalization? Again, a sweeping generalization that makes me go, "WTF?" The best relationships are kept private--really? I think that depends on what kind of person you are. If I kept a relationship private, it would be because I was keeping it a secret from those closest to me, which would mean something was off. And I don't know, if someone's important, I think they just come up in conversation. That's just me.

"She never had a father at home, that's why she needs the father in you." 

Now we're looking at daddy issues as a good thing? Looking for a irreplaceable part of your life in your partner rather than dealing with the loss itself? And encouraging men to be like a father to his partner? For a statement so short, there are so many fucked up things going on. It's kind of impressive on a certain level. 

Needless to say, when it comes to relationship advice, Twitter is for humor, and that's about it. Have you come across any particularly horrible relationship advice on Twitter or elsewhere? Share it with us!