So You Broke Up... Now What?

Now what? This is a question we all ask ourselves once a relationship has ended. If it was a short relationship, “now what” is often followed by, “do I want for lunch”. However, if the relationship had any extended length or strong effect, “now what” is often followed by a sense of being completely and lost.

Breaking up is a undeniably difficult process. That is not helped by the fact that, even though you shouldn't, many people wrap their identities in their relationships. Now that it’s over, half of who they thought they were is gone. The relentless realist in me sees these times as painful periods of transition that will end. The relentless optimist sees this as a opportunity to redefine one’s self. The dowdy pessimist sees this as the most terrible thing that has ever happened and it will never, ever, EVER end… ever. In their own way, they all have the right idea.

The gut wrenching pain you feel after a breakup is terrible, but it will end and from it, you will find inspiration to be reborn. You must not think of this as being the end of the world. If a break up can destroy your will to live, you have other problems. Problems which cannot be confronted in this >1000 word blog post.

Paired couples become one entity in the eyes of friends and family. After a break up, those ideas will have to change. In that transitional period, you have a window to redefine yourself. People are much more willing to accept a big change if it is accompanied by another big change. Switch jobs, dye your hair, drop the religion you don’t really believe in. Use this time to do something wild and new. Your changes will not only help you move on but it will also help everyone else readjust as well.

The worst thing you can do after a break up is ignore it. Ignoring it never works the way you want it to and will lead to baggage. If you are like me, you do not need any more ghosts following you around. Confronting the break up head on is the best, and toughest, thing to do.

In order to confront the break up you have to be willing to explore, understand and accept the reasons behind the dissolution of the relationship. You also will have to figure out for yourself where to put the emotions and feelings you still hold for the other person(s). You must not deny those feelings, or cheat the process as it only serves to diminish your happiness in the long run.

If you can find it within yourself to confront the facts of the relationship and get to a place a peace about its demise you will be able to move on.

While you will never fully forget, you will be able to live without dragging around anymore luggage. For the most part, that is enough. A beautiful thing about relationships is that no matter how bad they are you never want to forget the lessons you’ve learned, things you’ve lost and the things you have to look forward to.

How To (Tastefully) Not Be A Pedo Bear & Stay Out Of Jail

“She told me she was eighteen.” It is an interesting situation in which to find yourself. You innocently have a one-night stand with a person who you assume to be of legal age. That is until the police are knocking at your door to arrest you for statutory rape and corruption of a minor. Turns out that the hottie you met at the bar was only fifteen.

Age and sex is an obviously loaded topic. People tend to get a bit testy when you mention minors and sex. This is understandable when the consensus is that every next-door neighbor is a pedophile coming for your beautiful children. Sure, it is true that a child is more likely to be “corrupted” by someone they know, but who cares about facts when we have hysteria. I understand the desire to protect children from being taken advantage of by those who wish to do them harm. However, the lengths that our culture goes to in a noble, but misguided, attempt to keep children “pure” are more than excessive. It goes to the point where parents refuse to recognize that if your child can walk or talk they are, probably, touching their genitals with unfettered glee.

It is understandably difficult for parents to recognize the sexuality of their children. Luckily, our government has had the foresight to enact laws that help to give a general guideline for the sexual activities of minors. Commonly referred to as age of consent laws, ‘the minimum age at which a person is considered to be legally competent of consenting to sexual acts’, is one that varies. Below is a map of the ages of consent for each state in the union.


College is lousy with situations in which people 18+ are interacting with people ages 14-17. This is why it is even more important to know with whom you are having sex. There are no laws, that I am aware of, that prevents the fraternizing between people of any ages so as long as you keep it PG-13 you need not worry.

(Note: Something tells me I should explicitly state that I am not for any illegal interactions between any persons of any kind. This is including but not limited to of age persons canoodling with other persons under the age of consent in their jurisdiction. )

If you find yourself in a situation where you are weary of your partner’s factual age, you should immediately cease potentially unlawful behaviors. Have you any reason to believe the person you are messing around with is underage, back away swiftly and ask to see a birth certificate or state ID card. Yes, I am serious. Statutory offenses are prosecuted harshly, and in some cases, more so than murder. Unless you are willing to accept the risk of possible imprisonment, you need to take, what some people may call, drastic precautions.

Asking to see someone’s ID, if you do it in a non-accusatory way, will often be seen as a compliment. Try saying something funny like, “You look so young; I just want to make sure I’m not pulling an R. Kelly.” You of course could substitute Roman Polanski, Woody Allen, Michael Jackson or any other person you can think of. However the situation is handled, you need to make an honest effort to confirm the age of your conquest before you storm the castle.

(Note: You must understand that no excuse is going to protect you from litigation if you are found/accused to have had a sexual relationship with a minor. These precautions are for your conscience, if that matters. They may also help you in court if you still are the unfortunate victim of libelous claim from an unscrupulous/deceptive minor or their onerous parent.)

One thing I would like to clarify, is that AOC laws allow for anyone that age of higher to have sex with any their age or higher. For example, in MI, it is illegal for a sixteen year old to have sex with a 15 year old but a 16 year old could legally have sex with a person from 16 to 100+. You should also note, before a person reaches the AOC they are not allowed to have sex of any sort. If you are younger than the AOC in your jurisdiction, do not fret. You cannot be reprimanded, legally, though your parents may have something to say about it.

Full disclosure: Typing every character of this post made me feel unsettled. If you feel unsettled reading this find solace in knowing that this world if filled with a myriad of complex and challenging situations and we must be prepared with knowledge. Someone reading this right now could unknowingly be in a questionable situation and this information being available to him or her could prevent a big problem.

Ooh... What Does This Button Do?

“Show me yours and I’ll show you mine.” That is how it starts; two inquisitive children making an agreement to share the contents of their undies with one another. There is some poking, prodding and a few, “ooh… what does this button do?” moments. Little boys will pull on their penises and make balloon animals with their new friends. Girls will touch and push on their squishy new toy and wonder why it is so much fun. All of this experimentation is in good fun for children, but at some point becomes vilified for teens and adults. A child’s healthy curiosity and imaginative processes is shot, killed, maimed, stabbed, burned, shanked, ground, whittled, and curbed stomped into submission. All this is done to make way for the shame and embarrassment that is to be forced on us by our increasingly sex negative culture.

Some of us, like myself, where lucky enough to be given parent(s) whose rules for sexual activity where simply, “wear a condom.” However not all of us have been so lucky. Many of us where born to parents to whom the very idea of sex is just cause to have a mental breakdown. Sexual growth under these, or similar circumstances, removes the fun and enjoyment from sex. We stop experimenting. We stop pushing and twisting and wondering what the button does, because we fear reprimand from the omnipresent hand of society. This is so wrong. This is not how sex is supposed to be. Sex should be something that we are proud of; a look at what I can do experience. Sex is wonderful and we should be willing and, more importantly, able to explore our own sexuality, without fear.

By its very nature, sex is a cause of anxiety for humans. Sex forces us into a situation where we are exposed to someone who could reject us. The fear of rejection, like the desires to eat and reproduce, is instinctual and a very real fear. It is rare for us to see other naked bodies except in explicit sexualized situations. The people that we see naked are pillar examples of what we ‘should’ be, and probably are not. It is even rarer to be in a position where we are naked in front of others. For all its positives, clothing is really a hindrance to the growth that we need to be secure in our sexuality. Shame is not something animals ever experience; being naked all the time essentially neuters that emotion. Animals, the lucky bastards, also do not have religion, bad sex education, shitty parents, or confusing and misleading media screwing up their perception of themselves and others, but we do.

Our parents, the media, society, peers, clothes, religion, with all of these forces eroding the sense of fun and exploration from sex we forget the simple things. Simple things like the joy and youthful optimism that true unassuming curiosity and experimentation bring.

I pose these questions to you: Why can’t we play, explore, try, laugh, giggle, smile, jump, run, and tumble through the exuberantly blissful experience of sex? Have we been so expeditious in our ascent to adulthood that we traded joy for independence? Have we traded creative license for driver’s licenses? Why are we so willing to accept and perpetuate these shenanigans? Why have we allowed ourselves to become victims of this tomfoolery?

It appears that these stuffed shirt jive-talking crooked tooth swindlers parading themselves about claiming to know the answers to everything have bamboozled us. We have allowed these snake oil salespersons to muddy the already murky road of life with their sleight of hand. They have made us believe that one of the most purely enjoyable things we can ever do, is somehow grounds for social, emotional and spiritual damnation. However, I am here to tell you that that is just not true.

Go out and play, explore, try, laugh, giggle, smile, jump, run, and tumble through the exuberantly blissful experience of sex. Relearn to be proud of your sex, start with a crawl. Your curiosity is hungrier than Audrey II. Feed it, and you will see that what you thought was a little shop of horrors was in fact a cave of wonders. Don’t worry you can touch everything… including the lamp.

Dan Savage Be Damned... Though I Think He'd Approve

Dan Savage likes to say, “Every relationship you will ever have will fail… until one doesn’t.” This is completely true, if your idea of a successful relationship is one where the two, or twelve, of you love each other forever until you die. For the rest of us, we will have several successful relationships throughout our lives. These relationships will be short and plentiful, but they will play a huge part in making us successful in love and life. After all, practice does make perfect.

Short-term relationships can be anything from a one-night stand to a two-week summer fling to a two-year flirt fest. All of these are valuable, substantial and shant be regarded as throwaway experiences. Each one has something to teach you, no matter how brief.

A man or woman on the elevator inquires about your scent. Flattered, you flash a smile. You tell the story and just as you are getting to the final chapter, the elevator doors open to your floor. You hold the doors for a moment to finish, step out, turn and watch as the doors close on their smiling face.

What you just experienced was a successful and very short-term relationship with a beautiful stranger. While you may be tempted to label such a moment as just a compliment paid, it was in fact much more.

For a moment consider this was your first time using said cologne. You now know that, to at least one person, the scent was intoxicating enough to warrant a compliment. At the very least, you could say this was an exercise in flirtation and a verification of your general sexiness. Isn’t it enough that this moment made your day? Why do you need more to qualify it as success?

I do not want to over sell these experiences to you. This moment could make your day and be forgotten the next. On the other hand, you could remember that moment in the elevator with that beautiful stranger every time you mist yourself. It is all a matter of how these experiences affect you. In my case, one of these relationships has stayed with me for the six years following its end.

I… well let us not be coy. I had a fuck buddy who has forever changed how I not only view myself but how I view sex and relationships as a whole. His name was Chris; I never knew his last name. To be honest I didn’t know much about him at all. We met through a mutual friend and had a series amazingly hot one-night stands over a four year period. It was a strange unspoken arrangement, where in if we happened to see each other on any given day he would magically show up at my door in the middle of the night. We would play around, kiss and lick and explore each other in ways I have not, as of yet, experienced again. He would leave me more than satisfied, anxiously awaiting our next passing. He made me feel sexy and desirable. I was a fat awkward teenager so that was a big deal for me.

Keep in mind, this person was the equivalent of a stranger for four years. Some might say that this was slutty or morally reprehensible, those people are idiots and should be shot. Well, shot or put on an island by their self to rot. Before I met him, I was not nearly as confident and strong within my sex as I was afterward. To be honest I owe him a great debt, I thank him, and he may never know it. That being said I recognize that I may be glossing the past but even if he did none of it, he was still a catalyst for me to find these things within myself. Is that not enough?

Relationships being what they are, it is no wonder that so many “fail”. Successful relationships require a lot of compromise and strength that is learned. Until we find someone or a series of someones that we can do that for, it is true that every relationship will “fail”. However if you can learn to appreciate relationships for what they are, learn your lessons, take your lumps and enjoy them while they are there your outlook and definition of success will shift, for the better.

What was your best short-term relationship? I want to know your stories.  Share them in the comments below. If you haven’t had one, it’s summer find one! Lurking around every corner, at every concert, pool party, bonfire, or coffee house there may be one waiting for you. Seize the day.

Love you long time :P,

J