After my ex-husband and I divorced, I dated a lot. You could say I was sowing my wild oats, or the twenties I didn’t have a chance to experience. I had missed out on figuring out who I was, but also figuring out what I wanted in a partner. So, suddenly single in my mid-thirties, I had a lot of learning to do. I had two boyfriends during those six years of healing, and a few quasi-relationships in between. That time was strewn with breakups – some of which stuck, and some which did not. There were a multitude of reasons why this happened.

So if you’re nursing your breakup wounds and contemplating getting back together with your ex, before you do, make sure you’re not doing it for any of these ten reasons:

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So your friend is dating this guy and you’re thinking he’s bad news. It’s the kind of situation where you can feel stuck: On the one hand, you love your friend and want her to be in a healthy relationship. On the other hand, you know that if you say something to her, she may not take it well and it may ruin your friendship. What’s a girl to do?

Every situation is different, but here are some points that may apply to your situation and can be helpful to explore as you figure out the next right step:

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If you’re waiting for the day that you’ll wake up and *poof* have the iron-clad willpower of Gywneth Paltrow, then, well…you might be waiting for quite a while. In my opinion, willpower—for the most part—is not a genetic blessing possessed by only the skinny elite. To me, willpower is created through a series of conscious efforts that later help you make good decisions.

Here’s what I mean: [continue reading…]

Most people don’t realize that stress (and how you relate to your own emotions) is by far the biggest factor in whether your relationships succeed or fail.

Although it’s been said… many times…many ways…

You can’t find love in the world until you can find it within yourself…Your relationships with others are only as good as your relationship with yourself…We can only give love freely when there’s enough within ourselves to give away.

OK – we get it!

But what’s the opposite of love within ourselves, then?  What blocks this “love” within ourselves that would and should flow out into our relationships? I would call it “stress” in general, but here are some common expressions of it:

– fear, worry, insecurity, doubt
– anger, bitterness, cynicism, sarcasm
– jealousy, criticizing, insulting, hatred
– resentment, holding grudges
– feeling unloved, unappreciated, unnoticed

But rather than listing more expressions of stress and explaining how it blocks your potential for love, let me give you a couple of examples that illustrate why you can’t have love in your life when you’re stressed. I will also share ten personal secrets learned to live a stress free life and have better relationships with everyone.

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In today’s non-stop society, it’s hard to find time to workout. It’s even harder to stay motivated when your workouts aren’t producing any results.

Read below to learn how five simple (and very common) mistakes can make your workouts less effective. [continue reading…]

Just when you feel like you survived being single through the holiday season, Valentine’s Day shows up. Hearing peers and colleagues speak about their Valentine’s Day plans and being asked about your own can trigger all sorts of feelings. For some, it can feel like February 14th is Prom Night for grown-ups, and there you are without a date. Sure, you’re looking better now than you did back in your high school days of awkward braces and shoulder pads, but adolescence doesn’t have a monopoly on the experience of feeling inadequate and excluded.

In the movies the leading lady ends up with a prom date at the last minute (and somehow has the perfect dress and a gorgeous updo done in minutes, but I digress), but hoping for that fantasy to be your reality may set you up for disappointment. So here are some helpful tips for getting through Valentine’s Day…sans Ben & Jerry’s.

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alone: adjective \?-?l?n\: without anyone or anything else: not involving or including anyone or anything else: separate from other people or things

lone·ly: adjective \?l?n-l?\: sad from being apart from other people: causing sad feelings that come from being apart from other people: not visited by or traveled on by many people

The other day, I was standing in line at Starbucks (I know, I should really just make my own, it’s way cheaper) and I observed a phenomenon you’ve probably seen, too.

All of the tables were occupied by solo patrons sipping their drinks, staring at their laptops and phones, gently nodding to the music being transmitted through bulky headphones. I got my drink and did the necessary hula-hoop walk as I navigated through the sea of tables to find a place to sit. I passed each table, looking for one that seemed relatively welcoming for the silent blind date I was about to initiate, and ended up sitting down with a lovely chap who made room for me at “his” table for two, and we both did our own thing.

As I sat there working, I couldn’t help but notice that many of the patrons around me were engrossed in some type of social media. It was an ironic picture; a room full of people, no one talking to each other, all focused on creating community through a glass screen.  Seeing this picture of everyone looking down at their gadgets, smiling at a device that can’t smile back, it got me thinking about relationships and the nuances between being alone and being lonely.

As noted in the above definitions of “alone” and “lonely,” the difference does not solely rest in physical circumstances. In other words, it’s not about what is happening around you, it’s about what’s happening inside of you.

You can be standing in a room full of people—even people who really love and care about you—and still feel lonely. Conversely, you can be alone on a hike and feel absolutely amazing. [continue reading…]

Can you isolate the exact moment on a date or in a relationship when you know–perhaps on a subconscious level–that it’s not going to work out? That the guy is going to vanish into thin air, in a not-so-magical swirl of dust? I call it the moment of “imminent poof.”

The signs are always there for the taking. So why do we ignore them?  Does our desire to convey that we are “open” and easygoing, or to be in a relationship, blind us from listening to our gut?

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I’ve been having some issues in my relationship and I’m wondering what is the best way to go about resolving them, instead of making things worse and getting into the same fights over and over.

One issue I’m currently dealing with is my boyfriend has me blocked from some of his social network activity. I discovered it recently and haven’t said anything yet but it’s really bothering me. Should this be raising red flags or am I just overreacting? And what is the best way to bring it up without pushing him away?

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While every guy has his quirks and preferences, when it comes down to it we aren’t that complicated. When we’re in a relationship, what we really want is respect, appreciation, admiration, and love.

Problems persist in relationships because guys have different ways of expressing these desires than women do. So how can a girl ensure she’s giving her guy what he needs so he’ll stick around for the long term?

Here’s a list of ten actions every woman needs to take in order to make sure her beau stays crazy about her.

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I’m dating a guy that is really hard to understand. It’s like he’s determined to find reasons why things won’t work out, and yet I know he cares about me and doesn’t want to end it.

We are long distance right now so he has legitimate concerns, but what I want to know is this…when do you throw in the towel for a guy who is clearly putting up tons of walls and protecting himself from potential pain, and when do you keep putting up with somewhat ridiculous behavior knowing that once his walls are down, it could be a gold mine under all that fuss?

He’s been acting like a huge jerk lately and I really want to just tell him to get over himself, but I’ve seen very clearly how amazing and loving he is and truly think this is all just a form of protection “in case we don’t work out.”

I want to “crack his code,” but at what cost? Normally I wouldn’t ever put up with this kind of behavior, but something tells me to keep digging and to be patient. Am I wasting my time?

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Have any of you gotten to that place, where you’ve woken up one morning in your apartment alone, an empty space beside you where your former spouse used to be, and you realize, “I’m over it?”

Somehow — slowly and yet suddenly — the heavy cloud of mourning, the knots of anguish in your stomach are gone. You never thought they’d go away. In fact, you might have learned to live with that feeling, accepting it as an inevitable imprint of divorce trauma. You’ve stopped fighting it.

And that’s when it goes away.

There is no way to predict when it will happen. The aftermath of a divorce is composed of many painful stages, and each time you think you’ve graduated past one phase, you enter into another one. I suspect it is different for everyone. It is a function of who we are and how long we were married for, not to mention the nature of our relationship and the manner in which it fell apart.

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I dated a guy for two months and everything seemed perfect until he told me that his last relationship was three months ago. That relationship was a year long, so when he started seeing me they had only been broken up a month. Once that was out in the open he started distancing himself and I eventually broke it off because I was over the inconsistency.

I typically don’t like bringing up the past. I feel like the past should be left alone. But after my last experience I think it’s an important thing to know so that I don’t put myself at risk and end up the rebound girl.

So when you should ask a guy when his last relationship/serious dating/fling was? And how can you do it without it coming off in a negative way?

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I wanted to ask for your take on guys who play games in relationships, like the texting game, for instance. I thought people stopped that after college, but recently found out I was wrong.

I hate the whole game of one person sending a text and the other waiting two hours before responding, even if they have their phone and aren’t busy, just so they don’t seem desperate. I really don’t like playing games but this guy I’m involved with is being very confusing and I can’t tell if it’s just a game or not.

Is there a way to break the texting game or is that who that person is by nature and there’s nothing that can be done? How can I beat the texting game?

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Boston University. 2009. Fall. I am a senior and have about four credits worth of actual classes and 26 credits of drinking and partying. But then the worst thing possible occurs: I fall in love.

And I mean IN LOVE! Can’t eat, walk differently, wanna start volunteering in love. She was quite perfect in my eyes and she thought very highly of me as well. It was a relationship based on giving to each other as much as possible, and it doesn’t get much better than that.

The relationship was amazing and intense, but also very new. After a month of bliss I wanted to tell her I loved her. And that brings us to the night when I lost my mind, and nearly my college sweetheart…

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When blinded by our infatuation (which can last anywhere on average from three months to two years), it’s impossible to look at our relationship objectively. We might dwell on their positive attributes at all times and make excuses for them when they behave badly.

We desperately want it to work out and cling to any glimmer of hope that things are heading in the right direction. When something looks like a bad sign, we might ignore it and place even more weight and significance on the good things.

Having an optimistic approach to dating isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It only becomes problematic when we can no longer see a situation for what it truly is and recognize when it’s time to walk away.

To help us get this clarity, here are five ways to know it’s time to move on:

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I know you talk a lot about how men love a happy woman, but I’m having a really hard time being happy with my relationship as is. I always feel like I need to figure out why my boyfriend is acting a certain way, and I can’t help but worry that he’ll leave me for someone else.

I also get really frustrated when he doesn’t do things I ask him to do, like basic chores and stuff. I don’t want to be needy or a nag, but things like that make me feel loved and cared for. I want to enjoy the relationship and bring happiness to it, but it’s hard for me to get there when I feel like he doesn’t care most of the time. I don’t want my relationship to be a constant struggle.

So my question is,  how can I fix my relationship and stop it from falling apart?
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It’s tempting to jump into relationships when we meet someone we believe is wonderful. But if it takes a few months to begin gauging someone’s character, and two to three years to truly know them, we are setting ourselves up for disaster if we commit too soon.

Here are nine essential questions to help guide us: [continue reading…]

If you feel like you’re pulling teeth with two thumbs and no anesthesia every time you try to get your guy to talk about his feelings, well, you wouldn’t be alone. Plenty of men find they can’t, because they’re cut off from their emotions. Society still tells guys, from the time they are very little, to deny their feelings or better yet, not have them at all. Unfortunately, women are simultaneously being primed by society to believe that men should fulfill them emotionally.

So little girl and little boy grow up, get married, and become frustrated with each other. Amiright?

Sigh. We’re here to help you recognize when your man is having a hard time getting in touch with his “feminine side” (see what a sexist world we live in?). Patti Henry, therapist and author of The Emotionally Unavailable Man, writes that there are various behaviors suggesting a man is emotionally shut down.

Here are 16 signs your guy is emotionally unavailable.

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Me and this guy started off as friends but thing quickly turned romantic between us. He was doing an exchange program at my university and after a few months moved back home, but we continued to stay in contact and visited each other several times. Over these last few months we don’t talk as frequently, but we do have occasional lengthy phone calls where we talk about everything.

I don’t know where I stand with him because we never discussed it, plus we are both not very expressive/overtly emotional people, and I never expected (and still don’t) a relationship to blossom from this, but I do have strong feelings for him and want to see him soon. We are both going to be in Vegas next month and he messaged me asking if I want to meet up. Maybe I’m just paranoid, but I feel like he just wants a guaranteed hookup.

I guess my question is, is it normal for an ex-fling whom you were once romantically and sexually involved with to always reach out and initiate long conversations? Is it just to be polite/friendly, does it mean he misses me and still has feelings for  or am I just his “fallback girl”?

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I have been dating a guy for six months, but we’re not official. I like him a lot and really enjoy spending time with him and I know he feels the same about me.  Since we both have busy work schedules and children, we do not see each other often, maybe every other week, and we’ve taken two trips together (including one last weekend). In between seeing each other i person, we text and e-mail sporadically. 

I’m just wondering if this relationship is heading in the right direction, and if it will lead to something lasting. I am also worried about coming across as needy and sometimes I hesitate to initiate texts with him. For instance, is it needy behavior to send the text: “Thank you for yesterday – I like when we see each other, it feels good”?

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Last week, I was witness to an event that has shocked and awed the few men that have had the great, great privilege of observing it. I saw the mind of a girl work as she received texts from her current love interest. It was incredible. I had been hypothesizing what it is that girls think we’re actually doing on the other end of that phone and finally someone pulled the curtain back and allowed me to meet Oz…Oz was a girl. Oz was very confused.

It began Friday night. I crashed at my cousin’s place for the night in Williamsburg and she and her roommate had gone out and done Williamsburg things like drank alcoholic beverages and told boys to go away. That is, until one boy approached the roommate (let’s call her Mel), and Mel did not ask the boy to leave.

Fast-forward through what I could only imagine was heavy bar flirting, them making several plans to hang out the next day, and eventually a semi-awkward goodbye of her telling him no, he can’t come home with her, and then it’s the morning after…and the texting began. And as a guest in the house of these rambunctious 20-something females, I had backstage passes to the show. [continue reading…]

I came home one day to a stack of books, tons of fruits and veggies, and a new Vitamix on my kitchen counter. My mother had decided to become fully immersed in this new “clean gut diet.” Now if you knew her like I do, you wouldn’t be surprised. She’s tried every diet under the sun, each time encouraging me to do them with her.

The diets are usually meant for fast weight loss and are either impossible to keep up with, or just involve some crazy concoction that doesn’t seem fit for consumption. After questioning–and a little mocking–I realized this diet sounded different. It wasn’t about about a quick fix, it was about a cleanse. And it wasn’t the kind of cleanse that comes in all the pretty bottles (and leaves you completely starving for the week) it was genuinely about cleaning out your body and getting your digestive system to work optimally.

My skepticism soon gave way to curiosity (and the chocolate flavored morning shake looked pretty tasty!) and I decided not to dismiss this one so quickly. I skimmed through the book, learned a lot about Doctor Alejandro Junger M.D., and realized this guy knows his stuff. He studied internal medicine at NYU, completed a fellowship in cardiology at Lenox Hill, and after he was done with all the medical training, he went to study Eastern Medicine in India. Feeling incredibly intrigued (and a bit smitten by this incredibly intelligent, green-eyed doctor) I embarked on a  journey to a spotless gut.

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When I meet a guy I like, all I can think about is when he will walk away/get tired of me/declare he doesn’t give a hoot about me. I also keep thinking: How soon before he sees I am not that great a catch?

But with the guys I totally don’t want, I am subconsciously aware this person would be in it for the long haul without me constantly having to prove my worth. Perhaps in those situations, I totally relax and give off a different vibe.

Basically, once I like a man, all I can think about is how much time do I have before everything shatters? A day, a week, a month? I immediately start waiting for the end. Maybe some part of me is tensed up the whole time waiting for him to leave. When I meet a guy I like,

How can I fix this? How can I change my vibe so the guys I like will like me back?

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The one type of question women seem to spend the most time trying to answer is: Does he like me? Is he really into me?  Where do I stand in his heart?

So what’s causing all the confusion? Sometimes it’s because a guy is sending mixed signals (which actually is a clear signal he doesn’t like you, he’s just somewhat interested), and other times it’s because your emotions and ego can get involved forcing you to lose your objectivity. That’s why we created this helpful quiz, to give you a non-biased answer based on facts, not feelings.

Take this super easy, super quick quiz to find out if this guy is really interested… or just stringing you along. Make sure to read each question carefully and think before you answer for the most accurate results.

The quiz will ask you 15 questions about your relationship. As long as you answer honestly, you will get startlingly (even shockingly) accurate results and will know for sure whether he likes you or not.

Note: In order to receive your quiz results, we collect your email at the end of the quiz. Just wanted to give you a heads up so you know what to expect. :)

The first ever question we received for our Ask a Guy column was: “Why do guys take so long to text back?” Clearly it was a hot topic. The article exploded and remains one of the most read and shared articles on the site.

What is it that’s causing so much confusion? For one thing, men and women approach texting (and communicating) in very different ways. Unlike women, men don’t view texting as some sort of barometer for the relationship. Women, not he other hand, tally up texts like they’re plucking petals off a daisy, looking for a way to quantify how he feels with something totally arbitrary.
The reasons guy don’t text back, or take a long time to text back, vary from one man to the next. However, it’s pretty easy to identify what the culprit is.

Take this super easy, super quick quiz to find out why your guy isn’t texting you back.  If you answer honestly, you will get shockingly accurate results and will know exactly what to do to fix the problem.

Note: In order to receive your quiz results, we collect your email at the end of the quiz. Just wanted to give you a heads up so you know what to expect. :)

After scanning the comments on A New Mode, I have noticed a very common topic in almost every discussion. Somehow we always manage to fit Facebook into all relationship/hookup/guy-meets-girl talks. I understand it. The image we portray to the world is now through statuses and pictures.  But how does that fit into our special, or not so special, someone?

I am happy to do my best to shed light on how to navigate the complicated world of The Facebook with the first ever ultimate Facebook rule book!

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It’s been one month since my boyfriend and I broke up.  The other day I learned that he put up an online dating profile- wth?!  I am still going through the phases of our breakup and I can’t even fathom the idea of meeting and talking to a new guy right now. It may seem the norm that guys will do this to avoid their feelings–get sex, boost ego–but it hurts.

Why do guys do this? Why do they seem to get over breakups so much faster than women?

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When a relationship ends either both parties end up hating each other, they continue to care for one another but acknowledge it will never work and move in their own directions, or one continues to pine for the other. The last scenario is always the most difficult (at least, for the one pining) and can make an already painful process even more brutal. Sometimes, however, these cases do come to a happy conclusion and the other person also decides the relationship is worth fighting for. But how can you know if this is the way your story will unfold?

You can spend years waiting for your ex to change his mind and show up at your doorstep with a bouquet of roses and a rom-com worthy declaration of his undying love. And if that doesn’t happen (which it most likely won’t since Hollywood endings only exist in Hollywood movies), then you’ll have to deal with the pain of having wasted so much time and energy that would have been better served in other areas.

Sometimes hope is not lost and there is hope for a reconciliation. You have to be smart about it though, if you go too far out on a limb the branch will break leaving you badly hurt.

When emotions run high you aren’t always able to see clearly. This is why we’ve created this “Can I Get My Ex Back?” quiz, to give you quantifiable results that will let you know what your odds are.

Take this super easy, super quick quiz to find out if you’re ex is going to come back or if he’s done forever.

As long as you answer honestly, you will get startlingly (even shockingly) accurate results and will know for sure if he is willing to give the relationship another shot.

Note: In order to receive your quiz results, we collect your email at the end of the quiz. Just wanted to give you a heads up so you know what to expect. :)