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BREAKING UP IS HARD TO DO: A PLAN FOR RECOVERY
THE HOYA
SEX ON THE HILLTOP
OCTOBER 31, 2003

Last Christmas, my stereotypically-older-and-wiser cousin Andrea gave me a book called It’s Not Me … It’s YOU!: A Modern Girl’s Guide to Breaking Up.  I wasn’t dating anyone at the time, and I really didn’t feel the need to prepare for an unpleasant hypothetical, so I put the fuzzy purple volume away on my shelf in between A Catholic Girl’s Guide to Sex and The Monks of New Skete — How to Be Your Dog’s Best Friend. (Just can’t get enough of those self-help books).

Months passed and I started dating a fellow seriously.  I still wasn’t interested in the book. After all, I had already determined that we would break up when I graduated and moved to Los Angeles, whereupon I would instantly get over him and he would pine away for me indefinitely. It was a great plan actually.

Except that it didn’t quite go that way.  Yep, he dumped me first.

Umm … Plan B?

Having been both the dumpee and the dumper at various points in my romantic history, I’m well aware of the scathing, all-encompassing discomfort a good breakup can produce in its victim.

Wait a second, scratch that.  Did I say “good breakup?”  No. There is no such thing. Breakups only come in four basic types: bad, worse, terrible and horrifically psychotic.  Mine usually fall into the last category (oops).

In spite of that, I’ve actually managed to become friends with most of the exes.  Eventually.

So all’s well that ends well, right?

Well, sure.  Theoretically.  In the meantime, however, you're gonna suffer.  A lot.  So here’s a step by step guide to gauging the amount of misery you have left.

#1: Total Denial

There’s no way he’s dumping you.  Like your friend at Cornell who claims he turned down Harvard, you can stay in this stage for a while.  Everyone knows you’re lying anyway.

#2: Irritation

I already bought him a six-month anniversary gift, damn it!  What the heck am I going to do with red women’s panties that say “James” on the bum?

#3: Denial Part II

Denial continues until he refuses to kiss you in public and/or sleep with you — anywhere.

This segues quickly into …

#4: Realization

You call him from across the quad and watch him silence his cell.  Hmm … maybe he really wasn’t kidding about this whole “we’re not dating anymore” thing.

And then …

#5: Devastation

It’s all over!  You’ll never love again!  You’re an awful person, fat and ugly — and did I mention fat?

Torture yourself by wearing no makeup, crying hysterically and listening to “What Becomes of a Broken Heart?” and “Must Have Been Love.”  Download “You’re the Inspiration” accidentally. Think bitterly that you’re no one’s inspiration.  Cry some more. Listen to U2’s “Stuck in a Moment.”  Refuse to acknowledge the irony. Go for the Zelko vodka in your freezer.

#6: Revisionist History

Three shots later, slip into an emotional, highly irrational tailspin, focusing solely on your “good memories” of the relationship — some of which you may have entirely made up.

You Think: I miss him writing me long, touching, deep love letters.
What Really Happened: He was barely literate! He spelled "you" with one letter! 

#7: Drunk Dialing

If you haven’t deleted his number from your cell then you’re so stupid you deserve this stage.  I know a girl — we’ll just call her, uh, “J” — who drunk dialed five exes in one fell swoop.  She blames it on the bottle, except we all know she only had two apple-tinis.

#8: Loud, Angry Lying

You say: “I hate you!”
You mean: “I love you!”

You say: “You are a piece of expletive-ing expletive, you big expletive!! And you always were!”
You mean: “I was planning on dating you for at least another year, mother-expletive!!”

You say: “AND you’re ugly!”
You mean: “The more you reject me, the hotter you look.  Why the expletive aren’t we making out right now?”

You say: “And your expletive body part is really expletive small!!”
You mean: “If another girl touches that body part, it will be really small! Why the expletive aren’t we having sex right now??”

#9: Negotiation

Ah, business students, here’s your chance to shine.

Bargain: “I can change! I’ll dye my hair blonde!  I’ll lose 10 pounds!  I’ll stop being annoyed by your incessant binge drinking!”
Weigh Alternatives: “Who ya gonna date now, biatch? That ho from GW?”
Summarize Position: “You’ll never get anyone as smart/witty/easy as me.”

If negotiations lead to …

Sex: wait 12-36 hours until beginning cycle again from Step #1.
Loud Angry Lies: immediately proceed to Step #5 the moment he’s left the room.
Alcohol: go to Step #6, then when he refuses to answer your call, regress back to Step #5.

One day, however (sooner rather than later, you hope), you'll get to …

#10A: Bitter Resignation
#10B: Relieved Resignation

And then finally, when enough time has passed …

#11: Forgiveness

As easy as it may be to shrug and say “what a disaster, glad that’s over,” belittling your time with ex-significant other — no matter how imperfect — will just make you angrier.  Think you can have mind-blowing love without losing some control?  Without allowing for the possibility of someone hurting you?

As The Ex-Boyfriend used to tell me, “Take the good with the bad, Jules … take the good with the bad.”

So in a situation that seems so overwhelmingly bad, what good can come of this?  I don’t pretend to have the panacea for painful breakups.  At least, not one that’s legal.

But maybe, if we’re smart, we take our break-ups and learn something from each of them.  We compile them in our minds and draw conclusions, maybe change our behavior, maybe change our environment, maybe become a better person … or maybe just marvel that we were lucky (or crazy) enough to fall in love in the first place.

Posted by Julia Allison at 01:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

THE VIRGINITY QUESTION: HOLDING OUT FOR A HERO?
THE HOYA
SEX ON THE HILLTOP
OCTOBER 10, 2003

Back in the day – the day being my junior year in high school – my girl friends and I established a club of sorts. We called it the V-Club, and every year it got smaller, as one by one we surrendered our V-cards and crossed the line into “womanhood.”

Apparently I wasn’t the only one to have a club like this. Just down the hall from me lives a rare group of seniors – six of them, to be exact – who have yet to experience sexual intercourse, Georgetown style. Er, or any style at all, actually.

Wait a second. Georgetown is a Catholic University. Shouldn’t this place be teeming with V-crowds? Now, I’m not a Catholic, but I’m pretty sure that the church isn’t the biggest fan of premarital sex. The words “wrong,” “bad,” and “burning in hell forever” come to mind, actually.

I went over my friends, acquaintances, and random people I saw in the library, searching for clues, adding up numbers. Although I did find a few who hadn’t surrendered their V-cards to the goddess of lust, it looks like a lot of us are going to be hanging out in hell together.

In other words, yes, Pope John, we’ve had sex.

That having been established, let’s take a look at the exception: The College Aged Virgin.

Why do these students, female and male, exist? I wondered aloud to the four chaste people I could track down.

The Virgins of Nevils, as I’ll call them, wanted to know the same thing. “We don’t have three arms … or a dick or anything,” one of them exclaimed. Clearly they had thought about this before.

“It’s not like I’m unintelligent or terribly ugly or I have a deformity,” another continued, “I can play sports. So I wouldn’t be an embarrassment to take to a sports game.”

Can you see a guy sitting at a bar, checking off his list while trying to get laid? “1) Intelligent 2) Not ugly 3) No deformities 4) Must not embarrass while at sports games.” No. No, if he has any criteria at all, it’s more like “1) Female 2) See #1.”

As far as I could tell, there were three basic rationales for remaining celibate: religious/moral grounds, waiting to fall in love or no one wants to sleep with you.

I think we all know which category freshman guys fit into.

Ringing a virginal graduate of this university, I posed my question.  “Why am I a virgin?” she repeated, “Mel Gibson, George Clooney, Brad Pitt, and Johnny Depp haven’t offered yet.”

Was she mocking me? I couldn’t be sure.

But what about religion? Catholic guilt, anyone?

“Alright, there was a little bit of Catholic guilt in the beginning,” she admits. She’s not Catholic. She was definitely mocking me.

No, she explained seriously. She hadn’t done the deed because she hadn’t yet had a serious, long-term boyfriend. She wanted her first time to be with someone she loved.

Hey – I agree completely! In fact, it seems like most people do. The students I talked with aren’t waiting for marriage – they’re waiting for love.

And that means guys as well as girls. When it comes to having sex, most of us really do want to make love. That having been said, how we act on our desires is often the product of our gender, our upbringing, and our peers.

For guys who remain sexually inactive, the judgments can be harsh. “It all likelihood it’s not by choice,” sneered one senior. Another nodded and explained, “well, it just gets questionable when you’re 22 and have never had sex — something just seems odd.”

Some guys spoke of virginity as being something to “get rid of” as quickly as possible, while other guys took the middle road, concluding that it was morally permissive to sleep with anyone they loved. One fellow, obviously a paragon of virtue, argued that students “should be strong enough to save it for one person.”

I politely reminded him that he hadn’t “saved it” for one person. “I was weak,” he explained sheepishly.

It’s definitely more acceptable to be a “lady in waiting.” As one fellow explained, “girls can afford to wait – they don’t look like losers.” Yep. It’s the one time those swell double standards actually benefit us.

A good Catholic boy confided his confusion, “What throws me off is the girls who are virgins but pass out head like candy. Does God like you going down on guys any better than you sleeping with them?”

Hmm. Interesting question to ponder during Sunday mass.

I posed it to my little brother, always the ultimate authority on absolutely nothing. As usual, he couldn’t be bothered. “If you didn’t want to have sex and therefore you haven’t had sex, then sweet. I don’t see why I should cheer for you, though. I don’t think of it as like, winning a trial.”

I think he meant winning a race. Being the son of a lawyer messes up all your analogies.

His point, however unclear, is actually valid. So you’re a virgin because you haven’t wanted to get laid. Good for you. Maybe you’re a non-virgin because you have wanted to get laid. Also good for you.

I’m just not sure one is better than the other. Ultimately it’s a personal choice, and while certainly a lot of judgment is passed either way, that’s a huge waste of time (and of the following words: prude, whore, tease and slut).

Don’t get me wrong — by no means is sex a trivial act. But at times we make it out to be the biggest act of all. “In reality it's a big transition,” says one junior, “but not in comparison with other transitions.”

Yes, making love can be amazing. And yes, it is a big deal. As one young man said, “If you are mentally and physically prepared for it, life is too short not to have a lot of sex.”

And others would say life is too short to regret your first time.

I just say that life is too short to worry about your sexual label.

Posted by Julia Allison at 12:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)