Psst. I have a secret. There have been a couple occasions, in the past, where I've had a photo or two of a dude's, uh, junk on my cellphone. And I have showed these photos to a couple close friends (usually in the "showing off" sense). I know, I am awful, I am so ashamed. So when a guy friend suggested I do a poll about whether women would break up with a dude who showed his friends a racy photo of HER, my initial reaction was, "DUH," but then I was like, "Oh. Wait. I've done that. So maybe not." So, what say you?

I am currently sharing my apartment with my ex-boyfriend. Initially, this wasn’t the plan, but he gave a good argument about why it would be beneficial to the both of us — namely financially. I told him we could try it out and see. Well, it’s been a month and something has come to my attention that just really bothers me. He recently sent me an e-mail, accidentally, under an alias e-mail account he uses. The weird thing is that his alias is a female. When I asked him why he had an alias account and why he’s using a female name, he hesitated then said, “I don’t know ... I use it for junk e-mails and stuff.” I explained to him that I thought it was creepy. I, too, have an e-mail account specifically for junk e-mails, but I don’t use an alias and if I did, my alias wouldn’t be a member of the opposite sex. His response to this was to delete his female alias account and create a new male alias account. My question is, am I wrong to find this incredibly creepy and to wonder what else he’s hiding? It’s no secret that one of the reasons we broke up was due to his secretiveness and lying. Am I an idiot for thinking we could be roommates?  — Two’s A Crowd

Justin Timberlake and Jessica Biel are reportedly donezo. Though nothing has been officially confirmed and the couple was seen together earlier this week, it would be a slightly shocking breakup, mostly for the alleged claim that Rihanna is JT’s other woman. After three years of on-again, off-again for Jessica and Justin, all it took was some sightings with the feisty singer to launch a truckload of rumors. [Terra] Though they might not be over IRL, it reminded us of some other shocking celebrity breakups!

One of my favorite love stories -- and it's not a chick flick, as I think many men enjoy it -- is "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind." For those who haven't seen it or need a refresher on the plot, here's the gist from IMDb:

"A couple [Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet] undergoes a procedure to erase each other from their memories when their relationship turns sour, but it is only through the process of loss that they discover what they had to begin with."

So yeah, ignoring that last nugget of movie wisdom, I sometimes wonder if it might be worth it with certain people, if you could "eternal sunshine" them from your mind. I have a friend who is still weirdly, inexplicably emotionally tied to a dirty rotten scoundrel of an ex-boyfriend and I certainly wish for her sake that such a thing was possible. But what about you?

One of the big bombshells my ex dropped the day he decided he needed a break was, “I don’t know that we’re in love anymore.” I didn’t buy it. I was in love and I was certain he was too. He was confused, he needed space, and I was going to give it to him, despite the fact that for many, his words would have been the final nail in the coffin. So I was fascinated to read Laura Munson’s “Modern Love” column in Sunday’s New York Times about her refusal to fight with her husband when he declared he no longer loved her.

I was going through my jewelry box the other morning trying to find a pair of earrings, and I came across a couple pieces of jewelry ex-boyfriends had given me while we were dating. I haven't worn either of the items in years. Maybe I've felt I shouldn't because we're not together anymore, or because I didn't want to be reminded of the relationships every time I put on a necklace. Now, however, I feel there's enough distance between me and these relationships to wear the ex-jewelry without feeling too weird. But is it inappropriate to do so?

You might not have been splitting with someone when we started our 30-Day Breakup Guide at the beginning of the month, but if you are now (or do at some point in the future), don’t forget to follow our step-by-step instructions for how to get over him. Moving on from a relationship can be tough, but forcing yourself to go through our daily to-do list for a month will motivate you to pull yourself together in no time—or at least distract you from the deep emotional pain you’re feeling for 30 days.

The last time I went on a date was a month ago and it was decidedly “meh.” I deleted my profile off OKCupid because I was sick of getting new messages from guys who were, at best “meh,” at worst psychotic/illiterate/pervy. To be honest, for the first time since my breakup, I have been enjoying being single. And I don’t mean single as in “I’m dating lots of guys and going out all the time like Samantha from ‘Sex and the City,’ woo-hoo!” I mean I am single and enjoying my alone time.  I’m having dinner with friends, catching up on movies I’ve missed (I think I am the last of Blockbuster’s customers), riding my bike, and starting up yoga again. Next month I’m going on a yoga/surf retreat in Costa Rica for a week, and when given the option between coed or an all-women retreat, I went with the latter. Coed shouted two things to me—couples (blech) and single dudes looking to show off their shredding abilities. The latter would normally kind of turn me on, but like I said, MEH.

“My boyfriend is hot then cold towards me. I care about him, but I don’t know if the relationship is worth the effort. Should we stay together or break up?”—Mary, Massachusetts

Related:

Single and Don’t Want to Be? Watch this.

Is Your Relationship Going Nowhere?

How to Recover from Infidelity

When did I become the star of the Lifetime movie, “In Love With A Stranger”? (This movie does not exist yet, but it should.) Was this the way “General Hospital”‘s Elizabeth Webber felt when she found out her husband, Ric Lansing, had kidnapped Carly Corinthos and was keeping her locked up in a secret room in their house? Was this kind of betrayal what Janet Jackson was singing about on the song “What About?” How many songs, movies, and books have been penned about deception? Countless, I think. But there are two people I’ve been thinking about in particular, who seem like they would get what it feels like to find out you’d been lied to for years by the person you loved. They are Julie Metz, author of Perfection: A Memoir of Betrayal and Renewal, and my ex-fiance’s college girlfriend, who emailed me yesterday out of the blue.

A few weeks ago I wrote about how I wasn’t sure if I was really ready to be dating again, that I was still dealing with the lingering effects of my last relationship in which my fiance ended things suddenly.

“...I desperately fear, in all sincerity, that I will never again find someone who loved me like my ex-fiance did. And that even if I do, they will likely leave me the way he did. Isn’t that pathetic?”

A friend of mine emailed me, specifically about that line, saying it wasn’t what she expected to hear me say.

I have a little problem. I tend to obsess over why a guy suddenly pulls “the fade” or ends things just as they’re, seemingly, getting good. It’s one thing if the guy simply is not interested in pursuing anything further because of a lack of attraction, but what about the guy who does think I’m hot, awesome, and funny? (He did, didn’t he?) Where the hell does he go and why? According to a guy writer for Cosmopolitan, there are five reasons why guys dump women they’re “into.” I got a guy friend, whose opinion I trust, to give me his thoughts on each of them, lest I take them all incredibly seriously.

After you’ve been dumped it’s pretty easy to think up things that sucked about your ex. Why My Ex Sucks wants you to “condense your bitterness” into three reasons why your ex is the worst and submit them for public enjoyment. Some of the greatest include:

“He had a twisted relationship with his twin sister. He referred to her as ‘his girlfriend.’”

“He was so dumb that at one point he thought I made up both the names ‘Hamlet’ and ‘Shakespeare.’”

“When we broke up and I kicked him out, he proceeded uninstall and steal our toilet.”

All of this makes for loads of amusement, but you know what’s harder, and possibly even more therapeutic in, like, a healthy way, than coming up with three awful things about your ex? Coming up with three ways in which they totally ruled. My ex and I used to play a game called “Look at the things I’ve brought into your life,” in which we’d list random fun stuff we introduced each other to. For example, thanks to me, my ex is now a Democrat, got to go to Carnival in Trinidad, and eats green vegetables with some frequency. I attempt to return the positivity, after the jump…

Recently, I discovered that one of my best friends had ditched me after I logged onto Facebook and found her profile had disappeared from my page. We’d been having problems that had culminated in a huge argument the day before, but I figured we’d get through it. I figured wrong.

Still, being given the heave-ho by way of a social networking site? My first reaction was to laugh. I mean, we’re adults. Unfriending me seemed tantamount to toilet-papering my locker or scribbling my phone number on the boy’s locker room wall.

Breaking up is hard to do especially when you have to go to work the next day. After spending an entire evening arguing with your, now ex-boyfriend, the last thing you want to do is deal with the idiots in accounting or the crazy client who can’t make up her mind. Unfortunately, business doesn’t cease because of your broken heart. Here, readers tell us how they survived a breakup—and the ensuing workweek—and lived to love again.

At some point, nearly every woman will have to decide if a breakup means that ties are completely severed with her ex or if they are going to remain friends. Whether your ex is an ex-boyfriend, ex-husband, or somewhere in between, trying to remain friends with your ex is a recipe for disaster. Of course, if you have a child with your ex, you will still see your ex from time to time and you will need to remain civil to one another, but I would still caution against a true friendship with your ex.

Writers often turn their relationships—failed and successful—into stories and novels. But they’re not the only creative types spinning exes into gold. Recently, a few visual and performance artists have used dating and breakups as a starting point for their work. At least some people are finding uses for their relationship failures. We can’t seem to figure out what to do with our brokenheart.

While heartache pretty much sucks — especially the kind you can’t seem to get over — it can be a great learning experience. After the jump, the top 10 things you learn when you’re heartbroken.

Recently, a woman wrote to Salon columnist Cary Tennis seeking advice about a broken heart she’d been suffering for over 10 years. In 1997, the woman “set free a beautiful man to live the rest of his amazing life,” three years after meeting him on an island in Hawaii, where she works and lives. He was there temporarily and made it clear he’d be leaving eventually to pursue his career and Ph.D. elsewhere. Nevertheless, they forged ahead with a relationship, and she fell very much in love with him. She even got accidentally pregnant — a pregnancy she decided to terminate, but she feels that the experience forever “fused” her to this “amazing” man. Soon after, he left Hawaii, like he always said he would, and now, nearly 12 years later, the woman still cannot get over him. She says that since they are in the same career field and he has a father in Hawaii who “sometimes needs her help” and a brother who visits Hawaii occasionally, she cannot escape him. Why, she can even order a “poster of his partner through the National Geographic bookstore” if she wanted, so obviously,  “there is nowhere to hide.”

Lindsay Lohan is messier than eating a burrito in the back of a school bus. She just can’t keep it together!  She’s been chasing SamRo around town, allegedly stalking her beat makin’ bro Mark, tried to crash her twin sister Charlotte’s fashion party, and now the fam is considering filing a restraining order. Seriously, stick a fork in these love birds because they’re done cooking!  But from loss comes lessons—here’s what we can, and Lindsay should, learn about how to handle a breakup.