Before I got engaged, I used to think a couple’s truest test of compatibility and readiness for marriage was living together. What could be more of a test, I reasoned, than successfully sharing the same space, splitting the bills, and delegating household chores while still enjoying each other’s company and remaining sexually attracted to one another? […]
Since I got engaged early last month and began planning a wedding for this summer, I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to be hitched. As someone who already lives with her husband-to-be, I wonder just how much marriage will actually change things, whether I’ll wake up the morning after the wedding feeling […]
I’m at my parents’ place this week, visiting my family for Christmas. Shortly after I arrived, my mother presented me with an engagement ring. The ring belonged to my great-grandmother, who got married 80 years ago in the fall of 1928. This past summer, when I last saw my mom, I told her my boyfriend and […]
I was sitting at brunch last weekend eating greasy eggs with one of my guy friends. “So, how’s the love life?” I asked. “Eh,” Tom replied shrugging his shoulders. “What? You’re not hunting and fishing?” I asked, doing my best Patti Stanger impression. “Nah, it’s not that,” he said. “It’s just that dating is so […]
Tipping the scales at 300 pounds through college made meeting my beloved at a frat party or in the dining hall impossible. It wasn’t just the reactions I received from the opposite sex, but since I wasn’t comfortable in my own skin, how could I trust anyone else to be comfortable with me? At 23, […]
Recently, a friend sent me a link to a YouTube video called “Can Men and Women Just Be Friends?” I rolled my eyes. I hate that question. It’s heteronormative and sexist, and yet, I clicked anyway. The video has more than 12 million views. In it, women on a college-campus all say, “Yes! Of course men and women can […]
It’s been seven years since I owned a scale. Back then, I was 19, and obsessively chronicling my calories, workouts, and incremental weight changes. 105 one day. 106 would send me into a panic attack. 106.5 put me over the edge. When a handful of months later, I’d find out I was 121, my world […]
As I lay on the floor next to my boyfriend getting ready for to play another round of Dance Central on our Xbox, I thought to myself , Something is wrong with you. You are too happy. Less than 72 hrs before, I had a miscarriage. I lost the baby we were so excited to be bringing […]
His name was Patrick, but everyone referred to him as “the 17-year-old.” That was how his number was saved in my phone. I met the 17-year-old while visiting my 17-year-old cousin in the burbs. I was 22. The cousin brought me to a high school party. Patrick was in the corner, tall and spidery with […]
