by SG’s Team Agony feat. Rin

Let us answer life’s questions – because great advice is even better when it comes from SuicideGirls.

Q: My girlfriend just broke up with me recently after four years of dating and almost a year of being engaged. I never thought this would happen but she just up and left for reasons she would never tell me.

With all that behind me, my real question is what to do now? I have tried going out to meet people but with no luck. I have tried online sites but they seem just as bad as going out for meeting new people. I do have a few friends around but just find myself so lonely all the time. I work from home which doesn’t really help. It’s a good job working on computers and I make great money, but it doesn’t help me meet people at all. I just don’t know what to do with myself and find myself fighting loneliness all the time.

A: Regrouping after the breakup of a long-term relationship can be very difficult. The first thing to address is your loneliness. You’ve mentioned you work from home and make a good income. If you don’t already have one, you should purchase a laptop and take as much of your work outside the house as possible. Even if it’s just for an hour or two a day, hanging out in a coffee shop and working will give you a nice dose of people. Choose a pleasant coffee shop, even if it’s out of your way. Maybe it’s in the neighborhood you want to live in, or maybe it just has a great atmosphere.

When you’re lonely, it’s important to reach out to your friends. They care about you and want to see you happy –– try to make two or three friend outings every week. Good friends are the backbone of getting through a breakup.

Because you work at home and are in a low place right now, you should consider adding some physical activity to your weekly routine. Exercise releases all sorts of beneficial chemicals in our brains, like serotonin and endorphins. Cultivating a feeling of wellbeing will definitely help with your loneliness and put you in a good place for when you do meet someone new. Joining a gym would be the easiest step, but you could also try yoga, team sports, or just go running in your own neighborhood. Lifting weights at home would also do the trick, though it doesn’t have the added potential social benefits.

Since you just got out of a relationship, give yourself some time to recuperate before you stress about meeting someone new. Make new goals — find things you can achieve on your own. Spend time figuring out what makes you happy, then do it! In a long-term relationship we can lose ourselves and it can be really empowering, when single, to find out what we want to do and just do it without worrying about the repercussions.

Maybe she was against you getting tattoos; maybe she didn’t like it when you went out with your friends and came home late; maybe she hated it when you played your favorite album on repeat for three hours straight. Now is your time to do whatever the fuck you want without needing the approval of another person. Discover the good parts of being single. It sounds contradictory, but it’s true! Sometimes being single is fun.

Hope those suggestions are helpful to you!

Rin

Got Problems? Let SuicideGirls’ team of Agony Aunts provide solutions. Email questions to: gotproblems@suicidegirls.com

by SG’s Team Agony feat. Bailey, Rashel, and Vanessa

Let us answer life’s questions – because great advice is even better when it comes from SuicideGirls.

Q: I recently got out of an abusive relationship and I feel like I still can’t escape it. I moved three states away when everything disintegrated. He broke up with me via text message, in the same apartment, no less. We had lived together for two and a half years, and he was my life. Things got rocky towards the end, but as I was sexually abused and made to feel like my feelings weren’t valid, I came to accept that this was my path.

I don’t really know what I’m asking for here, and I’ve never asked for advice like this before. I’m an internalizer for sure… I guess I’m just seeking some guidance or a helping hand. I’m struggling to understand my own reaction, and that unsettles me.

[..]

by Laurelin

I don’t like writing when I’m angry. I suppose there is technically something therapeutic about allowing the words to pour from your pen, furiously scribbled thoughts pressed hard into the paper rather than the controlled sentences I usually produce. I am never proud of what I write when I’m angry. I still do it every once in a while I guess; some things just need to be let out so they can be released and hopefully not felt anymore. I remember writing when my heart had been broken, when I was longing for something different, when I was so inspired by something beautiful or sad, but I do not write very often when I’m angry anymore.

When I was younger I was angry a lot. I was easily hurt and I wasn’t able to see the bigger picture. As I got older I developed a little more sense and realized that every little thing that happened would eventually pass. Each hurt that came to my life would make its mark, and each day after that it would hurt a little less, until one day it became just a memory. Some memories and aches are sharper than others, like remembering something terrible I said and didn’t mean makes me cringe, but you take it with a grain of salt. I learned to think before I speak, and that a heartfelt apology goes a long way.

Other memories, like songs, are different. There are some songs that invoke such powerful memories of certain places and people that when I close my eyes I can almost go back in time. I can smell, touch, hear certain things, some happy, some impossibly sad. When I hear “Hey, Jupiter” by Tori Amos I am 14 years old in a bed and breakfast in Stratford, England. I smell lavender on my pillow and in the sheets every time I move as I drift off to sleep. It was my last family vacation before my younger brother got really sick and the whole family was out, it was just me in this beautiful place. Lavender and Tori Amos always make me smile.

[..]

by Darrah de jour

When I was in eighth grade, after two years of scratching, clawing, whining and whimpering outside the door of the popular girls, I was finally let in. I scored a cute boyfriend, who, without coincidence, was my BFF Paula’s* boyfriend’s best friend. Paula (a Queen Bee) was a transplant from a nearby school and was part Filipino with gorgeous thick black hair, thick black eyebrows, tan skin and a smattering of freckles on her nose. She wasn’t particularly thin and this made me happy. I was happy because I was 13 and absolutely obsessed with my weight. Plus, if she was super-popular and not super-skinny, then maybe I could be too!

I was dreadfully insecure, and covered this up by being overly-nice, pleasing everybody within a four mile radius, not doing things my popular friends told me not to, and doing pretty much anything they approved of. This included wearing overalls with one suspender hanging down, walking during P.E. instead of running, even though I was a great runner (thus, getting a B instead of an A), ditching class and going to the mall to occasionally shoplift nail polish and other assorted sundries, and talking back to my parents about curfew.

[..]

by SG’s Team Agony feat. Dalila, Kraven and Sassie!

Let us answer life’s questions – because great advice is even better when it comes from SuicideGirls.

Q: I have been married for 4 months and my wife is 7 months pregnant. (We got engaged before pregnancy.) My wife is pretty much turned off to sex at this point. I understand she’s uncomfortable and maybe not in the mood, but she is entirely turned off to the point where we haven’t had relations in 3 weeks, and it was dwindling leading up to the current drought.

I am being shut out on all levels of sexual contact. No old fashioned. No oral favors. Nothing! I’m trying to be supportive of her and not push it but at this point I’m thinking I’m not getting laid till Christmas. Please help! What should I do?

[..]

by SG’s Team Agony feat. Shaine, Lyxzen and Yulia

Let us answer life’s questions – because great advice is even better when it comes from SuicideGirls.

Q: I have this ex-boyfriend who is a alcoholic and every now and then he’ll calls me drunk and talks about memories of me and him, and tells me he wants to hangout with me. I still have feelings for him, and feel like he still likes me or something. Could I be right? We’ve both moved on and are with other people. What do you suggest I do?

[..]

by Laurelin

I honestly don’t know why my friend Dan even still wants to be around me. Every single time we hang out I turn into a drunk monster and wind up doing something completely and utterly retarded. Past events have included drunk yelling, drop kicking, punches in the head, “where is this going” talks as I’m getting kicked out of a bar, and most recently screaming at him that he was a pussy as I made him carve his initials into my foot with a giant knife. I have only a slight recollection of this happening, but it’s true; there it is to this day, a tiny “DK” on the top of my foot, a reminder that at the age of 28, total idiocy is still very possible.

He should definitely win an award; I have embarrassed him at multiple bars while he’s been working, woken up his roommates and neighbors in his quiet Cape Cod house and been found alone and drunk in the kitchen attempting to eat cold pasta salad with my hands like the scene where ET the Extra Terrestrial discovers food and beer in Elliot’s fridge. Dan and I are clearly just buddies at this point, this is not the type of behavior that says, “Hey, you should date me, I’m very stable.” I mean, I know everything should be taken with a grain of salt, but really, some things are just stupid. Sometimes I’m just really, really stupid. The other night in a blacked out state he decided that I should be the best man at his future wedding. “Start preparing that speech,” he slurred. “It better be good.” One of the guys, always.

I guess I don’t have the best track record with men. It’s been a year since my last serious relationship, and looking back I feel as though it was really just a blip on the radar screen. Learning experience, blah blah, everything happens for a reason. I guess it does: One line will forever define that relationship, one line spoken at the bar one night by my ex’s best friend. This guy was a monster, a terrible drunk and constantly blowing lines, but he always told the truth. I guess I was looking bummed out one night at the bar, because he came up to me and gave me a sympathetic hug.

“Don’t worry, Laur,” he said. “It wasn’t meant to be. You guys were great together but you know, the other night he mentioned that you were the best thing to ever happen to him, but that you weren’t the type of girl that you marry.” He smiled reassuringly and wandered off. I stood there, and as that comment slowly absorbed the world around me blurred. I thought I might pass out. Two years of my life, years spent happy, in love and with my best friend… not only was that all over now, but that’s what he thought? Did he know that all along? I have never forgotten that, and it honestly haunts me. I thought I had had something amazing, but he was just killing time. I am not the type of girl you marry. What the hell was he thinking?

[..]