The (500) Days of Summer Dating Theory

If you have seen (500) Days of Summer, you know it’s appeal, and if you haven’t, you need to.  (500) Days of Summer is the perfect anti-Romantic Comedy.  It’s adorable, it’s funny, it’s sad.  You want to love Summer and hate her at the same time.

However, to me, it is more than the perfect date movie.  It is slowly becoming a relationship predictor.  Now it is a super basic theory, that hasn’t been overly tested.  I would love to hear about your successes or failures with this theory.

The Theory

On a basic level, the movie (500) Days of Summer can predict how successful a beginning relationship will turn out.

To Test

1. Grab your significant other and watch (500) Day of Summer.
2. After the film is over, casually start a conversation about what you thought of it.
3. Once the conversation is rolling, volunteer which of the two main characters you identify the most with.
4. Encourage you significant other to do the same.
5. Compare results.

Predicted Results

A successful relationship can only thrive between people that identify with the same character.  Two Toms pair well together, and two Summers pair well together.  However, a Tom and a Summer should be warned if they want to date.

Now I know this seems obvious, or too simple, but you’d be surprising how much this movie prompts you to open up about yourself and your dating past!

-Alice Ambrosia

Arete's "The 'Not' One Night Stand"

PenName and I were officially broken up and I was in desperate need of male attention to reassure myself that I could still ensnare the attention of one. My (at the time) 5-year relationship was dead, having been ripped to shreds by soap opera-esque drama, leaving me a lonely, insecure second-semester freshman.

The solution to my doubts and new found freedom was easy: I was going to find a one night stand.

Smokes was a peer of mine. We mostly smoked together, and the mutual people we knew where either through smokers or the few theater people I knew. He was obviously interested in me, leaving him a clear choice in my book.

Smokes and my sorority sister had previously had a relationship. But even then she still made it very clear that she did not mind if anyone fooled around with or got involved with Smokes— I should have seen this as a sign that something might have been awry.

After literally propositioning Smokes for sex (I asked him if he had condoms in his room and if he’d be available at 10), and doing the deed, I believed that I had successfully pulled off a one night stand, no strings attached. It was to my understanding that all males looked for sex and that my no strings attached mission would be godsend.

My expectation for the night:

I would sleep with Smokes and that would be it. Maybe I would send him a text the day after, but my nothing more would become of our one night stand. Being a guy, he would let our distance grow and eventually our working/social relationship would be back to normal.

What really happened:

“Do you want to go out sometime, get to know each other better, take things a bit further?” He appeared to be looking for more.


After a few awkward days where Smokes attempted to ask me out on dates or catch my eye in the dining hall, we had spoken and I finally made it clear that I had no interest in his advances and that I had never meant to hurt him, which I clearly had after all of my avoidance and what “not”. He had taken my advances to be that of wanting more.

I had missed the signs that should have let me see he wanted more: the walks, the texts, the concerned faces and him asking me to spend the night, literally right after having sex with him.
I had had enough nerve and presence to flaunt myself at Smokes, but I didn’t have the brains to tell him straight up that I wasn’t looking for anything more. I hadn’t taken the time to understand that maybe guys aren’t always the guys we think they might be.

While not the guy for me, Smokes was just another guy (of so many) who are looking for more than just sex, even when offered just that. Whether or not Smokes genuinely wanted something deeper, I’ll never know. Regardless, I’m where I need to be in the dating world and I’m here because of that experience, knowing that not all guys are jerks, man whoring and sleeping around like I attempted to do. Go figure.

Oh and don’t sleep with your sister’s exes.

The end.

Alice’s First Love: And No this is not a Cheesy Post of Clichés

It seems to me that when a lot of people talk about their first love their eyes go cloudy, and their words invoke this vision of a lost summer romance in a time they long to go back to.  When I talk about my first love, I laugh, and will be the first to admit that I am glad we are no longer together.

Comic-Boy and I started dating the fall of our sophomore year of college.  We met while working on a production of Pride and Prejudice together, however we barely spoke.  I (a theatre performance major) was stage-managing the production while he (a theatre tech major) was cast as Mr. Darcy.

Now before you stop me, and say, “Alice, you promised no clichés,” let me tell you that a) I hate the story of Pride and Prejudice and b) I think that the character of Mr. Darcy is a creep and a jerk.  So no, I was not attracted to him because of his opportunity to play this romantic lead.

We started dating about a month after the show closed, and we dated for a little over a year.  Up until then, I hadn’t been in a relationship for longer than four months, so this is quite an accomplishment for me.

I loved him, I really did.  However, (tiny cliché warning) hindsight truly is 20/20, and now I realized how much I sacrificed to be with him.  His parents were divorced, and his dad who could help fund his college tuition thought a degree was unnecessary, and his mom, who wanted to help, couldn’t afford to.  A couple of months after we started dating, Comic-Boy had to withdraw from school for a semester, which resulted him being essentially homeless.

Of course, like any love-blinded girlfriend, I let him sleep in my dorm room (much to the dismay of Arete who was my roommate at the time).  We had pretty much moved in together, and I started paying for everything, including his food, movie tickets, etc.  When his mom had trouble paying for his cell phone bill, my parents added his number on to our family plan.  We paid for everything for him, short of co-signing a loan for tuition.

At the same time, Comic-Boy started becoming intensely co-dependent, antisocial, and depressed.  He would guilt trip me if I tried to go out with my sorority sisters, and refused to get to know any of them.  I started ditching out on activities with them so I could sit in a room with him and watch TV or play video games.

Summer was a bit of a break, after trying to live together in an apartment while he failed at finding a job, we both packed up and went home, giving me two months without him hanging on to me. 

When school started again, he had found a loan, and had his own dorm room, but he still guilted me out of spending time with my own friends.  Luckily, when sorority pledging rolled around, I had found a small group of other theatre kids that he actually enjoyed hanging out with, so I could immerse myself in pledging activities without him guilting me.

Suddenly, I was having a blast.  My immersion in pledging became an avoidance of him, and I quickly realized that no matter how inconvenient it seemed to him, we needed to break up.  I got a text from him one day saying that we needed to talk, and I gritted my teeth, preparing for him to go off on me for abandoning him for the past week or so.

Instead, he burst into tears and told me that he had drunkenly made out with one of the theatre girls I got him to befriend.  He said he thought we should break up, and I agreed, and rushed him out of my room.  I wasn’t pissed at the time, but that came later (and probably deserves it’s own post).

Looking back on my relationship with Comic-Boy, I don’t regret anything, except that maybe I didn’t end it sooner.  He was the first guy I ever said “I love you” to, but I never want to go back to those “romantic youthful days”.

Good, riddance, I say!

-Alice Ambrosia

Alice Battles the Complicated: Part I

Shark Week.

The perfect week for bringing together two people.  There is nothing more romantic than watching late night specials about people who almost died from shark attacks.

The best thing is that it worked!  I was actually cuddled up on the couch with a very attractive guy watching people losing limbs in dramatic reenactments.  It was getting close to three in the morning, and although there were other people in the room, all I could focus on was the feel of his thumb stoking the back of my hand.

I was ecstatic, here I was with Babel, a guy that I knew from high school.  He was that “cute older guy” when we were in school together, but now, four years later, he is actually into me!  He came over for a house party I threw while house sitting for my parents who were on vacation, and he outstayed all of the other guests.

Everything was lining up.  He paid attention to me all night, he kept trying to sit next to me, and then he had made the move to put his arm around me and pull me in close.  When Babel was leaving, I walked him out, and he looked at me like he wanted to kiss me.  He didn’t, which I thought was even more endearing.

Sounds like a nice beginning, right?  Here is the problem.  In a week, I will have left my parents’ house to go back to my apartment near my college.  Meaning that, in a week, Babel and I will live over three hundred miles apart.  I hear again and again about how distance never works, but something in me wants to ignore that.

Crap.

-Alice Ambrosia

So what is this all about?

Dating.

In a way, it’s an incredibly exciting and ominous word.  There are so many clichés and advice surrounding dating, but nothing can prepare you for the actual thing, or at least that’s what we've found.

We may only be twenty-one years old, but we realized that between the two of us, we have faced many different dating and relationship situations.  We have tackled (or in the midst of) long-term and short-term relationships, one night stands, on-again off-again boyfriends, long-distance relationships, failed relationships, and even the occasional lesbian advances.

Luckily, we can laugh at our failures, sometimes take pride in, and even enjoy them.  So we thought it would be fun to bring you in on our lives of boys and sexploits.  Enjoy the self-realization, adventures, and crazy hormones!

To learn more about who we are as individuals when it comes to relationships, read about Arete and Alice.

Living in my Brother's Shadow

I realized about a year ago that my issue with relationships could be explained in one sentence: my brother married the first girl he ever dated.

My brother and his wife started dating when they were freshmen in high school.  It started out like a normal high school relationship, but pretty soon they were going to the same college.  I have heard that a lot of high school relationships end when college starts, but they stayed together.  Their relationship hit a little turbulence when she got very sick and had to take a year off of school, but once she went back, everything went back to normal.  They survived two years while living in different states, and got married this past May after being together for almost ten years.

I was growing up in his footsteps, and he found his soul mate in only one try.  Needless to say, that is not the case with me.  I’ve lost count of the number of guys I’ve kissed.  If I tried, I could count my boyfriends to date, but that would be embarrassing.  I can’t seem to stay in a relationship, and yet I can’t seem to stay single.

 Watching your brother marry his high school sweetheart at the age of 24 is discouraging when you know that you won’t be in his shoes in three years.  Also, his luck of finding love so early has made me panic when relationships don’t work, thinking that I am running out of time.

I have constantly been a battle of emotions and logic.  It’s like every fiber of my being has been forced to pick sides in this tremendously immature elementary school brawl.  Normally logic and emotions should work together.  Nope, mine like to battle with cardboard and duct tape swords.

I know I should not compare myself to my brother.  I know I am still young, and it’s completely fine that I am still single with no immediate plans to settle down.  And yet, I still feel like something is wrong with me.

Damn you, emotions!  Can’t you just let logic win this game of bloody knuckles?

-Alice Ambrosia

“I’m my own dream girlfriend”

“I’m my own dream girlfriend”

She’s decently perfect in an imperfect world: curves, nice height, intelligent, quirky, witty, nice boobs— hell, if I were a guy, I’d date her. Too bad she’s… me.

My friends all throughout college have made fun of me for a lurid statement that I once off handedly made while on the outskirts with my long-term boyfriend, PenName. “I’m my own dream girlfriend,” I had said. They all laughed, and after a moment I realized that I was being completely honest with myself, I was and still am my own dream girlfriend.

Now before you think, “what an egocentric bitch,” stop and ask yourself, if a guy left you, would you ever think along the lines of “I’m too good for him anyway” or “he doesn’t know what he’s losing?” If you answered yes, then to a degree you too think you’re a good girlfriend. If you were in his shoes, would you want to be with you?

Breaking up is hard to do.

I ended up using the notion of me being my own dream girlfriend against PenName (my long term on again, off again, on, off on— you get the point, boyfriend of 8 years), after a massive, lengthy, bloody breakup brawl #2. I justified this second massive break up with the notion that PenName would never realize what he had let go and it would be him missing me, needing me, and begging for me to come back. My opinion that I was my own dream girlfriend didn’t fail me, at least not this time.

I started seeing someone else after about 3 months, all while flirting with PenName. PenName’s indecisiveness to start anything romantic ended up pushing me into another relationship.

Out of sight, not out of mind.

I’d like to say that PenName did come back, and left, and returned, and repeated a tiresome sequence that is possibly left up to Murphy’s law. But, after three additional months I had left the other guy and had decided to give PenName another chance after he showed off his capability to care by texting, calling, writing letters, and just being open and genuine about feelings and emotions in general.

PenName has always had it in him to treat me right and care, but it appears as though it only creeps through when I’m hard to get. Instances where I’m physically far away because of trips, or I’m out of sight and slightly out of mind due to a break up are the perfect example of when he comes running. Comments like “I miss you” and how beautiful I am come up in more and more. Eventually he hits a peak though, and PenName leaves again, jaded by the sheer presence of me.

I can’t date myself and that’d be creepy anyway.

So maybe what I need is someone like me to date, without the drama and the whole being female aspect. For now, I’m with PenName where he emotional, physically, educationally and positively supports me for being me. Until I can clone myself, I’ll stick to reality and finding a partner in someone other than myself.

-Arete Siren