Public Service Announcement.

Duncan and I are juniors. It is almost May. Therefore, we are DYING. So, the blog will have to be put on hiatus until after AP week, Prom, SATs and SAT IIs, etc. We'll hopefully be back in two weeks.

Guest posts are still welcome, if you are lucky and don't have a crapload of stuff to do in the coming month.

Girls to: watermelon404@gmail.com
Guys to: dmaclaur@nycap.rr.com

I’m really pretty passionate about this topic: HONEST ≠ MEAN.

It really pisses me off when people aren’t straightforward with things that need to be straightforward. If someone likes you and they make it clear, it’s up to you to let them know how you feel, straight up. If you like them at first and then change your mind, it is DEFINITELY your responsibility to let them know, straight up. Otherwise, you’re leading them on, or continuing on with something that isn’t true anymore.

Of course, sometimes, the other person can detect your change of heart, but in my experience, they either a) don’t detect anything, b) are in denial about it, or c) misinterpret everything. So, my advice is to tell it like it is anyway. Just in case.

I’ve always been a big proponent of this. If someone likes you, and you don’t like them TELL THEM. Do not make them think there is a possibility that you could like them, don’t make them think you like them, and god forbid, do not be crazy flirtacious with them. It’s NOT MEAN to tell them the truth. You’re not breaking their heart; you’re letting them down early and quick and easy. If you keep going, leading them on, it’s going to be harder to let them down and the effects will be much worse. THAT will break their heart.

It just really annoys me when people say that they can’t let someone down because it would be too mean. It’s not mean. It’s honest and a helluva lot nicer than lying to them about how you feel. No one wants to be played.

And there’s absolutely nothing wrong in doing what you want because you’ll be happier with it. If you want to go for some girl, but you’re kind of committed to another, choose one, and let the other know immediately. Don’t woo two girls at once. Don’t feel like a jerk for switching girls too quickly, but definitely consider yourself a jackass if you aren’t upfront about it as soon as you know what you want.

Basically, don’t be afraid to hurt someone’s feelings. It’s how this stuff works. And remember that being honest is not being mean. Being mean is lying to yourself and everyone else about everything.

HONESTY: be honest, it's not mean.

So, today’s topic (yeah, I know it isn’t Sunday. April and I were bored, and felt that, you, the devoted reader deserved another blogging before Sunday) is all about honesty. I guess mostly in relationships, but in everything really.

So, in my opinion, honesty is one of the most important virtues to have. Not skirting around difficult issues when they need to be addressed, not making up half-truths, and not lying in anyway. I try to hold myself up to my standard. I try not to put too much padding on what I say, and sometimes, a lot of times, it makes me come off as blunt, as callous, all those type of adjectives. But, I believe in the better interest of society, of people, of the world, my attempt to tell the truth in what I do is a good thing.

Right now, of course I’m talking very generally about the issue of lying. But, that is because, to relate lying to relationships I believe that it needs to be first supported outside of relationships. You can’t just be a truthful person to your significant other and then lie to all your friends about how much you and your partner had sex over the weekend. It doesn’t work like that. Well, actually, it sometimes does, but that’s beside the point. The point is that lying, in whatever shape or form, whether it is for ill or good, is not a good thing to do. Lying to protect someone isn’t helping them, it isn’t helping simplify the situation or dull the pain. It is only making the later revelation of the truth that much harsher. That of course assumes that the person who was lied to finds out the truth later, but even if this isn’t the case, the issue still stands as it isn’t just an issue of someone’s feelings being hurt more by lying to them, but as a moral issue that should be eliminated all together.

Now, I’m not going to say that all lying is necessarily totally bad. Sometimes it has its merits, but, no matter the merits of the situation that lying is conveying, I don’t think it is the proper course of action.

To reference the title of this post: Well, I don’t know if honesty is never mean, though that could depend on your definition of mean. It can easily be mean, calling someone fat (when they actually are), saying someone’s hair is a mess (when it really is). But, the way that honesty is delivered is one of the ways in which this gruffness can be combated. By calling an obese person fat you aren’t actually helping them by telling the truth. But, in theory, the truth can be helpful in that, in the example of the obese person, it can get them to realize that, yes, they are overweight and that they need to do something about it. And that can help the situation.

Of course, this doesn’t always happen, sometimes the truth is just something that is truthful, and not something that is necessary for personal improvement.

Ok, I feel that I’m getting sort of really general here, let me try to figure out what I’m trying to say really…

Ok. So, I don’t know, a lot of that is just really repetitive. So, onto relationship honesty:

In a relationship, one of the most important things that can happen is that the couple can share a bond of trust. This doesn’t mean that you need to tell each other every little detail of each other’s lives, but that you can trust the person to be there for you, to listen to you, to help you. This of course can develop in friendship as well. But the important thing about this trust is that it should be honest. It shouldn’t involve you always saying your significant other looks good in that pair of pants, when really, they don’t look good in them. Honesty should be paramount in that you can say anything and it can be accepted as truth. The other major point of relationships where honesty is important is in breaking up, as April and I dealt with on Sunday. But I’ll recap: when breaking up be honest about the reason why, don’t give lame excuses and reason you two can’t be together anymore. It’s never appreciated and doesn’t come off as sincere or truthful at all. So, just tell the truth.

Alright, to finish I’m going to talk about my biggest paradox in my advocacy of honesty: I’m both really sarcastic and I tell a lot of jokes. Now, a lot of the time, sarcasm and jokes deal with untrue subject matter and those make up my biggest paradox in terms of honesty. I am willing to tell almost anyone I know almost anything if they ask it of me, but I well berate, insult, belittle and be sarcastic to almost anyone as well. And most of the time, the things I say are not true, I don’t mean what I say, but, is that really an excuse for what I do? Eh, not really. But that is a discussion for another time really.

Dumping...dun, dun, dunnnn. (bring on the waterworks! lots of ice cream too!)

This topic came up a couple weeks ago at school, because apparently it was a health class assignment to write about how you’d want to be dumped or something? I personally have never been officially dumped, but I’ve never really been in much of a relationship before either. I do, however, know how I’d want to be dumped and how I would dump someone else.

Unless you’re in a messed up relationship, I would expect you can tell when a breakup is about to happen. Maybe things aren’t going well, or you never really talk or the fabulosity that your relationship once was isn’t there anymore. If that was the case, I’d say it’d be a “mutual breakup.” Some dispute that such a thing actually exists, but I believe it’s 100% possible. This would be my ideal breakup: sitting down and talking, and coming to the conclusion that you’re just not right for eachother. Sure it will be hard and there will be tears but it’s all on good terms.

But ideal breakups don’t always happen. In our imperfect world, things happen. Like, maybe you and your sig. other get into a huge fight, and one person screams “IT’S OVER!!” (like they do in movies) and you cry and wallow in anger and self-pity. Once you get over the initial shock, closure is totally necessary. You have to decide to move on without the anger emotion clouding your thoughts.

If your sig. other cheats on you, I guess it’s up to you to decide on giving second chances or not. On principle, I would say no way in hell do they deserve a second chance, but at the same time, I would totally probably give one anyway. It’s probably bad. But what can I say?

Anyway. I would prefer to be dumped in person. I would also prefer to dump someone else in person. It’s just so much more real, not to mention respectful. Over the phone is the tiniest step down from in person, so if you’re going to do that, why not just take the extra ounce of effort and meet them face to face? The worst ways to dump are facebook, email and texting. Texting is just a huge slap in the face. Like could you please care enough to at least dump me in person? And facebook. If you want your breakup all over the internet, be my guest and let everyone see the comment that ends your relationship. My problem with email is that the time you send the email and the time it’s received do not coincide at all. So when you’re done with the relationship, they don’t know it yet, and that’s just weird. Finally, there’s AIM. I know it’s not the best way, but sometimes it’s the only way. Maybe it’s impersonal, but it’s a way to get all your thoughts and feelings out at once, with an immediate response. In person, you can’t say everything at once. Emotions and the person’s response could totally inhibit that.

When I was talking about this a couple weeks ago, I was asked what I would actually say. It all depends on how the person reacts. But I’d start with, “I think we should break up.” Simple as that. But then, one of the guys I was talking to said that saying “I think” would be unfair, because they could say “I think we should stay together” and they couldn’t really have their wish. If I were to break up with someone, there is no way that I would let myself be convinced to change my mind. I would go in with the intention of breaking up and come out of it newly single, without a doubt. I also don’t think I could ever break up impulsively; I don’t trust myself enough to do that. I’d be afraid of regretting my decision later.

If I were to be dumped, I’d want the reason to be sincere and a good one. I’d want the person to be sensitive and caring about it. But then again, if the reason was jerky and stupid, I’d have a better reason to hate the guy. But in all honesty, I wouldn’t want to hate the guy. Which brings me to my next and final topic....

Staying friends after the breakup. It’s possible, it really is. But I think it’s more likely if the two of you were friends before the relationship. If you guys met and immediately started dating, it’d be harder to be friends afterwards since you were never friend before. I hate the idea that a relationship, something that is good, can potentially end something like a friendship. Of course, it takes time after a breakup to be friends again, but if you let the hard feelings and awkwardness subside, it can happen.

So I lied. I just thought of one more little thing. Never regret a relationship you were in. For that matter, never regret anything. But seriously, if you had never been in that relationship, no matter how good or bad it was, you wouldn’t be the same person you are after the fact. Just sayin’.

What happens when you get dumped!? Oh no!

How to dump someone. If you were being dumped, what kinds of things would piss you off, what kinds of things would you prefer (AIM vs in person vs phone, etc), is it possible to still be friends, where would you do it? At their house or on a date?

So, we’re back, finally. This weekly blogging thing is much easier. But now we basically never update. Anyway, back to the updating.

So, that’s the topic up there at the top, it’s a good question, and one which I’m sure many people have asked themselves. So, I guess I’ll just answer the questions that are posed in the topic:

So, what things would I prefer and what don’t I like about getting dumped? Well, if you’re going to dump someone the best way to do it, in my mind is in person, in a neutral place that doesn’t make the situation awkward. Like, you can’t do it in a place that neither of you can leave; therefore, no dumping your significant other on a boat. You get the idea. If both of you have ways of leaving with little attention brought to the fact that you’re leaving then that is best possible situation, at least in my mind. This is of course only really important for breaking up when you either want to remain friends (which I’ll talk about later) or you just don’t want to make a scene. So, like the topic says, you don’t want to have to break up with someone at their house, it puts one person on the defensive anyway, because they don’t live there, and if they are the one being broken up with then they have to leave their now exes house. And that’s just awkward. The only time it might be acceptable to break up with someone at their house is if the person doing the breaking up is leaving and breaks up with the person who lives in the house. That way there is already a leaving motion and it can be continued and not awkward, or at least not as bad. But really, anything that involves the two of you alone, like a date or at a house is a bad idea.

That doesn’t mean though that breaking up should be public, but you shouldn’t be so alone that you both can’t run off to your respective friends, or at least other people. So, you can’t break up while you’re on a date, or really right after one, unless it went badly, then it can happen. But if you break up after a date that seems to go well the dumpee is going to feel really bad. Basically you don’t want to give false hope when you’re on the verge of breaking up. In theory, perfectly, both parties should know it is coming and understand where it is coming from. This of course doesn’t always happen. This is why when you are dumping someone, or even if you are being dumped, you want to talk about it with the other person. Don’t just let it happen and then later wonder what was wrong. If you don’t know, ask about it. Because if you understand what was wrong you can either fix it for yourself and future relationships, or just know and not have to wonder about it forever.

So, I basically covered how to break up, whether in person or on the phone or online. The best way is definitely in person. Though, that can depend on how the person is going to react of course. A phone could be easier just because it can provide more distance. But, I think that generally breaking up should be done in person, face to face, so that you can actually talk about what happened or whatever.

So, finally, is it possible to still be friends. Well, I’d say it is. I’m best friends with one girl who broke up with me and good friends with another. Of course, I’ve also dated one person three times and so we broke up, and then got back together about a year later, and then the same thing happened again. But, we remained friends through all of that so I don’t think you can say it can’t be done. But, depending on the relationship itself, as well as the previous connection before the relationship started it could affect how well exes can still be friends. If the relationship was something that involved a lot of friends like activity, then eventually I think that the couple can be friends. Not immediately of course. You do need some time apart just to not make it really weird. But, you can go about your normal business pretty easily and still be friends with the person after a break up in that case. But, if the relationship was mostly based on relationship type things, going on dating and being all lovey and stuff, then it’s much harder to be friends. So, basically, if you’re friends with your significant other outside of dating them, then yeah, you’ll probably be able to still be friends, otherwise it’s a lot harder.

So, I think that’s enough about that. I need to go to sleep, I have work in the morning.