Today I learned why your ex-boyfriend does not want to be “just friends”.

I can’t take credit for this nugget of wisdom: the following is a brief explanation thanks to Tom Steele of B93.7 radio station. I figured out a while ago that it’s a bad idea for girls and guys to be buddies immediately after breaking up. But this provides a coherent explanation as to why. Thanks, Tom!

I know a girl who broke up with a guy and she told him she wanted to “still be friends.”  He said, “No thanks.”  She wondered why he couldn’t fall back to being just friends after they had a romantic relationship.  I came up with the “McDonalds Analogy” to try and explain it in a simple way that would help all women understand this tough question.

Imagine if you went to McDonalds a lot and ordered a Big Mac Combo meal.  A Big Mac, Large Fries and a Coke.  You really like this meal.  One day, you pull up to the drivethrough and order the Big Mac Combo meal and the girl tells you, “I’m sorry – you can have the Big Mac and the Coke, but you can’t get fries with that anymore.”  You think about this for a moment, and sure – the Big Mac is the centerpiece of the meal, but McDonalds has some really good fries and you like their fries with your meal.  So you say, “I’ve been able to get fries with that before, why can’t I have fries with my Big Mac combo anymore?”  The girls says, “Well, I just think it is better if you only have the Big Mac and the Coke from here on out.”

At this point, a lot of guys are going to go to Wendy’s or BK and see if they can get fries with their combo at that drivethrough window.  But there are some guys who REALLY like McDonalds Big Macs and they might think, “If I keep coming here and ordering the Big Mac and Coke, maybe she’ll change her mind and give me some fries with that later.”  So they will keep on getting the combo without the fries until the deal breaker happens: One day that guy is going to order the Big Mac and Coke and then he’s going to pull up a little bit to pay, and someone else is going to pull up to the drivethrough speaker and order the “Big Mac Combo” and he is going to hear the girl say, “Would you like fries with that?”

That’s why guys don’t like to be friends with a girl who breaks up with them.

Sorry in advance, this is a downer post. But not all life lessons are happy, right?

I went home for the weekend for Halloween, to spend time in Marquette with the boyfriend. If it hasn’t already been made aware, the boyfriend lives in Marquette and I in East Lansing, a good seven hour distance. We’ve been doing the long distance relationship thing for over a year now, and that really impacts who I am and who we are as a couple. Obviously I was a bit tied up, hence the absense in daily posts (I’m already breaking one of my own rules… dammit).

This weekend I learned that I’m becoming too obsessed with our relationship.

For a long time I’ve blamed it on the fact that our’s is a LDR. Mentality: “Well, I get to see him now, but I won’t get to see him in the near future. Better spend as much time as I can with him now, and make the most of it, since I won’t be able to very soon.” But now that the plans are changing to hopefully have him living in Ann Arbor this time next year, I wonder if living with that mindset for so long has permanently affected me.

Normal couples aren’t with each other 24/7 unless they’re married, and this allows them the opportunities for dates and update conversations and the like. Boyfriend and I talk daily, and when we’re together it’s for all hours of the day — running errands, watching movies, going out to eat. And I’ve noticed that after a while, we stop having real dates (it doesn’t feel like a date when you go out to dinner after being with your “date” for eight hours prior to that). And it’s not like I ever get sick of him. In fact, it’s kind of the opposite.

Initially, that sounds like love, and it sounds all happy and perfect. But after a while, I’ve realized, it becomes rather… unhealthy. Whenever time with him gets delayed by the demands of friends or family, I start to freak out a little bit. This past summer, I caught myself neglecting my friends on numerous occassions and it shocked and horrified me. The last thing I want is to be the girl whose world revolves around her boyfriend. Unfortunately, I might already be that girl.

The obvious next step is to somehow become less obsessed. But I haven’t yet learned how to do that…