Blogalicious

The Do’s and Don’ts of Staying Friends with an Ex

We’ve all been there. That fateful moment after a breakup where someone attempts to soften the blow by asking, “We can still be friends, right?” As much as we crave that comfort, there are plenty of reasons that attempting to stay friends is a bad idea. This week Ellie contributed her two cents on the issue, alongside other advice from experts,  to Heather Rinder at Her Campus, the online community for college women. Check out the article below:

After a break-up it’s easy to not only feel hurt and upset, but lonely too. You’ve spent a significant amount of time with a person who is suddenly no longer in your life, either in the same way, or at all. It’s natural to want to maintain a relationship with that person – calling them, finding ways to bump into them during the day, or planning “casual” lunch dates. Sometimes, though, this is exactly the opposite of what you need.

Her Campus spoke with relationship and break-up experts Dan Lier, of AskDanandMike.com, Ellie Scarborough, of PinkKisses.com, Dr. Ish. Major, of LittleWhiteWhys.com, and Dr. D. Ivan Young, author of Break up, Don’t Break Down for tips on when it’s OK to contact him, and when you have to just let go.

Here we list the do’s and don’ts of staying friends with an ex.

Don’ts:

Don’t enter into a “friendship” if you still feel romantic love.
Scarborough suggests a no-contact rule for at least 90 days after the break-up. “Instead of putting your energy into trying to be friends with the person you just broke up with, put that energy into other relationships like friends and family who you might have neglected a bit during the relationship,” she says.

Click here to read the full article

Q&A: What if I think he’ll be back…?

Bombshells! There are all sorts of ways to get help around here. Find advice in my vlogs, peruse Bettyville for awhile, and of course you can always ask me directly. That’s exactly what I’m doing here today, answering one of our bombshell’s burning questions. Settle in, dolls. I’ll tell it to you straight.

Q:

I’ve been dating a great guy, he is 53 and never been married. He is successful, great career, treated me great until…. We talked every day, saw each other twice a week for 4 months. He then stated he had tried to have relationships and he just can’t be in a relationship. I asked him why, he stated work and his family back home. He IS NOT dating anyone else. He seemed crazy about me and now I’m not hearing from him. He told me he can’t give me what I want and need. I think he will be back, but what should I do?

A:

The beginning stages of a relationship are fun, but they can sometimes be misleading. Before there are any expectations, before obligations creep in… that’s generally when it feels the most carefree for men, but as women, we tend to start making future plans rather quickly. When we reach a point where we start externalizing those plans, men usually pick one direction or the other (i.e., sticking around or hitting the road), and there may not be much space in between.

If he told you outright that he can’t give you what you want and need, it’s probably the truth. So, starting right now, it’s up to you to make your own happiness and move forward without him. If you need a little daily nudge, you might consider checking out our Betty Action Plan — it emails you a specific new step to take each day for 30 days straight, to get you focused on YOU again instead of him, regardless of what the future holds. Taking care of yourself and creating your own joy is always a win-win, no matter what.

Hang in there, babe! You’re a self-sufficient creature who deserves to be happy, with or without him.

got a question for me? shoot me email at ellie@pinkkisses.com

xx,

ellie

The VOICE, bombshell style!

We’re looking for the next PK Voice! No, you don’t have to get on stage and we don’t have Christina Aguilera as one of our judges. Our version is even more badass. We’re looking for bombshells far and wide to be the voice of PK by sharing on our oh-so popular blog. Have a great story of survival? Sweet! Do something lately that scared you? Perfect. Have an interesting perspective on the latest celeb gossip? Dish. Finding strength within you didn’t realize you had? Yes ma’am, we want to hear from you.

Here’s how it works:

• Choose a topic. Think about what you wanted to hear when going through a breakup. Here are some good examples: celeb splits, survival stories, sage advice, the ex files (reflections on past relationships), finding your inner bombshell, etc.
  
• Write up a post, 500 words minimum.
  
• Submit by emailing your post to claire@pinkkisses.com with the subject “PK Voice” by midnight on May 23rd.
  
• We will choose up to 5 winners, depending on the awesomeness of the entries
  
• Winners will receive these awesome prizes: pk tank, compact, koozie and your very own spot on the PK blog

Ready, set, go!

xx

Ellie  & the PK team

Q&A: How to shake the burn of a breakup 3 years later…

Bombshells! There are all sorts of ways to get help around here. Find advice in my vlogs, peruse Bettyville for awhile, and of course you can always ask me directly. That’s exactly what I’m doing here today, answering one of our bombshell’s burning questions. Settle in, dolls. I’ll tell it to you straight.

Q:
I really need some help, because this feeling is ridiculous. My ex and I broke up THREE years ago. We went out for two years, but during those 2 years we were basically together ALL THE TIME. He was close to my fam..etc. We talked about marriage..had a pretty healthy relationship or so i thought..UNTIL he completely blindsided me and became attracted to someone at work. We broke up OVER THE PHONE and pretty much became strangers. What’s always bringing these feelings of anger back are facebook, friends that I still talk to of his. He ended up marrying the girl from work 2 weeks ago! YAY for me. I just want to forget about him and not care..and let go…

A:

Honey, I know it can be hard to let go of the possibilities, whether it’s been three weeks or three years. BUT, it’s time to let this guy go. What are you waiting for? He CLEARLY has moved on and isn’t making any attempts to come back. And, by the way, he wasn’t that awesome. Just look at how your relationship ended! You deserve better. In fact, you need to take some time to write down all of the reasons he didn’t rock and look at that list any time you’re in doubt.

You say you want to forget about him and move on. It’s simple, really. It sucks, but you have to cut off any friends you share, any people you’re connected to on facebook who are friends with him and any other reminders… at least while you’re healing. You don’t need to torture yourself by seeing his status updates or looking at his wedding pictures. Nope, it’s time to focus on you. You’ve got an inner badass in there somewhere… let her shine.

got a question for me? shoot me email at ellie@pinkkisses.com

Music Monday ~ I’m a Survivor

This Destiny’s Child song hardly needs an intro. You know it already, but it’s probably been awhile since you’ve been able to appreciate it.

Turn it up loud this time, because this is for you.

xx,
ellie

Words to Live by…

Never ever EVER…

xx

ellie

Why you should have a MAD CRUSH on anger!

OK, bombshells… spring has sprung and there’s no better time of year for renewal, refreshment, and a re-energized outlook on life.  Today, the uber-talented and insightful Christina Pesoli stops in for a little chat about owning (and even celebrating) your anger.

Around here, we’re all about getting to know our own strength, understanding our emotions, and encouraging everyone around us to transform a low point into a turning point. And Christina totally gets it.  Here’s a bit of her advice just for you lovely blog-a-licious bombshells.  Enjoy!

xx

Ellie

Split-ups and sadness are a popular couple. But while sadness has a place in the break-up process, I’m not really fan of that emotion. The problem with sadness is it has a very short shelf life when it comes to its usefulness. If it lingers too long it can be really counter-productive. It keeps you mired in the past. It saps your strength and drains your motivation for embarking on new projects. In short, it prevents you from getting over the break-up and moving on.

But anger is a different story.

My former hair stylist was the first person who pointed out the difference in the relative usefulness of these two emotions in the context of a break-up. A few years ago when I was getting my haircut, she told me about a friend of hers who was going through a divorce. Her husband had failed to make their house payment for several months and spent down all of their savings without her knowing it. Then, right as the house of cards was collapsing around them, he up and left her and the kids. A couple of months later when I was in for another haircut, I asked how her friend was doing.

“Not well. She’s still sad. She needs to get over being sad and move on to being mad. That way she can start getting things done,” she explained.

I found that assessment to be fascinating. And once I stopped to think about it, I was surprised at how many people I knew who had followed that pattern. Women who had first experienced crippling sadness in the wake of a break-up, but then later got angry—and when they did, a burst of productivity, personal growth and healing followed.

The famous recent example is current is Adele. Her song Rolling in the Deep specifically and the album 21 generally demonstrate this emotional progression clearly. She went through a bad break-up. At first it was devastating and she was crushed. But then she got mad. And once she was mad she harnessed that power and used it to create a body of music that swept up every award for which it was nominated.

Famous people’s stories of success can be inspirational, but they can also seem removed from our everyday lives. Sometimes it is more empowering to hear stories of triumph on a more ordinary scale. Those stories seem less distant and in that way easier to relate to.

When it comes to people I know personally, my friend Kelly’s story of post-break-up success fueled by anger is my favorite.

Kelly always had an interest in acting, but with three kids and a husband whose job required him to travel a lot, she never had the time to pursue it. Plus, acting was something that her husband had a low regard for. Because being an actor in local theater productions was not an endeavor that would make any real money—the only measure of value he recognized—he thought it seemed like an ego trip and a pipe dream all mixed together.
If she had wanted to do something that could end up making decent money—say, selling real estate or something legitimate like that—he would have been all over that. But acting? Not only could he not support an idea that foolish, he couldn’t even bring himself to hide his disdain for it.

Not surprisingly, Kelly and her husband eventually split up. It turns out while he was away on business and she was at home with the kids, he had developed some outside interests of his own. These interests had names like Crystal and Kandi and were creative enough to compose steamy texts, but not smart enough to keep straight which nights he was out of town and which nights he was at home with Kelly and the kids.

The divorce hit Kelly hard. The kids were older and she found herself with significant chunks of time on her hands. She spent the first few months adrift and forlorn. But then she got tired of being sad all the time. To put it more accurately, she got mad about being sad all the time. Mad that she had put her own interests on the shelf in order to make her husband happy. Angry that while she was at home clipping coupons, helping the kids with homework and making sure everyone got three square meals a day, he was in cities like Vegas and L.A. wining and dining the likes of Crystal and Kandi with family funds. And the fact that she had spent the last few months moping around after splitting up with such a jerk made her really furious.

She recognized that she needed to do something with all of that anger—she needed a project to throw herself into in order to move on. So, she signed up for an acting class and converted all that anger into energy for her new craft. That was a critically important step.

She wasn’t doing it to show her ex. She wasn’t trying to become famous so she could then have a “booya” moment. She was doing it for her. She wanted to get over being mad at herself for putting her own interests last for so long. That is a critically important distinction.

Not surprisingly, things really took off for her. Her acting teacher connected her with an agent and before she knew it she was getting cast in local TV commercials. She had a new set of friends, she loved what she was doing, and the money she was making from her new hobby was a nice supplement to her regular income. She was so busy with her new project that she didn’t even notice exactly when she had stopped being angry. And being sad was such a distant memory it seemed like a whole lifetime ago. Kelly was happy. That was when she knew that the chapter of her life dedicated to her break-up was officially over.

The story could have stopped there and that would have been a happy ending all by itself. But this is one of those delicious tales that ends with both extra icing and a huge cherry on top. Kelly was cast in an ad for a local hospital and a huge photo of her smiling face was plastered on billboard located alongside a really busy highway—on the exact stretch that her ex-husband and many of his coworkers had to drive down every morning to get to work. As they say in the movie business, “Roll the credits. That’s a wrap.”

And speaking of wraps, it seems like anger always gets a bad one. Popular psychology tells people that in order to heal you have to let go of your anger. But that advice is misleading. The thing is, anger is a lot like gasoline. Gasoline can both burn your house to the ground and make your car go. The same is true of anger. If it’s not handled the right way it can destroy you. But if you harness its power and make it work for you and not against you, it can propel you do incredible things. If you follow the conventional wisdom and simply let go of your anger, you’ve just walked away from a very valuable resource. It’s like throwing away a gift card for a year’s supply of free gasoline.

Think of it like this: When you go through a break up, you get a gigantic gift basket of stuff as a consolation prize. A lot of it is shredded paper. A lot of it is stuff that you won’t want to hang onto. But there are also some really valuable things in there, too. Unfortunately, you can’t just quickly eye ball the basket and cherry pick the valuable things right off the top. Some of the best things—like that gift card to Exxon—are hidden among the worthless stuff and buried under a thick layer of shredded paper. There’s no way to know that you’ve gotten all the good things out of the basket until you’ve gone through everything.

But be careful not to confuse helpful anger with her trashy and destructive cousins rage and obsession. Rage leads people to do harmful things like slashing an ex’s tires or keying his car. Obsession causes stalker-type behavior like driving by an ex’s house or fixating on his every move. Neither rage nor obsession has any place in a healthy break-up recovery. And if you discover either of these losers taking up residence in your head and you can’t quickly usher them out by yourself, you need to find a good therapist on the double.

As Adele put it in one of her six Grammy acceptance speeches, breaking up from a rubbish relationship is something everyone goes through. When you find yourself there, work through your sadness—but don’t get stuck there. Then, when you turn the corner from sad to mad, make sure to use your anger like a rocket ship. Pointing it at your own house would be self-destructive. Targeting it at your ex’s house would cause you to miss your chance to break out of the gravitational force field that keeps you orbiting around your past. Instead, aim it toward an exciting new destination. Remember, when you’re traveling by rocket ship, the sky’s the limit. Blast off and enjoy the ride.

Christina Pesoli has a law degree from Notre Dame, and is the founder of Emotional Hard Body Divorce Boot Camp where she coaches women who are going through divorce, helping them to avoid common mistakes that make the process take longer and cost more. Christina also has a weekly column, School of Life, in Culture Map.

What if you’re falling for your best friend’s ex?

Say you’re falling for your best friend’s ex. You love your best friend, but you’ve gotten signals from her ex that have developed into a little crush. Seems complicated, right?

Think again.

The answer to this dilemma couldn’t be more simple. Click here to see the advice I dished out for this exact situation. And, if you want more, here’s a video I created about knowing when a guy is off limits:

Read the full blog post here.

xx,

Ellie

It’s Music Monday and you’re stronger

If you’re looking for an anthem for your independence this year, then Kelly Clarkson’s your girl.

It’s simple: what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

Kelly Clarkson – Stronger

xx
ellie

Should you text the ex on his birthday?

Sure, I understand that every situation is a little different and I typically tell all of my bombshells to make a no contact rule with their exes.

But, do you think there’s a time when you’d text an ex on his birthday? Click here to see the exact question I was asked and what advice I gave in Culture Map.

xx

Ellie