As we enter a new year, Laura Reynolds looks at how the dating game differs from previous generations.
Laura Reynolds looks at the freedoms of festive singledom
Join Jason Rose for a peek behind today's door.
Lauren Tabbron writes about the difficulties of spending Christmas away from a loved one.
Having a typically bad break-up is enough to, temporarily, put anyone off the relationship game: but, to pinch the lyrics from the song you all know but won’t necessarily know the artist (yes, apparently), is it better to be the owner of a lonely heart better than to be the owner of a broken one?
It could be a rather fatalistic way to approach romance, but they do say once bitten, twice shy, and with good reason. After all, no one (other than a certain kind of person into a certain kind of thing) goes back to the thing that hurt them the first time – or do they? There seem to be two camps: those who turn the ex into a monster, and those that stay in that dangerous friend zone. It’s the friend zone that often leads to dangerous territory - which itself often results in second heartbreak. What, then, is the point? Going into any relationship has to take with it the possibility, in the hopeful far, far distant future, of some kind of break-up. And so, if that is the likely outcome, is it then wiser to never get into that situation at all: better to be lonely than with a broken heart? That is a terribly pessimistic view of things.
After all, even if the potential of a break-up lurks around the corner, ready to rear its ugly head, possibly free from chasing Jennifer Aniston’s newest bloke (or John Mayer again) off, it is still the present – the here and now – we should be concerned with. A relationship is a journey, true, from A to B, but it is the passage taken along the way which is the fun part, the main part.
However, to look back on a relationship from the post-break-up stance, it is quite a different story. In those first raw weeks, it is laden with bitterness. A relationship is built around an intimacy with another human being with whom you can, somewhat poetically I’ll admit, bare your soul, and everything else that comes along with it. Much like a friendship – if it comes to a very sudden, abrupt and nasty end, there is always the question why? And always the answer comes in the form of the standard stock-phrase assurance that it wasn’t you, it was them, they were all messed up, don’t worry, you deserve better, you’ll find someone else!
And while that advice may come to light later on, the immediate mourning process must, first things first, be ultimately honoured. It is, to be completely melodramatic, the death of something – the end, non-negotiable. Everyone deals with break-ups in completely different ways: to wallow, to sleep, to throw oneself into work. Personally I find that baking cupcakes is fairly soothing: whisking seems to be very therapeutic; and contrastingly, listening to angry noisy Scandinavian metal is always a plus for venting out the frustrations. And, of course, never doubt the power of Ben and Jerry: now those are two men who never let a girl down.
But, let’s be honest, here: going out will not aid you in any way, or else you will make a fool of yourself. Bawling your eyes out in the middle of the revolving dancefloor in Reflex is so not a good look!
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