There are so many things I want to write about today.   I wake up every morning with a new blog entry in my head and fall asleep compiling new stories.  I am constantly writing and re-writing blogs in my mind until I can get to a computer and put them down on “paper”.   I’ve become a blogger, through and through.  And I want to thank you, my audience, for the inspiration to keep writing.  The last 10 months have been very interesting and I’m glad you were along for the ride.

Unfortunately, I knew one day this blog would have to end.  No one wants to date a “sex blogger”, at least not seriously.  The past year I’ve enjoyed being single very much.  Like my friend C. says, “You’re great single…  But you don’t like it.”  And he’s right.  I’m great on my own.  I am a fun, happy single girl.  But, in the end, I do eventually want a husband and family.  Not today, not tomorrow, but eventually.  And that starts with finding someone who wants to date me for more than 3 weeks.  And a relationship can’t last when it’s shared with the world, or blogosphere.

That being said, it is time for this blogger to turn in her keyboard. At least until I’m back to being the angry, single girl again.  It’s funny, for the past year I’ve been looking for a very specific person. I thought I knew what I wanted.  I’ve written about it, and have been struggling to find “the one” – if he even exists.  But when I finally got what I thought I wanted, it wasn’t right.  You can’t find a guy based on a checklist, or online dating description or an automatic search function.   It just doesn’t work like that.

I had to have some stranger, who doesn’t even know me, pick out a guy for me to go on a random date with based on a stupid online questionnaire.  And they chose someone I never would have picked for myself.  And it worked!  We probably would have lived in this city for years and never met otherwise.  (Yes, I’m talking about the datelab date.)

I’m not saying this is going to last forever, or even for more than a few weeks.  It’d be nice if it did, but that’s not really the point.  I know you’re thinking, “Why are you giving up a blog you’ve had for months for a guy you’ve known for only a few weeks?”  And the answer is, “because no relationship of mine is going to last if I continue to blog.”

I’m at a turning point.  Does this mean I’m going to start staying in every night and knitting?  Of course not.  Does this mean I’m going to stop cheating and start thinking of someone other than myself for a change?  Probably.  Will I need therapy?  Most likely.  This blog was great therapy, but it’s not fair to continue an activity that’s public, one-sided and involves someone else.  And, like I just said, I need to start thinking of other people for a change.

I apologize to all you ex-whatevers out there who may have been hurt by this blog.  It was a lovely experiment.  I will miss it.  I’m sure you won’t.

You can still follow me on Twitter for little updates every now and again.  And, who knows, maybe in a couple months I’ll change my mind yet again and be back writing for the masses.  You never know.

I will keep the site active for the next few weeks.  If you’ve always wanted to write a guest blog but never got around to it, now’s your chance.  Email me at Pretty.Smart.Blogger@gmail.com with your stories and I’ll post them.  Yes, this includes rants, raves & other comments from ex-whatevers.  Try not to be too harsh.

Thank you.

And remember, you are loved.

~ Pretty Smart

Recently, one of my best friends dated a guy that I didn’t like. He never did anything wrong, per se, he just reminded me strongly of my horrible ex and I learned enough from that experience to notice the warning signs. I want the best for my friends and don’t want them to make the same mistake I did, therefore my advice to my friend was “run! Run far, far away.” Of course the problem with speaking your mind about your friends’ boyfriends, is that they ultimately make the final decision. And if you speak badly about a guy and then your friend still dates him, it puts you in an awkward position… which is exactly what happened. I want to support my friend and her decisions, but at the same time, I want to protect her. She’s my friend. I don’t want to see her hurt. For a while I felt like I was the bad guy because everyone else seemed to like her new beau. But as the weeks progressed, everyone started seeing just how crazy he was. My friend finally came to her senses and realized she didn’t need to date an abusive asshole just because she wanted attention from a male.

So in the interest of helping other women out there, here are some warning signs I’ve learned to watch for. I know we all say, “I’m smart. I’ll get out of a relationship if it’s bad.” But it’s really not as easy at that. Very smart, independent women get roped into bad relationships by abusive, manipulative men all the time. I just hope you notice it sooner, rather than later. Because the longer the relationship lasts, the harder it is to break it off.

1. He wants to be exclusive after only a few weeks of dating.
2. He still has issues with his ex and talks about them with you.
3. He brags about making a lot of money when you’ve never asked him how much he makes (if someone claims to make $150K a year, would they be living with their mom or in a group house and driving a shitty car? Probably not.)
4. They constantly think people (and you) are offending them for
being dumb/fat/etc.
5. He doesn’t want you to go out without him. And if you do go out
without him, he calls and makes you feel bad for having fun without
him.
6. It’s a month into the relationship and he’s already having “talks”
with you about how you’ve hurt his feelings.
7. He storms out of bars and/or starts fights with you in bars because
he’s not having a good time and needs to start drama so you leave with
him.
8. He’s constantly making jokes at other people’s expense.
9. He talks about high school like it was the best years of his life
(because it probably was.)
10. He doesn’t seem to have many friends that he wants to hang out
with. He’d rather be with you and your friends and makes this gesture
seem like a great sacrifice on his part.
11. He shows up wherever you are, even when you didn’t invite him out.

12. He’s clingy!

13. You are prettier, funnier, and smarter than he is. And yet he feels the need to cut you down whenever he can to “keep you in your place”.

14. He acts like sex is something only for him. He’ll make you give him a hand job or blow job and not do anything in return for you.

Any other warning signs you can think of?  Post them in the comments.   Or if someone wants to start a list of warning signs for women, I’m all ears.  Here, I’ll start.  Red Flag #1 She writes a blog about her dating life.

I am not a morning person. I’ve never been a morning person. As a child, my dad would pour water on my head just to get me out of bed for kindergarten. I still get annoyed when I wake up before my alarm. I like my mornings in bed, plain and simple. And I love my mornings in bed with someone else. Who needs coffee when you can have an orgasm? I ‘m not talking about the “roll over, have sex, get up and go” routine. I like foreplay. I like waking up in someone’s arms and rolling over to half-awake to kisses. If I could, I’d replace my alarm with a hand running across my stomach and a kiss on the back of my neck. It’s an amazing feeling knowing that before anything else happens, before you get out of bed and start your day, you are the sole focus of another human being. He’s not thinking of everything he has to do that day and how busy it’s going to be. His first thought of the day is focused only on me. And it’s an amazing feeling. What can I say, I like having something to wake up for. I don’t want to wake up an hour early to get to the office. But I will get up early to have great sex with someone who makes me feel adored.

I’m not just talking about the physical act of sex. While its great having an early morning orgasm, it’s nice knowing that someone will put forth the effort. I’ve woken up next to men who wanted sex, but didn’t want to actually do anything about it. It’s insulting. But every now and then, I find a guy who doesn’t mind waking up with me. I’ve already said I’m not a morning person, but I’ll happily lose sleep any day of the week for a man who makes me feel desired. Plus it puts a smile on my face for at least the first hour at work.

Men if you love morning sex as much as I do, here are some tips to help get your woman in the mood.  Like I said before, you can’t just roll on top of her five minutes after waking up and expect her to be in the mood.  We don’t have morning wood, sorry.

And yet ANOTHER reason to always use a condom! This chick is allergic to her husband’s sperm but didn’t find out until their wedding night when they had unprotected sex for the first time. Dr Andrew Goldstein said: ‘The body recognizes the sperm as a foreign protein, like it would recognize a peanut allergen or a pollen so you have swelling, you have itching, you have inflammation of the nerve endings.’ So crazy! Her vagina basically has an allergic reaction to sperm. It’s kind of sad though because they can never have children the conventional way.

Here’s another article on the same topic. And looks like another blogger picked up on this GMA story as well and has even more links for your perusal.

It’s kind of disturbing looking at a picture of David Brooks while reading an op-ed about casual sex, but I think this article is a pretty decent observation of people who write publicly about their sex lives, like yours truly. He observes, “If you have several options perpetually before you, and if technology makes it easier to jump from one option to another, you will naturally adopt the mentality of a comparison shopper.” This is so true. I’m always looking for the next best thing. Most of us have been there. It’s late on a Saturday night and you just want some ass, so you scroll through your phone sending out texts to potential partners seeing who will catch the bait. Or you’ve been on the flip side where you get a text from someone who ends up not showing up, most likely because s/he found a better offer in someone else.

We have learned not to settle and to constantly be looking for the next best thing. There’s only one problem, eventually you’re going to hit your peak and you’re not going to know it’s your best offer until it’s too late. It’s like a supply and demand curve in economics. You try to set your price at the highest amount, that will also get you the most sales to turn the best profit. But markets change and prices fluctuate and you can never really know where on the curve you stand.  Every day, we’re changing, other people are changing, and the market is influenced by outside factors.  You assume that because you got a super model yesterday, you can get one tomorrow.  But that is not always the case.

One day, you are going to hit your dating peak, and essentially, that’s when you should stop dating and pick the most desirable partner. Unfortunately, we’re all greedy and it’s hard to know when to stop. Plus, no one wants to admit they’re about to lose their game. We want to believe there’s always going to be a better option and honestly, if you’re not ready to settle down you’re just not ready. So why end the fun?  Once you get used to casual sex, it’s slightly addicting.

David writes, “A coat of ironic detachment is required for anyone who hopes to withstand the brutal feedback of the marketplace. In today’s world, the choice of a Prius can be a more sanctified act that the choice of an erotic partner.” A car is a long-term committment. A sex partner isn’t. You have to be emotionally detached from sex if you’re going to sleep around, because if you start to like someone, and they don’t want a relationship, you just get hurt and lose a fuck buddy on top of it. Who wants to go down that road? However, what David doesn’t understand is that love and sex are two different things. For many people, they are intertwined. But they are still two different entities that can be separated. You can have love without sex, and vice versa. And someone who is detached from sex, can still be emotional and have a romantic notion of love. Self-preservation just comes first.