How living with my parents has actually improved my dating life

I’m a serial monogamist, but I’ve often felt single

I’m that friend who always has a boyfriend. Sometimes I’m even shamed for it. “Oh, and on the reservation, can you add another spot? Of course Marissa needs to bring her boyfriend.” But after seven, eight, maybe nine relationships from my late teens to mid-20s, I have usually felt single. A guy might physically sit next to […]

When my date said ‘I don’t want a relationship,’ I tried to change his mind

I have a bad habit of not believing people when they tell me things, especially when they’re telling me something inconvenient. Sometimes that’s fairly harmless. I’ll ignore the number of calories in a pint of Ben & Jerry’s Half Baked, for example, and wave off people who tell me I own too many floral patterned shirts. But my selective […]

For 7 years, I’ve followed in Alicia Florrick’s footsteps — quite literally

As of this Sunday, May 8, at 10 p.m. Eastern time, Alicia Florrick will cease to exist except in our memories. For me, the show’s finale is intensely personal. Over the past seven seasons, I went from a fan of the show to standing in for the main actress and several guest stars. Working as […]

On Mother’s Day, single moms get left out

On Sunday, Mother’s Day will be celebrated for the 103rd year in American history. As a parent, I am nearing only my fifth. But reflecting on the past four, my expectations couldn’t be lower. Mother’s Day No. 1: My daughter (she’s adopted) is 6 weeks old. I am recovering from a bout of meningitis, followed by a second mysterious illness […]

I canceled my home Internet — and got more connected to the people around me

Almost two years ago, I moved from my hometown of Miami to Tampa. In Miami, my entire family lives within a few blocks of each other; I can’t go to the grocery store without running into someone I know. In Tampa, I was unnervingly alone in a way I’d never been before. I wondered who […]

How Shakespeare helped one woman embrace her sexual fetish

Jillian Kennan sees Shakespeare and his characters everywhere. She’s imagined Helena and Demetrius fighting in the Omani desert. She’s spoken with Cleopatra while visiting a boyfriend’s childhood home in North Dakota. And she’s chatted with the Bard himself while riding the New York City subway. They’re fake conversations, of course. But the wisdom she’s gleaned from them has had a […]

Dancing alone in my underwear, I got my groove back as a single woman

At 25, I went through a rough breakup with a live-in boyfriend. A throw-all-your-things-in-a-trash-bag-and-run-away breakup. Extracting myself from that relationship was brutal, but I landed safely in a tiny bachelorette pad. It was my first time living alone. And what this liberated self wanted to do was eat candy bars for dinner, take three-hour baths, and […]

Friends grow apart all the time, but we rarely talk about it

It’s not uncommon for a fight between 5-year-olds to end with someone shouting: “You’re not my friend anymore!” There’s an honesty there that I can respect, a directness that’s refreshing: Let there be no confusion — this is where we stand. Adulthood, however, is a lot less clear. I have a friend who I’ve known for almost […]

The village that helped Hillary Clinton move past Bill’s infidelity

We know that Hillary Clinton believes it takes a village to raise a child. As my colleague Carlos Lozada has pointed out, 20 years since “It Takes a Village” was published in 1996, the presidential candidate still draws on that village philosophy on the campaign trail. While revisiting Clinton’s 2004 memoir “Living History” recently, I noticed that she also relied on […]

How do you find love on a fixed income? At age 60, I’m finding it difficult.

I’m 60 years old. I’ve been married twice (one husband died and the other marriage was short-lived). I have raised two children, and I see them often. But the one thing I haven’t been able to do is find love again. I have to spend my money carefully, as I live on a fixed income of Social Security and disability […]

Is it better to meet at Tinder than on Tinder?

There’s something about Tinder that feels very high school: The dating app is built on immediate hot-or-not judgments. If you have a mutual friend or two, it’s noted on a person’s profile, signaling what clique they might be part of. But most high school of all: There’s a lot more talk of crushes and hooking up than actual action. So it’s fitting that, Thursday night […]

Men, step up your shoe game and impress your date

Many men worry unnecessarily about the first date. You drive a 2005 Civic? Got a bit of a bald spot? You’re not in triathlon-shape? A female friend with discerning taste once shared some crucial intel for normal guys: “None of that stuff matters. Shoes, though? Shoes are important. A guy can have a belly, he […]

Podcast: How to break up

“I want to say that I didn’t see it coming,” Morgan Givens says of his worst breakup of all time. But he did see it coming. He and his long-distance girlfriend were fighting a lot. The breakup that came next — it started by text message — was so bad that it influenced every relationship he has been […]

Beyoncé and Hillary Clinton, powerful women who’ve both made lemonade
Ever since “Lemonade” dropped, I’ve been thinking about Beyoncé … and Hillary Clinton. The two most powerful women in the world, two halves of very powerful couples, two women who know a thing or two about infidelity. We know Clinton’s husband cheated on her; we know Beyoncé’s father was unfaithful to her mother. We don’t know whether Jay Z […]

Dear sort-of boyfriend: Here’s how you can save our relationship

My “boyfriend” and I have been in a long-distance “relationship” for a year and a half. I use quotations because most of the time I don’t feel like I have a boyfriend, and I question whether what we are doing is a relationship. Over the past 17 months, we have been in the same country for […]

What professional cuddlers can teach us about touch

When H. Melinda Krakowski, a customer service representative in New York City, was married, she couldn’t shake the feeling that she was alone, even when her husband was in the room with her. That’s because they almost never touched, and she felt starved for physical affection. After Krakowski and her husband separated, she sought out group activities […]

I was catfished on Tinder, but it was worth it

If you were a man who met me between March and July of 2014, you were lucky or perhaps going to be. These were the months just after I ended a 13-year relationship that had turned toxic and abusive, and I was ready to have sex again. I was wrecked in so many ways. I didn’t know what […]

8 Prince songs to soothe a broken heart

The right song, at just the right moment, can make you feel like you’re no longer alone in a world that’s cold. That someone gets your pain, hope or jubilation even better than you understand it yourself — and has set those feelings to the perfect beat. In that spirit, let’s take a tour through some Prince songs […]

My husband and I were nearly friendless — and I got desperate

When my husband Michael came home from work, he found me sprawled on the comforter of our bed, my face buried in my laptop. I was trying to arrange a blind date. I typed hurriedly into Facebook messenger: I know we haven’t hung out before, but I really think we’d have an awesome time. The little […]

I divorced my husband, but I still have an affinity for his Jewish traditions

I’m half-Christian and half-Jewish. I’d laugh when I overheard my children describing their heritage that way to their elementary-school friends. I was raised Baptist, in a fairly homogeneous community where interfaith marriages were rare and generally frowned upon. After I grew up, I rebelled and married a Jewish man, albeit a nonpracticing one who shunned organized […]

These singles refuse to settle, even in their 90s

“What did I do to deserve this?” Miriam Steiner asks. By this she means the flurry of attention over a photo of herself on a blind date. People go on blind dates all the time, right? Maybe not when you’re in your 90s. Steiner is 93. Her date, Harold Sharlin, is 90. Since the photo was posted Monday […]

Are you the only single guest at a wedding? Here’s how to really live it up.

Welcome to Wedding Guest Wednesday, a Solo-ish feature about the joys and woes of attending other people’s weddings. Because it’s not all about the happy couple — it’s a big day for guests as well. It first happened to me at age 25. Somewhere between galloping to Gangnam Style and stepping forward and back to the Electric […]

How do you know when it really is ‘just nerves’ or a real fear of commitment?

You know that feeling right before you throw up, and you either let the chunks blow or keep it in and feel awful for hours? Well, for Jen Kirkman, standup comedian and author of “I Know What I’m Doing — and Other Lies I Tell Myself: Dispatches From a Life Under Construction,” that nauseated feeling is exactly what […]

I was afraid to express my feelings. Here’s how I found the courage.

Last summer I almost died. One minute I was feeling a little sick, the next I was gasping for breath. My body felt like it was on fire, and every time I stood I felt as though I would faint. I had to crawl to my sofa to reach my phone to call for help. In […]

When your widowed father finds someone new

At this point in my 52-year-old life, I want my parents to stay the same. My beloved mother died two years ago from cancer. She is frozen in my memory just as she was at 74: lovely, classy, artistic, kind — and married to my father for 54 years. When she died, it was me […]

You’re supposed to feel guilty after a breakup. I did not.

I didn’t go through the “traditional” routine of mourning my breakup. Nope, I wasn’t curled up in a ball in three-day-old pajamas submerged in several pints of Ben & Jerry’s “Chunky Monkey” and cylinders of crispy potato chips while binge watching “A Different World” on Netflix. Instead, I feel guilty for not feeling guilty at all. Back […]

How to break up
We know how to break up. In theory, it’s easy: Mention the good things about this person (you’re awesome, funny, smart, etc.), deliver the bad news (you’re breaking up) and wish them well. After all, as dating and relationship experts counsel, direct rejection is the most effective, kindest way to part. Yet we’re still bad at it. We ghost or […]

After my divorce, tasks as simple as mowing the lawn felt huge

Yanking the cord, the lawn mower roars to life, spewing bits of grass and gasoline fumes. Pushing the mower forward, row after row in neat lines across the lawn, I am hot, sweaty and cursing the bugs flying at my face. And I feel triumphant. I was 33, owned my own home and had never mowed a lawn in […]

3 indulgent breakfast ideas for the solo chef

For many people, breakfast is an afterthought or skipped altogether in the rush to get to work. However, it’s my firm belief that at least once a week, we all earn the right to pamper ourselves with a decadent breakfast. Pampering yourself by making a special morning meal may seem like an extravagant act if you’re […]

I thought I was going to marry her. After we broke up, here’s how I coped.

Bennifer. Charlize Theron and Sean Penn. Kermit and Miss Piggy. (I’m not quite over that last one.) Couples break up all the time. And while each split is different, for me, the first three months were the hardest. My girlfriend of three years and I broke up around Christmas, and I’m starting to feel like a normal human being again. […]

‘Hey, where’d you go?’ 5 reasons people ghost.

You send an innocuous text — something as simple as, “hey, how was your day?” or “my plane just landed.” One hour passes, then two, three, four. Funny, you think, they usually don’t take this long to respond. At first you assume the explanation is innocent: Maybe their phone died. Maybe they went to bed early. A day […]

My breakup story: These 3 relationships ended, but the lessons remain

When a relationship ends, it can temporarily throw your life into chaos. Someone who was part of your life every day is gone; plans for the future are dashed. The pain dulls with time, but certain breakups never fully fade. These three Washingtonians tell their stories of how a pivotal split affected them — what happened; how they got […]

It’s not all tears and loneliness: The positive side of breaking up

When you think of breakups, the image that most likely comes to mind is of a sad and lonely person. For a long time, research on breakups reflected that image and focused almost exclusively on relationship loss as a negative experience. I’m a psychologist, and much of the work by my colleagues and predecessors has identified how breakups […]

He wasn’t my boyfriend. But it still hurt like hell when it ended.

When my boyfriend broke up with me, he had a friend tell me he was leaving me. Then he told me himself. He asked me to return the necklace he had given as a gift a few months earlier. I shouted. I cried. I said I was going home to flush the necklace down the […]

What to feed a broken heart

Ending a relationship is traumatic. The aftermath — the days, weeks, and sometimes months that follow that painful conversation — can be even harder. It doesn’t matter if you initiated the breakup or not, the lingering cocktail of sadness, anger and hurt can take a while to wear off. So often, a loss of appetite accompanies […]

Podcast: Divorce done well. How to be an excellent ex.

“People ask me all the time: ‘Did you and Carolyn have any children?’” says Nick Galifianakis, who draws the illustrations for Carolyn Hax’s syndicated advice column, which runs in The Washington Post and other publications. “And I always say the same thing: ‘Yes, we did. The world’s best advice column.’ ” On the latest episode of […]

The best spots in D.C. for Dates 1, 2 and 3

In 11 years of dating in Washington, I’ve been on dozens of first dates. And I’ve made plenty of mistakes along the way. A baseball game is too much of a time commitment for an initial meeting (a rookie error I made on my first online date in 2005, back when the Nats were still playing at […]