I Don't Want to Settle

If I have the choice of being unhappy with somebody and being alone, then I choose being alone. Sure, I would love to meet a guy, but I don't want to settle. I want somebody who is energetic, passionate, and fun. And, until I find that guy, then I'm okay with not being with anybody.

I like my alone time. It's peaceful. Do I get lonely? Sure, I do. I'm just way past the point of being with somebody just to be with somebody. I want more. I want an amazing guy, and I know I can find him. 2009 was so hard for me. I spent every day of it, wondering why it was so tough, why I was so miserable, why I couldn't find the connection I needed, no matter how hard I looked. The truth was I was looking in all the wrong places: the guys with whom I got involved this past year didn't deserve me, and they took me for granted and wasted my time.

2010 is around the corner, and it's going to be a good year. I'm positive, and I have a great feeling that wonderful things are coming my way. I'm older, wiser, and I don't want to waste my time anymore with men who play games, manipulate, or fail to see how fantastic a woman I really am :-)

When Love Makes You Miserable

For a few months I was in love with somebody. I'm not sure why, or if I was really in love with that person, or if he was even the person I thought he was. Now that I've stepped back from this situation, I realize that I didn't know him at all. He didn't want me to know him.

He played games, he kept me at arm's length at all times, and he had never stopped loving his ex. Needless to say, I was miserable. I had so much love to give, and yet he wasn't the one to give it to. He didn't deserve it anyway.

The last time I saw him, he mistreated me, and it broke my heart, because I had always been so good to him when he was at his lowest point. Sometimes loving somebody hurts, and I stopped loving him to finally make the pain go away. And it did.

Model Featured: Tom Stapledon

Colette's Favorite "Love" Tracks

This one will make you want to grab a sexy guy and hold him close. Trust.



Delline's vocals give me chills.



This one will make you dance with that special guy in your life.



I love this one because it's kind of forbidden and sexy. There's something slightly erotic about it.

Dancin' The Night Away

Last night, I went out dancing with my cousin, who just turned 21, and my best friend and her friends. We had a blast dancing the night away. I realized how much I've missed it. It had been so long since I had been out to a club. I felt alive again for the first time in years.

My ex and I had met in the club scene, and we fell in love because we shared the same taste in music and love for everything related to the scene. When our relationship started falling apart, we no longer went out, for a variety of personal reasons, even too personal for this blog. We stopped having fun with each other.

It made me think about relationships and how the only way they work is if a couple makes the effort to constantly work on them. It takes communication, compromise, and being able to have a good time with each other. Once those things are gone, then there's nothing left. Love cannot survive if those two people build a wall between each other, whether they realize it or not.

We no longer danced the night away with each other, the way we used to when we first met and fell in love. We no longer hugged each other, or told each other how much we meant to each other, and most importantly, we stopped having fun together. We became enemies and strangers living together. The last year of our relationship was like living with the ghost of what we used to be. I was constantly depressed and beat myself up because I couldn't make the relationship any better.

I lost myself. My spirit was broken, and I stopped going out and dancing, something I had been doing for a good ten years, if not more. My failing relationship took over my life. Last night was the first time since my break-up where I actually felt like my old self again. I danced the night away, but I also found a piece of myself that had been lost for a long time. It was an amazing thing.

Spring is Near

I love spring because it represents so much: love, rebirth, nature, rejuvenation, and living life to its fullest. Spring is a wonderful time of year. After a long, torturous winter (in New England anyway), spring is a warm embrace after the cold has finally left.

It's also a time of falling in love, feeling free, losing yourself, and enjoying the beautiful sights and sounds of the flowers blossoming and the birds chirping all around us. The thought of spring and all its beauty is the only thing that's getting me through these chilly days.

The Masochist Within Us

Sometimes the need to be loved, wanted, and desired is so strong that it makes you stay in situations that are unhealthy for you. My girlfriend told me a story about how she was with a man for several years: she said it was a rollercoaster of emotion and constant heartbreak. It was a dysfunctional relationship. He had a drinking problem, was a controlling asshole, but he knew how to sweet talk her when he needed to - which was pretty much all the time. He told her that she should fly home and be with her family, who lived in the Midwest, because he said he was never going to visit them. Nice guy.

They got engaged and a couple of months before the wedding, he broke up with her. He had met somebody else, and he wanted to date her. They were living together at the time, and after a couple of months of her staying there post break-up, he told her to hit the bricks. He wanted her to move out for good. Six months later, they got back together, but she never moved back in with him; instead, the relationship consisted of her going to his apartment a couple nights a week. It was all on his terms. She was his part-time girlfriend, if that. She was more like the "she'll do for now until I find somebody else" girl. And he did. He found the girl that he would later marry, and she was left in the cold once again. After the initial break-up, she had wasted 3 years with a man who did not love her and didn't really want to be with her. They had been together for 10.

After she told me the story, I immediately thought "How could you just stay in that bad relationship for 3 years after being told that he didn't love you anymore and he didn't want to be with you?!", but then as if she knew what I was thinking said: "I know. How could I stay in that bad situation? It was masochistic, but at the time, I couldn't help myself. I was my own worst enemy."

And then I think about some of my past relationships, the people I've loved, and the bad situations in which I've gotten myself into, and I understand. The need to be loved by somebody can be so powerful that it can make us into torture victims. Sometimes it's not about the love you feel for the actual person, it's more about not being able to let go of the notion of that person loving you. They reject you, and you are so desperate for that love that you settle for anything. Settling will always cause you pain in the end.

Bonnie Raitt wrote some of the most poignant song lyrics about love and breaking up: "I can't make you love me if you don't." It's that simple. You can't make somebody love you, despite how much you want them to or as much as you try to make them. Love is a funny thing: you can't help who you fall in love with.

Don't waste your time with those who do not love you back. Defy the masochist within and most importantly, learn to love yourself.

A woman in love can't be reasonable - or she probably wouldn't be in love.

Mae West