How long does it take to get over a relationship?

The question that can never truly be answered. Everyone's experiences are different though we share similar pitfalls in our relationships. The common answer has been "one month for every year you were together", however, is this always appropriate? There seem to be more reasonable responses, and ones that can cover just about every situation. For instance, it may seem to hurt more and for a longer period of time if you were the one that was dumped, but that is not to say that the dumper does not hurt, too.
In some cases, a break or break up may be necessary to learn and grow from the relationship and having to recall memories can keep the wound open. This is, though, a good time to learn about yourself and how you handle relationships and how you can make things work better down the road.

I have seen some very insightful remarks here that are very helpful and relevant:

"It's a good idea to ask this question in a larger context: one that encompasses your whole life. The trouble with break-ups is that they tend to remind us of anything else in our lives which is "broken" -- where life is stuck, dissatisfying, or stagnant. So our angst about these other areas gets "triggered" by the upset of the break-up, and it starts to look like the break-up was maybe a big mistake: everything becomes painted the same color of black....Love and relationships is a tough area by itself: there's a lot of entanglement between our ideas of love and our ideas of who we are at a deep level, so a breakup can really shake someone's idea of self, and resolving the "trauma" of a breakup involves seeing clearly who you are and what your future is about. So you can't really separate this issue from the other issues in life."

"I think when people have touched our lives, we will never really forget them. Just we are able to move on and take the good bits into our next relationship."

While I do believe that sometimes people break up because they are together at the wrong time (as I mentioned here), this isn't a hugely common situation. Most of the time, it's pretty simple and easy to see what keeps a relationship from working (for example). There are some interesting things out there to help people cope with the loss of a relationship:

How to get over missing an ex. I tend to like Mikko's insight and he has a lot of articles that he's written, some of which are linked back in this one.

WikiHow!. The most helpful and logical I've read. Step by step "to do's" to help heal your heart. "No relationship is ever a failure if you manage to learn something about yourself from having gone through it..."

There's often a lot to think about when a relationship ends, but that doesn't mean that every day or every thought has to be painful until the end of time.

X-Mas, its meaning and why you are all wrong

I meant to post this a few days ago. A friend shared this link and it excited me to no end, as a friend of mine had already explained why we use "x-mas" in place of "Christmas". Prior to his telling me, I did not know and am so glad that someone wrote about it. Get it right, people, and stop causing controversy over nothing!
What does 'x-mas' mean?

Grammar Correction of the Day

This one is my pet peeve of a non-contraction: WANNA.

Let me tell you something about the non-word, "WANNA"; it's a contraction without the apostrophe. I'll get on the apostrophes in a later post. However, I have to clarify the correct use of the fake word, WANNA.

It's a contraction of "want to", however, many people use it as a contraction for "want a". It's not. It makes me a little nuts to even see intelligent people make this mistake. In reality, you are typing more/using more characters when you type "wanna" when you meant "want a" than if you were meaning to type "want to".

I wanna go home soon, but watching District 9 is making me want a steak!

Bah humbug!

In light of my being trapped in the hellhole of Little Elm, I am sharing some holiday worthy lists:

50 funniest celeb quotes of the decade. I somehow hadn't noticed that the decade was ending.

10 most depressing Christmas songs. While I am in a totaly Scrooge mood, people need to stop hatin' on "Last Christmas". Sad songs have to include sad music, too!

Patton Oswalt's 'Christmas Shoes' animation. Big time, awesome BAH HUMBUG!

Grammar correction of the day

My involvement in the online community has driven me to offer grammar lessons to those less fortunate asses that don't know even the basic rules of the one and only language that they speak.
Correction of the day: using "of" where "have" should be. For instance, you *should have* studied more in English class, because "of" is an adverb or prepositon!
No, really. When you contract the words, you don't write "should'f". You write "should've"; the "apostrophe-v-e" is a clue to the word that was contracted. The negative follows the same pattern, did you notice? You wouldn't type "should not of", now would you? The same goes for "would" and "could".
Here's a quick trick: if the phrase is followed by a past tense verb, you would use "have", which is the specific helping verb for imperfect past, and present perfect tenses. Think of it this way: if you had gone out in the rain and were stuck in a restaurant for 13 hours, you might think that you should have stayed home!

Adding to the blogroll

I have found a great article for some important things women should know about their men and sexual needs. I am enjoying his blog but I thought this one was important to share:
http://jesusneedsnewpr.blogspot.com/2009/08/ladies-stuff-that-being-true-about-your.html

Updating the links

My reader is overflowing with updates from nerdom to music news. It's about time I put some up.

The Vatican makes mixtapes. Yeah. Click the link to see what songs they play.

Build your own iPod/iPhone dock. It's cool. I want to do it.

Windows 7 still fails. Users air their grievances about the OS but still say it's better than Vista.

Smashing Pumpkins' new song is available to DL. I just heard about this Billy Corgan/Jessica Simpson nonsense so he's kind of on my shitlist right now.

Six of the worst processed foods.Yummy!

Sigur Ros frontman releases solo single

Quick Links

Not anything too major, but incidentally, as the LotR anniversary approaches, there is a small theme:

Tobey Maguire in talks to play Bilbo in The Hobbit.I love Tobey. I do. However, I have my doubts about this...
and on the heels of the former, a nice little LotR spoof.
Tom Waits is Lord of the Rings. Well. I want to know more about this.
LotR will be available on Blu Ray this spring.

In non-Lord of the Rings clips:

Bobby McFerrin teaches us scales. Most people on Earth know him for "Don't Worry, Be Happy", but he has released many jazz albums over the years and he has an amazing knowledge of music. This short clip of him is amazing and I want to find more info about the program.