How to Date Your Boyfriend: The Teenager’s Guide

First things first: break up with your boyfriend. The reasoning behind your explanation to him is unimportant; however, the more obscure and abstract the better. Then, you must sneak onto your ex-boyfriend’s Facebook account and attempt to change his password. When Facebook sends notification to your ex-boyfriend’s email account, feign innocence. Find a new boyfriend. Show off your new boyfriend. Ignore your new boyfriend. Snoop around; find out when your ex-boyfriend gets a new girlfriend. Stalk this new girlfriend. Confer with your best friend that this new girlfriend is unattractive. Write an apology email to your ex-boyfriend for fighting with him. Ask him to come back.
+++Eat less. You are too depressed to eat. Throw away or delete everything your ex-boyfriend sent you—specifically letters, pictures, voicemail messages, and previous emails. Keep the clothes and jewelry. Confer with your best friend that his new girlfriend is unattractive. Tell your older siblings about this new girlfriend. Call your ex-boyfriend; call several times, because odds are his caller I.D. is on the fritz and repetitive calling will clear things up. Demand that your best friend calls your ex-boyfriend and have them suggest that your ex-boyfriend comes back to you. Allow your older siblings to write a nasty email to his new girlfriend demanding your ex-boyfriend back; you are powerless to stop them.
+++Confer with your best friend that his new girlfriend is unattractive. Write an email to your ex-boyfriend asking him where he has been and why he hasn’t contacted you yet. Become flagrantly shocked when his new girlfriend responds to your older siblings’ email; what does she mean by “it ain’t happenin’”? Ask your best friend for advice. Ignore this advice and ask again later. Cry. Point out logical flaws in your ex-boyfriend’s actions since he’s started dating again. Paste your relationship situation online in help forums and ask for advice. Ignore this advice; those internet dweebs don’t know what it’s like to be in love. Demand that your best friend spend the night. You need to be cuddled.
+++Map out your ex-boyfriend’s activities. Tables, graphs, and anything else you can use to illustrate his movements to unsuspecting friends and family. Confer with your best friend that his new girlfriend is unattractive. Make your parents buy you mint chocolate chip ice cream—by the gallon. Write passages in your online journal about how lost you feel in the world and how cruel life can be. Ask your older siblings for advice, and relate to your best friend these new pearls of wisdom. Claim insanity when your best-friend points out that they gave you similar advice first. Question your self-worth. Criticize his new girlfriend’s sense of style, hopes and aspirations, or choice in pet. Call your ex-boyfriend. Wonder why he won’t pick up. Use your imagination; he could be doing a host of wild and inappropriate things at this very moment. Follow this up by sending him an email that explains that he won’t pick up his phone.
+++Pray that your ex-boyfriend and his new girlfriend will break up. Make suggestions to your Higher Being that you will become more religious if they grant your prayers. Develop a nickname comprised of your ex-boyfriend and his new girlfriend’s first or last names. Use this new nickname to describe anything unsavory, unfavorable, or unappetizing. Curse your Higher Being for forsaking you in your time of need. Confer with your best friend that his new girlfriend is unattractive. React violently when your best friend suggests that his new girlfriend isn’t that unattractive. Use your best friend’s favorite shirt to wash your car. For best results, wait until they are wearing desired shirt before proceeding.
+++Become an expert in your ex-boyfriend and his new girlfriend’s love life. Consider becoming a lesbian. Watch lesbian porn. Give up becoming a lesbian because you claim watching lesbian porn makes you feel depressed. Inform your best friend that his new girlfriend is unattractive. Pretend to move on by agreeing not to dwell on your ex-boyfriend. However, do not fail to mention your ex-boyfriend during conversation, especially if the topic includes but is not limited to: children, diarrhea, eating, sleeping, breathing, nausea, life, death, condoms, or Roman mythology. Ask your best friend if you should email your ex-boyfriend. Email your ex-boyfriend. Make wishes on stars and eyelashes; state that it worked in Disney movies.
+++Slowly start to move on. Give the clothes your ex-boyfriend gave you to your best friend for destruction. Keep the jewelry. Seek professional psychological attention. Attend a few trial sessions, and then disbelieve the psychologist’s diagnosis; there’s no reason to believe a person who willingly surrounds themselves with nutcases. Demand more ice cream from your parents. Pick up your phone; your ex-boyfriend is actually calling you.
+++Drop everything that you’re doing, and sound as nonchalant as possible when you answer the phone. Secretly ask your Higher Being why He (or She) is doing this to you; you already know through your extensive sleuth work that your ex-boyfriend is still seeing his new girlfriend. Remain composed for the first 90 seconds of the phone call. Then fall apart. Yell at your ex-boyfriend when he says that he isn’t happy with his new girlfriend and that he wants you back. Identify with his new girlfriend and explain to him how she might feel. Call him a cheater. Then tell him how much you miss him. Call your best friend as soon as you hang up and ask for advice. Try not to cry when your best friend calls you the other woman.
+++Call your ex-boyfriend back and explain to him that you don’t want to become a home wrecker, on principle. Be sure to confuse your ex-boyfriend and make your intentions as vague as possible. Suggest that you just be friends. Then admit to your ex-boyfriend later that you can’t be just friends. Continue to talk to your ex-boyfriend behind his new girlfriend’s back. Question your self-worth. Wait for your ex-boyfriend to break up with his new girlfriend. Text your new boyfriend; you forgot to break up with him. Confer with your best friend that his new girlfriend is unattractive. Apologize to your best friend for distrusting their advice. Promise that it won’t happen again. Ask them for new advice.
+++Discard new advice. Wait for your ex-boyfriend to break up with his new girlfriend; he says he’s going to do it soon. Ask your ex-boyfriend if he thinks his new girlfriend is more attractive than you. Scold your boyfriend for suggesting that his new girlfriend is unattractive. Ask personal details about your ex-boyfriend and his new girlfriend’s bedroom activities. Believe every word. Tell your ex-boyfriend not to break up with her just yet; you know that it’s an inopportune moment for her, but you can’t relay this to your ex-boyfriend, who knows less about his girlfriend than you do. Wait for your ex-boyfriend to break up with his new girlfriend. It might happen at any moment, and therefore you must check your phone as often as possible. Ask your best friend not to tell anyone that you and your ex-boyfriend are speaking; if your parents knew, they would kill you. Forfeit your weekend rights to your older siblings. They wouldn’t mind keeping their mouths shut if you did their chores. Write about relationships where people stay together even though they don’t really love each other in your online journal. You are disgusted by these relationships.
+++Reveal more intimate feelings of affection towards your ex-boyfriend. Demand to know why your ex-boyfriend is planning on spending the night at his new girlfriend’s house in order to break up with her. Develop this into a bar brawl-like argument. When your ex-boyfriend agrees not to spend the night at her place in complete fear and compliance, insist that he spends the night, but only if he wants to. Leave this argument so that it is unclear whether or not you want him to spend the night at her place, and unclear as to whether or not he will or won’t spend the night at her place. Claim that you don’t want to know. Call your best friend. Explain what happened. Act as though your actions were logical and sound.
+++Wait by the phone for your ex-boyfriend to call you the night he breaks up with his new girlfriend. Tell your parents that you are considering getting back together with your ex-boyfriend. Do so in the bedroom or living room; whichever place has the least potentially deadly weapons. Claim that love without pain is not really romance, or that if fate were easy life would not be nearly as exciting. Reject their offer for more clinical assistance. Ask your ex-boyfriend out on a first date, because you want to start from scratch. Draw up rules and regulations that you would like him to follow this time around. Explain to him that he has to earn his trust back.
+++Develop a panic attack when his now ex-girlfriend tries to contact him. You cannot understand why she is so clingy. Insist that your ex-boyfriend break up with her again; he clearly did not do so correctly the first time. Demand to have physical evidence of this second break up so that you may study his technique; online is the preferable way to do this so that you may be emailed the transcript and dissect each line individually. Consider emailing his now ex-girlfriend to punctuate the end of their relationship. After careful and thoughtful internal debate—lasting no longer than 1 hour and 15 minutes—email his now ex-girlfriend. The email should be short, courteous, and impersonal, such as: “I’m sorry for your loss; you have my condolences.” Offer relationship advice in the form of a broad statement, particularly by metaphor usage. Be as cliché as possible.
+++Promise to be a better girlfriend. Continue to stalk his now ex-girlfriend in case she decides to pose a threat. Occasionally bring up her current affairs in light conversation, in order to test your ex-boyfriend’s tracking of her. Become upset when you realize that he no longer has any interest discussing his ex-girlfriend’s lifestyle. Update your best friend on her whereabouts, family events, and anything else you can get your hands on. Everyone is delighted to hear about her and how horrible she is now looking when compared to you.
+++After this incident becomes recent history, repeat, repeat, repeat.
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Sherard Harrington lives in Orlando, Florida where he is currently holding his breath through a Masters in Creative Writing. He firmly believes in three things: 1) Always tip the bartender, 2) Plaids and stripes together do not a savvy outfit make, and 3) There has never been such thing as “too much coffee.” After he decides which side of the Atlantic his feet will land on, he is hoping to adopt a Great Dane as a companion. (Or maybe a Mastiff.)