I wonder if it’s a disease that makes you an idiot.

It smothers your thinking.

Unless, of course, you think of a certain person, and then it goes into this dreamy hyperdrive. Not sure if that’s possible. But there we are.

The whole thing’s impossible. Once in awhile, when in another random douse of happiness, one takes a look at one’s partner and is slapped in the face with a great, big, HIM?! I-can’t-believe-it’s-him-of-all-people-am-I-sure-I’m-not-crazy-? wow, aren’t I lucky?, and it’s just something you wouldn’t love ever think would happen.

Yep.

While you’re trying desperately to not get used to it, to think any second it’ll end, you find yourself thinking in a vague, future-ish tense. Even a month ahead is a bit of a symptom.

It’s not like in the movies. He wasn’t smartly dressed, standing majestically in the moonlight, a soft breeze. No deep, caressingly voice declaiming. No roses. No gorgeous face. There was longish, pretty hair, though. And eyes full of love. And earnestness. It was outside, even if he was sitting in a dirty white lawn chair. And you’ve both been thrown out of the house. And for some reason, he was very attractive to you. And his rough hands had their own allure. And you’re holding onto his cane, but he’s actually a little younger than you. And he’s saying, “I love you.” You feel this odd sort of shock that can happen with anything else. His eyes looking at you aren’t blue, green, etc, or piercing, or have a meaningful glint…but they’re the only ones you want to see in the world at that moment, filled with something you almost can’t meet all the way with your own glances.

And then it’s suddenly better than some romantic scene. There isn’t to be metaphors mugging up its sheer realness. For all its supposed disappointments in correct “setting” it seemed more real, and more capable of being believed.

Not that it is, of course.

All the same, families, and people, are messy, squalid in the end. Is it so hard to believe that good people beat their children in fits of rage or frustration at lives starting to feel too small too soon? Or just because it would feel good to tear at something? That even when the kids have enough and try to leave, the parents still love them? I find it it’s easy to imagine that, no matter what, they’re the only set of parents you got, kid. They could have aborted you, think on THAT. (This, of course, is not a commentary on all cases, and certainly not those of severe nature or of differing cause)

It can give strength of character, hardship in general I mean.

Is it so hard to believe that there are at least several girls in your high school that have been, or will eventually be, raped?

Why do you all run when we tell you the kind of truth that should be commonly known? It’s more normal than a family that works. Real families are jagged, falling apart, glued-together sort of being, the kind that grows and changes, and doesn’t care about what plan it started with, for it randomly will almost vomit out its limbs as it scrambles along.

These things, if they happened to us, are important parts of who we became afterward. If we broke, or if we strengthened; it is only fair to let them know. But society carves it out that if it gets out it’s really rather common, especially the less severe cases, people won’t be able to look at each other; so maybe it’s necessary for the whole…but it hurts the individual when it comes to wanting to let someone they know love them for ALL their parts, or at least accept, instead of lying and hiding little secrets that burn holes in relationships later on.

It’s not about what they tell us, it’s about what we’re listening to.

There’s this cold woman. She’s haughty. And cruel. And quick to rip throats out, dark eyes staring severely. A twister of words, the kind of woman that watches every direction and her back twice. The one that can watch your blood run and just think of its color, and when it’s her blood, a eerie sneer of contempt crosses her face instead of tears. The kind that when she smiles at you, ever so lovely, is imaging an intense death for you.

She thinks it’s deeply amusing when you think she’s being dramatic and not in the least serious. It’s more fun sometimes even when you DO believe her.

She laughs when you’re in love. She warns, quiet, calm, watchful as an almost inevitable fall comes. She doesn’t relish it. There’s this feeling of something like mercy and pity–had she a heart anymore instead of shards sewn with wire haphazardly that is–that you would bother with love and believe. Her smile is a like a razor.

For love is much like faith. Trust is a leap of faith, and rarely a complete set of facts truly back up what you are believing in, or “know to be true”.

Then there’s the one that stops in the middle of a room and just thinks of someone she loves somewhere–because you see it still beats and time has not crushed the possiblity of healing yet–and takes several minutes before snapping out of it.

The one that smiles for no reason sometimes, the kind of woman who’d stop and take the clothes off her back and give them to you, without a word. There is a deep forlorness about her, but she loves you.

This one seems weak, foolish, doing stupid things because she floats when you love her back. This one almost trusts you.

But, in sooth, as you may have heard, this is one that has the real control and reins on the other. THe other one, lurks, deep inside, waiting for rage bottled up to explode and snarl with such venom as the other struggles to coax her back to its dark hiding place.
She seems to go more and more willingly to sleep as the loved one flounces on her way, heart fearfully mending, as it knows it may just be wasting its time.

The sweet one, the one that loves, is beginning to blend with the other, to compose a more wise yet willing woman.

And should you decide to shatter it all, for that can be your choice as well as hers, there is always the cold woman to wrench herself back out in full flower of unfeeling to chart the Nethersea until her use is stilled once again.

But should it not come to pass often enough, or forever, she will smile chillingly to herself and with a tombstone smile, walk the rest of a woman’s life instead of what she should have been, whole. The saddest thing is that no one will notice, for they walk turned in and so when they fall, they can’t help but wonder why them…

A premise of love is one that promises everything, but can take more than it gave in the first place with it.

A premise of love is more than a promise, and less than.

A premise of love is a possibility of rich hate.

A premise of love is a possibility of a life, and a death.

A premise of love is one not to be trusted.

A premise of love can be a premise of pretense.

Dear Dalea,

There is this younger man I love. I truly love him, I have for years. But my boyfriend, who is increasingly jealous with this “best friend” of mine, sees me less and less, and hardly calls. When he does, we have a good time until he suddenly tells me he doesn’t think I love him anymore.

But I do!

The young man, he says women should be respected and should be addressed to reflect that, so he insists on calling me things like “beautiful” and “lady”. But I need a man who’ll call me “lil’ mama”, and my boyfriend does that. He’s the thug I need, but the other one is very attractive. The only reason I haven’t left my boyfriend for him is because he’s just not gangsta or thug enough.

What should I do? I know I’m not that happy wiht my boyfriend right now, but this other guy might not make me happy either since he refuses to talk to me the way I prefer.

~In need of thug love

Dear Thug Love,

And women wonder why they aren’t respected as they should be. [Rest of answer coming soon]

The gold is slipping between her fingers.

She should think that’s strange. It’s sand after all. The roses falling about her face, mimicking the shape of her open lips, the petals lay on the cold tile like the freshly slaughtered body on the floor. But she’d come in with it there. Him. Him there. He was a being, even if he wasn’t human.

That’s when she realized it was a chain draped in her fingers, the pendent a beautifully wrought thing, pearls, veins of gold sweeping up and enclosing a rounded rose bud as if it was a egg instead. There was so much life represented in something so cold. So heavy. She swung it, experimented. That’s when the glint of small diamonds flung themselves into her eyes, the red pooled and growing sticky on the floor flashing for a moment like an angry maw. The whurring of it was comforting. The necklace felt right in her hands; like it had been hers. It wasn’t that it was beautiful; She had had beautiful things before, briefly, some of them she still had. But the moment the chain had been pressed into her flesh it felt…right. She paid what she had to, to own it. It was hers before she knew it existed.

She held the pendent, much heavier then one would think looking at it, and looked at the top of the rosebud-egg: a tiny cross, diamonds set on either side of it at its tiny base. It reminded her vaguely of the coronation egg, she thought this quietly, half-aware she was carefully spinning and swinging it again, testing how the weight felt pulling at the gold links.

There was sand in its hair. His hair. It had blood on it, but it was sand. She had sand on her hands….no, hadn’t she decided it was the gold? She knelt on the ground and dripped a finger carefully into the pool of blood around his smashed face, and drew a circle, symbols, and sealed it. She brought the bloodied finger to her lips and kissed it, whispering something, pushing this heavy feeling that had built up with each symbol, out onto the circle. There was a quiet flare of light, and the body, the blood, the sand, was gone. Her normally dark eyes flared to a green-yellow.

It wasn’t sand. It was tiny pieces of gold. That had been the infamous thief, Dimas. Dimas. Oh, God. He was playing hard ball. This would be hard to explain. But she closed her eyes and trickled a little of herself into her new pendent, and knew he hadn’t planted it. This was something of Dimas’, on his way here? Dimas had been uncatcheable…until now.

She was rarely afraid. But when she was, her pride came in handy. Right now…she felt real fear for a moment, but focused it away. There was work to do; for one, she needed to determine which would have the greatest chance of being the winning side, and then decide which to stand on. She had little time left.

V.V. Bounde looked up, dark eyes sharp and reflecting the rosebud egg, pouty lips no longer red with blood, but closed with worry like the rose that fears opening its silken petals to a harsh wind.

“Crouched like that…you look like a feral cat, but I suppose you’d only like that comparsion, eh?” an older woman, 29 years old, but still very pretty said, slipping out of the darkness, no surprise at her entrance registering in Bounde’s eyes.

“It’s time we became even more so subtle of predators, Cicila,” she said, in her voice she knew how to pitch low and yet extremely loud as she chose, something that always unnerved Cicila, like you couldn’t trust just who V.V. was and why she chose her tones for you the way she did.

“He paid you a visit, didn’t he? Well, don’t think you’re special, girl. He’s been making special trips to everyone of us up high, even those some of us that didn’t know the others were in it as an extra safeguard. Whoever’s endorsing him….I’d swear it was God himself,” Cicila breathed out, crossing arms over an ample bosom that sometimes leaned toward top heavy, what with her long legs and vaguely slim hips.

“Or the Devil,” V.V. murmured.

“I guess maybe this MIGHT just mean you’re not a crazy rogue that no one’s ever formally trained and showed up overnight, butting in on us professionals, those of us conjuring since we were this high,” Cicila said, raising a hand just two feet up from the ground.

“Let us leave here.”

“You’re in that kind of mood, then. You’ve gone archaic on me, black moods. Fine. I’m off to counsel. You’d do well to come and try to see who’s going to join whose side. There’s no doubt Quartz is running her stiff ass to your little friend’s side…”

“I have to find…Solstice,” her voice was a tiny whisper in the echo left after Cicila’s voice crashed through the mostly dim room. “He is in a realm that I believe at least some of his, my littel friend as you put it’s, other agents are hiding. Who my little friend is working for might be there. I hope…”

“That vision was influenced. You said so yourself, you fear you just want something dramatic to happen to you, and it’s hard for things to stand out in a crowd full of experienced seers, I know…”

“Does it still seem like that to you? I don’t know why the rest of you aren’t seeing it, but…”

“But going to see him…that’s a big gamble…the counsel won’t like…”

“They will dissolve today, see if I’m not right, something might change, but as time flows now, it will, as everyone makes new alliances, new enemies for something on one believed in a few days ago. They still won’t believe it that it’s THAT war, but at least some preparation will be made…” V.V. murmured, almost to herself. Cicila flicked a wrist to boost her own hearing capacity to catch it.

“ But if you do this…if this is a mistake, if this tampers..what if this choice of yours is a crossroads? The thing that will change the flow of time…?’

“That is what I am hoping for, Cicila,” she replied, a little grim. A little too grim, too easily a novel’s perfect character, Cicila thought. “Something to change this war from even maybe starting.”

“But you see, that’s what I’m afraid of…because it could change it the other way, too. You could make a could happen to a will happen…” Cicila said.

But V.V. Bounde was already gone, having been murmuring further, snapped her fingers, and stepped into a blank portrait on the wall.

She slid her hand through dark hair, mostly black, sometimes with a reddish brown tint. There was a very faint vanity to it that made her twist her full lips into a grimace. Glancing at caramel brown skin, she sneaked a look at her reflection in the smudged glass, more to trick herself into believing she wasn’t trying to hide a prissy impression from passerby.

If there were any passerby here, that is.

V.V. scanned her face, trying to tell herself it was paranoia of wanting to look good in case something harsh showed up. It was always good to make an impression with her sort of exotic beauty, especially with her smaller stature. She wasn’t a leggy gazelle. Just shy of average height, at 5’3″. Dark brown eyes a little too bright that seemed to be black enough to nearly hide her pupils flickered as she glanced cuttingly to the side at the stir of leaves, tensing, then relaxing seeing the wind.

Flicking delicate and shapely hands, proportioned as the rest of her was, a modest hour glass figure shown pleasingly in her shadow. No double D’s, but not an A either, but I have a decent, curvy ass, she thought to herself, a common theme she reassured herself almost automatically now when examining herself.

All this was contemplated then tossed aside like a plastic bag floating into view, than gone in the few seconds it took for her face to flash at her from the glass.

Some said she was an Indian witch, (though just as prevalent were tales of her being mexican, mulatto, many other things belonging to heated southern places of mystery), a powerful one from an accident of genes by the famously lusty (and well as famously wealthy) family well known to breed witches.

The kind even immortals hesitate to screw with, she smiled humourlessly to herself. Cheating parents and a mistake, a baby lost amid the other cradles that no one missed. She didn’t know what she was growing up, and didn’t get the training early like she should have. But she found her way to some sort of control in her early teens. That was just, what, 5, 6 years ago? Someone had opened her eyes and assured her she wasn’t crazy once upon a time. NOw she didn’t know whether to thank them or hate them for it.

“Yes. You never un-know something,” she whispered, with soft pain that writhed of having been long withstanding, the kind that everyone carries like a dark, hidden bruise that won’t quite go away.

“As if you would ever choose to not know something, Miss Bounde,” a softly male voice called out.

She tilted her head and gave her little faint smile, “This is true, but you are not Reardon.”

“Reardon is dead.”

She could only make out his shadow; it was strong, she could see that from just his shadow. The mix of trees and cement around her made her ache a little, but it was a scene she was used to handling. These choking cities humans had built up like ugly scars upon the planet’s body-in more than one plane, she’d found out over the years, hurt her.

“And how did that come about? I believe Reardon was as neutral as myself…”

“We all know your famous cowardice, Lady Bounde,” his sneer was evident the title. A title she had earned through contest, and by blood, although those two in her case had not gone together as one might think. How dare he.

“It is not cowardice, for you all must as easily know my committments on either side,” she said softy through her teeth.

He laughed, lounging against a stone column, out of place. He had made it; all she had done was blink. She swallowed. This was one not to mess with. Well, on the wrong side of the bed she may be from, but she was from a family known for that, too.

“Oh, yes, but you are a fool for trying to…how should we say? straddle both confidences,” He was much taller than her by several inches, fit and with a body that made her, even through her pride, want to scratch her nails in.

Of course he’s fit, do you think any of us in this can afford not to be? she snarled to herself. Pay attention. What is he? Weaknesses? Mortal? Obviously not human. But Changed? Glamoured?

She snapped her fingers and line of blue fire spilled in an arc from it, lashing near his face. Though he didn’t flinch, she felt the movement of his eyes widen. Good, the bastard. To be able to even glamour me that much means power. And lots of it.

Instantly her pull to get closer to him, the attraction fell away.  All her fury at a contact meeting gone terribly bad without her foreknowledge flared up.

“You do not attempt to glamour one such as me, fool,” her voice came out as a small hiss.

“Such an as…I mean, mouth on you. Yes, I see his old fashioned honor code influence even in your speech, even in the way you walk a queen,” he said to himself, “there has been a shift…”

The rest she couldn’t make out as he annoyed, shook out her spell near him.

“And you say I have bad manners!” He called, now on the otherside of her. No. There were two of him now. He’d made a doppleganger that quickly? Perhaps Reardon really was dead. In which case she had no business here anymore. She did not fight for one side or the other. She merely kept her and her contacts safely out of the way. Some slide one way or the other slightly, but she kept a fragile balance.

“I never said that,” her voice was husky with impatience, eyes seeking a way out as firm arms enclosed her from behind.

“Sorry, not like in a romance novel, you’ll have to forgive me, but you have. Remember me now?”

She blinked, and sought the voice in her memories. Had she?

“Arrecho?”

“Yes, but that is not what they call me now,” he said softly, nearly nuzzling her hair.

She knew treachery had been coming. She knew it. But Arrecho hadn’t had much talent when she last saw him. This couldn’t be the same lanky boy.

She snapped her teeth and laughed, elbowing him in the gut. He simply grabbed her by the hair and threw her face into the ground.

“Nothing personal, Miss Bounde. But the number of cowards are dwindling. Make a choice soon. That is all the message I bring because of our previous encounter. I do not forget the seer that saved my life.”

And then he was gone just as her blue flames, and the sound of her fingers snapping again, hit the air where he had been standing.

“My debt is paid,” his voice, disembodied, echoed in her ear.

Pride wounded, her took a few moments to control her rage.

“Of course I will. I’ll choose whatever side you’re not on,” she muttered half-serious, and once again ran her hand through her long, curling hair.

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[To read the original poem this story was inspired by/was a response to, contact Dalea!]

Oh my…I rather like this. This is the Man of Your Dreams. The one that, sadly…you must realize: When we want something enough, we dream, we hunger after it, until that dream and hunger itself takes on its own form, whispering come hither. Be wary, my dove…that it does not become a crutch, a measuring you’ll take every real guy to and find that he lacks, for your image could take on a persona of perfection too pure to ever be found in a real flesh and blood man. And I take it you also hunger for the carnal, and not so much to be a bride of God.

Let me tell you a story.

There was once a women named Isabelle in the old canal town of Venice. She was a kingly women. And in this, it is significant to say that she was kingly, and not queenly. She was pretty in her way, but not in the high favor that was the fad of the time. She was too swift of mouth and mind for most men to take, too mature too quickly for those her age.

Isabelle dressed in her purple silks, the ones that livened up her sharp eyes, and awaited in the line to be asked to dance. One by one her peers were chosen up, and when she was asked, she smiled, charmed and thought, “This is he”. But it never was.

A year later, and Isabelle is sick of heart of having herself broken down for what seems oafs that surround her day after day, seeking her body or her wealth, but never her.

Downcast, she fled to the rose garden and laid upon a warm marble bench and soon fell asleep. Right before the deepest of sleeps kissed her eyelids, she thought she saw a shimmer of a man with true pose, and not the arrogant swagger of what she knew so well and loathed. She danced a day and night of her life away with this man, this godling, falling ever more in love with his sweet words, his promises, ones that he seemed to make true in her dreams.

When Isabelle awoke, he was so wonderful and she so smitten to the idea of a real, good man she couldn’t feel anger at this cheating of real life. Instead she took to be more excited each day to lay her head to sleep, in hope that when she awoke he’d be sitting at her window, a rose in hand.

More and more the mistress of the house noticed Isabelle spent more and more time sleeping, and she turned more and more suitors away, always mumbling, “He isn’t kind enough, he doesn’t sing sweetly enough, he doesn’t hold my hand as tightly, he didn’t come as he said he would yesterday, those roses weren’t my favorite, he should have known if he was…Him.” Her mother was at her wit’s end, seeing Isabelle wasting away, always when the few time she was awake, this silly, forlorn smile on her face, always gazing at the window where her true love should come. One suitor never gave up. He waited, and visited, rejected, and came again and again, held her hand while she sleep as her sleeps became a coma.

Finally, one night when his father threatened him to chose a real wife, this last suitor (his name was Vin), voice deepened, turned into a plush velvet by his tears and finally spoke his heart and his goodbye, as time had finally ran out for his vigil.

“I love you..”

Isabelle was listening to her love whisper this in her ear at the same time, but choked awake when she thought she started to hear him say…

Vin continued, “Goodbye..”

“Goodbye…”

Isabelle cried up, sat up and threw her arms around Vin and sobbed, “No!” She blinked and realized who it was as Vin held her close, “Oh…I never…realized…you were here the whole time, weren’t you? My real love…” And with that, Isabelle banished her perfect man and took in her heart instead one of real love, of soul, and allowed Vin to court her. They eventually married, and Isabelle found she couldn’t be awake enough to enjoy her life that, despite not everything being perfect, was paradoxically more satisfying.

How does one ever know there was light, if there is not dark to contrast? In more harsh terms…take in account then of diminishing marginal utility…

I know this has a ring of a fairy tale, but I hope you get the meaning well. I’ve seen too many fall on this one…most I have seen eventually pull themselves out, but it was more work than it ever is to fall into this pit.

As for the writing itself, I rather like it. I can feel the desperation, the longing in it.

[To read the original poem this story was inspired by/was a response to, contact Dalea!]

Being a Nothing…not so simple, actually.

The following conversation with a friend of mine might help clarify:

Dalea: I think it would be interesting to know him, to let him have someone that knows him and can’t judge and if they do they won’t tell him because they’re nothing to him, and vice versa.
Dalea: Just someone to talk to, like a therapist?
Dalea: We all react differently to a person depending on our relationship with or to them, or what type of one we’d like to have with them in the future. If we come into it NOT angling, trying to be nothing to them, then I wonder what the potential could be for actually being ourselves, or something close to it?
Dani: yea that.
Dalea: I feel like he really needs someone to listen to him, and not just in that best friend way, he has one of those.
Dalea: Someone completely removed from the rest of his life.
DaleaI think if people had those, and some do, it would help them, certain types of people.
Dalea: I call them “Nothings”.

My point here, dear audience with a population of zero, is that without an agenda to focus on and alter our behavior and words on, more truth may be thrown out there. I’m not saying that general “we all don’t want to look lame or like a douche bag” syndrome won’t kick in…but the more we can wring it out, the better.

I’m not saying we can’t care for our subjects, or they us, the Nothings. My point is being a Nothing may actually increase your chances of developing the right type of relationship with your subject and vice versa instead of conventional means (especially if they have failed you repeatedly in the past). This goes for friendship, romantic attachment, and other types of love and bonding. You may realize over the course of being a Nothing, you’re not as in to them as a potential romantic partner as you had thought. Maybe just an awesome friend.

How many of you out there have “rushed into a relationship” or said yes to dates with a guy/girl just because s/he was ‘super cute and SEEMED really cool’? If you had taken the time to be more impartial to judging or immediately crossing that person off your list due to one superficial “big no-no on dating”? I don’t believe in absolute neutrality, I don’t think it really exists. But you can get close enough to help you see clearer and think before just saying “yes” and ending up feeling hurt you “screwed up” or simply tried your best and it still failed because they were not your match. What about that person you weren’t friends with? What if they actually could have been your best friend if you had taken the time to see past a prickly (bitchy, thug, etc) outside and see the person?

Try being a Nothing to them for a year (depending on how often you meet up just to talk, could be much less than that), and see if you’re still “crushing” on them, or you still desperately want to be their friend. You could have ended up loving or liking each other without realizing it.

This, like everything else, can have side effects. You could fall in love with your subject romantically and they not you, for example. Or a subject counts you as a best friend over time, but you do not. But that could happen anyway, but with a more reckless likelihood.

It’s a theory, it’s an alternate solution to the usual let’s talk a couple of times, a couple of dates, get into an actual relationship (romantic or otherwise) and then watch it crash early later on and wonder what the hell happened, they “SEEMED SO COOL”. It’s also not new. But most humans lack the patience to bother with this. They get carried away. But hey, just because you’re human doesn’t mean you have to fall prey to your weakness all the time, to the tricks of chemistry, love blindness, or friend-pity.

Once you screw up, as I put it jokingly, it’s a temptation to try to contact the lost loved one and try to be a “Nothing”. It’s possible…but only if you give it enough time that you’re sure you’re not just trying to get at them again. Being a Nothing means a certain state of mind (or lack of one and an agenda for what you’re going to try to make this person be to you and vice versa) GOING INTO the arrangement; this is hard, it’s going against embedded social behaviors and chemical reactions in your body. It’s also doable. You listen, you talk, you do what you can for them, but you never, ever harp on them about anything. Suggest if they ask. ONly if they ask. You’ll know quickly if you’re not cut out to be their Nothing.

I am going to try to be someone’s Nothing this year and get back to you all with the experience with more advice.

Much love,

Dalea

I have been walking for 3.5 hours and I still want you. Damn.

Dear Dalea,

I have this 15 year old best friend, who says he loves me very much. I’m 19 years old. I told him I don’t like him like that, but I still love him. But he still tries to have sex with me or kisses on me. He is so fine. I let him, but I tell him he and I gotta stop after awhile cause I have a man, although we nearly had sex one time. I told him last night he snuck up to my house that when he’s 18 maybe. He had a girl when this was going on, but recently left her.

My man never texts, calls or sees me anymore, but his sister assures me he still loves me, and wants me. He’s twenty two, I think. I never cheated on him, or nothin and he treats me like that, but I love him so much and don’t want to leave him. What should I do? Oh, and my man’s in a gang.

-Frustrated but still drawing flies with honey

Dear Honey,

You say, let’s hear, that ‘oh he don’t pay me no attention, he never texts or calls, or sees me, but I love him so much, I never, ever cheat on him, or step out, or anything…’

Fact:

He never texts, calls, or visits. Why are you still with him?

He’s a gang member. What’s your future with him, have you tried to think of raising a child in that environment? He doesn’t see you. Does he think of your welfare?

He’s a few years older than you. (Good job not even knowing by how much, considering he’s your “boyfriend” and all!)

You nearly slept with your 15 year old “best friend”.(We call this friends with benefits, not a position I think woman should be in if they’re talking about love).

You’re over 18 years old. That, Honey, is called statutory rape, just in case someone’s parents don’t know about it, or it goes sour.

You still keep flirting, calling, texting, meeting with your 15 year old best friend who’s still trying to f**k you and declaring love. You’re letting him do quite a few things to you and you say that’s not cheating? Honey, there’s a lot between “kissing” and “sex” so getting “close” to the latter means something went on that should have only been between you and your boyfriend if you had been loyal.

My suggestion? Remember that if this young man, this teenager, cheated on his girlfriend with you, don’t think he might not do it to you one day. There are plenty of other men out there, your age, who isn’t a boy to your young woman who aren’t cheaters. Of course, being one yourself, you might not mind what sort of scruples your man should have.

So, grow up and detangle yourself from both these messes!

~Dalea

[If you have a question to ask Dalea, leave a comment or send a message about your problem and she'll answer it! Check back in often for more!]