Role Reboot

Dear Dana: How Do I Convince My Girlfriend That I Want To Marry Her, Just Not Now?

Dear Dana is a bi-weekly advice column for humans who engage in romantic relationships. Please send your dilemmas, issues, conundrums, assumptions, conflicts, anxieties, worriments, obstacles, complications, predicaments, queries, questions, and any other synonyms for “problems” to deardana@rolereboot.org. Dear Dana, I’m in a four-year long relationship with my girlfriend and we recently just moved in together. A […]

I Was The Roommate From Hell

It’s hard to admit when you’re the bad guy. It was morning and I was in my one-bedroom college apartment that I shared with my roommate Peggy. I went into her room, technically the “living room,” and I opened the curtain to see if she was here. She was and she was pissed. Her sharp […]

Dear Dana: I’m Terrified To Give Up My Independence To Move In With My Boyfriend

Dear Dana is a bi-weekly advice column for humans who engage in romantic relationships. Please send your dilemmas, issues, conundrums, assumptions, conflicts, anxieties, worriments, obstacles, complications, predicaments, queries, questions, and any other synonyms for “problems” to deardana@rolereboot.org. Dear Dana, I’m 37 and moving in with my boyfriend. I’ve never lived with anyone and I’ve never dated […]

7 Reasons Dating Forever Is Better Than Getting Married

When you marry someone, you marry all of their shit. One look at Pinterest will confirm it: Our culture is obsessed with marriage. We have reality TV shows for every aspect of the process: dating, planning, dress-buying, and the wedding itself; we have an entire genre of books dedicated to teaching single people how to […]

Do We Have To Get Married?

You love each other. You move in together—which is a prelude to a wedding, right? This writer thought so, until the myth of holy matrimony was exploded by her grandparents’ relationship. When I was 8, my grandparents came home one evening after spending the entire day out—a rarity for them. I asked them what they […]

What’s The Point Of Getting Engaged Anymore?

Since most people know when the proposal is coming these days, what’s the point of getting engaged? Just set a date to get married and forget all the fuss. Last week I was in the emergency room for a rabies shot (don’t ask) and found myself listening to an awkward conversation between a nurse, who […]

We Live 9,349 Miles Apart, But We’re Killing It In The Bedroom

You said I was crazy to sign up for an extreme long-distance relationship. You were wrong. I live in Orlando. He lives in Australia. At any given moment, there are 9,349 miles (plus, one hell of an expensive airplane ticket) separating me from my boyfriend. In fact, our time zones are so far apart that […]

Thoughts On A Second Marriage

One of the best things about a second marriage is that you go in with your eyes wide open. “I don’t believe in ‘OK,’ ‘decent,’ or ‘solid’ marriages. I’m against them. I believe only in great marriages, and that you should expect and reach for no less.” – M. Gary Neuman (licensed psychotherapist, rabbi, and author) […]

Real Intimacy Isn’t About Sex

True intimacy requires time, it requires our mask to slip, our shadow to show. A few days ago on The Toast, Randa Jarrar stated that she was, “never living with a partner again.”  I’m a person who has lived alone for maybe a grand total of four months in my 46 years, so I eagerly […]

Why Do We Count Unmarried People In Relationships As Single?

This originally appeared on Alternet. Republished here with permission. Our view of modern relationships is totally warped. What makes someone “single”? When it comes to official forms, news, and punditry, and even in fictional movies and TV shows, the world seems to be divided into two kinds of people: Married people and single people. But […]