All my single ladies

I believe in love. I believe it transforms, transports, and transcends. I believe it fine-tunes goodness, solidifies strength, eradicates rage, alleviates stress, and elevates empathy. I believe in love (or something damn near like it) at first sight, I believe it's perfectly okay to love the one you're with, provided the one you're with either happens to have excellent news from an extremely up-to-date HIV test or answers to the name of Brad Pitt, Collin Farrell or Ashton Kutcher. And I firmly believe that marriage ceremonies would go much faster if you just skip the yada yada yada and go straight into the ‘till death do us part’ part. That my friends-that morbid talk about death doing us part-is love and romance intertwined as one! But more than anything else, I believe in love because when you don't have it, you tend to spend your every waking moment chasing after it…or at least that’s what I see happening with my beautiful, vivacious single friends..

Bruce Springsteen was right—everybody does in fact have a hungry heart.

But because a heart is hungry does not mean you should feed it every stale French fry or greased up burger that comes your way.

This post is dedicated to all my friends (yes I am talking to YOU) who are single and looking for love in all the wrong places or are in an unfulfilling dead-end relationship and for some reason cannot seem to get up and walk away.

I know what your thinking “ohhh no she didn’t”. Your heart is pacing as you are skimming down the entire post to see if I have bolded your name because you know deep in your heart of hearts you are guilty of this. But don’t worry. Relaxxxx. I would never do such a thing ;) all your secrets are safe with me. But what I will do is tell you to enjoy your single life as long as you can (no-I-do-not-have-cold-feet-and-I-am-not-saying-this-because-my-wedding-is-EXACTLY-200 days-away-eek) but because we are only on this lovely planet once. Or at least during this lifetime we are, I know,I know maybe we will all be reincarnated and come back as beautiful Arab princesses but that is a whole other post in it of itself. For now, I want you all to just live, laugh, and love (yourself). ANDDDD also make sure you have done everything on this list before you go giving your pretty hearts away to the next guy!

Ps. No I did not come up with this list all by myself, its stolen from an article from Frisky.com and ahem, no I have not done everything on the list, that is why I am asking you, my friends, to do so for me ;)

· Live by yourself for at least a year.

· Live with someone else for at least a year.

· Recover from a broken heart.

· Have a vacation fling.

· Take a road-trip with a group of girlfriends.

· Relish sleeping in a queen-sized bed by yourself.

· Get your finances in order.

· Learn to love your body.

· Have sex with at least one person you’d never want to marry (or introduce to mom).

· Find reliable birth control.

· Pay off as much credit card debt and student loans as possible.

· Spend way too much on a something frivolous.

· Exorcise all past relationship demons.

· Travel somewhere exotic.

· Establish a strong circle of friends.

· Forgive your parents for not being perfect.

· Have at least one night you can’t quite remember.

· Experience some really bad first dates.

· Find hobbies that fulfill you.

· Celebrate your 25th birthday