Super glue

Google "clingy girlfriend" and you will get approximately 132,000 search results. I'm not making this up. It's a problem.

ehow.com (the website that tells you "how to do just about everything") has steps for dealing with a clingy girlfriend.

Can she be dealt with or do you just have to be done with her?

Clingy comes in many forms but for the sake of brevity, I'm going to reduce it to two forms: public clingy and private clingy. A friend and I were once discussing this and we decided that private clingy is a lot worse. But, before I qualify either, let me explain them.

Public clingy is that girl who makes sure her steps are synchronized with her boyfriend. Their hands and eyes are locked. She follows him around at the party. I'm not sure if excessive PDA qualifies as public clingy because PDA is another category in itself (that I will delve into at a later post.) Nonetheless, these are a few of the characteristics.

Private clingy is the girl who sleeps in her boyfriend's room every night, even when he is not there. Private clingy is the girl who believes her boyfriend's lap is her permanent seat, even when he's surfing the Internet or even worse, watching a football game (again, women interfering with sports is another post entirely but for the sake of argument, I had to throw it in there.) Private clingy is the girl who thinks her boyfriend is about to dump her if he diverts his eyes for a nanosecond while they are hanging out.

Although both forms of "clingy" don't sound very appealing, private clingy is a true sign of insecurity. A girl who is clingy in public is usually just trying to show off for her audience and declare to the world that this is her man. Obnoxious, but it's not the end of the world. Someone who is pleading for attention, even when it's just in the presence of their partner, is insecure about their place in their partner's life. They are not putting on a show for the world; they are putting on a show for their partner-the person whom they should trust and know sees them for who they are.

My first instinct would be to write one of these girls off. But, if you care about the person enough, it's important to help them work through their flaws so that they do not make the same mistakes in their next relationship. But, don't baby her. If at some point, she can't trust how you feel, it's time for her to go.

It's natural to want to be around that special person all the time. We've all been there. But, we need to know where to draw the line between giddy and clingy.

Love freely,
tY