Reason 502: Winter

I am a 25 year old single man who has been recently dumped, I guess I can't exactly claim to be a relationship expert. Despite this, I have learned a few things, and I can't stress this one enough. It is a bare bones essential for any human living in the upper Western hemisphere to understand.

Winter Relationships are doomed.

For those of you who are reading this who live east of Salt Lake City and north of Nashville, take my advice. Take the months of November through March as a yearly "free-pass" card and do what you will with it, but for the love of god don't fall in love. It just ain't gonna work out. I spent two years in undergraduate school in Chicago before I eventually dropped out, and during this time I realized that A) I was never meant to live in a wintery city, and B) winter will trick/fuck you into falling in love.
I know this sounds silly, but there have been serious and well-funded studies into the behavioral impact weather has on mood, and I back it all 100 percent. I found myself a 24 year old unemployed student living near alone in the 3rd biggest city in the country in a studio apartment, single during the holidays. Under those types of situations,the suicide notes practically write themselves. You walk around all day in a freezing tundra, the likes of which any reasonable human would immediately about face in, except for the fact that you are only out in it because you are trying to find a job that allows you the monetary flow to turn the thermostat up slightly higher than the conditions you bared to turn up that thermostat in the first place. And even when you do turn up that thermostat to a glorious 65 degrees, you are on pins and needles hoping that Peoples Gas (in their infinite wisdom) will allow you to afford their services and that 10-pack of Ramen.
Sorry, I'm rambling. The long and short of it is, when you're young and broke and in a major city that is cold as shit five months out of the year you're bound to make some bad decisions. Walking to ComEd to pay the bill is a ridiculous proposition,so YES! I will pay the 4.95 "convenience fee." You find yourself struggling to make it three blocks out to the bar, Hell you find yourself struggling to make it three blocks to get to Dominicks for bread,milk,and Campbells. Best friends are getting married out in the suburbs yet the very idea of putting on a jacket much less the suit that would make you appropriately dressed sounds awful! Suddenly you remember the reason why you thought that "not working" fireplace that came with your studio was such a catch,and the next thing you know the first woman you can somehow talk into coming home with you is the gal you're going to hibernate with for the next 4 months. No one wants to go home cold and alone for the most part, so best just to not go out at all and stay warm in bed with this woman who also happens to have a stable body temperature of 98.6 degrees. Believe me, meet women in the summer when all of your internal organs aren't threatened with frost-bite and swine flu. You just can't trust a winter relationship, because it is based far too much in safety. Safety of home and warmth and the fact that only the madman would search for the love of his life in -2 wind chill conditions.