I Don't Know How You Do It, Making Love Out of Nothing at All

I'm deciding to be done with the new guy.

I think everyone has a person -- the person that she has to hear something from before she can accept it as true. For me, that person is my brother. Everyone has said basically the same things about the new guy, but my brother finally got serious with me today. I complained to him that the new guy called me up to yell at me on Tuesday, and he said, "Why are you talking to this guy anymore? You need to be proactive or don't talk to me about it." He said that the new guy is, at a minimum, verbally abusive, which does not bode well for the future. You deserve a lot better than this cat." (His Oprah-like pep talks now come with a twist of Sammy Davis, Jr.) My brother also pointed out that most people pretend to be nicer than they are at the beginning of a relationship and that this is the new guy's pretending -- in other words, it gets worse from here.

So, I've decided it isn't going anywhere from here.