08/07 5 Signs That Your Girlfriend Isn’t The One

riday, July 8th, 2011 | View Comments

It’s not always easy to admit that your girlfriend isn’t right for you. So before you accidentally marry her, look for these 5 telltale signs.

By Jen Kim

Figuring out that your girlfriend isn’t the one sounds like it should be a no-brainer. But think about it: People get divorced all the time, so plenty of dudes get it wrong. Plus, every guy has a buddy who’s been dating an awful she-beast for years. (And the same is true for women dating terrible dudes.)

So clearly, it’s not necessarily easy to admit to yourself that your girlfriend isn’t the one. But there are telltale signs that can give you an idea that your relationship isn’t heading anywhere — or that it shouldn’t be heading anywhere.

1. SHE’S AMAZING — BUT YOU STILL CAN’T COMMITShe’s smart, sexy, and doesn’t get mad when you go to grab a quick drink with your friends and accidentally road trip to Atlantic City on a three-day bender. What a gal! And yet even though you know she’s “perfect,” you can’t visualize yourself with her forever. It’s what psychotherapist Ken Page calls “the wave of distancing,” and it’s pretty common. “You’re with somebody who’s decent, kind, and available — and yet you get bored, judgmental, and annoyed,” he says. “So take a step back and let the wave pass.” Good advice — unless, of course, the “wave” lasts for six months. Then it’s probably not a wave, and either this relationship isn’t right, or you’re not ready for any relationship.

2. YOUR SEX LIFE IS LOUSYIt’s surprisingly easy to tell yourself that a less-than-enjoyable sex life is okay if everything else about your partner and relationship is great. After all, it’d be superficial and shallow to put so much emphasis on sex, right? Hell no. In fact, a recent study found that couples in secure and happy relationships have better sex lives than those in insecure, ambivalent, or detached relationships. In other words, a satisfying sex life is a key part of a good relationship.

3. YOU FEEL GUILTY ALL THE TIMEUnless you’re truly an awful person, you shouldn’t feel like the bad guy all the time. So if you’re always made to feel like you’re doing something wrong, the real issue is probably either that the two of you are incompatible, or that she has some major issues of her own. Even when you’re made to feel lousy all the time, the thought of ending things can make you feel even more lousy, because she’s cast you as the bad guy. But that’s just going to breed resentment.

4. YOU CAN’T DO NOTHING WITH HERAfter the newness of the getting-to-know-you and getting-to-see-you-naked stage fades, the relationship will center on how well you two get along just sharing space and time together. And if doing nothing with her feels like you’re serving hard time, that’s, uh, not so great.

5. YOUR FRIENDS AREN’T FANSEven if your friends have horrible taste in movies, music, or people they date, Page says they’ll have a pretty good idea of whether or not she’s good for you. And if they don’t get along with her — or if she can’t stand them — you probably have some serious issues. You can probably sense how they feel about each other, but if you’re not sure, ask a few who’ll be relatively impartial. “Listen to what your friends have to say when you ask their opinion,” he says. “Just don’t let their analysis of your situation be your only basis for breaking it off.” In other words, it should just confirm what you already knew deep down.

28/03 Ex-Girlfriend Details How Bonds Changed

March 28, 2011

Paul Sakuma/Associated Press
Kimberly Bell gave graphic and sometimes tearful testimony in United States District Court about the changes she noticed in Bonds during their nine-year relationship.

By JULIET MACUR

SAN FRANCISCO — Kimberly Bell — who was Barry Bonds’s girlfriend for nine years, spanning his two marriages — walked into the courtroom on Monday to testify at his perjury trial, and nearly everyone there turned to gawk at her.

Everyone except Bonds. As Bell took the witness stand, Bonds’s eyes were fixed on the defense table in Courtroom 10 of the Phillip Burton Federal Building. He knew what was coming.

For more than a decade, baseball and its fans have had to confront certain aspects of the sport’s steroids scandal: the unfair advantage gained by players who were using the drugs; the skepticism that baseball’s drug-testing policy was meaningfully set up to catch anyone; the tainted careers that have left likely Hall of Famers consigned to ignominy instead.

But on Monday, the public was introduced to what prosecutors insist is another side of the scandal: the physical toll of taking steroids, in effect what the athletes who used them were willing to do to their own bodies in pursuit of an advantage, real or imagined.

It was not pretty.

“He developed acne on his upper shoulders and back; his hair was falling out quickly, and he ended shaving it all off,” Bell testified of Bonds as the jury sat to her left, rapt. Then her voice grew so faint it was barely audible. “He changed sexually, in his testicles and performance and that.”

Between deep breaths and under unsparing questioning, Bell further testified: “The shape, size of his testicles were smaller, unusual, differently shaped.” Of Bonds, baseball’s official home run king, she testified that he had to resort to using “something” to resolve his trouble maintaining an erection.

For nearly six hours, Bell gave graphic and sometimes tearful testimony in United States District Court about the changes she noticed in Bonds, including a bloated face and belly. Prosecutors said all of it — the changed appearance and behavioral qualities — were documented symptoms of steroid use and thus evidence that Bonds had used them during his career, then lied about that fact under oath when questioned before a grand jury in 2003.

Bonds’s lawyers, in their cross-examination, tried to paint Bell as a vindictive, attention-craving gold-digger who was upset about their breakup. She posed in Playboy for money, was writing a book about her relationship with Bonds and gave at least 20 radio interviews about the subject, the defense pointed out.

Those attempts, to be sure, were aimed at blunting the power of her often explicit firsthand testimony.

Bell said she spoke to Bonds once about his possible steroid use, in 1999, but never pressed him about it because he told her it was common in baseball. Besides, she said he told her, he did not inject himself every day, as some bodybuilders do.

“He mentioned that other players do it and that’s how they got ahead,” Bell, who dated Bonds from 1994 to 2003, said. “That’s how they achieved.”

Bell testified that she had a good reason for never bringing up the subject of steroids with him again: she was afraid of him.

During their later years together, she said Bonds grew irritable and verbally abusive — “almost violent.” The government insists that change in his demeanor was brought about by steroid use.

Bell testified that Bonds threatened “to cut my head off and leave me in a ditch” and said that “he would cut out my breast implants because he paid for them.” He also said he was going to burn her house down, she said.

“I didn’t want to make him angry,” Bell said, growing teary. “I didn’t want him to yell at me.”

Their relationship started differently, she said. Bell first met Bonds in the parking lot of the San Francisco Giants’ stadium in the summer of 1994, then chatted with him the next day at a friend’s barbecue. She took a long drive with him in his new Porsche and spent the night with him that night, beginning their long relationship.

Bell said the first she heard of Bonds’s steroid use in 1999, when he talked about an elbow injury he had.

“He said it was because of steroids,” she said, adding that he explained that the muscle and tendons grew faster than the joint, so his elbow simply “blew out.”

Bell said she soon discovered that those achievements came at a cost. Bonds asked her to help clear up the acne on his back and shoulders, she said. She also remembered him standing in front of a mirror at spring training in 2000 and asking if she thought the bloating and puffiness in his face and belly were noticeable to others.

Yet she stayed with him. At times, he gave her money, in the thousands, and even helped her move to Arizona and put a down payment of $60,000 or maybe $80,000 on a house there shortly after he married his second wife, she said.

The defense questioned Bell’s motivation for testifying against Bonds, which she first did before a federal grand jury in 2005. Bell was angry that Bonds told her to “disappear” in early 2003, said Cris Arguedas, one of Bonds’s lawyers.

Arguedas said, “Sell a book that capitalizes on his fame, make a bunch of money, that was one part of your plan, wasn’t it?”

The Giants’ equipment manager, Mike Murphy, also testified Monday and said that Bonds’s cap size changed from 7 ¼ to 7‹. That change, prosecutors contend, showed Bonds’s head growth, which they say is evidence of use of human growth hormone.

Murphy, who has worked for the Giants for 54 years, said the cap size of several other Giants players, including Willie Mays and Willie McCovey, also increased, but only after they retired and gained weight.

The defense questioned Murphy for only a few minutes before Bell took the stand — and she remained there for the rest of the day. With her, the questioning was unrelenting.

Arguedas asked about an e-mail Bell sent to Bonds’s Web site after their breakup. Bell wrote about the other girlfriends she said Bonds had in other cities, calling one “the ugly whore in Vegas” and another “the stripper from Phoenix,” Arguedas said.

She asked Bell how Bonds — “the man you testified had some penile dysfunction” — could have so many girlfriends.

“You still weren’t angry?” Arguedas asked.

“Not really, no,” Bell answered.

At day’s end, a prosecutor, Jeffrey Nedrow, asked Bell, “Did you make this up just to get back at the defendant?” Bell answered no.

He asked, “Is it fun testifying in front of all these people?”

Choking up, Bell glanced at the jury and said no.



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