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The plot thickens | page 1, 2, 3
I'm 30 and have a boyfriend whom I love dearly. He is
creative and handsome and considerate; the problem is, he doesn't
stimulate me intellectually. It wasn't a problem until I met an
older man -- someone I approached about being a mentor to
me -- who is very intelligent, well-traveled and a successful
writer. He also happens to be attracted to me. I've become
infatuated with the mentor; we live in different
cities so the complications from having an affair have so far
been avoided. I'm tempted to run off with this older man, who
represents everything I feel is lacking in my life. It's risky in
many ways, but our connection is so intense that I'd be a fool to
ignore it. At the same time, I'm terrified of leaving my
boyfriend -- I still love him, and I don't want to hurt him. I'm
also afraid that our mutual friends would take his side, so I'd
be losing my social circle as well. I'm torn between adventure
and security. I want both. Is there a way for me to have my cake
and eat it too? On the Fence in SF Dear On the Fence, Mad impulses strike each of us. We just have
to deal with them, that's all. I have an impulse to become a
saloon singer, which I feel would fill the empty places in my
life. So far I haven't done this. The part I don't understand is
about your going to an older writer and asking him to be your
mentor. Do people really do this? Am I just hopelessly dumb? No
attractive 30-year-old ever walked up to me and asked me to
mentor her. Is it because my eyebrows are too bushy? Am I not
well-traveled? OK, forget about that. I'll work through that
myself. As for your question about cake, it strikes me as
cunning, as does your letter, and it strikes me that what is
lacking in your life is knowledge of yourself. You don't need to
ask anybody's permission to run off with your mentor and have a
mad romance in Tuscany and fulfill each other totally, fully,
ultimately, and lead a delirious life among the vineyards. I
think the successful writer may have violated the code of the
American Mentoring Association, but that's his problem. Dear Mr. Blue, My boyfriend and I have been living together for three years, and
with each passing day we get closer and further apart. We're like
family -- caring, affectionate, concerned for one another -- but
there's no romance. I'm much more like his sister than his lover.
I often fantasize about rekindling an old relationship (which I
know is a bad idea). How does one go about solving this? Do I poke my current
mate in the ribs and make him start being romantic again
(whatever that means)? Finding myself a new lover sure is
tempting, but it'll take forever to develop the comfort level I
have with my "brother." Sibling in Silicon Valley Dear Sibling, What comfort level are you talking about? You don't
seem comfortable to me, you seem dissatisfied and restless. Maybe
you're reluctant to cause pain to a good person, which is an
inevitable thing in life but something one naturally shrinks
from. As for poking him in the ribs, you know better than I if
his ribs are erogenous or not. Let me raise a hypothetical: What
if your live-in brother told you tomorrow that he thinks he
prefers men to women? Would that send you screaming and weeping
to a therapist? I doubt it. I think you could tell him that
you're thinking about finding a lover, and if he really cares
about you and if he's in touch with reality, he'd deal with it.
We don't own each other, you know. We're only lent, and on
certain terms. He isn't holding up his end of the deal. Dear Mr. Blue, I just turned 37, and suddenly realized that -- damn! -- I forgot
to get married and have kids. My banal question is: How does a reasonably smart, reasonably
pretty woman meet a mate in the big city? I've had long-term
relationships, and when I was younger it was never any work to
find a boyfriend. But these days, most men my age or older are
already married. Being a man, you must know how to locate others of your species. Mateless in Manhattan Dear Mateless, At 37 you're probably not going to find a fresh,
crisp one; probably you're going to pick one up off the floor,
where he lies weeping and wounded from his divorce. He'll be
older than you, maybe 10 or 15 years older, and he won't
see you as reasonably smart and pretty, he'll see you as Athena
and Aphrodite. On his good days. On his bad days, he'll weep in
his beer over the crummy way he treated Mildred and Timmy and
Trish. He'll be a little wobbly, like a bicycle with a bent
frame. He'll be terribly grateful for you. I don't know if he'll
want to have kids or not. Not at first, but maybe as a favor to
you. You won't find this guy by searching for him. He'll find
you, probably through a friend. Let your friends know what you're
thinking. Meanwhile, enjoy Manhattan. Dear Mr. Blue, I'm surprised and shocked that you've made a mistake in your
advice. You shouldn't be advising a woman to spend time alone
with a married man. I have come to the point where I won't even
take a female co-worker to lunch without another co-worker present.
Let's face it, solitary conversations are an intimacy. That
intimacy can easily grow into something else. If marriage
means something, the line must be drawn somewhere. This is mine.
No intimate lunches. It has prevented lots of
problems and I honestly wish I'd started this many years ago. Wiser Dear Wiser, Good for you. But I'm glad to have lunch now and then
with another woman, not secretly or intimately, just a lunch on a
sunny terrace in St. Paul, Minn., that I'd be very happy if
my wife walked by and sat down and joined us. I love to talk to
women. I don't see a reason to erect fences around the lunch. Of
course, a lunch between me and another woman is intimate. I don't
see intimacy as being necessarily sexual. I see it as necessary
to friendship, and if my friendships were limited to men, I'd
feel crippled. Dear Mr. Blue, I am 23, single for about, well, 23 years. Sure, I've
had a few brief flings, but nothing substantial. Never had a
high-school sweetheart. Never even succeeded in asking a woman
out for dinner. I've tried to avoid one-nighters, and the result
is that I've had absolutely no luck at all. Most of the time I
have no problem with this, but sometimes I get a little antsy
about it and try to be a little more aggressive and ask women
out. And then I screw up all over the place. Either I wait too
long to ask, or I ask too soon. Often I misread their signals. Or
my higher cognitive functions shut down entirely and ask the
Wrong Woman, like a psychopath for example. I have no trouble at all having good old-fashioned friendships
with women. Some of my best friends are female. Am I sending bad
signals to women I'm interested in? Or just unlucky?
I'm happy being single, but I don't want to spend the rest of my
life that way. Then
again it's hard to ignore the repeating patterns that are
emerging. Antsy Dear Antsy, Ask one of your old-fashioned friendly women for
advice. Maybe you have bad timing. Maybe you have weird hair. Or
bad breath. Maybe there is a small chunk of food on your upper
lip. Get a friendly woman to check you out, and then go mill in
the crowd. You're a young guy, and there's nothing wrong with
your not having had a steady sweetheart or asked someone out to
dinner. You're eager and hopeful and that's what's important.
Don't brood. Be happy about the company of women, and something
will happen. Feeling blue about your prose? In the doldrums over your last date? Ask Mr. Blue.
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