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A childless future? | page 1, 2, 3
An ex-lover I had been holding out for for four years just confessed he
now loves me more than ever and wants me back. These are words I
prayed to hear again. I am convinced he was my soul mate, but early in
our relationship he lost his job and pushed me away and was hateful and
cold, leading me on, saying he loved me and then saying it was
over. I pined for him for years. Then I got over him with the help of a
wonderful man who I have been dating for a year come next
Saturday. This is a stronger, healthier relationship. However, my
feelings are not as intense as the ones I had for my ex. Can I trust this
man again? He says he has changed and regrets how he treated me, and that the recent death of his father has made him realize how important I am to him.
Is the possibility of regaining that brief, beautiful, passionate
love worth losing the great relationship I have now? Torn and Tired Dear Torn and Tired, In a word, no. The hatefulness and the toying with
your feelings were plainly abusive, and nonetheless you held out hope for
four years: You have no reason now to believe he has changed. His story
about his father's death bringing him to his senses seems much too facile.
He's jealous about the new man; he wants to resume his drama with you.
I suppose he had a sort of dangerous mystique about him -- the
excitement of his passion followed by rejection -- but you're over that
now, so why go back to it? If you need intensity, go parasailing. Mr. Blue Garrison Keillor's column appears every Tuesday in Salon Books.
Feeling blue about your prose? In the doldrums over your last date? Ask Mr. Blue. Dear Mr. Blue, I am 32, somewhat overweight, but apparently still attractive to men because they flirt with me all the time -- until they find out that I am a highly educated woman making my living as a scientist. Then they treat me like I have the plague. Maybe they think I don't want to have kids. The truth is that I don't think there is a more noble job in the universe than raising children. And yet, how's a girl supposed to get married if she can't even get a date? I tried asking men out and that's even worse -- they get totally rattled. Sad and Lonely Dear S&L, If men are flirting with you, you're definitely attractive. If men are spooked by your intelligence or your work, then be glad you spooked them right away and saved yourself the trouble of getting to know them better. They're insecure; they don't know how to make conversation with an intelligent and accomplished woman; they're not the right men for you. If this keeps happening, you're hanging out in the wrong places. Change your route home, find a new place to drink coffee, quit going to that bar, switch gyms, change your religion. Dear Mr. Blue, I'm in my first year of a Ph.D. program in science, straight out of college. I love my mentor, but I hate everything else: the graduate school program, the big cold city where I live, the fact that I can't think of a single way to meet people. I feel like crying when I think of spending several years stuck here. When I applied to graduate schools, I was also offered a spot at a university on the West Coast, which I loved: the surroundings, the program, everything. I turned it down so I could work with this mentor. But now I'm not sure that was the right decision. Should I endure it, in hope it gets better? Should I transfer though it would set me back at least a year? Miserable and Lonely Dear Miserable, Sure, it probably does get better eventually, but why endure so much grief in order to be in the charmed company of your heroine? There are plenty of other mentors. You seem utterly too dependent on her and it's a very unequal relationship. I think you should give serious thought to moving to a situation you like better and don't worry about the waste of the year. You're young; you can afford a little indirection. Of course it would be good for your character to buckle down, make friends, get to like the city, but it'd be good for my character to take a cold shower every morning and eat a raw egg and read Deuteronomy and I don't do that, so why should you? Dear Mr. Blue, I'm a newspaper copy editor in a terrible funk. I moved into editing five years ago and since then have pined for the lost thrill of reporting. (My self-esteem has suffered; I've gained a lot of weight and my hair has turned into a frizzball.) I love writing and meeting new people and learning new things. But editing pays much better and I had hefty student loans to pay off. I've won awards for my writing and am almost convinced to apply for a reporting job even if it means a cut in pay. But I'm up for an executive editing post at a big paper. I have an interview scheduled for next week. I have to decide whether to go for the interview or whether to bite the bullet and apply for the reporting job. Perplexed and Miserable Dear Perplexed, Go for the interview. Talk to them. And if the job doesn't sing to you, then go back to reporting. If you were cut out to be an editor, you'd have taken to it by now. Instead, you're longing for your days as an ink-stained wretch sitting with the phone clamped to your ear, a cigarette hanging on your lower lip, banging out a story on your Underwood and yelling, "Copy!" Who can blame you? Executive editors, however, get to sit in their offices with feet up on their desks, thinking long thoughts about constitutional law and rapid transit. There may be days you'd enjoy doing that. Dear Mr. Blue, I feel like such a jerk. I have a big crush on the man who fixes my car. I had to tell him because it was driving me crazy so I wrote a letter to him and said maybe we could get together sometime. I know I scared him away because he never called me. I could never go back there again because I feel like a jerk. What do you think? The Jerk Dear T.J., I think you're awfully sweet and as far from jerkishness as you
can be. Maybe he's a jerk for not calling you, but you're not. Or maybe
he thought about calling you and tried to think of something interesting to
say to you on a date and all he could think of was brake linings and in his
anxiety he dropped your letter somewhere and can't find your phone
number. If you go back there again, be cool. And if he says something
about the letter, throw your head back and laugh in that wonderful girlish
way you probably have, as if the whole thing were a huge joke. Don't feel
bad about this for another minute.
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