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Hurt and confused | page 1, 2, 3
I have a longtime friend whom I love dearly, but I can barely stand to be around her these
days. She has become increasingly negative about her life, and conversations with her
inevitably turn into depressing pity parties. She has had a series of disappointing relationships
and can't seem to move on or learn to improve her choices. For every suggestion I make,
she has a reason why it can't possibly work. She seems to think that no one has ever had
problems as dire as her own and that if she could only find a decent man, her life would be
golden. I'm finding it harder and harder to sympathize with this person who won't help
herself or open her mind to new possibilities, and I'm tired of trying to downplay the good
things in my life in order not to depress her. How do I save this friendship? Sick of the Sob Stories Dear Sick, This is a friendship that needs to take a rest. Make yourself significantly less
available, and if you don't have the gift of lying convincingly, then make yourself busy for
a while, and fill up your calendar with things. Lying, though, is perfectly respectable. If a
friend asks, "Would you like to have dinner this evening and listen to me complain about my
life for a couple hours?" the truthful answer is No, but it's OK to say, "I can't, I'm sorry,"
which is a lie. You needn't supply details. If she asks for details, it's perfectly OK to make
up a few -- e.g., I am going to my therapist who feels that I need longer sessions and that I
need to lie down afterward with a cold compress. This is part of the art of friendship,
learning to make some distance when necessary. And then in a few months you call up the
Suffering One and say, "I can't believe it's been so long since I saw you!" and you see her
for lunch, and maybe this bad passage is over. Maybe she's discovered that the whole
problem was her allergic reaction to cat dander, or her unresolved anger toward Dad, or her
lack of zinc in the diet, and she'll be all shiny and happy.
Dear Mr. Blue, I'm really in a jumble. My boyfriend and I just broke up. He was my first serious boyfriend,
and we dated for a year and a half. Although I love him very much, I didn't
feel IN LOVE with him. He was thoughtful and kind and sweet and fun,
but something wasn't clicking. Now that we're apart, though, I'm
wondering if I have the wrong idea of what love is. What is being "in love," anyway? Am I
holding out for something that doesn't exist? Mega-confused Dear Confused, The failure to click is common. You get stuck talking to someone at a party
and they're OK, perfectly nice, they don't screech or give off noxious gas, and yet you
know in your heart you must make an escape and find someone else. This happens over and
over, at work with colleagues, at family reunions, even at Al Gore fund-raisers, and it
happens as a young person is looking for romance and a mate and a friend for life. You need
a few bumps so you get to learn what the game is about. In romance, as in life, you only
learn when you're losing. (When you're winning, you just sit there and grin like an idiot.)
You broke up with this fine gentleman for the best of all reasons -- it didn't feel right to you
-- and that's the one you don't try to argue yourself out of. What is it to be in love? Well, I'm in love, and it means you feel you have sailed into port. At the end of the road, after
each day of the petty struggle for power and glory, I get to be with this marvelous human being whose company is continually interesting, whom I admire, who can speak the truth to
me, who I am loyal to and fond of to an excessive degree, whom I crave being naked with, and who reciprocates these feelings. There is deep bass drumming and there is also a high
degree of civility, I believe. And it does exist. And it's worth your time and trouble to find a person you can be in love with. Surely there are many men you could be in love with, maybe as many as 214, and all you need to do is come across one of them when the stars are shining and the light is right for your complexion. He'll look at you
and fasten himself to you for the rest of the evening and it'll be all you can do to shuck him and after a while you'll give up on it and marry him. Dear Mr. Blue, My good friend and I have known each other since high school and have
always had a wonderful friendship filled with laughter and conversation and
affection. Once he even told me he was in love with me. I had to tell him I didn't return his
feelings. We remained friends. Almost eight years later, our time together started to become
more precious to me and I told him I was starting to have romantic feelings for him. He told
me that though he still loved me, he was not in love with me anymore. But we started
sleeping together and for four months now we've had this sweet, intimate,
thoughtful relationship. We both love each other and are happy when we're
together but neither of us feels that crazy-crazy feeling you see in
movies. Everyone says you don't have to ask if you're in love, you'll
know. Well, we don't know. We're both scared of hurting the
other one. I've been in love before, or thought I was, and it ended disastrously. As a result, I'm fearful of moving forward. Have we stumbled upon what we're both looking for or are we just fooling ourselves? Anxious Dear Anxious, Life ain't a movie, my dear, it's a radio show. And if you've got Sweet, Intimate and
Thoughtful down, many of us mortals out here would ask, "What exactly is the problem?" It
would appear that you two lovebirds have done a very nice job of backing into a romance,
and rather than scaring yourselves with shadows, you have our permission --- mine and the
rest of the audience's -- to enjoy it, be grateful for this sweet deal you have and allow it to
find its natural course. Anxiety is normal: Your mother gives you the family heirloom platter
to put in the cupboard, and you think, "I'm going to drop it," but you don't. We tantalize ourselves with worst scenarios, as a way to keep up our interest, and we walk dark streets
and hear the violins play pizzicato horror riffs, but the killer doesn't leap out of the shadows,
we walk home. Right now, you need to stop looking at your romance. It's too new to analyze, so stop examining it and just live it and be happy with each other. If you want that
crazy-crazy feeling, go to Utah and rent a snowboard or take a raft down the Colorado. It would be a shame for two fine folks like yourselves to let anxiety about the future darken the
pleasures of the moment. Relax. Don't hurt each other. Mazel tov. God bless you. Dear Mr. Blue, Eighteen months ago I met the love of my life and took a job in Boston so I could be with
her. And then she said she had changed her mind and she began to see someone else. She
hasn't explained what happened and she doesn't want to have anything to do
with me. I'm crushed by her abrupt change. And to live this close to her now and not be
even a small part of her life is killing me. How can someone act so in love and then just turn
it off like it never happened? Brokenhearted Dear Brokenhearted, The Red Sox have been doing this to Bostonians since forever, my
man, so don't feel you're alone. How can it happen? Well, people crave romance, and they
want that elation, want to speak that delicious dumb dialogue and say, "I'm crazy about you,"
and hear it said back. Even honest and upright people feel the urge to let go and dance the
old dance. Americans are terribly hard-working and strait-laced folks. Even Swedes have
more fun than we do. And every so often we hurl ourselves into a love affair with a big
soundtrack. And we enjoy the music for a while and then reality falls like a bucket of dead
mackerel. Or like a late September series against the Yankees. Don't hate her for what
happened. Be grateful for the swiftness of her change of heart: It's more merciful than to
have to endure this in slow motion and to get the awful truth drop by drop. And believe me,
she wasn't the love of your life. You might get a big sense of relief, though, simply by
leaving Boston. | ||
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