How to Be a Person in the World: Ask Polly's Guide Through the Paradoxes of Modern Life (2016)

II

You Are Uniquely Qualified to Bring You the World

What Would Kanye Do?

Polly,

My question is a simple and boring one: How do I find love? And, more importantly, how do I cultivate self-esteem? I’m in my late twenties, and I tend to get into relationships with dudes who are only half-interested in me, and then I badger them to death about their half-assed interest until the relationship slowly dies. What I want most, MOST, in the world is a happy family. Children I feel joy with. A genuinely happy marriage that lasts until I kick the goddamn bucket. I grew up with very unhappy, miserable parents who immigrated to the States, and I don’t even know what to look for in a partner or a relationship. I feel like if a guy is “nice” (i.e., doesn’t hit me or call me names and has generally good character), then I should just quit whining and wondering about why they’re not crazy about me, why they never pursue me, why they are always so goddamn tepid.

I want a big, passionate, happy, funny, fun love. I am afraid I will never find it. I think I am as likable as the next person, but I’m not sure how to make myself attractive to men. I guess I just feel ugly and unlovable, and I would like to stop.

I love your advice. (Is straight-up “I love you” too much? Probably, but still, I do!) I’ve been reading your stuff for a couple years on Rabbit Blog, and now I stalk you on The Awl.

Thanks,

A Reader

Dear Reader,

I love you, too, mostly because (1) you love me already, (2) you’ve put in a little effort to follow me here, (3) I can relate to wanting for years to tear my hair out over tepid motherfuckers, and (4) when you ask me this very simple question, I feel like a mathematical genius or a historian whose thoughts separate into layers and then keep expanding to infinity so that I don’t know where to start because there are just so many possibilities, all of them rich and exciting. And even though a regular person who didn’t love me and didn’t follow me here and isn’t frustrated over tepid motherfuckers will read that and say, “Jesus, lady, you’re an advice columnist, not a fucking math genius or historian, and even if you have fifty million approaches to this woman’s totally mundane fixations, that hardly qualifies you as one of today’s great minds. I’m sure she creeps men out because she’s boring or her ass is enormous. And you’re creepy, too, because you’re fucking old and you’re still dedicating all of this time to twentysomething girl trouble when you could maybe be doing something vaguely worthwhile with your life, if you weren’t so smug about your pathetic little Interwebs hobby.”

See how it works? You dig me, you put in effort, you aren’t remotely tepid, we can relate to each other, and you make me feel like the things that are patently fucked about me are actually thrilling and vital and they somehow matter. (And I know you’re exciting, and I love your juicy booty, but that’s not the point.)

Now imagine for a second that someone were to write to me and say, “Look, you’re just okay and you’re old and you’re wasting your time on this bullshit.” And imagine that I spend several hours of my time explaining why I’m awesome and my work here is incredibly significant to the health of the planet, and I fucking matter and I have great ideas, brilliant fucking ideas, I’m a genius, and seriously, what the fuck is wrong with you? Suddenly this tepid bit of flotsam is taking up my time, and instead of turning away from it, I’m making claims that my work is deeply important (which I realize is a highly subjective stance).

I’m starting to sound just like Kanye.

I love Kanye, and he sounds the way he sounds in interviews for a very good reason. He sounds that way because he’s an artist with great ideas who not only lives in a racist world but also lives in a world that isn’t all that appreciative of someone who delivers a passionate, angry response to his critics. He lives in a world that devalues free-flowing, emotional discourse from a black man unless it’s packaged very neatly into a rap. (Please note: This world also devalues free-flowing, emotional discourse from a woman unless she’s also funny AND sexy. If you’re not super fucking hot and funny, you can go fuck yourself, ladies.)

Kanye isn’t perfect, but you pretty much either love him and think he’s a genius and then he makes some sense to you, or you don’t get it and he seems crazy. Maybe you don’t love him because you don’t love his music or some of the mistakes he’s made in the past, or maybe you don’t love him because you’re a racist; those two responses actually look the same to him, and why shouldn’t they? Because the world is, verifiably, filled with racist motherfuckers, this is not a confused response. It’s an emotional one. He doesn’t love you either way. Maybe it’s a mistake for him to keep talking about it. Or maybe he’s helping everyone by being the symbol of a kind of anger that people are vexed by and afraid of. All I know is, I feel for him. Because lots of people don’t understand what he’s doing, and so they belittle him. And he’s right, they DO just want to meet him, leech off him, take photos of him, point at him, get him to sign some deal, kiss his ass, and laugh behind his back.

To which he says, “Fuck you AND your Hampton house, I’ll fuck your Hampton spouse, came on her Hampton blouse,” etc.

I know, add misogyny to my ass-objectification. Look, I have to be my brutal self, too. This is the texture of the world we live in, and stepping around it politely makes me feel crazy.

So here’s where we land: You need to tell tepid to fuck right off, Kanye-style. If you vow right now that the second you see tepid, you’re going to back up and say, “No fucking thanks,” and move on without looking back, then your self-esteem will immediately bounce back from years of abuse. That means retiring the soliloquy about how great you are. That means no more badgering. Replace the badgering with a rap. Write it down, file it away, move the fuck on. (Fuck you AND your futon. I’ll fuck your best friend, Sean. I’ll fuck him till the dawn. I’ll make your man my pawn. Fuck having late-night drinks. Fuck playing tiddlywinks. Fuck all your tepid kinks. Your half-assed shit still stinks.)

And you know what? Okay, I’m stretching this Kanye metaphor beyond the breaking point, but bear with me. We live in some crazy fucking times. Sexism is everywhere, and we’re not even confused by it anymore; we’re just drinking it down like water without thinking. How can we make enemies of people we want to get dirty with, and get love from, and make babies with?

And men are great, let’s be honest. Those filthy, simpleminded, government-bungling ball scratchers. We love those dicks. Love. Sincerely, desperately, quietly, devotedly. I have one in my own home—in my bed, of all places. Who let him in here? But he’s great, really—much more honorable and kinder than me, as a matter of fact. Sharp as a tack and best all around.

But here’s a little anecdote for you: I went out to a bar the other night with some women, and it was late at night (I have two kids; this is rare for me), and there were some men there—regular guys, reasonably okay-looking. Flirtatious high-fiving types? And they started shooting the shit with us. And we women were polite. Some were nice; others ignored them. Well, I like a high fiver. I spent years around the sports-loving bro species, and I appreciate them. That said, I don’t want to follow their meandering bullshit wherever it leads, and I don’t want to flirt, and I don’t want to feed their egos. I want to engage in a give-and-take conversation while occasionally calling them on their shit.

But you know what? It’s an accident of fate that I ever hung out with high fivers in my entire life because most of those guys hate me. HATE. They find me physically repellent.

These particular guys, I couldn’t care less about. But that’s the soup I’ve been in, without knowing it, since I was really young and single. Most guys I met preferred my flirty lady friends to me. Now sometimes slightly weird guys, slightly smarter, stranger, maybe more damaged, or maybe just more sensitive guys (or both), they were a little intrigued by my not-buying-it face and my assertive here’s-what-I-fucking-think fat mouth, or maybe they just liked my ass, which truly was a force of nature for a time. So what was it, my ass or my big personality? My sorta-pretty face, or my almost-smart words? I never knew. UNTIL THE BITCHES GOT TEPID. And by then we were already sleeping together and hanging out around the clock.

But did I say to myself, “Oh. He doesn’t like me. He likes my ass. A lot. Enough to put up with my bullshit for a while”? No. I didn’t say that. I can look back now and see the truth. “That dude didn’t even like me.” Or: “That dude didn’t even like women all that much.” Or: “He liked my personality enough to date me, but he would’ve liked me a lot more if I were about half as smart and half as talkative.”

And remember about Kanye? Remember your badgering? When you suspect that a guy doesn’t like you? You talk too much. Instead of talking so much, you should be saying, “Fuck you AND your Hampton house.” Yes, your first priority should be to keep an open mind, to listen, to observe men with a clear, uncluttered perspective. Your second priority should be to never, ever waste a minute of your time on a guy who’s tepid.

Because tepid is everywhere. Tepid is the air we breathe. Listen to me: We women can’t do anything right. We can’t say what we mean, we can’t be ourselves, we can’t age, we can’t talk about feelings, we can’t fuck up. This is how it feels to be a woman, motherfucker. The world is filled with human beings who want us to shut up and shake our asses—the end.

Can you fucking imagine if we had our own Kanye? For her to have Kanye’s power, and get invited to do the late-night circuit, of course she’d have to be a mega-hot, funny-as-shit woman who walked around looking exactly like the chick in the short skirt who eats giant hamburgers on those Carl’s Jr. ads, but instead of eating a hamburger, she’d be saying, “FUCK YOU, YOU ARE A SEXIST FUCK.” I mean, sure, we have our women who look mortal and say this. Are they on TV? Rachel Maddow, she’s on TV. How many people in that bar would even know who the fuck she is? Who listens closely to Lena Dunham (who is gorgeous by the way)? No, she’s not shaped right to listen to, right? She’s too full of herself? She’s too annoying?

Let’s not fall down that rabbit hole. All I’m saying is, here we are in a fucked-up world. And even when you find your species, you still are sometimes just a piece of ass to the best of them. Not even because they’re incredibly sexist—maybe they’re just pragmatic, or ambivalent in this case. They don’t happen to love you, is all. They don’t think you’re a math genius or a historian. They think that when you talk, you’re wasting their time a little. That doesn’t mean they’re bad. Sure, you want those guys and their futons and their best friend, Sean, to go fuck themselves, but that doesn’t mean they’re evil. But once they don’t love you, who the fuck cares about them? Were those dudes in the bar sexist for not being into me, or did they just think I was sort of bossy and repellent? Who the fuck cares?

You’re hunting a very small group, that’s all. Your target demographic, it’s small. There’s more than one of them, but they’re not everywhere.

That doesn’t mean your odds are bad! You will find love. Believe me. But in order to find it, I think you have to prepare yourself for a life alone and be at peace with that. It’s a real tightrope walk. I get it. But you won’t tell tepid to fuck off if you don’t believe in your heart that you will rock it out one way or another.

In order to tell tepid to fuck off once and for all, you MUST recognize that life among those who don’t appreciate or understand you is bullshit. You don’t want to live that way. You don’t want to be badgery and lonely while you’re with someone. You’d rather be alone.

What will make ALONE look good to you? You have to work on that. Because single life needs to look really, really good. You have to believe in it if you’re going to hold out for that rare guy who makes you feel like all of your ideas start rapidly expanding and approaching infinity when you talk to him. You need to have a vision of life alone, stretching into the future, and you need to think about how to make that vision rich and full and pretty. You have to put on an artist’s mind-set and get creative and paint a portrait of yourself alone that’s breathtaking. You have to bring the full force of who you are and what you love to that project.

And then you go out into the world with an open heart, and you let people into your life, and you listen, and you embrace them for who they are. You make new friends. You do new things that make you feel more like the strong single woman who owns the world that’s in your vision. And you don’t sleep with anyone until things are much warmer than lukewarm. And you accept that if things are lukewarm after that, you will be forced to kick a motherfucker to the curb, but with kindness, with forgiveness.

You have to do a lot. And you have to do it all against a backdrop of indifference that, as you get older, curdles into a kind of disgust. But you know what? We have each other. We have worlds within us, you and me. This mean, mean planet still rewards those who can see the depth and beauty of what they carry around inside of themselves. This indifferent landscape will rise up and give you love if you share what you have inside, if you dare to believe in your potential even as people tell you it’s a mirage, if you ignore the ones who are allergic to free-flowing, emotional discourse from you. They are everywhere, and they don’t matter. God bless them. Come on their Hampton blouse, and move on.

Polly

My Boyfriend Has Never Had a Job

Hi, Polly,

My boyfriend and I have been dating for three and a half years. We met in college, which is like an incubator for relationships: You look for smart, funny, liberal (if you’re in the South) partners. The notion of “Is this person practical?” doesn’t really register.

All right, I’ll cut to the chase: My boyfriend is chronically unemployed, and I can’t decide whether to break up with him or if even thinking that makes me a shallow, awful person.

He’s never had a job during our entire relationship. Part of that was time spent in college, which doesn’t count. But then he graduated with a useless humanities degree and couldn’t find a job. I graduated with the same degree, but considering I’ve had to work my ass off since I was seventeen to survive, I hustled and found work.

I’m currently in graduate school, pursuing my dreams, but I still pay our entire rent. It’s so much stress. And he knows it—he does all of the housework; I know he tries to find jobs (he’s just not good at it?). I think he’s clinically depressed, but considering we have no money, it’s not like he can get treatment for it.

At what point does a total lack of practicality become a deal breaker? I love him, he’s my best friend, our cats like him more than me. But I feel more like his parent than his girlfriend. And there’s a part of me that wonders, if I break up with him, what will he do? I worry that he’d have to move back in with his emotionally unavailable parents, sink into a deeper depression…Sigh.

Help.

Signed,

Freeloader Lover

Dear Freeloader Lover,

The words “chronically unemployed” imply that your boyfriend has been employed at some point. But if he’s twenty-five or twenty-six years old and he hasn’t had a job since college or before that, he isn’t chronically unemployed. HE IS STUCK.

You have to dump him. For your sake, but also for his. He’s not going to get unstuck until he takes responsibility for himself, walks out the door, and gets some kind of a job. Any job. The way he’s living right now is unacceptable. I don’t care if he’s looked for work before and can’t find what he wants. He can work somewhere. He can do SOMETHING. You don’t need a housekeeper. You need a partner.

And here’s what you need to understand, more than anything else: You aren’t helping him by paying for everything. You’re hurting him. He’s like an addict. He’s needy and he depends on you and he’s hiding from his whole life. He thinks that he can feed the cats and do all the housework and maybe he can hide from the world forever.

He’s wrong. And more than that, hiding isn’t making him happy. He feels like a loser. He feels like it’s only a matter of time before you dump him. These aren’t good feelings. I’ve been in that state before, and if I had someone who loved me, who was willing to pay ALL of the rent when I was young and sad and didn’t want to do anything with myself, I would’ve taken full advantage of that. Thank god I didn’t have that person in my life.

I’ve also felt like someone’s parent before. I know how you feel, and it sucks. You feel responsible for holding this grown adult together. But it can also feel good, in a weird way. It’s satisfying to be needed that much, especially if you’ve never been needed before. It can bring out all of your nurturing instincts, whether you’re a man or a woman. If you walk in the door and there’s someone there, happy to see you, cooking you dinner, thrilled to hear about your day? That can be pretty satisfying. Some of us have never had that. And if he gives you a lot of credit for being someone who knows how to go out into the real world and bring home the bacon? Well, it’s hard not to take pride in that.

The problem is that nine times out of ten it doesn’t last. Not only do finances become strained to the point where you can’t do anything out of the house, ever, but those excellent dinners disappear. Instead of being greeted with a smile, you’re greeted with the sound of snoring on the couch. Or the sound of a bong being fired up while Assassin’s Creed loads on the TV. If your guy doesn’t already smoke a lot of pot…well, I’m sort of guessing he does. But he has a big problem either way.

And that means you’ve got a big problem.

I get how hard it is to dump someone you feel 100 percent responsible for. When I was in my late twenties, I had what I thought was a really great boyfriend who in reality wasn’t bringing much to the table and couldn’t face the real world. We were stuck in a bubble together. He was childlike. He could be great company sometimes, but he wasn’t a great partner yet. He needed to grow up.

I will never forget watching him walk away after I broke up with him. He looked like a sad little kid. I felt like I’d just kicked my own son out of the house. I know that sounds absurd, but really it was that crushing. I didn’t just feel guilty; I felt completely heartbroken and ill. I wanted my kid back. I wanted him to feel safe.

And I didn’t get over him quickly, either. I wanted to date adult men, but I still wanted my ex in my life, because I loved him so much. I wanted to take him with me wherever I went, like a teddy bear. I never wanted to say good-bye. He understood me. It was so comfortable and comforting! He really loved me—and, again, HE NEEDED ME.

But you know what we both needed? To break our co-dependent bond and face ourselves. That wasn’t going to happen when we were together. So he was a casualty of my youth. And I didn’t find someone who was the same intellectual match for me for years after that. I fell in love, but I didn’t feel that comforted and loved again until I met my husband.

You will feel lonely and sad. You’ll miss your boyfriend. But you have to push him out the door. You can’t be responsible for where he lands. You could give him a month to find a job. But honestly, I think you already know that he needs to live alone regardless. He needs to handle his own life. He needs to grow up. He’s not going to do that living with you. He’s depressed, and he wants you to take care of him. Taking care of him doesn’t help him; it only makes him more depressed.

He’ll need to get a job and an apartment and learn to fend for himself. But you might be surprised at how independent he can become, once he’s forced to snap out of it. He might hate working an entry-level job (who doesn’t?), but he’ll be better off for it. If he wants to crawl back to his family’s house, that’s his call. But you have to remind yourself that it’s not your problem.

Struggling with a shitty job is part of growing up. You punch the clock at a horrible job for a few years, and guess what? It sucks. But eventually, you start to figure out how to get a job you actually enjoy. That doesn’t happen when you’re vacuuming and playing with cats full-time.

Let your boyfriend down gently. Doing that doesn’t make you a shallow, awful person. It makes you a sane person. It means you care about his well-being. Don’t blame him for being lost and paralyzed by his circumstances. Tell him you believe in him, but you need to move forward separately now. Dump him with compassion. But dump him. He’ll thank you for it someday.

Polly

Devil Town

Dear Polly,

Two years ago, I was sexually assaulted by a longtime pal. We’d worked together for a decade, shared triumphs and losses over the years, and I considered him one of my most trustworthy friends. And then he hit some especially rough patches—alcoholism, midlife-crisis kind of stuff. He left his wife, ignored his child, and went off the deep end, constantly partying and living up this new single life. He also became so aggressive toward women that he was banned from our usual drinking establishment. Although he was popular with a particularly hip, snarky, creative subset of people in our small town, he was also widely disliked, in large part because women tend to be creeped out by him. For many years, I defended him, excusing the weird vibes others perceived as his “dumb sense of humor.” Turns out, those folks called it. I’d already started edging away from him, but given our long history, untangling from our friendship wasn’t easy. And then one night he attacked me at a club, repeatedly and violently shoving his hands under my dress, grabbing between my legs, all while laughing in my face as I tried to shove him away. If it had been anyone else, I’d have grabbed security, called the cops, pressed charges. As it was, I had to run to my car to get away from him.

The next day, he shrugged it off but agreed it would be best that I moved out of our shared work space. My husband was appalled (obviously), but being aware of the hell this guy’s wife and child were already going through, we decided it would be best to move on without adding to their suffering (by pressing charges or otherwise confronting him). By this point, many people in town had a horror story about dealing with him as he was constantly drunk, starting fights, torpedoing his business, and otherwise burning all bridges. Eventually, he ran out of people willing to associate with him. He also got a DUI. That must have been a wake-up call, because after that he started laying low and even convinced his wife to take him back. Several months passed, then he reemerged on the scene, getting a job at a place where I did consulting work and popping up at social engagements. I found myself reacting with both uncontrollable anxiety and disgust that he would get to be the cool kid again after hurting so many people. I started sharing what had happened—and how much I was struggling over being confronted with him—with mutual friends. To my great relief, they were horrified and quite clear in their desire to support me. I was especially gratified that my guy friends took this so seriously.

Except for two of them. These two not only celebrated his return but actively campaigned for him, helping him get a really good job and inviting him into our shared circle. This put me—and the friends supporting me—into a terrible position. It’s too small a town to easily shun someone, but if it weren’t for the efforts of these two guys, at least my closest circle would have been safe.

I basically lost my shit over this. How could they be on his side and not take what happened seriously? How could they advocate for someone who sexually assaulted me and others? They’re supposed to be my friends. When one of them got screwed over by his boss years ago, I took a public stand against the business, despite doing so having an impact on my own career. I’ve been there for the other one more times than I can remember. And they’re jettisoning all that for the sake of this creep, whom I know better than either of them?

Eventually, they started to consider me the asshole for making them feel bad about supporting a man who was, in their words, “trying to rebuild his life.” I realized that I was going to have to give up this battle. So, deep breath, we had some conversations in which I conveyed my intent to agree to disagree.

Then, a couple nights ago, I was fixing something on my husband’s Facebook page and saw an interaction in the side feed between one of those two friends and the guy who assaulted me. I lost my shit all over again, chatted angrily at him, to which he responded horribly, accusing me of focusing my anger at him instead of the person I “think” hurt me, saying I’m awful for not forgiving, etc. So now I’m mad at myself because I already knew they talked all the time, plus I made a point of deciding to at least forgive the two guys for not understanding. Now I’ve reneged on that promise. I’m finally really the bad guy.

I need help figuring out how to forgive. Am I crazy for thinking my friends should be loyal to me over someone who has behaved so horribly? Other than moving away (not currently an option), how do I navigate this? Do I just pretend things are fine until maybe eventually they will be? Why don’t these people understand? Why do I have to suck it up and the guy who attacked people gets to skate? Why does the bad guy get to win? Am I being overly judgmental, forgetting that I, too, can be a real jerk at times? (I have never assaulted anyone, please note.) Do I want too much? I’ve been asking myself these questions for months. I’m stuck.

Floundering

Dear Floundering,

Your letter reminds me of a Daniel Johnston song called “Devil Town.” Johnston tells the story of living in an evil place without knowing it, only to wake up one morning and discover that all of his friends are vampires. “Oh lord, it really brings me down about the devil town,” he sings.

It’s such a strange, simple song, but it’s also devastatingly sad. You think you’re surrounded by trustworthy friends, and then you wake up one morning and realize they can’t be trusted.

Some readers might believe that you’re overreacting to your situation. To me, the crucial part of your story is not the grabbing, per se, but the fact that this guy laughed in your face as you said no. That’s malice. It suggests not only that he’s a deeply screwed-up person but also that he’s intent on making other people feel powerless. That malice is what makes it almost impossible for you to get over this. He was your friend, and suddenly he wanted to torment you.

On top of that, it sounds like he never apologized. He shrugged it off, apparently never owned up to his other aggressive acts, and never addressed this insane, predatory behavior that cropped up in the midst of his drinking. If that’s true and he never faced what he did, then basically he’s the same dangerous asshole he always was. He did not reform himself. He is still a bad guy. It’s disturbing that your friends can’t see that. But it’s also not all that surprising.

Sure, at first glance, your friends are merely “supporting” their buddy and helping him get his life back together. But have they heard you out and respected your feelings about what this guy did to you? Did they understand his offense in the first place? No. They don’t “get” sexual assault, or they wouldn’t refer to “the person you think hurt you,” as if you imagined the relentless grabbing and the fleeing and all of it. They don’t understand the difference between making a blind-drunk pass at someone and deliberately grabbing and chasing and laughing all the while. They don’t know what it feels like to see that kind of malice in someone’s eyes. That’s why this jerk haunts your dreams and makes you anxious when you see him. His intention—to make you feel small and powerless—was crystal clear to you. What he wanted you to know, at some cellular level, even in his boozy state, was that even after years of friendship and trust between you you’re still just a piece of ass to him.

When someone gets drunk and uses racial epithets at a friend out of the blue, what does that say? It says, “Some part of me wants to cut you down to size.” That’s racist culture and it’s asshole culture and it’s also just being an unmitigated asshole to the core. Your ex-friend has demonstrated a similar kind of hatred.

Your reaction to this guy is natural and justified. Your anxiety makes perfect sense. You don’t want to be around him. You tried not to make things worse for his wife, but you told your friends. You wanted to protect them and yourself.

Your two friends may think they’re helping him and that you’re heartless for staying focused on something he did when he was drunk. But that’s misguided. He never apologized. He never came clean. He never confronted the beast he became when he drank. That beast is still there. If he’d handled things differently, acknowledged that he did terrible things, that would be different. You still wouldn’t want anything to do with him, but you would at least know that he’d faced his actions. Instead, your mutual friends have helped him take a shortcut. That was shortsighted of them, and it sprang from their essential misunderstanding of his offenses. They didn’t call you to talk about the fact that they were supporting him or consider how it might affect you. They didn’t ask you questions about what you went through. They took the easy way out.

You SENSED this all along. You chose to assume they understood your pain but they wanted to support their friend. You addressed the situation with the two of them directly, you agreed to disagree, and you moved on. Perfectly mature and not a bad choice. But do you see how YOU had to do the bending and they didn’t do a thing to facilitate that? Then you saw the friend interacting with the jerk, and it upset you. Totally natural that it would upset you. You confronted him.

And while it probably wasn’t completely fair to take him to task for being friends with this guy when you’d said you accepted it, what came out of that interaction? You learned that he never took your account seriously. His attitude was “Fuck what you think happened; you’re wrong. I wasn’t there, but I’ve decided independently that you’re making it up.” That was under the surface of your interactions with that friend all along.

Fuck that guy. He’s not your friend.

Sure, it wasn’t all that prudent of you to start hurling angry words at him over Facebook. But does that make YOU the culprit here? No, it does not. You were angry because the creepy predator ex-friend’s attack on you is a haunting thing in your life. Why is it a haunting thing? Because he grabbed your body violently, in public, and laughed in your face while he was doing it. “See how small you feel? See how little you mean to me?” He’s attracted to you and can’t stand the power you wield over him, so he has to make you feel demeaned and pathetic. That dynamic is as old as time, and it’s one of the most frightening things a woman can face.

Some people believe that every aggressive sexual act or unwelcome advance adds up to the same thing. My personal feeling is that context and attitude matter a great fucking deal, both in how we define an act and in how quickly we might be expected to “recover” from it. In your case, your ex-friend’s actions and his attitude sent a very strong message: “You’re not a person to me. You don’t exist. Years of friendship, professional affiliation, mutual friends: It all adds up to nothing. You are nothing to me. Your feelings don’t matter; your thoughts don’t matter. You’re still JUST A WOMAN. When you say, ‘Stop!’ I’ll laugh at you, because your words add up to nothing.”

You had power over him, so he wanted to erase you. Acts of malice stay with the body. They are not easily forgotten.

Because what you’re describing is not a bit of drunken, idiotic grabbiness or unfortunate cluelessness. It’s malignant and purposefully demeaning. I suspect that most women reading this know exactly what that energy feels like. We’ve been there. It’s different.

It takes some explaining for guys like your two friends to get it, having never been close to that particular kind of malice. Maybe it would make you feel better to describe it to them in writing so they’ll get it. Maybe they need to have the cruelty of that act explained to them. Maybe they need to hear that until this guy apologizes directly to you, you aren’t about to take his “reformation” seriously. It should’ve happened a long time ago. If he wanted to live in your community, he should’ve addressed what he did to you and anyone else he hurt or disrespected.

Otherwise, what the fuck? It’s amazing, the horseshit we expect women to swallow and act like it’s honey.

And now you’re the bad guy because you exploded? And even you believe that! Your mistake was that you tried to push your emotions aside and accept a situation that is un-fucking-acceptable. Trust me, I’m all for pushing emotions aside and dealing when life requires it. But you can’t forgive and forget, because it turns out you’re still angry.

Why? Because they aren’t listening to you. They think you’re needlessly stirring up trouble. I would write to them and explain to them what malice feels like. I would explain that their friend hurt many people, and that hurt is real, and those people don’t want to see his fucking face anymore for a very good reason.

Then I’d move on, knowing you’ve expressed yourself clearly, not through a chat on Facebook, but on paper.

Is that the wisest thing to do? I can’t say for sure. The wisest thing might be just to accept that these guys are blind and stay out of their lives. They have the luxury of not having to see. And they have the luxury of not having to see the luxury of their blindness. They would rather call the seeing world crazy than open their fucking eyes. But if you feel strongly enough about it, you may owe it to yourself to address your feelings with them, if only for your own peace of mind.

It’s okay. Your eyes are wide open.

Polly

Commitmentphobes of N.Y.C.

Dear Polly,

What is the deal with all these thirtysomething men who say they “aren’t looking for a relationship at all right now”? I see it as a product of New York City being a grown-ups’ playground where men are enabled to act like children until they are fifty or sixty (or older?!) or maybe they are deeply wounded from their last relationship or maybe they have just gotten too good at being alone and just having another body in their bed makes it impossible for them to sleep. This state of mind doesn’t make sense to me, because I thought the point of life is to make connections with other people and opting out of relationships makes you inhuman. Like “No thanks, I don’t breathe oxygen.”

I don’t feel this way, so I know this isn’t my problem. Except I feel like I keep on meeting these men with whom there’s a mutual attraction, affection, and easy rapport in conversation, only to find out that they have the intimacy chip missing. I know I can’t do anything to change a person who says things like “I’m not looking for a relationship.” So what do I do? And what is their deal? And how does this madness stop?!

Love,

I’m Great So Why Don’t You Love Me?

Dear IGSWDYLM,

When I was thirty-four years old, I went on a date with a very attractive, extremely smart guy. We’d e-mailed back and forth a lot before that, so it was pretty much on no matter what. But just as things were getting interesting, he said, “Of course, I’m not looking to get serious at this point.” I smiled and said, “That’s okay, I’m trying to avoid jumping into anything too fast, too. If everything goes really well, you could maybe be Boyfriend #5.” He laughed and I excused myself to go to the bathroom, where I closed my eyes and thought, “GODDAMN IT, NOT THIS AGAIN. I CAN’T FUCKING DO THIS AGAIN.” My last relationship had ended when my boyfriend couldn’t commit to marriage. The boyfriend before that talked about commitment all the time, but whenever we discussed the future, he always sounded wishy-washy, if not downright skeptical. “NOTHING WILL EVER WORK OUT. I’M DOOMED. I’LL SPEND THE REST OF MY LIFE BEGGING GUYS TO BE WITH ME.”

Eventually, I talked myself down. “It’s okay,” I told myself. “This is a first date. Don’t say a word about this. He likes you. Don’t ask questions about how he feels. Don’t dig. Just smile along, have fun, and then say good night.”

I returned to the table. We chatted and had a good time. I didn’t push it. I said good night. We went out again a week later. I did not fire questions at him. I did not sleep with him. You could say that I was faking it, playing by The Rules, but actually I was protecting myself. I didn’t want to get emotionally invested and then figure out that it wasn’t going anywhere. I didn’t want to demean myself by playing the desperate thirty-four-year-old woman with the biological clock ticking down. I’d had my share of spontaneous fun with guys for years. This time, I was going to keep myself safe from harm. I was going to resist acting like an insecure wreck—which, by the way, I was capable of doing even with men I didn’t like that much. I’d done it many times before, with all kinds of unworthy dudes. It was just a compulsion, really. I always had to say the one thing I wasn’t supposed to say.

My plan was to get to know a handful of guys and put off going out with anyone seriously for as long as possible. Why take some guy seriously just because we started sleeping together? Fuck that. Even if Boyfriend #1 lived across the country and Boyfriends #2 and 3 were really just friends so far and Boyfriend #4 flirted with the waitress a little too much on our first date, I needed to keep thinking of myself as a scientist, collecting data from a remove, making smart, logical choices.

It felt good to embrace logic, even if my lizard brain sometimes screamed, “NOT ANOTHER FLINCHY DUDE! I CAN’T TAKE IT!” in the privacy of a bathroom stall.

Three weeks later, my date told me he was dumping all his girlfriends. I said, “Poor ladies.” A few days after that, he asked about my boyfriends—specifically, if I could break up with them. I said sure. He seemed worth it.

A year and a half later, we got married. I know, gross. Same old smug fairy tale. Same old “Look at me, I played my cards just right and tricked a guy into marriage.” But that’s not what I’m trying to tell you with my story. I’m trying to show you that just as most women insist that they’re looking for something serious, most guys (yes, particularly in New York) say they aren’t looking for anything serious. These are just the sounds we make. You can’t get twisted in a knot over it at first. You have to roll with it.

So this is what I’d advise: three or four dates of rolling with it—not to lure a hapless motherfucker into some elaborate trap, but to protect yourself from feeling like a beggar.

Because you aren’t a beggar! You should never feel that way! Even if you feel a little disingenuous saying, “I’m trying to avoid getting too invested over the wrong person,” when you feel like you’re already in love with the person in front of you, that’s okay. You should be more cautious about falling in love too quickly, shouldn’t you? You shouldn’t invest in the wrong guy prematurely. What if he’s kind of a dick on the third date? What if, when you do sleep together, the sex isn’t great and it doesn’t improve over time? And you’re already semi-committed? What if it turns out he’s anxious, depressed, broke, allergic to kids, and about to move to another country?

For the record, in the good old days, I totally slept with anxious, depressed, broke, kid-allergic guys without thinking about it for a second. That was my target demographic, even. But let’s be practical. When you’re in your thirties and you know you want to have kids, should you risk getting involved with that guy, then waste a decade struggling to make him cheer up and grow up and love kids and deal? Why not marry a plastic garden gnome instead? It would be a lot less taxing and stressful.

When you know what you want, you have to keep your heart and your eyes wide open. You have to be willing to fall in love, but you also have to be willing to step back and say, “No way, this is not a good choice for me,” before it’s too late. If you’re walking around lamenting all the noncommittal guys, that’s going to distract you from the fact that you still get to choose. It’s completely natural to think, “Oh my Christ, these guys with their loner bullshit!” It’s like noticing that the sky is blue. But don’t let that make you forget your value. Don’t feel like you’re asking permission from someone else just to get a tiny bit of consideration and attention.

This is why having firm boundaries from the start is important. You have to remember that you’re gathering information at first. It will still make your heart sink when you hear that he’s not ready for anything serious, but you have to stay cool and ride it out. Even if he acts like he’s ready to get married tonight, wait and see—if he’s on drugs or just wants to get into your pants or what. You must stay open and observe. You must control yourself. You must not treat men like they’ll fix all of your problems. You must not treat yourself like you need someone to fix all of your problems. That’s not fair to you.

What do you want from your life? Who do you want to be in ten years? What are your strengths and your flaws? You have to know the answers to these questions. When you do, you will be able to say to your date, “I am a regular, flawed person. I’m not here to close the deal at all costs. If there’s something that feels wrong, that’s okay. That tells us we’re not a match.” Easy come, easy go. Letting the wrong ones show their true stripes is just as important as letting the right ones show their true strengths.

Does that sound too clinical? Well, you know what’s worse than feeling too clinical about dating? Feeling like a beggar all the time. That feeling is what you really hate the most. You don’t hate the flinchy guys. Why do they matter? You just hate that feeling of asking a flinchy guy for a favor. “I know you’re not into relationships, but will you date me anyway? I know you really only want sex from me, but will you love me anyway?” Instead, you can say, “You sound indifferent about this. Maybe we’re not a match. I don’t want to get serious too fast, but I also don’t want to tool around with just anyone. I believe in true love.” See how it works? You can say what you believe in without writing a lukewarm dude into your story.

The bottom line is: It doesn’t matter if New York City is filled with noncommittal motherfuckers. You don’t need to change the population of New York City. You can keep bumping into these kinds of guys over and over, and it means nothing. It doesn’t alter your future. You just have to know yourself and know that you won’t settle for something half-assed. You can be alone for as long as it takes. Can’t you? Isn’t it good to be alive? If it’s not, fix that. But in the meantime, borrow a little of that single-guy apathy, and make a rational assessment of what you see. Slow down and tolerate the meaningless patter. Hold your own space and honor yourself and don’t let that space shrink or collapse in the company of indifference. Don’t ask indifference to love you. Indifference can go fuck itself. This is your life, and it’s going to be big and bright and beautiful.

Polly