IV

Weepiness Is Next to Godliness

Drunk No More

Dear Polly,

I feel I’m at a transitional period in my life, straddling the line between messed-up party girl and responsible woman. For most of my early twenties, I rarely went more than a few days sober, and my life essentially revolved around nonstop drinking and sex. Up until a few months ago, I was drifting into “real problem” territory, and I’m currently not imbibing. Not only that, but I have been treating my body well by working out, eating right, and quitting smoking. It feels great. But not drinking (and smoking) also means that I have to deal with my pesky insecurities head-on. There’s always a voice in the back of my mind telling me that this new life is great, but it would be so much easier to slip back into that boozy oblivion. I feel like I’m transitioning into a true “responsible adult” life, but I’m terrified of this voice that seems to want me to fail. Nothing scares me more than giving in and going back to who I used to be, yet part of me feels it’s inevitable (even though I have complete control over the situation).

Another problem with having all this raw emotion is that…well, I feel raw. Suddenly I’m seeing glaring intimacy issues I never even knew I had. It’s easy to feel a connection (and sleep with someone) after a bottle of wine, but now I find myself shying away from men who want nothing more than to adore me. They’re always respectful, but I still find myself frozen in discomfort when things move beyond a chaste kiss or they send me a sappy message. Sometimes this aversion even turns to mild disgust, and I’ve ended things with a few guys who “liked me too much.” (It shouldn’t be surprising that my last few serious relationships were with guys who did a great job of stringing me along.)

How do I convince myself not only that I am better off without the booze numbing my life but that I’m worthy of the decent guys who have come with this new lifestyle? I can’t go back to the way things were before, but I’m almost afraid not to.

Almost Adult

Dear Almost Adult,

You have to find the beauty in the rawness you’re feeling and the sweetness that lies just beyond your discomfort at being watched and appreciated and loved. It’s natural that you would push these unfamiliar feelings away. You’re much more familiar with a very different kind of joy, a joy that comes from blurring the world enough that you can be a blaring loudspeaker, a spinning top, a gorgeous automated toy. That’s boozy carnival-ride joy for you: You get to blurt out the craziest shit, toss back another drink, take your clothes off, and you never have to notice any of the pain or fragility underneath it all. The whole world is a hazy kaleidoscope of carpe diem recklessness.

Being a drunk twentysomething woman who’s up for any flavor of fun can feel like being the Mother of Dragons from Game of Thrones. You go wherever you want, you take whatever you want, you don’t care who doesn’t like it. You can’t hear the voices, inside you or outside you, that want you to fail. You’re too busy dancing and drinking and yelling, “I AM THE BLOOD OF THE DRAGON.”

And let’s be honest, drunken grandiosity has its appeal. There are times when that existence feels exhilarating and wild and, frankly, superior to the anxious control that calm, sober people have to exert over their lives. Drinking sometimes seems to offer a quick, temporary exit from feeling blah, particularly when you’re drinking to handle an underlying depression, which I think might be the case for you. That makes it really tough to prefer sober clarity. Because instead of sanity and happiness and ambition when you’re sober, what you get are disparaging voices and melancholy and aimlessness. How will you find your path to happiness that way? Why be sober at all?

Here’s why: Because if you go back to the bottle and keep escaping into your blurry merry-go-round world, you’ll never learn or grow. Learning and growing aren’t just about accepting the company of men who like you for more than your twirling, dizzy self. It’s also about feeling the weight of melancholy press on you in a new, helpful way. That kind of sadness isn’t a fleeting feeling to stomp out; it’s something more sublime. It allows you to really notice the people around you, to recognize the pain they carry with them, to see the pureness of their hearts. The sad thing about recovering from addiction is that you still equate rawness with weakness, failure, collapse. But rawness is life! With rawness comes the promise of overcoming a bleak, hazy depression and stepping into the sunshine, where you can see yourself without judgment, where you hear the world at normal volume, and where you actually connect with people.

It’s crazy that coolness—that kind of willful indifference that’s associated with boozing—is something so many of us covet. Sexiness is all too often defined as disinterest, the attitude of someone who barely sees us at all. All too often we tell ourselves that we feel more alive when we’re striving to be noticed. As long as a guy isn’t looking at you and you’re craving his attention, you don’t have to think about who or what you are.

But the respectful, adoring energy you describe in the sober men around you—that energy is so much more promising in the long term. Once you give in to it, that’s the energy of poetry, of art, of life-bending happiness. It’s the energy of a partner who’s a great lover and a dependable friend and a good listener. It sounds corny, but trust me, that is what you want. I’m not saying find yourself any fawning guy and settle down. I’m saying don’t turn your back on positive attention from someone sane just because it makes you uncomfortable. Be patient, take a deep breath, and try to train yourself to tolerate positive attention for a change.

Remember, you only find that kind of adoring energy repellent because you hate being seen clearly, because at some level, you hate yourself. You only back away from it because you want to back away from yourself. You don’t want a crystal clear, high-definition mirror. You want to spot your smeary reflection in the side of a napkin holder, four beers into an afternoon bender. You want to be a sexy, indifferent blur, because then you’re never still enough to notice that you’re disappointing to yourself, that you’re depressed, that you’re running from the truth.

Before you can tolerate sobriety and the attentions of sober men, you have to learn to tolerate looking into that crystal clear, high-definition mirror. You have to look at yourself and see someone who’s not invincible or unfailingly sexy.

You are weak and raw and broken, and that’s okay. That’s where real life begins. Throw yourself into that rawness. Dive into a bunch of stories about absorbing and leaning into disappointment and loss and melancholy as a way of moving through it. Go watch Living Out Loud or Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind or Sex, Lies, and Videotape. Read The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami. Read Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner. Read The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles. Read Mating by Norman Rush. Being raw means connecting to other people’s trials and noticing how we all have to find our own answers; we all have to learn how to show up and breathe without grasping for something to deliver us from our own pain. When you resist your own rawness and pain, you only create more pain for yourself.

You have to make peace with yourself. Push away the bad voices, again and again, and replace them with something kinder and more patient. Say to yourself, “I’m broken right now, but I’m doing my best.” Take in the electricity, the shivers, the rough-hewn fear of your raw state, and eventually, if you welcome these feelings in enough without fighting them, you’ll find inspiration and comfort there. Let this crisis guide you to higher ground.

Polly

I’m Dating My Best Friend’s Ex

Dear Polly,

I’ve committed the cardinal friendship sin of dating the ex-boyfriend of one of my closest friends. I did this knowing that their breakup had been devastating for her, and understandably she feels betrayed and disgusted.

Their relationship ended about ten years ago, when we were in college (we’re in our early thirties now), and we all lived in separate cities until recently, when he moved to mine. He didn’t know many people in town, so I invited him to various social events, which developed from casual friendship into mutually romantic feelings.

In an effort to handle it in the best way possible, I was immediately honest with my friend (despite our distance and the hypothetical ease of duplicity). In my mind, since the relationship had occurred so long ago, I wasn’t choosing between the two. I naively imagined that I would tell the friend and she would initially be hurt but ultimately forgive me.

It’s been a few months, and aside from a few painful text and e-mail exchanges she wants nothing to do with me. She is not okay with the relationship and does not envision returning to our prior friendship.

I have always validated and supported her feelings throughout our friendship, but it’s tricky in this case, because in doing so, I condemn myself. In case it is relevant, I know that she struggles with depression or possibly manic depression.

Should I resign myself to losing a close friend because of the romantic choice that I made and simply do my best to nurture my other friendships? I know that friendships end frequently for less dramatic reasons. But I value our history and her beautiful brain and jokes and spirit and of course don’t want that outcome.

Or should I continue reaching out to this friend, in hopes that her feelings will evolve? In the latter case, to what degree/in what format can I do so without feeling like a stalker (or like I’m patronizing her, as in “Are you over this yet?”)? Thus far, it has felt as though I can’t say anything right.

I’ve communicated that I want to be her friend and work things out, but that’s actually considered to be MORE hurtful, because in addition to dating her ex, I am inadvertently blaming the end of our friendship on her.

As far as the relationship is concerned, I don’t regret anything (aside, obviously, from causing pain for a loved one). I’ve never had the luxury of dating a friend and, though it’s early, have never been in a relationship so mutually respectful, positive, and honest. He even reads me Ask Polly columns aloud while I’m driving!

Any suggestions you can offer as a sage and objective party would be greatly appreciated.

Signed,

Fearful of a Lifelong Rift

Dear FOALR,

Okay, I have to admit, you got me right where you want me with that last bit. He reads you Ask Polly columns aloud while you’re driving? DO NOT LET GO OF THIS BEAUTIFUL MAN.

So, look. No matter where you fall on the scale from “Never, ever date the ex of a close friend!” to “Do whatever you want with whomever you want, true love will prevail in the end!” the fact remains that you made a choice. You may have assumed that everything would be fine once you told your friend about your choice, but you chose to take that risk. You didn’t call her to see how she felt BEFORE you went for it with your guy, thereby valuing the friendship over your brand-new love match. You were not willing to hear “No, I don’t want you dating him. That would upset me.” You chose him over her.

And you are still choosing him over her. Maybe that’s exactly as it should be. Maybe you two are the perfect pair, and a long-term friendship can’t possibly measure up to this romance. Maybe you will die in this guy’s arms sixty years from now, and you’ll thank your lucky stars that you put him first.

No one is going to tell you you’re a huge asshole for choosing love in this case. It’s been a decade since he dated your friend. He lives in your town; she lives far away. But honestly, it was a mistake not to call her first, even if you were going to kiss the guy either way. It was a mistake. You sent a clear message with that mistake. Your priorities were clear.

For your friend, this situation is heartbreaking. Don’t bring her manic depression into it. Don’t say to yourself, “She should let go of this; they dated ten years ago.” Don’t say, “If she weren’t THE WAY SHE IS—oversensitive, depressed, lonely—she’d be cool with this. I mean, what’s the big deal? It’s not like they were ever getting back together. He never loved her the way he loves me. He says so himself! He always felt like there was something missing there.”

Do you see what’s happening? Do you see how you win and she loses? Put yourself in your friend’s shoes and crawl into her mind. BE HER for a minute now. Imagine that the two people you’ve loved and trusted the most in the world are now aligning themselves and discussing you thoroughly and then leaving you out of all of it and moving forward without you. You don’t have to be manic-depressive or have an overactive imagination to picture that. Can you understand that? Imagine it. They want each other, not you. You’re not important anymore. You don’t matter. They made their choice. They win and you lose. When he dumped you, you were crushed, and your friend knew all about that. But she went for it anyway. She didn’t call you first. She didn’t check in. If she had just talked to you, you could’ve thought it over and maybe even given her your blessing. That would’ve felt so much better, even if you had mixed feelings. You might not have liked it, but you would’ve known that she cared enough about you not to want to fuck over your friendship.

But she didn’t do that. And not only that, now you have this feeling, no matter how you try to fight it, that she is better than you. You’ve wished that things would’ve worked out with your ex so many times, but you were never good enough for him. That’s how it felt. And now she is good enough. Your friend! She wins his heart! And you don’t matter. You are nothing.

I know you think I’m being a little dramatic about this. And honestly, I don’t give a flying fuck who dates or marries or makes babies with any of my exes anymore. Take them all! I can hardly even imagine caring anymore, and I understand why people say, “Whatever, get over it, move on,” when it comes to situations like these.

I’m not saying you’re a bad person. Not remotely. All I’m saying is this: You cannot fathom the psychic turmoil you’ve incited with this very casual, Nothing to Do with Her decision. You can’t touch how big this is for her. Even if you struggle to understand—and I do think you’re trying—you can’t touch it. So first of all, trust me there. Open your mind as wide as it can go and honor the fact that she is in real pain, and your choice not to consult her is at the center of that pain. You made your choice, and you chose him. Say that out loud and own it. This wasn’t a casual mistake, actually. You actively chose him over her.

When I was twenty-six years old, I was in love with someone great and I had a great job and I was reasonably happy. I was a mess in many ways, but I was sallying forth with my life. One day, my very best friend in the whole world sat me down and told me that she had been sleeping with my ex, who was my second-best friend in the world. My ex had dumped me six years earlier. I always had the sense that he was looking for someone better than me. He was extremely smart and attractive and talented. I always felt like I was less amazing than him—or that, at the very least, he didn’t recognize that I was just as amazing as he was. It drove me nuts. But we were good friends! I loved him.

But you know who I loved the most? My best friend. I loved her like I’ve never loved any other female friend, before or since. We felt like the most in-love straight women ever to have lived. We were together all the time, the way you can only be together when you’re twenty-six years old and living in the giant upscale hipster mall that is San Francisco. We marched through the fog in our black boots like a two-headed, four-legged Bay City cliché, smoking American Spirit Lights and high-fiving over stupid jokes and eating giant falafels and drinking pints of Guinness and finishing each other’s sentences and laughing and feeling seen and heard and understood completely for the first time. I’m making us sound terrible, but we weren’t so bad most of the time.

No one understood me the way she did. And I admired her so much. I laughed at all her jokes. I was a huge fan. (I would never use that word with anyone else.) We cried together. We were very self-protective people who let down our guard with each other because that part seemed fated somehow. It was like we were supposed to tell each other the truth. Sometimes I felt small in her presence, because she was so big. But looking back, we were both big, and we both felt smaller than each other sometimes.

We were young and confused, and the whole thing was complicated. We didn’t know how to sort through our problems. We should’ve followed the rules of love relationships: Respect the other person’s feelings, don’t always lead with what YOU need, give the other person some room, and address what they say with an open heart. I know that I was bad at those things back then.

And maybe we were already falling apart as friends when this happened. Even so, when she started dating my ex, it was like some cruel god reached down and took my two most important, most trusted friends and ripped them away from me. I had nothing, and they had everything.

Let me be clear: When she first told me, over lunch, I was fine with it. I said, “Oh, that’s funny. No, it makes sense that you two would be together.” He had always had a little crush on her; I knew that. And then I mentioned it to my roommate, and he said, “Oh, they’ve been dating for a while now. Everyone knows that. They would kiss when you walked out of the room.”

The disrespect of that! That the two people I loved the most would sneak around behind my back. And when I confronted them about it, they both said, “I thought he/she should tell you, since you two were closer than I was with you.” They BOTH undervalued my friendship!

The aftermath was a terrible mess. I was angry. My ex was avoidant about discussing it, and then he’d gripe about her to me, and then he’d turn around and tell her things I told him. My friend was apologetic, then defensive, then hostile, then she just cut me off completely. Then she’d get mad at my ex for agreeing to have lunch with me when I came to town. And I was also apologetic, defensive, hostile. I talked shit to a lot of people, and so did they. It was a giant ball of shit.

I wish I’d just stepped back and dealt with it on my own, like your friend is doing. I tried to do that, but I was too weak. I had no compass. I was so hurt. Even when I was talking to one or the other of them very openly about how I felt, even when I was trying to listen and understand either one of them, there was a voice in my head saying, “YOU DON’T MATTER TO THEM. THEY CHOSE EACH OTHER OVER YOU. YOU ARE LESS THAN THEM. YOU ARE NOTHING.”

I know that makes me sound like a crazy person. All I can say in my defense is that I was so vulnerable with each of them, and then they were gone, and I was devastated, and it was harder than any simple breakup I’ve ever experienced. My past with my ex felt like it was stolen out of my hands. He had never been mine. She was never mine. Part of my history was lost, somehow.

We are all friends now, almost twenty years later. But we never went back to what we were—not even close. I love them both and I went to both of their weddings (to different people) and I was so glad to be there. I don’t feel inferior anymore, obviously, and I have to dig a little to remember that sensation, honestly. But this one event, the way it was handled and the fallout from it, changed everything.

I know that my situation and your situation are very different. But you write, “I have always validated and supported her feelings throughout our friendship, but it’s tricky in this case, because in doing so, I condemn myself.” How do her hurt feelings condemn you, exactly? You hurt her. That’s a fact. Can you accept that? If you can’t admit that you made a choice, and it was a choice that hurt her more than you can possibly imagine, then you’re probably right to assume that there is no friendship there.

But you don’t have to be right, do you? You don’t have to look at what you did and say, “I didn’t do anything wrong. I was right to go for it,” do you? Because that’s not true. Is it not enough to get the guy; you also have to be right, too? You also have to be blameless? That’s a lot to ask, don’t you think?

Listen to me: You were WRONG. You should’ve talked to your friend first. Even if you weren’t going to honor or respect her feelings, you should’ve talked to her first. You can hear someone out and still make your own choices. That would’ve made all the difference, I’m guessing. You made a mistake.

It’s not the end of the world. But it might be the end of your friendship.

If you really do care about her, you should throw yourself into a state of empathy for where she is right now. That’s not condescending; that’s being a human being with a heart who cares a lot. Ask your new boyfriend to join you in that state. Focus on her beautiful brain and jokes and spirit and how crumpled and hurt she feels now. Tell her you’re sorry for not telling her as soon as you considered getting together with him. Tell her you didn’t think it through enough or try it on for size and if you were in her shoes, you’d be incredibly hurt, too. Tell her you’re sorry. Tell her that you understand why she’s mad and you would be mad, too, but you will never stop wanting to be her friend. You want her in your life. You want to know her until you’re both old and gray. You love her and you miss her.

Keep saying those things. She’ll either come around or she won’t, but if you really care, don’t give up. Keep sticking your neck out and being true to your friendship. Accepting that you made a mistake and you were wrong to handle this the way you did: This is a crucial first step to growing up and becoming a stronger, better person. Above all, never, ever say to yourself or to your new guy or to anyone else, “She should be over this by now.” That’s not fair. You don’t know how it feels. You may try to imagine it—that’s a step! But you don’t know. Painting someone as weak or pathetic for feeling hurt or overwhelmed or heartbroken is inexcusable. It’s antihuman. This world is filled with people who think feeling less, being indifferent, makes you strong. Don’t believe that. Be one of the smart, thoughtful people who stands up for sensitive people. When you stand up for sensitive, hurt people, you’re also standing up for vulnerability and authenticity and true love.

Whether she ever speaks to you again or not, that’s her choice. I will say that I did eventually learn to stop defining my ex-boyfriends as MINE. The carelessness I encountered from those two was instructive. You can love someone like crazy, but it does actually matter how much they love you back. It says something about my maturity level that I ignored their feelings, good and bad, and defined the world based on my own little bubble of experience.

What bothers me, though, even now, is that we never got it all back—the love we shared, the bond the three of us had, together and separately. We’re still old friends who talk every year or so. We love each other. But what we had is lost.

Some people really are irreplaceable—who they are, your history together, the way you feel when you’re together. I have old friends today with whom I very deliberately tackled a mountain of trouble because I knew that if I ever dumped them or let things fall apart, they were sure to become ghosts. (Mind you, I have other friendships that ended and didn’t leave a hole at all, and I knew they wouldn’t.)

If you know that she will become a ghost and she’ll haunt you? If you know that she’s that special? Apologize as much as it takes. Don’t stalk her, but don’t give up. Check in every few months and say, “I still care and I won’t stop caring.” If she tells you to fuck off forever, send her a note a year later and say you’re still sorry, you still love her, you’re still there for her if she ever comes around. Admit that you chose him over her. That was understandable. That was your choice. But the way you went about it was wrong. Admit that, too.

Early, formative close friendships are special. Don’t shrug this off if you really do care. It will be hard to handle her anger. It will also help you to grow. You might feel like a real asshole sometimes, but you’re not an asshole. You just made a mistake. Even so, if you don’t acknowledge that your small mistake feels huge to her, if you can’t sit in the company of her pain and take it in and accept it, then you’re making an even bigger mistake—for her and for yourself. This is an empathy test. This is a lesson in maturity. This is the way toward a bigger, more generous heart.

Polly

How Do I Get Over This Betrayal?

Dear Polly,

In 2009, I married the man I never thought I’d meet: the man I actually WANTED to marry and have children with and spend the rest of my life being loved by and loving. I was thirty-nine. Six months later, I was pregnant with our son, and six months after that he was informing me that we needed to separate.

During months four and five of my pregnancy, he’d been recalled to active duty with the Coast Guard to help with the BP oil spill in the Gulf, and while he was there, he was the same loving, doting man I’d known for five years. Once he returned, he was different: not coming to bed with me, going on walks or running errands that lasted for hours, and, most hurtful of all, announcing that he was taking a weekend trip to Boston, then, after not being in touch all weekend, texting me to let me know he was really sick and wouldn’t be returning the night he was supposed to. Which of course made me extremely concerned, then infuriated when I discovered that he was hungover, not sick. He had missed our final Lamaze class and seemed to feel no qualms about it.

In the meantime, the horrible fights had started. I was concerned about the dramatic change in his personality and actions, and after several mumblings about working it out on his own, he finally blew up at me one night, essentially screaming about everything I’d ever done wrong the entire time we’d known each other. Now, our relationship was certainly not perfect, and in hindsight (of course) I can see that we’d let our communication—for which we’d always been the envy of our friends—get lazy because we took it for granted. However, this blowup took me completely off guard. Forget that I was already emotional and hopped-up on pregnancy hormones. I was completely taken aback.

Fast-forward through the pregnancy (all the while he was awful, sending me horrific e-mails trying to get me to make a decision about our unborn son’s custody and visitation arrangement, all the while insisting he wasn’t thinking about divorce), through the first awful, completely sleep-deprived months of having a brand-new baby while not knowing what was going on with my marriage, and through two years of lawyer negotiations, to our eventual divorce, which was finalized two years ago. I still haven’t been able to forgive him.

I’m not pining or hoping for reconciliation. That ship sailed long ago and was cemented when I discovered that he met someone in Louisiana. Who, interestingly, was from Boston. Which everyone else probably saw coming from a mile away, but I did not. At any rate, while we are civil for the sake of our son (who is four now and adores his daddy, and I wouldn’t want that any other way), I can’t seem to finally let this massive betrayal go. I’m dating, sort of, but haven’t connected with anyone and am thinking it’s just ME and am afraid I’m never going to be able to trust anyone ever again. I’ve been to therapy with two different people, and while they’ve been great cheerleaders, their advice boils down to “Just do it.” If it’s an ass kicking that I need, I’ll take it; I am just desperately exhausted from the anger and the feeling of injustice and would love to be rid of it.

Want to Be a Better, Happier Mom

Dear WTBABHM,

When someone is wrong for you, he’s just wrong for you. Things fall apart. There’s no way to hold it together. You can’t be nicer or better or sexier. You can’t make him more patient or more caring or more loyal. Nothing about this is your fault. And let me just say that men who fall in love with other women while their partners are pregnant are not exactly the tippity top of the heap in most guides to common human varietals.

But let’s not barrel down that rageful road. Instead, I think you need to survey the facts on the ground and see that you just dodged a major bullet. That guy was never going to give you the support and love that you deserve, ever. My guess is that he’s not capable of sticking by someone’s side when the chips are down. Some people are like that. They love the hell out of you one minute, but as soon as the situation shifts—they get bored, you get pregnant—they’re out. I’ll bet that if you roll back the tape, you’ll see a few different examples of him backing away from you.

In fact, your letter offers a pretty informative lesson for other women out there who wonder whether or not they can really lean on their partners and trust them to see them through the rough road ahead. If a guy seems to love you yet his behaviors show an interest in creating greater and greater distance, if he never takes responsibility for anything he says or does, backs away when you need him most, or seems unable or unwilling to get to the bottom of any conflict with you? You shouldn’t marry that guy. A lot of people—not just men—are terrible at making room for another human being in their lives. If you’re dating someone who pulls away even as your bond should be strengthening, that’s doesn’t bode well. Don’t sign up for a lifetime of that. So many people do.

I know that it’s incredibly hard to raise your son alone while dealing with this betrayal. The structure of your day-to-day life is a regular reminder of the trauma you experienced at the hands of your ex. It’s easy to see why his shitty behavior might scare you away from dipping a toe into the dating pool again.

But it’s time to rid yourself of the aftertaste of his bad decisions once and for all. His choices don’t define you. His heartlessness and lack of loyalty have nothing to do with you. That’s who he is. You didn’t write that story. It’s time to stop being the woman who got left behind when she was pregnant and be someone else instead.

I’m not saying you need to clamp down on your emotions. I’m just saying that it’s a mistake—one that’s unfortunately common among women—to let some guy’s shitty decisions form part of your lasting identity. You have to make sure to define your life story in a new way.

I don’t think the challenge for you is to simply try to get over that betrayal and learn to trust in love again. I think your challenge is to reinvent your whole life so that it looks beautiful whether or not it has a man in it. If you start dating right now, I think you’re going to feel traumatized. You need to be stronger and healthier and happier before you date again. You’re sitting around asking, “How do I do this?” as if finding another man is the logical next step. Your therapists are saying, “DO IT! GO FOR IT!” and I think that points to a central misconception of where you are and what you need.

It’s okay to want love in your life. But your letter suggests that you don’t feel ready for love yet. You don’t feel worthy of love yet. You still feel like someone who got dumped on her ass. The path from here doesn’t involve dating (to magically make it all better), and it doesn’t involve finding some kind of closure with your ex (who needs to be permanently filed under “MR. WRONG” and who you’re right not to reconsider for a second). The path from here is all about you and you alone: the things that bring you happiness and make you feel strong and independent. What are those things?

Where do you turn when no one is picking up the phone? How do you take care of yourself? What makes you feel like you’re on the right track? What makes you forget about your ex and dating and men in general?

Let’s try this: If I told you that you would never, ever fall in love again, what kind of a plan would you make to ensure your own happiness moving forward? What would you work toward? What would you do more of? I bet that you’d have to give up on some big dreams that you care about a lot. But I also bet that giving up some of those things might add up to a weird kind of freedom. Maybe you’d cut your hair short and save up for a house. Maybe you’d start riding horses or writing poetry or growing sunflowers or taking dance lessons or baking pies.

Instead of seeing your balance of days on earth as either a sad, lonely slog through single motherhood or a rosy daydream thanks to some magical second marriage, you need to begin by painting a picture that doesn’t include love. You need to stop making room in your life for someone else’s love and start making room for yourself instead. When you feel proud of yourself and care for yourself, you won’t worry about betrayal as much. When you can imagine a beautiful life even in the absence of romantic love, finding love or losing it again won’t seem nearly as scary.

This doesn’t mean you have to give up on ever finding love. But right now, finding the right man is just too important to you. I understand that, and I can relate to it very well. But you have to work your way past that. You have to forget men for a while and think only of yourself and your son. He is about to be a big kid, sooner than you can imagine. Slow down and drink him in. Drink yourself in, too. Drink in your life as it is, right now. Recognize how much happiness is already at your fingertips, and savor it as much as you can.

As Arthur Ashe once said, “Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.” There is no injustice in your life, not anymore. You are healthy and your son is healthy, and this world wants nothing but happiness for both of you. I know it’s not that easy. But just for today, pretend that it is. Love yourself and love him. Maybe this is exactly where you’re supposed to be.

Polly

Why Don’t the Men I Date Ever Love Me?

Dear Polly,

This weekend, after eighteen months together, my boyfriend told me that he cared very deeply for me and that we had the best partnership he’d ever experienced but he did not love me, because there was a spark missing.

So he ended things in a kind and mature way. We’re both in our thirties, and the entire thing has been kind and mature and caring (and sexy and vulnerable and honest) from the beginning. I’ve dated my share of guys who were bad partners, and this guy was a good one.

And although I am hurt, I get it. I also know that he was always a little bit on the fence about letting me fully into his life. (Literally and metaphorically: Whenever I would go to his apartment, there would never be a place for me to sit. He would have clothes and books and projects piled on every single one of his chairs and his sofa.)

So I kept waiting for him to start taking the actions that would let me in, and he kept waiting for the spark that would make him want to move forward. And in the meanwhile, we made a fun little team.

In the end, although I am sad that he and I aren’t going to continue our team, I respect him and I get it. And to be honest, at my core I’m feeling a bit of relief. I want someone who wants to let me in fully.

What is flooring me is the piece about how he didn’t love me. None of the guys I’ve dated long-term have ever loved me. They’ve liked me a gosh-darn awful lot, but boy-oh-boy do they not want to pull out those three little words.

And I think I’m lovable. Both in my innate humanness and in my adult life. I have my shit together. I went to a therapist as a preemptive measure because I knew this most recent boyfriend and I were about to have either the breakup conversation or the “let’s start taking steps toward building a life together” conversation, and I wanted to talk through how to approach both scenarios.

My therapist said, “There’s nothing about you that is getting in your own way. You have remarkable communication and emotional coping skills, and you and your boyfriend have a highly evolved partnership.” She used the words “highly evolved.” She did warn me that the fact that he wasn’t physically making space for me in his apartment was a red flag, which, you know, I knew. We agreed that whatever happened between me and the boyfriend would happen in a mature and respectful way and that I would be able to handle it vis-à-vis my remarkable coping skills, and all of these things have come true and I’m still not fucking lovable? I should be cherished.

I realize this sounds like a female version of the typical nice guy who wonders why no girls like him but never wants to make a move. I’d like to think that there’s a difference between “I’m a good person, why won’t you date me?” and “I’m a good partner, why don’t you love me?” but maybe there isn’t. I also know that the big difference between me and the typical nice guy is when I got broken up with, I didn’t go, “Whyyyyy­yyyyy­?” I went, “Okay, that’s sad, but it’s true and right and reasonable.” (That typical nice guy doesn’t know what the truth of a relationship is, and I know what the truth of a relationship is. But I ache that the truth is always “I don’t love you, good-bye,” instead of “I love you, but good-bye.”)

I know I am not owed love. I also wonder sometimes if I don’t know what love actually feels like, because so many grown men have told me it’s been missing from our relationships. (One came back a year later and said, “Oh, wow, I did not realize that I loved you when we dated, I am so sorry.”)

So, dear Polly, what is love? Why is it missing from my highly evolved partnerships?

Sparkless

Dear Sparkless,

I have two things to tell you. First, this guy was going to dump you no matter what. He says he never had enough of a spark for you. Sometimes men imagine that they’re going to be blown away by someone, literally knocked off their feet by a babe straight out of a Doritos commercial. But other times, men just don’t find your personality intriguing enough. They might like YOU—being around you, going out to dinner with you, sleeping with you, having brunch with you the next day. But they don’t necessarily find themselves fully engaged and interested in who you really are. They don’t want to sit and talk unless there are a few cold beers and some snacks nearby. They don’t want to walk and talk unless the two of you are on the way to a movie.

I was always paranoid about this when I was younger, because there was always so much evidence that the guy du jour liked being part of a “fun little team” and getting laid regularly and spending time with a talkative, funny woman, but he didn’t necessarily love me. Even though it made me feel paranoid, I found evidence of this in little things: He wanted to catch a movie instead of having dinner together. He wanted to meet up with his friends after one drink at a bar together. He wanted to listen to the radio in the car instead of talking.

But actually, it’s a little rare to find someone who loves you so much that he just loves to talk, talk, talk with you for hours. Plenty of dudes will want to form a “fun little team” with you, particularly if you’re smart and highly evolved and you have your shit together. Your stock will always be high. There will always be lots of dudes with projects strewn all over their apartments who will take in your easygoing nature and your eighteen-month-long ability to suspend your disbelief and go with the flow indefinitely.

There’s nothing wrong with you, in other words. You’re probably attracting a wider swath of men than is good for you. They aren’t self-selecting themselves out of contention, because you seem perfectly healthy and reasonable. If you seemed impatient or intolerant, you might slough off some of the wishy-washy slackers in the mix. If you were a little temperamental, you might lose all but the most fervent admirers. Instead, you are healthy and sane and no one will object to being a team, and when you hit month eighteen, you’ll (very wisely) assess the situation with your therapist: “Welp, he’s either going to pop the question or hit the road, and I need to be fully emotionally prepared for either eventuality.”

Okay, this is where the record screeches to a stop. You seriously didn’t know if he was going to say “Let’s be together forever” or “I like you bunches, but I never want to see you again”?

I don’t get that. It makes me wonder if you’re really showing up or not. It makes me wonder if you don’t want, so badly, to be someone’s dream girl that you’ve got your hands on all of the sliders and the knobs (sorry!) at all times, controlling all the levels to achieve the perfect mix. Does he look impatient? Turn up the tempo. Does he seem bored? Pump up the bass. Does he seem on edge? Turn down the treble. Play up the mid-range.

You write, “I know what the truth of a relationship is.” Sometimes when someone writes something that straightforward, it’s the least true thing in the entire letter. If you knew the truth of this relationship, wouldn’t you know whether you’d be together for another day or another four decades? Wouldn’t I know a thing or two about you or about him? I get that you can’t put too many details in your letter or you might be recognized. But I can’t tell from your letter whether you were madly in love with this guy. I don’t know if he deserved that love or not. I don’t know what all of these other wishy-washy exes were like.

Your letter is all about you. You’re really asking me if you’re capable of being passionately loved or not. But you haven’t told me anything about you. You haven’t mentioned any details or any troubles in your past relationships or any overarching flaws you might have or repeated mistakes you might have made. In fact, the most detailed bit of your letter is the part where your therapist assures you—before she knows if you’ll be getting dumped or getting engaged—that you’re 100 percent healthy and evolved and approved for future marriage or future singledom. Either way, you are a government-certified, grade-A, consumer-friendly woman, approved for multiple uses, from forming a fun little team to kind, healthy, mature fence-sitting!

Your real problem is that you’re sure you have a problem. Because you’re pretty sure that you have a problem, you’re hiding. You’re putting up with whatever. You’re never getting ruffled or hurt. When someone breaks up with you, you’re not yelling, “Whyyyyy?!!!” In fact, you imply that only a weak or less evolved person would do that. You imply that you aren’t a weak person, you’re not crazy, you’re not fucked-up, you’re evolved, you’re healthy, you have proof: Your therapist will vouch for you. You have “remarkable communication and emotional coping skills.”

You’re so good at being GOOD. But how good are you at being YOU? You know what makes a spark? A real human being with a bad attitude who’s tired of moving shit just to sit down in a motherfucker’s apartment. A woman who, after eighteen months of doing everything together, doesn’t sigh and say, “Okay. I’m hurt, but I totally get it.” She says, “HOLY FUCK, I THOUGHT YOU WERE ABOUT TO POP THE FUCKING QUESTION. THIS IS SUCH A FUCKING CURVEBALL. [Knocks a pile of books off a chair to sit down.] I just wish I hadn’t worn these fucking tall shoes, they’re killing me, and I thought I should wear them in case we needed to go out somewhere nice to celebrate! [Takes off shoes and throws them at the wall.] GODDAMN IT! FUCK THIS!!!! [Grabs a sketch from some pile of shitty sketches and rips it into a million pieces. Throws body onto filthy carpet and sobs, noting bits of filth in carpet while sobbing.]”

Okay, so that was a dramatization of some messy behavior. I’m not trying to tell you to be more of a psycho and someone will love you completely. But you do need to be something. Are you afraid of being something?

Because let me tell you the god’s honest truth: A lot of women out there are afraid of being something. The template for us is pretty clear: We are meant to have clean skin, a pleasant demeanor, and a nice rack. I’m not speaking up against nice racks, Lord knows. But there are lots of ladies around me, everywhere I go, who hesitate to say what they’re thinking and feeling. They go with the flow; they never make waves. And eventually, they don’t even seem to know what makes them who they are. They live to serve. They read the books that other people are reading. They say the pleasant things that other people are saying. They never put their needs first, unless it indirectly serves someone else—a manicure, some highlights. They make sure everyone around them is 100 percent satisfied. Like grocery store managers. Like customer service reps. Like masseuses who also give free happy endings.

If that sounds sexist or demeaning, then it’s by design. The developed world is packed to the gills with shiny, pretty sheep who will never step on your toes. I know many representatives of the middle-class suburban version of this, and I even know women in creative fields who pull the same “Me, too!” face in everything they do. It’s soul sucking and it’s problematic and let me just say, too, that it is a fucking snooze.

When someone says to me, “I try to be nice,” or “We make a good team,” or “I like for things to be clean,” or “I’m pretty organized,” you know what I think? Well, first I think, “I need to be nicer and clean my fucking house a little better.” But then I think, “Jesus. Why don’t you try being a dick and striking out on your own and making a fucking mess for a change?” And also I can see it in some of these husbands’ eyes. This woman is holding it down at home, and god forbid she do anything else.

I know I’m digressing, Sparkless. But you do have a spark. If you wanted to be swept up by some conformist everyman who replaced the multiple projects with a clean condo and a straight job, you could do that quite easily. There’s a more average bear that will love, love, love this highly evolved, communicative self you present to the world.

I think you want a project-obsessed boyfriend because you want to have projects of your own. You aren’t writing to me so that I’ll tell you that some man will love you someday. You aren’t writing to me to prove that you’re healthy enough and now you’re ready to be cherished. You’re writing to me because you’re ready to cherish yourself.

Like you yourself wrote, YOU SHOULD BE CHERISHED.

I want you to get out some colorful markers, and I want you to write these words fifty times, on the same page: “You SHOULD BE cherished. You should be cherished. You. Should. Be. Cherished.”

You don’t cherish yourself. You do whatever what’s-his-face wants to do, for the sake of the fun little team, for the sake of demonstrating your good communication skills. Just admit it. You never draw lines in the sand. He says, “We need to talk, it’s serious.” And you don’t say, “WHAT do you MEAN motherfucking WHAT?!! TELL ME RIGHT NOW.” You say, “Okay,” and then make an emergency trip to your therapist and discuss all of the possibilities, and then you show up the next day, well rested and prepared to discuss either ending it or nailing it down. That sounds perfectly sane and wonderful, but that’s not fair to you. You are cherishing him, and cherishing your therapist, and cherishing sanity, and cherishing evolved-lady living, but you aren’t cherishing you.

Don’t you deserve something beyond falling right in line with the other perfect, shiny ladies who deserve doting husbands? Don’t you deserve a bigger, brighter existence than the ones they might be perfectly satisfied with?

You aren’t satisfied with “evolved.” That’s not enough for you. If it were, you’d be more sure of your spark, and remarks about lacking a spark wouldn’t get under your skin. You wouldn’t take some dude’s ambivalence personally.

And look, you’d also feel more alive and less worried if you felt comfortable with simply being good. Because even the ladies who step right in line and aim to please, they have lots of spark, if that’s what makes them happy. You want more than that. The lack of spark within you comes from the conflict between WHO YOU TRY TO BE and WHAT YOU REALLY WANT FOR YOURSELF. You want more. You act like you don’t want more, you act like you’re satisfied, but in fact you want a lot more.

I don’t know what, specifically, you want. Maybe you want the freedom to say exactly what you mean, instead of saying the “right” thing. Maybe you want to be assertive and bossy, but you don’t like women who do that, so you’re afraid. Maybe you want to be the one with the projects strewn all over the place.

I used to date men who were obsessed with their creative projects. After a while, I realized that I didn’t want them. I wanted to be them. I thought being close to that energy might be enough. I thought that being loved by someone who was willing to give himself completely to the creative process was enough. I met a musician once who was consumed by his creations. I put him on a pedestal. I had so much crazy lust for him it was almost stupid. But it wasn’t him—I hardly knew him—it was his focus, his total involvement and belief in what he did, that made me crazy. I wanted to have that kind of passion for myself. I should’ve been cherished. I refused to cherish myself. It was easier to pretend that all of that magic and passion belonged to someone else and that I had to ask permission to get a little taste of it.

You should be cherished, too. Cherish yourself. What kind of work are you doing in therapy? Is it time to stop being so good and start discovering what’s going to transform your life into something big and vibrant and shocking? Do you want to get little pats on the head and control your expectations and quietly hope for more? Or do you want to say, once and for all, “NO MORE KIND, MATURE SLEEPWALKING. NO MORE WISHY-WASHY DUDES WHO LOVE THEMSELVES BUT FIND ME WANTING.”

It’s time to forget about being lovable. And in fact, it’s time to forsake someone else’s idea of what gives you a spark or no spark. Block the “other” from this picture. No more audience. You are the cherished and the cherisher. You are the eminently lovable and the lover. You are a million brilliant sparks, flashing against a midnight sky. Stop making room for someone else to sit down. Fuck “good” partners. Fuck waiting to be let in. You are already in. You are in. Cherish yourself.

Fuck wondering if you’re lovable. Fuck asking someone else, “Am I there yet?” Fuck listening for the answer. Fuck waiting, alone, for a verdict that never comes. Don’t grow up to be one of those women with a perpetual question mark etched into her brow: Am I good? Am I lovable? Am I enough?

You are here. Sit down. Feel your potential in this moment. You have accepted too little for too long. That is changing today. Breathe in. Draw a picture of yourself. Tape it to the wall, with the words “YOU ARE HERE.” You are here. Cherish yourself.

Polly