Dear Polly,

I am hoping you might help me with a peculiar personal problem. I apologize in advance if this is a bit vague. To begin with, I am your average 28-year-old fun-time party gal who is often overly drunk/brash, 'one of the guys,' sensitive to criticism/weirdo childhood and thus live a smaller life which I've overall been happy doing with great girlfriends of my own, cool hobbies, owning my own home, working a well-paying not particularly prestigious helping-people job that affords me lots of free time to do whatever I want. I definitely need therapy & a journal, which I plan to do, soon.

I've lived in a certain medium-sized city since moving here after college and just last year I began dating someone (great) with a cool group of friends—I've had a lot of fun. Recently boyfriend's Best Friend began dating a new girl with prior connections to the friend group; she just moved to town over the summer. The problem? Whenever I'm around New Girl, I feel like garbage; through no fault of her own. She is nothing but polite and friendly and unobjectionable in every way. Also not drunk and embarrassing at social functions. Of course, in the past, I've met/become great friends with women who are smarter, more beautiful, more accomplished but I've somehow always been ok enough with my own special-snowflakeness to preserve my baby cool-girl ego. I suppose New Girl might be my particular brand of snow, but hers is Neimans and mine is Marshalls. I went to a smart person school, new girl went to the smartest person school, I've always dabbled in writing, new girl was a real writer, I work in a particular field, this person is now going to school in this same-ish helping people field—to basically be the boss of me (if you get my drift). Even our looks are similar. But I feel like that's not really it?

My boyfriend did once admit offhand that he had a crush on her, which makes me feel bad but not overly worried, as new girl and Boyfriend's Best Friend appear to be starring in the greatest movie romance of all time. Maybe I am just jealous of her whole life. Whenever I am around New Girl, my jaw is clenched, my fur fully bristled. I have to work really hard to be friendly and not weird or rude or standoffish, while inside my head I just want to move really far away, like drop everything and high-tail it to the other side of the country. I've brought it up to my sister, my friends, but they're all basically like "what's your problem? She's so great!" I have never had this problem with another human being before, no jealousy issues etc, so I'm pretty confused about why I'm all of a sudden cruising Craigslist housing ads in low-population western mountain towns.

Please advise.

Greener and Greener

Dear Greener and Greener,

God, I love letters about jealousy. Love them. Because jealousy is delicious and terrible and it's a gift from the gods above. Yes, it will eat you alive and turn you into a monster and ruin your life. But it's also really rich and mysterious and not unlike falling madly in love—in its own twisted, deeply dissatisfying way.

Jealousy arouses the passions within. It gives you important information about your identity, your ego, your vanities and what's missing from your life.

You say you're jealous of her whole life. What, specifically, do you want that she has and you don't? Look closely at that. Maybe this small, manageable life that you've carved out isn't really big enough for you, now that you're comfortable and safe and aren't really making giant messes everywhere you go anymore. (Um. I assume you're not making giant messes anymore. If not, that's something to consider fixing.)

It's natural for women who are a little wild and unsteady emotionally to relentlessly seek safety in smallness, and in settling for whatever they can get. When I was younger, I was reckless, arrogant, insecure, and aggressive and I sometimes toggled between semi-destructive behavior and extremely hermetic avoidance. Most of all, I never dared to reach for or ask for too much. But after years of this toggling, I could see that the life I built was a little small. Now don't get me wrong: I love small. Scrappy is comforting to me. Cool makes me itch a little. I feel slightly prickly when I spend too much time in places that aren't a little middle/working class, a little dive bar. And I like slouching around the house in my soft pants. That's living, as far as I'm concerned. That said, though, when you spend a good chunk of your time hanging around the concrete yard of a public elementary school, talking about random domestic trivia, you do have to ask yourself: Do I want to grow older and lumpier and more disheveled by the year? Do I want to spend the rest of my life putting together elaborate Lego Friends cruise ships and eating nachos and watching "The Voice"? (I know, nachos. Fuck yes to the nachos.) OR am I a big bright force of fucking nature that needs ambitious creative projects and very tall leather boots and grandiosity and giant icy cocktails and dancing and I AM GOING TO LIVE LARGE, GODDAMN IT, SO FUCK THIS CULTURE AND ITS COUGAR-SHAMING SEXIST HORSE SHIT.

It's healthy to ignore the SHOULDS: I SHOULD be cooler than I am, and live in a house that looks like a Boutique Hotel. But it's not healthy to ignore the things you truly want. I want to take on new challenges and feel good in my skin and drink a giant icy cocktail.

So feel what you feel about New Girl. That's the first step. Let it tell you something about the smallness, the mediocrity, the compromises of your current life. Now ask yourself: What does she do better than you, exactly? I mean, fuck the smartest school. The smartest or best anything is a mirage. What else, though? What does she show you, not about what you SHOULD be, but about what you WANT to be? Write it all down.

This process alone may solve some of your troubles with New Girl. But let's go one step further, because you're all tight and angry around this woman. Do you think she's full of shit and she acts like she's happier than she actually is? What makes you so mad? DO YOU TRULY BELIEVE SHE'S A BETTER PERSON THAN YOU? If so, why? Is she more generous? Is she more patient? Does she listen more closely?

Maybe you feel like you need to grow up, finally. And maybe some stubborn part of your ego wants to be the most alluring, special girl in the room. But if you're fixated on being the special one, the smart one, the hot one, it really does prevent you from being a person at all. You are marketing your product. You're not living.

And when someone is in that state, everyone else knows it. I met someone like that recently. She'd ask me a question and her face would look so beautiful and interested, and then the second I opened my mouth to answer her, her face would turn snarly and ugly. It was incredible to watch. That's what a ravenous ego-hunger does to people, when they chase down bigger and bigger ego rewards without looking closely at themselves. A lot of the celebrities have this sickness, just from being in the public eye and recognizing how tough it is to stay there. And because we see these people on our TV screens, we sometimes trick ourselves into thinking THAT'S WHAT SUCCESS LOOKS LIKE, instead of just calling it what it is: a personality collapsing under the weight of its own narcissism and ravenous ego hunger.

So you have to walk a fine line. You have to make sure that you're honoring your desires. But you also have to give up on being the special one, the flashy one. Just be a person in the room. Let New Girl shine. Befriend her. Listen to her. Be generous and forgive her for whatever flaws she has. At the very least, behave that way and your feelings may follow. This is an opportunity for you. You are advancing to a more generous state.

But you have to accept that you are not the best, and you will never be the best. This sounds like admitting defeat, but it's actually one of the finest victories you'll ever achieve. Start with vulnerability, and humility, and then dare to ask for more from your life.

And keep reading, because I got another jealousy letter this week that takes this New Girl story to a whole new, terrifying level….

Polly

Hi Polly,

This question has been asked countless times before in other advice columns, but you're my favorite and I would love to hear your take/be the recipient of your tough love. How do I stop feeling jealous of my boyfriend's ex?

The back story: My boyfriend and I have been together for one year and it's been great. He is the first man I've ever loved and we met through our shared passions (people who follow this column: accepting a lifetime alone and exploring your own hobbies/projects and truly being okay with your single circumstances works wonders on meeting kind, interesting individuals! Not just people you end up falling in love with!). My "problem" is, I'm not the first woman he's loved. I was perfectly okay with this reality until I met his ex while we were on a wedding-turned-vacation trip a few months ago. She was beautiful and charming, well-traveled and the life of the party. After a few drinks, she pulled me aside during the wedding reception and told me, through tears, that she just wanted my boyfriend to be happy. I knew very little about their time together and was confused by her need to tell me this. My boyfriend quickly informed me that their relationship didn't end on great terms and there was suspected cheating on her part. He reassured me that he had zero feelings towards her and he was annoyed that she seemed to think she ruined his shot at happiness. It was a really bizarre day.

The second leg of our vacation, after the wedding, was at my boyfriend's previous city of residence. He loved it there. It's vastly different from where we live now and he wanted to show me this part of his past. Of course, this city was the city where he and his ex lived together for a few years. He would casually reference things they did together. "This was mine and ex's street, our old apartment is over there," "This is where ex liked to shop," and so on. Their old neighborhood was picturesque and perfect and exactly where I saw myself living a few years out. I found myself hating her for already experiencing the shared life I wanted with him, in this wonderful place. Ugh, it's so stupid that I spent a significant portion of that trip thinking such negative, ridiculous, jealous thoughts. I couldn't not think about it at the time, considering I had just met her days before and it seemed as though she was everywhere. After a few days of learning about his life in that city and hearing more about his relationship with the ex, I finally told him that I really didn't want to talk about her anymore. He got the hint.

So, here I am months later, feeling the occasional pangs of insecurity and jealousy any time something reminds me of her. And then I get sad thinking about how he will never have to experience the same worry about my previous relationships because they were all so fleeting. That sounds kind of terrible—I don't want my boyfriend to be jealous of anyone! I guess I just don't like the imbalance that I'm making up in my head. I've heard the standard advice, "He's with you for a reason! She's in his past for a reason! Your respective paths crossed for a reason!" and that outlook really makes sense. He never gives me reason to doubt his love or his intentions. I guess some some days I just worry that I'm not as exciting (she was a flight attendant and they took frequent excursions to remote places at no cost, how does that even happen!) or as interesting (she's lived all over the world, I've lived in various parts of Appalachia) or as sexy (my boyfriend made the terrible mistake of telling me she was a highly sexual person and could orgasm multiple times during a broader discussion of why I have a difficult time relaxing during sex, sigh). One of his friends posted a group picture from that wedding today on Facebook and in it, my boyfriend is seated between his ex and me. I couldn't stop thinking about how they looked better together and had a way cooler relationship and that spiraled into more destructive, unnecessary thoughts. I immediately hid the picture and decided to message you to prevent further craziness.

I haven't really talked to my boyfriend about this because I know it's wildly unattractive to admit that you've been comparing yourself to a former lover. I figured it was something I would just get over and hopefully that proves to be the case in time. Polly, can you tell me how to stop fretting over something that shouldn't even be an issue?

Sick of Feeling Jealous

Dear SOFJ,

Oh sweet Jesus, yes. I love your letter, not only because this situation is the stuff of nightmares, but because your perspective on this woman is all twisted. Yes, she's charming, she travels a lot, she's gorgeous, whatever. I mean, I get it. I don't blame you. And maybe she and your guy do look perfect together. But I guarantee you, he doesn't care about that, and no one else does, either. It might as well be the juicy shame-the-protagonist subplot of a girl movie. Irrelevant.

But speaking of juicy subplots, next we come to the two details that really tell us everything we need to know:

1. Dream girl was multi-orgasmic. (!!!)

2. Dream girl wants you to know that she loves your boyfriend soooo much and all she wants is for him to be happy. SHE'S NOT JEALOUS, NOT HER! SHE JUST WANTS YOU TO KNOW (sniff, sniff) HOW INCREDIBLY HAPPY SHE WANTS HIM TO BE.

So ask yourself this: Why does she want YOU to know this? Why? Why wouldn't she just tell HIM that?

Here's why: He does not give a FUCK about her.

And here's why he doesn't give a fuck: BECAUSE SHE'S A FUCKING CRAZY PERSON.

Now follow this train of thought with me, uncharitable though it might seem: This exgirlfriend is nuttier than a nut log. You have unwittingly stumbled on the Angelina Jolie of the mortal world. (Angelina's not mortal. She's not even human, because she's not competitive at all, she has a great big heart and an enduring soul and she just happens to look perfect and sound perfect every single second of her life while she's CARING FOR THE WORLD'S CHILDREN.)

Looky here. Generally speaking, we don't call other ladies crazy. That's called Making Bad Choices. We don't cast aspersions on women who are just being happy and nice—like New Girl in that first letter. Her niceness makes us feel mean, but that's our problem, not hers.

But this Angelina of yours: She's different. And we are allowed to fucking notice that she's a troublemaker. Because only a troublemaker corners you and starts talking about him. You have nothing at all to do with him and her, them! You didn't know a goddamn thing about THEM or HER before now! She wanted you to think about her, to know that they mattered once, pure and simple. But she couldn't say, "Oh Jesus, this is weird for me, but I'm happy for you guys." Or better yet, say nothing. No. She couldn't talk to him directly. She couldn't merely smile at you and chat about nothing, real friendly-like. She couldn't make a joke about his bad habits, or something casual in passing. No. She needed you to know how passionately she feels for him. She needed YOU to know that she existed, that she mattered to him once.

I mean, come on, lady! Why? What kind of a giant stupid sad narcissistic ego needs to announce itself to the new girlfriend? I'm friends with my exes and some of their wives on Facebook. I don't send them personal notes saying that I just want their fucking husbands to be happy! I am pleased to see photos of their adorable babies and the like. Do I hope that my exes are happy? Yes, even the ones who were dicks. Do I tell their wives that? FUCK NO I DO NOT, because why would they care?

So she waves her hands around—I MATTER I MATTER!—and now you're like, "Hold on, who is this?" Your boyfriend didn't say a word about her, did he?

Oh, wait, hold on, he did say something… ABOUT THE FACT THAT SHE'S MULTIORGASMIC. Oh my fucking Christ. Look. First you have to know that he was just trying to tell you that he's good in bed, really really good, so whatever you're not feeling isn't his fault. Not very smart of him, but that was accidental. He was protecting his own ego, not reminiscing. He was trying to say that you need to loosen up and get a little crazy, when it's equally true that he needs to learn more stuff about how to operate your goddamn machinery.

And he thinks he's great in bed because HIS EX IS A LYING LIAR WHO LIES.

She doesn't really want him to be happy, and she's not multiorgasmic. No fucking way. This Angelina of yours is a charming, perfect, world-traveler and she's A FUCKING ACTRESS.

Now, I'm not saying I know this for a fact. Being multi-orgasmic isn't so rare, particularly once you have a partner you really trust who adores you and isn't constantly monitoring your response so he can stick a little gold star on his dick (ahem!). Once you know what you want and how to get it and you're not worried how you look or act when you're doing it, it's possible. But the supreme hotness of sex does wax and wane regardless. I'd sort of like to know if Angelina came three or four times every single fucking time they had sex. Because if she did, I'm going to go ahead and CALL BULLSHIT ON HER RIGHT NOW.

Of course you can't tell your boyfriend she was faking it. He's too invested in her as a sign of his mad skills in the sack. That's his cross to bear, I guess, one that I doubt is helping him in the skill-attainment department.

Anyway, let's review what we've learned by slipping into full-on aggressive combat mode with Angelina: She's batshit crazy and a liar and she fakes orgasms with great gusto. This explains why your boyfriend isn't actually all that passionate about her. She annoys him. He doesn't want her back. He may not know that she's a faker but he does know very well that she's a fake and she's nuts and she's not what he wants, not even a little bit. This also explains why she cheated on him: She's a narcissist. Some other guy came along and flattered her a little, she had to fuck him and whip out her multiple orgasms for his benefit, so he'd know just how supremely Best Woman Ever she is. She couldn't say no to that. She had to prove to this other guy, who didn't even matter, that she was The Dreamgirl of the Universe.

So there's your very uncharitable, bad-energy explanation. I don't believe in skipping that step. I don't believe in saying "She's wonderful, you're wonderful, let's all go in peace," immediately. This is a learning fucking moment, people! Lean the fuck in!

But now let's try something different. Let's assume that Angelina is trying, very very hard, to be happy for your boyfriend, but she's struggling with it a little. She was drinking and she told YOU this because she knew HE wouldn't care. He cut her off completely after she cheated, and that was incredibly hard for her. Maybe she is a wonder in the sack, in addition to being beautiful and charming, and because of this, men sleep with her and they almost never break up with her, but sometimes they don't really like who she is deep down inside anyway. And that haunts her, because she IS a good person, really, but she never feels like anyone really loves her for her. Even so, she sleeps with men too soon because she can't resist showing them her sexual prowess. She always wins them once she gets them to bed. She can't help but pull that trigger and seal the deal, even if it means spending her entire relationship feeling like she has to prove that she's really smart and lovable, in addition to being gorgeous and charming.

See, this story is much more convincing, and it's also, mysteriously enough, compatible with our more aggressive thesis. She's either a real Dream Girl or a partially fake Dream Girl, but the bottom line is that being a Dream Girl is much harder than it looks from the outside.

This woman is a robust brand. And we don't know what it's like to feel that everyone wants to consume you. We can't crawl inside her skin. But she made mistakes and your boyfriend dropped her. She is jealous of you. She cried to you. She is hurting. She is in the past and she knows it.

You're the only one who doesn't know it.

Let her go. She doesn't make your life more interesting, and she doesn't make you smaller and less worthy. Give her your sympathy and release her. Let her teach you a lesson about trying to be the Best Woman Ever: It backfires, and it's lonely and it sucks.

Here's another lesson for you: You need to talk to your boyfriend about sex a lot more. You need to work hard to have complex, vulnerable, thoughtful, rambling talks with him about your feelings and his. He needs to let you in, and you need to let him in. He needs to know more about what you want in bed, a lot more. You need permission to be a little unresponsive until you aren't anymore. He needs to know that you won't get there if you're acting or thinking you're a disappointment the whole time. You have to start with nothing and build something together. You don't have to go on about the ex—and if you do bring her up, I would be very clear about the fact that she doesn't matter, except as a symbol of something. She made you worry, and wonder if you really know him, if you really know what he wants from his life, from you. You want to share yourself with him more, to feel truly deeply connected at another, more trusting level, which will help you to understand yourselves and each other moving forward.

Lean into the vulnerability that this jealousy kicked up in you. Don't stop at "She's fucking crazy, that ex of his!" Don’t' stop at self-protection and defensiveness and counter attacks. Something beautiful is opening up to you now. More love, more connection, more security, more possibility. It starts with you forgiving her for trying to make herself bigger than you—and bigger than she really is. It starts with you feeling empathy for her loneliness and her need to matter to you. It starts with you forgiving yourself for not having traveled, for not being more charming, for not being gorgeous from every goddamn angle. It starts with you being chumpy and small and not all that good in bed. That's so lovable, you don't even know. You are not that experienced. You are not smooth and unstoppable and swaggery and special. You are thoughtful and easily upstaged and here's the secret: When you are upstaged, the world loves you more.

He loves you more. He just does.

He needs to figure out how to show it a little better, and when to shut his fat mouth. You need to figure out how to receive it, and believe it. This exgirlfriend of his is bright and shiny, but you are solid and real and you don't know how to shine more brightly. You don't know how to lie, and that's what's nice about you. You are humble and angry and fallible. He wants you.

Polly

Jealous again? Jealous like a good American? Write to Polly and let's talk about being jealous forever and ever and ever..

Heather Havrilesky (aka Polly Esther) is The Awl's existential advice columnist. She's also a regular contributor to The New York Times Magazine, and is the author of the memoir Disaster Preparedness (Riverhead 2011). She blogs here about scratchy pants, personality disorders, and aged cheeses. Photo by Laszlo Ilyes.

The post Ask Polly: I Am So Jealous Of This Other Girl! appeared first on The Awl.

Polly,

I'm going kind of crazy right now.

A year ago, I quit this job that I mostly enjoyed and was good at after three years in the same position. I quit because I wanted a promotion and suddenly it felt masochistic to keep waiting for that to happen.

I want to emphasize this: I really, really wanted a promotion. I wanted a promotion because I was undeniably successful in my role. I wanted a promotion because I had a lot of ideas how we might do things better but I had absolutely no authority to implement those ideas. I wanted a promotion because I wanted the external validation of a fancier title and a bigger paycheck to confirm that I really was as good at my job as I felt in my head.

I wanted a promotion so badly that I kept working and working longer hours and taking on more and more projects until one day I realized that not only was I trying to win a race that had no finish line, there was no one else competing in this race but me, and I was running myself ragged for absolutely no reason. I mean, I had talked with my boss about my desire for a promotion. But there were no opportunities available, and though there was a lot of talk about maybe promoting me, after more than a year, nothing happened.

Quitting was a good decision. For one thing, I've had cancer and it's not unreasonable to assume I don't actually have all the time in the world to wait around for good things to happen. Quitting gave me the freedom to move closer to my family. Quitting gave me more free time. Day to day, I'm a much happier person.

But here's the thing: There have been some personnel changes at the old organization, and now there's an opening for my former boss's position. And I want to apply for it. I don't actually want to move back to the old community. I don't think I actually want the job; I'm well aware of the frustrations and challenges of that particular role. What I want is for them to want me.

Which they probably wouldn't! There's an obvious internal candidate. I'd really just be giving them another opportunity to say, "Sorry, you're not good enough." But I can't stop thinking about it. Today, I actually wrote out a cover letter for my application. I am like a slow-motion car crash.

Can you help me stop obsessing over this old, perceived slight? I'm by nature a resentful, grudge-holding person; I'm still angry at the company that laid me off years and years ago even though I can rationally argue that laying me off in particular instead of any other employee was actually the most compassionate decision. I don't want to be that kind of person, but you know: I really, really wanted a promotion.

Thwarted

Dear Thwarted,

You didn't get a promotion because there was no way to promote you. Also? You had a lot of ideas how the company might do things better. You were passionate about those ideas. You took the inefficiencies and inconsistencies around you personally. And while it's easy to believe that these things make you an ideal candidate for a management role, you're wrong. In fact, in 9 out of 10 workplaces, these things make you the least likely person to be promoted.

Generally speaking, managers are not people who fixate on how the company might do things better. Managers simply run things. They perpetuate the status quo, and they are hired to do just that. Sure, there might be a superstar CEO or business owner who rains down hellfire and damnation (or muffin baskets, or bonuses), and then all the managers inform the plebes of the new policies and initiatives that are going to streamline everything, usually in asinine, out-of-touch ways that fuck everything else. But managers are not the source of these initiatives. The manager's real talent lies in his/her ability to pass along bullshit initiatives WITHOUT letting on—in longwinded emails and longwinded meetings—that those initiatives are fucking bullshit. The budding manager is promoted not based on long hours, vision, and passion, but on an ability to encounter hilariously ill-considered directives with a quiet shrug of resignation.

Most people who've been in the workplace for more than a few years will recognize that I'm not exaggerating. In fact, the workplace comedy didn't reach its full potential until writers recognized that they could only capture the stunning stupidity and willful mediocrity of most workplaces by embracing farce. (See also: "The Office" UK, Office Space, and Dilbert before them) The same is true for depictions of Hollywood. The industry is run, generally speaking, by such unenlightened jackasses with such gargantuan egos that if you tell simple, true stories about them, people think you're working on a hilariously over-the-top "SNL" sketch.

And if you've ever actually been a manager, you understand why people with initiative and passion, who take their jobs very, very seriously, are exactly the sorts of people you don't want around. Because they take up your fucking time. You're a survivor, after all. You know the culture of the office will never fucking change. So when someone sends you a 1,000-word email about how this or that system is inefficient and there's a much easier solution, it takes too much time, and it stirs up emotions about what a jacked up joint you're working for, emotions that you worked hard to bury long ago. Instead of seeming like a real go-getter, the email writer is identified as a giant fucking pain in your ass.

But let's move past the built-in indignities of any workplace, shall we? Let's just assume that you bit your tongue repeatedly and played your cards perfectly. In addition to working long hours, let's assume you turned in clean, exceptional work and wowed everyone with your great attitude and cooperative work style. So you wanted someone to show you that they noticed all of this hard work. You wanted to feel wanted.

Instead, they said "Sorry, we just can't promote you."

Here's what they DIDN'T say: "Sorry, you're not good enough." That's what you HEARD, but that's not what they actually said.

Now I want you to think about who actually did say that to you. Who sent you the message that you would never be good enough?

Maybe no one will come to mind. Maybe you watched that scene in Election where Tracy Flick is lying on her bed after losing the school election and her mom comes in and acts all nice and then says, "Maybe you didn't make enough posters," and you DIDN'T feel a weird shiver of recognition. Maybe you just thought, "Fuck, maybe she really didn't make enough posters!"

And maybe you've never seen a therapist. Maybe you've resigned yourself to the identity of Grudge Holder instead of asking why you return to old slights as if there's some important mystery to be solved there, as if the more you dig up buried disappointments, the more you'll learn about what you did wrong. You figure you fucked up something, or maybe there's something off about the people involved, and if you look really hard at the mess you left behind, you might figure it all out.

This digging up old shit and sifting through it obsessively is a very close relative of Explaining Yourself When You Don't Fucking Have to Say a Word. In order to address the world's repeated assertion of "Sorry, you're not good enough," or "I don't understand you," or "No, I'm just not interested," you have to whip out charts and graphs and correct the essential injustice of the situation.

Think about that "Sorry, you're not good enough" moment at your job—the emotions that got kicked up there, and how you reacted. What you did. What you said. Now I want you to dig up 3 or 4 memories that involve you doing or reacting the same way to personal circumstances. Who took all of your hard work and the case you made that you were worthy of being heard, and said to you, "I don't fucking want to hear it"? Who sent you the message that you were thinking too much, trying too hard, and that somehow made you unworthy?

Once upon a time, I had a job and I was really good at what I did. I wanted to be acknowledged for it. And I was. But then, later, times were tougher, and it wasn't really possible for me to be acknowledged for it anymore. It was a structural issue, not a personal one. But because I would sit down every day and dig deep to produce good work, and because my managers were smart, good people, I became fixated on their inability to acknowledge or reward my hard work.

Why did I become fixated? The easy answer is that I'm a Grudge Holder. The more complicated answer is that I have a very deep, intractable need to be understood and appreciated for exactly who I am. This nugget of high expectations exists at the center of my psyche. Now, sure, everyone wants to be understood and appreciated. But exactly how much energy will most people expend in order to be understood and appreciated by people who either don't have the time or don't have any concrete reason to express such things? Personally speaking, I will work tirelessly to be understood. I will explain and re-explain. And at some level, I am absolutely certain that, with enough explaining, I will be understood and embraced—at long last!

It sounds kind of comical, but trust me that there's heartbreak there. And this is where your digging should lead you (but it doesn't): to some central injury that needs to be addressed. This obsession with your old job is asking you to excavate something important, some operating system buried at the center of things, fueled by pain and rejection.

Yes, of course we can step back and say "Fucking get over it already." That's easy. America is the land of Fucking Get Over It Already, and the Don Drapers of the world, who appear on the surface to function the most smoothly, have ten thousand leagues of rejection and fear under their tumultuous seas. These are the managers. They do what's needed. They calmly maintain the status quo. They swat away challenges to their authority like pesky flies, even if there's something important and true there.

The essential Don Draper-like nature of American life, in other words, is custom-made to make a lot of us crazy. As much as we have gotten over it, as much as we do our best to sally forth without overanalyzing or overexplaining, there's a daily madness that unnerves us, a feeling that everyone else has been stricken with some crazy viral infection that we're not allowed to acknowledge.

And look, I'm not that enlightened, and maybe I don't even want to be. I don't lead encounter groups on weekends. Like most fallen romantics, I'm one half soft, confessional teddy bear, and one half macho asshole mouthing the words to "Can I Get a Fuck You?" every few minutes. Maybe that's just what survival looks like, when you're not living in some deeply feminine socialist democracy where the government gives you an allowance for red wine and soft cheeses.

That necessary bluster shouldn't tell you you're a Grudge Holder, though. And most of all? You really have to be careful. Because when someone or something kicks up that old message of "Sorry, you're not good enough," you need to monitor your reaction and resist the urge to move closer and stick your hand straight into the center of the flame.

Obviously this means you shouldn't apply to that job at your old workplace. You don't want to move back there or take that job or work with those people again, and FOR SURE they don't want you there. You may see this as an opportunity to hear "Yes! We do want you! We never appreciated you enough, and we see that clearly now!" Maybe in your fantasy, you get the job, and then tell them, "Naw, I can't move back there! Too bad for you!" But some sick part of you knows that this is also a big chance to hear "Sorry, you're not good enough," yet again. And some sick part of you wants to hear that, too, because it validates something deep and true about how you see yourself. You are not good enough. Somewhere at the center of your psyche, those words are engraved.

Listen to me: Don't let yourself write this off as a silly workplace fixation. There is heartbreak here. You have been working too hard your whole life just to fix this. The energy you've expended on this is unfathomable, and still, it seems like the answer is always the same. You are tirelessly fueling the blinding brightness of a thousand suns, and still, the world seems to say, "No, thank you, we'll pass." And also, "What's wrong with you, anyway?"

This isn't about victimization. This is about what we, in our hearts, feel as we step out into the world, and what we're looking for. For a long time, it was as if I was crafting gorgeous miniature houses, and then scanning the horizon for someone to give them to. But did I look for someone with a real love of gorgeous miniature houses? No. I looked for someone wearing industrial work boots. I looked for the kind of person who was sure to smash my house into a million splintery pieces. Build, present, smash. Build, present, smash.

And here's the confusing thing: The people who smash what you build? Some of them are employers and friends. Some of them are blood relatives, with perfectly good intentions. You can't just send them all packing and be done with it. But if you hand them your pretty little house, YOU NEED TO REMEMBER what will happen. Don't do it. Keep your soft, confessional teddy bear self safe from these people.

But create a safe space for the teddy bear, for the miniature houses, for the heart and soul of who you are. This is what I keep saying about putting up signs (Write down: "You are good enough right now, BEYOND good enough" and tape it to the wall.) This is what I'm saying about doing silly, small things for yourself, and working on projects and creating things that have nothing to do with work or other people's approval. This is what I mean about being vulnerable. Because if you swallow down your pain and put on your work boots and go all Don Draper and "Can I Get A Fuck You?" on the world, that's what makes you a Grudge Holder. And that's also what keeps you pandering to the Don Drapers out there. That's what draws you to the flame, for more of the same old pain.

Even though I feel great these days, I still sometimes notice that I'm a real sucker for rejecting or withholding personalities. Sometimes it's just the faintest whiff of narcissism, or the slightest, unexpected scent of Mean Girl that does it. I work harder. I say too much. I insert foot into mouth. Most of the time, I'm not even invested. I don't even like the person that much, or I have absolutely no skin in the game. But on the wrong day with the wrong kind of person, old synapses start firing and I want to prove—to the exact people who are guaranteed not to give a shit or understand a thing—that I matter. I want to work hard to show that I deserve love, goddamn it.

And when you stumble on a microcosm of people who seem restless and impatient, who can't hang out with people who aren't hip enough, and can't go to places that aren't cool enough, and can't talk to people who aren't rich enough, or stylish enough, or important enough, what you'll find at the core of their operating systems is "I deserve love, goddamn it." When someone can't listen closely or can't stop scanning a crowded room for someone else to talk to, when someone can't talk to you because you don't seem important enough, there's a sickness in play. The irony is that the damaged are both seeker and rebuffer, rejecter and rejectee. There is no distinction between Don Draper and his awkward, striving underlings. They're all locked into the same feeling of needing more understanding and approval from a cold, cruel world. But they are addicted to the chase, so they never really want to arrive anywhere.

You have arrived somewhere. Don't let this vestige of a past chase ruin what you have. Some workplaces, some bosses, some friends, some relatives, some exes will never want you, and will never appreciate all of the amazing qualities you bring to the table. It has nothing to do with you. Forget them. Build those parts of you that make you feel peaceful and accepting and satisfied and soft and vulnerable. Make a religion out of letting go. You do great work, and everyone knows it. Don't fixate on the indifferent. Keep yourself surrounded by people who look you in the eye, listen closely, and really seem interested in you as a person. Try to do the same for your friends. Stop working so goddamn hard for once in your life. You are already good enough.

Polly

You deserve love, goddamn it. Write to Polly and she'll say it right to your unlovable face!

Heather Havrilesky (aka Polly Esther) is The Awl's existential advice columnist. She's also a regular contributor to The New York Times Magazine, and is the author of the memoir Disaster Preparedness (Riverhead 2011). She blogs here about scratchy pants, personality disorders, and aged cheeses.

The post Ask Polly: I Never Felt Appreciated At My Job And It Still Drives Me Nuts! appeared first on The Awl.

Dear Polly,

Sometimes when I'm feeling unaccomplished I like to seek out some new, insightful, unbiased, life's great mystery deciphering blog or news and culture magazine or twitter account and somehow this morning I wound up at The Awl reading your column. I love it. Your hyper-honest, humorous, practical approach was entertaining and, dare I say, educational.

Here's my shit:

I am a 27-year-old male, which is probably not your target demographic, but third wave feminism says embrace the contradictions of life so fuck it, right? I graduated from college sometime in the fuzzy prehistory of my adult life and prior to moving to a new city and finding a great job I met a beautiful, charming, intelligent young woman who everyone loves, myself included. We dated as I packed up my life and saved a few grand to make the transition from my boozy college town to a city where I didn't have pill-head drinking buddies and pot dealers on speed dial.

By the time I finally moved we had grown around each other like two house plants sharing the same window. There were ups and downs like any relationship. I'm a little narcissistic, manic-depressive and stubborn. She's a little jealous, reactionary and clingy. But overall we had a good thing going and we decided that when she finished school (I'm a few years older) she would join me in said new city. I knuckled though some lean (read "broke") months on my own and then she arrived—ensue happy urban life.

It's almost 3 years later and I have been thinking about breaking up semi-constantly for the better part of a year. Adulthood, from a functional standpoint, has been pretty easy. My job turned out to be really stable and lucrative enough for us to pay the bills and rent an adorable little house in a nice neighborhood. I taught her about healthy credit card use. She taught me about working together as a couple to achieve our goals. When she didn't find a rewarding job in her field we decided to put her back in school on a great career path. Hurrah for great long term decision making!

Here's my issue as far as I can figure it out. When I first moved down here I was all about embracing a new, fun, cultured lifestyle. I made some friends, at and outside of work, went to lots of independent movies at the art house theatre, spent time reading Cheever short stories in hip cafés and felt well on my way. When she arrived she had some difficulty making friends. I was sympathetic and supported her through several job changes, encouraged her to take classes where she might meet like-minded people, etc. Meanwhile she hated the friends I had made. She felt threatened by the women I worked with, developing a jealous streak I hadn't yet witnessed. We worked through it. I stopped hanging out with the guys and gals she disliked. Assured her that she was more important to me than any of them. Made new friends. She disliked them. Much of this was centered around her feeling threatened by women in these various social groups. Women with husbands. Women with boyfriends. Single women. Women who fawned over me. Women who had no discernible interest in me. Women to whom I may as well have been the sticky spot the bar back forgot to wipe off your table. She moved her way through them like someone trying on shoes. I love her and we continued to work through it, but for about a year now I have been watching myself turn away from the active lifestyle I craved to a more sedentary, domestic, melancholy bent.

And it isn't as if I have watched her blossom and bubble with happiness. She has found some friends (of both genders) and seems to lead a confident, empowered lifestyle around them. I encourage her to feed off of this, to flirt back with the boys in her classes and spend time with the girls she seems to enjoy. But around me she has become quite negative and seemingly insecure. She complains about school, about the jobs she occasionally works. She constantly worries about her weight, which I understand isn't novel or odd. But it's one of those dammed if you do/if you don't subjects where my attempts to only buy healthy food are met with initial enthusiasm, followed by cutesy antagonism and eventually disdain and combativeness. We have wildly different schedules and needs. I can't remember the last time we both wanted to do the same thing. Her idea of a good time is going out to eat for Mexican or TGI Fridays which I find unnecessarily expensive and dull. We attempted to retreat into our tried and true college-learned alcoholism but while we each can go out for drinks and have a good time independently, she has become a bitter, paranoid, even hurtful drunk who claims to remember nothing the next day and sweetly apologizes for it.

Even at home as we attempt to spend "quality time" together, she will suggest watching a movie and within 15 minutes out comes the Facebook or fashion site. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against these things in themselves. Christ, I spent half the morning reading The Awl and trying to guess whether someone was a Wes Anderson movie character or a Jewish mobster. But these gestures are half-assed and she will wind up complaining to me about it as if I was the one who brought the laptop to "quality time."

Now is the part where I try to take some responsibility.

1. I'm a flirt and I like meeting new people. Some (all?) of her jealousy no doubt stems from this. But my attempts to be sensitive to this have backfired. We recently went out for Halloween and she got mad at me for not being the charming, gregarious man she used to know. The same charming, gregarious man who would send her into a drunken rage when he met a spunky trio at the dartboards, one of whom was a woman. I have watched myself become nervous and reserved. And the next morning following our Halloween night out, all she wanted to talk about was some girl she claimed was "so into me" even though we hardly spoke. I'm no saint. I enjoy the attention of a new acquaintance, regardless of gender. I am probably not the most attentive companion in public. I don't like PDA or hand-holding, but have no problem with periodic pecks or the occasional territory marking hug. But I've never cheated. I've never taken or given a phone number. I respect physical boundaries and do not touch or invite the touch of strange women.

2. Being boring is my fault, not hers. I can do whatever I want with my free time. If I want to go out with buddies I can. If I want to read novels in cafés I can. If I want to take yoga classes I can. If I want to learn to play the god-dammed concertina I can. But I always thought relationships were supposed to be platforms to help you become who you wanted, not reasons to hunker down and avoid upsetting your other in the hopes of a better time down the road.

3. Most men (I think) would have cut and run a long time ago. Call me old-fashioned, I always want to give it my all, work through problems, never say die. But I also don't have a lot of people I can go to for advice and I am wondering whether I'm being naive or unrealistic. Our lives have become so intertwined that I fear cutting ties for the miserable time it would cause her. I fear she would drop out of school or panic and move home to an unhappy life. This isn't to say she isn't capable and resilient. But she does not value self-sufficiency like I do and has grown extremely dependent on me. I cringe to think of the money and time she would throw away if I were to give up on us. I care deeply about her and want her to make good decisions and be happy. But at what point is me worrying about her happiness killing my own.

4. We have communicated about many of these things. Nothing has really changed and I have, in many ways, stopped talking about the problems to allow her peace of mind to focus on school. That sounds like a terrible idea but I don't know what else to do. She suffers emotionally from our problems in ways that I cannot even begin to empathize with. If I'm not ready to cut the cord, I feel like dragging her through my twenty-something existential issues is cruel.

This is way too long and probably unpublishable but you seemed so insightful in a funky postmodern way when I read your responses that I felt I had to reach out. Thanks for any consideration.

Domestic, Sendentary, Melancholy

Dear DSM (Haw!),

Your girlfriend sounds exactly as lame as I was for about a decade of my life, and for that reason I would strongly encourage you to break up with her.

I didn't understand this back when I was the one wilting around the house, acting jealous and flinty and occasionally drinking too much, but when a relationship makes you clingy and weepy and angry and weird, and you can't tolerate other women around your guy and you put a ton of time and energy into analyzing all of the women who are out there LITERALLY THROWING THEMSELVES at him, then the world is sending you a great big message. The world is telling you, "YOU ARE NOT READY FOR A SERIOUS RELATIONSHIP. You need to grow up and learn more about the wide world out there, and you're not going to do those things as long as you're clinging to this dude."

It's funny, though, because I do think you're making a few understandable but somewhat condescending assumptions about your girlfriend. When you write, for example, "[S]he does not value self-sufficiency like I do and has grown extremely dependent on me." I don't doubt that she's dependent on you at this point. But I wouldn't assume that she doesn't value self-sufficiency. I would bet that she values it very much, and really hates that she finds herself turning you away from potential friends and pulling you into a melancholy cocoon of two. She probably doesn't think this state of affairs is ideal any more than you do, no matter what she happens to be saying about it right now.

We can't really make any assumptions about the kind of person she'll become 5 or 10 years, because she's in a very particular kind of tortured state at the moment: She doesn't feel secure with your love for her. Maybe she'd be insecure with anyone in the world, because she's not grown up enough to be in a relationship yet, or maybe you two have different ideas about the world and different tastes in people and it's tough for her to feel that you truly love her and appreciate her enough. The interesting thing about jealousy is that, many times, it grows out of ambivalence. If you think your boyfriend isn't really, truly your type, and isn't capable of appreciating the good things about you, then you're (somewhat perversely) more likely to cling, and to assume that other women—particularly those who are different from you—might present a real threat to your relationship.

It was often easy for me to imagine someone better for my various boyfriends than me. One of my exes clearly wanted someone who looked down on him intellectually. Another ex obviously would've preferred someone dumber and bustier who wore bright red lipstick around the clock. (Poor guy really suffered under my moody, bony, unshowered reign.) And then there was the guy who was perfectly suited for an earth mother—sweet, easy-going and super-awesome (as opposed to bossy, wound up, and obsessed with life's little indignities, like me).

It's bizarre how I knew that these guys should be with other girls, but I still didn't want to give up on "us." I kept rooting us on, like a crazy person cheering for a pair of filthy, mismatched socks. And even as I remained stubbornly fixated on making things "work" for us, I became less and less self-sufficient. I was working hard for something that didn't even make sense, and dedicating all of my time to someone who didn't even see the point in me—the needlessly complicated analyses, the sharp elbows, the incessant whining about the intolerable fuckedness of most people and the wild injustice of living in a neighborhood with NO FUCKING BAGELS AND NO INDIAN FOOD AND JUST ONE THAI DELIVERY PLACE WE ORDER FROM EVERY GODDAMN NIGHT ALREADY.

I wasn't exactly living my best life with these guys, is all. Your girlfriend isn't living her best life with you, either. You sound reasonably smart and charming and are apparently attractive to the opposite sex. It may be that she's worried that she'll never do any better than you. Or maybe she's just walked down this long tunnel into codependency, and you walked there with her, and put up with her shit along the way, and now she doesn't know how to back up and rethink the whole thing. She's invested in you, that's all. She wants to MAKE IT WORK.

It'll be work, alright. You'll share a life of endless drudgery.

But I would not take her current state of jealous, depressed weirdness as a sign that she's about to fall apart over you, and screw her whole life over in the process. Not-quite-good-enough relationships between mismatched socks sometimes becomes obsessive BECAUSE it's not a good match. Your hesitation and doubt may have kept her thinking that she's into you, but that doesn't mean she REALLY is. It may be that she hates all of your new friends because she doesn't really dig you or your taste in people or anything about you as much as she feels she should.

Even as I wept piteously over my first live-in boyfriend, I knew he was wrong for me. And I still remember when he dropped me off at my brand new apartment in the wake of our break up. He looked at me with eyes full of pity and said, "I'm really worried that I've ruined your whole life." Even though I'd been crying, this made me laugh out loud. "MY WHOLE LIFE?" I said. "YOU THINK YOU JUST RUINED MY ENTIRE LIFE?! You think I'm never going to recover FROM THIS?! I'm 22 years old, dude. I'm pretty sure things are going to work out for me just fine." He looked at me with disbelief. "Really?" he asked. I wanted to punch him in the face. It was much easier to say goodbye and shut the door after that.

I was shocked, though, because I realized that he thought that my emotional response indicated that I couldn't stand on my own two feet without him. Yes, I was lame, and I was depressed, and I wasn't ready to deal with the real world yet. I wanted to hide. The real world, real jobs, looked scary and terrible to me. I just wanted to eat ice cream in bed.

But even in my depressed state, I knew I was avoiding something with him. I knew I was trying not to face my life alone. I never for a second thought that I'd never meet anyone else or that I'd sink into an alcoholic haze or lose all of my friends or whatever.

I just didn't know what the world had to offer yet. I didn't know who my lifelong friends would be yet, and didn't have any idea that the world was full of amazing books and incredible music and people who were weird in the same ways as me. I thought that the world was made up of terrible jobs downtown with asshole bosses, and bad bars filled with frat boys, and the alternative was fractionally less awful dudes with plastic Ovation guitars who listened to the same five Dead songs over and over and over again.

I think your girlfriend is hiding from the world, that's all. You're not helping her by staying with her. You're not her savior. You won't ruin her life. Even if she does move back home, she'll get back on her feet and go out into the world again eventually. A lot of clingy young women can be wildly melodramatic about break-ups, so melodramatic that you can't imagine that they'll survive for a second without you. They're just afraid of being alone.

The fact is, you're not THAT important, even if she says that she wants you and only you. And you are, for sure, a little bit of a narcissist. That's ok. You seem smart and loyal and I'm sure you'll have lots of great women chasing you around. Fly and be free, pretty bird. Don't take responsibility for your girlfriend's life, because she'll be fine. Don't show her this column as proof that you're blameless and she'll be fine, either. Just be kind about it.

And one other thing? I know your girl was mixed up, but don't ever, ever help anyone with a diet. I know, you were just stocking up on healthy food; you were just trying to help. Trust me: Just. Don't. Someone buys me diet food, or tut-tuts when I reach for the cheese? I EAT ALL OF THE CHEESE. I had two kids and got a little round, and thanks to the fact that my husband didn't make a single fucking peep about my roundness and my vacuuming up the Queso and the chocolate willy nilly for a few years, I independently decided that the roundness was getting old. If he had made it clear that roundness wasn't his thing, I would've turned into Voldemort on the spot. An enormous Queso-vacuuming Voldemort, conflicted and guilty and resentful and rounder and hungrier than ever.

So let the ladies decide about how to manage their bodies on their own. If you no like, move on, but shut the fuck up about it.

Honestly, it does sound like you have a tendency to "help" in ways that are a little controlling. If you really do value self-sufficiency, I'd strongly recommend that you not move in with anyone or pay for their schooling or support them until they've demonstrated that they're grown-ups and can develop passions and interests and friends of their own—and keep them. Sometimes propping your partner up too much, and getting all up in her business too much, and playing supportive, encouraging, boundary-less boyfriend too much just makes a girlfriend feel weaker and less capable than she actually is. You have to give your partner space to make her own decisions. Don't urge her to pursue a career with the same enthusiasm that you've pursued a career, or to flirt with the boys with the same enthusiasm with which way you flirt with the girls. When you need your partner to match you perfectly, and to substantiate all of your habits, good and bad, by mirroring them back to you? That just proves that YOU'RE not grown-up enough to have a mature, healthy relationship, either.

I'm not saying you're not a great guy. Just watch out for those tendencies moving forward, and I think the world will reward you with some grade-A independent-style, grown-up types of women. If that's really what you want.

Um. IS that what you want, really? Because if you're secretly into girls who need you more than anyone else in the whole wide world, who are more than willing to form themselves in your image, I think you'll find yourself up a similar shit creek absent a paddle much sooner than you realize.

Good luck out there, Tiger!

Polly

Do you seek out unsustainable living arrangements with disposable lovers? Write to Polly and discuss!

Heather Havrilesky (aka Polly Esther) is The Awl's existential advice columnist. She's also a regular contributor to The New York Times Magazine, and is the author of the memoir Disaster Preparedness (Riverhead 2011). She blogs here about scratchy pants, personality disorders, and aged cheeses. Still from "Superman's Girlfriend, Lois Lane" #106 by Joel Kramer.

The post Ask Polly: If I Dump My Needy Girlfriend, I'm Afraid I'll Ruin Her Life! appeared first on The Awl.

Dear Polly,

I don't seem to want anything all that badly. Well, I do and I don't… You talk about having a compelling vision for your life. Well, I can't seem to come up with much of one. At best everything is fuzzy. I've always wanted one of those careers where you're paid to be yourself—one where you can be funny and show off on a stage and make people laugh and be entertained. To be someone's muse and inspiration rather than the service lackey I am now. Except I took acting classes and auditioned for plays and never got in. I'm not stereotypically good looking and female, plus in the end, I can't really pull off portraying anyone but me. I suck at musical instruments, my voice is flat, and I have no flexibility so I can't dance. The closest thing I can come up with to be a stage showoff is being one of those storytelling folks, like on The Moth or NPR. This sounds very nice to me and I am entertaining at it, though I used to be more excited at the idea than I'm feeling these days. On the very few occasions when I've gotten to talk at people or show off, I've felt like THIS IS MY THING. But I have maybe one opportunity a year to do that (teaching a class or having to do a speech at work), and this year's opportunities to do that have come and gone and somehow I didn't get as much buzz from it as I remember having in the past.

But then I start thinking of the practicalities. How I sucked at trying to run my own business in the past, plus it was boring as fuck and I like having a regular paycheck and health insurance that someone else takes care of. I don't seem to be much of a self-starter/freelancer and I don't get excited by having my work published by other people. It seems like a giant "who cares" to me now because back when I did that, nobody did care much. I don't like social media and I don't want to have to whore myself up on it. I have looked into the local theater opportunities in my small town and the programs here are either for kids or for the musical theater company. I can whine all day and tell you my stupid reasons why not that pretty much go on to infinity, but it boils down to, every time I think of the load of shit I'd have to do to start working on this, I lose all interest and feel inadequate to the task. I don't have a compelling, burning desire or vision or goal to chase after to get me where I want to go and motivate me to do things, no matter how scary or boring. I don't have folks I can rely on for much help in these things. My friends have lives and families and whatnot and you can only ask for so much from anyone anyway, plus it's not like I know anyone who's done or doing what I want to. I feel at sea as to how to do this thing. I can't do it alone, but I have to do it alone, or else it won't get done. But it's not getting done anyway.

I may be technically depressed. I don't know, I've felt pretty neutral my whole life and I'm never freaking incapacitated by sad, can't get out of bed, I can always function no matter what, etc. (Plus I'm beyond terrified of taking the scary drugs and having all the scary side effects—I don't feel bad enough to think that the side effects and trying on drugs for a year to see how they fit is worth that hell just to see if I feel a perky that I've never experienced. I really, really hope that meds for life is not the only answer to this problem.) I used to want love, but that desire has burned out and gone with age and maybe that's all for the best given my personality. I am far more suited to being single, and other humans needing me to take care of them fries me, which is why I'm not super thrilled about my current job.

I used to think someday I'd move to LA and have a career and some awesome destiny. I deluded myself very nicely for a couple of years that my awesome future was only a year or two and a move away—then I realized this year that I'm never going to make it and you can't just move without a plan and a goal, hoping for a change. The practicality kicks in and I always realize that this is all I've got and this is all I'm ever going to be—a boring clerical who's getting way too old (mid-30's) to have dreams of being an attention whore. I want so much more than this provincial life, but I haven't the faintest idea how to get it. Everyone is tired of hearing me whine, including me, and folks (including my mom and shrink) are now saying, "Can't you just be happy with things as they are?" I see their point, since I'm clearly not going to do jack shit anyway and I might as well enjoy that my life is okay. I really like the town I live in, I have a job I'm unlikely to get laid off from because god knows everyone needs someone to work at a front counter and take the drama, I have my own apartment and a car and spend my free time doing my fifty billion hobbies instead of wiping bums and screaming at my family. If not for the inner whine to be a shiny star, I'd be fine. So why isn't that enough? Why won't the whining wanker within me stop wanting attention and just shut up? Except I'm starting to think what with the losing interest in the few things I did feel like were calling me, maybe it is shutting up, because I'm too inadequate to answer that call. I didn't answer in time and now the call is dying.

I'm sick of trying to solve this problem. What am I supposed to do, Polly? Look for another "thing," because maybe I was wrong? Realize that I have ambition without ambition (or just no ambition at all) and accept that this is as good as it gets? Take medication that scares the shit out of me and hope that somehow "fixes" me? (Again, I really really hope that's not the only answer.) I already exercise regularly, so that's not it. Is it that I have been wanting the wrong thing, or that I just don't have it in me to care all that much? What the hell is wrong with me and what do I do about it?

The Whining Wanker

Dear WW,

Your initials are the same as Walter White's (and Walt Whitman's!). Everyone's favorite high school chemistry teacher also felt uninspired and disappointed in the face of his mediocre life, but once he found his true calling (cooking drugs!) he felt far more inspired and excited by the possibilities the world had to offer. He also felt more anxious, more afraid, more depressed, more isolated, more aggressive, and more in the mood for setting shit on fire and running people over with his car.

The standard advice here is that you should drop everything and pursue your dream. Unfortunately, your worldview and/or your current chemical state don't support this agenda. If you moved to LA right now, you'd very likely find the entire show-off culture off-putting, if not faintly repugnant, and instead of getting out of bed in the morning and paying your rent in a timely fashion, you might encounter that incapacitating sadness that's so far eluded you. Right now, you're probably propped up by your family, your routines, and your bullshit job and your various hobbies, however unfulfilling many of those things might be.

But here's what might happen if you moved to LA and lost all your props and tumbled into incapacitating sadness: You might have the kind of breakdown that could push you out of your current, mildly depressed state. You might feel more anxious, more afraid, more depressed, more isolated, more aggressive, and more in the mood for setting shit on fire and running people over with your car. You also might feel more inspired and excited by the possibilities the world had to offer.

The central question is not whether or not you should pursue a career as a professional show-off. The central question is what will snap you out of this mildly depressed state. Success or failure in the entertainment world may at least force the issue, but you'll still have to address the underlying problem, which is that you're mildly depressed, you've been mildly depressed for years, and your entire mindset around yourself and your life is warped because it was formed in this mildly depressed state. It's like your whole life is off-key, and you're walking around wondering why everything sounds wrong.

I bet you dislike that characterization—that you're not completely sure what's acting on you, when someone else can see it clearly. Back when I was in love with music and songwriting and was also mildly depressed, I was never embarrassed to play my songs for people, but I WAS totally ashamed of any suggestion that I had a big dream of playing music for other people in any official capacity. I was happy to paint myself as a mess, but I was not ok with someone else observing some flaw that I hadn't pointed out already, especially if that flaw was related to naïve optimism and hope.

This is the terrible curse of the pessimistic cools and the skeptical know-it-alls and the more-jaded-than-thous. We must anticipate every angle, every criticism, every pitfall—how this story goes, how pathetic it is, how it will end badly. Being ambitious, wanting something we might never have, feeling hopeful about something grandiose and inspired that relies at least 80% on magic—that's like having food stuck to your face. Being eager and earnest and slightly self-deluded is, to the cool and the hip, the ultimate nightmare. It's like that dream where you're in school and you look down and realize you have no pants and no underwear on. Suddenly you can feel the cold press of the plastic chair on your tenders. That's the physical sensation of realizing you're a joke to the rest of the world. I bet self-protective hipsters have that dream a lot.

But that's what happens when anxious or depressed or just needy kids are left to their own devices, to tell bad stories about themselves and the world. We mine the disappointments of our childhood, and the disappointments of our chemistry, and we craft them into self-protective armor that keeps us safe from needing other people, from needing our dreams, from needing anything. We are really fucking safe, and nothing adds up to anything, and nothing is worth doing.

You will do your thing, whatever that is, when you're capable of doing your thing. Right now, you are not capable of it. You don't really WANT to do your thing. Hell, you don't even want to WANT to do your thing. And if you magically landed in a space where you could do your thing, you might feel marginally more useful and proud, but the layers and layers of armor would still be there. Happiness would still elude you.

Trust me that you are under water right now. You can't smell anything, you have no real desire. I remember that state well. When I was young, I only wanted love, and everything else seemed stupid. But sometimes having a shitty attitude about possible side effects of following your dreams can block you from your dreams. Some people are geniuses at what they do, but they'll never expose their work to anyone because that might mean that they have to let other people into their world, people who aren't trusted and safe. Why would strangers have the power to keep great art from seeing the light of day? Because many great artists are also fragile chickenshits. Many great comedians and show-offs are also mildly depressed. They know how to sort out the bits that are truly entertaining, because most stuff doesn't entertain them at all. People who are a little negative and sullen and therefore bored by most writing are often the best writers.

You are very, very afraid. That fear springs out of the depression. There are so many things you DON'T want. That's how I used to think. Every single path led to things I didn't want. I was more focused on shit I wanted to avoid than I was on the good things. Good things had no smell, no taste anyway. Only scary things were real to me.

Paradoxically, as scared as you are, you need to lose the distance between you and the rest of the world. Right now, nothing is touching you. You don't need people needing you? I get that you're burned out, but there's something fucked up in the mix here. You are afraid of neediness because you are afraid of needing.

I have to tell you, I don't hear your story and think, "Oh, here's another person who wants to do something FUN and CREATIVE for a living—like that's so fucking easy to do—instead of just appreciating what they have like a normal person." I hear your story and I think "Here is someone who can't feel anything. Here is someone with a big problem, but everyone around this person is saying THERE ARE NO PROBLEMS HERE, SILLY!"

Your head and your heart and your psyche and your life need an extreme makeover, to match the unmet demands of your soul. If your therapist can't see that, then you should push your therapist to dig deeper with you, or find a new therapist who's more demanding, or understands you better. You need to fucking dig and dig and dig and excavate all of the trouble and worries and scary stuff that are clogging up the works. You need to chip away at your armor until you can breathe again, until you can open up to other people and they can open up to you without making you feel fried. You need to be pushed over a steep cliff, into an abyss. As you're falling, darkness will form itself into an image of something: Something you do want, passionately, unabashedly.

You might need to try the drugs. You might need to try doing a solid 45 minutes of aerobic exercise every single day. You might need to start your day with a green smoothie. The older you get, the more you have to manage your physical state. I never understood why my dad ran, swam, ate a mango for lunch, and then had an early cocktail. Now I get it. Mood maintenance is everything for the olds.

I feel obligated to mention that I have a good friend who used to sound EXACTLY like you do: Nothing was worth doing. Everything was dripping in hassles and drawbacks and unsavory eventualities. He took a tiny dose of Lexapro and suddenly he was all sunny and bright and engaged to be married. I don't mean to advocate for that path, I just feel like you shouldn't write off the possibility that you have a chemical imbalance that could be corrected. Personally, drugs make me feel drugged. So I exercise a lot, and I eat a fuckload of kale. (Here's an interesting factoid! If you're over 40 and you want to keep eating the bread AND the cheese AND the beer, you're going to have to run like someone's chasing you for a good portion of your day.)

I am a moody motherfucker, even with all of the kale and the running around like The Fugitive. I don't blame other people for it as much anymore. I sleep 8 hours a night. I drink tea, for fuck's sake.

I don't know your physiology. But I want to strongly encourage you to experiment, adjust your levels, cut back on coffee, turn up the volume on the greens and the fish, exercise more, consider drugs, reassess. I also want to encourage you to simply say NO to the "You are a fucking failure" and "This is beneath you" sounds in your head. Bad thoughts used to be my morning habit. I only noticed them once my life was awesome and they were still there, every morning, trying to derail my day before it even started. Don't underestimate the power of simply saying FUCK YOU to them, pushing them away. You have to listen closely to the way you talk to yourself, the way you tell yourself you're fucking up every second of every day. Then you have to quiet those voices, repeatedly, until they eventually die out (and they do!).

Your physiology and your head probably need work; I can't be sure. But one thing is crystal clear: You don't know how to be vulnerable. Not even a little bit. Passion comes from vulnerability. If you want to know how to transcend this provincial life—and there are lots of ways to do it—you absolutely must start by ripping out these old walls that protect you and prevent you from feeling connected to yourself and to other people. You must learn to make yourself vulnerable and open and sensitive again. You need to feel the cold plastic on your tenders. You need to feel unguarded, fragile, soft, lost. This is not about a career change. It's about swapping out your head with a new one. This is not about what you actually do, it's about HOW YOU DO IT.

I know plenty of successful writers with amazing credits under their belts who are flat-out unhappy. Writers are often fixated on the notion that more success will bring more happiness, but the truth is that success is pretty abstract. It's hard to bask in success. If you've ever seen anyone try, you'd know that. It's efforted, and typically includes redirecting the conversation toward the current bestseller list, so everyone can marvel over the writer's success together. If you ever hear someone do this, take pity. This person is not (merely) narcissistic, he or she is having trouble accessing any form of satisfaction, and needs some assistance in feeling the feels.

We imagine glory for people in the spotlight, but if they're not balanced, what they mostly achieve is an anxious state of perpetual pursuit. Think of Stephen Dorff's character in Somewhere, gazing blankly at a pair of strippers performing in his hotel room. Hot naked girls should be exciting, sure, but there's not enough glory in the world to drown out the sound of that boom box, clicking cheaply on and off, or to quiet the girls' mundane chatter. Glory, even enhanced with high-grade narcotics, never arrives often enough or stays long enough. Glory is a few minutes, an hour, a few days at best. Mostly, bored people who want attention and excitement end up dying in fiery car crashes, or tricking the mailman into looking at stills from 50-year-old photo shoots.

Walter White made plenty of mistakes. But he knew you had to love your craft, no matter how stupid that craft might be. Personally, my salvation has come from learning to appreciate the act of writing itself. It's a luxury, to sit and write every day. Am I changing the world? Should I have done more by now? Those questions are just needless noise, like the cheap click of that boom box. If I AM a failure, then being a failure fucking rules, because here I am, right now, doing what I love.

If you love to perform and be funny, then you should work on your stories a little every day. Focus on the craft of it, without getting mixed up about the goals, moving to LA or not moving. Read great writers and storytellers. Polish your work. Take pride in perfecting it. Then submit it to This American Life. Don't fixate on that part of it, but don't skip that part, either. This isn't about changing careers, necessarily. It's just about doing something you're good at. It's about getting better at it, and enjoying it. It's about giving yourself the space to do something you love. It's about pushing the fear and the avoidance aside, instead of taking that resistance seriously, analyzing, listing reasons for not doing anything. Push it aside and work. Just an hour a day. Not too much.

You work at your craft, money or no money, glory or no glory. You work and work and work. You improve. You feel like you're making progress. That is all. The joy lies in the process. If you think there's no joy there, you're wrong. You need to open yourself up to it. You need to stay open to how much joy it brings you, to work hard at something that feels ever-so-slightly right to you, to work on small projects, to make some teensy bit of progress, day by day.

When you do what you really, really love, good things happen. That part IS magic. You have to follow your love, listen to it, be kind to it. You have to keep working, and never lose sight that the primarily satisfaction of creative life arises from the satisfaction of working hard, creating, slowly. Nothing else touches that, once you cultivate it. No applause or awards or book contracts can compete with simply sitting and working hard and knowing in your heart that YOU ARE FUCKING GOOD AT THIS.

That makes no sense to you right now, because you're fundamentally indifferent. You're so indifferent that you have no idea WHAT will be good about NOT being indifferent. So you have to go on blind faith. Please trust me, though. The world will open up to you like a flower. You will walk out the front door feeling naked, feeling like you forgot your fucking pants, and it will change you. You will understand why people work hard, why people fall in love, why people learn to cook, why people build treehouses, why people go on trips to places they know nothing about. Suddenly you will understand why people bother, and why YOU should bother.

You must work harder, though—that's your new way of being good to yourself. You have to work harder in therapy and start working hard at your craft in your free time. Make the investment now. You need to dig out of this hole and smell and touch and breathe in the world for the first time. You will not believe how fucking good it feels. You will not fucking believe it.

After that, move, get a different job, fall in love? Anything is possible. ANYTHING. Is. Possible. I'm not saying you should cook drugs or set shit on fire. But you should throw out your rusty ideas about yourself. You aren't too old to do anything. And when you finally leave behind this skeptical, know-it-all, over it, why bother, hiding state of being, you will feel better than you ever have before. Every fucking cell in your body will pulse with gratitude. But you have to cast away a lifetime of bad thoughts rattling through your head, and throw out a lifetime of bad stories about who you are and who you'll never be. As Walt Whitman put it, "[R]e-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.”

You want more than this provincial life. Your very flesh, your bad thoughts, your warped, limited sense of what you're capable of: That's where your provincialism lies. You've swallowed someone else's view of what you should and shouldn't expect.

Your soul wants more. It's time to listen to your soul.

Polly

Have you slipped into a self-protective trance without noticing? Write to Polly and find out!

Heather Havrilesky (aka Polly Esther) is The Awl's existential advice columnist. She's also a regular contributor to The New York Times Magazine, and is the author of the memoir Disaster Preparedness (Riverhead 2011). She blogs here about scratchy pants, personality disorders, and aged cheeses. Photo by Adam Barham.

The post Ask Polly: My Life Is A Beige Pointless Hellscape! appeared first on The Awl.

Dear Polly,

I feel sick just writing this, and I don't want to lose something good, so here goes:

I'm a 34-year-old single mother of a beautiful, sweet, and healthy three-year-old boy. I never imagined having kids, but accidentally became pregnant three months into a destructive relationship. I kept the child and eventually got rid of the man (with the help of a domestic violence counselor and a restraining order), which was a healthy decision.

You see, healthy decisions are not my forte. With a few exceptions, I usually date the damaged bad boy, the alcoholic who needs rescuing, or the tortured artist. I scrapped all that when I had my son, and haven't dated since removing baby daddy from my life 2 years ago. Until recently.

Five months ago, I met a man at my sister's wedding (one of the groomsmen), and we connected. Talked all night, laughing like crazy, connected. We hugged briefly at the end of the evening and we both felt it was worth pursuing. He lives 1400 miles away from me, and we began an email correspondence, sharing our relationship history, likes and dislikes, and getting to know each other. We have a lot in common. We fell in love. We made plans for him to relocate to my city and move in together. We decided all this before spending a great deal of physical time with each other. He's visited once a month for the past five months, and the trips have gone from elated, nervous excitedness to awkward arguing and annoyance. He is sensitive, kind, attentive, and doting. He is so very patient and loving with my child. Because of these traits, I find myself feeling less attracted to him physically. He seems meek. It is truly something sick. I have a hard time looking at him on occasion, because every little quiver, every timid step, every noise he makes while eating makes my skin crawl. He follows me around and paws at me. He is far less experienced than I am in the bedroom, and yet I do not know how to let him know what I like, because he is not keeping up with me in that department.

I don't have a lot going on, aside from an unsatisfying job, my son, and my love of animals. I don't have the financial resources to pursue hobbies or interests, and this man offers stability. I love him, but I'm not sure why I'm so uncontrollably moody around him, and why he has turned me off. He is so gentle—the gentle man I always thought I wanted, because underneath it all I'm gentle, too—but I'm pushing away and I don't know if I love myself enough to make this work. I have tried talking to him about this and he just apologizes and says he feels out of his element. He picks up on my annoyance which makes him feel uncomfortable, which triggers a neediness, which I find unattractive. I don't want my son to have a bad boy for a father figure, but I don't want to resent my lover over petty things. Are these petty things? Is love about being able to be annoyed by someone, and loving them anyway? I tell myself that I have a good man—and I don't want to lose him—but how can I really snap out of this? I feel terrible, ungrateful, and confused.


Thanks for listening.

Annoyed

Dear Annoyed,

You are accustomed to being ignored, dismissed, and listened to only in the most cursory fashion, so this man who adores you, listens closely, and tries very hard to please seems unlovable. He seems unlovable because he makes you aware of yourself. When you're chasing a guy who's distracted, uninterested, dismissive, you are blissfully unaware of yourself, lost in the chase, trying to get him to love you. When someone loves you as you are, you don't have the same luxury of not showing up completely.

On top of it all, you hate yourself for feeling repulsed by him. You feel rotten and shitty and ungrateful. And there he is, being sweet to your kid! If it weren't for your boy, or the fact that he might support you, you might've given up by now.

You fell in love, which was easy. He is an easy person to love. Now you have to accept that he's not a dick, he's not made of magical dickhead fairy dust like the guys who disappear, who can't listen, who don't give a fuck about you. If you forced those so-called bad boys to stay, to be present, to help, they would seem lame, too. They would get wilty and weak upon closer inspection—they'd look much, much worse than your boyfriend, in fact. They just don't slow down enough for you to get a close look at them.

You're tortured by the notion that this guy will make you crazy forever, with his twitchy, timid, self-conscious shit. You know who else looks exactly like that? You do, when you're chasing a guy. You may think that you don't, but you're wrong. Neediness makes people look deflated and not so sexy.

Right around the time I got engaged to my husband, he started to look like the geekiest man alive to me. We went on a trip to Spain, and day after day we would drink beers together in beautiful places, and I'd think, "I'm going to spend the rest of my life listening to this twerp talk." He got terrible haircuts back then. He didn't know how to dress. When he said something he wasn't sure about, his mouth would do this weird downward-twitch thing on one side. It was the physical signal of him second-guessing himself. It was not cute.

He thought I was awesome, but I knew that I was sick inside, not good enough to be loved by him. I would scare him off and he would find some gorgeous, loving woman who was much, much better for him than me, and I would spend the rest of my life alone. All of my friends would say, "Through some miracle THAT MAN was crazy about you and you fucked it up? You really want to be alone don’t you?" They'd never listen to me complain about love again.

After trying to scare him off and hating myself for it, I finally confessed that I had lots of negative feelings and almost-cold feet. "I love you and I want to be with you, but I feel really guilty because I hate your hair. I hate the pants you wear. You're handsome and your pants are just awful. It's criminal, almost, how you cover up your pretty looks. And that thing you do with your mouth. Ugh. I know, I'm an asshole. I feel so shitty about what an asshole I am."

Instead of getting angry, it made him laugh. "I do wear bad pants," he said. So we talked about his twitchy mouth after that. I made it very clear that I wanted us to be together, that he didn't have to change anything but I DID have to talk about this stuff, not because he was bad, but because I didn't know how to show up and be in a relationship with a mortal human being without ripping them to shreds in my poisonous, unlovable brain.

Luckily, my husband understands the poisonous brain thing. He has an appreciation for complexity, for inner conflict, for the fact that you can say something terrible and admit to feeling things you don't want to feel and that doesn't change your love or your values or your commitments.

I don't know this for sure, but I'm going to bet that if you make your love and your values and your commitments clear, your boyfriend will understand about the other dark feelings that are plaguing you. You need to be clear about what you want, emotionally and sexually. If you don't want to be pawed, you have to say that. Men love a woman doing the dishes. Why? They can go fuck themselves. I don't want action when I'm washing shit.

In my opinion, great relationships between smart, complicated people are only possible when total honesty is in the mix. You won't accept this generous man in your life until you accept your own flaws enough to make them clear to him. You're judgmental and fault-finding. So am I. But you value generosity and gentleness. And you'll learn to tolerate neediness, even as it reminds you of yourself in ways that are uncomfortable.

This is a phase. You're getting serious. People have cold feet when they get serious. There is a difference between FUCK THIS, I HATE THIS RELATIONSHIP cold feet, and "Oh God, he's humming that song again, he is such a repugnant dork. I want Idris Elba instead!" Just because you have an overactive, brutal head doesn't mean that your heart wants him gone. I think your heart knows he matches you. The matching might be awkward and uncomfortable for you right now, but it's real. He is not an escape, like a "bad boy" is. He is right here, right now, human, normal, flawed.

If you can be open about your preferences and turn-offs, and be heard, if you can express yourself and ask him not to stigmatize or pathologize the things you desire, and if you can do the same for him somehow, then your relationship will grow past this. Visits are weird and intense—similar to spending two weeks in Spain with someone, thinking too much about every stupid little thing that they do. I think you have to be as honest as you can in order to get past this. You have to include your self-loathing, which is a huge part of this. You have to include your guilt, and your attraction, and your distaste. You have to say which things you want to go differently.

Maybe his timidity and pawing will always feel wrong. I want to caution you strongly to give yourself and him a chance before you take something small and use it as an excuse to bail. The sex, also, is all jammed up by your lack of acceptance—of him and of yourself. The sex might be amazing once there's more honesty in the mix. You can't possibly predict the outcome there without more time, and less poisonous, detached, confused thinking.

The stakes feel high. You aren't used to being loved. You don't really like being the one with more power, the one who's being chased. You'd frankly prefer to be the chaser. I'll bet your boyfriend prefers to be the chaser, too, and kind of likes that role. Maybe that's something to talk about together.

Trust me, though, that this phase doesn't last forever. If you have a career, if you have friends, if you have a full life, you don't sit around chopping apart your partner's flaws around the clock. You say that you don't have a lot going on, except for your son and him. You need to work on yourself, and make your life more complete, so that you don't make him such an area of extreme focus. Some of your discontent lies there. If you simply allow him to support you without bettering yourself, neither one of you will be happy.

But if you use the stability he's brought to your life to make your life more full and complete outside of him, then these tiny little things that seem tragic now will just seem like tiny little things down the road. Insecure tics are nothing, when they're accompanied by generosity and kindness and attraction. Once everything is out in the open? That's the beginning. It either works or it falls apart from there. You'll never even get to the starting line if you don't express what you need.

At the very end of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, this exact process begins: Two people who love and hate each other enter this crazy space of shoving it all in each other's faces. I'm sure lots of terrible couples have stayed together a little longer after seeing that movie. But to me, it's one of the most beautiful scenes, one of the truest and rarest expressions of real love that's ever been created. Because when you let someone into your life, there is ugliness and shock and fear and repulsion there. No one likes to admit that. You wonder if you'll be dragged down, dragged into someone else's flaws and messes. You wonder if their weaknesses will take over, if you'll spend the rest of your life tortured by their other-ness, their teensy tiny sounds and smells that fill up your space and sometimes seem to fuck with your good life. For a while, you hate the other person and you hate you and you hate the two of you, together. So inadequate, so insecure, so flinty and pushy and messy and wrong.

To me the moment of truth comes when you say it out loud: Look at me, hating you. Look at you, hating me. Look at us, how gorgeously our flaws match. How gorgeously we collide. Sometimes you have the strength to say these things, and the other person says (or, more often, implies): "No, I don't want you like this. I don't want the truth. I don't accept that I'm a mess. And I don't want to be with someone who is." And also: "Why are you crying? What did I do to deserve this shit?" And also: "If you loved me more, you wouldn't mention that I smell bad, or make weird noises, EVER." I've been there. There's this opportunity for connection, for acceptance, and the other person says FUCK THAT AND FUCK YOU.

Lots of people, LOTS AND LOTS OF FUCKING PEOPLE, really, truly don't want to connect. They just want to do what they do without being challenged or being forced to show up. They want to talk about the easy stuff, keep it light, ignore the trouble, keep the peace, don't look too hard at anything, and don't get too honest. There's another tier, above that: The people who want intimacy, but only on THEIR terms. They want access to an open person, sure, so they can turn that person on and off, like a faucet. Great when they happen to want you, not so great when you need something from them and they can't handle being needed.

But there are a few people who can show up. If they see that you want them to show up, they can show up. If you're present, they will find a way to be present, too. I think that's what you have in this man, even if you aren't quite there yet yourself. You're going to have to work to catch up with him. You should not see him as inferior. You're the one who needs to open your heart more. Because the moment that you look at another human being, and all of his flaws stand out so clearly, and you feel love, love, love? That's a moment of transcendence. That's real love. It's not chasing. It's not dickhead-fairy-dust-created magic. It's not swaggery sureness and photogenic sex. Real love is two flawed people, laughing together at all of their flaws, their gorgeously matched flaws.

Admit your anger and repulsion. These pesky little irritations are nothing. When you tell him the truth about what you're struggling with, if you do it with love and with the intention of accepting him, chances are good that he'll understand, and you'll be released from this shame you're feeling. Once that shame and guilt stops blocking everything else, you might find it easier to feel love for him again.

This is just where you are right now. It's ok that you're here. There are lots of reasons you're here. It's not your fault. You aren't used to this kind of love. This is brand new.

You may be on the verge of experiencing mutual acceptance and real commitment for the first time, and it feels scary. If you're very open and honest and vulnerable right now, though, you'll gain so much. Because real mutual acceptance doesn't mature into compromise or settling. Real acceptance blooms into a kind of mutual celebration of who you each are, separately and together. It's a celebration of the limitless possibilities of two people who are not afraid to honor each other's gently used souls. As Mary says in Eternal Sunshine, "Adults are this mess of sadness and phobias." You are flawed. He is flawed. Together, you are flawed. Together, you are amazing.

Polly

Do you wonder why you fall in love with every woman you see who shows you the least bit of attention? Write to Polly and she either will or will not yell at you!

Heather Havrilesky (aka Polly Esther) is The Awl's existential advice columnist. She's also a regular contributor to The New York Times Magazine, and is the author of the memoir Disaster Preparedness (Riverhead 2011). She blogs here about scratchy pants, personality disorders, and aged cheeses.

The post Ask Polly: I Am Severely Chafed By My Gentle, Compassionate Boyfriend appeared first on The Awl.

Dear Polly,

So it's the Holidays again, which means everyone's going to come at you bitchin' about family. Let me throw my hat in the ring as a member of that (sizable) contingent. My mother and her husband live near where I grew up, about a seven-hour drive from where I live now. My father and his wife live out of state; I only see them twice a year or so. My two younger sisters both moved far out of state (to the same town no less) with their children within the past year and a half. The reason for this background—I'm the "only one left" close to visit my mother.

She's a sweet woman, but every time the holidays creep near, she starts in as the Cruise Director of a massive guilt trip. Why don't I (and my partner) stay with them for Christmas? "We have plenty of room! I'd love to see MY ONLY SON this Christmas. We can have Christmas Morning Together!!!" (Not exactly appealing. I'm coming into my late thirties and don't have children of my own.) This is a double squeeze as my birthday falls a mere two days after Our Good Lord Baby Jesus's (with whom she has a very, very close personal relationship).

It's not like I'm leaving her in a lonesome empty nest. Her husband has three grown children, all of whom have families of their own (my how the ChristFolk take that 'fruitful and multiply' line to heart). Most of them live close by, and she's surrounded with scores of kids and grandkids. The dinner is the long table of adults with two card tables full of rugrats, huge turkey with all the trimmings, massive tree, choir music; it's a dozens of prayers and invocations kind of holiday. It's a postcard Christmas, and I'm grateful that she has it. It's what she likes, and what she wants.

However, it's not how I (nor my partner) roll. We've been together for coming up on three years, and when the holidays come around, we just like to spend them quietly together. Go on vacation somewhere (often near where my mother lives, making turning her down all the more difficult). See friends. Drink and smoke and swear and be merry (all of which are verboten at my mother's domicile). We're Obama-loving, atheist, chimney smoking, whiskey swillers. To top it off, I'm a CIS straight dude and my partner is a female bi queer with an ex-wife. Imagine how that conversation with my mother went the first time around…. "So she's confused, then? Is she on drugs? Was she abused as a child? I should pray about this." My mother, her husband, and his entire brood are Born Agains. Nice, generous people who are always kind and sweet. But it's still uncomfortable; there is nothing to talk about, nothing to drink. And you have to watch your language for Chrissakes. Every third season or so, one of her husband's kids will challenge me to a debate on my atheism. Yeah. It's a really fun thing to discuss when there isn't a cigarette or a scotch around for miles. My partner thoroughly enjoyed all the ruckus in the household during the Prop 8 times, I'm sure.

Here's the final caveat. I'm happy to visit her around the Time of Christ's Mass. I've seen her every year since I was in college for the Holidays. I just have zero interest in the Events. The Big Meal, the Prayer, the 400 people in the house, all of them with little Jesus Spawn running around. In years past, I've even stayed the night. But since I've been in this wonderful relationship, I've wanted Christmas to be our thing, as a grownup adult couple. As such, we do not want to stay the night at her house (remember, the Good Lord requires us unmarried thirtysomethings to sleep in separate bedrooms for the duration). We'd have no cuddles for Christmas on her turf.

When I told my mother, gently but firmly (for now the third December in a row), that this is an adult vacation time for us as a couple and, since we have no children, Christmas morning holds no special magical allure, she told me I was being selfish (a very old, common retort from her) and that Christmas was "not about me." The implication is, of course, that it's about her, then. Again, we are totally going to be stopping by as I (and now with my partner, we) do every year. Again, I see this woman around the holidays every year. We just don't want to stay the night, do the Christmas Eve / Christmas Morning, Big Meal with Lots of Prayers thing. We want to stop by on the 23rd, or maybe the 26th, and spend the afternoon and have a quiet, small meal, and then drive back to our cozy hotel and fuck like the cute, secular, unmarried adult couple that we are. I explained this, (for now the third December in a row) thusly: "Mom, we'd love to see you this year, but as I've told you before, we don't feel comfortable staying the night at your house—particularly when you insist we have separate accommodations. We'd like to be in a hotel like usual." To this she said I was being "childish." She suggested I "grow up." Then things usually devolve into why I'm not married yet, and when am I going to get married, and why I don't have children yet, and when will that happen.

I keep having this conversation with her every goddamn year, Polly. And with my sisters now moved away, and as I get older (and still very secular, and still very unmarried, and still very much childless) the conversation gets more passionate, more unnerving. Her position becomes that much more intractable, and my response that much more hardened. It makes me want to fast forward to New Year's. It casts a shadow over our entire vacation. Because guess what the topic of discussion at the aforementioned quiet afternoon meal on the 23rd or so? "Why or why won't you STAY FOR CHRISTMAS?!?" I may be stubborn but I'm not soulless. The guilt works, Polly. Every January I feel like a Shitty Son.

Oh what to do?

Sincerely,

Fed Up at Xmas

Dear FUAX,

What you do at Christmas is definitely your personal choice. I understand why your mom's Norman Rockwell charade feels like a living nightmare for you and your partner. I can also understand not wanting to be pressured about marriage and kids, not wanting to pray and revel in the joy of Jesus's birthday. I get that it's asinine that you and your long-term lady would be consigned to different bedrooms. I understand the guilt and the defensiveness and anger that arise from this yearly showdown.

And yes, there's something depressing about being asked to assume this compliant, child-like role, to become one of a mob of Christians at a big table, nodding and yes-yesing and passing the gravy with a lot of people you don't care about and can barely even tolerate.

But, is the birth of Christ really so precious to you? Can you not fuck like cute, secular, unmarried adults every other night of the year? You need cuddle-time on this one magical night, or the suffering is immense—even though you don't remotely care about the holiday's significance?

As a mature adult, there are those rare, important moments when you are asked to show up, and pretend. You are asked to play an elaborate game of make-believe, for the sake of someone from another planet who nonetheless is a good person and made more than a few sacrifices on your behalf.

Now, if you were physically abused by your mother, or if she said things like, "See, son, I knew you'd never amount to shit"? That would be different. If you were gay and she rejected that and refused to accept your partner as part of your life? If she actively and aggressively fought against what you stand for? That would be one thing. Does her refusal to accept and acknowledge exactly who you are and how you choose to live hurt you to your soul? I'm not hearing that, but if that's the case, then, sure. Do your own thing, knowing that the pain of playing along with her charade would ruin your entire vacation.

But if you can simply step back and accept that you're two different people, with different quirks and beliefs and stubborn notions, if you can swallow her ridiculous rules and tolerate her tribe's idiotic lectures without feeling like your psyche is being violated and injured, if you can grasp that she wants a SYMBOLIC CHILD of hers to be there for the whole routine, for every prayer and invocation and celebratory breakfast and chaotic present-unwrapping, to demonstrate that she is loved and appreciated as a mother by at least one of her kids, then you should rise to the occasion and give your mother what she wants.

You should do it because your mother isn't battling you over your choices, day after day. She's not telling you, day after day, that you're doing it wrong. She wants you to get married and have kids, which makes her exactly like 99% of the mothers out there. Her wanting that doesn't make her particularly awful. If parenting brought her immense happiness, she naturally wants the same thing for you, as repetitive and closed minded as that might be.

Your mother doesn't fight with you all the time. Her primary battleground is Christmas. She wants this one thing from you. She wants it to an irrational extent. It makes her weepy and enraged. She wants you and your partner there, pretending that you fit right in. She wants you to pretend that you are a good Christian son. She knows that you aren't, but for 48 to 72 hours she wants you to pretend that you are.

Now, some people will tell you, "It's enough that you go and make an appearance." But that isn't the same thing. She wants you to stay under her roof, for emotional reasons. Do you know how it must feel, to be cooking and cleaning for your husband's kids and grandkids, when only one of your kids will even hang out at all, and he's only around for a few hours before he disappears? I'm not trying to give you shit, I'm just trying to make you see how lonely this holiday spectacular actually feels for her. You say you're grateful that she gets her postcard Christmas. But she doesn't really get that. It's only a postcard Christmas if her own kids are there, trust me.

Personally, I think you should give your mother exactly what she wants. Arrive on the night of the 23rd and stay until the evening of the 25th, then flee to a hotel room. I would push to stay in the same room as your partner, but I wouldn't make a stink about it if she refuses.

Sometimes love is about showing another human being every single part of you, and having that person accept and understand you completely. Other times, though, love is about caring enough about some insane, twisted, aggravating creature from another planet that you're willing to show up and play along with their insane, twisted, aggravating alien games. Sometimes love is about getting in the car with your partner, and, as you drive for seven hours, saying to each other, "We are about to eat a steaming platter of shit. We are going to eat it and eat it and we're going to act like it's delicious."

Some partners and girlfriends and wives will not agree to such a thing. I have a feeling your lady is special, and she'll feel proud of your decision to do this.

My dad was not an easy person. He had very strong opinions about what I should and shouldn't be doing with my life. He consistently referred to each of my boyfriends as "That Guy," as in "Why are you following That Guy across the country, anyway? Playing house is hell, you know. And what's the hurry? Why don't you stay here for a few years instead? What's so great about That Guy that you need to move 3,000 miles away?"

He was not all that tolerant of me or my thoughts or feelings. He would often get annoyed when I talked about myself or my life, so I mostly listened to him talk about his girlfriends, his travels, his dilemmas, whatever. The last time he visited me in San Francisco, I woke up at 7 a.m. three days in a row and picked him up from his hotel so we could go running along the beach, and then have breakfast together. 7 a.m. was like 3 a.m. to me then. I was hungover two of those mornings. I saw doing this as a major act of generosity on my part.

On his last night in town, we went out to a bar and had an early drink together. We ended up having a really good conversation, actually, maybe the first adult conversation, between equals, that we'd ever had. But I'd told my friends to come to the bar later on. When they showed up, I was anxious for my dad to leave. He could tell. He didn't want to leave. I could tell. I encouraged him to leave. I was nice about it, but I couldn't see us hanging out with my friends. Plus, I had a crush on one of the guys who'd shown up. I needed to focus my energies elsewhere.

My dad died three months later. I don't even know those other people anymore.

It was so important for me to have things my way back then. I saw everything I did for my dad as a massive sacrifice. Sure, my dad was tough. But he loved me and I loved him. Because he made me feel guilty a lot, though, I thought that every second I spent with him was ME doing HIM a favor. I had no idea that I was the one who was lucky to be there, to know him as an adult, to joke around, to have a few drinks, to get his perspective on the world, or just to sit back and appreciate his tweaked holding-forth on the state of things. I had no idea all of that was about to go up in smoke.

Sure, sometimes I played the SYMBOLIC CHILD when my siblings didn't want to do it. I flew to Johnstown, Pennsylvania to attend my grandfather's funeral, when no one else could go. I didn't have the money for a plane ticket, and I didn't want to fly on a small plane from Pittsburgh to Johnstown, because I was very afraid of small planes. When the pilot announced that we were about to land in "John Town." My dad and I looked at each other, stricken. The pilot had never fucking landed a plane there before. The airport was on top of a mountain, and that day it was shrouded in fog.

The pilot missed the runway on the first pass, and had to circle around and try again. My father and I were quiet and pale and gulping like fish. I got off the plane and had to lie down for a minute, just to keep from throwing up. Then we drove down the mountain and arrived in a small, crowded room with my grandfather's corpse, which was wearing foundation and bright pink blush.

That trip was not fun while it was happening. My dad drove really fast, and our political views clashed, and he didn't exactly respect my opinions, unless I was analyzing one of his girlfriends' personalities. But now I feel so grateful that I was there. We didn't have much time left. How does that Bowerbirds song go? "Though I could not know then, we'd have but few times like these."

Parent-child relationships are so bewildering and heartbreaking, almost across the board. We try hard to do right by our parents, but after a while we feel like we've done enough, like we need to make our own choices and get some distance.

But when I think of the years I've wasted, wanting my mother to conform to my expectations of her instead of just accepting her limitations, it makes me sad. For years I wanted her to understand and embrace me completely, even though I wasn't doing the same for her. I could've just shown up and played along and not taken every single thing personally, for her sake. Instead, I got lost in my own anger and frustration that things couldn't be different, that we couldn't be together on MY terms.

It's hard not to take your parents personally. Maybe impossible. Your mother is seriously taxing. I get that. And if you spend the night, you may think, over and over: WHY AM I DOING THIS? At times you may feel glum and despondent. All of your shit from the past is likely to come up.

But it will also be VERY INTERESTING, won't it? You will learn a few things about yourself, and your mother, and your partner.

You'll have to be content to play the good son and observe and stay calm. During the day, you'll go out on a walk or a jog or a hike with your partner, and you'll talk about your crazy mother and her crazy stepchildren at length. And after it's all over, as you're driving away to the second half of your vacation, which will include lots of cuddling and sex and drinking and smoking, you and your partner will laugh together at your mother's irritating tics.

But why not give her this gift, all the same? What you don't know yet is that this Christmas insanity is also YOUR reward. This is you, experiencing your mother's twisted joyful oddities on HER terms for once, and it's a gift to you. Because it'll be good for your heart and your soul and your memories.

Honestly, I think you're in conflict over this visit because your heart is telling you to stay overnight at her house, for her sake, even though it's fucking purgatory. Your intellect says DO WHAT YOU FUCKING WANT. YOU'RE AN ADULT. FUCK HER AND HER SHITTY NOTIONS OF GOD AND FAMILY. But your heart believes that you should be there on Christmas, the way she wants you to be.

I would pitch this plan to your partner: Crazy Christian Christmas, nutty mom, pesky kids, heteronormative nightmare, followed by alone time with you for five days in a nice hotel. She'll sigh heavily. But I bet she'll think it's really mature and generous of you, to want to do this for your mom. I bet she'll know that it'll be really interesting and weird and funny and good for both of you, to suffer through this together and bite your tongue and be as pleasant as possible.

And I bet that, once you commit to this, you'll feel better. You will feel proud of yourself.

If you know for sure that you are incapable of this, that it will scar you too deeply, well, that's your call, not mine. But you should ask yourself, "Which choice offers the richest experience possible? Which choice will make my life the most interesting and adventurous? Which choice will be the most memorable?" I will never forget that crazy trip I took to Johnstown. Even though it was taxing, it's one of my most vivid memories I have of my father and his family and his hometown. Even though your family visits are excruciating, if you throw yourself into the spirit of it and try very hard to play with little children and chat with God-fearing cousins and help your mom make the mashed potatoes, I think you'll be changed by it. People will annoy you and make you angry and you'll have to work hard not to argue and say the wrong thing. But once it's over, you will feel good about your ability to rise above your own needs and give of yourself like this.

But look, even if you don't go, you should resolve to stop arguing with your mom. She won't become a different person, or start listening to what you're saying out of the blue. She's getting older, and less flexible. Will her mind still be sharp in ten years? Will she be able to cook a turkey? Will all of those families that come to her house eventually stay at home instead? In a few years, will your mom be widowed, living in some rest home in another state, near one of your sisters? Appreciate what you have right now. Appreciate her for who she is, right now, with all of her limitations and flaws. Watch her in your company, and witness how much she loves you, how much you matter to her.

I'm sure you feel angry that I'm asking you to do this, that I'm adding to the guilt you already feel, when you were hoping I'd tell you to tell her to fuck off instead. It probably makes you feel a little sick just thinking about doing this. And it'll be easy enough for you to find some friend who'll tell you that you should do whatever the fuck you want for Christmas.

But you might not have that many years left to play the good kid. It actually feels good to play that role. It's a role, sure, and maybe it's not perfectly in line with your most authentic self. But it's a generous thing. You can play it once a year, can't you? You can put every ounce of your love for her into it, and you can play that role like you fucking mean it. Love is not JUST about being accepted for exactly who you are. Sometimes love is about accepting someone else, first and foremost, and giving them exactly what they need. I don't think you'll regret that. Twenty years from now, I think you'll look back and say, "I'm really glad I gave her that."

My dad died almost 20 years ago, and I still think about running along the San Francisco Bay with him. I didn't know that would be the last day I'd ever see his face or hear his voice. I'm really glad I didn't sleep in instead.

Polly

Are you freaking out about the holidays? Write to Polly and she'll fix you a nice homemade knuckle sandwich.

Heather Havrilesky (aka Polly Esther) is The Awl's existential advice columnist. She's also a regular contributor to The New York Times Magazine, and is the author of the memoir Disaster Preparedness (Riverhead 2011). She blogs here about scratchy pants, personality disorders, and aged cheeses. The terrible Santa is by Dan Century.

The post Ask Polly: My Mom Keeps Guilting Me About Visiting For Christmas! appeared first on The Awl.

Dear Polly,

For the past seven months I've been dating a great guy but now that things are getting quite serious I'm totally scared. I can't tell if it's because I myself am beginning to fall out of love with him, or if the internalized judgment of my (very judgmental) parents is freaking me out.

Before I met this guy, I was on an online dating rampage. I was preselecting guys who were tall, dark and handsome, had been to good schools, and were very, very likeable by my parents' standards (which at the time I thought were also my standards). I am extremely intellectual and well-educated and was looking for someone else very similar, although in the past I have had a penchant for guys with a rebellious streak as well. Then I met a man in person who totally did not fit in with what I was trying to look for. He is short, has a mohawk and rides a motorcycle, and did the Marines instead of college. He also is very successful in an artistic industry that raises some eyebrows among my parents extremely conservative WASPy set. But we met in person, not on the internet, at a social dance event, and the sparks really flew. At first I tried to fend off his advances by insisting that I would never date someone who was not my newfound "type" but soon the attraction became overwhelming and I succumbed to it.

And man, was it awesome. I have never been so attracted to someone in my whole life. Soon I was having the best sex of my life, and what is more, I was learning that I had totally judged my Mohawk Man prematurely, because although not having attended college, he loves art and culture, particularly classical music, and has generally made a point of educating himself on his own, as best he could. He is very cultured, having traveled the world in the Marines and for his work, and he has memberships to art museums, which we visit occasionally, and he enjoys accompanying me to plays, seeing indie films, we even went to the ballet, which he loved. We also do other fun stuff, like this weekend we went sledding and built a snowman, and of course we are avid social dancers, and go out dancing usually at least once a week. Our relationship has been going great, and I have been very happy. Although he has cultivated a rebellious appearance, to me he is sweet, thoughtful, respectful, considerate—a successful badboy with a heart of gold. Who could ask for anything more?

My parents dislike him immensely because he hasn't been to college, because he is short, and because my family is New York City upper middle class and the family he came from is Alabama blue-collar. They actually confronted me and told me that they think we will never be truly happy because people from the North and people from the South will never get along, that people who haven't been to college will never be as happy as people who have, and that people who are short have Napoleonic complexes and are inherently sadistic. I know, it sounds crazy, but my parents actually said this stuff to me, verbatim. After a prolonged falling out with them resulting from this ridiculous conversation, they have finally started to open up to the idea of my Mohawk-Man, and even had him around for Christmas dinner, but I can tell they would still prefer if I was with the Harvard doctor of their dreams.

Lately things have gotten quite serious between Mr. Mohawk and I. I'm 29, he's 38, and for a few months now, we've been talking about our children, spending the rest of our lives together, making plans for our future. He has in the past been very ambivalent on the subject of actual marriage, preferring instead the idea of eschewing social norms and starting a family without being married, or becoming domestic partners or something like that. He has been married before, and the wedding was very stressful and soon after he and his wife began to lose interest in each other and it was the beginning of the end for them, really. But since I told him that getting engaged and getting married before having children were really important to me, lately he's been starting to ask all those, "So… what types of rings do you like, hypothetically…." kinds of questions that let me know something serious is probably coming down the pipeline.

And yet this creeping, horrible doubt has been growing in my mind about our relationship in the last few weeks, which has been manifesting as crippling anxiety attacks. This guy has been basically amazing through and through, we have so much fun together and we share similar hopes and dreams for the future, are on the same page about wanting to start a family, etc. etc. There should be nothing wrong here. And yet this pervasive sense of anxiety is overwhelming and controlling me. I don't know what to do. I don't understand if this anxiety is a real thing that I need to take seriously because it's coming from a real place, or if it's just the result of some weird internalized judgments from my parents rearing their ugly heads and sabotaging something really great. Or am I just getting cold feet, now that I am finally about to get something I really wanted?

Please help me. These anxiety attacks are getting worse and worse and I don't want to throw away something really great just because of cold feet, or because my horribly judgmental parents have implanted some subconscious judgment time bomb in my psyche.

Sincerely,

Cripplingly Anxious




Dear CA,

Sweet god, your parents' imaginations are as rich and as foreboding as a J. R. R. Tolkien novel. Short people are inherently sadistic! People from the North cannot live in peace with people from the South! Their armies will clash in the night, until the end of time! Marry this foul Hobbit, and be doomed to a life of mediocrity forever!

If only your Hobbit were taller, and had grown up in one of the finer suburbs of the northeast! If only he'd spent his formative years sulking around the mall in White Plains, or vomiting into the couches of some stinky frat house in New Haven, he'd be guaranteed a lifetime of happiness! If only he'd blindly followed the path of least resistance, from prep school to college to med school, dutifully fulfilling his parents' wishes every step of the way, then your parents could trust him to live a life of quiet longing, shuffling obediently to soccer lessons and swim lessons, picking up groceries at the proper gourmet food boutiques, drinking himself into a stupor each night in front of the premium cable entertainments currently in favor.

Instead, your Hobbit had the great-est adventure, over the hills and far away, among the ruffians, whores and harlots of the filthier port cities of the globe! Why, he probably high-fived over exotic pilsners while watching common whores cavort on stage in Pattaya and Guam, instead of high-fiving over domestic pilsners while watching common sorority girls cavort in Dartmouth or Philadelphia!

At least we know that your anxiety is genetic. And it's faintly adorable, really, how your parents want your boyfriend to match the rest of their high-end possessions. We can't exactly blame them for expressing their concerns to you, even if those concerns happen to be unhinged. I have two daughters and it's pretty tough to imagine what kind of slouchy little shitbags are going to be worthy of their shining, golden, honey-bear perfection. I pity the first fool to darken my doorstep with his pimply dipshit face.

That said, though, it's pretty obvious that your boyfriend took his time to go out into the world and figure out what he wanted from his life. He sounds very open-minded and open-hearted in the best of all possible ways. He's seen a lot of the world and he's inquisitive and thoughtful and ambitious and he wants to create a life that feels right to him rather than trudging along to the beat of some really shitty drummer who has no soul and couldn't tell you why he's banging away in the first place. I am curious, I'll admit, what kind of "artistic industry" "raises eyebrows." Is he artistically painting kittens on black velvet, artistically dunking pig fetuses in formaldehyde, or artistically framing shots of ladies bent over pool tables? Let's just assume it's the unborn pigs in formaldehyde, since that's obviously the most sophisticated and civilized option, ah ha ha heh.

Just get him to lose the fucking motorcycle, or encourage him to take out a top-dollar disability insurance policy and life insurance policy on his suicidal ass. Et volia! We are 100% ready to roll full-steam ahead into a lifelong, legally binding contract. Ah, love—heady, intoxicating, litigable!

Hold on. Wait. I have more questions. Goddamn it! I hate to spoil the mood. But… Why are you so haunted by your parents' views of your boyfriend, again? Maybe you've never disagreed with them before? Maybe you've never noticed that their minds are filled with terrifying dark fantasy worlds? Maybe you worry that this man is not a good match for you because you've got normal long-term-commitment jitters? Or maybe you worry that this man is not a good match for you because… this man is not a good match for you?

Would you say that your boyfriend has been on his absolute best behavior around you? Have you ever disagreed about anything, and if so, how did you resolve that? Would you characterize him as an alpha male, super confident, someone who gets his way in every situation? Has anyone else—not you—ever found him the least bit domineering or controlling in any way? I'm assuming that he isn't, but I want to ask just in case your parents saw some behavior that they didn't want to mention, instead opting for the much more sensible-sounding assertion that all short people are sadistic demon-trolls.

But look. On the off-chance that your boyfriend is a macho Jack Russell of a man who wants everything his way, at all times, and there's some possibility that you haven't had a chance to see this yet because you've mostly been sucking and shopping, "Pretty Woman"-style, for the past seven months, then you might consider running away, fast as your foxy legs can carry you, to the nearest hidey hole.

Intellectually, do you feel that this man has interesting ideas and insights, understands your perspectives and feelings, and often surprises you with his sense of humor? Does he like to talk as much as you do, and when you two talk, do you feel closer to each other? Are you comfortable telling him anything and everything, and do you feel like he's the one person you want to talk to about most stuff? Because a long time ago, I dated an Ivy League graduate who didn't have shit to say about anything. He had to be drawn out and had zero unique ideas or opinions as far as I could tell. I also dated a high-school drop-out who was a charming, hilarious, sensitive conversationalist and was great at pointing out the little absurdities in the most mundane experiences. I once dated this other guy who went to a mediocre college and watched a ton of football, but it was fun because he played football in high school and could read every play before it happened, and he would reenact the best plays with such enthusiasm that I loved wasting away my Sundays in his company. He also happened to have a mathematician's mind, and even though he used the words "stuff" and "things" over and over again, he was usually reaching for abstract concepts that were complex and curious, the sorts of things that stretched your perspective and made you feel really comfortable talking about your own freaky, long-winded ideas. But I also dated an upper-middle class guy who went to a great college, and all he talked about was sports, what someone did when they were drunk, and how he wanted to get rich someday. He was a really nice guy. We were attracted to each other. But when we spoke, there was no magic. We believed in each other as concepts, on paper, but when we sat and faced each other over a meal, we had nothing. He thought I needlessly complicated the world. I thought he (stubbornly, fearfully) simplified it.

Here's my point: Obviously you don't need a Harvard man to be happy. But you do need someone who makes you feel comfortable, and garrulous, and full of ideas and feelings. You need someone who appreciates the twists of your mind when you ramble. A smart woman does need a smart man, whether he's a math genius or a plumber or a plumber who also happens to be a math genius. The biggest mistake you can make, in my opinion, is marrying someone who maybe loves your body and your face and the idea of you, but doesn't actually enjoy hearing words drop out of your fat mouth. If you don't feel intellectually matched and understood and met, then you should move on. The people I know who married bad intellectual matches for them are pretty fucking restless.

What's weird is, I can't really tell that much about this guy from how you describe him. The fact that you say he's sweet and thoughtful? I trust that. But when you throw in your looming doubts, and the fact that you've only been together for 7 months, I wonder whether he's just in Dating The Hot Baby Girl mode, and he'll be very different after the courting phase. Your description of why his marriage broke up makes no sense to me (but more on that later).

And it also concerns me that you don't say that he's smart—not because I think that means he isn't smart. In fact, I wonder how perceptive you are about intelligence. The fact that you're so focused on your education, his lack of education, his memberships to museums, the fact that he passed the ballet litmus test? Very bourgeois, your notions of refinement and smarts. If indeed he does keep you interested, and he takes in new information greedily, and he has succeeded at running his own business, then why all this focus on provincial signifiers of pedigree? Frankly, I'm not sure that you're going to be happy with him until you reevaluate a lot of your prejudices and misconceptions about what intelligence and sophistication actually are, and what value they have in the world. Personally, I don't care a whole hell of a lot about how many facts are bouncing around in a person's head. Mostly I care about a flexible, open mind that comes up with great ideas over the course of a conversation, and learns new things and tries out new angles on the fly. The smartest people I know spew out crazy shit in conversation, often stuff that they've never considered before. The dumbest people I've known tend to regurgitate shit they read in bad books — over and over again—as if it's just as interesting each fucking time it's repeated.

I'm not wondering if your boyfriend is smart enough for you, honestly. I'm wondering if you're mature enough and open minded enough for him. Maybe it's a bad match because you're not as unique and flexible as him, and you can't quite transcend the very parochial values you've inherited. I wonder how well you know yourself. I wonder if you've been challenged at all in your life, in places other than school. Maybe he's prepared to make a lifelong commitment to someone who isn't really grown up yet, who doesn't really respect how much work he's done to become the man he is today. Then again, maybe he's not grown up yet, either.

Instead of letting your boyfriend pop the question out of the blue without any further discussion (which is fucking archaic, by the way), you need to sit down with him and talk about what you both want from life. I know you've talked dreamily about these things, but this time you need to be very concrete. Where will you live? Do you want kids or not? Will he always live the way he does now? What will change? Will you stay at home and raise the kids, and let your fancy education lie fallow? Is he ok with you working full-time? Are you ok with him working around the clock while you deal with all the kid stuff, even though you also have a job?

Also: What specifically went wrong in his last marriage? In your letter, you worry that YOU are falling out of love, and you also say that his feelings for his first wife dwindled right after they got married. Do you both see marriage as a perpetually in-love state of being? Because if that's the case, you should probably date for another year and see what it's like to feel a little lukewarm towards each other now and then, or to disagree with each other occasionally. Every marriage has its lukewarm moments, and a marriage's success depends a lot on how you navigate those mutually "meh" moments together. You also want to know what it looks like for you to ask him for something you need emotionally, that doesn't necessarily make perfect sense, but that you need nonetheless. Hot tip! Men who repeatedly insist that emotional reasons for doing stuff are "fucking irrational" and "absurd" (ALL TOO COMMON!) don't make great spouses.

You also need to ask yourself: What would it be like to divorce this man, or to share custody of your kids with him? Would he be vindictive, or cooperative and calm about it, or resentful and passive aggressive?

By now you're probably having another anxiety attack.

My point? You're anxious for a reason. You aren't ready to get engaged yet. You don't know enough about him, or what your future together will look like. Your parents are wrong about everything else, but they're right about this one thing. They know that you need to slow down and get to know him better. They're worried that you don't know him well enough yet. If you're also worried, you need to figure out why you're worried, and discuss it openly with him and maybe even with a couples' counselor. In my personal opinion, given what you've described in your letter, you need to go out for at least another year before you commit. You need to see how he reacts to you worrying. You need to watch and see if he can help soothe your anxiety, or if he rejects you when you're anxious.

You also need to look into your heart and ask yourself if you can see yourself with him for the next 40 years. If you feel disappointed with that picture, for whatever reason—even if that reason feels pathetic and judgmental—then you need to be honest with yourself about that. Forgive yourself for whatever you're feeling. Is it your fault? No. Can you control it? Maybe, maybe not. Trying to beat back your true feelings may only cause you more anxiety. But maybe it will help to talk to him about these doubts and fears and unfair prejudices. Maybe it'll bring you closer together. Maybe it will tear you apart. Maybe that's as it should be.

As a legendary Hobbit lyricist once put it, "The mold of your life is in your hands to break." I'm not saying your boyfriend isn't right for you. He sounds great. But you definitely need a lot more time and a lot more information before you commit. To be clear, some people can get engaged quickly and it works out fine. Knowing what I know about your situation, though, I would strongly advise against it. That doesn't mean that he's WRONG ALL WRONG. It just means that you both show signs of being swept away by romance without looking very carefully at the practicality of your choices. Maybe you're both a little immature when it comes to love. You want it to be a fairy tale. You don't want to talk over the details, because that might just spoil everything.

You know what REALLY spoils everything, though? NOT talking it over. Because you're happy together, and very much in love, it shouldn't scare you to get to know each other better. If it scares him to mull over the details, if it makes him permanently jittery and aloof, that tells you a lot about what it might be like to be married to him.

Instead of worrying about the glow wearing off, you should focus on trying to make your relationship deeper and stronger and better than ever. This might just be the beginning of the really good part.

Good luck!

Polly

Are you afraid to grow up? Are you afraid to grow old(er)? Write to Polly, Bilbo!

Heather Havrilesky (aka Polly Esther) is The Awl's existential advice columnist. She's also a regular contributor to The New York Times Magazine, and is the author of the memoir Disaster Preparedness (Riverhead 2011). She blogs here about scratchy pants, personality disorders, and aged cheeses. Photo by Paul L Dineen.

The post Ask Polly: My Parents Don't Want Me To Marry This Short Man And I'm Freaking Out! appeared first on The Awl.

Hi Polly,

My ex ("John") and I, who are both in our late twenties, were together for a number of years. The relationship was lovely at the beginning, but because of intermittent long-distance, different life experiences, and so-so communication, it was increasingly bad for a few months. One day, John called to say that he wanted to talk about ending the relationship. I asked if he still loved me, and he said yes and then sobbed for thirty minutes. Then, I asked what he saw as the problems in our relationship and whether they were fixable, and he talked incoherently for an hour. I asked if he wanted to end the relationship that night, he said no.

I asked for two days of no communication, then we spoke again and I told him that though it wasn't my idea and I was sad about it, I felt relieved by the idea of breaking up. He freaked out and started convincing me to get back together. I said I would think about it, asked for more time to think before he was scheduled to fly out to visit me. He flew back to our apartment in the city where we met, it was good, and bad, and emotional and then halfway through the week I found out my friend had a terminal illness. The same one (down to the subtype) that my mother died of when I was a child. I told him that I wasn't sure I could cope with our relationship issues while also coping with the inevitable loss of my friend. He told me he could be there for me, I believed him.

Turns out, he couldn't be there for me! And then he broke up with me. On the anniversary of my mother's death. Repeat: on the anniversary of my mother's death. And I spent an hour comforting him while he sobbed, in his boxers, over Skype. We haven't spoken in the year since.

I've heard that you shouldn't fixate on the details of "how" you get dumped because what you're really upset about is the relationship ending. And, of course, I was sad the relationship ended because a lot of things about John were great and we had some good times, particularly when we lived together in the same city. But at this point I don't miss the relationship or him. It's been a hard year, but I recognize that the loss of this friend (he passed away six months ago) and other challenges would have been harder with John. I'm doing healthy things like pursuing my interests and traveling. I even met someone new who is much more compatible with me. The one thing I can't get over is that John couldn't let me be dumped with dignity. That he had to choose the worst possible moment to do it. That he had to prove that he could win me back. That I never told him that these things he did made me lose a lot of respect for him. I even comforted him during our last conversation when he was worried he was a bad person.

What do you think? I don't really want to talk to this person again, but I'm having a hard time letting this go. I'm angry that I was treated this way by a person who claimed to have loved me for many years. Am I mad at myself for not seeing through this shit? And what should I do? Just wait it out? My therapist thinks that I'll be able to let go of this with time, but what if that's not true?

[Also, don't worry, I'm in hella therapy for the dead mom/friend stuff. And other stuff too.]

Signed,

Disrespectfully Dumped

Dear DD,

The guy you're describing is very emotional but can't handle other people's emotions. He knows how to pretend to be an honorable guy, but he has very little ability to put anyone else's emotions before his own. You say you were disrespectfully dumped, but what you're describing isn't a lack of respect, it's a total lack of ability to deal with intimacy and emotional responsibility. He recognizes that he's wildly dysfunctional in this regard, and he's already ashamed by it, hence the copious sobbing. Yes, even the sobbing is all about him. But it's also an implicit acknowledgement that you're stronger than him, more level-headed than him, healthier than him, and more capable of moving forward, honoring other people, and finding love than him.

I don't see the point in shaming him further. He's already pretty goddamned ashamed.

Now, you say you two broke up on the anniversary of your mother's death. I'm guessing you were involved in some ritual to honor her death or you were just particularly emotional that day, and you called on him to be there for you. He wanted to be there for you. He tried. And then he sat around, soaking in your sadness, and the walls started to close in. He panicked and broke up. It was life or death.

Then there's the moment where you told him "Yes, you're right, let's break up," and then he immediately wants to get back together. That's a classic. Most of us have been involved in a slow motion version of this a few times. A guy dumps you. You cry. You mope around for a few weeks. Then, you scrape yourself off the floor and get your shit together. You start working out more and feel better than ever. You get a new haircut. You have a spring in your step. Guy reappears, amazed by your non-wilty appearance and attitude, and says he wants you back.

My guess is that this guy really does love you and respect you, and he basically would want to stay with you forever if you were a robot without feelings or emotions of any kind. You say that things were bad for a few months and he bailed. That's the robot-seekers classic profile. Your ex has no concept of working through a hard time together, either because he's immature or because the second you're angry or sad that looks unattractive to him and he wants out. (Forget the unattractiveness of sobbing in your boxer shorts over Skype and allowing your freshly dumped girlfriend to reassure you that you don't suck.)

But let's be fair. The guy is emotionally challenged. He's ashamed of himself. He wants to love you, but he can't tolerate the heaviness and the hurdles. He's hoping to happen upon someone who is light and breezy without fail. Maybe you're a little smarter than him. Maybe you're more intense. Maybe you're also more capable and that makes him feel weak. Maybe he wants to be the strong one, but your strength makes that difficult. Maybe he feels like a flaccid slice of lunchmeat when he's with you.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Rejection isn't personal. Even after you spend a few years with someone, they may still have some idea of the perfect girl lodged in their head, and you will never compare favorably to their ideal. This guy in particular has so much shame and so much flinchy approach-avoidance in the mix, he's likely to long for a woman who soothes and reassures him that he's heroic and special no matter how twitchy and evasive he is. And he's not wrong: women like that do exist. Some people don't discover that their spouses absolutely can't show up for them until they're going through something truly terrible.

As unfortunate as it is that you've seen so much death at such a young age, those experiences probably prevented you from signing on to a lifelong commitment to the wrong guy. Your therapist is absolutely right that you'll get over this in time. Shit happened to me in my late 20s that I thought would stay with me forever. Life changed so fast over the next decade that I couldn't even kick up interest in the same obsessions a few years later. Major fixations and traumas from that time eventually shrunk down to these odd little artifacts from the past that I'd stumble on and become puzzled by. It was like looking at a flower without being able to remember the smell of it. All of the tears and the bluster and the agony, all of that was wrapped up with a very young person's fears about her future and fears about whether or not she was strong enough (or sane enough!) to ever be happy.

One word about your late twenties: Ugh.

So much panic and drama. Trying to get your career, your friendships, your finances, your love relationships right. Assuming that these things should be all sewn up by the time you're 30 or 32, or else you're a fucking loser. Only a 28-year-old could believe in that kind of epic lifestyle game of Musical Chairs: You hit 32 and the music stops and if you don't find a chair, you're screwed. The assumption being that, from that point forward, everyone stays in their little chair and life is exactly the same for the next 40 years.

I think that, even though you've moved on, you're certain that this past relationship and the way it ended says something about your destiny, about your ability to find love and keep it. You'd never say that about a high school relationship or a college relationship, because everyone agrees that those are fleeting and superficial most of the time. But somehow your having spent a few years with this guy at the ripe old age of 27 or 28 reflects poorly on you in a more permanent way.

In this little part of your perception, you're not that different from your ex, sobbing in his boxers over Skype because he thinks he's a bad person. This fixation is about you and your fears and deep insecurities, and it ultimately has nothing to do with him. Just as his battle with "bad or good guy, capable of real intimacy or incapable" will rage on as he sallies forth without you, the deep insecurities and worries kicked up by his callousness are yours and they don't have his name on them. Addressing them with him at this point (and he's sure to be even less helpful and sensitive than ever) will only make that worse. Just as his battle is about being able to challenge himself to tolerate other people's emotions and be there for them without giving in to the urge to flee, your battle is about admitting your insecurities without viewing them as unforgiveable flaws that damn you to a life of loneliness. This struggle you're going through isn't really about him, it's about your ability to sidestep the disappointments of the past and refuse to define yourself by them.

You could have three more breakups that were even more awful than this one, and you'd still just be playing the averages in terms of regular female experience in your late 20s and early 30s. You write, "The one thing I can't get over is that John couldn't let me be dumped with dignity. That he had to choose the worst possible moment to do it. That he had to prove that he could win me back." I think you're ascribing way too much rational intention to this guy. He didn't CHOOSE to dump you without dignity. He didn't CHOOSE the worst possible moment to dump you in order to maximize your suffering. He didn't CHOOSE to win you back simply to prove that he could do it. He acted from his own panic and bad impulses. Like so many very weak, very fickle, very young men (AND WOMEN! AHEM!), he runs towards the indifferent and flees those who want him and ask for more from him. It's time to forgive him for being one of a herd of twitchy, indifferent dudes. If he were capable of making rational choices, he wouldn't sob to you over Skype about his fears of being a bad guy. I'll bet he's more haunted by how things ended (and how weird and flinchy and chicken-shitted he was) than you are.

Now I'm going to get a little bit harsh with you, because you're asking for growth and forward-motion in your life, and I think this is the key. You emerged from that relationship with very little understanding of who that guy was and what the pressures working on him were. You still think he made these calculated choices, that he did these injuries to you in some kind of thoughtful way. You don't offer up any evidence that you understand him at all, or that you grasp the faulty dynamics of the long-term relationship you were involved in. Your communication with him was incomplete. You were going through traumatic times, truly, but what was he going through? What effect did your emotions have on him, behind his guarded efforts to APPEAR the honorable, stand-up guy? Did you have any hint that he was playing along at all? Did you ask him about his feelings? Did you listen closely when he talked? Did the two of you discuss heavy stuff, ever, and was it a two-way conversation, where you both learned a lot about each other and felt closer to each other afterwards?

I think you need to be wary of allowing men to play roles in your life without really showing up. I think you need to be wary of your own impulse to get your emotional needs served without really asking yourself where your partner is and what he needs, emotionally, and how his experiences have molded him emotionally. What you describe, in this guy, is a narcissist who can't make it about you even when he's dumping you. I'm not entirely convinced that you aren't also a little narcissistic when it comes to your story of what happened and how you weren't properly served by him. You have to work on giving other people space in your life, space to have their own experiences and responses to stress and to situations that make them uncomfortable. Your traumas, while HUGE, can't blot out the sun so completely that they always, always take center stage and push everyone else's needs to the side. If they do, then you should probably be alone until you're strong enough and resilient enough to enter a relationship with a spirit of generosity, of give and take, where two very different people bring different qualities and passions and also injuries to the table.

It's natural to be narcissistic when you've been through hell and you need support and you're at the exact age when all of it seems like DESTINY, like whatever happens now will determine THE REST OF YOUR LIFE. I was a raging, raging narcissist at your age. RAGING. I could SERVE other people, yes, but I couldn't really show up and let them in. Know what I mean? I think you AND your ex fit into that category, both of you. Forgive yourself for that, and forgive him. You're not as different as you think.

Before you go to bed at night, I want you to write down 5 things you're grateful for in a (new!) journal. Then I want you to write, "I am sending (your ex's name) my love and my forgiveness. I hope he finds happiness." Death is hard to process. It haunts us, and casts a shadow on our lives for a long time. Your ex appears to be wrapped up in your experiences of loss, but he really wasn't a part of them. He was on another planet. There's no intention involved there. He got tied into some story in your mind, a story about how people leave you, unexpectedly, for no good reason at all. It was a twist of fate that he even wound up in that story. He's flashing through your mind and you're providing a melancholy soundtrack that doesn't fit him. When you're older, these two deaths you've endured will still feel weighty and important to you, but he will be separate—this strange, blurry image at the edge of the picture that had nothing to do with any of it. You will have a sense memory of your mother, and your friend, but this ex-boyfriend will be odorless, colorless, weightless. He doesn't matter as much. He is not central to your story.

Honor the dead. Keep them close to your heart. But forgive this guy, and then forget him. Even as you release him from your life, use the pain to open yourself up. Make room for your contempt, and watch how it crystallizes into pure sadness. Don't protect yourself. Stay vulnerable to the injuries you've sustained. By staying vulnerable, you'll slowly let in more light, more color, more joy, more possibility. By staying vulnerable, you'll make more room for other people, in all of their flaws, with all of their vulnerabilities. You'll see that people don't really make choices most of the time. They're all flying blind, just like you are. Seeing that is a beautiful thing. Seeing that is forgiveness.

Polly

Are you hung up on the past? Write to Polly, then!

Heather Havrilesky (aka Polly Esther) is The Awl's existential advice columnist. She's also a regular contributor to The New York Times Magazine, and is the author of the memoir Disaster Preparedness (Riverhead 2011). She blogs here about scratchy pants, personality disorders, and aged cheeses. Double cat photo by "zeevveez."

The post Ask Polly: My Ex Dumped Me Callously And I Can't Get Over It! appeared first on The Awl.

Dear Polly,

I'm a 26-year-old female living in NYC who has been in a serious monogamous relationship with my boyfriend for over a year and a half now. He's a supportive partner who fulfills all of my needs and I love him tremendously.

The only problem I have with our relationship is that he was previously married. I met him shortly after he left his ex, and was with him through the divorce. His marriage was an abusive one; she inflicted years of mental and emotional torment that he's still recovering from. He also still lives in the same neighborhood as his ex (I've seen her on more than one occasion while out and about), and they still communicate because they share joint custody of their three dogs.

My main problem with her, aside from the fact that she's a terrible human, is that I'm obsessed with her—with hating her, specifically—and am resentful, on behalf of my boyfriend who has made peace with their toxic relationship, that she hurt my partner and continues to be involved in his life.

She leads a very public life online (she's one of those "lifestyle bloggers") and it's easy, and so much fun, to watch her make mistakes after their separation and subsequent divorce. She's also older (by 5 years) and seemingly "has it together," living alone and working in her dream field, while I'm quite the opposite. She's contacted me online before, in a manner I found threatening, so she knows I exist and was devastated (and blogged about it extensively) when she learned her ex-husband was in a committed relationship with me. This brought me great joy, and I realize that that's a very sick thing to feel.

But within the past few months my infatuation with her emotional shitshow (which has subsided over the past few months, unfortunately) has completely consumed me, and it's beginning to affect my relationship. I logged into my boyfriend's emails and read conversations between the two (I confessed and he was angry, but forgave me), and one night I drunkenly confessed to him every detail of my obsession with her. He was patient and understanding.

Most importantly, I feel like I can't pursue a more serious relationship with my boyfriend because he's already done all of "those things" (marriage, trying to have a family, etc.) with someone else and I haven't. I hate being second.

I feel like there are so many things I want to say to her, and if I just said them, I would feel better. But I know it's a bad idea for me to contact her. It would upset my boyfriend (he doesn't want to have to deal with her any more than he has to) and part of their divorce agreement is that she cannot communicate with me.

What should I do?

Dwelling On His Past

Dear DOHP,

So you're living in someone else's past, and you feel unresolved about it. And why wouldn't you? You feel angry at someone you don't know and never had a relationship with. You want to say things to her about the way she treated your boyfriend. You are feeling feelings on his behalf, and you want to express them as if they're YOUR feelings. BUT YOU DON'T ACTUALLY KNOW HER.

You currently believe that you could get closure by telling her how you feel. You're wrong about that. It would be utterly dissatisfying to tell her how you feel, because you don't know her, and because your feelings about her are all wrapped up in your protective feelings for him, your doubts about him, your desire to be The First, and your hopes and dreams with him. She can't possibly address her role as a symbol of intrigue and drama and trauma in your life.

Before we go deeper into that stuff, though, we need to talk about SHARING CUSTODY OF A DOG. Here's a public service announcement to future divorcees of the world: Never, ever set up joint custody of a fucking dog, ever.

Yes, dogs are members of the family. Yes, they matter, and losing a dog (or three) to a divorce is sure to be painful. I am a dog person. That's an understatement. My dog Potus is arguably more in touch with my feelings than my husband is. If my eyes so much as water slightly, Potus notices immediately and nudges me with her cold nose and stares at me with her big saucer eyes that say, ARE YOU OKAY? She doesn't do this to comfort me so much as to say, "Please stop this, so I don't have to worry about you." (Echoes of my childhood there).

Yes, I would battle in a court of law over Potus.

That said, driving dogs back and forth between households, and seeing your ex-wife every fucking week when you don't need to, is pretty deranged. You have no kids—you dodged a bullet—but you're still going to get on the phone and talk about doggie medications a few times a month?

JUST DON'T DO IT. Either push for custody of your dogs or give your dogs up (if you trust your ex not to ruin their lives), but do not share them. AND NEWSFLASH: MOST DOGS DON'T LIKE TO BE SHARED. Dogs are not fond of being relocated every few days or weeks. Dogs like to sleep in the same bed every night.

I lived with a guy who shared custody of his dog with his ex-wife, and let me tell you what, it was totally fucked up. I loved that dog, too. I understood why they would want to share custody. But then it became increasingly obvious that the dog was their little way of keeping tabs on each other. She left him for another man. He got a lot of information about the new guy just from picking up the dog from her place. He would come home with the dog and talk about the guy, or talk about her new apartment, or her new furniture. She would come to our house and he wouldn't want to see her face, so he'd hide in the back while she dropped the dog off. Hiding felt fucking stupid to me, so I started answering the door. That also felt stupid, and very awkward. It was ALL stupid and awkward.

Meanwhile, was the dog happy? Maybe, maybe not. Sometimes I thought the dog really felt happier at the ex-wife's house. She moped a lot when she was with us. Maybe she was just a mopey dog.

But even if the dog LOVED visiting both houses, was the whole carnival worth it? Were the dog's preferences adequate justification for constant fucking contact, despite bad feelings on both sides, despite a breakup that involved infidelity (on her part), despite massive amounts of rage and sadness (on his part) and a strange reluctance to move forward (on both of their parts)?

Because, like you, I became semi-obsessed with this woman who had already claimed my boyfriend, who had done the whole white-dress-big-wedding thing with him, and who was clearly still HIS WIFE in his mind, no matter how he felt about me. How could I not be obsessed? SHE HAD A KEY TO MY FUCKING HOUSE. She appeared in my living room once a week! When I was planting flowers on the front patio or washing the floor, I would think of her seeing it—because she WOULD see it. It was as if our relationship had this hostile third party witness, one who also happened to know a lot about my boyfriend. She knew all of his flaws and shortcomings, and she'd REJECTED him. In spite of my best efforts to rise above the whole thing, I found myself wanting to demonstrate to her that he had changed, that we were totally happy and in love, that we had something she'd never had with him. LIKE A CRAZY PERSON.

And you know what was really tough? I understood why someone would leave him. He was a really lovable, well-intentioned guy, but (at the time) he was really angry and troubled and really fucking hard to live with. And he was DEFINITELY not over his ex.

I always assumed his ex-wife was completely over him. But then we took the dog on a driving trip across the country, and she called every morning, sometimes at five in the fucking morning, to see if THE DOG HAD ARRIVED SAFELY AT OUR DESTINATION. And even though he supposedly thought this was crazy and controlling of her, he kept answering her calls. Even when she forgot about the time change and woke us up way too early before a long day of driving, he wouldn't tell her to cut it the fuck out.

That's when I realized: They were in this together. They were still working something out. I felt like a third wheel because I WAS a third wheel. I broke up with him a few weeks later.

That situation taught me a lot about sinking deep into a pre-existing drama that really had nothing to do with me. And look, if the ex-wife had kept a blog? And I could read all about her feelings about him, and me? If she'd ever contacted me directly? I would've fallen right into that wormhole, and it would've been irresistible and satisfying and terrible and awesome and then, she would have moved on and gotten over it and I WOULD'VE STILL BEEN OBSESSED. Why? Because it was all still a mystery to me. I never knew her and she never knew me and it was all conjecture. That's what obsession is: wild, uncontrolled THINKING about things that are mysterious and unreal. Obsession is not about feeling, it's about invention. And the more you obsess, the more it becomes about the act of creative overthinking, about circular thought patterns, about neuroticism, about trying desperately to control something that's completely out of your control. In this kind of ex situation, it's about filling in the gaps, trying to solve the mystery of someone else's shitty relationship. I wanted the problems in my life to come from the ex-wife—her callousness, her control freak tendencies, her infidelity—but underneath that I knew that my boyfriend was incapable of meeting someone halfway. He talked a big game about compromise, about collaborating, but he was always dictating the terms of everything we did, every step of the way. If he wasn't completely in charge, he was furious, or fearful.

Instead of trying to tackle the frustrations and disappointments of our relationship, I focused on the mystery of her, of them. I got caught up in feeling sorry for myself for not getting the fairy tale I deserved. I don't think I ever cared about wedding dresses until I saw their wedding photos for the first time. She wasn't the most beautiful woman alive, but she looked beautiful on their wedding day. All of a sudden, their little fairy tale felt like MY tragedy. They got to have something I would never have. I was lonely and powerless in that relationship, so I told an elaborate story about WHY I was lonely and powerless. It was ALL HER FAULT.

If you have a big, imaginative brain and you naturally think think think in circles anyway, obsession is like coming home to mama. Only mama is more like a vengeful, unforgiving god. Mama is the fucking Heat Miser.

So you're in that crucible, due to circumstances beyond your control. I'm not going to blame you for your obsession, and tell you to grow the fuck up and get over it. Honestly, having been where you are now, I'd be more concerned if you WEREN'T remotely affected by the fucking joint dog custody and the lifestyle blog and the rest of it. I would be worried that you were a fucking robot if those things didn't bore deep, deep, deep under your skin.

So I just want to tell you this, loud and clear: A lot of your current troubles are circumstantial. Anyone with a functioning heart and a functioning brain would land where you've landed.

But I also believe that you may have displaced your frustration and your anger, and made her a target for feelings that don't have anything to do with her. He might have reasons to hate her, and maybe you dislike her on his behalf. But no matter how much you've read her words or heard about their life together, you don't fucking know her. You can't work this out with her because she's not your lover or your friend or even your loose acquaintance. You have no relationship with her.

So it's not really about her. It's also not about the fact that he was married before. My husband was married for 12 years to someone else. When I met him, he'd only been single for about 9 months. We share custody of a child with his ex. Not a dog, a human being! But his ex-wife doesn't loom large in my life; she's just a person I hardly know. I understand his feelings about his marriage and his divorce, but I don't feel emotionally invested in that story, nor do I see her as some kind of an intruder or hostile witness in our lives. When we were planning our wedding, it often slipped my mind that he'd done it all before. He never acted like ours was a second marriage. He said he felt like it was his first "REAL" marriage, however you want to interpret that.

So honestly, I think there's something in the mix here that's bothering you, and blaming it on being "second" makes little sense and frankly obscures the source of your troubles. Maybe you're a little bit haunted by your boyfriend's ex because her perspective on him bugs you. Maybe she disrespected him and you're worried that you will, too, eventually. Maybe you have doubts about him that you don't want to address with him or anyone else. Maybe you think he'll never want to marry you or have kids with you, even though he wanted those things with her. Or maybe you're worried that you don't REALLY want to marry HIM.

I don't get the sense that last one is true, I only mention it for the readers out there who are obsessed with someone and they think it means they want to be with that person forever, when in fact it could mean that they're hung up on the person because he/she makes them feel confused and conflicted, because he/she is intriguing but WRONG SOMEHOW. Obsession often indicates ambivalence.

Your case is a little different, though. My guess is that your boyfriend's ex looms large because she has an engaging career and you don't. She makes a living doing something she loves and you want that for yourself. You're also insecure because you're young and you're not entirely sure what you want from your life yet. You wonder if your boyfriend could ever love you as much as he loved her, because you're not that much like his ex. Even though she's a fucking nightmare, you wonder if you'll ever capture his heart and imagination and passion the way she did.

You're not feeling fragile about this because she's somehow better than you. You're feeling fragile because, instead of believing in your own dreams and working towards what you want from your life, you're distracting yourself with her. You're all wrapped up in their past, their drama, their weirdness, long after they themselves (officially) left it behind. You are procrastinating. You are distracting yourself from something you don't want to deal with. You've found a distraction big and colorful enough to provide an extended escape from the hard work you still have to do on yourself.

You need a therapist if you don’t have one already. You also need to work on talking to your boyfriend—regularly, openly, honestly—about what you want from this relationship, and from him. Do you sometimes feel that he's a pushover with other people? Do you feel that he's honest with you, or do you suspect that he placates you when you're upset? What will the next few years of your lives look like? What happens when one of the dogs gets old and sick? Would he consider giving her the dogs, or splitting them up? Does he have a problem cutting off all contact with her?

Again, your situation is TOTALLY understandable. Your feelings are understandable. Even your OBSESSION is understandable. Honestly. But it's a sign that things aren't quite right in your life. Obsession only goes in the warm, moist Petri dish of confusion. You are looking for a distraction from your own challenges.

You need to have another long, heartfelt talk about this woman, about what she SYMBOLIZES in your life—with both your therapist and your boyfriend. After that, though, you need to forget that she exists. Don't talk about her, don't think about her, don't write about her, don't picture her. When you're tempted to think about her, you need to say these words. I DON'T KNOW HER. SHE IS NOT IN MY LIFE. SHE HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH ME.

Then you need to take a long, hard look at your life, and figure out what you really want, and you need to GO OUT AND GET IT. Because, look, do you want to spend the next five years thinking about someone who you don't even know? Do you want to destroy the love you have with these obsessions and fixations and this illusory desire for "closure"?

What started as a funny little gossipy thing has turned into something dangerous to you. The stakes are very high now. You have to stop concerning yourself with her, because it's hurting you. You have to do the very hard work of concerning yourself with yourself instead. You will find your passion, and your confidence, and you'll never worry about her again once you do that. But can't skip that step. You have to find yourself. Don't hide behind your relationship. Spend some time on your own, and with friends, nurturing your independence, and figuring out exactly what you want your life to look like. You are avoiding this right now. But you can't let someone else decide what you want. You have to decide for yourself. If you aren't careful, you will end up with a life you don't want at all. Don't allow yourself to get distracted like this. Don't follow the path of least resistance. Don't tell stories that belong to other people. It's time for YOUR story to begin now.

Polly

Are you stalling? Write to Polly and find out!

Heather Havrilesky (aka Polly Esther) is The Awl's existential advice columnist. She's also a regular contributor to The New York Times Magazine, and is the author of the memoir Disaster Preparedness (Riverhead 2011). She blogs here about scratchy pants, personality disorders, and aged cheeses. Dog photo by Timothy J Carroll.

The post Ask Polly: I Am Obsessed With My Boyfriend's Evil Ex-Girlfriend—And Her Blog! (And Their Dogs!) appeared first on The Awl.

Hi Polly,

I am stuck on my recent ex of about 15 months.

We began online and with distance. He was in a live-in relationship at that time. I told him that I was not interested in an online, long-distance relationship and that I definitely was not interested in an attached man but he assured me that these things were temporary—and I believed him. She was/is his boss (she got him the job) and he claimed he was fearful of repercussions and also that he feared she would kill herself or quit her job if he left her. He also said that he hated the city where he lives and was looking to relocate within 12 months and began to make tentative plans to move to where I was.

We had that 'instant connection' that happens sometimes and he love-bombed me with attention and spent hours and hours every day talking to me and really trying to get to know the 'real me'—or so it seemed. I had been single in every sense of the word until we collided (and we did collide) and I had long given up hope of ever again meeting a man who I was interested in, let alone one who returned my affections—which this man did in spades.

There were red flags (other than those I have mentioned) in that he played the victim: He told me about his severe anxiety issues, his history of hospital confinement due to a nervous breakdown and the biggest, that I ignored, is that he would test my (sexual) boundaries and emotional boundaries. He told me he did not 'believe' in relationships, even that he did not feel 'love' and had never been in love, although he behaved like he and I were definitely in a relationship by being incredibly emotionally intimate and spending ALL of his free time with me—AND he told me he loved me.

We met a few months into our relationship. I insisted that the live-in girlfriend be aware of this and he did tell her about me (although he lied and made up a story as to who I was) after we met in person the first time. I flew across the country and spent 4 weeks in his city, and the meeting just deepened the love I felt for him, even though there were problems—niggling doubts about his intentions, his honesty, etc. I was completely hooked however and ignored my doubt and insecurities. It seemed as though this man was completely into me.

Shortly after I flew back home, the trouble really began. First of all, he moved into the spare room in the house he shared with his ex. This didn't take, however (for obvious reasons) and he moved out completely, much to my joy, and things with us became even more intense. We would talk, SMS, and Skype for hours and hours all day every day. A few times he was 'unavailable' but I didn't think much of these incidents.

A BIG flag—and point of contention for me—was that he had a dating profile on a dating website. He showed me this, he was open about it and insisted that he just liked to talk to people. I actually tried to end things a couple of times in this period because he was still no further along making arrangements to move to where I was. This was about 9 or so months into things at this point. Whenever I withdrew at all, he would bombard me and beg me not to leave or turn away from him. He kept assuring me that I was the most alluring woman he had met in 10 years and that he had a bottomless desire for me as a person and as a woman.

Eventually, I found out that he had been talking to and sleeping with a woman he met online, for about a month. She contacted me to let me know that he had told her that he loved her (within weeks) and had given her a large sum of money. When I confronted him, he apologized and told me it would never happen again.

I put this 'affair' down to me not being around physically. I was convinced that if we could just be together, we could find out if he and I had a chance.

Not long after, I got a job interview in his city and decided to attend. He offered to pay my fare and told me that I could stay with him and if I needed to, his parents (he was in a share house, so staying with him long-term was not going to be okay). I came over and the first weekend things were lovely. Then, that first week he was a bit distant and our usually incredibly good sex vanished into thin air. He began to have massive panic attacks and things were just… strange. (Oh, I forgot to mention that his anxiety attacks are medicated daily with large doses of Xanax).

I got the job I applied for, but he was weird about this, and things were not looking good. On the Saturday and Sunday, my second weekend here, we had a lovely, romantic weekend and we had sex a couple of times. Then, on the Monday morning, he dumped me—telling me that his emotions for me had been 'burnt out' due to his anxiety attacks. He claimed this had happened before. I remembered then that he had stopped wanting sexual contact with the woman I 'replaced' just three months into their three-year relationship

I was devastated. I had left everything behind to come and try to spend time with this man to see if he and I had a chance. To make matters worse, he left me sitting alone, shattered, in his sharehouse that very night and went on a first date with a woman he had met online a week or so earlier. Turns out that he had a 'new' me to talk to in the early hours of the night while I slept in his bed.

The next day he was quite cruel to me. I did not get angry with him about what he had done or the date, I was just devastated and completely bewildered because he had promised, just a few weeks before, that he would never, ever turn away from me and here he was saying that he didn't even really 'know me' and suggesting that for all he knew, I could have been lying about who I was all this time. It was like the world had been flipped upside down.

I stayed in the sharehouse, renting a spare room that came up—mainly because I had no money to find anywhere else and I was due to start my new job.

Over the next eight weeks or so, he continued to 'date' this woman, but to act as though he and I were still in a relationship. He constantly wanted to hang out and talk, watch movies, etc., and many nights we slept together—no sex, mainly because I kept hoping that this 'bad dream' would end and he would tell me that he had made a huge mistake. He would wander around naked in front of me and wrap himself around me in bed but he never tried to touch me or made any sexual overtures.

We had a few brief discussions about what happened, the last being that he apologized for what had occurred and then told me that after I flew here, he and I made love (his words) a few times and then he realized that he "no longer found me physically attractive." Yes, he said that.

I finally lost my temper after he said that and told him to fuck off and walked away. But even then he came into my room the next day (when I was due to move out) and again kept trying so, so hard to be my "friend." Our friendship in the house only existed because he chased me for it. Every film we watched was his idea, he constantly came into my room looking for me. He bought food and cooked for me all the time. I did not chase him or his company for one second.

I am still reeling from all of this. I have only been away from that house and in my new digs for two weeks but this has affected me more than I can say. Initially he kept up contact by calling, etc., but that has eased off and it has now been eight days without any contact from him. He is on the dating site for up to 12 hours a day. It's the one thing I keep an eye on and really, that is to reassure myself that he is doing to my replacement what he did to me. He seems to NEED the subterfuge of these internet dalliances.

I don't think that it is serious between him and my replacement. In fact, I think it might be all but over (I could be wrong). But that is by-the-by. What I cannot seem to do is reconcile the facts that this man who worshipped me for 12 months, who swore I was the most amazing woman he had ever met, who was planning to relocate, who left his previous relationship for me—that this same man just callously discarded me like I was nothing.

He wants to be friends and claims that he still really likes me as a person and wants to be in my life. I am humiliated by what happened and just can't seem to get past it, thoughts of what I had with him, how he made me feel. They haunt me all day and night. I just can't seem to accept that someone can just change their mind like he claims he did.

I need help to make sense of this.

Reeling

Dear Reeling,

Please read your letter from beginning to end and imagine that someone else wrote it. Then, tell me what advice you would give to that person. People who read your letter are not going to be the least bit curious about this guy you fell in love with. He's an emotional leech. He spends every second of every day sucking love out of women—you, the ex, the new you, the NEW new you—all without feeling it. He's trying to feel, and failing. First he told you about how he lost all sexual attraction and love for the ex very early in their relationship. Then he told you he doesn't "feel" love and doesn't believe in love and doesn't know what love is. That wasn't a way of testing emotional boundaries—that was him telling you the truth about his issues. Then you found out he was looking for other women online. Then he told you, milliseconds after you arrived in town, that he wasn't attracted to you anymore. Then he found a new you. Then he followed you around the house, kept hanging out, kept talking to you, kept trying to milk you for more, more, more, all the while searching for even more women who might give him love, online, anywhere.

There is no mystery here. This man can't feel anything. The love he finds doesn't do enough for him, because he can't really show up. So he looks for more, constantly, compulsively. He has no idea how to have a real intimate relationship with a real human being. When you arrived in town, you created a problem for him. He would've been happy to leech attention and affection from you, long distance, indefinitely. You should assume there are dozens more of you out there, slowly being prodded to give themselves to him—virtually, always at arm's length.

So he's not that interesting, at least not to people who aren’t into human quicksand. He has big, big problems, and his life is pretty confusing for him, too. He's struggling to get something he needs, but it never works and it's never enough. Give him your sympathy and get the fuck away from him and never look back.

Here's what IS interesting: HOW THE FUCK YOU GOT HERE. He was supposed to move to your city. He never did that. So YOU picked up and moved. He acted like a crazy person immediately. Instead of bailing and going home, you stayed. He broke up with you. Instead of bailing and going home, YOU MOVED INTO A HOUSE WITH HIM AND A BUNCH OF FUCKING ROOMMATES.

Could that be right? I have to keep checking the details of your letter, because there are so many bizarre, nonsensical twists that it's challenging to keep track of the chronology of it all. It's a suspenseful story, too, because once you realize there's no rhyme or reason involved, you start to wonder what fresh disaster will strike next. Not only that, but you write about yourself as if you have no free will and no mind of your own. After he dumped you and was dating someone else, he kept wanting to hang out, and talk, and be naked in front of you, so… THAT'S WHAT HAPPENED, OF COURSE. WHY THE FUCK DID THAT HAPPEN AGAIN?! I mean, seriously. Are you a throw pillow, or can you use your feet to walk the fuck out the door, and use your mouth to say GET AWAY FROM ME YOU CREEPY FUCKING ASS CLOWN?

Just as you took his straight statement of truth—"I can't feel love"—as an emotional manipulation, you take his wanting to hang out with you as proof that he still loves you. Everything he does feels personal to you.

So here's what you need to know: NOTHING HE DOES IS PERSONAL OR SPECIFIC TO YOU AT ALL.

When he wants to see you, that has nothing whatsoever to do with his feelings for you. He's trying to escape his desperation and loneliness and anxiety. Remember when he said he couldn't feel things? Remember when he said he wasn't attracted to you? Remember when he said he suffers from panic attacks? He's running scared and hoping for some magic to save him from himself. There is no magic. When he says, "YOU ARE THE MOST AMAZING WOMAN I'VE EVER MET" that's his way of saying "MAYBE IF I SAY SOMETHING REALLY DRAMATIC ABOUT YOU IT'LL COME TRUE OR AT LEAST I'LL BE SAFE FROM THE TERROR OF BEING ALONE FOR A WHILE."

He is an emotional black hole that will never be filled. He will follow any woman around like a puppy. Once that stops working, he will start drinking, or using drugs, or chasing some other fix. It has absolutely nothing to do with who you are.

But even now, despite all of the evidence you have that he's a human sinkhole, some part of you still believes that he has special feelings for you, that he's just confused, that he's dating the wrong girl now but he'll come back around and realize that he just got mixed up and lost sight of how great you are.

He didn't get mixed up. He's always been this way. You're the one who got mixed up. Your free will, your ideas about yourself, your existence as a person who acts (instead of simply being acted upon), your ambitions, your friendships, your family, your hopes and dreams—it's no coincidence that all of these things are missing from your letter.

So here's what you need to do:

1. Get a therapist.

2: Call every one of your friends and explain what happened to you, and ask them for their support as you move forward during a very difficult time.

3: Call your family and tell them you're having trouble.

Now: Should you quit your job and move back to your city? Maybe. I don't like you in the same town with this guy. You could waste at least another year or two staying hung up on him, getting pulled back into some half-assed relationship with him, supporting him through his various break-ups while hoping he takes you back, and on and on and on from there. Hanging out, occasionally sleeping together, wondering if it might eventually add up to something, wondering if he'll start "loving" you again, and showering you with all of that "affection" and "adoration" that he seems to be very good at generating in a vacuum of real contact or knowledge or understanding or feeling. Listen closely here: Even if you win him back, he will ALWAYS be chasing down other women (among many, many other problems). Every second you spend thinking about him or contemplating trying to get him back is a second spent wasting your time and hurting yourself and making yourself smaller and more powerless and needy.

You might need to flee. If you can't trust yourself not to follow him around or obsess about him or monitor his online movements, then you should probably move back to your old town.

But I hate even giving him that much power in your story, because he's irrelevant. Right now all that matters is you. How many friends did you leave behind to be with this guy? Do you have female friends? Do you confide in them? Are you close to your family? Do you have any activities outside of your job that you enjoy? Do you exercise regularly? Do you explore on your own, go to new restaurants, read new books, look for friendships (rather than love) online?

What kind of a life do you WANT?

Based on what you've described here, I think you need to take a solid six months off from dating of any kind. It's not safe to go back in the water in your current state. You need to go to therapy and build yourself from the ground up. Because this man became your savior very, very quickly. Now, it's true that almost any woman can understand the temptation to let that happen. It's true that some people really do fall in love, move to a new city, and then live semi-happily ever after, or at least for a while.

Still, you have some issues that you need to sort out. You need to drastically reexamine your notions of what love will look like when you find it. Dudes who immediately decide you're perfect, who want to be in constant contact, who have "psychochick" types in their lives that just won't go away, who describe losing sexual interest in this or that woman (instead of describing, say, what kinds of conflicts or missed connections eroded their ability to communicate or listen or give to each other generously), who put love in magical, fated terms instead of ACTUALLY WANTING TO SPEND TIME WITH YOU, FACE TO FACE, AND SEE HOW THINGS DEVELOP? These dudes need to be avoided like the plague. They are looking for a fix. They will say whatever they need to say to get that fix.

You need to build love out of friendship from now on—slowly building trust, slowly getting to know someone, meeting his friends, getting a sense of him in the world. When a guy describes panic attacks, hospitalization, suicidal girlfriends, go-nowhere jobs, lost chances, destroyed friendships, you really have to ask yourself: Is this the landscape I want to inhabit? DON'T I LOVE MYSELF MORE THAN THAT?

How much DO you love yourself? Why did you think this was your last chance to find love? Why did his intensity appeal to you so much, compared to the relatively mundane statements made by people who aren't desperate for immediate salvation?

You need to radically reexamine your notions about yourself and others, and radically redefine your views of romantic love.

But first, you need to take care of yourself. Find a therapist immediately, and talk about this guy to the therapist. Call your friends and talk to them. Otherwise, though, push him out of the picture. You know enough about him now to never consider him for another second. Do not check out what he's doing online. HE WILL ALWAYS BE DOING THE SAME SHIT. It has nothing to do with you. You need to focus on taking care of yourself. Right now, you are broken, confused, and sad. You need to work very hard to love this broken girl, right now. She is lovable. She deserves YOUR love. She deserves a leading role in this story for once.

Buy her some flowers. Make her a cup of tea. Tell her to pick up the phone and call her mother, or her aunt, or her old friend from school. Tell her things will get better.

Things WILL get better. Right now, you have to love-bomb YOURSELF with attention. Spend hours and hours every day talking to friends, to yourself, to your therapist, trying to get to know the real you. Who is she? What does she want? When you find her, it will feel so good, and you'll never surrender your entire life for someone else again. You will feel stronger, and happier, and more alive. That power is already inside of you.

If you dare to look closely at this situation, and see it for the wake-up call that it is, if you dare to stop asking why HE did what he did, and start asking why YOU did what you did, if you dare to examine what you think you do and don't deserve in this life, you'll emerge from this terrible time with a whole different feeling about yourself and your life. This crisis could change you, if you stop fixating on him, step away from your anger and longing, and allow yourself to be vulnerable about how you got here, who you are, and who you really want to be.

If you're vulnerable and you look very closely at yourself—how you run away from friends and family who need you, and run towards strangers who seem intense and mixed up and damaged and who NEED YOU TO SAVE THEM—then you can break this pattern before it becomes a pattern.

Maybe you DON'T think this is about you, though. If my response makes you angry and defensive, and you just want to insist that this ISN'T about you, it's about someone who really DID love you so so so much but he's just confused and he needs you, he just doesn't realize it? Well, I can tell you right now, you will keep bumping into this guy. He will keep finding you. He is everywhere. And he will fucking find your ass.

My strong suggestion to you is that you dig very, very deep with a therapist and admit that you're mixed up about love. If you work very hard, you'll come out of this a much happier person, and you'll start to attract strong, happy people who aren't needy vampires.

In the meantime, go on a long walk and listen to "Hestia" by Katell Keineg:

"I've been laying low, breathing for a while,
With my arms wrapped around my heartbroken child
But I woke up one day with a song in my heart
And the words of the song said you are witnessing a start today."

Forget him completely. This is about you. You were in a weakened state. He showed you his fangs and you showed him your bare neck. Next time, you'll be stronger, and the sad vampire will only elicit your sympathy.

Polly

Do you have a thing for vampires (or zombies)? Write to Polly and tell her about it!

Heather Havrilesky (aka Polly Esther) is The Awl's existential advice columnist. She's also a regular contributor to The New York Times Magazine, and is the author of the memoir Disaster Preparedness (Riverhead 2011). She blogs here about scratchy pants, personality disorders, and aged cheeses. Bela Lugosi still from Mark of the Vampire.

The post Ask Polly: I Moved To A New City To Be With An Emotional Vampire appeared first on The Awl.

Dear Polly,

I have a problem that's common to some extent for everyone but lately it's beginning to be unmanageable for me: I have terrible anxiety.

Background: I'm a gay 29-year-old male who's been working at a crappy data entry job for the past couple of years. I've never been in a relationship and since coming out, I've somehow gotten into the habit of having sex only once a year.

As you can imagine, growing up I used to be a nervous little queer kid; scared of being called a faggot, I cultivated this deep monotone speech pattern and tried my damn hardest to keep the camp to a minimum. As the years passed and I moved into high school and then college, this way of living killed what little self-esteem I had and my anxiety got progressively worse. I waited until I was 23, when I was already out of college (sigh), to ever so slowly begin the coming out process only to people I trusted. At first this felt like a huge relief and it coincided with me getting placed in a kick ass internship. But then? My anxiety jumped into high gear and it seemed like I couldn't focus on anything; unable to continue going forward in my career and personal life.

When it comes to career stuff, the internship I scored dealt with public policy, and my goal was to immerse myself and see if it was an area I could see myself growing in, but the sad truth is that I never could find out because my anxiety was so overwhelming I had to keep my head down to make it through the day. When I was at work, I couldn't bear having people call attention to me because I would instantly blush beet red. I can handle women talking to me one on one—the conversation flows and the end results are positive, but I've been finding as I get older that I get incredibly embarrassed when a man, especially if he's attractive, attempts to make conversation with me in a well-lit setting. At my job, there are fluorescent lights everywhere so when I'm approached by my office's Tom Hardy, I get super red and I just have to end the conversation. Here's what goes on in my head when Hardy talks to me: He's looking at me; I'm getting red now; he can see all the pores in my face; I'm getting redder; I must look so uncomfortable to him; his nervous smile shows me he's noticing how red and embarrassed I look." How can someone progress in a work environment with those kind of shitty social skills?

And that isn't even the worst of my problems at work; I have a horrible public speaking phobia. I've sucked at speaking in front of a group since I was a child, but now it's gotten so out of hand that I've had 3 separate panic attacks in front of my department. One was especially mortifying because it occurred not only in front of my co-workers but also colleagues from outside organizations at a state conference. I ran out of the auditorium, went into a restroom and started bawling. I've spent years beating myself up about public speaking but I can't seem to approach it with anything but sheer terror. What really trips me out is making eye contact with the audience, especially with men. I start to panic, have trouble breathing, and blush. When I see those eyes, it feels like they're beaming their thoughts into my head: you're fucking stupid; you're worth nothing; who do you think you are; you're getting red.

When the internship ended, I had spent so much time dodging attention that I failed to make a mark in front of my superiors and had to take a dead end position at the company. Now I sit here in my cubicle wondering how I could have fucked up so much. This job requires nothing of me so my brain has nothing better to do than over-think and jump start my anxiety.

In terms of my personal life, everything is whatever. I struggle with gay shame everyday. I have a good set of friends, and I should be grateful to have them because 10 years ago I thought if I came out of the closet I would be left with no one but myself. The problem is with my family. I'm an Asian American with immigrant parents who I know would be devastated if I told them the truth. I've worried about breaking their heart and disappointing them since as far back as I can remember, but keeping this secret from them is killing me. Sometimes when I'm commuting I'll wander off in my head and imagine different scenarios of how the coming out scene would play out; it never ends well. Obviously, I've never brought a girl home. During each holiday season, I spend my time carefully steering conversations so that my uncles don't ask me in front of my parents if I have a girlfriend yet. I can tell it embarrasses them that their almost-30-year-old son can't seem to find a date to save his life. This year after both Thanksgiving and Christmas, I went back to my apartment with my back aching.

I'll be 30 in 4 months and I spend my nights tossing and turning, dreading that my life will look exactly the same in 5 years. How do I change… me? Look, I know that I can't change the fact that I'm gay and I know I can't change that I have an over-active nervous system; but how can I keep my shame and my panic attacks from leading me into a life of nothing?

Big Nervous Mess

Dear BNM,

A life of nothing comes from not wanting to be any of the things that you naturally are. You grew up in an environment that makes you feel that who you naturally are is bad. In disguising your true self, you not only lost any chance to express yourself authentically and naturally, but you cut off your connection to your most brilliant impulses, your most vivid and dynamic streaks of insight and genius, and your most tender and heartfelt moments of empathy and love and joy. I know you don't really need me to state the obvious on this front, but I do want you to really acknowledge at a deep level what this act of hiding and masking and pulling away did to your soul, because it's unbearably sad. Your anxiety is a symptom of your injured soul.

But hiding was also a survivalist's choice, and maybe a smart choice for someone with your wiring and your lack of interest in being in the spotlight. Coming out and being yourself and taking on immediate outsider status wasn't something you could stomach, with your family, your circumstances, and your nature. Who knows what kaleidoscope of hellish outcomes might've sprung out of taking a riskier path? I want you to feel real empathy for the scared kid who kept the camp to a minimum and made his voice monotone. I mean, what a tragedy, that a naturally dramatic and vivacious boy would have to imitate the dull heterosexual trolls in his midst! The sheer loss of that! To have all of this exciting, vibrant potential, to be a unique flower in a field of milkweed. No, dillweed. There you were, a blossoming, glorious purple iris, with nothing but dickweed as far as the eye could see! And you had to hide your gorgeous purple and yellow blooms and imitate dickweed instead.

OK, I just Googled milkweed and it's kind of a raggedy-ass plant, but it's got all these orange and yellow or hot pink flowers on it that attract butterflies. (It's the only thing monarch larvae eat!) And dillweed is just green, but it has those cool little green blossoms, the kind that look great in a big glass vase. Or in a giant pot on a sunshiney back patio, the sort of giant pot of weird green plants that makes people say, "Jesus, what ARE these? I need to know what they are! I MUST GET SOME OF THESE." So let's just admit that even the seemingly dull, monotone-speaking heterosexual men of the world are ALSO plucking their own pretty flowers, just to please an unkind universe that favors DICKWEED over the other, far more exuberant and melodious and electrifying varietals.

The most anxious guy I ever knew was this incredibly smart, creative, interesting guy I met in college. He looked and sounded like your average frat boy until you got him a little drunk, and then he'd come out of his shell and talk in winding, artful, bizarre circles, always with deeply mournful undertones. He could also play guitar and sing, but he didn't sing in the usual faux-scratchy Bob Dylan voice that everyone else did. He had a sweet, clear, high voice, and when he sang Kris Kristofferson's "Casey's Last Ride," he could make a whole room full of drunk assholes weep big salty tears. I'm not exaggerating. It makes me weep big salty tears just thinking about it.

He did the ROTC thing to pay for college, which meant he had to keep his hair very, very short and he had to act like a gruff macho dude in order to avoid unnecessary attention. Although that probably doesn't sound like much of a hardship, a lot of depression and anxiety and loneliness bubbled up around it for him. He was tall and had big shoulders and he would look in the mirror and say, "God, I look like such a typical frat dirtbag." A few times, he put on fake facial hair and a long-haired wig and a hat and went out to bars like that. He would marvel at how mean people were to him, in his disguise, but somehow looking like a misfit and seeing their meanness felt like seeing the world as it really was for the first time. It was punishing, and it felt cathartic, to be acknowledged as a misfit. That was his strange way of escaping the lie of his identity.

Eventually he graduated and joined the Navy and things got even worse. His anxiety and depression skyrocketed. I remember visiting him on his ship in San Francisco during Fleet Week. He talked about feeling desperately unhappy and fearful that things would never get any better. Even if he survived the Navy—which didn't seem all that likely to him—he'd get out and live a life of nothing.

This is probably where you expect me to tell you that he killed himself. But he didn't. He moved to San Francisco, grew his hair long, got a series of great jobs, fell in love with an amazing woman, had some kids, grew some weird facial hair, started wearing hats, sang in a gospel choir, started writing his own music, and he's about to put out an album of crazy old-fashioned gospel-influenced music that sounds like something that would fit neatly into the soundtrack of a Coen Brothers movie.

And here's how strange life is: Last fall, someone sent me a link to an awesome "Breaking Bad" tribute scored with… my friend's music.

He is not living a life of nothing. And maybe his challenges were minor compared to yours. Maybe just being poorly suited for life on a Navy ship is laughable, compared to what you've dealt with. But to me, it doesn't matter. His basic nature made his particular circumstances unbearable. HE WASN'T WIRED FOR HIDING. He had to bury his authentic self for years, and it almost killed him. His salvation came in the form of shedding his dickweed disguise and letting all of the colors of his true exuberant, melodious, electrifying soul spring forth, for all the world to see.

You aren't wired for hiding, either. You have to stop blaming yourself for that, and for the blushing and the panicking and the bawling in the bathroom. I can only imagine how it feels for you to have fundamentally reshaped your entire personality to match the colorless, lackluster demands of your habitat. You weren't built to live a lie. Few people are, but as a smart, sensitive kid, you are particularly ill-suited for it.

And it's not JUST that your nature is ill-suited for it. You have a long history of burying your true feelings, your true self, and the trauma of that accumulates. You have been injured by the repeated feeling that your parents will not love you if they know who you really are. The pain of that suspicion, the pain of having to hide under those circumstances, must be almost unbearable. Maybe you don't feel the pain, and instead your brain does backflips whenever you talk to a man. That bad energy has to land somewhere.

But did you notice how wearing an ACTUAL freaky disguise, and being treated with contempt for it, was a relief to my friend? Oftentimes the ACTUAL pain that you anticipate for so long is nothing, compared to the imagined pain in your head. And, as my friend demonstrated, sometimes we stumble on artful ways of releasing our spirits from the conformist forces that threaten to blot out the sun entirely. Sometimes, a little free-flowing freakiness is just the ticket. Sometimes, veering into a realm that’s completely unfamiliar and a little scary, that sounds at once alluring and repellent, can clear out the cobwebs and get the spontaneity and authentic joy flowing for the first time.

I know that you hate public speaking, and you feel incredibly scrutinized and paralyzed when you have to present to a group. MOST people feel that way. The major difference for you is that you think this means there's something wrong with you. And WHEN you feel anxious about speaking, you almost get PTSD because it kicks up all of the trauma of hiding—hiding your true voice and sensibilities in high school, hiding your true self from your parents your whole life.

Someone with less trauma over this, but with the same fears of public speaking, would simply tell people, "I can't present to a group—I don't like it. I'll write a report but I won't present it, because I'm not comfortable with doing that." Maybe that's not ideal, but it's better than forcing yourself to do something you're not ready to do. You don't HAVE to be exactly what the world wants you to be. The world can fucking adjust to who you are right now, and so can you.

Should you do toastmasters or practice your public speaking in a safe group, among other people who freak the fuck out when they're asked to speak publicly? Maybe. Or maybe you should find a different job, with people who are more flexible, and see clearly how smart and talented you are, and how absurd it is to have you doing data entry. Can you imagine a setting that might free you up and make you feel more accepted? Isn't it possible that there are jobs in your field where you might work around other gay men, in a more casual and nontraditional environment?

At the risk of replicating some gay-man version of the magical negro here, I have to tell you that I suspect that your natural self is the best kind of glorious, generous, vibrant, dynamic, exceptional kind of self. If you didn't have to hide anymore, you would open like a beautiful flower and you'd feel the rain on your face for the first time and you'd say, I WILL HAVE A LIFE OF EVERYTHING. If we could find the right vehicle, the right outlet for your soul, we might coax you closer and closer to this kind of happiness and raw thrill at being alive.

Maybe you should write poetry. Maybe you just need to go to some spoken word events, to watch other people feeling nervous but letting their souls shine through anyway. But you definitely need something strange and wild in your life, that frees you up and makes you feel more genuine.

And what about embracing your introverted status, but doing it with other introverts? What about engaging in something creative that allows you to quietly be in the company of other interesting men? What if you took up something you're terrible at, just because? What if you set out to make friends online, and you made it very clear in your profile that you are PAINFULLY SHY AND AFRAID? I feel like you need to accept your weirdness and shyness enough that you can show it to other people.

It's going to take some time to find your path, and you need outside help. You need to find a therapist immediately. You simply must do it, no matter what. I can't describe to you what a difference it will make in your life. I would see a male therapist, in fact, because that's where you need healing. You need to feel accepted and supported by a man. I can tell you right now that THAT ALONE will turn your life upside down—in an good way. And of course a good therapist will be totally comfortable with your stress and blushing and crying. THAT'S WHAT YOU'RE THERE TO DO. Don't forget that. Therapy is all about having your worst reaction in the company of that supportive energy. You're SUPPOSED TO bring out the ugliness and the weakness and the shameful everything. That's how you reach past a life of nothing.

And in your everyday life, too. You're SUPPOSED TO bring out the ugliness and the weakness and the shameful everything. You're supposed to cry and show the world who you are. If they demote you, fuck them. They don't see you clearly. Your good friends see you. Slowly try to open yourself up to new people. Show them the things that make you feel ashamed. They will feel good, that you invited them in. If they don't, forgive them and move on. They're just letting you know that they're not worth your time.

So: Get a therapist, consider joining a support group for young gay men, investigate activities that will make you feel like you're coming out of hiding, look into other jobs, and of course, exercise daily in order to reduce your physical anxiety.

You say that it's killing you to hide the fact that you're gay from your parents. I'm sure a lot of people would argue that coming out might relieve your stress and anxiety immensely. But I know that it can be traumatic to reach for such a major change when you're already feeling anxious and depressed. That's really something you have to explore with your therapist. I also don't know if you should consider taking drugs for anxiety. It's something to consider, but I do think that you have a lot of clear reasons for feeling anxious beyond your biochemistry, so I would address those factors before trying out drugs if possible.

Above all, though, you need to know this, believe this, and say it to yourself every morning: THE WORST THINGS ABOUT YOU ARE ALSO THE BEST THINGS ABOUT YOU. Your sensitivity, your hyper-awareness of other people's emotions, your attunement to the world—all of these things are qualities, as long as they're not channeled into a negative feedback loop. You're living in an illusion now, the illusion that every little awkward thing you do matters and is seen clearly by other people. You are hyperaware of reactions, like someone on psychoactive drugs. But people just don't care that much that you stutter or turn red. They have shit on their minds, too. Once you channel your sensitivity somewhere else, all of these interactions will lose their high-pressure feeling and you'll be able to just exist. You don't have to keep up every conversation. You can allow silence to set in. You can say, "Alright, let's talk about this later." You can serve your own needs. You can be yourself. You can ask for what YOU want, instead of always trying to be what other people want of you.

YOU ARE SPECIAL. YOU ARE SENSITIVE. YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL. Write it in sharpie and put it on the wall. YOU ARE A FUCKING WEIRDO. YOU ARE AMAZING. YOU DESERVE TO BE EXACTLY WHO YOU ARE. Write it down. Post it on the wall. This is your work now. Your work is to BELIEVE THESE THINGS. Your work is to read these things every day, and believe them, and live inside of that belief. If you do that, your whole life will change.

And you have to get a therapist. Start cooking dry beans and baked potatoes every night for dinner if you have to, but get a therapist. Get one you suspect might be smarter than you, one who stays calm when you fidget and sweat.

Here's what you don't realize yet: Blushing and crying in the bathroom make you lovable. Many, many people who read your letter will feel REAL love for you. They wish they could meet you and give you a hug. They get it. We are all freaks and misfits. We all need a hug. The weirdness that you're sure damns you to the sidelines, to a life of nothing, is exactly what makes you unique and intuitive and divine. The dickweed disguise must be shed. It's going to take a little more work than you thought to shed it completely. But once it's gone, you are going to love someone deeply, and he is going to feel so grateful for your love. You are about to bloom before your own eyes, and you're going to help someone else bloom after that. You are going to have a life of everything.

Polly

Do you need to try something new, that you're really bad at? Write to Polly and find out!

Heather Havrilesky (aka Polly Esther) is The Awl's existential advice columnist. She's also a regular contributor to The New York Times Magazine, and is the author of the memoir Disaster Preparedness (Riverhead 2011). She blogs here about scratchy pants, personality disorders, and aged cheeses. Photo of Asclepias welshii—which only blooms in the desert, ahem!—by the USFWS.

The post Ask Polly: I'm Turning 30 And Anxiety Is Ruining Me appeared first on The Awl.

Dear Polly,

I’ve been seeing a dude for about three months. We met online, during an intensive dating-people-online phase of mine prompted by the end of a six-month relationship prior. When we met, I had pretty much given up—not in a resigned, self-pitying way; my attitude was that online dating was wasting too much of my time and energy, with unsatisfactory results, so I was going to keep myself open to romantic possibility, but not actively pursue finding someone.

Then I met this dude—we went for coffee, and I was surprised at the ease of our conversation, and we kept seeing each other and it kept being really nice. About a month later, we had a vague relationship talk (he asked something along the lines of whether I considered him my boyfriend) and thereafter considered ourselves exclusive.

He is not the type of dude I usually go for, and this is a refreshing change. Throughout most of my 20s (for 8 and a half years), I was in (what I now have come to acknowledge as) an unhealthy, co-dependent relationship with a man-child artistic type. This new dude is very independent, has travelled the world, has strong family values, loves his job, and is equal parts nerd and jock. (Relevant information? His longest relationship was three months.) While New Dude and I do have good conversations and a similar sense of humor, we do not share the same depth of intellectual connection as did my ex and I—this intellectual connection was one of the major initial factors in us hooking up. I was also spoiled by the Ex (a three-year remove has allowed me to acknowledge some of the positives of our failed relationship) in that he was extremely articulate and communicative. He sent me daily, multi-paragraph emails full of cute details and in-jokes. On the down side, he also expected several phone calls a day and needed to know where I was all the time—I fully realize that a lot of what I thought was sweet and thoughtful at the time was pretty damn toxic. But I think I’ve subconsciously conflated “caring” with “tons of communication” in a relationship, and this is something that is not happening with New Dude. He doesn’t communicate very frequently—lately, because he did at the very beginning. Is this a settling-into-the-relationship thing? Is three months too soon for this behavior to start? My friends have told me I need to talk to him about this, but my issue (one of my issues) is that I don’t feel that the timing is right to have a chat like this, and that he should be aware of it and shouldn’t need to be told to send a “hey, how’s it going” text every coupla days, and what if the lack of that communication is just indicative of the bigger issue that’s troubling me, i.e. what if our levels of emotional investment are not matched? And what can I do about that—make him like me as much as I like him? I guess that’s what keeps me from wanting to sit down and chat about what’s bothering me—maybe he doesn’t even really care. All I have to go on is the fact that whenever we hang out (twice a week at least, although it’s mostly me initiating / making plans) we have a great time; but the lag in between spending time together fills me with doubts and anxieties, and frankly I don’t wanna be That Girl.

I realize this sounds very trite and trivial. What is my question? Okay, here it is: How can I know if I should fully invest in this relationship?

I realize any new relationship is fraught with scary uncertainties, but I guess I’m just not ready to invest more if it’s not reciprocal (although, who does, right?). Should I sit him and down and talk it out? See if things change? Make myself mellow out and realize New Dude is different than The Ex, has a different style and adjust to that?

(I should add that when we exchanged Christmas cards, he signed his "Your Pal." I signed mine "Love." Telling, no? I should also add, though, that we do call each other “dude," “chief," etc.—very casual jovial terms. Am I letting this argot unintentionally set the tone for our emotional interactions?)

Or is my question: do I even like this guy that much, or am I settling? Should I hold out for the absolute best, someone who matches me in all the ways that count, or is he that guy and more time will uncover that truth? It’s so hard to know yourself, right? What if I’m just terrible at self-assessment and can easily talk myself in and out of things?

Any input you have would be much appreciated.

Sincerely,

Anxious About Reciprocity

Dear AAR,

I want you to think about Lorde for a second. Not Lorde the actual teenager—I don't know much about her, and if you do, scrape that information out of your head. I mean Lorde the brand, the performer, the girl in the dark purple lipstick who gets up on stage at the Grammys and does this.

Pop, sure. Teenager, sure. But undeniably bad ass. And even if the real Lorde turns out to be obsessed with aristocracy and genuinely would LOVE to be a royal, the branded, polished, performing Lorde, the imaginary bad ass, is basically saying, "We reject your horse shit universe of bling, you shallow, worthless fucks you." Lorde the brand works because Lorde the brand stands for something very clear and concrete. Lorde the brand stands for living the life you have right now, and savoring it, and saying NO to all of the shit that doesn't jibe with your ideals and passions.

Now let me ask you this: Would Lorde put up with whatever from this dude you're dating, or would Lorde snort derisively at his card signed "Your Pal" and then toss it into an enormous incinerator and stomp away in her glitter-encrusted hobnail boots?

If you were happy floating along with this, if you didn't mind NOT having an intense intellectual connection, if you were cool with seeing him twice a week, if you didn't get a strange feeling when you read the words "Your Pal" on that flinchy piece of shit Christmas card, that would be one thing. But you don't like the way things are going right now. You don't like it one bit.

And this is not about demanding a lifelong commitment immediately. This is about you. You know what you want. You don't necessarily want someone who texts you fifteen times a day. But you DO want to be in love. You want to be loved by someone who wants to talk a lot, who wants to share himself completely, who WANTS to fall in love and thinks you're extra super special and more than a fucking pal.

So be honest about your true desires here. The single best thing you can do, as a single person and as someone who's just started to date someone new, is be very, very clear about what you want, and what you don't want.

When you don't communicate what you want, because doing so somehow makes you THAT GIRL—unattractive because she has the audacity to ask for exactly what she wants from men (which isn't actually unattractive, ahem)—guess what happens? You are treated as a pal and you are expected to go with the flow. When you sell a guy a fictional story about how cool and easy-going you are, how well you can hang, how low-maintenance you are about everything, all you're doing is torturing yourself and delaying the inevitable moment when he realizes that you can't deliver the low-key gal you promised from the start. Why play along with "Your Pal" and "dude" and "Hey, let's hang out occasionally and ignore each other the rest of the time" when that's not the life you want?

And what's so fucking attractive about that easy-going, no-problem girl anyway? Does she have a single fucking thing in common with Lorde, or is she inadvertently aspiring to be a muted, high-fiving fuck doll? Do you want to be a person, or do you want to be an emotional Hooters waitress, serving up cuddles and hot wings and laughing it off when your ass gets pinched for the 15th million time?

You're not even sure that you're crazy about this guy. You're just trying to WIN HIM, like a big ugly cheap toy at the state fair. You won't know if you really do like him a ton until HE'S IN IT COMPLETELY. If you keep playing along with his "pal" routine, you might trick yourself into thinking that you're in love with him, simply because he's half-assed and therefore slightly mysterious. The last thing you want in your life is to get hung up on someone simply because he's apathetic towards you. What's nuts is that it's sometimes easier to feel feelings for a guy who's WRONG for you and essentially uninterested and unavailable than it is to fall for someone who's totally and completely in your life, present, willing, interested, invested, etc. Cardboard cutouts make great love objects, particularly if you spent too much of your childhood watching The Little Mermaid on repeat, thinking that giving up your excellent tail and your soulful singing voice would be just fine, if it meant spending eternity with that big, bland, macho-zero-nothing Prince Eric.

Why play make-believe just to keep Prince Pal in your life, anyway? You don't NEED a guy—ANY GUY!—in your life, do you? You aren't risking anything by telling a guy who's not really delivering much value to your life EXACTLY what you want, are you? But you ARE risking a lot when you DON'T tell a guy exactly what you want. You're risking wasting a lot of time and emotional energy on someone who's not remotely prepared to share himself with you. DON'T DO IT.

I had a boyfriend who didn't tell me he loved me for a year. It became kind of a joke between us, and I was very patient, because it was obvious that he loved me. But you know what? He was too immature for me. Same thing with the boyfriend who didn't want to talk about the future, didn't want to get a job or put down the bong, but also didn't want to break up or move out. He wanted to maintain the status quo, because that was easier than changing things, showing up, growing up, moving on, or doing anything at all.

When I met my husband, I was 34 years old and had been in several 2-year-long relationships. I was very clear with him about what I would and wouldn't settle for. My husband is not a pushover. But my self-respect and clarity set the tone for our relationship, and allowed us to expect a lot from each other, behavior-wise, instead of allowing lots of room for mutual sloppiness and disrespect. We talked a lot about what it means to accept another person for who they are. We talked about honesty and maintaining a spirit of generosity—which, by the way, if you do it from the very start, really pays off. Instead of saying "You owe me this!" you end up saying "I think I should give you more on this front" or "Why don't you take a break and let me handle this part?"

I'm not saying there aren't snags or fights along the way. But look, if what you REALLY WANT is a strong, healthy, resilient relationship, you don't get it by playing it cool forever. In fact, when you wait too long to say exactly what you want, it comes out all resentful and needy and weak. I'm not saying you have to lay out a plan for your upcoming wedding. I'm just saying you have to make it clear that you'd like to see him regularly, that you want to be honest and open with him about your feelings and have him do the same, and that you don't see the two of you as "pals" and can't really proceed in a relationship that masquerades as a friendship with benefits. Without these things, you don't feel that you'll get to know him any better, and therefore you'll be frustrated AND you'll be wasting your time, time that could be spent getting to know some OTHER GUY who's looking for the same kind of honest, intellectually stimulating, emotionally rich relationship that you are. YOU ARE NOT THE KIND OF WOMAN WHO WANTS TO WASTE HER TIME BULLSHITTING AROUND WITH SOMEONE WHO DOESN'T GIVE A FUCK. If that makes you "That Girl," so be it.

And beware waiting too long. Because if you put off this conversation until you've already bit your tongue and been disappointed a bunch of times, until you're already a little angry about how things have gone, what fucking good is that? You'll end up sounding like someone who's been faking it for too long, who's a little passive aggressive and nuts, who can't be trusted to tell the truth about anything, or who's TOO INSECURE to tell the truth about anything. You assume that leveling with him now will seem needy and insecure, but in fact it'll make you look like a woman who knows what she wants and is confident enough to ask for it. You'll look like a woman who doesn't mind losing a dude who's not all that into her.

BEFORE he disappoints you (again), tell him what you want from him. If he can't give you what you want, that's ok. Move on. Better to figure that out now. Yes, you'll think, "Why did I have to open my fucking mouth?" when things fall apart. But what is the goal here? To stay in a shitty half-assed thing at all costs?

Because I'm telling you, if you don't say a word, this picture doesn't improve. You just get more and more anxious, and then the relationship ends just the same.

AND there's a smallish chance that he'll say, "Yeah, I can do that. I want to be with you." When you stand up for what you want, and you aren't afraid to say it out loud, you'd be amazed how well the world responds to that.

But, let's be honest, lots of guys don't like it. You know what kinds of guys don't like it? The guys who are hiding from themselves, the guys who don't want to be seen, the guys who don't want to show up. AND THEY ARE FUCKING EVERYWHERE, dude. But you don't want someone like that. You want one of the good ones, the ones who can look you in the eye and say, "YES. What you want is not unreasonable. I want to be intellectually met, too. I want to be emotionally open, too. I want to be with YOU."

Acting casual and nonchalant is fine for a while. You don't want to get too intense and over the top straight out of the gate. Who does? But three months into a relationship? It's not only ok to ask for what you need, it's healthy to do so.

I played along with anything and everything for so many years, and it never did anything for me. It just made me feel like a crazy, needy person once the truth came out, that I didn't want to just hang around and act like a guy for the rest of my life. I settled for whatever, time and again, without bringing the full force of who I was into the picture. Eventually, I found myself, through music and writing and through a few strong, committed friendships. And once I understood my own ideas and beliefs about love, and I felt confident enough to express them, I could finally stand up for what I really wanted. I had courage in my convictions. I didn't have to roll along with ways of living that I knew would never serve me or create a happy, fulfilling relationship.

And look, once you make a very clear distinction (This is what I want from a relationship. This is what I DON'T want.) you can actually HAVE FAITH THAT YOU WILL NOT SUFFER THROUGH BULLSHIT AGAIN. You can trust yourself to walk away from bad situations. You can trust that you won't sell yourself short. You can trust yourself to give voice to your desires, and to honor the deepest, truest parts of your soul.

HOW FUCKING GREAT IS THAT? To trust yourself to take care of yourself and honor your soul. When you hit the point where you're not going to sell your fucking soul up the river for a pretty face? That's the turning point into adulthood. That's the beginning of true happiness.

You probably aren't that anxious to sit down and make demands of this guy. But I want you to see this as your big moment of truth. You aren't making demands of anyone. You are simply stating what is real and true for you. He can understand and appreciate it, or he can resist it and move on. Either way, you give him your blessing and your love and there are no hard feelings. You simply know what you want.

Do some writing about what you really, really want from love. Make a list. Then list the things that make you feel disappointed and sad. Talk it all through with a few friends. Revise your list. Spend some time alone and really feel your way through this. You shouldn't be talking yourself into or out of anything. You should be looking deep inside and asking yourself what you want, how you want to live. You should be reaching for the very best possible love and life for yourself. You should be thinking of your favorite bad ass. Don't you deserve to treat yourself with as much adoration and love as Lorde does? And if not WHY THE FUCK NOT? Why don't you cherish yourself and who you are like THAT? What damns you to half-assed fucking men, exactly?

So anyway, tell him. Don't do it when you're angry or disappointed in him. Do it when you feel good about everything. But don't wait too long. Don't wait until you're upset. Do it soon. Tell him what you want. Not "I want marriage and kids right now." But: "I want an intellectually stimulating relationship between equals, where two people share their ideas and feelings." Be specific. And be kind. Let him off the hook. He hasn't promised you anything. Try to accept that this may not be true love. Try to allow him room to want different things.

It's ok if he doesn't want what you want, and he's willing to say it. That's a good outcome, actually. He will be doing you a huge favor if he is honest and tells you that now. The harder thing is the guy who PRETENDS he wants it, kind of, but mostly just doesn't want to move his fear-changing ass off your couch.

Listen to me closely now: The people who dare to ask for an expansive, life-altering love, who will be alone rather than settle for less, are the ones who find it. People who accept less, who figure they don't deserve any better, who figure that it's too much of a risk to tell the truth and scare men off, are the ones who live with a constant feeling of disappointment and neglect. When you neglect yourself and your feelings, you get neglected by others, too.

Stand up for yourself. Stand up for what you want. Does that make you That Girl?

Then BE. THAT. GIRL.

Because That Girl is a shining beacon to the rest of us. That Girl doesn't play along and call herself whatever some dude is calling her, whether it's "pal" or "that chick I'm sleeping with" or "her, over there." That Girl doesn't sit through drifty, disconnected conversations with men who can't show up. That Girl doesn't care if you think she's attractive or appropriate or easy to be around or not. She's not caught up in some dude's love affair—with himself, with his stuff, with his fantasy of how easy and sexy and mysterious True Love will be when he finally finds it, just like a porn flick starring him with a soundtrack by The Shins. That Girl is willing to risk his disapproval for the sake of her own happiness.

Fuck the critics. Fuck the onlookers. Fuck this cold, disapproving world, that doesn't like That Girl or really any fucking girl at all, when it boils right down to it. BE THAT GIRL.

Polly

If your boyfriend spills the wine, does that mean he digs That Girl? Write to Polly and find out!

Heather Havrilesky (aka Polly Esther) is The Awl's existential advice columnist. She's also a regular contributor to The New York Times Magazine, and is the author of the memoir Disaster Preparedness (Riverhead 2011). She blogs here about scratchy pants, personality disorders, and aged cheeses. Photo by ArtFamily from Shutterstock.

The post Ask Polly: Should I Play It Cool—Or Ask Him For More And Be "That Girl"? appeared first on The Awl.

Dear Polly,

I am looking for a different perspective on my current relationship. I have been with my boyfriend for six years. I just recently moved in with him about four months ago. We have a pretty good relationship in that we hardly ever argue and still have sex fairly frequently, he makes me laugh, makes me feel safe, and I enjoy being with him.

A few months before I moved in with him I had discovered something disturbing and highly confusing! I found that he had a fake Facebook account. He had pictures of a young man and was claiming he was 8 years younger then he actually is. I read messages from many girls over quite a long time frame, mostly fairly harmless convo but a few not so harmless as well (including sex and the words "I love you"). I confronted him about this, and we had a very sincere conversation about it. He claimed it boiled down to his low self-esteem (which I know he struggles with). He also said it wasn't "real." Ultimately I forgave him, and he agreed to stop and delete everything.

Fast forward to now and I have found him again on a different social networking site, one that is more based on dating relationships. Again, he is not on there as himself, but as a much younger guy with the same pictures. Even more recently I have found email communications between him and two different girls. These conversations are not as innocent and again use the words "I love you"—and it's sexual. It appears he has even helped one of these girls financially.

I know he would never actually meet these girls in person, because he is not being truthful about himself (what he looks like, his age). In my mind it's still cheating and I'm sure that's the case in everyone else's opinion as well. I consider myself fairly intelligent, and I know every person that I would tell this story to (I have never told anyone about this, hence why I'm writing you) would tell me to leave his ass and find someone that will not 1. lead me on for 6 years without a marriage proposal 2. have these online relationships after being given a second chance. Trust me, I am considering ending everything, which is a huge step especially since I live with him. It will be the hardest thing I will have ever done and I am not sure if I have the guts to do it.

But: the pros with my relationship outweigh the cons even though the cons are HUGE. I am a member of his family. If I break up with him, I lose them as well. He makes me happy and I appreciate him, I enjoy his company and we have a lot of fun together. I consider him my best friend. I can't picture my future without him. We talk about marriage and kids all the time.

He doesn't know that I know this latest secret, and now I obviously have major trust issues. In short I am a mess, and I'm struggling with acting like everything is okay.

Do you think counseling would help us? Especially him, if it is all about his low self esteem? Do you think I could use that option as a alternative to ending our relationship? Or do I just rip off the band-aid and start all over again?

Thank you.

Conflicted

Dear Conflicted,

So now you're pretending everything is fine, and he's pretending everything is fine. You two make quite a pair!

The fact that you and your boyfriend hardly ever argue becomes a damning detail when you throw in the fact that he's been lying to you—multi-layered, effortful, elaborate lies involving lots of different women, even after having been discovered—and you, in turn, are prepared to make some final call about whether to work on things or leave in a vacuum of a) input from him (slightly understandable, considering the bullshit he fed you last time) and b) input from friends or family (frankly, pretty worrisome).

To be clear, though, you don't deserve this. You deserve love and support from someone who understands that games of make-believe have consequences. But you wouldn't even be considering staying with him if you felt, deep down inside, that you deserved better. From what I can tell, though, you don't think you deserve to feel emotions at all.

You don't show your real feelings and your insecurities and desires to your boyfriend (or to your friends and family) and your boyfriend doesn't show his real feelings or the full scope of his insecurities and desires to you. You're both bullshitters. Your life together is bullshit. You can't make any assessment of what you two might be like together in the future based on the past, because he's a liar and he can't even stop lying when he's at risk of losing you. Either he believes that risk is worth it, or he's not afraid of losing you. Or, he's trying to lose you. And you feel like you need him too much to risk showing him your full self.

Pretending that everything is ok right now isn't JUST a means of getting a handle on this before you tell him what you know. You'd prefer to pretend that things are fine—not only because you can't handle the devastation that's about to go down, but also because that's the way you operate in general. You'd rather lie through your teeth if it means feeling loved and safe.

My guess is that you come from a family with problems that are apparent to every passerby, and he comes from a sneakily family steeped in denial and "looking on the bright side," populated by narcissists and pushovers and ruled by really toxic dynamics that no one will examine or talk about openly. You escaped into this relationship and were embraced by his family, who presented as "healthier" than yours. You felt safe and supported and adored for the first time. But the walls of this safe house are rotted out and they're starting to collapse, and even your boyfriend thinks you're desperate enough to pretend that nothing's wrong.

You need to see a therapist alone and sort through what you feel you deserve and don't deserve. If you go through this process WITH your boyfriend, in the hopes of keeping your relationship together, I fear that you won't grow enough. You're not married yet and you don’t have kids and you're young. So take advantage of the fact that you aren't going to ruin anyone's life here, and get the fuck out.

Your boyfriend doesn't know who he is or what he wants. He had a chance to clean up the situation and confront it, and he just kept lying. Even if he never intended to or couldn't meet these women, he was comfortable corresponding with them as if he were a different person. Just think about how fucked in the head you'd have to be, to pretend not only that you're single, but that you're younger and better looking than you actually are.

Imagine yourself, putting up a picture of Bar Rafaeli and then approaching men online. "Ooo, I get so cold and lonely sometimes, and I long for you to keep me warm." How fucking stupid would you feel, doing that? And then Bar sends her online paramours some cash when they need it? What?

Even if your boyfriend could never figure out a way to meet these women in person, even if he never intended to do so, someone insecure enough and deceitful enough to engage in that kind of a hobby won't figure out how to be trustworthy and decent for years to come. How long do you want to wait around? Does it make any sense for you to wait a few years, and then have kids with him, and then find yourself in this situation again, but juggling babies while you weep into your hands?

He refuses to grow up. He wants you to know that he won't grow up for you, no matter what you say. He doesn't have the guts to tell you "I don't want to stop doing this," so he's just going to let you figure it out all over again. But you're not married. You're not trapped. You can simply walk away. Or, you can actively choose to sell yourself short for the sake of a history together that's based on lies. That's the kind of choice that will make you feel weak, that will make you feel like you don't deserve any better.

That doesn't mean I'd advocate dropping a cheater across the board. If you're married and you love your spouse and he or she screws up and is outrageously repentant, that's a whole different ball of wax. Your situation is nothing like that. It's only been a few months since you found out about the Facebook shit, and he's already talking love with new women. How do you even respect someone who's needy enough to suck love and affection out of strangers, while wearing a fucking hot-guy mask? Let's just state the obvious: That's some five-alarm neediness and deceit right there.

If you stay with him and go to counseling, in sifting around for answers about who YOU are and what YOU really want, you may/will likely get pulled into the far messier and more dangerous question of who he is, what he wants from you, and why he needs his ego propped up by a room full of women for things that don't even belong to him. I feel bad for the guy, almost. But YOU shouldn't. Once the moving van is packed up and you've seen your therapist a few times and you're starting to see how much more you need in your life—trusted, supportive friends, some acceptance of your own emotions—in order to be truly happy, sure, you can look at him and say, "Poor guy. He has a long road ahead."

But don't get into his corner right now. If you go into counseling with him, you'll have to take on his problems AND yours, and you might never figure out who you really are and what you really want. (I know you think you know who you are and what you want, but I think you don't yet.) If you go into counseling with him, you might never have the kind of close friends who you can lean on when the shit hits the fan. You might never reach out to anyone in the world, aside from strangers, because with a stranger you have less shame, about your situation and yourself and your feelings.

Why would you be ashamed of this situation, though? Yes, it's true that we live in a culture where women are shame sponges. If something shameful is happening within 10 feet of a woman, you can bet that onlookers will find a way to pin the shame on her, even if she's just an innocent bystander. But I'm also guessing that you don't have healthy boundaries, that you grew up in an environment where the shame of the parents got projected onto the kids, so you thought that random shit was your fault, or that you didn't have a right to voice your own emotions. The fact that you're trying to make the call in a vacuum is a testament to these unhealthy boundaries. You're making a major grab for control before this issue is even on the table. You want to be the author of this narrative before the story even starts to unfold. You don't want to believe that you are vulnerable to the forces in play here.

Notice that there's no mention of emotion in your letter, beyond a reference to your being "a mess," which also reflects shame. But it's ok to feel terrible about this. You're allowed to feel bad. It doesn't make you weak. You need to call a friend and tell her about this whole ugly thing, without knowing exactly what your next move should be. You have to present a giant messy question mark of a life to your friend, and risk her thinking that you made some mistakes. You have to admit that you're a fallible person, in a bad situation. Then you've got to find a therapist—for you—and see that person as soon as possible.

You're a good person and you need to make some space for yourself in the world—real, true, honest, fallible space, where you can argue sometimes, and not have sex sometimes, and call people when you feel the worst you've ever felt, and call people when you feel nothing and you're not sure why.

You have to give up control. Life is going to take you to some beautiful places, but you have to let go. You are allowed to be weak now. Take advantage of all of the promise in this breakdown. When it feels like the earth opened up and swallowed your life whole, those same powerful forces can be harnessed to build the kind of life you never dreamed was possible. There's more happiness in store for you than you ever could've reached with this guy. You think he's your sunshine, when really, he's been blotting out the sun. The world you live in now is unsafe. The hostile world you imagine outside your door is full of warmth and possibility. It's time to walk outside and feel the sun on your face.

Polly

Do you catfish, and if so, why? Write to Polly and explain it to her!

Heather Havrilesky (aka Polly Esther) is The Awl's existential advice columnist. She's also a regular contributor to The New York Times Magazine, and is the author of the memoir Disaster Preparedness (Riverhead 2011). She blogs here about scratchy pants, personality disorders, and aged cheeses. Photo by Steve Kwan.

The post Ask Polly: My Boyfriend Is Secretly Catfishing! appeared first on The Awl.

Dear Polly,

I'm part of a group of friends that have known each other for many years. I treasure this group and want to be friends for a long time to come. Unfortunately, conflicts have been coming up here and there over the last couple of years, it seems to be escalating, and I'm at a loss as to how to make things better.

The problems mostly revolve around me and one of the other women in the group, "Jessica."

Jessica and I are very different people. She's an only child who, at age 40, still lives with her parents. Her mother does all the cooking, cleaning, laundry, even buys all her clothes for her. She was very sheltered growing up, attended religious all-girls schools, including college. She is very girly. I'm also 40 and single, one of five children (3 girls, 2 boys), went to public schools, and haven't lived at home since I was 18. I'm non-religious and not girly at all.

A few years ago Jessica decided that she wanted to be closer friends with me. She's not the kind of person I'd seek out as a friend, but I figured why not? We'd occasionally get together and chat or talk on the phone, but every time we'd talk I'd come away wishing I knew less about her. It's not that she shares things that are too personal; it's that find her immature, self-righteous and painfully insecure. It's gotten to the point that every interaction involves a miscommunication, which turns into needless drama. I want to go back to just being acquaintances, but any attempt I make to do that is extremely upsetting for her. She interprets entirely normal, innocent behaviors as a rejection of her. And it's happening much too often.

Here's a recent example:

The group was going on a 3-day ski trip. Jessica found and reserved the condo, I said thank you and please let me know how I can help out. She responded with an email about cooking food while we're on vacation. She opened by saying that she'd been juice fasting for several weeks, so she'd put together a menu of all the things she'd been craving. Attached was a 3-page doc of links to very involved, expensive, time-consuming recipes. The dinners were three-course meals. It would have required many hours of work every day of the trip. To her credit, she ended by saying she was open to my menu suggestions as well. (It's worth mentioning here that I am a mediocre cook at best, but Jess has decided I am a great cook. I have told her several times it was my ex who made all the good food, but that information never sticks.)

Well, there was no way I was going do all that. Knowing it would not be well-received, I thought long and hard before writing a light-hearted, respectful reply, saying that it was a bit more than I was expecting, and that I wanted to just relax and have fun on the trip. I offered to make one of the dinners she requested (but only two of the three courses) and suggested we could ask everyone who was going to take on a meal. She replied that that was a good idea and that she had been "assumptive." I hoped that would be the end of it, but it was not.

Jessica then got another woman in the group, "Terry," to do it. Terry quite literally doesn't cook at all, but she's incredibly nice and finds it impossible to say no to anyone. It's also worth mentioning that she was bringing her two small children on the trip. Jessica told her that she was terribly hurt that I'd said no, and believes I only refused because she was the one who asked.

Terry's take on things is that Jessica was trying to bond with me, but because she's so nervous and insecure, she makes mistakes. Terry thinks it's perfectly okay that Jess didn't ask if I actually wanted to do the cooking. She thinks Jess probably would have helped me cook (even though Jess does not cook and panics when she's in the kitchen), and that her food cravings made her forget to ask what other people might want to eat. She also assumed I would enjoy spending the weekend cooking for everyone.

As these conflicts between me and Jess have started to add up, a pattern is emerging. The group's thinking seems to be that because Jessica is so easily hurt, while I seem just annoyed and not so vulnerable, I should be the one to fix things. I have no idea what to do. I've tried talking to Jess about it, and it sort of helps briefly, but she immediately expects to be really close friends, and I just don't enjoy her company. Even worse, because everyone else is so forgiving of Jess's behavior, I'm starting to seem like the problem. I'm hoping there's a way to set everything right and put an end to the needless drama. We all used to get along so beautifully. This group is like a second family to me, but they are as sick of the drama as I am. What should I do?

Signed,

Baffled

Dear Baffled,

There's no doubt at all that Jessica lives in a fantasy world of her own making, with assistance from her supportive, fantasy-enabling Mommy. When you offer to help, in passing, and she responds by sending you a three-page menu of elaborate and difficult recipes custom-designed to suit her cravings? That's obviously a test to see if you will give her the same unconditional love (in the form of hard labor) that her Mommy does. Recognizing that this is absurd and more than a little indicative of unstable emotional health just means that you are a thinking person with brains stuffed into your head and eyes screwed into your face.

The trouble begins with your mouth. Your explainy, guilty mouth does too much guilty explaining, just when it needs to shut up and step away. You feel at once repelled by Jessica and obligated to be her buddy and be a team player and go with the flow. So you explained that her menu "was a bit more than I was expecting." How did the lady in a sanitized bubble take that? She took it as "YOU are a bit more than I was expecting." Because she's ALWAYS a bit more than anyone is expecting, every day of her anxious, needy, preemptively angry, test-administering hothouse-flower life.

Please note: Her mother is the real criminal in this picture, for wanting to keep her child forever and ever in her smothering, laundry-doing clutches, at the expense of that child's maturity and sanity. If Jessica were cooking and cleaning at age 40 while her mother relaxed? Great. Instead, though, Jessica is this enervated, weak thing with a big sad mouth that laments that no one will ever quite deliver all that she needs. It's all very Grey Gardens, which is sad but also transfixing and hilarious and awful and delicious.

So how did you wander into her crosshairs? You didn't just say "Aw, what the fuck, why not befriend Little Edie? What could possibly go wrong?" No. A little piece of you is guilt-driven and wants to save someone. You were a little horrified by Jessica's malformed personality, but she made you feel sort of healthy and thriving by comparison. She was entertaining, in her total delusional state. She puts so much emotional and verbal energy into constructing fantasylands in her head, whether via juice fast, elaborate menu she herself doesn't want to cook, emerging persecution complex, what have you.

That three-page menu, by the way, reminds me of a former roommate of mine who, when we were moving to a new apartment, packed all of her stuff in giant boxes, even though she herself was tiny. Then she carried a single lamp to the moving van and took a smoke break on the curb. After moving giant boxes and furniture all day, my other roommate asked her to put her arms around one of her boxes; they didn't reach all the way around. My littler roommate had a sense of humor about it, but there was also a kind of "So what?" attitude, a sense of entitlement, as if whatever other people could be suckered into doing for her was just fine. (Please note: This is an adaptive strategy and maybe how people end up stinking rich? Or also how they end up losing all their money? Fuck me, I don't know.)

That Little Edie angry charm, that "So fucking what?" thing, that "Here's what my heart desires and YOU are going to give it to me, or else"? It's inexplicably seductive. Maybe it's only seductive to those of us who were raised by narcissists, or who just have a real taste for narcissists, or who ARE narcissists. But let's be fair, who maintains a lively and dynamic personality well into old age, but a borderline narcissist? Who, instead of telling you about their fucking kids or their gardens or their doggies, has sharp and impossibly explosive shit to say? Say what you will about Alec Baldwin; to me he represents the good and the bad of the Hollywood narcissists. He hangs around comedians and comedy writers, who absolutely say atrocious things in each other's company to get a laugh, and so bad shit is on the tip of the man's tongue, and he has a giant ego, and he feels persecuted. I have some sympathy for that variety of narcissistic asshole, which is still a world apart from Mel Gibson. His beloved show went off the air and everyone turned on him. He actually wants us to understand this; he's saying I love you and I need you and fuck you to the public, in one fell swoop.

So Bubble Jessica and Little Edie and Alec Baldwin, they're these glorious, intense, horrible, self-righteous, salty-sweet, anger-filled nuggets of cronutty goodness. Baldwin's brilliance as an actor, serious and comedic, is all wrapped up in his flaws. You know how I always recommend that people love and accept their flaws as much as their finest qualities, because they're inextricably linked? Baldwin struggles because he's a loudmouth, and he's smug, and he's insecure, and he's angry, and HE WANTS TO EXPLAIN, and these things are tied to his genius as an actor. He feels persecuted and misunderstood because he really is a nice guy underneath all of the shit, he has love love love to give, and he's hurt. But, like most bright, shiny narcissistic butterbombs of hatred and desire, he's also a lot of other things. What should he do? Should he put his glorious light under a bushel? No. He should cut push-button words out of his vocabulary, he should resolve to never malign another person, ever, because it's in poor taste (particularly when you've never met them? Ahem?), and he should STOP EXPLAINING.

And yet, Baldwin's explaining is still kind of faintly lovable. He feels guilty, and angry. He's all mixed up. That's why he puts crazy words on the page, god love him. You are also feeling guilty and angry and you're putting too many words on the page, in emails and in conversations with others in the group. You're trying to come across as reasonable and benign, but you sound a little harsh. That's you. You're not like bunny rabbit Jessica, whose voice sounds like a Keane painting.

Know this, though: These friends of yours love Jessica. She's entertaining, so they've decided to accept her for who she is. They're not spending extra time with her one-on-one (like you, dude!). They don't know or basically choose not to see the crazy therein. When they're asked to prepare foods, they simply say NO. Or they say YES, like Terry, because Terry likes to do other peoples' bidding. Fine. But they're not asking each other what they think of her or you, or what her or you said about this or that (like you are, dude!). This is how groups stay together. Everyone agrees not to notice.

You found out from Terry that Jessica was hurt by your refusal to make the foods. Why did you find that out? Did Terry offer that, and then say that Jessica was blameless? If so, she's stirring up shit. But I don't think that's how it went down. I think you're talking too much. YOU ARE CAUSING DRAMA. You need to accept that. Yes, I know you don't believe this. I suffer from this myself, this notion that I can talk (politely, carefully) or seek information and NOT be stirring up shit. NOT POSSIBLE.

And you're going to get blamed for ALL of it, because all Jessica is saying is that she's hurt. Ooo, that Jessica! She's a wise one. Even though she's secretly self-righteous and nuttier than squirrel shit, she puts a pretty goddamn savvy face on the crazy for your crowd. But you're bad at that. You sound angry and harsh and yet YOU WANT TO BE UNDERSTOOD. And let me tell you what, that is a tough fucking row to hoe, my friend.

Why do you want to be understood? Because your intentions are good, and because you feel guilty for accidentally falling into a friendship with someone who's alluringly confused and angry. Somewhere deep down inside, you feel like you really should've made that ENTIRE stupid elaborate menu for Jessica. Because she said so. Ooo, that Jessica! She really IS something. She sniffed out your potential as a codependent enabler from the start.

I sort of love Jessica now, I have to admit it.

So let's break it all down again: Little Edie asked you for something absurd. You felt like you SHOULD do it. You offered to do some of it. You explained too much about what was wrong with doing more. You talked to other people about it. You sounded guilty and angry. And you REALLY wanted to talk about what a freaky psychotic throw pillow of a human Jessica is, but you knew no one would bite. So you lingered around the edges of what you TRULY wanted to say. You hinted. You grumbled. You called someone else. You tried to sound cheerful and accepting and vulnerable, but didn't quite pull it off because you're pissed that you're in this mess and it's all Little Edie's fault.

What should you have done instead? Said no. Made a joke about food cravings. The end.

This kind of shit is so easy to do in groups. You worry and write too much and talk too much precisely because you suspect you'll fuck it all up and get ejected, because you think a lot and talk a lot and FUCKING WHY DOESN’T ANYONE ELSE NOTICE THAT LITTLE EDIE IS AMONG US?!! It's hard to be lively and fun but also bite your tongue. It's hard to walk the line between being helpful and doing way too much. Groups will take advantage of your kindness. That's what the herd does. It's natural. The herd nods along and lets you dig yourself a hole, too. The herd doesn't notice that Jessica is Little Edie, because Jessica seems vulnerable and soft and she needs the group to take care of her. Herd like care for baby rabbit Jessica. Herd no like sharp and pointy you, mean to baby Jessica, way down there in the dark, dark well, all alones!

What is the answer? RUN WITH THE GODDAMN HERD. Do what the herd does. And for fuck's sake, stop looking for understanding from a herd.

Remember these words: HERD NO UNDERSTAND.

People who love herds are often people who want to keep things light and breezy at all costs. That doesn't mean that they're incapable of hashing shit out; they simply prefer not to. Often, Herd People are not into intimacy in friendships. When friendships get intimate, they run the other direction. I've had friends who lean on me, cry to me, tell me all about their troubles, and then a few weeks later when I bring something up, in order to check in, they act like I'm causing trouble. It's as if they got drunk and blathered to me and they feel regretful about it.

Motherfuckers really struggle with intimacy, out there in the world. They don't really want heaviness, most of 'em. They don't want slicing and dicing. They want to go out into the sunshine and DO SHIT. DO, DO, DO. That's all they do. Maybe when they slice and dice they get all circular and neurotic. Maybe they start to hate themselves, because those are the grooves that are worn into their synapses because they don't have that many supportive relationships and don't know how to lean on people without shame, so they naturally sink into a funk at the mere sight of introspection and self-analysis.

Or maybe they just like doing shit. They're doers.

Needless to fucking say, I am not a woman of action. But I have always loved a herd. I think I'm trying to fix something from the past, with herds—mend some bad family dynamic. And I like the spirited fun a herd can get up to. But I am also terrible at herd life. I talk too much. I like to snicker about the pretentious one with the fucked up, bent-ass tail in the back, maybe hoping she'll get picked off by the next lioness on a lunch break. I always feel guilty for not doing everything all the time. I rally everyone, then feel resentful that I'm the one spending money and hosting and cleaning up and half the fuckers show up for an hour and then bail without saying goodbye. I'm always trying to bridge the gap between the couples with kids, the couples without kids, and the singles—which is a little bit like personally flying to the Gaza strip to settle this whole Israeli-Palestinian thing once and for all.

BUT HERD NOT WANT TO BE HERDED.

Here is my advice to you: Stop talking about Jessica completely. Treat her with kindness but step back from the friendship. Say you're busy. When she asks for stuff, say yes or no. Be really, really nice, and insist to everyone else that you two have resolved EVERYTHING, and it's all fine. Occasionally you can meet her for coffee, tapering it off slowly until you basically never see her. Let her whine about it. Say that you're busy. Yes, I hate being fake about this stuff, and I can tell that you do, too. BUT THIS IS HOW IT'S DONE WITH SOMEONE LIKE JESSICA. You can't give her information or explain yourself or look for understanding or she'll stir up more shit. So pretend to be upbeat. Pretend ignorance. ACT LIKE ONE OF THE HERD.

And then? Put more energy into your non-herd friendships. Figure out who understands you, who might talk with you about Jessica and the herd and be sympathetic, who might support you through ugliness, loss, self-doubt. You're not a herd animal, like it or not. You struggle to be "good" in a herd. That's ok. Just practice playing along with them, because you want them in your life. But cultivate closer friendships elsewhere. Give back all of the support and love and understanding that you take, and thank your closest, truest friends profusely for their love and support. Thank them by listening, too. If you don't have close, true friends, work on getting some.

Guilt and anger and confusion and lots of talk around an acquaintance you can hardly stand is a waste of your time. Do you want real, intimate friends, though? Can you handle it when someone shows up and really knows you? Or are you hiding in the herd, too?

Maybe most people are. But maybe it's time for something a little different. Maybe it's time to know yourself better, to accept yourself—pointy edges, salty-sweetness, anger, vulnerability, longing and all—and ask for more love and understanding from people who are actually capable of giving it.

Polly

Are you a scruffy-looking HERD herder? Write to Polly!

Heather Havrilesky (aka Polly Esther) is The Awl's existential advice columnist. She's also a regular contributor to The New York Times Magazine, and is the author of the memoir Disaster Preparedness (Riverhead 2011). She blogs here about scratchy pants, personality disorders, and aged cheeses. Photo by Martijn Munneke.

The post Ask Polly: My Terrific Herd Of Friends Is Being Ruined By This Awful Freak appeared first on The Awl.

Hi Polly,

I drink a lot, some weeks nearly everyday, some weeks once or twice, and once I've started (usually when I get home from work) I always keep going until I go to bed. I'm OK if I do it alone, but if I communicate with people in any way while I'm not sober and then the next day I don't remember each and every word of the conversations I start panicking and feeling I did something horrible.

I've had a rough life, but I've worked hard and, after a couple of psychiatrists that didn't help much and 1.5 years of therapy that did, I'm finally, at 29, in a very good place. I have very interesting and kind sisters and friends, a job I really like, lots of projects and great dates with myself and crime novels in new restaurants every Friday night.

A year ago I cut my narcissistic abusive parents out of my life for good, and now I'm working (pretty successfully) on being less productive, going on more adventures and not chasing after unavailable pigs who didn't even read my comics. I'm starting to think men liked me more when I was deranged and full of anger and that's a bit upsetting, but I'm very happy with my life in general.

A few months ago my therapist and I decided I was ready for a break so I'm not seeing her at the moment, and I was drinking much less during my time with her and never addressed this, so I ask you.

I'm not a loud drunk. I don't cry, vomit, derail the conversation, break stuff, put myself or others in danger. I'm polite and mostly dance or sit around having fun and being nice to people. Then what's the problem? How do I stop waking in panic the next day, going over my memories looking for the part where I screwed up and now everyone hates me?

I was raped while I was in a K-hole once (or twice), so I could just be getting triggered by the feeling of not-quite-remembering the night before. Or maybe it's just my mother inside my head going all "Look at what you've done, you relaxed and had fun and probably forgot to stop the horrid real you from shining through, and who's going to love you now?" I don't know. I struggle with the idea of loveability being subjective, a lot. A part of me will never stop looking for the exact formula.

Or maybe those are just excuses and I'm just a good ol' drunk.

I'm not hurting anybody (but me, and only by panicking) and I don't want to stop drinking if I don't have to. Can you think of another way of stopping the panic?

Thanks a lot!

Paranoid/Drunk

Dear Paranoid/Drunk,

You should stop drinking.

That paranoia and panic you feel isn't irrational or avoidable. That panic is your soul pleading with you to put aside your elaborate justifications and your self-protective intellectualizations for once, and accept that you are actively choosing a self-destructive path that will eventually destroy the happiness you've worked hard to achieve.

I want to urge you to open your heart and read this without quickly deciding I don't know what the fuck I'm talking about. I want to urge you to treat yourself with real care for the first time in your life. I know you believe that self-indulgence is self-care. You're wrong. You want me to help you with this relatively simple matter of feeling less panicked and paranoid in the wake of your binge drinking sessions. It's not that simple.

All of your growing self-doubt and self-hatred is pushed to the side when you drink heavily, so you have to wade through much more of it whenever you're sober. No wonder you seem to want to be sober less and less. But when you drink as much as you do as regularly as you do, you lose the ability to reflect rationally on the big picture of your life. When you're always drunk or a little hungover or gearing up to get drunk again, trust me, you don't see yourself or the world clearly. You think your sober moments are unreasonably negative when, in fact, they're rare chances for clarity, during which you question your self-savaging impulses, and grasp for a chance to take care of yourself, to keep yourself safe.

You believe that alcohol allows you to access who you really are. That's not true. What you access when you drink is a temporary escape from your self-hatred and anxiety. It's a short-cut you haven't really earned, that doesn't stick around for long. The boisterous, dancing, celebratory self after 2 or 3 drinks might be OK, but you never stop there, do you? It sounds to me like you're incapable of stopping there. You believe that you're owed more than that, that you have to grab more for yourself because no one else will. And soon the happy drinker is replaced by a sloppy, forgetful drunk.

Wanting to remember what you said to other people when you were wasted doesn't make you a control freak. It makes you a conscious, considerate human being who doesn't make excuses for her selfishness. Do you think you're a good listener to your friends when you're drunk? If you can't remember what you said, how do you remember what THEY said? Do you care what they say at all? How do you think it feels to have a relationship with someone who doesn't remember a lot of your interactions?

But thanks to your narcissistic parents, you may not be able to hear what I'm telling you. You may think I'm saying that YOU'RE BAD. You may think I'm saying that no one will ever love you, because you are horrid and rotten to the core. That's the black and white thinking of the damaged. That's not what I'm saying. In fact, what I'm saying is that you're turning your back on your vulnerability at the exact moment when it holds the key to moving forward. You're trying to push your sadness away, to write it off as irrational, instead of confronting it and accepting it and learning from it. Maybe you THOUGHT your way through your problems in therapy, but you haven't FELT your way to the truth yet. You can recognize intellectually that you were once open and nice and you were misunderstood and hurt and rejected by a cruel world, but you haven't mourned that loss completely and given yourself permission to feel disappointed and broken. Instead, you're determined to sally forth armed with ideas about what you should and should not accept, shutting out all naysayers and giving yourself exactly what you THINK you need along the way.

You ARE good, but you are going to lose that goodness if you can't ever make yourself vulnerable, if you can't feel your feelings and admit that you've gotten off track, that you can't survive by shutting the world out and drinking until you feel alive again. You're hoping that you're not THAT crazy. And when I tell you that you have to stop drinking yourself into a stupor and dare to be a hurt, crumpled, flawed, sober person who has made more than a few mistakes, you will hear me saying YOU ARE CRAZY AND BAD. This is your big challenge right now: to listen very closely and accept the fact that the people who SEEM to reject you don't loathe you as much as you think, and that the people who SEEM to accept you completely may have problems with certain aspects of your behavior that they're afraid to voice. Or, they're damaged like you, and they'll flee the second you show them your real, sensitive, emotional self.

I suspect that you'll find some inaccurate details here and use that to justify ignoring ALL of this. You might think that if I'm right about you, then everyone else who's ever rejected you (including your mother) and implied that you're nuts (including your mother) will ALSO be right about you. But that's not true. People can ask you to change your behavior without rejecting you to the core. You don't know that because you don't have good role models for that in your life, and you don't do it yourself. You either embrace people or reject them. They are either great or terrible. That's what deeply damaged people do.

You know what else damaged people do? They get very, very good at telling themselves elaborate stories about their rights and entitlements, how healthy they are, what's wrong with the rest of the world. When you were younger, this was an adaptive strategy, a matter of survival. As you get older, though, you are using these same tools to shut other people out, to become a self-reliant planet of one. Instead of NOT getting blackout drunk, you're simply going to stop calling people to talk. Problem solved. And slowly but surely, you yourself will become a judgmental narcissist. Where do you think they come from, anyway? They grow from the wreckage of damaged, overly criticized, under-loved, self-protective humans like yourself.

The first step to becoming a narcissist is making your own rules for everything. "Other people consider this alcoholism, but they don't know shit. All I'm doing is going on great dates with myself, and making myself happy. I won't let any more unavailable pigs tell me that I'm not lovable. I am lovable if I decide I am."

You know why men liked you more when you were deranged and full of anger? Because that was real. Right now, you're pretending. You went through therapy, but never told your therapist about your drinking. Maybe you were drinking less then, as you say, but it seems strange that it never came up, and that you started drinking more once you quit therapy. When you lie to a therapist? That's not therapy. That's bullshit practice, easily and cheaply sourced from any local bar.

You also say that you were raped once—or maybe twice—while you were in a fucking K-HOLE?! Dude. WHAT. THE. FUCK.

To state the obvious, you have been through some horrific shit. And I really am sorry about that. But your confusion and inability to trust yourself or take full account of your actions will continue until you stop bullshitting yourself and everyone else. This is your moment. Today is your day to look at the truth, to accept the truth, to feel the panic and the pain and the hurt of where you are. You have constructed something that won't last. The walls are rotting around you. It's time to look at what's true here, without fear, without hiding.

You were judged badly. You were hurt. You felt like nothing you did was ever right. You took on your mother's voice and adopted it and now it's in your head. You gave yourself shit constantly, and then you learned how to turn those voices off: By drinking too much, by giving up. When someone else criticizes you, you have an easy solution: you shut them out completely because you can't stand one more harsh word. You used to be furious at yourself all the time, for being unproductive, for falling behind on everything. So now you're over that. You think that's the solution, treating yourself like a petulant baby who needs what she needs no matter what. You pretend you don't care about being productive, that you're nicer than you are, but the anger is still there. Alcohol helps you to pretend.

So today, you have to try something really hard. You have to try to look at the truth without overgeneralizing and thinking that you're ALL BAD. You have to listen to other people, and allow them to give you guidance and support. You have to choose a path that leads away from narcissism. That means recognizing that other people with opinions and suggestions aren't ALWAYS just as unfair and selfish as your mother. You have to be vulnerable, feel your sadness, feel your grief, without believing that it means you're weak. You have to embrace your truly open, available friends and stop chasing men (and friends and family) who prefer the pretend, drinking, boisterous good-time-girl to the flawed, messy, sober, scared you. You have to accept that flawed woman and love her fiercely and try to protect her from rapists and K-holes and friends who think it's kind of funny that she gets fall-down drunk regularly, or friends who don't care enough to ask if she's been drinking too much, or friends who also drink way too much, or friends who get weird and squirrely the second she shows the slightest needy or negative emotion.

You have to return to your therapist or find a new therapist and tell that person the truth about your drinking and everything else. You have to tell everyone the truth. You have to ask them to challenge you, instead of playing along with your lies.

You may laugh off this reply. I know I would've done that, when I was hiding and rationalizing my bad behavior, telling myself that I never hurt anyone, telling myself that anyone who criticized me was just damaged or jealous. But this happiness you say you have is tenuous at best. Your identity is still forming, and you're warping your sense of yourself with this boozy horseshit routine of yours.

Today is the day that you decide to care for yourself, flaws and all. You need to make a commitment to yourself, to stop serving up drinks that keep you confused and hazy and bewildered and full of empty bluster. Do you know what that empty swagger of yours is worth? It's worth nothing. You might love basking in the illusion that you're carefree, but no one else is buying it, not really.

Today, you can choose to reach for a life that really IS carefree. You'll have the earned swagger of someone who truly listens, and remembers everything. You will be productive again—without beating yourself up over it—and you'll feel real satisfaction in your accomplishments for the first time, instead of feeling nothing. You'll indulge yourself with rewards that make you feel relaxed and proud of yourself, instead of making you panic. You'll return to therapy and you will stop drinking and after a few weeks of sobriety, the world will shift, and you will SEE where you've been clearly. And you'll see where you want to go.

You will stop pretending. You will go on a run, make a great dinner for yourself, read until you fall asleep, and wake with the sunrise to write your comics. You will love yourself, and the world will love you, too. You will be angry and lost and regretful and distracted and unproductive sometimes; you will be messy and emotional and way too sober, and you will be loved.

Polly

What are you running from? Write to Polly and find out!

Heather Havrilesky (aka Polly Esther) is The Awl's existential advice columnist. She's also a regular contributor to The New York Times Magazine, and is the author of the memoir Disaster Preparedness (Riverhead 2011). She blogs here about scratchy pants, personality disorders, and aged cheeses. Photo by Alan Levine.

The post Ask Polly: How Do I Stop Hating Myself For Getting Black-Out Drunk? appeared first on The Awl.

Hi Polly,

My fiance and I have been together on and off since we were 18; we are now 26. He was my first boyfriend, first kiss and he is the only person I have had sex with. After dating 20 months I asked for a break to date other people because I thought we were too young, at 20, to be as serious as we were. The beginning of our relationship felt magical. The innocence of first love, having never felt these types of feelings before. I believed in true love and the "one" and knew we'd make it back to each other.

Six months later we did reconnect and began dating again. It lasted only a year. I felt with certainty now that he was the "one" but he now acted ambivalent. His parents had announced their divorce right after I'd ended things with him. He decided to drink away his feelings and now placed his friends above me.

I was still shocked and devastated when he dumped me. He said he still loved me and needed time to figure himself out. I pleaded with him to let us work it out together, I tried to help him see that how he was dealing with his feelings (drinking) wasn't constructive and urged him to surround himself with better people. In a sense I tried to "save him" because I couldn't accept that it was over. I struggled with the notion that someone could love you and leave you.

For the next year and a half I allowed him to come in and out of my life. He did many things to hurt me, including lying to me, leading me on, talking badly about me to his friends—and cheating on me. I look back at this now and feel that I did not show myself any self-respect because I was so hung up on the notion of "the one" and idealized our relationship. I also struggled with severe depression and an eating disorder during this period.

Eventually I cut all communication and did not speak to him for nine months. In this time I gradually became better. I made new friends, excelled in school, followed goals and grew as a person. I felt strong enough that I could see him as a friend and rejoin our group of mutual friends that I had missed. Many people would think I was stupid for taking him back after all of this. However, he truly was different and also closer to the person I had fallen in love with. He was honest with me about everything that had happened even when it hurt to hear the truth. He made the relationship a priority again. We moved in together and have lived with one another for two years. We have an easy chemistry and get along very well.

I pushed for the engagement and was initially excited about it, happy to start our future together and be on solid ground. However, a few months after becoming engaged, I started to feel depressed again and eventually entered into an affair with a good friend of mine from university who I have always had some hidden feelings for (it lasted for only three weeks). My fiance was mad when he found out but has decided to work it out with me. He says it made him realize how much he does love me. While he should be furious or fighting with me, he's been extremely compassionate and stepped up his game, making dinners and sending me cute notes. Truth be told, based on our history, I expected him to leave me. Him not leaving has been reassuring.

I know that you can't compare a long-term live in relationship to the high of an affair, but it has made me realize that maybe something is missing in my current relationship. The passion is gone and the sex is okay but not great. I fantasize still about sleeping with this other guy just to see what sex is like with someone else. I worry that I still don't know what truly makes me happy. I also worry that my depression paints things negatively and I'm taking it out on my relationship—because of this I can't make sense of my own feelings. I don't like the way he never speaks with certainty. I wish he took more interest in my career or we had more shared passions. I worry that our relationship is based on getting along and having fun and we don't go deep enough. Alternatively, am I taking for granted having a solid partner who takes care of me and loves me? Is it just depression speaking?

I am in therapy to work this out but it nags at me everyday. The more I spin it around in my head the more I feel bad. I feel bad for treating someone the way I have and for not being sure about someone who is sure about me. I can't take time off from a relationship that has had so many breaks. Either we get married or we break up for good. I've just decided to go with the flow and continue planning the wedding.

Feeling Bad

Dear FB,

I know you're tormented by your situation. But let's look at the facts on the ground: You worry that you and your fiancé "don't go deep enough." The sex is ok but not great. You pushed to get engaged, but shortly thereafter you had an affair. You've been very depressed in the past and had an eating disorder. He cheated on you. You cheated on him. You're depressed again.

Even if we limit our considerations to the mediocre sex, the wondering if there's something missing, and the suspicions about not going deep enough, this marriage gets a big thumb down from me. In my own experience, this combination of mediocrity/disappointment/shallow connections doesn't pan out well. Longing for a deeper connection is not good. Throw in blah sex to match, and you're talking about a major disconnect that's going to haunt you every single day you're together. You might be used to him, you might need him emotionally and you might be accustomed to seeing him as "the one." But that doesn't change the recurring suspicion that he's not ultimately right for you.

You fought for the relationship for so many years that you're simply accustomed to putting the relationship on a pedestal, in spite of many clear signs that you're not an amazing match. You wanted to WIN him, to convince him that he was THE ONE. You wanted to wrap things up, "start [your] future," "be on solid ground." You were depressed and needy and unsure of what your life might look like, and you thought that if you could JUST secure your relationship status, you might feel safe and sound for once.

And sweet Lordy on high, I can relate to that. Fuck yes I can. Because for me, nothing was more frightening than graduating from college and getting booted out into the real world. I didn't want to do ANYTHING back then. I wasn't excited about the adventure of it all. I just wanted to hide. And even when my life was kind of adventurous, moving to San Francisco after living in North Carolina my whole life, getting a job downtown, mingling with the big city folk, I was just meh about the whole thing. I wrote sad poetry. I went home and cried to my noncommittal college boyfriend, who was all "Ew, go away." So then I yelled, because I was a fucking crazy person. I threw the pumpkin out the window on Halloween. (I did not kill anyone on the street below, thankfully.) The next morning when I went to catch the bus to my shitty secretarial job, the sidewalk was covered in pumpkin slime. When I got to work, I wrote a sad poem about it. A BAD poem, that was also a SAD poem.

I tried to show my bad, sad poem to my boyfriend, of course, but he was all, "Ew, go away."

But if I told my husband that story about the pumpkin – again! – he would smile and laugh. He likes hearing my dreary little tales. He understands how it feels to be pathetic, to do stupid shit, to act like a fucking crazy person, to feel sorry for yourself, to laugh about it years later. And to STILL feel a little sorry for your pathetic bad-poetry-writing self.

The two of us talk about this kind of bullshit all the time. And I've had maybe one other boyfriend—out of, I don't know, fifteen?—who would enjoy a really pathetic story the way we do. The others would just want me to get to the point, or take my fucking pants off already. That kind of disconnect affects the quality of the sex you're having, too. I'm not saying you always need to make the sweet slow sensitive emo boy love. NAY. I'm saying your perception of how deep the connection is MATTERS TO A HUGE FUCKING EXTENT.

As clearly as I recognize that you couldn't give less of a shit about my stupid husband's appreciation of my bad personality, I inject this here because when I was younger, I always treated major doubts about a relationship as something to push aside or hurdle over or stuff under the bed or, best of all, eliminate entirely. Major doubts made me unhappy, so I mostly wanted them to GO THE FUCK AWAY.

I was so wrong. Because major, repeating, inescapable doubts—about things like how good the sex is, how deep your connection is, whether or not there's something missing—they are IMPORTANT. If you have giant doubts that won't go away, to the extent that you're clandestinely almost-fucking other people? You should not marry the dude.

SO: Even if you seemed totally healthy and happy and had dated 15,000 other guys, I would still say this really is not your guy. But–newsflash!–you do NOT seem totally healthy and happy and you have not dated other guys AT ALL. Instead, you seem like someone who has spent the past few years wanting to figure things out, nail things down, get 'er done, etc. And look, having been there, I have to say, you just aren't ready to make the call. You're easily depressed, you don't know what other guys are like, you're a little needy, a little rash, a little confused. This is not a good time to make a lifelong commitment. You are very afraid. You may even be so afraid that you started that affair because you thought a brand new relationship would provide you with the perfect safe escape hatch from this one. Maybe you wanted to give yourself a safe place to land, because you're afraid of being alone.

I don't think you're ready to get married to ANYONE, honestly. You have a lot of self-knowledge to gain. You need to figure out how to make yourself happy independently, without anyone in your life.

But even if that weren't the case, your doubts don't sound like a typical case of cold feet. You want a deeper connection, and better sex. You have many, many years left to find it. Breaking up will give you time to get to know yourself better, to make closer friendships, to become stronger, to clarify what's important to you.

I remember a friend of my mom's saying that I should make a list of the things I would NOT compromise on when it came to men. That made me laugh, because I'd basically never had any standards at all. It was just "Does he turn me on or not?" But do you know what turned me on back then? A whiff of escapism, or a faint hint of indifference.

You don't want to be getting a divorce ten years from now, with two little kids under your roof, because you were never sure. You need to be alone for a while and sort yourself out and grow up. Your doubts are telling you something. You aren't doing your fiancé any favors by keeping them to yourself. You spent so much time chasing him that you didn't realize that you weren't that into him after all, and you definitely weren't ready to settle down. A few years from now, when you DO finally have a deep connection with someone, when you can tell that person anything and everything, and he listens and gets it, and you have great sex and you just KNOW that you are a great pair? You will be very, very glad that you didn't go with flow way back when.

Put another way: If you were your own daughter, and she asked you, "Should I go through with it and marry this guy?"—what would you say? If my daughter asked me that, I would say "Be brave, and hold out for something that feels complete. Hold out until YOU feel complete."

Polly

Do you feel complete? Write to Polly!

Heather Havrilesky (aka Polly Esther) is The Awl's existential advice columnist. She's also a regular contributor to The New York Times Magazine, and is the author of the memoir Disaster Preparedness (Riverhead 2011). She blogs here about scratchy pants, personality disorders, and aged cheeses. Photo by Gabriel Saldana.

The post Ask Polly: How Do I Know If I Should Break Off My Engagement? appeared first on The Awl.

Dear Polly,

The amazing man I'm with told me to improve my looks when we first got together. We've been together four years now. Here's the story:

When he first met me, he had fallen for me straight away, always coming in for coffee on my shift at the local cafe, always texting first, offering rides home, asking me out first. He was very sweet and persistent.

I was hooked and I said yes, yes I will be your girlfriend. Then some shit started…

He never complimented me on any of my physical traits, yet every weekend we hung out, he would somehow manage to tell me that he wanted me to have larger breasts like so-and-so, get more toned legs like this person, grow your hair long and put on some eye shadow…. A lot of similar things were said over and over for probably the first six months of our relationship. I think I didn't confront him for so long because I really liked him otherwise. I was also only 20 at the time and really wanted this relationship to work.

I was incredibly hurt every time but I held my disappointment and devastation inside. Then one day, I was mad enough to confront him. I told him that what he was saying was downright hurtful and that he shouldn't be with me if all he can think of is improving me and making me more like other women he probably desired.

He was completely shocked at my confrontation as if he didn't realize he was hurting me. Right after that he never compared me to anyone again, he even started complimenting me and saying that I was the most beautiful woman in the world to him.

I usually tell him to drop it with the comments because I don't believe him. It annoys the hell out of me that he always tries to overcompensate.

You might be wondering why I stay with him? Well, he's WONDERFUL. He does dishes, takes out garbage, is kind and thoughtful. He always wants to buy me anything and everything I want, even though he can't cause we're not rich, but he always tries his best. He listens to me and is interested in my life. He supports my goals and dreams and always believes in me when other people do not. He is faithful and compassionate. It's difficult to leave such a lovely package.

My theory for his actions at the beginning of the relationship is that, he was just being completely honest, without any thought for consequence. On the very downside, his ridiculously honest comments at the beginning of the relationship have given my self-esteem a beating. Sometimes during sex I feel inadequate cause I know I don't look a certain way.

BUT… why oh why did he say such cruel things and then try to over-compensate??? It is very very annoying.

AND HERE'S THE TWIST. The other night he decided to compliment me. I got mad and started saying he has been lying all these years. And then… he admitted that he had been!

He said that I am not the most beautiful woman to him. He was just trying to make me feel better and mend the wound.

WHAT THE FUCK. Why go through all the trouble of lying just to tell the truth? Sigh. I am pretty relieved to finally hear the truth. Because I always knew.

Now I don't know what to do, I've been largely ignoring this issue, sweeping it under the rug.

I would love some straightforward advice. I want to know if it's worth it to stay with a man who didn't really want me for who I was physically. I know relationships are not based on physical attraction. But do you think his actions have been unreasonable? I feel hurt and kind of ugly. Should I completely forgive him and keep focusing on the positives of our relationship?

He has since said, "Physically you are an okay, pretty girl, but that's it. Many girls are much hotter than you." I know this is true. I'm glad he can be honest again. But I don't know if I can get over the fact that he lied for sooooo long.

I really don't want you to tell me to follow my heart, and that it's up to me to choose what I do. (Because that's what people have told me.) Please tell me what to do… OR tell me what you would do if you were in my situation now.

Thanks in advance.

Not Hot Enough

Dear NHE,

First things first. Your wonderful man is a fucking moron, no more, no less. Straight out of the gate, he was a total and complete idiot, not to mention a sexist dimbulb who had the gall to reduce you to the sum of your (individually analyzed and rated) parts. Sadly, this is just how dudes (and women, too) are grown in this poisonous culture, to see each unique flavor of gorgeousness as some mutant strain that needs all of its lovely originality beaten down and smoothed over until we all resemble bland catalogue models and Disney-branded fuckdolls. If your dipshit boyfriend had a magical looks mixing panel, so he could adjust your nose shape and cup size and leg length and waist size and eye shadow levels just so, you'd come out looking like a cross between Pamela Anderson and some nondescript child star from an ABC Family sitcom, trussed up in Ru Paul drag. And you would be BUTT FUCKING UGLY.

The camera (and therefore the dick sitting in the greased hand) may prefer big watery doll eyes and baby piglet, button noses and tits like two overinflated volleyballs, but in real life, even clueless dudes like yours prefer real adult humans with words that spill out of their misshapen mortal mouths. So what's a poor guy to do? After several decades of training his dick, via strenuous porn- and US Weekly-aided beatdown sessions, he goes and falls for a regular, real-life woman with thoughts and feelings and tits that aren't turgid, an ass that isn't airbrushed, features that aren't supernaturally inoffensive. He thought you could make a few simple changes and get him off faster. Lazy, tactless, almost unforgivable, if not for all the other good stuff about him.

You kept your mouth shut for way, way too long. You were young. HEY LADIES! Don't bite your tongue when your new paramour starts clumsily hurting your feelings about your physical features. Make it crystal fucking clear that you are unique and beautiful in your own way and if a dude can't see that with his lazy pig eyes then he should get his rocks off with 2-D images and leave you the fuck alone. (You can get this point across without sounding like a vengeful evil queen in training, of course. Theoretically. Not that I've tried.)

Now, plenty of smart women out there might tell you to dump the dude immediately. Not me. I believe you when you say that he's great. I really do. Considering how toxic and fucked this culture of ours is about looks, we cannot lay that giant burden of blame on a probably very nice dummy boyfriend. He stewed in these toxic cultural juices for way too long.

And sure, clearly he went overboard in his awkward attempts to fix everything. You waited WAY too long to speak up, and he was mortified when you finally did. He had NO FUCKING IDEA he was hurting you. So he starts saying you were perfect in every way instead. He is not a smooth guy. Bu this heart was in the right place when he tried to clean it up.

So then what happens? THEN you grill him exhaustively about his sweeping and exaggerated lying about your looks, which—I don't know, lady. I get it, I totally do, but you're starting to really push it, ripping the old bloom off the rose as if that's going to help. So finally, you leave him no option but to tell you EXACTLY WHAT HE THINKS. (Ladies: Don't fucking ask.) And here is what he thinks:

"Physically, you are an okay, pretty girl, but that's it. Many girls are much hotter than you."

Do you notice that this statement is basically what the mirror tells the evil queen in Snow White? The magic mirror tells the evil queen that she is beautiful, sure, but SNOW WHITE IS ONE THOUSAND TIMES MORE FAIR. Which translates, roughly as, "You're OK. You're like a 7, maybe an 8. But Snow White? She is hot as shit, dude. She's like an 11. And I'll be honest, there are tons of 9s and 10s out there. But you're pretty. You're a 7. Maybe an 8 with make-up. You're at least an 8.5 when you've got my dick in your mouth."

OK, fine. Magic mirrors don't have dicks.

The point is, your boyfriend's exact words match those in a fairy tale for a reason. Unbeknownst to most people, the moral of "Snow White" is not "Don't taste sketchy fruit from pushy old ladies." It's actually "Don't expect to be the hottest girl in the world, because you never, ever, ever will be. Even if you think for five seconds that you are The Hottest Ever, those five seconds will go POOF! and then some other little button-nosed, pale-ass hussy will roll right up and steal your thunder and you'll be all GODDAMN IT I AM THE HOTTEST KILL THAT BITCH!"

(This is also the moral to a few of the better Tori Amos songs.)

So here's the thing: Nobody gets to be the hottest. And thinking that there's one hottest out there, or that there's some 1% of hotness that floats around among 18- to 35-year-olds, constantly pushing out the elders and bringing in the youngsters, is deeply fucked. The whole statement "Many girls are much hotter than you," is at once completely accurate for every woman alive, including your lower-rung Gisele Bündchens, and also totally inaccurate, because the so-called "hottest" are, in many cases, humans who've been sanded and sculpted and airbrushed into shapes and forms so common and bland they might as well be a hologram.

And that's not to mention what happens when you actually speak to many of these sorts of strange people who are either naturally designed or custom-designed for the camera. Some of them are rocket scientists, absolutely. Others, though, have been so constantly besieged by their own stupefying hotness—always surrounded by fawning, babbling menfolk—that they have no onboard navigational systems and, in fact, are a little depressed and worried that no one digs them for who they really are. To the point where, if you say to them, "You're super hot," they feel like you're saying, "You're dumb and worthless inside. I will never look past your camera-ready face and see a real person." I know it's hard to feel sorry for hot ladies. But what I'm telling you is true. Hot people are sometimes very insecure, and a little dull in their repetitive, self-centered, not-all-that-sensitive-to-mere-mortals style of insecurity.

In conclusion: Worrying about all the hotter girls in the world, or thinking that you should move toward their ranks somehow, is understandable, yes, but it's also totally fucking stupid, a waste of time, AND (as the evil queen in Snow White so beautifully demonstrates) a really good way to destroy your emotional health and ruin your entire life.

Competitive hotness is also terrible for your soul, and your personality. Stay in shape, shampoo your hair, sure, but don't start thinking about your relative hotness in the room, in the neighborhood, in the town.

Because here's the real truth. Are you listening? EVERY WOMAN YOU KNOW IS AN OK, PRETTY GIRL. Every single one. Every woman has been told there are hotter women out there. Sure, we all believe that there are these fine gradations of hotness that can be ranked. WRONG, MOTHERFUCKERS. Each face and body is uniquely gorgeous and riveting and special, and the healthier and happier you are, the more clearly you can see this. There is no hotness target you need to hit. You simply need to be active, eat raw green shit as much as you can stand, and—this is the crucial part—BELIEVE THAT YOU HAVE SOME SPECIAL SAUCE that is yours and yours alone.

Because even though you are soaking in this poisonous, monkey-spanking, Hooters culture, the fact of the matter is that the world outside your door LOVES that special sauce.

Let me tell you about myself. I am not and have never been the hottest. In high school, my best friend was widely agreed-upon to be the hottest girl in school. She was voted "Best Looking" and everything (Yes, we old people endured that shit). I was the ok-looking chick who got her leftovers. Sometimes the leftover dude would actually sit and sulk when his buddy disappeared in the next room with my friend. He would SIT AND SULK instead of making out with me, that's how much he wanted her and was uninterested in my lukewarm leftovers.

Why did this happen? Because at the time I was gunning for the hottest one, too. IN HIGH SCHOOL, WE WERE ALL GUNNING FOR THE HOTTEST. And when you blindly gun for the hottest (LIKE A LOSER, ahem) you deserve to feel like lukewarm leftovers.

But when I look at old photos of all of my girlfriends from high school? We all look like different flavors of pretty. We are like a bouquet of flowers. We were all lovely in our own original ways. No one was the absolute most riveting. People who couldn't see the bouquet, who would rather pick out one and say THIS ONE IS THE FUCKING BEST ONE are the sorts of people who dig red roses over peachy tulips and plucky daisies and interesting green weedy clustery flowers you've never even seen before.

Now I'm 43 years old. Do I think I'm gross? Sometimes. But generally speaking I feel good about myself. I run 4 miles four times a week. That doesn't render me magically gorgeous, but it does allow me to imagine occasionally that I'm not wretched. My husband says the right things and I don't dissect those things. I suspend my disbelief. I never accuse him of lying when he claims that NO ONE LOOKS NEARLY AS GOOD AS I DO. He is wrong, of course. I don't ask him to be specific about who looks better and who looks worse. Ok, I do sometimes say stuff like, "I'm lucky you have such shitty eyesight."

I'm not above it all, believe me. And there are days when I look my fucking age, and yes, I wonder how it will be years from now, when I look like Walter fucking Cronkite. I cannot wrap old age in my loving hippie embrace. When I eat too many cronuts, my face looks like an ass cheek. I occasionally long for sticky overpriced French eye creams that I cannot fucking afford.

But I know that no matter what else is going on with me, no matter how old and Cronkite-like I get, I'll still have a little swagger, damn it. I will not stop believing that I have that special motherfucking sauce.

Beauty is not about the facts or where you rank on some scale, and only an idiot would try to put it in those terms. You, letter writer, are probably, in the words of the magic mirror, A THOUSAND TIMES MORE FAIR than me. You know what you need? More spark. More special sauce. More swagger.

You need to stop asking this boyfriend of yours specific questions. Do not ask him about your face or your ass or your tits. NEVER do that. Do not squeeze your thigh and point to it. Do not point out bad photos where you look like a praying mantis. Do not ask him where you rank. Why would you trust HIM on that front anyway? Like I said before, as nice as he is, he is obviously a moron about knowing when to shut his mouth, and what not to say when it's open. Why would HE know how you stack up, or what beauty actually is, for that matter? The only relevant question is: Are you attracted to me? Do I turn you on? And clearly, if you asked him those things, he would say YES YES GIVE IT TO ME.

So you need to decide for yourself what makes you a special, irreplaceable flower in the lady bouquet. You need to notice that The Hottest and OK, Pretty are exactly the same when you're talking to them, listening to them, spending time with them. My favorite, most interesting friends look the most beautiful to me, and I get confused when other people seem to see them differently because they don’t know them well. Your boyfriend seems to adore you. He is not cheating on you or flirting with randos online. He doesn't own a cardboard cut-out of Pamela Anderson that he puts on top of your body when he fucks you.

The problem now is that you want to edit the stupid shit he's said. You want him to read from a new script that will erase the old one. NOT POSSIBLE. Your big task now is to accept that men and women are not the same, that lots of men on this planet are at least a little dipshitty in the same dumb animal way that your boyfriend is, and that that's just the way the world is today. A man is not a woman. Women are confused and weird in other ways. Women also do stupid shit. But right now, let's accept that your guy has bad taste and can't appreciate the bouquet of womankind, thanks to the cultural pollution he's inhaled and ingested. Let's gently nudge him toward seeing the REAL BEAUTY that's around him, not just in you, but in all women whom he maybe considers less than officially hot. Let's readjust his badly calibrated instruments through generous, kind attempts at enlightenment. Here and there. Gently. He is slow and clumsy. Be nice about it. He has a crappy palate, like someone who's eaten nothing but Chicken McNuggets since the day he was born.

You should move past that. He adores you and gives you the love you want. Accept his donkey mind and American dolt taste and be done with it. What the fuck does HE look like anyway? Is he shaking off mega-wattage supermodels everywhere he goes? I fucking doubt it. Let the guy dream about perfection that doesn't exist, if he must. He just doesn't know yet that perfection isn't hot at all, it's bland and fugly. He'll grow up and figure it out. Maybe.

But you also need to grow up and get over his shortsighted comments. Figure out that you have a special, special sauce that puts all of the Hooters blandness in the world to shame in a single instant. Figure out that your pull is so strong that your dude, even with his badly calibrated instruments, didn't notice this or that flaw at the outset. All he wanted was you. Once he got you, he wanted to perfect you, because he is the whack product of a whack culture. Not your problem. His problem, his sickness, period.

Now, if you don't read this and think, OF COURSE! MY SPECIAL FUCKING SAUCE! I'VE ALWAYS HAD IT! (I mean, what are all those boys doing in the yard, anyway? That's my milkshake, motherfucker!) If no part of you is like FUCK YEAH, MY SPARKEDY SPARK!? Then you've got work to do. Work that has nothing to do with him. You have your own sickness. You need healing.

Therapy, maybe. Not to talk about your boyfriend's ideas about your body. To talk about YOUR ideas about YOUR SELF. Why do you suspect that he will abandon you, or find you to be NOT GOOD ENOUGH (if, in fact, that's what lies at the center of this anger you have toward him)? Who told you that you didn't stack up? Who told you you were just ok, nothing special?

YOU ARE SOMETHING SPECIAL. It's obvious to everyone else, isn't it? Why can't you yourself see it? Do you think you need big tits and eye shadow to see it more clearly?

Be patient and kind to yourself. Nudge yourself gently in the direction of noncompetitive appreciation of your place in a gorgeous bouquet. You will come to understand and appreciate your glorious place on this planet. You may need a therapist to help you with this, or not. Just don't stay angry and scared, and stop giving your power away to other people. Look at the truth and then decide for yourself what YOU want to believe in, moving forward.

Most of all, don't pin any of your struggles on your status as OK, Pretty Girl. From one OK, Pretty Girl to another, THERE ARE A MILLION KINDS OF FAIR. Stop treating yourself like cold leftovers. Embrace exactly what you have, love love love your pretty face for all of its distinct prettiness, and enjoy it like crazy. It's not about actually being THE MOST PRETTY, it's about feeling pretty. Feeling pretty IS being pretty. Learn to do the things that make you feel pretty. Accept your slow monkey boyfriend and look past his clumsiness, straight through to his big heart. He will learn, and grow. Feel the love, seize this glorious, shining day, embrace how gorgeous and unique you both are, and smash all the mirrors that say otherwise.

Polly

You're not quite hot enough either? Write to Polly and discuss.

Heather Havrilesky (aka Polly Esther) is The Awl's existential advice columnist. She's also a regular contributor to The New York Times Magazine, and is the author of the memoir Disaster Preparedness (Riverhead 2011). She blogs here about scratchy pants, personality disorders, and aged cheeses. Photo by Don DeBold.

The post Ask Polly: My Boyfriend Thinks I'm Ugly appeared first on The Awl.

Dear Polly,

I feel like at this point I really need the perspective of someone not at all attached to my situation, who has a 'no bullshit' attitude that I'm desperately in need of right now. I'm having a really hard time making an incredibly serious decision. I will try to make this as short as possible.

I broke off a long term (6+ year) relationship about 18 months ago. Shortly thereafter I began dating a guy I knew through mutual friends and a intramural sporting group. We started out just as friends; texting, happy hour, group hangouts, etc. But the texts eventually took a flirty turn and I asked him out on a date. We started spending a fair amount of time together after that, seeing each other for dinner, a movie, and sex at least once a week, but it didn't really seem to be going anywhere. I was okay with going slow because of my previous relationship, and we were super compatible physically, but after 6 months of "dating" I still hadn't met anyone close to him other than his roommates. When I asked why, he got defensive and eventually it turned into "I'm not ready for this. I don't want a girlfriend. I don't want what you want. It's not you it's me." I took it very badly. I guess in hindsight I fell in love with him even though there were so, so many red flags. When he started to show interest in a new girl, I damn near had a nervous breakdown. I found a good therapist and began talking things out. I left the country for 6 weeks to spend time with extended family to try to get over him. It worked. I cut all ties and came back rejuvenated.

Thinking I was "better," I rejoined my team sport when I returned (the one of which he is also a part) with the assumption that he no longer had a hold on me and we could be friends. He was now dating the new girl, but within two weeks of my being back he began to send me slightly inappropriate texts. I was flattered and felt like I finally had the upper hand. I told him I didn't want to talk to him if he had a girlfriend and of course he said he didn't. The new girl was not a long-term thing for him. A month later he broke it off with her (much like me, she fell fast and hard so he cut and ran).

At the point of his breakup with her, it had been about one year since we first started hanging out. We start talking and texting again. I flirted with him, try to keep it cool and relaxed, but really I was dying to just have sex with him. I pushed hard for a friends with benefits situation and he was on board. Why wouldn't he be? Things were pretty good. I'm much less attached (or so I thought) and having great sex with someone I like and am attracted to. But after a couple months I could tell he's not much interested anymore. Begrudgingly, because I do still really like him, I made up my mind to tell him that we shouldn't be intimate anymore and should just go back to being teammates. I knew it wasn't going to turn into what I want no matter how much I wanted it. The day I intended to tell him this, I found out I'm pregnant.

He took it very hard. Says he absolutely does not want children and if he ever had them he doesn't want them like this. Over the course of the next week, our many discussions have turned into him dropping hints about why I shouldn't keep it, without actually asking me to get rid of it. It sucks, but I'm finally getting some honesty from him. So what do I find out really? That he is deeply in love with someone else. His recent lack of interest in me was due to him reconnecting with his ex from many years back. "The one that got away" (his words). The things he said to me about how he feels about her were like a knife to the throat. It turns out he does want everything that I want, just not with me. He wants it with her. To the point that if she came to him with the same news I did, he fully admits he would have reacted quite differently.

So now I'm nothing but a nuisance, a complication, a potential reason that she might not get back together with him. I didn't expect that we would naturally turn into a happy family, but I thought maybe he would be supportive of whatever I choose. That's not the case. He wants it gone, and if I decide to keep it we agreed he'll sign away his parental rights. It wasn't even an option in his head to try to make any other scenario work. I'm not good enough to raise a child with because I'm not her. Before I told him I was 99% sure I was going to keep it no matter what, expecting to be a single mom. Now I'm a fucking mess and have no idea what to do.

His laundry list of reasons not to have it makes sense (neither of us have any money and are heavily in debt, I'm getting laid off from a well paying job and taking one that pays about half of what I'm making now, we're not in a relationship, many more), but I'm so fucking mad that I have to deal with all the fallout either way and he just gets to wash his hands of me and go run back to the girl he loves. I don't want to bring a life into this world out of spite, but I don't want to terminate a life just because the situation isn't ideal. I'm 35 and still single with no prospects (because obviously I have shit taste in men)—what if this is my only chance to have a child and I give it up? I know I can artificially inseminate one day if I want, and I have much respect for women who do, but I wouldn't, I just know I wouldn't, so please don't tell me I'll have the chance for kids later by that avenue.

I've never felt like such shit. Like as a grown woman I still continue to make the worst possible decisions. I fear I will hate myself either way. I already do for allowing myself to get caught up in him again. I feel like I've made no progress in therapy. Like I'll never be good enough to have anyone's children. I cry every day, big heaving sobs with big tears that don't seem to want to stop. I'll have the support of my family either way, but I don't know how to know if I'm ready for a child, for this child. I have an appointment with my obgyn next week and an appointment at the clinic the week after. One of them will get cancelled, I just don't know which one.

Knocked Up and Knocked Down




Dear KUAKD,

You're in a really bad spot right now, so don't blame yourself for feeling terrible and confused. On top of some seriously tough circumstances, being pregnant can make you feel incredibly emotional and vulnerable, particularly during the first trimester. That's why every single sexually active woman out there should try to figure out what you'd do if you got pregnant BEFORE you actually get pregnant. If you're sexually active and you feel sure that it would be a mistake to have a kid, write it down (for yourself; you might want to see it when you're addled) and make it known to your partner from the start. If you know you WOULDN'T want terminate a pregnancy—which, like it or not, sometimes becomes more the case as you enter your late 30s—it's smart to recognize that and let your partner know that's where you stand.

Because even if you think you're absolutely clear on what you want when you're not pregnant, trust me, once you're pregnant, it's very difficult to think straight and make a logical decision.

Now, I'm not implying that every single decision in life SHOULD be logical. Some illogical nutzo choices will also end up being the best things that ever happened to you. You just need to know that when you're pregnant, you might suddenly become baby obsessed. I didn't glance at a baby until I was pregnant. Babies looked germy and slithery and not very cute to me before then. You might really want to go dredge up that piece of paper in your journal that says, "Dear Me, Don't have a baby right now, even though you think you might want one. It's not time yet."

Likewise, knowing that you WOULD want to keep a baby really changes the picture in terms of casual sex. Pushing for friends with benefits status starts to look much more emotionally risky under those circumstances.

And let's be honest. When you push an exboyfriend to have no-strings-attached sex, you're already playing with fire, particularly if you were the one who got dumped. It's hard to find a woman who hasn't done this at one point or another, but it's a soul-sucking nightmare maneuver that'll bring all of the depression and sadness of the break-up back in full force. It's easy to think your feelings won't come flooding back, that you'll be in control of everything this time. But no. If you're even toying with the idea of this, chances are you've got a bad habit of compartmentalizing your feelings, believing that you can control how you feel, believing that just because you feel sort of carefree and indifferent TODAY, you'll feel the same way when you see your no-strings sex friend out on a date (remember those?) with another woman.

So, lots of cautionary tales here for all the single ladies. But KUAKD? That advice isn't me beating up on you. No way. The only reason I'm saying HEY LADIES WATCH OUT is because we've all been there, or we're there right now, or we're about to do the same fucking thing without thinking carefully about it first. In fact, let's all just roll back the tape and think about that dude we slept with, at the absolute wrong time in our lives, and imagine getting pregnant with that dude's kid. The nightmare scenarios are endless (uh, for some of us anyway).

You shouldn’t feel any SPECIAL kind of guilt simply because you wound up getting pregnant, KUAKD. The fact that you're reading into this situation as if it makes it clear that you'll "never be good enough to have anyone's children" really drives home the fact that you're massively confused about your responsibilities, his responsibilities, and what transpired between you. This guy's attitude toward you is not an indicator of your worth or a predictor of your future success with men. You pushed for a no-strings-attached situation, and that status was never going to change, not even (or especially not) with an unexpected pregnancy. You knew he was sleeping with you because you made it easy for him to do so, not because he was in love with you. Again, I'm not shaming you. We've all done this. I'm clarifying, though, that getting wound up about his lack of feeling for you at this point feels a little bit like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic well after it sinks to the bottom of the Atlantic. I know it hurts and you feel like total shit. Many, many people who are reading this are feeling sad for you right now, and we're all sending you our love and support. You can get through this.

BUT: You can't make a clear decision about this baby when you're swimming around in freezing cold waters, lamenting what might have been but wasn't, lamenting what you don't have and maybe will never deserve. YOU DESERVE A LOT. This situation, while it looks pathetic to you right now, is just something that happened, something unfortunate that could've happened to anyone who is sexually active and isn't in a committed relationship.

Normally, you'd have time to get over the harshness of what he told you, that he absolutely positively doesn't want YOU. But in this scenario, you don't have time to think about HIM at all, honestly. And let me be frank: It worries me that most of your letter is about him, when it is now clear that he is completely irrelevant to the gigantic decision you need to make. This situation is just too heavy for us to slice and dice his culpability, his intentions, his love or lack of love for you, the mistakes he made along the way. He told you, "Count me out." So emotionally, you have to think about yourself, how YOU are going to get through this, what YOU want your life to look like moving forward.

And I have to tell you something else: You're very lucky that he's telling you he wants no part of this. The situation is crystal clear. You want this baby or you don't. It's your choice. It has nothing to do with him. Is it lamentable that he won't help you decide? Well, I get the sadness there. But it's not lamentable. Lamentable would be him PRETENDING that he sort of kind of can almost deal with a baby, and then freaking out and disappearing after the baby is born. Common, actually, and fucked. But he's telling you the truth.

And honestly, you don't seem entirely interested in the truth right now. It seems like you want to find some way to change the facts on the ground. So the first thing I want you to do is admit that HE IS OUT. As a grown fucking adult, you need to get tough for a second and say it. THIS GUY IS NOT A PART OF THIS DECISION. Stop talking about him, OK? Stop imagining a better scenario, with him in it. HE IS IRRELEVANT NOW. KISS HIM GOODBYE, AND GOD BLESS. This will be difficult. But this is where you are, like it or not. You must face the music and accept that there's no time to consider him, for your own good.

If you can't get past that part, where you forget about him and quit wishing things were different? I don't think you're mature enough to have a kid, frankly.

So: Let's just assume you get it, and you're going to fucking man up and get him out of your fucking head once and for all so you can think clearly. Now, with a clear head, you need to make the call about this baby.

I would like to TRY to walk you through what a baby will mean to your life right now, to help you decide what you should do. But look, I can't do that. It's complicated, it's emotional, and there's no way in hell that I can give you a thumbs up or a thumbs down on a human being. Kids are amazing and they make life great. And being a single mom is INSANELY difficult. Maybe you'll end this pregnancy and get your life in gear and start kicking ass. Maybe you'll have this baby and get your life in gear and start kicking ass. That's what I want for you, one of those two things. But I think whatever it is that you do, you have to change the way you tell your own story. You say you'll feel regretful either way. I think you need to paint two really beautiful pictures, one with the baby, and one without the baby, and THEN decide. Fuck regret.

I would resolve right now that you're not going to ALLOW yourself to regret whatever you decide. You're in this situation that's very common, actually, and you need to trust yourself to make the right call. You need to give YOURSELF the gift of refusing to haunt yourself with what might've been if you made the opposite choice. It's too much, signing yourself up for that kind of life, looking backwards.

You can choose a path here without making your life tragic. You aren't a victim of your circumstances. Your story is not doomed. This is your big call to action, your moment to get yourself together and treat yourself with love and respect from this point forward. You will not settle for lukewarm men anymore. You will not settle for sex without love. You will not pause for anything less than total interest and engagement. You will protect yourself from bad situations. You will chip away at your debt, and allow yourself to be ambitious, maybe for the first time. You will straighten things out and take responsibility for yourself and you'll start to feel real pride in yourself. You will still find love. Someone is going to love you like no one has loved you before. You will know before it even happens that you deserve it. You deserve to be loved completely, for exactly who you are.

So: If you know you will find love one day, do you still want the baby? Do you NOT want the baby anymore? Imagine that you will have everything you ever wanted from life, guaranteed. Does that make you want to have this baby, or does it make you want to wait and see what comes next?

Either way, you have to accept who you are right now, and allow it to be. Don’t punish yourself by having or not having a kid. You're a great person who happens to be pregnant. You're a grown woman, and whatever you do, this is your moment to stop feeling lost and confused. This is your wake up call. I can't choose what you should do, I can only tell you that you MUST not be clouded by guilt and anger and fear as you decide. Recognize that you're hormonally inclined to want the baby. Recognize that you have no proof that this is your last chance to have a kid. But don't ignore your heart or your soul or your ideas about yourself. Imagine two amazing paths stretched out before you, and choose the one you want.

BUT: If you're thinking of this baby as HIS, as a connection to him, as a way of reaching him and having him, then you're in trouble. He really does have to leave the picture for you to think clearly about this. You have to think of yourself and this baby. Is this the right time? You now have proof that you CAN get pregnant. Does that mean you should have THIS baby? I don't know. I really, really love having kids. But raising a baby alone would've been really hard for me. I'm tough and independent (and uh, also weak and needy and a little lazy sometimes?). I'm not sure that I'm temperamentally suited for that kind of a challenge. I also know women who seem to be loving single motherhood. You know yourself and you know what's best for you.

Unless you DON'T know yourself, at all. Then, I'm going to say that you should give yourself time to grow. Forgive yourself, and give yourself more time.

You are not alone. Open your heart and see that, ok? Look around you. Write down all the people that you're grateful for. Whatever you do, allow this event to redirect you, away from people who don't care that much, toward people who really, deeply care. Only let the people who DEEPLY care into your life from now on. You are loved already. You are good inside. This world will bring you everything you need. Open your heart and let it bring you its gifts. Get up in the morning and welcome the unknown into your life. You will be embraced and supported and loved, no matter what you do next. You will be loved.

Polly

Do you want to give birth to an (adorable) puppy instead of a (slithery) human child? Write to Polly!

Heather Havrilesky (aka Polly Esther) is The Awl's existential advice columnist. She's also a regular contributor to The New York Times Magazine, and is the author of the memoir Disaster Preparedness (Riverhead 2011). She blogs here about scratchy pants, personality disorders, and aged cheeses. Photo by David Goehring.

The post Ask Polly: Should I Have This Baby? appeared first on The Awl.

Hi Polly.

I’m not really sure why I’m writing you. Actually I am. I need to feel ok with being single at 33 while still maintaining hope that I can find a solid, real, lasting relationship. Every time I read one of your columns on this subject, I feel empowered. I apologize for being unoriginal but this stuff is hard and I am at a loss!

I embrace being single. I appreciate being on my own and dictating my own schedule, I do a ton of yoga and look great (might sound conceited but it's true), I own my own successful business, I own my condo, I save money, I travel and pursue things that are interesting. I have an adorable, silly cat, dammit. I believe strongly that I can’t and won’t settle until it’s RIGHT.

I’m admittedly scared that that conviction will keep me from being in a happy relationship because I’m asking for too much or won’t know “right” when I see it. At the same time, I seem to keep getting hurt. There’s a pattern—I date a guy for a month or two. In the beginning, it’s always him pursuing me hard. And then I let my guard down and start to like him, start to think about a future with him, and then, like clockwork, he backs out. I really don’t understand. I know that you have said over and over that we shouldn’t try to draw some sort of conclusion about rejection, but I am struggling here!

Most recently, I was seeing this guy that I was very interested in. True to form, he worked hard to date me while I was not so sure at first. After about a month and a half, I thought things were going great. I had to go out of town for 10 days, for work and to take care of my mom who’d had major surgery. We texted or called each other every day when I was gone. When I got back, rather than making plans to hang out for an evening, he wanted to stop by for sex on the way to a party that he “had to make an appearance” at. I suggested hanging out another time when we could actually spend time together rather than be rushed. He said he understood but basically I never heard from him again.

Maybe I hurt his feelings? I made it clear that I wanted to see him, just was not really ok with those circumstances. I love sex but I felt like a “layover” (ha, ha) on the way to his obligation or good time. I knew he’d been busy at work but in his shoes, I would have made time, invited him to the party, not gone, something else. Logically I know that this guy did not treat me right, or at least was not “into me” enough to work with me and honor my feelings. Even though he put a lot of time in in the beginning—hanging out every day, calling and texting all the time, telling me how much he liked me, etc., etc. The worst part is that I still really like him! I can’t shake the idea that I was too demanding or inconsiderate.

Am I trying too hard? Not trying hard enough? Do I need to lighten up? Be more blunt? Do I get attached too quickly or not quickly enough? I’m really trying to just be myself and see where it takes me, but these little episodes where I date guys who disappear is messing with me. They make me question how great my single lifestyle really is, question my approach to dating, get my hopes up and let them down. On the other hand, I know I need to be open to risk in order to get what I ultimately want, which is long lasting love. How do I reconcile those two conflicting feelings? I also have this weird idea that if I just get past the first few months, I can make things RIGHT if I like the guy enough. I feel like a failure that I can't even get to that stage! That has got to be completely wrong but I don't know how to change that thought process.

Maybe Doing Something Wrong

Dear MDSW,

One of the major pitfalls of being single is trying to apply all of the principles that work in other parts of our lives to the problem of love. It's natural, of course, that you'd think that the same hard work that you've done to start your own business, buy property, and stay fit and healthy would somehow translate to finding the right person. And I don't even mean that you're doing that, exactly. I mean that you have some notion of agency and control over how things will go with any given guy. You write, "I have this weird idea that if I just get past the first few months, I can make things RIGHT if I like the guy enough."

You have to lose the idea that your big challenge is to "get past the first few months." Like somehow you'll never MAKE ANYTHING WORK if you can't CLOSE THE DEAL or at least PREVENT the deal from being prematurely closed during the first few months.

Studying past failures or analyzing the point at which things fell apart, repeatedly, in the past will NOT necessarily tell you anything about what you're doing wrong. You simply haven't lucked into finding the right guy yet. That's all. We can't overhaul your management style on this and secure more success. You simply have to stay open and play it as it lays.

Personally, I was always great at getting past the first few months. I liked hanging out, shooting the shit, letting the day unfold however, watching football, ordering pizza. All of the lazy things I would never allow myself to do when I was alone, I would do around a boyfriend. I compartmentalized my feelings well enough that a dude would see a very easygoing, witty, anything-goes personality for a long time. A bad bout of PMS might threaten to rock the boat, but then I'd essentially apologize and pretend I didn't expect to be met emotionally and go back to hang out mode fast enough that I'd cover my tracks.

Eventually, though, I'd start to put on some pressure, plus my façade would break down and I'd start getting intense or weepy or weird at the drop of a hat. Boyfriends would wonder if this was the new normal. I'd wonder whether we were really a good match or not for the first time, but I'd still keep trying to MAKE THINGS RIGHT. I was really good at making a mess and then making things right, basically maintaining the status quo while I got more and more depressed over the dead-end nature of each relationship.

By a year into it, I'd feel pretty dependent. I wouldn't be putting the same energy into friendships or my career or anything else. I would set everything aside to hang out. Without the dude, I knew I would feel lost and lonely. But the dude was usually looking less and less like my one true love to me by then.

Do you see how much time I used to waste with the wrong guys? You aren't doing that. Do you know how many times I would've been ok with that layover offer? I might've made it obvious that I was the perfect person to take along to that party afterwards, but all that means is that I had a bulletproof social pitch at the time, one carefully crafted to appeal to your typical breezy, Mr. Flinchy nowhere man. You have a life, a job, a condo, a cat, friends, travel. You aren't going to serve up drive-thru sex to a guy who's on the way somewhere else. The idea that having principles like this, and living your principles, could EVER be construed as demanding or inconsiderate is totally laughable.

It's also a testament to just how hard it is to be a single woman in your 30s. You have collected data. And as a smart, hard-working woman, you are naturally going to use that data to determine WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU.

You liked this guy. He wasn't right. He wasn't right because he missed you and then he wanted to stop in for sex instead of taking you out for a quick bite first, then going by the party, knowing that you'd both be in the mood after. To put it on the table like that, to say "I want to fuck and then leave to do this other thing." Or even "I want to fuck and then we'll go to this thing after." No. Shit, he could've said "I need to see you right now!" and come over and things would've happened and then he could've invited you to the other thing, or you could've had dinner or whatever. I'm not saying he should've been more coy, but let's face it, there were plenty of ways he could've gotten exactly what he wanted AND not blasted the impression that he might just be in love with you clean out of the water once and for all. Did he care about the impression he was making? Clearly he did not. That's all the information you need, and it has nothing to do with what YOU did after that.

His disappearance is a moot point. You merely indicated that you weren't a fuck buddy, and he scrammed. This is how it was going to end. He's attracted to you, that's all.

My guess is that lots of guys are attracted to you, so you're going to have to meet a greater volume of guys just to find a few who are legitimately interested in who you are. It's not HOW YOU SIFT THROUGH THEM that determines whether this or that dude is truly interested or uninterested. Sadly, you don't have that much say in the matter. But it's actually freeing to realize that. You are sifting by staying strong, by not compromising the things that are important to you, and by not being afraid to say "No, thanks" when you get an offer that you ABSOLUTELY CAN AND SHOULD REFUSE. I know it feels like you "messed up" because you really liked this guy. I know that feeling well. But you didn't change the outcome. If it were me, I would've invested two years and thousands of dollars in couples therapy and THEN I would've figured out that I was with the wrong guy. God, it makes me tired just thinking about it.

So here's the bad news: You just have to stay open and know that you'll find the right guy eventually. You really will. And it won't be hard to tell if it's right or not. If it's super hard to tell? It's not right.

The taxing thing is that every time we meet someone who's fucking great, we say, "Is this right? Where should I compromise? What should I say to this? Am I doing that old bad thing I do where I ask for what I want and ruin everything again?" The stakes shouldn't be raised just because someone seems really smart and funny and nice to look at, and you decide you really are interested, and they work really hard to date you. But they do. In theory, you should be able to say, "I'll know if this is right if he keeps asking me to dinner and listening and treating me like someone he might really love." You should be able to remain a little detached, until it's clear that a guy really does care and doesn't view you as a conquest. But who can do that? It's stupid to even expect that of yourself, honestly.

You say guys pursue you really hard at first. Are you clear with them about who you are at that point? I don't mean "Hey, I want to get married soon" but "This is who I am. You might not be the kind of person who wants someone like that." Even that sounds strange, I know, but there are these opportunities when you're dating, to either appear lovely and demure and sweet and to encourage the continued pursuit at all costs, or to be frank about who you are. This is just a stab in the dark, but it's possible that if you flashed a few flaws a little sooner, you might get a sense what the guy in question is ACTUALLY after: a real human being, or a very attractive woman who WILL SLEEP WITH HIM EVENTUALLY, DAMN IT! I know I sound like a crazy person, suggesting you show your flaws at the very outset. And certainly when you start repelling dudes straight out of the gate, that's not going to convince you that you've got the moves like Jagger.

BUT I have to tell you, there's some really good swaggery carpe diem feeling that comes from asserting who you are, for better or for worse. You should maybe experiment with it. Hanging back and watching how hard he'll work to get you can be a crafty maneuver that leads to short-term success, but it's also a little bit traditional and (somewhat paradoxically) it appeals to a more predatory macho style of dude. It gets all of his CHASE THAT BUNNY RABBIT juices flowing. Useful, I guess, if that's what you like. But given your smarts and your overall empowered, I Know What I Want deal, the bunny chaser is maybe not your target demographic. You maybe are looking for a sensitive guy who really loves real human women, not bunnies.

I do think, also, that—oh god, now this is really the stuff of shitty women's magazines and heteronormative nightmare trend pieces—but I think that having it all can be a stumbling block for men, but it's a stumbling block for the kinds of men you absolutely don't want in your life. Your general togetherness and attractiveness, when paired with a cautiousness and quietness upfront, is really fluffy bunny ass for a traditional man. When you show your sharp bunny claws, though, this kind of man is going to turn cold and turn tail and run. The magazines will tell you to fluff up your tail and play down your giant brain. I'm going to give you the opposite advice. If I were you, I would try flashing the bunny claws earlier, to see what you're dealing with. Is this a bunny chaser, or a guy who likes real assertive happy human women? Mutter a few ribald remarks, make your opinion crystal clear, then look the guy frankly in the eye as if to say, "That's me, buddy. Like it or lump it." Many, many men with an eye for a princess will get gone real quick-like after that.

And I know, I know, I know that plenty will read this and picture a kind of gauntlet-throwing hot-tempered wretchedness being inserted into a perfectly nice mix. But that's not what we're talking about here. I mean, I'm a personal fan of gauntlet-throwing hot-tempered wretchedness, sure, but that's neither here nor there. MDSW, I think you understand what I mean by borderline bold statements and some advertising of flaws and open eye contact and clear boundaries, paired with interest and kindness. I think you might just figure out that you maybe are a little controlled and stiff around how present yourself at the outset. And I think you might just see that what you want is NOT to make it past the first few months. What you actually want is to fuck things up BEFORE then, so you can move on to the guys who aren't just engaged in an elaborate chase to get some high-end tail.

So that's the only thing I'd ask: Are you making it clear from the start that, not only that you are NOT remotely perfect, but you're not for everyone? You are who you are—assertive, frivolous, angry, effusive, messy, exacting, hopeful—and you want something real. It's funny because most smart women are ALL of these things. And sometimes just saying so will scare away the guys who want someone who prefers to pretend and stoke the mystery, and will attract the guys who find honestly and flaws and vulnerability and toughness mixed together incredibly romantic. It won't change who you're dealing with, it won't turn Mr. Wrong into Prince Charming. It will simply save you time by clearing out the escapists and macho chasers who aren't into egalitarian relationships and female complexity and real life.

God bless the bunny chasers. And if you're a bunny, god bless you, too. I know people who really love that whole picture, for sure. I don't personally know how to navigate it, so I can't offer much advice to those who prefer it.

But I don't think that's what you want. So I think you should stop focusing on what you're doing to fuck things up so early, and focus on fucking things up earlier, thereby sorting out the clunkers before you've invested your emotions too much.

Other than that? You have to be optimistic, be patient, write down everything you're grateful for every night, and remember that you will look back on this time as one of the most important times of your life. You'll look back and feel really proud of how you conducted yourself, how strong you stayed in the face of your loneliness, and how much you appreciated what you had. It's true that you could be in this place for 2 years or 12 years, and even so, you will look back and feel good about it if you play your cards right. It's amazing to have your own business and your own place and your own cat. You are living the good life, for sure, and while it's great that you're open to finding love (which takes its own kind of effort) nothing that happens on that front should undermine how satisfying and hard-won your happiness is right now. You have to believe in your life and romanticize it as much as you can. Remind yourself to feel proud of what you've built, and what you've overcome, every single day. And feel proud of your flaws and your loneliness and your big heart, too. It's ok to feel vulnerable about wanting love and not finding it. That vulnerability will lead you to good places, even when it feels like it'll topple your apple cart. You don't have to be perfect. Let yourself be a little weird, a little uncertain, a little brash. Let yourself get a little messier. Let your seams show. Be proud of your broken pieces. They're the best part of you.

Don't speed through these days to get to the good part. This IS the good part. Savor it.

Polly

Are you trying to savor the good parts, but you can't do it, thanks to fucking Candy Crush Saga? Write to Polly and spill it.

Heather Havrilesky (aka Polly Esther) is The Awl's existential advice columnist. She's also a regular contributor to The New York Times Magazine, and is the author of the memoir Disaster Preparedness (Riverhead 2011). She blogs here about scratchy pants, personality disorders, and aged cheeses. Photo by Rick and Brenda Beehorst.

The post Ask Polly: I'm 33 And Single. What Am I Doing Wrong? appeared first on The Awl.

Hi Polly.

I've been with my current boyfriend for three years. We're really great together—similar interests, senses of humor, great sex. I love him so much—the only issue is that of our respective backgrounds. He grew up in a tony suburb, went to prep school, then to a very prestigious college, and finally the very prestigious graduate school where we met. I went to public school in a bad neighborhood, put myself through a not-so-prestigious college, made a name for myself in my field, then got into that same prestigious grad school. Our families could not be more different. I didn't think it would matter so much, but something happened recently that I can't shake.

My little brother, who has been a fuck up his entire life, has finally gotten it together and joined the Air Force. I'm not super pro-military or anything, but he was on a bad, bad path and now he has a job and structure and it's been really good for him. When he finished basic training, we (me, my mom, and my boyfriend—our father has long been out of the picture) went to his graduation. I'd never been to one of these things before but it's a really big deal for the airmen. A lot of them, my brother included, had never really accomplished anything worth celebrating before. My mom basically cried the entire time.

Unfortunately, throughout the day-long graduation, whenever we were alone, my boyfriend would bring the subject back to him. He looked around anxiously when we got there because most of the young men were in uniform. He kept asking me if he thought people knew that he hadn't served. Then he would go on these weird defensive rants about why he hadn't served, one of which included some pretty fucked-up ideas about people who don't go to college. I got pretty annoyed at him for being so self-involved on a day that should have been about celebrating my brother. I didn't say anything, though, because it was so out of character for him to behave like that.

In the couple of months since this incident, I get so angry whenever I think about it. I brought it up with him once, but he sort of dismissed me, saying that he wasn't trying to draw attention from my brother. I actually totally believe him about that. I guess the thing that drives me nuts is that this person who has been given every opportunity and celebrated at every turn can't stand one day when others are being honored and he isn't. I'm probably being too harsh, but this is the narrative in my head.

This whole incident is bringing up some stuff from earlier in our relationship that I think I'd just brushed aside. When we first met, I honestly resented how easy his life had been compared to mine. I used to tease him for being a prep school kid and eventually he told me that hurt his feelings so I stopped. Since I stopped, we basically never talk about class-related stuff, so I think it appeared that we'd resolved that conflict. In reality, we just stopped talking about anything that would trigger any tension related to class. We also spend way more time with his family. It's partially because we live closer to them, but also because I'm comfortable in his family's world of affluent professionals while my boyfriend is just not comfortable spending a lot of time with my family in my old neighborhood. We do have pretty decent communication about other issues—this one just seems to be off limits for some reason.

I do love this man, and we're starting to talk marriage (we're both around 30). Can I be with someone long-term who I resent in this one way? Is it possible to love someone without wholly respecting them? Or am I being too hard on him? Ultimately it's not really his fault that his parents have been able to give him so much. I just really can't tell if this is something that will blow over in time or an indicator that this relationship isn't built to last.

Help me Polly!

Confused About Class

Dear CAC,

Honestly, I think you misread your boyfriend's reaction to your brother's graduation. I don't think he was envious of the attention. I think he felt unexpectedly droopy and emasculated in the company of all of those guys in uniform, looking sharp, accompanied by a lot of pomp and circumstance and talk about the incomparable honor of giving your life for your country. No matter how you might feel about the military or our country or the whole notion of having to give up your life at the whim of a potentially misguided leader, as a young man this experience would probably be unexpectedly intense. Your boyfriend is roughly the same age as all of these perceived heroes proudly proclaiming their willingness to die. It was understandably unsettling for him. He didn't want you to see him as less heroic than those dudes. He didn't want to see himself that way. He wanted to explain why he thinks those guys aren't necessarily doing something that's so honorable. He did this away from the rest of your family. He was trying to get you on his side, looking for your support and understanding. He probably said some dumb things along the way.

Not that I don't understand why you weren't aware of the particular folds of his emotional experience. You had your own concerns. This was your brother's big day. And if your boyfriend blathered on and on about himself the whole time, in front of your family, that would be concerning. But I don't get that sense. I get the sense that he made a series of discombobulated, defensive comments when you two were alone, and they stuck in your craw and made you wonder if he has any idea at all how totally pampered he's been, how easy he's had it, how hard other people have to work just to fucking exist.

I do understand your anger about that. Personally, I would want to explain the big gap between rich and poor, between sailing along and struggling tooth and nail, between floating through college and working really fucking hard in school while holding down two jobs, between sailing into grad school and working a real job first. And I think you should explain those things to him.

But I also think that you have to empathize with him, not only about his feelings around this military graduation but also about his life in general. He was standing there feeling a little bit useless, in spite of his faith in himself and his beliefs about the world. He was feeling like a wilty little grad student among macho men. Men are really fucking sensitive to this kind of thing. Even the kinds of smart, sensitive late-bloomers that most of us favor have these moments of self-doubt where they wonder, "Christ, should I feel embarrassed that I'm not uniformed and heroic like these macho guys? Am I supposed to feel like they're making good choices and I'm the wimpy dude back home they're out there protecting?" It's easy for women to forget how often men compare themselves to each other, and how sensitive they are to feeling somehow less studly in the company of overt machismo.

I know saying that makes me sound like a deluded Camille Paglia type. Throw in a little Greek mythology here and there and voila, six figure book deal. But I do think you're not opening yourself up to your boyfriend's experience enough, and you're not going to have a healthy relationship with him if you can't stop seeing the first 30 years of his life as a relaxing and leisurely stroll down Easy Street.

Imagine for a second going to your boyfriend's little sister's debutante ball. It's her big night! She struggled with eating disorders in the past, but now she's doing fine and she just got into a very expensive private college, and she looks just beautiful! Her dad is so proud of her, and her mom is crying big salty tears! What you're thinking, though, is that these fucks would never ask YOU to wear a white dress, thanks to your zip code of origin. And in spite of the token people of color here and there, these people are obviously racists. Imagine that you stayed up late grading papers the night before, and your tuition fees are overdue, and there you are, surrounded by gorgeous little rich girls who never do anything more taxing than sitting still to get their nails done? And everyone can't stop talking about how impressive and gorgeous and special they all are?

I know it's not the same thing. And I know you would keep your mouth shut. But imagine the feelings you might feel. Imagine the things you'd like to say to your boyfriend, in private, after watching him admire the pretty spoiled girls from afar.

Listen to me: Your boyfriend was feeling feelings about that graduation ceremony. That's all that was about. If you start discounting his feelings routinely just because he's been a little pampered, your relationship will suffer. Your guy had his own hardships, trust me. You can say to yourself, "What a spoiled little fucker, and he doesn't even realize it!" But that's not fair to him. You love this guy. You need to find out more about the things that did challenge him, the situations that did unnerve him and make him feel bad about himself.

I grew up in a perfectly comfortable home in a perfectly nice middle-class urban neighborhood, first as a professor's kid and then with a divorced working mom. We were usually in debt and I was always expected to scrub toilets, trim bushes, rake leaves, paint doors, empty gutters, pull weeds, whatever. I always had a summer job, starting at age 15. I never had a car. I was definitely jealous of my friends, with their fucking Clinique cosmetics and Esprit sweatshirts and Polo shorts, with their dermatologists and their expensive ballet lessons and their pretty redecorated bedrooms with walls and ceilings they didn't paint themselves. I loved my friends but I was a real asshole about how spoiled they were. I used my resentment of their wealth as an excuse not to empathize with them. I discounted any suffering they told me they were going through. And some of them had real problems—deeply dysfunctional families, eating disorders, financial support that kept them semi-infantilized until their early 30s. I thought my own problems were somehow more real than theirs, just because they had a lot more money and didn't have to work as hard as I did.

The truth is, we were ALL privileged. And I was particularly privileged, because I learned the satisfaction of hard work early on in life. I do mean satisfaction. I can't count the times that setting my feelings aside and doing some really fucking hard work has pulled me out of a funk. Most of what's good in my life found its way to me because I knew how to work hard without giving up, to work hard at something until I was better and better at it. I'm not a workaholic, not by a long shot. I am a lazy motherfucker. But I do understand and appreciate a concerted, strenuous effort. I don't mind looking at my work and saying, "That could be better." It doesn't scare me that it'll take MORE HARD WORK to take something from mediocre to great.

People who don't understand hard work, who don't appreciate and enjoy it, end up suffering a lot. That is a fact. Your boyfriend has nothing to do with this point I'm making; he's in grad school, he knows how to work hard. I'm just telling you that there are many, many aspects of struggling that are a real privilege, that put you at an advantage, once you realize your full potential.

I want to challenge you to take more pride in your background. Not angry fuck-you resentment, but real pride. I know you think you have real pride, and you also think I am a fucking pampered piece of shit who doesn't get it. You're probably right about that. I still want you to listen to me: Real pride can be angry, sure. But real pride can also allow for difference. Real pride invites the privileged in, warmly, to witness with clear eyes, to share some of the many gorgeous aspects of growing up with nothing. There is ugliness there, but there's beauty there, too. There are things about your family that might make you feel ashamed, but that should make you feel proud. My grandparents chainsmoked hand-rolled cigarettes and watched "The Family Feud" every fucking night on a couch covered in plastic. At the end of the show, my Carpatho-Rusyn grandfather would shout to my Carpatho-Rusyn grandmother cleaning up in the kitchen, "Dem Greeks, dey won, Ma!"

When I brought my boyfriend to visit my grandparents, was it uncomfortable for him? Of course. He couldn't mask his emotions, as he spotted the plastic grapes in the little urn on the wall. People who grow up with lots of money often don't have access to working class people, don't have access to immigrants. But everyone is provincial in their own way. People who grow up in Manhattan can be hopelessly provincial, hopelessly unaware of the rest of the country, the rest of the world. If your boyfriend isn't that comfortable around your family, that's not necessarily snobbery, and if you cast it in that light, you're being unfair to him and yourself. Some people out there watch "Judge Judy" and speak in double negatives. Shocker. Some people live in neighborhoods that seem scrappy and dangerous to outsiders. He just needs some time to get used to it. You need to insist that he get used to it. If you protect him from it while resenting him for that, if you avoid taking him home, you'll injure your relationship. Give him the benefit of the doubt. I hate the phrase "It is what it is," but when it comes to showing people where you came from, it comes in handy. This is how I grew up. It is what it fucking is. Did I choose this? Would I choose it again? Do I hate this? Do I love this? All of the above. It is what it is.

Also? Being a guy is not a walk in the park. The separation from your own feelings you have to achieve just to get by is crazy. Prep school, while it sounds absolutely luxurious to a poor kid, can be an insanely cut-throat, unfriendly place. Kids I know who went away to prep school often came back with completely different personalities, personalities that, quite frankly seemed a little defensive and overly cool, like they'd been traumatized by their exposure to a whole new level of uber cool, pushy rich kids and had emerged far worse for the wear.

That's my casual observation, nothing more. But you really do need to open your mind and allow that your guy has had a very different experience than you, and not all of it boiled down to him getting his ass wiped by servants armed with extra-soft toilet tissue.

I don't think you'd feel as angry at him if you'd chosen a time when you WEREN'T mad and explained the very particular folds of your background to him. I think this needs to happen, and you need to do it in a way that doesn't make him feel defensive about the way he grew up. After you feel like you've been heard—and look, you've got to warn him, "I need for you to listen very closely to this. I need you to understand all the shit I had to do to get here"—then you've got to hear HIM out. You've got to ask him all about his upbringing, and you've got to be nice about it, really fucking nice, not dismissive and eye-rolly. You've got to appreciate the little bits and pieces of his past that feel crumpled or messy, that don't fit together well, that made him feel sad as a kid.

He sounds like a sensitive person, just like you. Sensitive people don't have an easy ride, no matter where they are. We will make mountains out of molehills wherever you plant us. And even though it's easy to be unsympathetic and skeptical of that—and believe me, I can be—it's still important, if you love him dearly, that you empathize with the challenges he faced and still faces, no matter how small they might seem to you.

It's probably time to have some tough conversations. Don't wait until you're mad. Sit him down when you're feeling good and look him in the eye and tell him you need to talk about your differences. Be gentle. There is no moral high ground in this conversation. You are simply two different people, with two different stories. He needs to understand that your family is important to you. Remember that it's never easy to accept and embrace someone's family, no matter what they're like. Be respectful of that, but make it clear you feel sensitive about them and protective of them and you don't really want him making negative comments to you about them moving forward. Just as he didn't want to be teased about prep school, you don't want to be teased about your background, and you don't want him casting aspersions on your family's choices. You should ask him to rethink the way he talks about people's life choices when he talks to you and to them, with some acceptance that he may not have all the information he needs to draw conclusions about people from completely different circumstances from his. You should tell him that you're going to try to do the same thing for him: Not assume that someone is lazy or spoiled, for example, or doesn't know the meaning of hardship. There are all kinds of hardship out there.

It's a big challenge, for two people from totally different classes to come together and smoothly navigate the world. It's also really romantic and interesting and if you approach it with care and sensitivity, you'll both grow into richer, wiser, more mature people together. You both have a great opportunity to learn a lot. Try to embrace it rather than avoiding it. Try to open your heart and be vulnerable and allow him the same safe space that you need.

It will be a challenge. Lean into the challenge and talk about it a lot, with a generous, accepting spirit, and your love for each other and trust in each other will grow in leaps and bounds.

This isn't about your boyfriend wanting to be the center of attention. He's grappling with something bigger than that. He has prejudices, sure, and also fears and insecurities. Let him show you the full scope of who he really is, flaws and all, and dare to show yourself to him. We are not ONLY safe among our own kind, in our own comfort zones. When we believe that, we make our worlds smaller and smaller. Take pride in your path here, and let him have his pride in his path, too. Dare to do this without anger and preemptive, self-protective resentment. Dare to do this with an open heart.

Polly

Are you ashamed of your money? Do you suspect that buying a million copies of Polly's book might make you feel better? Because you're right about that. Also? Write to Polly and cry her a river.

Heather Havrilesky (aka Polly Esther) is The Awl's existential advice columnist. She's also a regular contributor to The New York Times Magazine, and is the author of the memoir Disaster Preparedness (Riverhead 2011). She blogs here about scratchy pants, personality disorders, and aged cheeses. Photograph by Teruyoshi Hayashida, from, of course, the incomparable Take Ivy.

The post Ask Polly: Will Our Class Differences Tear Us Apart? appeared first on The Awl.