Author and Columnist
NOTE: This entry was created on 3/17/01 from a letter written to Heather, Conor, and Sarah.
It is a little funny to me -- though perhaps I have no ground to stand on here, given that I rely on confessional writing for a good part of my output -- that you mass emailed your friends these updates. I don't imagine that they cared as much as you wanted, and I can be nearly certain that they did not reply in a way you would have felt validating.
I shall see her tomorrow before I go to work (then, I am going to lend Kate the mother-of-pearl angel pendant she gave me on our first Valentine's Day together so she has something of mine to protect and watch over her.)
You try too hard to force these moments, as though setting up the right props will give a happy ending. Granted, this worked marginally well with the Nabokov book, so I cannot wholly fault you.
Sarah once told you that you spoke as though you were in a movie, which she surely meant as a compliment and not a curse. The trouble is that you also act as though you live in one.
Now, I will allow that I am reviving your recollections in my commentary. That is a bit cinematic. You don't believe that jewelry would watch over Kate, but you want her to feel the silver of it against her skin in a way that will remind her that she has you on the hook.
You may have phrased that a touch differently.
I still have this pendant. I have a tray of other charms from, I suppose, my adventures. I wear few of them because I have no cause. I don't wear the angel pendant, though I have polished it a few times. The angel lost their definition long ago from contact with your skin, now smooth a Renaissance cherub looking vaguely upward.
She told me over the phone (sobbing, of course, because my honesty pushes every emotional button she has), that she wants me to be her friend and I am not (I introduced this topic, she seized it).
Yes. You aren't Kate's friend. You are pushing her and thereby cutting your own throat, you reckless, clingy fool.
She is exactly right. And I am a fool for it.
Glad to see that we are on the same page about it, though I am serious. You are excusing yourself via supposed self-awareness.
I told her than I want to treat her as I do my consorts, even though I want to be in a romantic relationship with her while I do not with them (as I expect you know). Okay, so I only told her the first part since the last part is bloody obvious. She asked why I just didn't then.
You are greedy of her, I suppose. She is as plain-spoken as she can manage. You are hearing her, acknowledging, and promptly ignoring because it is a level of work you are not willing to put in.
And you shouldn't be with her again, but you definitely won't listen to that.
(who'd have figured that freezing ones nose in a tent during a storm would be considered a pleasant memory?).
I would. I lovingly detailed it in one of my books. Good contrast.
I can deal with that when I don't have to worry that she is going to be with someone else next week.
So you are jealous. I've mentioned that Kate almost definitely was with several people between your breakup and now -- and she had every right to be. I don't know what happened around your separation, if there was already in-roads made with future bedmates, but that hardly matters.
So if she was not practicing the art of osculation or more with me, I needn't be concerned that she was elsewhere.
She was, and you know it, or you wouldn't be making such a big deal here. It wasn't your business what a woman you were not dating was doing.
She felt the need to explain that she very well might be with someone who is not me when she decides it feels right to be in a relationship
Yeah, this is about the clearest she could phrase this.
After tomorrow, the lass will be an ocean away with guys using British accents. I hardly feel secure. The security allows me to be her friend.
If you need to be secure in the chance that she might sleep with you and not some Brit, you aren't acting like her friend.
The only reason I was so flipped out about Kate recently is because I was hearing reports that she was being bedded by one of her friends and it made me more insecure than I had ever been in my entire life. I did not believe these reports, Kate is a chaste lass and certainly wouldn't sleep around, but they played upon my worst fears.
She was. Kate told her friend Amanda of the sex. Amanda told Matrona. Matrona told you. You decided to attack Matrona and Amanda. Matrona never forgave you, and I don't blame her.
Kate later told you that, yeah, she was sleeping with him (or had at least slept with him) because you had been crying on her lap, and it aroused her. There was more to it. She hung out at his house all the time, and they had been friends for a while.
She didn't tell you at the time because you obviously could not have handled it, and she didn't want to have to deal with the fallout.
She didn't owe you fidelity. You ceased to be lovers months ago.
I know it superficially seems irrational, but I don't want to lose her.
You did as a girlfriend. You are as a prospect. You are at least wearing at your friendship.
Okay, okay, so I am not actually with her. But I was in a way. Now I am not again.
You made out with her. You've made out with random girls at concerts. You love her -- I do believe that you mean this as best you can -- but it was just sexy fun to her.
I have firmly pushed myself out of her good graces and may have no more than five minutes (that is all she would promise me, but she was very upset at the time) to become secure once more.
You certainly have. I don't understand what this "five minutes" business is.
When you are regularly upsetting women, they don't want to sleep with you.
Oh, what I wouldn't give for her to say, "I don't want to be with anyone for a very long time, I think, but will be sure to let you know if that changes before trying to be with anyone else," because that is not a friendly thing for her to say.
Correct, it isn't. You could not have dealt with Kate having slept with other people in the interim anyway. Even if you got back together, how long do you imagine that would have lasted once she told you?
She didn't want to be in a relationship with anyone else, but she did want to explore herself in college. You could have been a further part of that exploration, but you would not have been her boyfriend.
I am not exactly asking her to promise herself to me, simply not put the idea in my head that I could lose her to some knave while she is in London and I am powerless to stop it.
You might mean this. I don't know if Kate made you think this, though maybe she did. Perhaps she used this to put a little distance between the two of you before placing an ocean there. She might also have been honest, letting you know that she was open to hooking up with someone she would never have to see again. You could not handle that honesty, and it was not a kind sort.
Have I mentioned that you have attachment issues? You do. I had them for a long, long time.
I do feel qualms about voicing these things to Kate, because I become both in deed and in her mind, her ex-boyfriend whom she increasingly resents because he is a hurtful concept to her.
You say these things, but you don't stop yourself from acting out your worst urges to cling to her. You could have made this all so much easier on both of you in so many ways.
Oh, but I feel such love, and it isn't obsession.
I can agree that it isn't per se obsession, but it is toxic.
You do love her. I love her, in a sense. But this is not loving.
It's the pure stuff, not cut with the Ajax of Lust or the Baking Powder of Desperation.
My dear friend, I could bake a thousand cookies with how desperate you are.
I would have no trouble finding someone to bed or to keep me company.
Technically true. Then you would carbon copy this unfortunate woman on this moping about your ex-girlfriend, no doubt.
I also could better suggest women who would suit you, who you ignore, or wrong because you keep wanting Kate.
I would be mind-numbingly happy being single and having her in my life if only I didn't have to worry that she would be going off and hurting herself with bad relationships.
If your happiness is contingent on her being single, you are not yourself single. You are in a one-sided relationship with your ex. Being single is the freedom of having to answer to no one else.
Oh, but who am I to judge? Oh, yes, I am someone who dated extensively and was rather discontent with my searches. Until I found Kate.
Okay, let's talk about that. You were a serial monogamist in your teens. One could extend this into your thirties, in that you didn't date much between long-term relationships.
Were you discontent? You were just keen to fall out of limerance when the hit wore off. That's fine and natural for a teenager. It would have been a better experience in college, though I fear that a more adventuresome model of you would just cling to the first woman who took him to bed.
You were as content as you could be in your teens. You didn't mind the tide of connection and breakup. I don't remember many who dumped you who hurt long, nor did you feel more than morose that you had to break up with someone you liked but couldn't love. It was natural.
Then I was content even when she infuriated me and made me miserable.
Say this again, but slowly.
You loved her. You had some fantastic times together. But there were times where you thought you would have to break up with her because it wasn't working out. You internalized her trauma, resented her drug use and smoking. You were overprotective of her. Her friends looked down on you, and your feelings toward them were not always fond.
You and Kate wanted different things. Not even out of life, but just the short term.
If she hadn't left you, there might have come a time when you left her, as there had been moments before.
I was with her for two years, and I must confess that I probably would have asked for her hand eventually. Okay, so that isn't a huge shock and I don't think I have ever come across as exactly noncommittal.
Did we agree on one gag per response? I am placing it here.
You wanted to marry Kate? Are you insane? You are twenty. As it is not the 1970s and you did not knock her up, absolutely not.
Also, how do you hear "I don't want a relationship, and I am probably sleeping with other people" and think, "Why, I should propose to that girl"?
Perhaps if I just back off, things will heal? Well, odd as it seems, backing off requires both parties to be around. She needs to KNOW I am backing off, else it is a useless (though perhaps emotionally salutary) gesture.
You don't get to scream, "Hey, you see how I am not harassing you? Do you see? Are you watching?"
You could have backed off so many times. It might not have changed how she felt about relationships, but that shouldn't have been the goal anyway.
It isn't a gesture. It is you not putting pressure on a young woman who runs from pressure. It is you taking care of yourself. She doesn't need to see it for you both to be improved by it.
She will be an ocean away and I can practically guarantee will not try to make any contact aside from a post card or possibly one e-mail.
She calls you long distance. She contacts you. Your guarantee is wrong. She brings you the gift of a wooden box and an Aero bar.
Even an ocean away, she reached out.
I wish that she had stayed there for a semester. It would have done wonders for you both.
I have never felt this way before; I have never done this before.
I wish you wouldn't do it right now.
Like a Heinlein novel, I am a stranger in a strange land.
Hey, bud. You probably should read that novel before you reference it about your ex, who wants to sleep with other people. It's not on your side when it comes to that issue.