Love among the ruins

Dear Cary,

I weigh 250 pounds, and I've been this overweight for my whole life, including when my boyfriend and I started dating. He says he loves me the way I am, and he'd like to get engaged on New Year's Day. I'm afraid, though. He's been totally loyal for the two years we've been dating, but I'm worried that someday he's going to wake up and really look at me and realize how big I am.

He's a wonderful boyfriend, and I know that in every other way I'm the perfect woman for him. We go to the same university, have the same interests, the same goals and dreams and we're just really happy and comfortable together.

I worry because so many people seem to think that nothing else matters except a woman's weight. What about when we leave school and our friends, he makes new friends who might tease him about me? Also, he's probably going to go far in his career (as am I) and I don't want to be an embarrassment to him at company parties. So I guess my question is, will he always love me, or will he start to resent me and feel embarrassed of me eventually?

A

Dear A,

If all you've got is fear about the future, you're doing great. People leave people for all sorts of reasons, and there's not much you can do about it. People leave people because they're too thin, too mean, too short, too tall. People leave people because they're just unhappy. You sound happy and like you have a great future. So here's the thing: Do not deprive yourself of what you might have just because of some fear of what might happen in the future.

A couple of weeks before you wrote your letter, some people crashed airliners into the World Trade Center towers and killed thousands of people who probably had all kinds of worries about the future but they didn't even get to find out what would happen. You get to find out.

Go for it. There's no reason to believe that what you fear will come true. It's just fear. Why not try to put it aside and just be grateful for this guy who loves you and who you love.

Dear Cary,

I have a somewhat irritating problem. I live in a midsize city in the South and have decided that it is not the place that I want to stay, long term. However, I am in love with a man who will not leave this city. He is a wonderful, generous, sweet man who is just addicted to being close to his family and this town! I feel as if I should travel, perhaps go out West. What should I do?

Hippiegirl

Dear Hippiegirl,

Sure, you should travel, go out West, but I have to say, if it were me, I'd keep living in the city you're in. I left the South years ago to go West and I guess I'm kind of glad I did, but I yearn, yearn, yearn for family, roots, smallish city, family. It was very hard, and I got quite lost in this alien culture, rootless, full of people just like you and me: restless, too good for where they came from. What you have sounds great.

Why don't you figure out the specific things you don't like about your city, and find solutions? Is it the heat? Is it certain things the people do, like talk too slowly or display prejudice. Do they hold the door open for you when you don't want them to, is the architecture too boring, are there no mountains nearby, does an air of segregation hang over the city like a dull memory of slavery?

Are the people boring? Seek out people who dislike the city as much as you do. Need museums? Go to New York. Develop a long-term visitor's relationship with great cities like San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, Los Angeles, Chicago and New York. I live in San Francisco, I work a block away from the Museum of Modern Art, but do I go there? Well, when my mom visits, yes.

OK, I'm a bit funky culture-wise, but it's not uncommon for those of us who leave everything behind and come to a big city to find ourselves so consumed with work and survival that we don't take advantage of all the cultural opportunities there are.

Stay put. Love this guy. Get to know his family. Buy a nice big house for a song. Start a sophisticated group of arty friends and thumb your noses at the locals. And travel.

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