Long-distance love

Dear Cary,

To give you some background, five years ago I was involved with a man who incessantly cheated on me. Everyone in my circle of friends knew of his behavior -- except me. Once I found out, I was completely humiliated and terribly heartbroken. Of course I ended the relationship, which took me over a year to recover from. Now, years later, I'm dating a marvelous man I adore and who adores me.

My problem is that he works many hours (he's a lawyer) and that plays with my trust issues. As a protective measure, I go through the checklist of how to catch a cheater -- Does he work many hours, etc. -- and he sometimes fits the bill. I panic. This last weekend this panic got me into trouble. I worked myself into believing he was somewhere other than where he said he would be (he has a trial this week and had to work the weekend). So, I wrote him this very accusing e-mail demanding he let me know where I stood with him. Well, that went over like a lead balloon. What I was looking for was reassurance, what I got was a combative response.

I've apologized for my behavior, and tried to explain how the past haunts me, but I don't know if he understood. Any suggestions as to how I can repair the damage?

On the Fence With Hope

Dear On the Fence,

In your best, most sober and confident state of mind, you have to decide if you trust him or not. If you really, really do trust him, and you're just jumpy because of your past betrayal, throw yourself on his mercy and tell him that you love him and trust him but you are still crazy insecure; say you need him to tell you that you're the only one he loves, that he's faithful, that you don't have to worry. Tell him: "I need to hear you say it." And then when he says it, if you believe him and you still trust him, you probably just need reassurance through this period of insecurity.

But if when you sit down to have this frank talk with yourself about whether you trust him and you decide you don't trust him, that's different. You could hire a detective or otherwise plot to discover whether he's fooling around. But even if your investigation came up clean, the investigation itself might linger like a breach of trust, and you might never feel comfortable with him again. So if you really, really, really don't trust him, you should break it off because, for whatever reason, he's not the one.

Dear Cary,

Long ago, my parents met at a radio station in South Florida. My mom wanted to see the guy who had gotten the job she'd been after. She stormed into the studio and stopped dead in her tracks when she saw my father, all 170 pounds of his long blond hair and tie-dyed T-shirt. They fell head over heels for each other and were soon married. As I understand, my parents' entire hippie generation had relationships like this. He was 23, she was 27 and they were married for 15 years, before divorcing badly after my mother gave my father permission to seek sex elsewhere (as they were swingers and she traveled 80 percent of the time) and then got pissed off, sometime during the late '80s, when he took her up on her offer. As I've recently turned 24 and have in my past more sexual exploits, conquests and "relationships" than I could possibly begin to imagine, I'm beginning to worry that I'm nearing the point that I'm past my prime. My hair falls out three and four at a time and I'm beginning to sprout new hair in the strangest places. I'm not nearly as suave and debonair as I used to be and I feel sometimes as if I've fallen off my "gaming horse," though I've played "the game" to death and am sick of it.

Strangely enough, there even seems to be a shortage of women. I live in Atlanta, a city of 4.5 million people. I've lived fast and hard, having done more in 24 years than most do in 40. Could it be that I've whizzed past my relationship prime like I missed my childhood? Am I being too demanding? I want a woman who's intelligent, articulate, witty, creative, honest, caring, open and successful, athletic and beautiful? I've met so many women who have some, but not even close to all of those qualities. The grand majority of women who have the physical attributes are shallow, petty and uninteresting, and those that have the mental, spiritual and emotional attributes are typically more suited for being a ballast weight on a shipping vessel.

I know your first reaction will be to cite my age and dismiss my questions with a simple, "Oh, you're so young ... it'll happen, just wait." But, that just doesn't seem to be it. I had a full-time job when I was 13, ran a nightclub when I was 15 and joined the Marine Corps at 17. I owned a house, had 17 employees and a six-figure income by the time I was 23 and the only thing I've not been able to figure out is the romantic side of life. I'm not unattractive and despite my seemingly cocky résumé above, am a very affable and generally good-spirited person. Have the sins of my past been revisited upon me now? Have I doomed myself to a life of looking for love, but never finding it?

Perspicacious

Dear Perspicacious,

Well, let me restate the problem: You're concerned that while you've found remarkable success in other areas of life, you haven't found true love, and you feel that the whirlwind pace of short relationships you've had up till now, as well as the emotional lessons you learned from your parents, may have something to do with it. I would say you're probably right.

This is a guess, but in seducing many women in short succession you may have acquired some bad interpersonal habits. They may be preventing you from forming the kind of bond with a woman that love grows out of. You were too young to notice, but in the '60s and '70s the flip side of your parents' hippie hedonism was the feminist revolution, in which women declared themselves full human beings and attempted to curtail their widespread objectification by men by attempting to reclaim and redefine certain images of sexuality and desire (have I got that basically right, dear?). The result of this was an accommodation on the part of men that involved no small degree of soul-searching about relationships, power, beauty and love.

Now that the benefits of the feminist movement have largely been won for women, the sort of agonizing debate over who opens doors for whom and who whistles at whose wiggle isn't as common as it used to be. But some simple truths about men and women remain, one of which is that a relationship is different from a merger and acquisition or a "conquest." And therein may lie your confusion. As much as it might appear possible -- because we still do commodify women -- money can't buy you true love, and there is no direct route to it such as might be sold on late-night infomercials. There have been songs about this. I can't believe I'm actually having to say these things.

Complaining that you had 17 employees by the time you were 23 and yet have not found true love is like complaining that your degree in biochemistry doesn't seem to have helped your hockey game. The two just aren't related.

Face it: Even though you don't want me to say it, I'm going to say it: You're only 24. You just don't know enough yet. But let's explore this in a little more painful detail: It's reasonable to assume that many women of the type you seek probably exist, and if you set about now looking for them, using the most efficient, businesslike methods at your disposal, within a year or two you may have identified several who meet the requirements. But once you locate such a woman, what then? You will find that each of these women in turn has a whole set of independent requirements. How likely do you think it is that your ideal woman has you as her ideal? And how are you going to guarantee that she remains single and available, and how are you going to arrange for her to be in your city, and to take a liking to you? And what do you do when she reveals quirks in her personality that do not comport with your master plan? Can you simply rezone her, or order her to conduct remedial work to bring her up to code?

It's an awful lot of work you're facing. Why not just try to live a normal life, enjoy your success, have fun and if you meet a woman you feel really happy with, who laughs at your jokes and makes you scream in the night, just try to stick around with her and hope she doesn't find you too unbearably tiresome.

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