Site Presented By
Friday, Jul 10, 2009
Dear Cary,
I ended a relationship with the love of my life almost a year ago. We dated for about a year. We loved each other intensely and passionately and had the greatest chemistry you can imagine -- feeling synergy in conversation, sex, family and work. Most of the time, that is. We broke up because things got too intense, and we were both stubborn and selfish. And I think I loved him too much and he knew that, which as you know becomes detrimental in many relationships, resulting in total emotional closing-up for him and embarrassment for me.
I was involved with a new person for a few short weeks, just someone who took up space. I ended it, and once again alone (and happier), I realize my problem. I never stopped loving "my love." It plagues me because I think about him still, and I know that in my mind I believe that he was my soul mate and I'll never find any person with whom I feel "like a kid" again. I want to move on with my life, but dating is not doing it. I am a wonderful, loving and successful woman with so much to offer, and fear that this unforgotten love is holding me in the past -- somewhere I never choose to live. Yet another side of me refuses to get older, have kids and marry someone I just love, and sit down and tell my grandkids about "that one person who set my soul on fire."
Time has yet to heal these wounds. How do I resolve my conflicting emotions and move forward from what I know not to have been a successful union, anyway?
What am I thinking?
Dear What Am I Thinking,
If this weren't one of the big, universal experiences, James Joyce wouldn't have written "The Dead" and Henry James wouldn't have spent so many words on this concept of "the life unlived." Life is a constant withering of possibilities. Every choice murders a possible future. We could easily be in a state of constant mourning and secret itchy remembrance. But there is an intoxicating fire in the life we have chosen, the doors that are open, the light in the eyes of the person we are with. All we have to do is slow down and look into the fire.
There is no solution, any more than there is a solution to death. This what life is like: This is the poetry of it.
One year isn't enough to stop fantasizing and forget. I'd give it seven or so.
Dear Cary,
I am in love. My boyfriend is in love. We are past 40, he's closer to 50, and both of us are divorced -- he for two years, I for 10. We've been dating for more than a year, seriously involved for six months. I just adore the man, and I think he feels the same way about me. Problem: His children, both girls -- one 12, one 16 -- don't like me and make a point of letting him know it. I don't think this would be a problem if 1) he took a stand with them and let them know that we are adults in an adult relationship, and I'm the person he chooses to be with, or 2) I only see him when they aren't around (he shares custody and they live with him every other week).
Neither of these solutions is perfect or, perhaps, workable over the long term. I don't want to miss seeing him on Christmas and holidays, and not go with him to the beach for family vacations. I don't want to feel like an outsider in his life. Nor do I want to be subjected to the older girl's rudeness when I'm with him (she has given him a number of ultimatums concerning me, such as refusing to spend the week with him if she finds out that I've stayed with him at his house during the week when she's at her mom's house).
It also saddens and angers me that he apparently listens to these complaints as if they are on a loop, going 'round and 'round. My boyfriend and I have discussed this at length, and I think he sees that he has been subject to the girls' whims and wishes throughout the two years since he and his ex split. But this hasn't changed his response to them, which is either to listen to their complaints ad nauseam or avoid having the four of us spend time together. I want a full relationship, and I'd like to get married sometime in the next few years. What should I do? Step further out of the picture? Or hang in there, waiting for a door to open?
On the Outside
Dear On the Outside,
If I were one of those girls, I wouldn't like you, and nothing you could do would change that. If I were one of those girls, and my dad had gotten divorced two years ago, I would not like anybody who intruded into my already disrupted family life, and I would not like anybody whose presence held the threat of taking my father away from me. I would do what I could to make life unpleasant for her. I would not want her around.
If I were in the relationship that you describe, I would realize that, for now, the dad has a primary responsibility to be there for his daughters, and if I truly loved him and trusted him, I would accept the limitations on our time together for the next six years or so.
If you can't do that, perhaps you'll have to find another man. But if the opportunity to serve these girls in ways they will never acknowledge or repay intrigues you, if you could be there for their dad and, by not being there, be there for them, perhaps it is something you should undertake, just because you can do something good for the world.
While you can't control how the girls feel, if he really loves you and thinks you're a wonderful person, it wouldn't hurt for him to tell them that. Who knows, they might find it reassuring to know that he is not a passive victim but is getting a lot out of his relationship with you.
But perhaps, having already raised a child, you've had enough of selfless service to the young. In that case, you'll probably be happier, and less trouble to the world, if you find a guy who's not raising children.
