A classic conundrum

Does it make sense to stick it out with one of the few people I've ever loved, even if the sex is dreadful?

By Cary Tennis

Oct 8, 2002 | Dear Cary,

I'm 25, and recently moved in with my girlfriend of six months. This is the first serious "adult" relationship I've ever had. I love her very much, no one makes me happier, but I also have been having occasional panic attacks -- 99 percent of the time, they don't relate directly to her personally, rather to the future questions: "What happens if we break up?" "How much will it hurt?" "What if she's not the one?" I think frequently of marriage and children but am frustrated with my occasional paranoia.

I think too much, probably, about everything. Sometimes just wondering why I'm not panicking starts me panicking. My parents divorced when I was 9, and I frequently feel as though everything good in my life is destined to go bad. I'm sure I'll have some doubts about her/our relationship whether we're together for five more weeks or 50 years, but I find it frustrating that these panic attacks interfere with my enjoyment of life.

Sometimes random things will set off my mind -- a relationship in a movie, a song, a television show, and it takes me a while to calm down. It wasn't until about a month and a half ago that I first started worrying. Around the same time, I was switching jobs and hating living with my then-roommate.

I don't want advice on the relationship, I feel quite confident about that. She's been absolutely amazing about "my mind," but I don't feel that I'm being very fair to her, as she bears the brunt of these panicky moments. She's wonderful about listening to me, talking to me, and helping me calm down, it's just that I feel like I shouldn't burden her with that.

Is there a good method for dealing with these worries, getting used to sharing your life with another person, living in the now, and balancing my occasional doubts with my frequent urges to ask her to marry me while we're brushing our teeth?

Probably Need a Lobotomy

Dear Probably Need a Lobotomy,

I too am frequently filled with intense loathing and despair, and I sometimes suffer mild panic attacks when I feel trapped in a situation or feel that there are too many items on the shelves in the grocery store. It's lessened in intensity over the years, but I don't really have a solution for it, other than to recognize what it is and that it will pass, and to just keep going.

At times I have thought that I was going mad. At other times I have thought there was something wrong with the world, or with the grocery store, something that could be fixed if only people would listen to me. Early in life, before I had accepted that these episodes were just a part of my particular life, I spent much time trying to blunt the sensations by ingesting various substances, and by fleeing, or changing the landscape or the curtains. I believed for a time that I was unhappy because the world had not yet become politically and culturally enlightened. I thought if I worked toward the political enlightenment of others I might stop suffering. I built a social outlook out of my angst; I wore my suffering like some wretched penitent. I believed that my symptoms were a kind of special knowledge.

But now I think I was completely wrong about all that. My problem was simply that I could not handle the pain and ambivalence of being alive and conscious. As I was walking to the grocery store yesterday thinking about your letter, I realized that the only ultimate solution to my unhappiness would have been to be suspended in warm liquid or cotton, weightless, tube-fed, in miasmic darkness, with soothing oceanic music, all the time. In other words, my problem was only that I was no longer living in the womb.

As a young man, I was too arrogant and too spoiled to accept that I had to spend time suffering like every other fool. My suffering had to mean something. I couldn't accept that it was just random mental bullshit. Now I suffer as a daily routine. Life goes on. I know my suffering is just a phenomenon like any other phenomenon. I might get bitten by a mosquito but I will not blame capitalism. I will put some lotion on it, or maybe ignore it until it goes away.

And, if I recall, that is the kind of attitude that adults seemed to have when I was a child. Remember? We would fall or get stung and cry and cry, but when they had a mishap they just picked themselves up and put on some lotion or a bandage.

So I would suggest that if you are anything like me, you are just a little bit crazy, and a little bit unhappy, and perhaps a little bit sensitive and creative and empathic, and you can live with it.

If it gets really bad, if you're going to harm yourself or your girlfriend, do yourself a favor and go see a doctor or a therapist. They can help you hold things together during the really tough times. But if it's just general craziness and worry, I would try to pay close attention to it, learn about it and wait until it passes. And while you're waiting for it to pass, try to think of something witty and amusing to say.

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