Since You Asked

When we parted ways that afternoon, I asked him if I could see him again, and he hemmed and hawed and said it’d be hard, because we live in different cities. In retrospect, I should have said right then, “OK, that’s fine. This was fun. Take care of yourself,” and never spoken to him again. But I didn’t. We kept in contact for a while (I guess maybe he thought it was the polite thing to do? Though our conversations were generally amusing and flirtatious) and I asked him again if we could see each other, and again he hemmed and hawed. Then I didn’t hear from him for three weeks. I felt the rejection acutely. I cried every day. Occasionally he would send me weird and maudlin e-mails and text messages, like consoling me unbidden via text message the minute my basketball team got knocked out of the NCAA tournament. Otherwise he would ignore my polite and infrequent messages.

For some reason, a few months after our first meeting, he agreed to keep me company for a day while I was visiting his city. We spent a lovely day together, which culminated in making out in a train station and me stupidly telling him that I Liked Him liked him. He put me on the train and kissed me goodbye. I got a few more weird text messages and e-mails over the next few weeks, and eventually, they stopped coming. I made one last-ditch attempt to engage him during the summer — ignored. I have not contacted him since. I got the hint.

Here I am, six months later, writing to you. The pragmatic part of my mind knows he’s, y’know, just not that into me and I need to forget about him and move on. The vengeful part of my mind thinks, “He could do so much better than me, obviously he just goes after the low hanging fruit, that ‘do you really have to leave?’ thing is his shtick. What a loser.” The irrational part of my mind wonders what did I do wrong, and what should I have done differently, and why doesn’t he realize I would have been such a good girlfriend to him, and his ex is a horrible bitch for messing him up so much, and if I were thinner and prettier he would want to be with me, and on and on and on.

Now the pain is less a stabbing agony and more a dull ache I live with, but can’t quite ignore. I’ve tried therapy, exercise, prayer, sports, volunteering, drinking excessively, sobriety, sleeping with other men (the one nice thing to come out of this mess is that I realize there are actually attractive men out there who are sexually attracted to me) to forget about him. Things could be a lot worse; I could not have my health, or a job, or a roof over my head. But I almost wish I had never met him, because then I wouldn’t have had those few highs of happiness and contentment that make the valleys of my past and current misery feel so much lower.

What do I do? How can I forget about him? How do I go on?

Alone Again, Naturally

Dear Alone Again,

Sometimes I am just moved by a letter and want to write to the person to say thank you for the particular kind of knowing vulnerability your letter shows. Thank you for etching out a complex of emotions that I’m sure many people share. Thank you for the bracing echo of toughness here — you offhandedly say the pain is now less a stabbing agony and more a dull ache you live with but can’t quite ignore, and although I ought not take pleasure in your suffering itself I take pleasure in the precision with which you render gradations of awfulness way outside the scale of day-to-day suffering. I like that. I like what seems like honesty in it. I like it as a reminder of how quickly things can tumble. We are none of us princes or princesses (actually once I saw a real princess in the airport in Paris and I remember that; I think actual princesses really do have different lives). But most of us we are not princes; we do not command the universe. We suffer. We do not get what we want. We sit and wait and hope. And then something opens up and we reach for it and lo and behold it is the fragrant, thirst-slaking substance of our most fervent dreams. Then it goes away and we are back to daily life and can’t believe we’re supposed to live without it now. We had it, it got away and we are inconsolable.

That is what you have described for me here, and I just want people to read your letter and to think about you. You are a gentle and brave soul, and you are part of our tribe.

Yes, we are a tribe, I think, a lost tribe of the world.

And you know what breaks my heart? There is mystery and glamour in this piece and yet I detect you putting your gloss of hopelessness and despair over it the whole way. And it breaks my heart. You first devalue your own suffering by calling the precipitating incident “trite.” Then you say you guess he stuck with you because you are amusing, because you are not much to look at, you say. And thus you consign yourself to the ghetto of the not much to look at … and none of us gets a chance to say, Wait! Don’t shut yourself in that damp, chilly closet of nonchalant self-murder! Don’t do that! It hurts to watch it. It hurts us! And then we also, uncharitably, may come to suspect you are doing it for that very reason — to hurt us! — and, thus goaded into uncharitable feelings, none to our credit, we suspect you may be taking us for a ride, inviting us to join in your irascible blend of self-pity and self-castigation. But I don’t think so. I trust you. I think you are showing us who you really are. And again that’s why this tears me up.

I believe, too, that you have arrived at an assessment of your faults and your attributes that has some nuances as well as some jagged edges, and that you use this self-assessment to mitigate  the underlying pain of feeling rejected and lonely.

So, anyway, the lovely man sticks by your side all evening, and you go home with him and have a fantastic night of lovemaking, a fantastic night! And again you put that heartbreaking gloss on it: You assume the pleasure you take is because you haven’t been touched in years. And what if it is because you haven’t been touched in years? How does that devalue it?

Argh. It pains me to the point of inarticulate sputtering. So. You go with him and you have a fantastic night of lovemaking, with a second helping in the morning. And then he goes away and you are unsettled and unsatisfied.

What do you do? you ask. How do you forget him? How can you move on? Well, I think you have moved on. What you are having are the complicated, difficult, sometimes painful thoughts that we have when we have had a big disappointment.

You say, when he asked to stay, your “cold, black heart melted a little,” and I laugh because I appreciate the raw, unsparing view you take of yourself, but also I want to tear my eyeballs out because you are being so cruel to yourself. And I want to remind you that in that moment you had choices. And you probably telegraphed to him this same bleak, self-hating pessimism. I’m not blaming you really; maybe he wasn’t such a great guy. But there is no doubt in my mind that you also gave signals that said you felt you had no chance with him and why bother and so forth. So that when he slipped away, it was in a sense a foregone conclusion. And that makes me sad, too. So you are tearing me up. Now don’t apologize. I like sad movies, too. And I admire people like you; I admire how you can take so much punishment and keep pushing on through the hell. It’s something I rather relate to, and admire.

Can I give you advice? Can I help you? Well, sure, to me you seem rather like an open book. You are not a hard case. A decent therapist could probably whip you into shape in no time if you would allow it, if you would allow a little icky tenderness to be applied to your blistered skin, if you would allow a little of the little girl you once were to come back into your life and be cared for, if you would allow just a little silliness and a little hope back into your life. I’m sure there is lots of pain underneath the withering sarcasm, but it can be borne.

So: For over a month, your letter had sat there, staring at me. I would go back and read it and pound the desk and want to shoot nails into my head and think to myself, one day I have to run this letter. But what do I have to say? Not today. I’ll get to it. So finally I have run your letter, mainly because I wanted others to see it. I don’t know that everyone will be as moved as I am; I may have a particular weakness for your personality. We are probably somewhat alike, and thus my empathy for you is maddening. Plus I don’t feel I have anything smart or clever to say. I just have this big feeling that you are enormously sweet and quite dangerously cutting and somebody should come into your life and just be a nice guy and gently coax you into being kinder . My only fear is that if a nice guy comes into your life, if you have not dealt with this cutting, biting, uncompromising, demanding and perhaps perfectionist side, you will cut him to ribbons without really meaning to, and he will run out into the street and collapse from contagiously low self-esteem.

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I am very eager to have babies with the man I love. With us now moving, kids are on the back burner because we won’t have health insurance until one of us lands a job with benefits. We had been trying to get pregnant until the decision to move was made because I have decent benefits with my current hateful job. (One of the reasons I haven’t quit, the other main one being that I’m trying to hold this job out till we can move.) I really want kids soon; I have wanted to be a mother since I was 5. But the stress of life and my failing body seem to want other things for me. I had injured my back at work and now am in physiotherapy to heal it, yet I’m still obligated to work my full shifts. Those eight-hour shifts literally drain me. I haven’t had a period in 3.5 months (my doctor insists it’s stress-related). And most recently, my pap test came back with abnormal cells on my cervix. No further tests have been done, but my doctor thinks my back, lack of period and abnormal cells are at least partly because of too much stress. Hard not to be stressed when all these symptoms have made me worry and fret even more about never being able to have children! The more that I worry, the more stressed my body becomes. The more symptoms of the stress I experience, the more I worry. (A huge catch-22.) One of my worst fears is to end up being barren.

On to my other issue. My fiancé and I both smoke marijuana regularly. I will note here that we do not smoke cigarettes at all, nor do we drink alcohol very often. Although I have heard that it can prevent couples from conceiving, I only “slowed it down” when we were trying to get pregnant. My fiancé seems to have his usage under control. He is able to use on a part-time basis and not every evening and every weekend. I am a different story altogether. I use (abuse) marijuana for stress. I rush to get home after work to have the bad memories of the day dissolve into higher thoughts. I am not high at work, but evenings and weekends are full of my usage. It’s the way I’ve taught myself to deal. Although I don’t think marijuana is an “evil drug” that “leads to other drug usage,” I know that I am misusing it. I have never felt the need to try any other drug (besides alcohol and caffeine). But I barely even notice the effects any more. Despite that, I can’t imagine quitting it altogether. I know that if I were pregnant I would not smoke at all, because there is another human being involved who would be affected by it.

But without marijuana, how would I deal with life’s stress? Plus there is some part of me that feels like marijuana is not bad. You ought to know that in my family, a few other people smoke marijuana. My aunt and cousin probably use it once daily, and my mom and brother once or twice a week, and my dad on occasion. While they never permitted any drug usage as a teenager, I found out and smoked with family after turning 19. Obviously this is a huge part of the reason why I can’t seem to convince myself that marijuana is “bad.”

This new city will not have any marijuana contacts for my fiancé and me, and it is my plan to stop smoking when we move. But really, I don’t want to stop at all, and I feel like I’m lying to myself by thinking that a new city will stop me from finding a way to do it. Plus, my fiancé is moving first, and we will be apart for a month (we’ve never been apart for longer than 10 days in the past four years). I know that with him gone, I will want to smoke even more. Especially because I feel like I want to get as much smoking in before I “can’t” anymore.

I know several people who use marijuana more than I do and who firmly believe that no one can get addicted to it. I guess I’m not so sure about this, but I would like to believe it because then I’m just a hippie and not an addict. I worry about the usage affecting the physiotherapy on my back, but since we aren’t trying to get pregnant, I still smoke whenever I want to. My fiancé knows that I smoke too much, he knows that I KNOW that I smoke too much too. But month after month he still brings it home for us. I have tried to quit before, asking him to keep it all hidden and out of sight. This always fails, because I will find it and sneak some or bug and bug him to get it out of hiding for me.

I don’t think I can stop until he stops bringing it into the house and we get rid of all the marijuana paraphernalia that is around our place. If my fiancé doesn’t want to quit with me, I would be disappointed. But as long as he kept everything out of our house and cars, I think I could do it. I really do want children in the long run and better physiotherapy results in the short term. What do I do?

Moving and Shaking

Dear Moving and Shaking,

You are using marijuana to relieve stress.

Stress is your problem. Whether you stop smoking marijuana or not, you need to learn more and better ways to relieve stress.

Start doing tai chi; start doing yoga; meditate; take naps; breathe deeply a lot; do biofeedback. If you are doing any of these activities already, don’t conclude that since you’re doing it a little it must not work. Instead, do it more.

You may need higher doses of yoga to get relief. Also, if you are consuming lots of caffeine, see about cutting back. Try substituting some herbal teas for caffeinated beverages now and then. Notice the difference. Especially in the afternoon, cut out the caffeine so you can get a better night’s sleep.

You will notice things about yourself this way. You will notice the different qualities of consciousness that arise from various techniques. It will be entertaining and interesting. You will notice a gradual improvement in your ability to go through life in a relaxed, worry-free way. Unpleasant activities like work and dealing with power-hungry blockheads will go more smoothly.

During this time, you might want to experiment with not smoking for a time. Pick an occasional time when you are stressed out, and instead of smoking, do 15 minutes of meditation, or some tai chi or yoga.

Don’t try to quit all at once, especially not on your own. Just learn some better relaxation techniques. Take it easy. Look for gradual improvement.

Once you’ve found other ways to relieve stress, you may not feel so fearful about the idea of quitting marijuana for good. Try going without for a few days at a time and see how that goes. You can always smoke. But experience what it’s like to handle life without it. Try to get accustomed to that feeling. You may feel slightly on edge, but take a deep breath of fresh air instead of a hit of weed.

The thing is, whether you call yourself an addict or not, changing habitual behavior is hard, and it’s especially hard to do alone. It’s hard to do without a program. It takes time, effort and support, and there are ups and downs. So I wouldn’t recommend trying to stop smoking marijuana on your own, or just with your fiancé.

As you say, for a variety of reasons, you are going to want to quit. So what I’m suggesting is that you prepare, in these ways, for the day when you will need to quit. I’m sure marijuana gives you other things besides stress relief; it probably gives you a heightened sense of the beauty of life, of tastes and sounds, and of general well-being. These things you may need to seek out in life; I find that there are other ways to feel these momentary highs. Seek them out.

For quitting things, as you probably know, I favor the 12-step method because it has added benefits: It helps you get your life together and is a lasting program of living. It is a community. It works for a lot of things.

When and how you quit is up to you. I can say that based on experience, it is definitely possible. You can quit and lead a normal, happy life, when you’re ready to. My bottom line is just that A) You should acquire new stress-relief methods first, before trying to quit, and B) what was B? Oh yeah, B) Don’t try to quit on your own. If and when you do decide to quit, do it with a group or a program behind you.

And, hey: Good luck. You sound like really nice people and I wish you the best in life. And say hello to the kids when they come. And say hello to the mountains.

Yeah, I know this isn’t all my fault, that it takes two to make a bad relationship, and all that. And certainly there are women — most of them — who wouldn’t even look my way. Great for them. But for those who are willing to look my way, don’t I have a basic human obligation to keep them safe from my horribleness and inevitable failures? Without exception I say the wrong thing, do the wrong thing or just collapse.

So. Given that I contribute nothing to the world but disappointment and misery, and I can’t control my desire for companionship and attention, shouldn’t I just kill myself? Isn’t that the moral thing to do at this point?

A Dangerous Nothing

Dear Dangerous Nothing,

You, my friend, are exactly perfect the way you are. You’re not a moron!

Look on the bright side: You have a technique. Don’t wait to show her your bumbling, fumbling, weak and incompetent side.  Spill your soup on her now! On the first date. Roll your car over your own foot and have her take you to the emergency room. Come out of the bathroom with tape all over your face. Why? Because a person with tape all over his face looks funny!

It’ll break the ice. She’ll thank you for it!

Pour it on  about what a loser you are! That’ll get her going about how you just have low self-esteem and you’re being too hard on yourself.

If you are asking women to marry you and promising to fly them in your private jet to your villa in Portugal and saying you’ll pick them up at 8 o’clock sharp the next morning and then you are not showing up, then women are going to bed thinking about your private jet and then not getting to ride in it. That’s bad.

You should slap yourself in the face once very hard if you are doing that. Then you should force yourself to sell your imaginary private jet at a loss of millions of imaginary dollars.

But killing yourself wouldn’t make any sense at all, and it wouldn’t make anyone happy, not even you.

Besides, there are worse people.

Thanks!

Dear Cary,

Hmmm. I won’t write this like a writer, more like the utterly confused person I am. I’ll sum up. I’ve been with BF/husband (I didn’t want to get married, he did) 15 years. He came with three daughters, all filling pages of the DSM. One is bipolar, one BDP, one ADHD etc., etc. At the time I was 30 and had just lost both my parents very suddenly, I was making a lot of money, had inherited some and was really trying to pretend nothing had happened. We were great. I still think he’s the funniest human I’ve ever met and that we share that thing all good couples do: We think we’re better than everyone else. Fast forward. His insecurity has dogged us from the beginning. Had I been more aware and noticing, I would likely have run.

Three years ago we lost our dog. He was our child. The one thing we had together. It was bone cancer and it was awful. It probably triggered for me the memory of losing my parents so quickly — I went a little nuts. I had an affair, I left, I ended the affair. I was so fucking sad I couldn’t stand it. I drank a lot.

Meanwhile, I’m a writer. Literary, but not totally insignificant. I’ve been sober for about four months, and working desperately to finish this new book I have due.

A week ago I learned that he was setting me up, saying, “Your phone rang and it was a blocked number, is there anything you want to tell me?” All this involves cappuccino and serious face. When I realized he was making it all up, I lost my mind.

I can’t take it anymore. Every day is a prosecution. There’s more, of course. A lot. I tiptoe around him, he’s angry most of the time and his three grown daughters don’t want to talk to him without a therapist in the room. He’s brilliant and tricky and there is no way to win. I can’t fill the black hole anymore.

And why now, besides the obvious? I’m sober, I’m working, this book is good … why would he tear it out from under me? I know it’s not conscious, but it’s incredibly twisted.

I love him, and we were better than everyone else, but he’s killing me. Dead.

Tormented

Dear Tormented,

You’re four months sober. You’re going to have to take this on faith. Nothing else matters. Nothing is going to be the way it was. There is nothing to do but stay sober. This other stuff will get sorted out later.

Four months sober is its own special condition. It may manifest as confusion or certainty, clarity or dullness, energy or lethargy, high or low, but it is an edge; it is a liminal state out of which a strange future is being born.

You can afford to slow down now and not try to figure everything out or fix everything. It wouldn’t help anyway. Your old fixes won’t work. Well, they might seem to work for a while, but the point is that you need to abandon them because they will not lead you where you have to go now.

No matter whether you finish the book or don’t finish the book, stay married or get divorced, as long as this sobriety goes on day after day you are going to reclaim your life, your childhood, your spirit. You are going to see and feel things that were formerly only a dull buzz or murmur. These dull murmurs of being will provide the sinews of a new construct. It will not be the you that you envisioned when you were busy envisioning yourself. It will be different. But it will be authentic and thus suffused with the energy of life.

Imagine looking at what your husband is doing and not needing to do anything about it.

You will shed many illusions. You will shed the illusion of being better than the rest of us — beneath which has secretly lain the illusion that you are worse than us. These troubling illusions of separateness and hierarchy will go away and you will be reunited with humanity on an even footing.

Guard your sobriety as you would guard your life.

Your husband and others will attempt to get back the old you who would engage their craziness. Observe this from a safe distance. Don’t engage their craziness. Stay safe in your four months of sobriety. Finish the book. Take long walks.

Your husband has lost you. You are no longer entertaining him in his madness. So he is reaching out to you. He is trying to get you back.

Don’t go there. You will just have to stand firm.

Guard your sobriety as you would guard your life. Finish your book. Take long walks. It will start to make sense.

I do want to marry and have children. Thus I’ve spent a fair amount of time on self-reflection, either on my own, in a therapist’s office, or on the phone with my sister. I’ve spent several years sifting through the finer details of my relationship with my father — yep, he’s emotionally distant and critical, has an on/off problem with alcohol, you know the drill. So now, I have all this knowledge about me, about my relationship with my father, about why I play the role that I do in my relationships, etc., etc. I’m grateful for this knowledge. However, I want this knowledge to do something for me, because, frankly, I’m really starting to bore myself.

Knowing what I know, how can I, or anyone, for that matter, truly change? How do I stop making the same old choices, drawing in the same old men, putting up with the same old crap?

Sincerely,

Ready for Change

Dear Ready for Change,

I only know one thing about this. When you have had enough then you will change.

Have you had enough? Have you truly had enough? Are you stumbling, blind and desperate? Are you lying on the sidewalk? Have you fallen to your knees and cried out to anyone who can hear that you cannot go on one minute more?

Then you will change.

Until then, you may acquire new skills and insights that alert you to your behavior. You may make better decisions. You may abort certain activities. You may begin to see the patterns in your life with greater clarity. You may become more cautious. You may get better at evaluating potential mates.

But you will not change in any fundamental way until you reach a breaking point. This breaking point may not be dramatic or even visible to others. It may be quiet, a moment  when something shifts inside. You may not even realize it at the time. But a transformation is not an adjustment. It is a shift.

Many desire deep, fundamental change, yet it is elusive. Certain life-changing experiences bring us to our core selves, or force us to make certain leaps — leaps of faith, leaps that take us out of the ordinary and expose us to a more authentic and searing experience of the self. But how does that happen? How can we make it happen?

I don’t think we can make it happen. But there are things that seem to predispose us to it.

Having a fatal flaw can be a blessing. Facing it may bring about the change you long for.

For me it was alcoholism.

That is all I know, personally. I have only experienced this once, when my alcoholism brought me to a condition in which I was willing to do the 12 steps. But people have adapted the 12 steps to other conditions. It seems reasonable that certain psychological conditions would produce the same hopelessness and despair that drive people to do the 12 steps.

Those of us who have found lasting help through the 12 steps can usually point to one defining moment. Such moments are usually preceded by years of difficulty and numerous attempts to change without experiencing any major disruptions in life or having to entertain foreign and sometimes empirically questionable notions. What happens in these moments is qualitatively different from the acquisition of new life skills or psychological insights. We had acquired life skills and understanding and insight but still could not stop doing what we were doing.

So I would suggest if you want such an experience that you entertain the notion that you might be one of those people for whom the 12 steps might work even though you do not seem to be an addict. I have heard people speak of being so demoralized by their behaviors that they “hit bottom” with codependence, sex, anger, etc.

It makes sense. It’s not my story, but it makes sense. Why should alcohol have a special place in the mechanics of human transformation? Why would the universal human experience of hitting bottom and reaching out for help and finding a new way of living be confined to addicts? The history of religion and consciousness shows otherwise.

The important point is that transformation is not acquisition; rather, it is loss. We do not pick up new tools for living first; we first abandon what has served us so far, and in that moment between abandoning what has brought us this far and stepping into a new vessel is a moment of profound terror and joy.

That moment of terror is what distinguishes transformation from mere adjustment.

Since you have are standing at a precipice, I suggest you look into the 12 steps as they have been applied to problems of relationship and family. Al-Anon is a group that started to help the family members of alcoholics but has now been found useful for a variety of human problems.

But the steps are just activities; the results can often seem miraculous but I continue to believe that change begins with some ineffable human shift, whether you call it raw desperation, ego deflation, a moment of clarity, incomprehensible demoralization, seeing the light … it doesn’t matter so much what we call it as long as we understand what we are talking about. So the problem remains: How are we brought to this point? How do we arrive at it? Can it be precipitated, like inducing birth?

Perhaps you will be brought to this point by continual meditation on your problem, or by continuing therapy, or by a sudden realization; perhaps it will come to you as nothing more than a passing thought that has lasting resonance. I urge you to begin with the 12 steps and see where that takes you; doing such activities, if nothing else, seems to keep us attuned and alert to the necessary moment, whenever it arrives, and it always arrives in its own time.

My problem is there hasn’t been a night that has gone by that I haven’t had a “nightmare” about this guy. And the new girl. And his parents, whom I adored. A recurring dream is that I move into a new place (which I did already) and I am so excited about it, and then I walk outside, and there they are, my next-door neighbors.

I have been on a couple of dates and met some really nice guys whom I really don’t think twice about.

I know I did the right thing, but I am so embarrassed and annoyed that my subconscious will not let it go. Any suggestions on what it might take to stop these dreams/nightmares?

My subconscious would really appreciate it.

Over It But Not Really Over It

Dear Over It But Not Really,

My subconscious had a conversation with your subconscious and found out that you’re still totally in love with this guy. Your subconscious is, anyway.

Your subconscious was telling my subconscious how attractive he was and what a good time you used to have until the conversation started to really irritate me and I had to break in and say some things to both of them.

“You’re all about you, aren’t you?!” I said to your subconscious. “Here this girl is trying to get over this guy and she’s asking me for help, but you just can’t get enough of him. You keep throwing him right back in her face. What’s wrong with you?”

Now, because my subconscious and your subconscious were speaking to each other in their own special language, I can’t transcribe exactly what your subconscious was saying. But here’s a rough approximation.

“You really loved him, didn’t you?” my subconscious said.  “You really loved him and she ditched him without consulting you. That’s it, isn’t it? You felt comfortable with him screwing up all the time, not being true, not being able to settle down, not telling the truth? How can you love a guy that much who treats her so badly? Aren’t you and she one and the same? Don’t you have any regard for her? You’re just out for a good time and nothing more?

“You don’t care? Really? You’re her subconscious and you don’t really care that much what happens to her? Oh, you don’t mean that you don’t care, but that you don’t take her fears seriously because they’re groundless ego fears? That she’s not really in danger even though she thinks she is? That she doesn’t really have a broken heart even though she’s crying for months? What are you talking about? [Your subconscious can be a little arrogant and obtuse -- like a lot of subconsciouses.] It’s just “ego fear”? Come on. Really?

“So riddle me this, Her Subconscious: Where were you when she was going through all this with this guy? You were right there? Why didn’t you tell her?

“What? You liked it when he wouldn’t behave? You liked the fact that he was out of control? That is crazy! That is perverse!

“Oh. Right. You’re the subconscious. You’re supposed to be crazy and perverse.”

After having this conversation with your subconscious, I understand you much better. Your subconscious loves the jester and the cowboy and the wanderer, who make for sketchy boyfriends but your subconscious doesn’t care. It’s not that your subconscious doesn’t care about you. In fact, you are all it cares about. But it considers many of your fears to be petty, society-based fears, not grounded in spiritual reality. See, your subconscious is coming from a perspective of pretty much timelessness, infinity, no death, that kind of thing. It’s not in a hurry, your subconscious. It’s got loads of time. It always has a parking space.  When it’s just parking, it’s into parking. If it’s making love, it’s just making love. It’s just interested in what’s happening before or afterward or in different locations. That’s meaningless to the subconscious: future, past, here, there — it’s all the same. Plus, when postage rates go up, it doesn’t have to adjust the meter, if you know what I mean. (That’s the most amazing thing of all, if you’re in a small business. But you don’t know what I’m talking about now, do you, because you’re not in a small business? Well, you should be. As a hedge against inflation and joblessness.)

Anyway, this explains why you are in such a tough spot.

So what can you do?

Well, I know one thing. You have to give your subconscious what it wants, or it will make life hell.

Think of your subconscious as if it were a child and you were the adult having to pay its way and drive it around.

It’s like, OK, if it were playing baseball, it would be the one guy out there who is just enjoying the sensation of playing and doesn’t care about the rules or the score; he loves the crack of the bat and the sliding into base; he loves the feel of the clay and the grass; he loves the uniform and being out in the sun and cheering when something happens.

That’s your unconscious, or inner child, or soul, or whatever. That’s the part of you that is alive and hungry.

Your subconscious misses him more than you do. It misses the sweets. It misses the chance to be on top of the world, in the moment, laughing in the bar, completely satisfied. It misses him, how he took care of things for you, how he made things right while he was making things wrong.

Your subconscious knew all along exactly what he was like and what he was doing and that was fine.

You have no secrets from your subconscious. I think that’s where people get the notion of “God” as somehow all-knowing; it’s our projection of our own unconscious.

Your subconscious is pure knowing. It sees and knows and shrugs. It shrugs, that is, as long as it is getting what it wants, for that’s the other part of it: Your subconscious is also pure longing. It doesn’t care about the rules he broke. It just wants him back. And it will keep serving him up in dreams until it gets what it wants, which is … whatever it wants … which it will tell you about in the cryptic and maddening language of dreams and coincidence.

So what are you going to do?

You have to own it, for one thing. You have to own your own desire. You have to say, out loud, here is my desire for that guy, and it is strong, and I do want him, I want the taste of him, I want the feel of him, I want to do the things we used to do, I miss feeling the way I felt after we did the things we did, and I miss knowing that he wanted me and was there, and all the things that happened while we were together.

Your hungers have led you into bliss but also torment. You are a Western person who takes it for granted that you are in charge and that there are rules, and that a lover can strike out if he violates the rules. What you are encountering, though, is the nature of desire and the subconscious, which does not care about rules and the violation of them but only cares about vision and passion and taste and touch and wanting.

Go easy on yourself is one suggestion. Admit that you are not in charge, that your desires are bigger than you. Observe that moving and changing jobs and changing bars did not eliminate the condition of desire. That is because desire does not inhere in conditions or locations. It is in you; it is your desire. It is yours. Own it.

Satisfy it.