Since You Asked

I do have aspirations for another career, but it will be next winter before I find out whether or not I’ll be admitted to a new degree program in that area. In the meantime, I’m working and volunteering for a couple of worthy causes, trying to support and launch the youngest and saddest child, and listening to my spouse’s incessant, Tourette’s-like muttered curses and explosions (we both work at home).

I guess I am in mourning for the life I wanted and thought I’d have, only now it’s too late, and I am stuck in a loop of regret. How to get out?

R.

Dear R.

So, who says you are supposed to feel gratitude?

Maybe there’s been a misunderstanding about this gratitude business. Some people, when they are feeling bad, make a “gratitude list.” But that’s not an instruction about how you’re supposed to feel. It’s an activity. You might try it. But giving yourself instructions for how you’re supposed to feel is not helpful.

What is helpful is to assess just exactly how badly you feel. With accurate information, then you can reframe the situation. Statements like, “nothing of the life I thought I’d have … has or will ever be realized,” and, “Everything about my life … is a complete disappointment” make it hard to gauge exactly what happened and how badly you feel about it and how long you’re likely to feel bad about it.

So, for instance, how would it feel if you were to say that your income fell by a certain dollar amount, which created a gap of X amount in the budget, which meant you had to make some decisions about where to cut the budget, and you chose to cut the housing budget?

You may say, What choice did we have? Well, even if your alternatives were to get rid of your kids, or stop eating, you did make a choice. Even bizarre choices are choices. Reasonable choices are choices. We can choose to act irrationally. We can stop eating to save money. We don’t, because we retain a good bit of rationality.

It sounds like I’m trying to get you to be grateful, doesn’t it? But I’m not. I’m just suggesting that you be accurate. Being accurate is not about avoiding feeling or being clinical, either. It’s more the opposite. You will find that when you examine these events in detail, your true emotions come. Let them come. They may be strong. But let them come. That is how you will get through this — by experiencing these losses in their fullness.

While we’re at it, not to be argumentative, but I don’t get what a failed career is. I know what losing a job is like. I know what it’s like to reach a point where something isn’t working and to decide to try something different. I’ve certainly done that. And it’s been painful. And I’ve discovered I have strengths and weaknesses, and many of my ideas have not panned out. And I’ve felt bad about missed opportunities.

But I’m not sure I believe in the existence of a “failed career.” Was there a prize or a job you applied for and didn’t get? Was there a whole series of such events? How many? Were you fired? Who fired you? Were there personal conflicts involved? Were they resolved or are they still active in your life today?

Just how bad was the experience on a scale of 1 to 10? How long did its emotional effect last? Is the effect still as strong as it was when it happened, or has the effect lessened? How often do you think about this bad thing that happened? Are you thinking about it as often now as you did right after it happened? How long do you think it will be affecting you in an important way?

Just be specific and honest. And it’s OK to be vivid, to say, well, I wanted to crush my head in a vice. I wanted to burn something down. OK. It’s good to focus on what exactly happened and how it made you feel.

This belief that you’re supposed to feel grateful for your misfortune bugs me. It even sounds vaguely masochistic. But maybe behind it is simply the social expecation that we’re supposed to take our lumps in silence, and not let on that we’re devastated, not let on that we had beautiful hopes that were crushed; maybe we’re supposed to not feel anything at all! But then you’re not digesting experience. It’s still raw, lying on the surface of consciousness, distracting you. So take it in. Feel it. Be specific.

And another thing. You don’t have to “move on” either. Not until you’re ready. People say, Oh, you should be grateful. They say, Oh, it’s time for you to move on. I’m like, What are you, a cop with a nightstick? I’ll move on when I’m done playing the blues on my harmonica, thank you very much.

Really, people will tell you all kinds of garbage. Don’t believe it.

You don’t have to move on until you’re ready.

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But I am gay and I need to send her the email below to tell her what I am feeling emotionally and at the moment:

Hi _____,

There’s something keeping us both from progressing in the relationship. As perfect as you are to me, it’s about something I’ve thought about since I was a wee tot.

I’m bisexual or gay, unsure.

I don’t want to hurt you, but I owe it to you. You know I really DO care about you? But I can’t change who I am. Sexuality isn’t a choice I can make.

I think there are loads of possibilities that my outlook can change in the future. It’s unsettling, horrible, which I need to go through on my own.

We’re still the same and always will be.

What do you think of my letter? Should I send it?

B. Smile

Dear B. Smile,

Good for you. You are taking a courageous step. I applaud your honesty.

Before you send your letter, there is one thing I would change, and I’ll tell you why.

Sometimes when we want people to be happy we tell them the things we wish to be true. You may wish that you and she would stay the same. You may wish this with all your heart. But the truth is that your relationship is changing.

You can be friends, but you are ending the romantic part of the relationship.

Here is how I suggest you change the letter:

Hi _____,

There’s something keeping us both from progressing in the relationship. It’s something I’ve thought about since I was a wee tot.

I’m bisexual or gay, unsure.

As perfect as you are to me, I don’t want to hurt you. But I owe it to you to tell you.

You know I really DO care about you? But I can’t change who I am. Sexuality isn’t a choice I can make.

This is hard for me, but it is something I need to go through on my own.

I’m sorry I was not honest with you from the start. At times I wasn’t completely sure myself. But I want you to know the truth. We cannot be a romantic couple because I am gay.

That doesn’t mean we can’t be friends. I will always be your friend. All I ask is that you accept me as I am.

As you see, I’ve added something as well. I felt it was important for you to acknowledge not being completely honest with her in the past. That may have hurt her. I hope you don’t mind. If there is anything you want to change, please do so. These are just suggestions. It’s your letter.

Good luck, and congratulations on taking a courageous and important step. I hope that you and she will remain lifelong friends.

It’s not surprising for a 21-year-old who had been in school her entire life to want to be a little spontaneous. Ideas, plans, funds were starting to come into place; then when I least expect it, a month before graduation I meet someone. One of those someones that you can’t bear to part with at graduation. And young in our 20s — we had similar ideas about how to spend our post-graduate time. And we thought, Hey, this could work.

Five years later it seems to have worked. We’re still dating. There’s a hefty amount of long distance under our belts, but we’ve taken turns living in both India and New Zealand together while the other was on a great fellowship. We bounced across the U.S. as ski bums — working odd jobs, traveling and living. Yes, we were spoiled, and almost carefree.

But when he decided to go to law school that life ended.

I chose to spend his first year of law school away, working on a research project in Southeast Asia and finishing up a graduate degree. And now for his second year, we agreed I’d come back and look for a job in Boston where his law school is. And six months later, that’s what I’m still doing. While I’ve done a fair bit of temping during that time, I’m networked enough that I have my own calendar devoted to just that, and have even had some offers — nothing that’s worthwhile in my eyes has materialized.

Unfortunately, people I talk to who are in my field  tell me that the place to be for my work is in D.C. (or back overseas — where I would love to be), and now that I’ve set my eyes on other locations the interviews are starting to float in — for jobs I’m excited about — of course none in Boston. Now this fellow of mine has been supportive, helpful and reassuring through this process. However, when I bring up the possibility of my leaving,  it’s hard to talk about. We’ve done it before — months apart, emails, phone calls — we’re just as good at long-distance as we are living together. But he had thought my coming to Boston would be the end — no more distance (at least for a few years).

And me? It’s hard to say if the right job in Boston would end my frustrations. Sometimes I think it would, and sometimes I think I might be coming to terms with a new reality, that we are people who want two different lives and what worked when we were 21 won’t work now.

I am ready to jump on a plane again, but now I’m afraid he won’t be there when I get back.

I have made sacrifices for him besides coming to Boston. I delayed my fellowship. I’ve turned down some great opportunities to be with him already. Maybe I’m selfish to refuse to settle for work that I find unsatisfactory in order to live here with him. Is it something I should be prepared to do? This is the guy I thought would be the one I’d spend the rest of my life with.

Should I be happy with being in a loving relationship? Because the truth is, I don’t think that’s enough for me. I guess this is part of the balance that adults in love with separate careers have to figure out. But I feel that I’ve borne more of the weight already, and now law school is tying him down to one place and a set career for more and more years (he’s got a summer offer for a Boston firm, which will likely be his job when he graduates).

I don’t know what I’m afraid of the most, missing out on the great opportunities of my life in order to be with him, missing out on the great love of my life, or a third option. Which I think I really do fear: that after five years we’ve grown out of each other. That my alternative lifestyle isn’t enough for him, and living here in Boston with his career aspirations makes me feel like I’m missing out on mine.

I’m a spontaneous person; I act on what feels intuitively right. But with this, I don’t know how to act or what to do. It’s taken a toll on our relationship. Am I supposed to just settle? Or is it too much to ask him to accept that I might not be able to keep my Boston promise, and take off where there is good work to be found?

Unsettled New England Transplant

Dear Unsettled,

You don’t think being in a loving relationship is enough for you.

You said that, not me. So you know the truth about yourself. The question is, How do you live out that truth? What are you willing to sacrifice to be true to yourself? What risks are you willing to take to be true to yourself?

The older I get and the more I painfully survey the places I have turned away from my authentic self, the places I have been frightened or drunk or proud or lazy or confused and have made cynical or shallow choices, the more I look at it, the more I see both the hand of powerful yet invisible social forces and also the hand of my own unconscious, my own victim archetype, my own death instinct, my own drive to hover in darkness, to be less conscious, to avoid conflict, to pretend. So as I look at others and the profound choices before them, I sympathize with the horror of being wrong, and the fear of ending up in a chaotic mess. Still, I see now, one must choose what is right and real in the moment. You must choose based on who you are now, not on who you think you may become.

So far it has been easy for you to be true to yourself. As you get older it gets harder. It’s no less important, psychologically; you are not somehow less alive; it doesn’t get harder because you change. It gets harder because society’s tradewinds relentlessly push you back toward the herd. No one says it in so many words, but basically you are now expected to begin the long, sad process of giving up yourself.

And you don’t want to! And I don’t blame you! Why should you?

Social forces are hard at work hatching that baffling conformity that grinds up the outliers in all the social groups we pass through growing up. If you are lucky to be one of those who glide with frictionless grace through school and work and family, in perfect accord with those around you, then lucky for you. But if you are like you, or like me, then you are always battling these invisible social forces that work to strip you of your difference. If you are aware of these social forces and have analyzed why they exist — to maintain a certain economic and social order, to control resources, to ease the minds and consciences of the ruling class — you have a chance of defying these forces and staying true to yourself.

But no matter what, it isn’t easy.

This social force, this tireless, relentless, ever-increasing ratcheting-up of pressure for you to give up your ideals and enter the machine, this thing will work hard on you night and day. That’s what’s happening now. It’s time, say these invisible social forces, for you to settle down, for him to become a lawyer and get a house in Boston and for you two to become nice, respectable, well-educated, upper-middle-class contributors to society.

Lately I have had some time to think. At age 58, I can see that there were times I was running away from myself. There were times I was making choices that allowed me to shrink from the truth. I now see that there is a path, a true path, for each of us. We don’t have to take it, but it’s there. We may not recognize it, or we may see it but not believe it is correct, or not like what it says about us; we may see ourselves differently. But I believe we do know what is our correct path, what feels right in our bodies, what feels right deep within us.

We know. So it is a choice whether we follow our true path or not. We can choose to ignore what we know; we can refuse to pursue the truth about ourselves; we can follow a path that looks more conventional, that will please others, that will round out some proud narrative we have imagined for ourselves. We may find we are living our lives as a symbolic correction to family expectations or perceived curses; we may think we are going to show others the error of their ways or undo a historic wrong … whatever our inauthentic paths are, and there can be thousands, I do believe that even in a postmodern age each of us has the capacity to discern something genuine within.

I think you know what I am talking about. It’s plain as day to me.

In making big decisions we often give more weight to the risks than  the benefits. I have read about this in economic decisions, where we so fear losing money that we miss the opportunities to make it. Our bias toward doing the less risky thing may at times lead us into lives of unexpected conformity and debilitating compromise.

So allow me to act as a countervailing force: I think you are going to be fine. You are resourceful, hardworking, adventurous, young and strong. If it’s not time to settle down yet, then don’t settle down. If you lose him, I am sorry. If he will not wait for you then that is how he has to live his life. There is nothing you can do about that. You have to live your life.

Greater riches await you if you steer your course precisely. Visualize these social forces as constant distorting trade winds, bending us always away from our true direction, so that we are always sailing past the island we think we’re sailing toward. If we do not constantly correct for these trade winds, instead of beaching on that tiny island we have dreamed of, we land at the big island where everybody else is, and we have to pay all those dock charges at the marina, and nothing seems quite right for us.

In short, for now, I counsel delaying. That might be the best course for now. Delay. Delay, and keep moving.

At some point you will reach a crisis and risk losing this man. If you are to live your own life you must be willing to let him go. That doesn’t mean you have to break up or that you have to lose him. Things might work out. Maybe he will come to you. But you must be willing to risk losing him; you must be willing to pay the price to preserve your own soul.

Losing him is better than losing yourself.

And now I sit and wait for these photos to show up somewhere. It’s been about 18 months. Nothing has shown up. I regularly Google my name and the email address I was using at the time, as well as the other person’s “name.” Nothing.

I don’t know for sure that these photos were intended for public viewing, but it’s easy to imagine that they would end up that way. They might be there, sitting on some website, waiting to be discovered. Or they might not be. I don’t know. I never will.

Now I wonder, how am I to live the rest of my life with the knowledge that these photos could, at any time, turn up? How can I have this hanging over my head, the idea that in a year’s time, 10 years’ time, 40 years’ time, these photos will turn up? Obviously there’s nothing I can do. I can’t stop it if it’s going to happen, but how do I live with the anxiety that they could turn up, and ruin a job, a relationship, a family life? I also have paranoid fantasies about the future of the Internet, where everything is easily retrievable, where facial recognition snaps to life and brings up every record from every corner of the Internet of a person and their past.

I wonder, is this the one stupid mistake I made that will come back to tear apart everything?

It’s affected my life. I don’t feel safe. My normal high anxiety levels are higher. I used to want to achieve in an area of public visibility, and was making some good roads to becoming known in certain areas. I’ve now retracted, feeling certain that the moment I achieve any sort of profile, my past — this one or two stupid weeks of bad decisions — will come and get me. Similarly, when I meet people who I think I could have a relationship with, I think “What if, somewhere down the track, they found out? They saw?” So, again, I retract.

That’s it. I know that in a way it’s an unsolvable problem. I also know that it’s at least partially fed by my own highly sensitive neuroses, and partially fed by fact. I can’t tell how much of each equals a reasonable amount.

If you’ve got any answers for me at all, any way to manage this without tipping over the edge, I’d certainly appreciate them.

Shouldn’t Have Said Cheese

Dear Shouldn’t Have Said Cheese,

Thank you for confiding in me. I’m grateful for the courage you have shown in sharing your story. The fact that you were able to confide in me shows that you still trust some people.

Truly, it is difficult to live in a world where some people cannot be trusted. Yet we must live in that world. We cannot eliminate all those who might at some point not be trustworthy. We cannot always know what people are thinking. Even the smartest of us can be deceived. There is no shame in that.

I hope you will continue to show your trust, and take my advice and reach out again, to get some help with your anxiety. Now is a good time to do so, because anxiety can get worse as you go along. If you reach out now for help managing and minimizing your anxiety, the opposite will happen: You will gradually find ways to form trusting and strong relationships, which will make you feel more secure in the world, and you will learn ways to cope with these fears about the future that come up from time to time.

Here is a site provided by the Anxiety Disorders Association of America that will help you find a therapist to talk to about this and other concerns you may have. (Please note that if you do not want to provide your address, you can leave those fields blank and search simply by state or, if you are in Canada, by province. Also note that the First Name and Last Name fields are for the name of a therapist, if you know of one you want to search for.)

This one incident has left you anxious, and it is important not to let that anxiety grow.  You also mention feelings of paranoia and a desire not to tip over the edge. So I suggest you find a therapist to work with now, before you have to suffer more worry and anxiety. This situation can be resolved. If you get help for this now, I think you will be able to look back on this and see that it turned out OK. You will feel stronger and optimistic about the future.

I have great faith in the ability of trained psychotherapists and psychiatrists to help us overcome problems of anxiety and paranoia. I myself have been told by a Ph.D. psychologist that I have a tendency toward anxiety, and I have been helped by my many conversations with him.

So I know from personal experience that it is possible to be helped in situations like this. But it is important to act.

So find someone to talk to about this and commit to seeing that person regularly for a while. After a bond of trust develops, you will be amazed at how relieved you feel.

Why? you may ask. Because he is a complete and utter slob! He grew up on a farm and spends lots of time outside tending to his garden and fixing his many lawnmowers that he has fished out of the trash. I spend hours cleaning, all for him to destroy the house in literally a matter of minutes. It is ridiculous. To add insult to injury he does not wash his hands … EVER. Not even after going poo … I feel like I was hoodwinked and bamboozled, because there is no way in hell I would have ever put myself in a situation to live with one of my parents at this point and time in my life. I have expressed my frustration with the situation, but he doesn’t want to ever talk about it. I want to move, but right now I am not financially stable and I am so close to finishing school, I don’t want to jeopardize my studies.

Grown Woman Living in Daddy’s House

Dear Grown Woman Living in Daddy’s House

I don’t think you are an ungrateful daughter. I think you are a person reacting to a shitty situation in an understandable way.

After years of being self-sufficient you’ve been thrown back into dependent daughterhood. That has got to trigger some feelings you’re not prepared for. That’s got to be tough on the ego. It would be hard for it not to matter how well your father handled it.

And he’s not handling it all that sensitively, one must say. When our  survival is symbolically threatened, we sometimes reassure ourselves by making our immediate surroundings clean and healthy and spotless. It’s a good thing to do if you’re feeling threatened and insecure; it can cheer you up to clean house. So here’s an interesting symbolic contradiction: Here you have come to your dad to help you survive, and he is providing for you, yet also doing things that symbolically threaten your survival: Dirt, poo, infection, disease, loss of control!

Subconsciously it may be felt as aggression: Your dad is threatening your survival rather than nurturing it. He’s bringing danger into the house. He’s bringing dirt and disease into the house, meaning, symbolically, into your body. So he’s polluting you when you are trying to regain your strength. The literal-minded may quibble but we’re talking about emotions that take place below our conscious awareness, in the language of symbols.

On the surface he’s doing you a favor, and good for him. But he’s also not admitting your personhood or your power: He’s retaining his own power over his own place. That’s the prerogative of property ownership in a society that worships property. You are expected to grant him the prerogatives of ownership. But he’s not accommodating you, really, as a person. It may even feel as though he’s trying to push you out.

His hospitality may be begrudging; his messing up the house may be passive-aggressive; he probably wants to go on living as he is accustomed to living. There may also be some unspoken disapproval of your reversal of fortune, and perhaps a little unspoken “I told you so,” if you have been too independent for his liking. He may even be enjoying being the father to a relatively helpless daughter once again — a daughter who cannot force him to wipe his feet.

Assuming your parents are divorced, is he also repeating a pattern of conflict he had with your mother? Could be. They could have had fights over just such things. If those fights led to their divorce, you may also be experiencing uncomfortable memories of an earlier symbolic threat to your survival. Also, not to jump ahead, but this could also be a preview of the role reversal that happens as your dad ages and weakens and you take on the role of caretaker, being sure he washes his hands and wipes his feet, as a mother would do in raising a child.

But that’s just the messy symbolic stuff it’s my job to dredge up. On the surface, in the practical present, you’re a capable adult woman in control of her life and career. You’ve made yourself a plan that requires you to do some compromising. That’s what this is: It’s a conscious compromise. You’re still making your own choices. This is just temporary.

You’ve found shelter in a bad time. Your dad is your ally. He loves you. He’s providing you a place.  He’s doing what he can, in his way.

Hang in there, finish your course of study, thank your dad and stay positive. When you look back on this, as uncomfortable as it is now, you’ll be grateful there was a place for you to go. With the passage of time it may even become a fond if bittersweet memory.

I know she loved me more than anything, and she sacrificed a lot to try to give me a good life, but as a kid, I felt as if I was battling her alcoholism for her. I would constantly find single-serving wine bottles stuffed between couch cushions, and it was an almost nightly occurrence for her to drink herself to sleep, leaving the house a mess and me to throw away the empty bottles and rinse out the glasses she would leave next to the couch. After she would go to bed, it was usually a coin flip whether or not she would rise from her sleep to stalk around the house staring blindly at everything and shouting incoherently. More than once she, thoroughly drunk, thought I was a burglar and tried to attack me. The first time this happened I was 11, and in her mind she had gone back in time and thought I was going to steal her baby (me). She nearly strangled me.

What made my childhood much easier was the fact that I had grandparents nearby who did not seem to struggle with alcoholism or poverty or depression. They were good people who seemed to rise above all the stupidity we are capable of. In fact they helped my mother make ends meet on a few occasions, and they always seemed to come to the rescue when we were in a jam. I felt more often than not that my grandparents were like my real parents, and my mother was like some big crazy sister who loved me a lot but was still trying to figure things out.

And from a young age, the lesson they kept quietly teaching me was that alcoholism was a demon in our family. It ran in our blood, and had ruined cousins, uncles and sisters. And the best way to avoid this fate was not to start at all.

And for my part I promised myself that I would never drink, or smoke, or do drugs.

And I never did.

A lot of people may not believe me, but I have never so much as sipped a beer, or taken a drag from a cigarette. And there is my problem. Everyone who knows me knows that I don’t drink, and I feel like I’ve put myself in this box where I will never drink.

This was fine for my early 20s, and in some ways I felt superior for not having blown hundreds of dollars at the bars, or woken up with hangovers, or been so drunk I couldn’t remember what happened to me. I have always been in control of my life, and that is something I take pride in.

But I also feel like there is this whole side to life that I may be missing out on, and that maybe I should relax these rules I’ve created for myself. I feel that a lot of people can’t relate to the fact I don’t drink, and I also would sometimes really like to be able to have a beer with my friends and be their equal, and not this always-sober outsider. A few weeks ago at a champagne brunch with friendly strangers who didn’t know I don’t drink, the waiter poured me a glass of champagne, and when they toasted I held it up and looked at it for a long time before I realized my wife was staring at me.

What to do?

Dear What to Do,

Testing yourself for alcoholism is like testing yourself for flammability. You’re probably not. But what if you are?

“Given the fact that alcohol-dependence seems highly heritable,” why take the risk?

Why not instead ask what needs alcohol might satisfy, and then find other ways to satisfy those same needs? Why not seek safe, life-enhancing alternatives to drinking? Why not read Abraham Maslow and design your life around the quest for peak experiences?

We raise our glasses and drink ceremonially to sanctify some event or passage. We all drink from the same bottle. By imbibing the same drink, we are joined; it is a kind of sacrament. You can mime the gestures but something pulls you to fully engage. Of course it does. This is not just about getting a little champagne in your mouth. It is a powerful ritual.

My suggestion is to find even better ways, more direct, honest and compelling ways to have this same ritual bonding and expression of shared esteem and purpose. I suggest you make this a lifelong pursuit. Make it a way of undoing for good the perhaps multigenerational history of alcoholism in your family.

This way, if those who dispute the role of genes in alcoholism are correct, and behavioral factors are more important, then you will still be doing something to eradicate certain behaviors that were leading to case after case of alcoholism. You will be finding something that members of your family have a particular need for, and satisfying that need.

Look for something that seems cool but not too cool, something you’ve always wanted to do, something you’re drawn to, that’s maybe a little outside your normal range but not totally kooky and weird.

For instance, it may be possible to participate in the ecstatic communality of a sweat lodge. I don’t know. Maybe a sweat lodge would be too weird for you. I don’t know how much facial hair you have, or what your body mass index is. I’m just saying, identify the underlying principle and then find something that suits your social tastes.

That there are things wrong in the world, that there are things so awful in this world that knowledge of them drives us to want to blot them out of consciousness. Read today’s piece by Noam Chomsky, for instance, for a reminder of how thinly “normal American life” veils our history of brutal atrocities.

How are you supposed to think about these things and not feel as though you are going mad? How are you supposed to have a conscience and not feel trapped by history? How are you to take all this in, as a young person? How to reconcile knowledge of evil done in one’s name with the innocent desire to believe in one’s country, to identify with one’s countrymen, to feel strong and patriotic and confident about the future?

These, too, are legitimate questions. So, my friend, I urge you to take seriously the genetic and environmental risk factors for alcoholism, and actively seek ways to have ecstatic experiences in this insane world without killing yourself. Adopt adaptive behaviors that don’t make things worse.