I definitely respect teachers; this is not a teacher-bashing e-mail. I personally know how difficult it is! I also have a wonderful fiancé, only a few years my senior, who is a doctor and promises the world to me. He wants nothing more than to keep me on my pedestal and give me everything I ever wanted. And did I mention my friends? They are fabulous! We have only grown closer since meeting at age 18, the same age I met my fiancé.

So why do I feel so dissatisfied and so unsettled? Why do I want to see what else is out there if I have achieved the personal life that so many desire? After graduating, I was offered that great D.C. job, and I was accepted into those great graduate schools, but I passed them up to stay with my wonderful partner in my home state. I figured if it was difficult to find a man who was so willing to commit to marriage these days (as that is what older women told me) that I'd be crazy to pass it up. However, sometimes I feel as if I have nothing to live for. I feel that at nearly 26, I already know how this will play out: I will be the pampered housewife/elementary teacher of a successful doctor who will be given anything she wants at the snap of her fingers. I should be happy/ecstatic ... right?

So why am I not? Why do I have this need to struggle and feel pain? Why can't I feel blessed with the easy way out when so many others don't even have the choice? I have already set and canceled a wedding date due to this inner dialogue. A part of me wants to break free and run away somewhere new and conquer my world on my own and totally alone, but then my rational side kicks in. What if I'm lonely? What if I don't succeed? What if I end up alone? What if karma bites me for breaking my fiancé's heart?

I don't want to look back when I'm older and think of "the one who got away" or "the dreams that were never fulfilled." Is it more devastating to lose dreams or people? Please help a young reader who feels like she is being suffocated with good fortune. I really want to be ecstatic with what I have as it would make this simple life much easier to accept.

Future Trophy Wife

Dear Future Trophy Wife,

Why do you feel "so dissatisfied and so unsettled"?

Because bourgeoise life is soul death? That could be why.

"Why do I have this need to struggle and feel pain?" you ask.

Because knowledge is acquired at a cost. Sometimes that cost is disruption of the settled life. Sometimes that cost is the disappointment of a loved one.

Silence about the true self, over a lifetime, accrues a crushing soul-debt that one day comes due in madness.

So tell the good doctor that he must be prepared: You may suddenly want to live in a hut in the woods and carve statues out of walnuts and eat berries and smear them over your face and make raucous vocal noises. You might want to travel to the South Pole to see the glaciers calving, or live in a New York loft learning wood sculpture, or adopt 12 kids from war-torn Afghanistan who otherwise would be raised by totalitarian Taliban freaks, or take up Expressionism, or become a motorcycle mechanic and have an old Indian disassembled on the kitchen floor, or take a sudden passion for kayaking and ride off for weeks to travel the rapids.

He might have other ideas. He might think you're the perfect ornament. He might not know he thinks this. So you'd better tell him now.

Privileged people don't always know what they think. In fact, not having to figure out and say what you really think is itself a privilege; having things just work out is a privilege.

It is hard to give up privilege. Duh.

So try to read the invisible ink of his cultural expectations. He may not even know what they are. Social progress beats its head against this immortal fact: Our most invidious and regressive beliefs are the ones we do not know we have.

We must discover, painfully, how backward we are. Then, painfully, we must work to change. Who would do this if not forced to? Men in the 1970s at the onset of the feminist revolution changed their ways not so much because they deeply understood what it was like to be oppressed but because they deeply craved the acceptance of the women they loved. Over time, certain habits of egalitarian regard took up residence in our hearts. But there was little heroism in this.

Or do I speak only for myself? Perhaps.

Anyway, what do you do now?

You make a decision to live your life with seriousness. You make your life as you want to make it. You pursue whatever it is with seriousness and passion. You find satisfaction in things that matter to you. You make peace with your decisions. You don't blame other people nor lament the life unlived.

And when the occasional doubt creeps up, you entertain the notion that perhaps, just perhaps, you are doing exactly what you are supposed to be doing -- fulfilling a destiny that is good and true, whatever that destiny is. And if years later, having chosen to go your own way, you are living in a dingy apartment and things have not worked out quite the way you had hoped -- not yet, anyway -- and you see the doctor dancing at a glittering ball with a glittering wife on his arm and she is wearing the jewels he bought for her which he could just as easily have bought for you if you had only said yes ... well, what will your answer be to that future you who looms large in your fears? Will your answer be that you are glad you saved your own soul?

Or will your answer be that a life of quiet comfort and conformity was really the life you wanted all along?

How can you answer this question?

You answer the question based on what you know now. That's all you can do.

---

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The person is my ex-boyfriend who cheated on me and broke my heart when I was 19 years old. He recently found my phone number and contacted me with the pretense that he wanted to ask for my forgiveness. In short, we have met up a couple of times, kissed, have talked about pursuing something more, but I keep putting it off because I feel terrible about what's already been done. At the same time I feel like there has to be a reason for me sneaking behind my bf's back and doing this to him. We have had our fights, and honestly I have tried to break up with him, but when I do so he always sways me otherwise. My ex is not a dime, either, as he has his baggage and I know I wouldn't want him as a replacement -- immediately anyway. My ex always brings up the fact that we should give it try since we loved each other once, and frankly they both seem like the same person. Ahhh!

Taffy (Pulled Two Ways)

Dear Taffy,

I like that word "docility." You say your eyes have been opened to the "docility" of your relationship.

The Oxford English Dictionary definition of "docile" is "Apt to be taught; ready and willing to receive instruction; teachable." Its second definition is "Submissive to training; tractable, manageable." As in, "The docile wife would obey without a murmur." Docile, like docent, comes from the Latin root "docere," to teach.

So you have been teachable. Perhaps you have been taught all you can be taught and are hungry for new knowledge.

You want some excitement that you are not getting in your relationship and you are getting it by kissing this former boyfriend. But you feel bad about that.

Yet you say, "I feel like there has to be a reason for me sneaking behind my bf's back and doing this to him."

There probably is a reason, which is not the same thing as a justification. You're doing to your current boyfriend what your ex-boyfriend did to you.

Perhaps you hope that sneaking around behind your boyfriend's back means that he deserves it somehow. The logic there seems to be, "I'm doing this, therefore it must be OK. For why would I do it if I didn't have a reason?"

Of course, the reason isn't the point.

So the wheel turns. You're in the grip of powerful forces. As are the titans of Wall Street, whom we vilify. Money and sex. It's not like we could just tame them.

I also like your use of the word "dime," as when you said your ex "is not a dime, either." I had to look it up but I liked what I found, i.e., a metonym for a "10," the term "10" having been immortalized by the Blake Edwards film, which one might say is "eponymous," a word I used to detest in rock album reviews as it seemed so unnecessary when one could say "of the same name" just as easily.

And note the difference between metonym and metaphor: "When people use metonymy, they do not typically wish to transfer qualities from one referent to another as they do with metaphor: there is nothing press-like about reporters or crown-like about a monarch, but 'the press' and 'the crown' are both common metonyms."

That is, there is nothing "dime-like" about your ex-boyfriend, even if he were a 10. And all this comparison reminds us of what's going on in the relationship. You are restless, and you are thinking maybe there's something better out there, and there's something about the act of ranking pleasures that leads us to consider if we might do better elsewhere.

"'Blake’s timeless original encapsulated the fallacy of "the grass is always greener" in relationships,' said (Hyde Park chairman Ashok) Amritraj," who was at that time, two years ago, talking about doing a remake.  (Are they still working on the remake? Man, that movie sure made for lots of posters on undergraduates' dorm-room walls.) By the way, have you ever seen the original poster for the move "10"? We don't tend to remember that one.

But we digress. But thank you for sending me on that little trek! It's one of those digressions I'm often vilified for. But this one was suggestive, or productive, and I don't mean like a productive cough. It was illustrative of my point -- that we all want to stray from whatever is familiar. We grow tired of the routine. We seek things that make us light up. Our brains seek things that make them light up. That's what the brain is for, aside from figuring out wiring diagrams. It's for lighting up. And what does it light up? Is there a "spirit" or "soul" that lights up, or is it purely the lizardlike reflex of a faceless bundle of neurons?

I dunno. I really don't. But I feel that we can all be much healthier if we tone down the moralizing and recognize that much of what we struggle with is beyond our control, neither good nor bad, just the car we're riding in. We're just trying to stay in the car we're riding in, or drive the car we're driving, or some other equally tantalizing and yet idiotic pseudo-mystical metaphor.

The truth is simpler. He turns you on.

You are young and easily turned on. It's an animal thing. So don't feel bad. I can't tell you what is right or wrong.

I can suggest this: I suggest that you act in a way that makes you feel strong and unafraid.

Try that. Try acting in a way that feels strong and unafraid. Whatever that means. It might mean telling your current boyfriend the truth. Or it might mean continuing to see what happens. It's up to you. It's your show.

---

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I didn't sign a lease so how do I tell them I am moving out and moving in with my boyfriend?

Also, the only reason my parents let me move out was because I would basically be living with my grandparents. They refused to even let me look at other apartments. They do not like my boyfriend but I love him and am ready to take this next step with him after four years. How do I do this without ruining the relationship between my family and me? 

Confused Mover

Dear Confused Mover,

How old did you say you are? Almost 19? OK, well, unless you live in Alabama, Nebraska, Mississippi or the territory of Puerto Rico, you reached your age of majority at 18 and your parents can't legally prevent you from moving out and living with your boyfriend.

But they can still make your life a living hell.

You are basically in transition. You are moving from being a powerless serf, i.e., a minor under the control of your parents, to being an independent person with the right to vote and live where you want.This happens in stages. For instance, you can't legally buy alcohol yet. So there's that. But you can vote. And you can live on your own.

So you want to show respect for your family's feelings while at the same time asserting your new power as an independent person. It's tricky.

Knowing that in the end it's your choice what to do, perhaps you can talk to your parents and grandparents honestly about what you are going through -- that you don't what to hurt your grandparents' feelings or go against your family's wishes, but that it's time for you to grow up and take on adult roles and responsibilities.

Tell your family members that you love them and do not want to disappoint them but that you also are ready to live a life of your own as an adult.

All the while, keep in mind that they really can't stop you.

You say your parents would only let you move out if you moved into this place at your grandparents'. So that sounds like this was a condition.

Agreements usually have conditions and expiration dates. Surely your parents did not intend for you to live at your grandparents' place until you're 60. So think about what your agreement with them really is. Would living at your grandparents for six months, or a year, seem reasonable? And are they completely opposed, forever, to your living with your boyfriend? Or are there certain conditions he needs to meet? Maybe they haven't said exactly what they expect of him. (Or maybe, OK, they just don't like him.) You need to know more.

That's why I suggest having a heart-to-heart talk with your parents before you do anything else. You have to get some things clarified.

Moving in with your boyfriend sounds like it's the big issue. If I were you, aside from hearing them out on what they think of him,  I'd sort of play down that aspect of your plans. In fact, if you can, you might be wise to first find a place that you can afford on your own. See how you like living on your own. Learn the ins and outs of dealing with landlords and maintaining a household. That's how I would do it. In stages.

Here's why: Things might not work out with you and your boyfriend. It's great that you've been together for four years but you're both still pretty young. If you get a place together and then break up, your life is going to suck for a while. You may have to move again, or get a roommate, and that's chaos and trouble that you don't need, especially while you're getting over your first big breakup.

I'm not saying it's bound to happen. I'm just thinking of you. Why make trouble for yourself?

Also, if you get your own place, your grandparents will feel better about your leaving their place.

Good luck!

---

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Woman 1, I've known since high school and she grew up in a home with a neurotic mother and her on-again-off-again boyfriend who was addicted to drugs. Her biological father never seemed to care much for her after he got married again and had a child with his new wife.

She was very creative and funny when she was younger but she started dating high-risk guys as she got older: junkies, alcoholics, abusers, hitters. Usually, older than her but not always. I've always tried to gently tell her that these guys were no good but she either kept telling me that she could change them or resented my advice as she saw it as a veiled attempt to get her to dump the guys and go out with me.

I eventually broke off contact with her because I couldn't take the late-night, sobbing phone calls or how she dumped Alcoholic A for Junkie B. I heard from a mutual friend, she started smoking crack.

Woman 2 is another friend of mine I've known even longer (since kindergarten). She grew up in a home with a complete family unit but with an overbearing mother and an alcoholic, distant father. Thankfully, she doesn't do drugs but she lives in a rich fantasy world.

She always had low self-esteem (which I find preposterous as she is good-looking and has a vibrant personality) and dated older guys. For instance, her date for the junior prom was a 21-year-old guy who she told her parents was 18. She was married to a guy who was six years her senior but their marriage fell apart as he was too immature (her word) and he was cheating on her.

After the marriage ended she started dating a guy who's 18. She and I had kind of a falling out when I told that that's not really appropriate for a woman of 32. Sure, age is just a number but I think her actions speak to a larger problem. She told me many times that she doesn't want to grow up. I fear she's going to mess up this kid's life or he's going to move on and hurt her. He's in town for summer break (he goes to college on the West Coast and plans on transferring back to the East Coast next semester to be closer to my friend) and she won't return my phone calls or e-mails.

Woman 3 is my sister. She and I grew up in a home with a workaholic mom and an overbearing, emotionally abusive stepfather. I have my own issues that I'm starting to work through ... but that's a whole other letter.

A while back she disappeared, which put my mom and me through an emotional ringer. She turned up a year later, announcing that she was going to be married to a man 23 years her senior (she's younger than I am). He seems like a nice guy but their relationship is creepy. As far as I can tell, he doesn't abuse her in any way but he and my sister tend to drink a lot.

We've kind of drifted apart since I told her that I support and love her but I don't wholly approve of her marriage and she moved a considerable distance away for work. I'd like to reconnect with her but I'm finding it difficult.

So, I guess my question to you is how do you deal with or try to help women who have "daddy issues"? I mean, I could be way off-base with my assessment (as you like to say, I'm not a therapist), but there seems to be a common thread here. I don't really feel comfortable telling any of the three women to seek help. Woman 1 has already tried and failed therapy many times, Woman 2 hasn't been, as far as I know, and she doesn't seem to think that she may have some kind of emotional issue, and I don't want to tell my sister to seek help as it might ruin her marriage. And that's my dilemma.

Thanks for your advice.

A Friend and Brother

Dear Friend and Brother,

When you see these women, you feel like you know what is going on with them and would like to help them. But they are not receptive to your help. They seem closed off. This is puzzling and frustrating. Because you recognize what is going on.

Of course you do. You know what it is like to grow up with that sort of thing.

We pick out people who have the same kind of unhappiness we do. And we gravitate toward them and try to help them.

Many of us are like this. Every time we try to help someone else and fail, it feels weird. It feels bad. We do not know exactly what is going on but it is upsetting.

Until one day we realize that what we are doing is avoiding our own pain. We have learned to act as though it is not our pain that is at issue, but other people's.

A part of us feels that we have conquered certain things and wants to share our strength. But another part of us wants to admit that we are the one who is in pain. We want to be the center of care and attention. But we focus on others. We have told the world that we are OK, we're fine, and feel we have to be true to that. It's these other people who need help. We are generous and kind; we are willing to give them help. But they don't seem to appreciate our help.

And why is that?

Because they recognize us. It is like one drowning person offering to help another.

But we go on like this for a long time, trying to fix the unhappiness of others, skating on the surface of our feelings while underneath we are a colossal mess, a roiling chaos of abuse and anger and hurt and fear and brilliance.

And then one day we fall through the ice.

Only then, when we realize that we ourselves are drowning, do we call for help. Only then, when are we truly helpless, is it permissible to cry wolf.

So let me speak to you in this way. I sense that we are a lot alike. At the risk of sounding formulaic, my guess is that your childhood with your stepfather involved deep emotional pain, which you have not yet fully felt or allowed to come to the surface. You have pushed this pain aside and will tell people that you have mostly gotten over it. But the truth is far from that. The truth is that you are in a holding pattern in which you do not seem to be able to make genuine contact with others. You try, but something does not happen. There is no genuine warmth there. You would like to be rescued from this but you feel you have to do it on your own.

You feel you've mostly got it together and just need to make some adjustments.

Me, I think you are in for a surprise, that you can scarcely imagine what is actually coming your way. But don't worry. It will be weird and scary but you will come out the other side happier. If you go to this place of pain and chaos and hold yourself under long enough, if you can sit with these feelings of deprivation and outrage, with the help of a positive witness such as a therapist or a spiritual guide, you can be helped. And then you can in turn help others.

But you have to really go there. It is not pretty. There are monsters.

You cannot help these women until you have gone into the scary depths yourself and battled what is there. You must get some scars. You must take some blows. Then they will recognize the scars on you. They will see that you have been through what they have been through and have come through on the other side.

It won't take much talk then. It will be evident. They will feel it. You won't need to correct them or lecture them. You will be a quiet source of strength and an example. It will be simple. They will want to be with you and they will watch how you have dealt with these things and either take your lesson to heart or not. It won't be your problem. In that way, you will become useful to them. 

---

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On the other hand, my boyfriend, roommates and friends here in the city are supportive, but don't understand me at all as they all have large families scattered around the region and few friends at home. They know this type of emotional and depressed response from me is not normal, but I feel like they're just brushing me off as overreacting. How can I come to terms with the move?

Childhood-home-less

Dear Childhood-home-less,

I think you have to go to this home and walk around and spend some time there and say goodbye to it. You have to sit there on the lawn or in the backyard and sketch or take photos or write something, and put some pieces of this house in a container to keep. Maybe you can take some soil and some paint and some things, a favorite thing or two from this house. You need a ritual. You need a way to say goodbye.

That's what you should do. Go to this house and spend time there and say goodbye to it. Talk to the house and let it talk to you and make your peace with it.

There ought to be rituals for the leaving of houses. But we just call the movers.

This is an opportunity to learn how to gracefully let go of things.

Letting go of a childhood home is particularly hard. As children, we often dream that the house will be ours legally and financially the way we have always thought of its being ours spiritually. So that way the spiritual, the emotional and the financial could come into harmony. But that is not what happens with real estate. Because we are not connected to the land the way our souls are; there is an intermediary layer of commerce between us and the land our souls love and feel kinship with. The land is a legal object, legally separable from the trees on it, legally separable from its status as earth. Strange, but that is how we have found it possible to be so mobile and do so many things.

The house is not yours. It's as simple as that. Maybe you thought it would be yours, and maybe it could have been yours if things had turned out differently, but no.

These are hard truths to bear. Letting go of the childhood home is about growing up. Growing up is about accepting what is ours and what is not ours. I am speaking as much to myself as to you when I say these things. It is painful. That is about growing up, too -- learning to bear the pain of loss with grace. I have felt so awful about the places that have gone through my family. I have felt that these places were mine but they were not really mine. I was not the titleholder. Yet I wished for other people to hold on to them for me. I was not willing to buy them myself. That's the hard truth of it. I thought others should hold on to them because I thought that was the right thing to do, the way it should be.

Oh, save us from the torment of knowing the right thing to do!

I could have bought the land my mother lived her last years on because it so pained me to think of its being sold, but in the end I let it be sold because it did not make financial sense for me to borrow the money to buy it and keep it and pay for it every month just so it would be there so I could hike up there once a year or so. I had to let it go. I have a life in California. I have a house.  Yet it made me very sad to see my mother's land go -- almost as sad as it was to see my mother herself go!

It was the end of a dream, really -- the idea that my mother would keep that place and we would all gather there and be a happy family.

So now, these days, I think I will be happier if I learn to let go of things more quickly.

Let go and move on and keep skipping down the road.

Maybe you can learn this, too. Maybe you can summon your best memories of this place, and  give form to them in a set of photographs and memories. Maybe you can write something long and detailed about this house and keep it, or give copies of it to people so they know how much this place meant to you. Maybe you can make one last trip there and take photographs and sit on the porch for a while.

And then let it go.

---

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All our mutual friends knew. He sent me desperate e-mails telling me he regretted it and still loved me for a good five months after I left. I didn't answer.

Since then, I've done damn well, if I say so myself. (And I do. There aren't many resources around to congratulate people who manage to deal with the nuclear aftermath of these experiences, and be OK with themselves, and build anew. It's hard. We need some applause.) I didn't talk to him. I didn't talk to her. I didn't blast about his behavior to his friends, or his colleagues, or his parents. I didn't insist that friends choose sides, and I didn't fantasize about revenge, or hope for his imminent downfall and impotence.

I moved to another country. I made new friends, got into one of the world's best universities, quietly went to therapy, read an awful lot of Anna Akhmatova ("but I warn you I am living for the last time"), baked, succeeded professionally, had a lot of fantastic sex, traveled to glorious places on my own, met the famous and the wise, took risks, and have, in general, built myself an utterly brilliant life, not out of proving a point but out of wanting to be OK. I also learnt a lot of things about living a life with integrity. You know, Adult Shit.

To which I say to myself: well done. You did it.

There's one problem. We live in a cheating-rife culture. My job means that I'm exposed to a lot of celebrity news, and lately it's been pocked and rotted through with talk of affairs.

Time heals all wounds, given a certain definition of "heals." The saying should more correctly state that time lays a thin covering over wounds, until something negates that protection.

It doesn't happen all the time -- indeed, it's rare -- but talk of cheating, particularly flippant talk, as if it's not a matter of importance, can reach a deep pulse point under my skin. It gets to it, and it presses, and I am completely ravaged. Cary, I spent a lot of time trying to convince people I was suffering during my eight months underwater, and I still don't feel completely as if my claims to it are believed, but when that pulse point is hit, I suffer. I suffer in an acute sense -- in the wolves-down-the-hill, sun-exploding, bone-crushing, empire-falling way that innocent people suffer when evils are visited upon them without provocation or reason. I feel all the injustice and betrayal of their act rushing through my skin. It's bad. Sometimes I lie still and can't move.

What do I do? Unfaithfulness is, regretfully, a part of modern life, and I'm going to have to deal with that. How do I pad the pulse point so that it doesn't bring me right back to the moment when I first read the e-mail and entered a state of physical, hyperventilating shock? How do I live, I suppose is the question, with what has been done to me?

Still Pulsing

Dear Still Pulsing,

Eight months may be long enough to find some distractions and gain some accomplishments, but not long enough to heal from what you went through. Maybe you need more time.

You have been hurt but also you have come to new knowledge about yourself. This knowledge will take time to feel like a natural part of you.

Now you know how it feels to be on the receiving end of the cruelty we dismiss as "human nature" or "the way things are," and you see that "the way things are" really does wreck people. But you do not yet know how to square this knowledge with the glib and edgy style that passes for wit in the social and professional circles of celebrity media.

You're supposed to laugh but you wince.

It's not funny to you anymore.

Of course it isn't.

You can speak up but you may not be heard. Worse, you may invite ridicule. It's your right to speak up when stupid or insensitive people perpetuate social victimization by making light of it. But there are risks for the person who speaks up. Things get really awkward and people go back to their desks.

Not that there's anything wrong with that. I personally love an uncomfortable scene, when uncomfortable truth is spoken. Social progress does not happen until the victims speak and make the perps squirm.

But I'm thinking of you. There's no reason you have to make yourself the butt of scorn. You don't have to be a martyr to the cause. You can bear the callousness of others with quiet dignity, while you make slow changes in whom you choose to associate with.

Sure, your blood boils. If you choose to speak you could say, in a level tone of voice, that you no longer find infidelity funny. You could. It's all a matter of what you choose to do. Take heed of what you feel and put it to good use.

And if you're looking for validation, I can certainly offer you that. There is nothing wrong with you. You still feel the pain for a reason. You were hurt. It is not just in your head. And you are re-experiencing the trauma. It is being triggered. If you go in for psychological help, you might seek out some help in the area of desensitizing yourself to prior trauma; perhaps someone who specializes in PTSD, or who practices EMDR, may be able to help.

One final thing. When new knowledge comes, we have to make room for it; we have to part with old knowledge; that means admitting that we were wrong about certain things. Part of this new knowledge may involve seeing how you were taught to allow people to treat you badly and not to speak up for yourself. I am not saying that you deserve what happened. I am saying that all of us are taught disempowering habits of cultural accommodation, and as we grow and get knocked around we have to examine them and learn how to protect ourselves. If you examine the social behaviors you were taught as a young child, and the belief system you carried into adulthood, you may find the cruel habits of those around you mirrored in your own psyche. That can be painful. But it is one of the only sure routes to change.

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