Dear Cary,
My younger sister is a 21-year-old college student who is “trapped” in an abusive relationship with her ex-boyfriend, who is 35 years old. She first met him when she was 19, fell in love with him and eventually moved in with him. After they started living together, she discovered that he was emotionally and verbally abusive, to the point that after six months, she had had enough, broke it off and moved out. The problem now is that for over a year, he refuses to accept that their relationship is over. Although he has not physically abused her, he has “forced” her into his car, screamed at her in public, in front of her professors and classmates, snatched her cellphone out of her hand to see if she has been talking to/texting other guys. He stalks her, physically, following her around town, staking out her apartment, and electronically, constantly checking her cellphone, email, Facebook, Amazon accounts, etc. (During the time that they were living together, he managed to get access to these accounts, and somehow manipulate the password access such that he continues to have access, despite my sister’s attempts to change passwords, etc.)
At one point things became so bad that she went to the police to file a report. She told me that the police were very unhelpful, reluctantly took the information, and seemed very unlikely to do anything unless/until he threatened her with physical harm. She says that she feels powerless to escape. At least that’s what she claims. I say this because she is by her own admission “not 100 percent certain” that she never wants to see him again. She is certain that there is no romantic future for them, but she claims she still has enough of an emotional tie to him that she is not entirely sure she wants him entirely out of her life.
Because they both live in a small college town, she cannot avoid him. He has no problem causing scenes in public which, to avoid, causes my sister to yield to his demands to talk, which often lead to screaming, crying fights, including threats on his part to commit suicide if she does not maintain contact with him.
She has told my parents and me about his abusive behavior, but because she attends school across the country, none of us have seen or can physically confront her “ex.” We are also hindered by the fact that she seems unwilling to do whatever it takes to get this psycho out of her life. It seems like during the time they lived together, he almost brainwashed her into thinking that she will never be able to fully escape his hold over her. We cannot be entirely sure that she is doing her utmost to escape his clutches.
What can I do to convince her that she needs to do whatever it takes to get him completely out of her life? And, assuming I can get her to see the light, what practical things can she do, without jeopardizing her safety, and, as much as possible, avoiding public humiliation and drama, which he has been all too willing to turn to in his efforts to control her?
A Concerned Older Brother
Dear Older Brother,
One thing that will help is to impress upon her how dangerous her situation is.
As the group AWARE points out, “Stalking is a serious, potentially life-threatening crime. Even in its less severe forms, it permanently changes the lives of the people who are victimized by this crime, as well as affecting their friends, families, and co-workers. Law enforcement is only beginning to understand how to deal with this relatively new crime.”
Send her to the website for AWARE — “Arming Women Against Rape and Endangerment” and talk with her about what she finds there.
Also, womenslaw.org, a project of the National Network to End Domestic Violence, has a good explanation of the state-by-state variations in restraining-order law.
The fact that the police were initially unhelpful should not deter her. She will need to be persistent and thorough, and follow the often maddening and apparently senseless procedures outlined by the courts.
An understanding of how women have been historically denied their rights and mistreated by the courts will also motivate her. Perhaps it will make her angry. Anger may be what she needs. The consciousness-raising that women did in order to gain rights and public understanding took time and involved much conflict.
Perhaps I can also provide a little personal history to show how difficult it can be to disentangle the personal from the political.
When women first started talking to men about our abuses of women, many found it hard to accept that the behavior we had been taught by our older role models was in fact harmful and hateful.
It was hard to change.
Many of us men did change. Some resisted loudly. It was not easy for us to give up behaviors that we had worked hard to master in the first place. What I mean is, when you’re an adolescent boy, you turn to your dad and other older males to find out how to treat women. You ask them what women want, how to treat girls, and in my case, my elder male role models were all sexists. So they taught us, their sons and nephews, to be sexists also. They didn’t call it learning how to be sexists. They called it “becoming a man.”
And then, after practicing what they had taught us during the sexual revolution in which sexual mores were loose and women were often compliant, we suddenly had to change. Women were suddenly demanding not only equality in the workplace but in the intimate spheres of romance and social life. Suddenly we were supposed to do the dishes and cook.We had not been taught even these elementary tasks of domestic maintenance! We were taught that there would always be women to do it! How crazy is that? And yet it’s true. There were degrees, of course. Some families were less sexist and more sensible than others. But for many, many men, this much was true:
We had to throw out what our fathers and uncles had taught us about how to treat women. We had to defy our fathers and uncles in this very intimate and emotional arena. It wasn’t easy.
Nor was it easy to give up our male privilege. It was not easy to give up our power. But many of us did. We saw that the assumptions we had been taught to make about women were wrong. We saw that how women were portrayed in movies and on television was wrong. We saw how this connected to women’s real unhappiness. I saw this in my own mother and in other women of her generation. I saw it and it hit home emotionally. I saw that how husbands and fathers treated women led to lasting harm. But it was not easy to give up what my father had taught me.
It was not easy and it was painful.
For there were bonding moments between men and boys that, though injurious to women, were emotionally satisfying. Sharing in the snicker and the leer, the knowing comment about a woman’s legs or breasts — these were our initiation into our fathers’ world, and with them came longed-for gestures of acceptance. These pitiful moments served as rites of passage: I whistled at a woman. I guess I’m a man now.
The courageous work of women over the past century has enshrined many rights in law and custom. Because much seems now settled, it may be hard for younger women to grasp the ways men still use the conventions of romance to oppress them. That’s what this man did. He used the conventions of romantic love to oppress your sister. Now he is using the vestiges of romantic love to render her vulnerable to further attacks. And he has turned to tormenting her in ways that could probably be prosecuted. Yet when she goes to the police she finds herself rebuffed. Here, too, she is confronting the vestiges of a centuries-old center of male power. When a young woman approaches an older policeman to complain of emotional torment arising out of a romantic relationship, vestiges of the old patriarchal order are reenacted.
So naturally she feels rebuffed. She feels as if her complaint was meager and unimportant. She has been patronized. She has been stripped of her dignity and power. It may sound hyperbolic to say this, but it is commonplace.
Knowing the larger picture can give one courage.
If your sister will educate herself about her history as a woman, she may make connections that motivate her psychologically and emotionally. That is what pioneering feminists did. That is why they met in consciousness-raising circles: They understood that if they were to succeed, they had to motivate each other. It was not only knowledge that they were transmitting, but courage.
This courage is what your sister needs. Women’s groups in her area will gladly provide some of that courage.
As for what else you can do, it might help to actually go there and talk with her. Go to the police station with her. Help her contact a lawyer who can talk to the police and frame the situation in such a way as to get a legal stay-away order.
There was a column a while back in which I was widely viewed to have given a too-lenient view of a domestic situation in which the man displayed traits that to many indicated that he was dangerous. So perhaps I can make up for it this time by insisting that this man’s behavior be treated as dangerous.
You can help by regularly checking in with her on the situation. You can also help by aiding her in changing her passwords. I don’t know the technical situation but it’s possible he knows not only her passwords but her supposedly safe “hints” — you know, the supposedly personal information only she would have. So please consult with someone about computer security and help her change her passwords in a more foolproof way.
In general, commit to giving her regular calls and pep talks to keep her motivated and confident. Visit her if at all possible. Impress upon her the seriousness of this man’s behavior. Be there in any way you can. Help her find a lawyer who can advocate for her in the courts. Don’t be discouraged. Be there. It’s what an older brother is for.
Cary,
My dear friend is about to marry the wrong person. He is a brilliant, outgoing man, always willing to put others first, and in this case to a fault. His fiancée has pursued him since high school. He avoided her romantic advances for years, knowing he could do better, but she is a very smart and manipulative person and succeeded in landing him as a boyfriend. In the early years, he occasionally expressed a desire to break up with her, but could not build the nerve to do so. Since then, almost a decade has passed, and they are still the only partners either has ever had. I know that if he could press a button and wake up tomorrow with her happy and living in another city, and him happy and single, he would do it. However, a number of factors have kept him from leaving her. Their best friends from childhood are very close-knit (for example, his older brother is best friends with her older brother), and their families are close friends as well. Understandably, he feels like to break up with her would shatter this group of people he cares so much about, not to mention the emotional impact it would have on her.
Now, if she were as kind and selfless as he, I would give them my blessing. However, she has a devious, controlling side that she has used, in combination with his naive kindness, to secure him as her lifelong mate. On a day-to-day basis, he is constantly made to apologize to her, as she finds fault with the most harmless guffaw or, heaven forbid, a difference in opinion. Recently, she forbade him from going on his own bachelor party because she suspected he would cheat on her, costing him thousands in plane and hotel fees in the process. She has used her cunning to manipulate him over the years, to the point where he feels like he has no choice but to marry her.
How can I save my friend? I have stopped confronting him on this because his wife-to-be is so shrewd and smart that she has altered his fundamental thought process: He BELIEVES she is a great partner now, a real catch, because she has told him so time and time again. Deep down, somewhere, I know he knows that he’s settling and that he could do better; he’s made this much clear by putting off her very public and repetitive pleas to get married. Is there any hope for him? There are other close friends of his who feel the same way — what can we do?
I predict that the marriage will go one of two ways. Either he’ll snap out of it, get sick of being mistreated and break it off in a nasty divorce. Or, much more likely, his wouldn’t-hurt-a-fly benevolence will get the best of him, and his fear of hurting her will force him to spend the rest of his days with someone he does not love. He’ll swallow his romantic ambitions, as he has all of his life with her, and force himself to believe that they’re meant to be together … all simply because she told him to.
Help Me Cary!
Dear Help Me!,
What if your friend had a need to be controlled and manipulated? What if his fiancée were meeting that need? Would it be wrong of her to meet that need?
If a person locks himself in a cell because he feels safe there, is that wrong?
Do we allow our friend to lock himself in his cell? Do we blame the cell? What if the keys are right there but he prefers the cell? Do we keep running over there and opening the door? Do we insist he can’t stay in the cell, that he has to come out and walk around like the rest of us good American souls, making his own decisions, standing on his own two feet? What if he doesn’t want to stand on his own two feet?
What if a man wants a woman to run his life for him? What if he wants her to tell him what he really wants so that he doesn’t have to think about what he really wants because thinking about what he really wants would mean having to ask for what he really wants. And who the hell wants to do that? That’s scary!
What if he has a strong need to not make decisions and a strong need to avoid conflict?
Basically, relationships meet needs. That’s why we have them. There are needs for love and companionship and sex that seem pretty normal. We get that. But what about other needs?
We’re not always meeting the needs people think we should be meeting. We’re not always meeting our most admirable needs. That doesn’t mean they’re not needs. They’re just not the needs other people think we should be meeting. And, well, duh: That’s what makes them our needs and not somebody else’s. They might be perverse and pathological needs, but they’re our needs. I know it’s sad. Doesn’t it help a little bit to look at it like this?
I hope this doesn’t make it worse. I’m just trying to help.
Why not leave him alone and wish him well? Why not just say to him that if there ever comes a time when he’s ready to bust out, you’ll be there for him.
That’s one way to look at it.
The other way to look at it is that she has put him under her spell. This happens too. People become hypnotized and lost. They become dependent on others to run their lives. They get addicted to drugs. They retreat into fantasy and it’s not entirely choice; there is a malevolent force at work.
When that happens, we can say things. We can say, you’re ruining your life. We can book a hotel room and get all his friends and family to sit on chairs and couches waiting for his arrival, and then tell him, Oh, listen, I just have to drop by here at this hotel to pick up my sister, won’t you come up there with me, and then Boom! Surprise! It’s an Intervention!
Interventions are great. When else do family and friends say what they really want and what they really feel? Interventions are terrific. The tears, the choices, the driving off to rehab!
But a pre-wedding intervention would be kinda weird. Hey, dude, we really hate your fiancée. We think she’s ruining your life. We think you should dump her.
You see the problem with that?
So here’s a thought: We act as if we have repressed our desire for happiness and that’s the problem, and if we only let it out, we would be happy. But what if we actually have the reverse situation? What if what’s actually repressed in our society is not the pursuit of happiness but true tragic consciousness? What if our overwhelming social insistence on happiness has actually driven the tragic underground, so that it is the tragic that threatens to arise out of repression, so that that it is the tragic that we seek in our intimate moments, in our private moments? And what if that is why we have these problems with drugs and suicide and depression — not because we’re not happy enough, but because we have repressed the tragic?
What if not everybody wants to visit San Diego at least once in their lives?
If that were the case, if grief were the thing most repressed in society, then we would find ways to express our melancholia, our sense of the tragic, in our intimate relations.
Another way to look at your friend’s situation is to consider the possibility that he is getting ready for something but is not ready yet. Maybe his soul is getting ready. Say a fierce battle awaits the soul. We can be in a holding pattern. There is not much to do while waiting for the soul’s great challenge. So we amuse ourselves with pastimes.
Maybe she is a pastime. Maybe he is waiting.
One thing I know: We can’t change people.
I hope this helps you accept what he’s doing so it won’t be so painful to watch. Maybe if you think about it in terms of his needs, strange as they may be, you won’t feel you’re letting him down by not interfering.
Promise to be there for him if he ever decides to leave the cage.
Dear Mr. Tennis,
I’m on the cusp of my 30s, in a life partnership and polyamorous. My personal history involves a graduate-school education, a grade-skipping, semi-home-schooled childhood and several coming-out stories. So I’ll ask you to picture me as I am right now. I have crazy hair and clothes. I’m finally allowing myself to feel young after many years of trying to look mature and serious; I am secure enough in my spiritual and political beliefs to remain quietly confident about them, but I used to be quite the crusader. There’s a strong creative vein that runs through my family. I learned the hard way that to repress my artistic impulses makes me go quite mad. I make music, perform and dress up whenever I can. I get hooked on things and experiences very easily, but I have enough self-awareness to unhook myself before I get too damaged. I used to drink too much and get in fights, I used to have a really haphazard, risky sex life — till I laid out rules, got some help and learned to watch my moods and habits. Mostly I get by. I read a lot of philosophy, I meditate, I do the spiritual stuff and try not to live in my head all the time. I still get a bit obsessed with ideas and concepts and lifestyles, and of course, I get hung up on wonderful people.
Now there is this new person in my life, and the usual thing has happened where I decide that I fancy them, and I have to work out what that means. This time I would like to proceed differently — you know how things often proceed in cycles with different relationships and friendships? Every time a situation comes round, it seems to turn out a little better — or at least I seem to learn a new thing each time I recognize that pattern remodulating itself.
This other person is pleasant, cute, older but not to an alienating extent. He’s a bit more in touch with his physical expressions than I am. I apply slightly more logical rigor to our conversations. He encourages my introverted, whimsical side. I delight in the strong, lively intellectual interplay between us. There’s a mutual physical attraction — personal spaces keep getting crossed in a way that gets more and more blatant. It’s already obvious to my life partner, who knows all about my proclivities and finds this whole story hilarious and adorable. But nothing has been explicitly acknowledged. Yes, it’s at that awkward stage!
On an emotional level, I have preserved enough awareness to realize my “just good friend” and I don’t go about things in the same way. I often find myself sort of “bearing with” his theories about personality and social interaction. It’s no huge ideological disagreement, I just recognize that we are not soul mates — we don’t have a tight, unconscious bond like the one I have with my life partner or even with some of my old lovers. I’m still deciding if that’s a good thing. I think on balance it will be, because I can really pick out that point of difference, the very deep and years-long connection with my true partner versus this scholars-with-benefits fling — it will help me be poly in a way that keeps everyone happy and reassured. Of course the question is, is that what I want …
A real source of annoyance is that while all this is going on, I know this person has a life of his own and a partner of his own. Now I’ve no idea how his life is arranged — we move in these liberal circles and perhaps he is free to go wander as he likes. Maybe all’s fair if nobody knows the particulars, or maybe he has the official blessing to do whatever. Most of me doesn’t care; that’s his business, I am going to let him do what he does and I won’t shoulder any moral burdens. But you know how life is in little arty circles — things get really insular — I am cautious. Actually I can’t pinpoint the precise reason for the cautious feeling. It’s not the force of moral convention. Do I stand to lose power or agency somehow? I’m not scared of rejection. Maybe it’s that uniquely feminine kind of retroactive self-doubt in action. I lack the intuition to work it out.
The options that I keep seeing before me are these: I can’t sit in limbo and flirt and pretend we are both unaware of what’s happening. That’s insulting to my intelligence and frustrating. I could make him back off a little, insist that what I’d like is a friendship uncomplicated by chemistry. I would actually accept this quite readily if I had no other option — there’s plenty going on between us as friends that enriches both of us, it’d mean fewer dramas, it wouldn’t change much in the friendship as it stands. But to have the choice in my hands is awful. I can’t let go of this atavistic feeling. It would also feel like I’d be denying my poly identity somewhat. The other thing I can see happening is that awful inevitable moment that so often happens — you know, the one where you both have a few too many glasses of wine, or you get down on your luck, or whatever the relevant excuse is to get into bed with each other. And I really don’t want that. Playing the dance of unconscious attraction is going to lead to that situation, I’ve seen it and I’ve been that person and … yuck. I’d find myself trying to justify it afterward and generally being a hypocrite. Nope, I’ve got to be at least a little true to myself.
So, what should I do, where’s the third path I’m not seeing, and how do I keep all this from turning into one of those awful crushes? I’m doing as much as I can right now not to fret — acquiring hobbies and new friendships at an alarming rate, doing the art thing and as you see, the writing thing — but that all feels like an attempt to stall the wheel of causality before history comes round for another pass.
De profundis etc. 
Sincerely,
Ms. Moppet
Dear Ms. Moppet,
One thing you could do is to say to him, “I am going to make a decision by the end of today whether to sleep with you or not. What do you have to say in favor of my sleeping with you or in opposition to my sleeping with you? Do you have a position?”
If he hesitates, you might say, “This is called ‘giving you an opening.’”
See what he does. If he is truly enlightened, he will not circumlocute. He will make an answer.
He may say no. He may say yes. But he will give an answer.
If he engages in circumlocution, then he is not enlightened and you should not sleep with him.
However, as long as his answer is quick and clear, the matter remains open. You then have to decide what you want.
It doesn’t need to be hard. It’s like standing at the candy counter. Other people are in line so you have to choose. Your choice is not going to change the course of world events. You just have to decide: Either choose a piece of candy or walk out of the store. Just do something. By the end of the day, as you have already promised him, make your choice about what you want.
There are four possibilities:
- He wants, you want;
- he wants, you don’t want;
- he doesn’t want, you want;
- he doesn’t want, you don’t want.
The fourth possibility should make things simple. Neither of you wants to have sex with the other. Actually, though, that can be the most dangerous of all. You may let your guard down and get drunk together. That would call into question the truth value of your avowals. But let’s move on.
The next-simplest is the first one: he wants, you want.
If you decide you want to sleep with him and he wants to sleep with you, arrangements should be straightforward.
If, however, he says he does not want to sleep with you, or does not think it is wise, but you want to do it anyway, then it becomes interesting.
You will have some work to do.
Fortunately, such work is pleasant. It involves breaking down his resistance by creating pleasurable enticements. There is nothing strenuous about such work. The only problem is that even your enticements may not work and then you will feel disappointment. But even this disappointment need not be soul-crushing. It’s just a matter of recognizing that you didn’t get something you wanted. At least failure will be clear: You decided you wanted something and were going to attempt it, there was a certain probability of success and a certain probability of failure and success was not yours.
Oh, but there is this: If you make your enticements in bad faith, you also risk ruining the friendship. That is, if you pretend the reason you are taking off your blouse is because it’s just too hot in here, that’s not fair. You have to be upfront and say that even though he does not want to sleep with you, you are going to try to make it happen anyway. That way, he knows the danger. He knows you are out to seduce him so if he really wants to not sleep with you he can take appropriate measures.
You have to be upfront about it: I understand that you don’t want to sleep with me but I am going to try to make you change your mind and here is how. Then he will know you are taking your blouse off not merely because of the weather. Then you can begin your program of subtly escalating enticements, secure that it is not a subterfuge.
If he can’t resist you, that’s his philosophical problem.
Nothing in this should be a barrier to honest friendship. It is more in the area of a friendly contest. Can he resist? Let’s find out.
Now, should he say he wants to sleep with you but you decide you do not want to sleep with him, that’s a different matter. He may be quite as determined as you.
If he wants to sleep with you and you do not want to sleep with him, your resolve may need buffering. When we find that having made this or that decision we cannot later stick to it, we must examine the conditions under which our resolve falls apart. Often, if we are honest, we will see that our resolve falls apart after several glasses of wine.
So if you decide you do not want to sleep with him but he wants to sleep with you, you will have to not drink with him. Drinking leads to sleeping with people. That is why we like it so much. Alcohol affects the ability to carry out a plan when the plan requires resisting impulses.
That raises the question, What does “want to” really mean? If you decide you don’t want to sleep with him but then you get drunk and sleep with him anyway, does that mean you really did want to sleep with him? Maybe it’s not “wanting” we’re talking about but “making a plan.” “Wanting” is not a static quality, but a fluid reality that shifts with our movements. When we say “decide what we want” what we’re actually talking about is “making a plan.”
Drinking changes how we regard our plans. What seemed ironclad and sacred earlier in the day now looms like some tiny and abstract prohibition scarcely worthy of our attention.
Anyway, that’s the practical side of it.
As to the larger question of consciousness and being, well, I suggest that you give some attention to the states of being that give rise to your questions. When we are agitated or anxious we formulate text strings with question marks attached. This activity is a result of our agitation. It does not mean that these text strings terminated with question marks have answers.
Anyone can construct such a thing? It doesn’t mean that human effort ought to be expended constructing the corresponding text string terminated with a period that would be considered an answer. I can do things like this? I can end sentences with these marks? It doesn’t mean there’s an answer to them? Does it? Which ones are legitimate questions? Which ones are merely text strings terminated with question marks? I’m fairly sure I know the answer? I think you do too? But how to implement it? That seems to be the question? No?
So if I were you I would concentrate on the quality of my consciousness by increasing my meditation. When I find my consciousness filling with these text strings terminated with question marks, I would return to my meditation. I would view them as random objects of consciousness, like noises and bird songs.
I would look for questions that have immediate answers, like, What am I going to do next? I am going to go into the house and make some tea.
Other questions I would consider as noise.
And, again, the important and interesting question to ask this person is, Are you in favor of, or against, us sleeping together?
Then make your own decision by the end of the day and stick to it for at least a year.
At the end of the year, you can revisit the question.
Dear Cary,
There is a lecturer in my faculty whom I find devastatingly attractive. I find him so attractive that I have to actively control myself in his presence. I think about him nonstop. I am a graduate student and he is a lecturer. He is probably about double my age, and I am 22. I took one of his classes a few semesters back but won’t be in any of his classes in the future.
I am sure I have made my attraction as painfully obvious as possible. Should I try to proposition him? What do you think of this sort of age gap? And how do I handle the possible (probable) rejection? I am aware of the imbalances of power, experience and maturity, as well as the conflicts of interest and possible repercussions that may ensue.
Unsure
Dear Unsure,
You may have thought and read about conflicts of interest and imbalances of power but are you ready to find, in the agonizing grip of an affair, a visceral unhappiness unlike anything you have ever known? Can you handle wanting to scream or grab a crowbar while also wanting to weep and beg forgiveness?
Are you ready to find yourself, as if living in a pre-feminist era, driven to a gradual, crippling compromise by your desire for some man who for all his fine words still seems to secretly enjoy unassailable privilege? Are you ready to be emptying ashtrays and making tea and realize, holy shit! You secretly expected his prestige and power to rub off on you but nothing has really changed! Are you ready to realize you allowed yourself to indulge in some 19th-century claptrap and did it with your eyes open and your finger on the page in this book right here where it says women are powerful and things have changed and you control your own destiny, which is sort of true in lots of ways except for the ones that really matter?
Except where actual privilege lives its actual life?
Actual privilege is nice and attractive. It just doesn’t have much of a heart.
I’m not saying be a good girl and never act on your impulses. And I’m not setting it up for I Told You So And Now Don’t Come Crying to Me or some such. I’m saying, do some research on him. Does he have a girlfriend? Is he married? Does he spend time with lots of students, or mainly with his peers? Watch him. Study him.
You are vulnerable here. Maybe you are capable of handling this. But maybe not. It wouldn’t be the first time someone thought she knew what she was doing.
So do some courageous self-assessment. Share your dilemma with your women friends. Don’t just walk in there with your eyes shut and open up for him. Power and privilege still break women’s hearts and psychotherapy is expensive especially if you didn’t get that tenure-track job even though he promised to go to bat for you in the committee and now that you think about it, weirdly enough, he didn’t really support you as energetically as you thought he would.
I mean, Are you ready to want what you didn’t think you wanted, and want it more strongly than you thought you could want anything, and then find out that no matter how much you want it you’re never going to get it because somebody else already took it and she wears weird eye shadow?
That is what happens when your lust is only a thin covering over a deeper, global longing that you don’t even know you have until after it’s driven you crazy.
Are you ready to realize that you’re the one who said all these empowered, knowing, independent-sounding words and now all you want is for this man to just stay right here and not go teach his next class while you embody your desire in the form of another cup of green tea and an omelet, which he consumes but does not appear to taste, and when you ask him a question about his work he waves it away as if it were not phrased properly and when you see him with other students, you notice a pretty young woman student who has this adoring look on her face that seems eerily familiar …
And if it comes to that will you be able to accept that he has another young student who finds him as irresistible as you do and he may be seeing her tonight, and he may lie to you about it or not tell you anything, or disappear for weeks at a time with no notice, or break a date with you without warning or explanation, or suddenly seem distant and petty and not at all interested in you and what you have to say, or become critical of you and your life choices or not want to meet your friends and family or find fault with your apartment, which is too small, or the color of your toenails, which is too bright, all of which makes you scream at him but you don’t because you don’t want him to see your juvenile, screamer-bitch side, which you only so recently thought you’d completely left behind.
Because you are a graduate student at a distinguished university and it wouldn’t be right … after he fails to show up yet again and you are left sitting at the bar wondering why you didn’t heed the warning signs.
You could have read about this in a book. You don’t have to actually fall off a cliff to know why it’s good to stand back from the edge.
Maybe you are very tough and self-reliant and just want an adventure. I don’t know you. But if you are so tough and self-reliant, why are you sharing this with me?
I think you know there is something dangerous about this and what you really need is for someone to say, Slow down. Examine your motives. Examine your hungers. What are you really looking for?
Dear Cary,
Hi. Today I’m working from home because I’m so confused and humiliated about a situation at work that I am taking advantage of this option whenever I can. I started this job about a year ago, as a temp who was quickly hired into a high-powered position. Before that, I dropped out of a Ph.D. program after a year of research in the Third World because I realized the academic life just wasn’t for me. After I came back from life abroad, I couldn’t find work for awhile and just got depressed. Between work, trips to the gym, and finally finding some friends, until a few weeks ago I was rebuilding my life and things were really starting to look up. I was looking forward to a lot of things. I haven’t dated or had sex in almost two years, but I figured that would come. I’m not a supermodel, but I’m good-looking and seem to attract men when I bother to do things that aren’t work or the gym. I’m 31, my situation in life is constantly improving, and a lot of people would be happy to be where I am.
When I started the job, a certain male co-worker caught my eye. We flirted a bit, but nothing serious. We would talk about sci-fi shows and books and generally had really nice interactions. He is 41 and divorced, with several bitter relationships behind him. He’s also a vegan and a self-professed feminist with high social ideals.
A few weeks ago we had a work party at a bar to celebrate a milestone in our year-long project. A few of us stayed late and were having a good time. When I went out for a cigarette, he followed me and kissed me. We spent the rest of the evening making out. It was followed by texts and Skype chats, and an invitation to the symphony. We went, had a great time, and went out for drinks. The subject of us working together came up, since we work in a small office where things could get awkward quickly. I said that we could take it at whatever pace he was comfortable with and see where it could go. So he invited me back to his apartment and sexy time ensued. I was happy and excited, thinking that maybe things were going to move forward in the one part of my life that had been empty for so long.
And then I heard nothing. When I texted him, I got a polite response that his day went well and that I left some jewelry at his place. Nothing more. Then I emailed him to ask if he wanted to get together over the weekend and heard nothing. I saw that he was active on the online dating site that we both have profiles on, but he didn’t answer for days. On a Friday afternoon, he sent me an email saying that he wanted to be good friends. That we could really be great friends, but that was what he was comfortable with. He said he was too busy to tell me in person, but he could drop my jewelry off and spend a few minutes with me before he went to dinner on Sunday. He said he was sorry I would be disappointed. It ended with an exclamation point about how excited he was about it being warm and being able to be outside. There was no real explanation, no apology, no discussion of how this would affect our work. Attempting to keep my dignity, I responded with “Message received. Please leave my jewelry on top of the fridge at work — no one will notice.” There has been little communication since, though when he did leave the jewelry for me, he was a bit chatty in the email, asking how I was. I didn’t respond.
I’m definitely hurt, but I’m angry and most of all confused. How do you go through a year of flirting to change your mind like that? How can he be so cavalier knowing that I’ll be uncomfortable in our workplace? He knew how long it had been for me and he escalated things anyway. The way he went about things and handled this was stupid and cruel. And we have to email each other 10 times a day for work purposes. How do I interact with him after he treated me with so little respect?
A close friend in my office knows what happened, and encourages me to just leave it alone and let it blow over. Part of me thinks that’s the way to get through this with my dignity intact. Part of me wants to send an email that isn’t explosive, but that at least calls him out on his bad behavior. Maybe I should talk to another co-worker for advice. I don’t know what to do, and it’s so much harder to shake off the hurt and anger when we have such close contact all the time. It’s also hard to shake off the feeling that there is something inherently wrong with me that made him change his mind so quickly. My self-esteem, which had been growing, is now at a rock-bottom low. I don’t think I function in the world very well, because I do expect to be treated with respect and kindness by those around me, and I do expect people who profess certain values to live by them.
What was he thinking? Why would he do this to me and to our workplace? Am I the immature one for expecting people to be careful? Is it right to do something or to leave it alone? I’m confused and uncomfortable, Cary, and I would really appreciate your advice.
Confused and Dismayed
Dear Confused and Dismayed,
This guy had several bitter relationships behind him. Guys with several bitter relationships behind them are doing something wrong. Look at the pattern.
Here’s what you need to do. You need to adopt some protections for the future so that you do not get involved with another man like this.
Maybe you lack the ability to spot such men. Learn to recognize them. Here are some clues:
Real men who will treat you well may occasionally eat halibut. They might hold the door open for you even if you can get through under your own power anyway. They do it because they’ve seen what happened with Stalin. If that doesn’t make perfect sense that’s OK. It’s meant to be sort of oblique. A man who’s OK and not going to screw you over might even be rude to you but he’ll apologize when it’s pointed out to him. He won’t pretend his rudeness was an instance of high social ideals in action.
He’ll just apologize.
Without beating up on men, because after all I am one, can I just say that if you have been socialized as a man you have learned some pretty rotten stuff? This learning is called “being realistic about the world out there.”
For instance, if I were drinking with a group of young men (which of course I mean I’m 23 years sober but if) and if I mentioned that I had had a one-night stand with a woman at work and had decided I didn’t think it was going to work out long-term, and I was wondering what to do about it, there would not be an immediate outpouring of, “Let’s talk about this together, guys, and put ourselves in her shoes and imagine how she’s feeling and debate the ways you can smooth things over with her and make her feel better about what happened.”
The consensus would be: “Cut her loose, dude. End of story.”
If I were to pursue the issue and say, “Well, guys, what about her feelings, and the awkwardness of it, and the fact I sort of led her on to believe it was going to be more than what it turned out to be?” the consensus would still be, “Shit happens. Cut her loose, dude. End of story.”
If I were to say that I think she and I should have some conversations about how things are going to proceed henceforth, there would be some good-natured ridicule and they would move down to the end of the bar.
Guys are taught to let it go and move on. In a fundamental way, this leads logically to the eventual dehumanization of the other. That is, if you are taught to make unilateral decisions in a relationship, then what you are really doing is invalidating the relationship and in the course of it invalidating the other.
The logic of it looks like this: If one is in a relationship then each person has a say. Ethically speaking, if one is in a relationship, one cannot make decisions about the relationship without the involvement of the other. Yet we guys are taught to do precisely that: to be independent, to make up our own minds, to keep our own counsel, to stand on our own two feet, to lay down the law. That’s what he’s doing. He’s doing what men have been taught to do for centuries. He’s made this decision about the relationship all on his own, without any involvement by you. He probably thinks he’s handling it pretty well. Amazing, isn’t it?
If one person has no say in matters concerning them both, then that is a kind of objectification, isn’t it? To treat someone as having no say, no opinion worth hearing, no desires worth considering, is to consider that person less than human, is it not?
So this is why you’re upset. You have been dehumanized.
Of course, this kind of dehumanization goes on all the time. It is so common that we scarcely pause to consider it. We men are taught to do this. We are taught to dehumanize the other. We don’t call it that. We call it being realistic and grown-up.
He’s the product of bad conditioning. He may also have a mild personality disorder. That doesn’t mean you have to be nice to this guy or like him or feel sorry for him. It just means that his behavior is not inexplicable. It’s a perfect emblem of how we live today. It is a perfect emblem of the society we accept as normal.
That’s why many of us feel half crazy most days.
Don’t trouble yourself too much. You’re fine. You just thought you were dealing with somebody like yourself. You’re not.
You must learn to recognize guys like this and stay away from them. If you can’t recognize guys like this, ask your women friends. If you don’t have any women friends, make some.
Dear Cary,
At 23, I’ve been lucky enough to find someone I’m crazy about, and who is crazy about me. I’m constantly surprised and reassured by how happy he makes me, how open he is to discussion about problems that pop up, and the fact that we still have a playful rapport after two years. He’s a little older than me, 26, and is pulling his life together in a way I’m not. He’s started a promising business, files his taxes, and has generally started to live out the frightening but accurate 26-35 age bracket. I’m nowhere near that kind of togetherness, but neither of us resents or disapproves of the other person’s state. We are both in a happy and respectful open relationship, both because we both enjoy it, and because it reassures us that we can make changes and adjust over the course of what we both assume will be a long relationship. We have avoided living together to respect each other’s space, and generally try to reduce codependency in any way we can. In other words, this relationship is rad, and we’d both be happy for a long time.
So here is my problem: I feel too young for what this relationship has become. I often find myself wishing I had met him five years later, or 10. I’m not so naive that I’d insist he is the only one for me, there’s no one like him, that I would never find anyone this good again, etc. I’m old enough to know there are plenty of other people I could love. But I want to be with him, and it seems silly to jump such a sturdy ship just on principle. Like everyone else, I grew up with a narrative of “you’re still young, just have fun,” and I recognize that’s good advice. If we break up, that’s great advice. But this relationship also feels like a rare blessing, and throwing a tantrum about the fact that it came early is ungrateful. I don’t feel trapped — I just feel … preempted, as if someone gave me a house when I still hope to travel.
I don’t know how to make my peace with this, and it often makes me freeze up around him. I want to treat him fairly, and be fully present in this wonderful relationship. Is this something I should worry about, or am I just throwing a major gift back in the face of the universe?
Happy Brat
Dear Happy Brat,
You may find it useful, as a habit of mind, when you have these mysterious, free-floating thoughts or emotions, to glance back at them quickly, as though you had passed something while riding the train and are trying to see what that was that caught your eye: Was it a dog, or laundry hanging in someone’s backyard, or a man smoking a cigarette on a porch? What was that that caught your eye and entered your consciousness? It may be a memory of something your boyfriend did that irritated you, or a desire for an experience that you are afraid to pursue, or a secret insecurity your boyfriend may expose, or a wish that someone would say something nice to you and tell you that you’re loved. When such feelings arise, adopt the habit of quickly looking back to see what you were just thinking or seeing, and see if you can pinpoint what it was that gave rise to your feeling of unease. That may bring you closer to your own inner world, and allow you to articulate more skillfully the mass of swirling emotions and thoughts that we call conscious life.
If you do have real worries, they are rooted in some material condition or experience. You will feel better if you can locate the source of your concerns and verbalize them.
What you are experiencing may have a concrete source that you have not yet articulated to yourself. You may be fighting off feelings of sadness about finishing school. You may feel anxious about how to live now that the structure of university life is over; you may be missing that strict set of rules and steps. You may feel anxiety about the future. That would be natural.
You may be feeling some obligation to your partner that he has not set for you; even though you have an open relationship you may feel he has expectations he is not articulating, or you yourself may have a desire for a closeness and commitment that you are afraid to express.
So I strongly suggest that when you have such notions as you have described, you take the courage, in the moment, to look for the concrete roots of your feelings. Underneath these ideas may be powerful emotions. In fact, there may be emotions that you are holding at bay by the very act of abstracting them.
Now, a related matter is your freedom. Freedom can be a source of anxiety. It necessitates constant decision-making, which can be exhausting. It’s hard work knowing that your life is your own and that your choices determine your happiness.
Since you are free and must make your own decisions, it’s good to have a scale by which to judge which choice is best. One such scale is the scale of increasing options vs. decreasing options.
Certain actions will diminish your options and others will increase them. For instance, at this point, since you have an open relationship, breaking up with your boyfriend would not increase your options, but decrease them. So don’t do anything to mess up the relationship right now. Just let it be. Let it become what it is going to become.
If the relationship ends, you’ll be one of the first to know. Meanwhile, if there are no concrete problems facing you, then there are no concrete problems facing you. You will know when there is a problem. You will find yourself in a hospital or in a jail, or at a funeral, and the nature of the misfortune will be clear. But if you are walking down the street on a sunny day, or eating dinner in a colorful cafe, or making love, or walking your dog … that is not a problem.
Finally, do not worry about being too young. That problem will solve itself. Soon you will be old. Then you will have regrets.
There is no reason to hurry.
(Credit: Zach Trenholm/Salon) 
More Cary Tennis.
(Credit: Zach Trenholm/Salon) 
