I am in the fourth year of a partnership with a great guy—smart, athletic, caring, fair, trustworthy, all of it—but I am bored out of my mind. Although he loves outdoor activities like biking and skiing by day, his only hobby in the evenings is watching TV. I am a musician, artist, craftsperson, not an outdoor whiz, and I feel like I am completely uninspired in this situation. I have talked with him about at least not watching TV every night, and we try for a while, but it always ends up back where we started, with him watching TV, and me in another room reading or doing something somewhat productive, or just giving in and watching with him (I hate TV, wish we didn’t have one). I want to do things together but he is not interested in any of the things that I am interested in. Maybe this is just the most a person can hope for in life and I’m spoiled for wanting more than loyalty and love from someone, but I feel guilty all the time for hiding these thoughts from him. Maybe he would be better off without me, too, you know? Maybe I should let him go so he can find a girl who is really IN LOVE with him.

How much you love someone depends, in part, on the effect of partnership on the necessities of your life, as well as your interests. In your case, however, you don’t seem to see partnership as necessary for the necessities, so the difference between what you two want may be be more than television.

If you’ve been struggling to make ends meet and/or raise kids and someone enters your life who’s decent and willing to share the load, you’re probably going to wind up loving him, even if you don’t love everything you do together.

On the other hand, if you’re a fairly self-sufficient person who doesn’t need a partner in order to have a decent standard of living and raise kids, then there’s no reason to live with anyone who doesn’t ring your bells or leave the couch.

You didn’t mention kids or finances, so I assume you’re kid-less, and, despite being an artist and musician, miraculously not broke. If that’s true, then what do you need this guy for? If you haven’t grown to depend on him after four years of living together, and you’re not eager to have a family, then it’s hard to see him as a better off with you since you don’t really sound better off with him.

Be careful not to get paralyzed by guilt. You can’t control your feelings about him, and what you’re going to do next isn’t about failing or lacking, it’s about evaluating how well the two of you match up and deciding whether that match suits your goals. So add up what life would be without him (the effect on your time, bank account, plans, etc.). You sound as if you’ve done this, but sometimes, feeling guilty can prevent you from doing routine accounting.

If, as you suggest, you can do better without him, don’t feel defensive about letting him go. You both made a good effort to make it work, and you have many good things to say about his character and can be sure he’ll do well with someone else. You’ve just seen many big differences in your interests and activities and have gained a healthy respect for their importance in making a relationship work. Neither of you were stupid to try this relationship, but, despite being a good idea, it was a near miss you can both learn from. You’re doing the right thing for both of you by moving on.

If the pain of breaking up is more his than yours, that’s not as important as the other stuff you evaluated. As a matter of fact, you suspect he may well have an easier time finding his next match than you will.

If this experience has taught you about your needs and you respect what you’ve learned, you’ll become better at screening out your dates and ensuring that you don’t compromise your independence again unless you encounter a more compatible candidate.

If you aren’t happy with someone who’s “perfect” for you, then they probably aren’t. And if you don’t need a someone, period, give them the chance to find someone new (or spend more quality time with the TV).

STATEMENT:
“I wish I could like my boyfriend better and I don’t want to hurt him, but I think I’m better off without him and vice versa. I won’t let fears about negative feelings stop me from doing what’s necessary and remembering that break-ups are part of the learning process.”

Now that I’m 35 and looking around for a wife, I can’t help feeling that I destroyed my future by not marrying my college sweetheart. She’s a terrific person and we had a great relationship, but I wasn’t ready to settle down back then. So I dumped her, she found someone else, and now she’s happily married with kids and I’m a successfully executive who can’t find anyone to compare with her. The women I meet always have something wrong with them and I think my mistake has doomed me to die single and alone.

The biggest danger you face is not dying single, but dying defeated. Well, the biggest danger you face after death itself.

Some good people are single because they aren’t lucky about finding a mate—their lives are too complicated or, for various good reasons, they don’t meet someone who’s both available and on their wavelength—but that doesn’t mean they’re sad, lonely failures. They’re simply dealing with a mixed bag of luck, like everyone else.

As Christ might have said, if he hadn’t been so busy telling parables, what’s important is not whether you find riches or happiness, it’s how you deal with it when you can’t find riches and happiness. And, despite dying penniless, single and alone, he seems to have done alright for himself.

In addition, your negative attitude may be damaging your mate-search technique. While your college relationship taught you that you have a good capacity for friendship and partnership, it’s the timing that was wrong; your personal equipment—the size of your heart, and size is everything—has proven itself. So instead of feeling sad and defeated when you think of your old flame, be proud of your relationship and determined not to give up your independence unless you find someone just as good.

Assess the efficiency of your mate-search. Like any kind of search, it needs to be done efficiently or you’ll wear yourself out and then, see above, feel tired and defeated. That’s often a sign that you’re spending too much time on unsuitable candidates and losing your focus. Ask yourself whether guilt, horniness, or sentimentality are causing you to prolong pseudo-friendships that drain energy, reduce availability, and leave you yearning for solitude. If so, get a coach and learn how to do a good, tight search and a rapid, polite exit.

You can’t make yourself lucky, but you can be sure that there’s nothing wrong with your ability to be a good partner. If you’ve also given yourself the benefit of a good mate-search, you also know you’ve done your best. You may be sad about being single, but it’s not personal and it’s not failure. It’s just life, which, as always, is preferable to the alternative, no matter what your relationship status is when you enter it.

STATEMENT:
“I can’t avoid feeling that I fell off the deck of the love-boat after having been given a choice cabin for two, but I’ve made reasonable choices, I’m a good candidate, and I know what I’m looking for, so I will pursue my search with patience, I will not doubt myself, and I will never give up. “

When my son was born 30 years ago, I met two other moms and we became friends. Although with partners, we shared the same interests and our kids got along well, and we spent the next years as very good friends doing lots of things together and with the children-one of those friends even married my brother (one son and three years later, they divorced). At the same time, I met a new partner (I was now separated from my son’s father), and we spent the next 27 years having a very on-off relationship. It’s difficult to sum up all those years but I think I can say that I probably cried through most of it! I should have left, I didn’t, he wasn’t committed, I was, I wanted a family life, he didn’t. I’m not perfect and I didn’t always behave well. Five years ago he had a son by another, not partner, woman and when that didn’t work out he and I got together again. Then last year, I invited my friend/ex sister-in-law to lunch with us, and they got together. The shock was immense … and it’s not so much the loss of either but this terrible feeling that I have been used as a sort of dating service by my friend and I just can’t get rid of this feeling of betrayal. It’s now a year on and I haven’t seen them since, and the emotional hurt is a lot less– I have done lots of new things, made new friends, and life is rosier, but I have this constant anxiety that this friend is going to take someone else from me – my sister? my other brother? and, worst of all, I have this strange fear that it will be my son. I would like to be happy for my ex and my friend, but I can’t. I protect myself by staying away but I have this huge sense of loss that I have lost this whole part of my life. I need to let go of this underlying anxiety that I am going to lose someone to her again.

When it comes to kids, we expect parents not to expose them to unnecessary rejections and losses from adults they’ll get attached to, who will then go away. When it comes to how parents protect their own hearts, however, the same standards don’t seem to apply, even though, as your experience shows, they really should.

Yes, I understand, you’ve loved a guy for 27 years, but it was always off-and-on, causing you intermittent heartache and wasting your opportunity for something better. You wouldn’t have needed a shrink, psychic, or your average plumber to predict a sad end to all you invested in him and his family.

That doesn’t mean your love was meaningless or less than real. It was powerful, at least for you. Like a good mother, however, your job is to protect yourself from real attachments that can’t work, and you haven’t done that.

What’s worse, you’ve come to assume that love controls you, as it has, so you’ve become a victim and fear that love will screw you again, and take away someone you care about. You’re afraid, but if you’re more careful about who and how you love in the first place, you will have the control you need, some peace of mind, as well as a lot less heartache.

The good news then is that love can’t screw you if you don’t let it. The bad news is that most love won’t work, and you’ve got to leave it alone when you know it won’t, regardless of what your heart says. One thing you’ve learned from your 27-year affair is that life is short, and it’s better to feel some pain now than feel a lot of pain over the course of decades.

First, resolve to stop being a victim. It’s no accident you’ve done better since your friend put an end to your underpowered (it takes two to power) love. Instead of worrying about your next loss, celebrate the fact that you’ve gained new friends and found better relationships.

You’re also more likely than ever before to find relationships that will last, but only if you interrupt the flow of good internal feelings at the beginning of a relationship to ask yourself if there’s any evidence it will actually work.

By the way, it would also help your brother and possibly your friend to ask themselves the same question. If you hang around with people who follow their attractions without giving much thought to consequences or values, you’ll find yourself in the midst of a boiling soap opera, and often be its victim. And the victimhood ends now.

As for that former friends’ tendency to use your friends and family as her dating pool, you’ve finally done what you should have done long ago, when you saw her mistreat your brother, by putting her out of your life. Suck up the sorrow, embrace your ability to do what’s necessary, and don’t let your feelings of powerlessness make you paranoid. You’re in control now, and even if you can’t control her, you can’t let her craziness run your life.

So, in addition to giving yourself better, more compassionate management, stay away from people who regard feelings-management as unacceptable interference with their inalienable right to follow their hearts.

As you’ve learned, following your heart often puts you on a decades-long trail of tears. Protect yourself as you would your son, enjoy your freedom, and keep enjoying it until you find someone reliable enough to enjoy it with you.

STATEMENT:
“I may always be sad about my old lover and scared of losing again, but I learned a lot from that love, I’ve done much better since I gave it up, and I will continue to do better if I remember what I’ve learned and stay away from people whose self-control I can’t trust.”

I promised my wife I’d stop messing around, and I meant it, but last month I did it again and restarted an old fling. I love my wife and the last thing I want is to lose her and the kids’ respect; I’ve got a wonderful family, and I’m not some macho guy who goes cruising to pick up skanks in bars. My problem is that women have always been very attracted to me, I don’t know why, and the sex is very, very satisfying (for both of us), even when we don’t really have much of a relationship. I’m an asshole, and I can’t stop myself. What can I do?

Certain ingredients make love particularly addictive, and one, for guys, is female adulation. They say women loves compliments and being adored, but they rarely ruin their marriages in order to receive them.

Certainly, what addicts you is not your fling-partner as a person, and sex is probably just a part of it. What lights up your pleasure centers and creates needs you can’t control is a mysterious combination of feeling strong, desired, and personally admired.

Whatever feeds your habit, it’s been going on a long time, and understanding its sources in your personality will probably not help. More likely, analyzing your feelings will make you more self-critical and vulnerable to the need for sexual re-inflation.

Unless I’m mistaken, you’ll find the addiction is hard to break, no matter how hard you try, and your first task will be, as they say in AA, to admit your helplessness and accept it as a fact of life. No, that doesn’t mean accepting that it will control your life, simply that it will be a presence in your life that you have to work hard every day to control and that may never be entirely controlled. The first step to avoiding asshole-ish behavior is acknowledging that you’re acting like an asshole in the first place.

Indeed, some people never control it, in spite of overwhelming incentives to do so. The good news, however, is that some good people have sustained meaningful marriages in spite of this behavior. Somehow, their wives felt loved, valued, and secure, despite their husband’s many affairs (and went on to become Secretary of State).

If it’s available, I recommend a 12 step group with other men who know what you’re talking about and who are trying to keep themselves under control. Look for a few attendees with good control who are leaders and sponsors. Unfortunately, there aren’t many guys who have this problem in the way you do, and stigma keeps them from identifying themselves, even to one another, but they are out there.

Even without a 12 step group, however, use 12 step principles. Accepting your helplessness means you shouldn’t promise your wife you’ll stop, because that will likely trap you in lies and shame. Tell her you can’t make promises, but you’ll try, one day (and come hither stare) at a time.

Take strength from your honesty and honest efforts. If you can regain your pride, you can show your wife how much you love her, instead of mollifying her like an angry mother.

Don’t give up. Spend time thinking about the reasons you want to stay faithful, aside from appeasing your wife. Look for any activity, or even a medication, that will allow you to think for a couple more seconds before you act. An antidepressant that has the side effect of reducing sex drive will go a long way towards preventing the act in the first place.

Shame, lying, and mollifying are probably as disruptive to your marriage as the infidelity itself. Work on all fronts and you may be able to improve your marriage and self-esteem, and then you’ll be able to look for some compliments and adoration from within.

STATEMENT:
“My compulsive sexual habits make me feel deceitful and threaten everything I value, but I’ll try to take strength from what I value to invest in my marriage, let my wife know where I stand, and stay focused on improving my self-control.”

Even in my 40s, I carry a lot of baggage/resentment from my upbringing. I was born in a foreign country and adopted by an older couple who had already raised two of their own kids before deciding to adopt. They were worn out, emotionally distant–my Mother suffered severe depression—so it was a quiet, lonely, and undirected childhood. I’ve since created what most days feels like a good life but working in a very competitive field, I feel like it can all be taken away from me in a flash (and, like most people since the economy collapsed, I’ve been laid off a number of times). I’ve always managed to find work, but I can’t help but think my shy and quiet demeanor has a lot to do with ending up on the chopping block; slipping through the cracks has been the recurring theme of my life. On some level I know I suffer from attachment disorder–connecting with others has always been a challenge and making idle chit-chat with co-workers and “bragging” about my accomplishments takes extreme effort—but moving forward I’d like to feel more connected to people I work with and form stronger relationships and friendships in my life. I think it would be good for my career and my overall being. How do I make that happen?

Before plumbing your personal history for the cause of your isolation, examining its impact on your resume, or trying to increase your degree of connectedness to other people, there’s a much simpler first step—asking yourself why you’re doing all this in the first place.

You’re not saying you’re lonely or that you wish to be closer to a particular friend or family member, just that, if you were more connected to others in a general, categorical way, you would be less disposable and less easily fired. That may be true.

On the other hand, you’re also saying that your lack of connectedness, like your mother’s lack of connection with you, represents a kind of failure that makes life less meaningful. That’s just plain false.

Yes, connection and emotionality can give life meaning, but love often turns to meanness and shallow sentimentality if it isn’t based on shared purpose and strength of character, and those who allow neediness, love or lust to run their social life often feel that everything is less worthwhile when things fall apart. (If you need examples, this site’s archives have plenty.)

On the other hand, your mother, whom you describe as depressed, worn out, and distant, may have achieved something meaningful in adopting you. No, neither you nor she experienced a sense of happiness or intimacy and, if those are your main criteria for judging worth, then her parenting was a failure from which you haven’t been able to recover.

What she did do, however, in spite of depression, aloofness, and fatigue, was give you safety, stability, and a chance to grow, and you clearly did a lot of growing, acquired substantial skills, and developed a good work ethic.

I assume you could, in some way, count on her, and, given your background and start in life, that’s a big deal. As parenting goes, distant isn’t good, but unreliable is much worse, and that’s worth acknowledging. It’s also possible that there was love on both sides that neither of you was good at recognizing, either in yourself or the other. You both may have achieved more than you realize.

Don’t then assume then that the connectedness of small talk and easily flowing feelings is the only or best way to be. As Star Trek’s Spock demonstrated more than a few times (and in alternate realities), even the emotionally aloof can create meaningful bonds by spending more time with someone, gathering information necessary to translate feelings into their own terms, and learning to express whatever is important.

As far as work goes, you don’t need to feel obliged to joke around or share feelings at the water cooler. Find projects that will allow you to work with people you respect, become a good listener, and keep a database on what’s important to them and interesting to you. When Spock says “Fascinating!” he means it, even if he doesn’t get the joke or join in the camaraderie.

Don’t try to be chatty or regard yourself as a failure if you’re shy and like solitude. Give yourself the right to choose the importance of relationships in your life and then go about building them, using the strengths you have and not torturing yourself.

This is an instance where space, at least the one that exists between you and others, need not be the final frontier.

STATEMENT:
“I may feel marginal because I’m shy and don’t attach easily to others, but that hasn’t prevented me from achieving independence or doing good things with my life. If I respect my own strengths, and choose relationship goals that are meaningful to me, I can find my own ways of achieving them.”

When I got home from vacation recently, I felt guilty about fending off a dinner invitation with a nice but obnoxious cousin and wrote him an email suggesting I’d missed his calls because I’d been away, and I was now very busy catching up, was sorry to have missed him, but would phone when I had a chance. Alas, he has phoned daily since and has an unerring ability to call when I’m just going out the door or sitting down to dinner, etc. He is also an extremely difficult person to get off the phone, failing to grasp concepts like “I must go now.” I thought perhaps I could write him to tell him of my unfortunate agoraphobia and chronic laryngitis, but I’m sure Dr. Lastname can provide nicer advice about reaching my goal of avoiding contact with boring relatives. Honest to God, he phones at least once a day. And nothing gets rid of him. Except you?

It’s a sad truth that some people yearn for closeness (see above) while others crave distance, but that’s the fun nature of the human condition. It’s not clear what your cousin wants aside from a (boring, endless) dinner, but as much as you want to avoid that, you should first determine what’s best in the long run.

There’s no reason to feel guilty about disliking a friendly cousin who lacks social skills. Feelings are feelings, and just as they may draw you to someone who’s a charismatic asshole, they may also drive you away from a decent bore. Which is to say, sometimes your feelings have their upside, just not for your cousin.

It’s natural, too, to be amused by the oblivious blindness of the socially impaired, irritated when it pushes them to intrude into your territory, and perhaps guilty about your negative response to a friendly overture (complete with four symphonic movements and an encore before the first intermission). What you don’t want, however, is to let irritation or guilt control your response.

Decide how much contact you feel obliged to have with a cousin you don’t really like, thinking generically and in terms of policy, procedure, and consequences. Factor in any debts, moral or otherwise, that you owe him or his parents.

Remember that, apart from the displeasure of his company, you may gain satisfaction and meaning from meeting occasionally, sharing memories about old times, and swapping information about relatives you seldom see. Decide for yourself whether this activity gives you a broader sense of where you come from, who you are, and the community you belong to—even when it’s boring.

Don’t feel obliged to hurt feelings in order to make him go away; patience and inventiveness, which you obviously possess, can do the job. Without lying, you can tell him you’re engaged in a number of solitary projects, often don’t answer the phone or respond to friends for long periods of time, and refuse to give details (which, given your cousin’s lack of perception, probably won’t be asked for anyway).

Assure yourself that you can control the duration of any conversation, as long as you give yourself the right to do so, and that you need never fear drowning in his persistent attention.

Don’t expect him to get the message—he just doesn’t get that kind of message. That means, however, that he’s also unlikely to be offended by your unending excuses for not responding to his calls, or your methods for shortening their duration when you allow them to happen. You can keep your distance without being cruel, even if he can’t take a hint.

STATEMENT:
“I may feel guilty and irritated by my cousin’s calls and wish I could get a restraining order, but I make my own decisions about sustaining family connections and I will stick to my own rules, regardless.”

I have been in therapy for 8 years, sometimes weekly, sometimes monthly or less, depending on life events and finances. My goal has always been to find some peace or grace in being me. I told this psychiatrist the first time I met with her that I “pattern like a duck,” meaning that I form strong and sometimes obsessive attachments. My attachment to her started that day and, this many years later, is still fierce and often painful. She is appropriately nonjudgmental and vacillates between thinking that the work for us is in this attachment and suspecting it’s a form of resistance. I can’t seem to focus on anything else for more than a couple sessions. I have read (obsessively) about attachments in therapy..,either to luxuriate in my own, or to get some understanding of what it is that has a hold of me and what it would take to get past it. Am I supposed to “work through it”? What does that look like? Am I supposed to ignore it? The only positive thing about this unspecified longing for her is that I have attached less to other “marks” during this time. Otherwise, I feel stuck. I think about just leaving therapy to get some distance from her and this dynamic, but I would rather just get over it. HELP (and thank you).

If you approach therapy with the goal of finding “some peace or grace in being me,” you’re in for a long, dependent journey with your therapist, mainly because, with a goal as loose as that, your journey has no real end.

This is the point, of course, where we say your goal is actually a wish, an ambiguous feeling not necessarily connected with your priorities or values. It’s a nice notion, but it’s not necessarily something you can control, and not something tangible enough for your therapist–or this therapist—to help you figure out.

Unless you connect your wish to something concrete, I can’t tell whether your duck-patterned tendency to get over-attached to people prevents you from finding good friends or a partner, or just causes you embarrassment and pain that interrupts your desired peace.

Sometimes people in psychodynamic therapy—shrinks and patients both—forget about this connection because the treatment process is interesting and feels fraught with significance. It’s dangerous, however, to lose your way.

Instead of transferring some of your feelings about others onto your therapist in a way that allows you to examine them, you’ll wind up transferring your energy, attention, and engagement, whereupon therapy becomes more important than life. Remember, your shrink is a hired hand, not a life partner; treatment is supposed to help you manage your life problems, not provide a sheltered alternative.

By now, you should also know that a tendency to get over-attached is part of your personality and unlikely to change. After all, if it hasn’t changed in 8 years of therapy, or in all the years of your life up to now, it’s probably yours for life.

So, putting aside your wish to be a different person, ask yourself whether your urge to over-attach is really screwing up your work or relationships, and use that as your new therapy starting point.

For example, if you’re over-attached to someone who is not a good friend, then use your therapy to figure out how to get free. Don’t waste time figuring out why you choose the wrong friends or get over-attached, because that’s just a way of avoiding the pain of doing what you gotta do. Suck it up, do it, and be proud that, whatever your feelings, they don’t control your choice in friends.

On the other hand, if you’re managing your life fairly well in spite of over-attached feelings, give yourself credit for that achievement, declare your therapy a victory, and withdraw your troops.

You might not find your desired peace, but most people don’t. Instead, you’ll have found something much more useful; the point of therapy, or, even better, therapy’s end.

STATEMENT:
“I may never know why I attach like a duck, but I won’t let my feelings prevent me from breaking up with bad friends, finding good friends, and being a good friend.”

I don’t know why I couldn’t stand living with my ex-wife. We married young, but she’s a nice person and we raised a good family for 15 years before I pulled the plug. I think it was something about us both being, well, very attractive people—we were also attracted physically—that made the relationship feel wrong after years went by and I felt I was living with a stranger. Now I’ve got an amicable divorce and am dating a woman I really like, but the other day I got panicked by the idea that the same thing will happen again, and I’ll wind up feeling smothered by having to live with someone I don’t really know. My goal is not to screw up another relationship if I’m really incapable of having one.

Too much love and not enough friendship may have done in your Romeo-and-Juliet marriage, but that doesn’t mean you can’t love or do better the second time around. You’re not telling me that you repeatedly get close to girls and then run away; you’re just afraid it will repeat one more time.

It’s ironic that winning someone you really, really long for is dangerous because, if you want someone that badly, you probably don’t really know them. The fairy-tales rarely cover this part, but if you win your true love, that’s when your troubles begin.

You don’t usually yearn for someone because of who they are, but because something about them triggers your needs. They’re rich or beautiful or make you feel very, very good. Friends, on the other hand, are usually great to be with because they don’t trigger strong needs, so you feel comfortable being yourself. The fact that you’re not feeling too needy allows you to relax and makes the relationship more real.

First, consider your own definition of friendship, and ask yourself whether you can accept this girl when she’s being a jerk and whether she accepts you under similar conditions. Ask whether she’s solid and trustworthy, and whether those qualities are confirmed by what you know about her past, her family, her other friends, and reports from your private detective.

Then see what happens when you have your next closeness-panic. If she doesn’t over-react and you still want to hang out with her after you’ve calmed down, you’ve proven to yourself that she’s good with nervous Nellies and that your attraction to her is stronger than your fear.

If she does freak out, then you’re just a pair of beautiful strangers, and it’s time to look for a new partner whom you like more than you need.

STATEMENT:
“It’s horrible to pull apart a not-so-bad marriage with a decent partner, but I tried hard and didn’t give up easily. Now I’ll do my best not to make the same mistake, and hope that I can find the one additional ingredient I need in a relationship to make it comfortable and lasting.”

Please Note: There will be no new post on Monday due to the American firework festivities. We’ll return to posting on Thursday, assuming we don’t blow our fingers off.

I never feel as though I ultimately have any power in a relationship beyond what’s given to me by the woman I’m with. The early stages always evolve easily, organically, the two of us meeting each other’s needs. I give a lot of myself and feel very happy and safe and good as she reciprocates. At some point, however, an imbalance always arises, and I find myself doubling-down on staying patient and compassionate while she’s acting less committed to meeting my needs. It leaves me feeling confused and betrayed, like I’m serving at her pleasure, and if I complain, then that’s it, it’s over. This happens again and again and I sense I’m missing a transitional skill set. I’m not going to stop being the type who invests a lot emotionally in a woman I want to be with. The question is, how do I transition out of that early, romantic stage into something that allows me to stay compassionate but preserves my self-respect as things invariably start to get complicated?

Questions like this are tricky, because at best they’re vague, and at worst, they’re a tad creepy, because they refer to girlfriends entirely in terms of their impact on your feelings, rather than the details of who they are and what they do in life.

Since we’re all about giving our readers the benefit of the doubt, we’ll assume that just pointing out that girlfriends are people doesn’t solve your problem.

Instead, we’ll take it that your approach to relationships, like your case, is simply too reactive to your emotions, rather than self-involved and narcissistic.

In the absence of specifics, the main focus of this case seems to be the importance of meeting emotional needs in a relationship, and evaluating relationships in terms of how good they make you feel is obviously something we’d frown upon.

If you want your needs met in a relationship, it’s better to focus on what’s more tangible and under your partner’s control, e.g., she might not make you happy everyday, but, in the long run, you’re better off if she makes car payments on time (because you’d be pretty unhappy if visited by the repo man).

It’s up to you to define what you really need, choose someone who has the capacity to give it to you, and assess whether you’re getting enough to be worth the hard times when it feels like you’re getting nothing but crap. That sounds fairly business-like, and it needs to be business-like, because, otherwise, your feelings will run you into the ground.

If you rely on feelings alone to tell you what to do, any kind of mutual attraction will make you satisfied, whether the attraction is based on lust, money, infatuation, or a mutual hatred of the Yankees. Your needs will be met and so will hers, but meanwhile, you haven’t sized up whether she’s a steady person who shares your values and shows an ability to accept your less attractive qualities, and vice versa.

You’re not missing a transitional skill set, you’re just failing to define your values and do pre-screening. Yes, this process means forgoing the joys of fast romance and frustrating your short-term needs by going slow, doing fact-checking, and tolerating horniness, loneliness, or both until you’re confident you’ve got someone and something solid. It also means avoiding the kind of frustration described above.

Your current approach leaves you feeling betrayed and wondering what you did wrong. The more you accept those feelings as true, the more actively you’ll pursue anyone you’re attracted to, while feeling passively dumped once things don’t work out. You’ll become a depressed victim and wonderful shrink-fodder.

From now on, don’t invest a lot in anyone or anything, emotionally or otherwise, until you’ve checked them out carefully, drawing on your experience and self-knowledge. Focus on the details, if not for us, then for your own sake if you ever want an actual human wife.

STATEMENT:
“The more attracted I am to a woman, the harder I will try to remember what I’m looking for in a partner and look for evidence that she has it. Meanwhile, I will try to keep my heart and other organs under control.”

I’m scared by the way I’ve started to snap at my ailing parents. They expect me to do what my two older sisters used to do for them, but my sisters have moved away, and I’m not well, and there’s only so much I can do, but my parents don’t seem to understand that. I’m feeling drained and I want them to understand I’ve reached my limit. I can’t do any more.

When you’re a kid, it’s normal to regard your parents as the authority on needs. If they tell you you’re not meeting their need for you to do chores or school work, then so it was written you’re a bad kid.

You may complain that they aren’t fair, but you haven’t yet developed your own standards or the strength of mind to believe in them. If you feel unjustly accused, it’s hard to feel happy with yourself until they’ve withdrawn the accusation and declared you innocent.

Now, like a lot of adults, you feel the same way, even though you’ve probably developed your own standards for what a good person should do to help her parents. If you were judging a friend, you’d expect her to respond to her parents’ needs by doing anything that would make a difference, that couldn’t be done by others, and that she could afford to do, given her other obligations.

You’d also point out that she had little control over most of their problems and should be careful not to give herself responsibility for them. You’d remind her that her parents had less ability than ever to judge her actions and restrain themselves from complaining or making her feel responsible for their pain.

So caring for your parents is a trying time. If you listen to them as a child would, however, you’ll knock yourself out and resent them for never being satisfied or appreciative. You’ll get nasty, helpless, and passive. Victimized, you’ll talk yourself into feeling desperate.

If you’ve learned by living and watching them, however, you can use your own standards of right and wrong to protect yourself from their unhappiness, and the guilt it triggers. If they don’t like your performance, you can agree to disagree. You can find your own balance between meeting their needs and attending to your own, without needing their approval.

Take time to consult your own standards, and don’t respond to them before you do. Dismiss the kid who wants to be approved and understood. They need grown-up help now, and if you can act like one, you’ll wind up giving them better care without losing track of your own needs.

STATEMENT:
“It hurts to see my parents struggle and hear their disappointment with me, but I know I love them, I’m determined to help them, and I believe I can do a good job of caring for them without having to do everything they ask or winning their approval. I just have to do what I think is right. “

Well, I’ve been with my boyfriend for 5 years, and during our third year I got into his Facebook account and saw that he’d cheated on me by talking online with girls saying he loved them. I walked away for about 4 months. He tried everything to get me back and after he showed me he changed I thought I should give it one last chance since he is my first everything. I’m trying to move past this but I feel there is something inside me that wants to explode every time I am with him. What advice can you give me to forget this incident or should I not forget?

You’ve given this guy one more chance because he’s your “first everything,” which is understandable. At this point, however, he’s also your first lesson in how character, unlike love, is forever.

He didn’t do this to hurt or disrespect you, because that would imply he thought his actions through before taking them. Instead, he acted on his very flawed set of instincts, which is what brings his character into question.

Sincerity, tons of respect, and heaps of flowers shouldn’t get you to lower your guard. Most guys who sincerely regret their bad behavior regret it because they got caught, or they don’t feel like that any more, or they wish you weren’t mad at them.

Sure, guys like this may really, really love you and have nothing but sincere regrets, but they can’t admit that their basic instincts haven’t changed, won’t change, and will always come back. They sincerely wish that weren’t true and that the guy who did those bad things was another guy, but all the earnest wishes in the world don’t guarantee that his actions will improve.

Most guys with bad instincts improve, not by becoming better people, but learning to control themselves after getting to truly know themselves, for better or worse. At some time or other, they accept the fact that their bad instincts will never go away, and that they will always have to struggle to keep them in check. They know that the moment they think they’ve won permanent control, they’re in real trouble.

Unless he worships the ground you walk on, your boyfriend’s love will probably not keep him on the straight and narrow. If he controls himself because he loves you and doesn’t want to hurt you, that’s fine for as long as it lasts. Usually, however, real couples get mad at one another over stupid things and have petty urges to hurt one another. That’s when his control will break down, unless it’s rooted in deeper, personal values, not just loving feelings that can fade after a shouting match.

Your goal then isn’t to forget this incident, but to first figure out whether it’s indicative of what your future together holds. Don’t pay lots of attention to the sincerity of his love or whether he shows you tons of respect, but do give him points for admitting that he has an honesty problem, and give him more points if he wants to change because he wants to be a better guy, and not just to get your love. Give him lots of points if his actions reflect his words over a long period of time.

You know what you think about his cheating, but the real question is, what does he think about it, and what does he plan to do. If his plan just involves groveling and empty promises, get ready to be the first one in the relationship to say it’s over.

STATEMENT:
“Cheating feels like my boyfriend disrespects me and that it won’t happen if his respect is real. That’s not true. Cheating is a bad habit that’s hard to change and it has very little to do with how much he loves or respects me. The only way I can safely trust him with my future is if I see that he owns his problem, wants to be a better guy, and keeps his hands, eyes, and email connections to himself.”

After 10 years of working my butt off for this company, my boss rewarded me by giving me all the shitty parts of her job and taking away all the things I liked to do and giving them to herself. She’s not mad at me and doesn’t want to force me out. I don’t think she expects me to be mad and if I told her, she’d think I was being touchy. My goal is to feel better about these changes so I don’t blow up, but doing this job has never been easy and now it feels like an endless humiliation.

If you’ve worked your butt off for a company and gotten treated like shit, there’s a wonderful lesson to be learned. You should never, ever treat work as if it’s family or the whole of your life. You also shouldn’t be surprised if losing your ass makes a shitty feeling increase.

I know most jobs come to feel like family; you see more of the people you work with than anyone else, and the bosses talk about caring, loyalty, and fairness. It’s hard not to feel humiliated and/or like the mistreated middle child if no one listens and you’re given tasks that everyone else hates doing.

Remember, however, that your goal in working is to make a living, not to get the job done or win your boss’s respect. You work for yourself and your own values, and, while your boss is your most important client, that’s all he is. Until the day arrives when respect becomes currency, focus on your paycheck and timecard instead.

If you care too much about your work and then feel unappreciated, your feelings become dangerous. It’s not just that disgruntlement gets noticed, but that criticized bosses always find something wrong with you. At that point, it gets personal and moral, and you’re the one who will wind up in the shrink’s office, not them.

Step back, assess your strengths and opportunities, then market yourself and see what’s out there. If the job market is dead—and that’s been the rule for the last few years—respect yourself for working with disrespect. It’s hard enough to make a living when your boss likes you.

Take comfort in this secret: the guy who does the shit-work no one else wants usually has a more secure job because processing shit is the most essential part of any job. Work hard, but get your butt back; after all, you already work for an asshole.

STATEMENT:
“I may feel as if my devotion has been rewarded with humiliation and disrespect, but that means I’ve been giving too much to my job and not thinking enough about my own priorities. It’s time to become my own boss and develop a job description that limits overwork and attends to other parts of my life. I don’t really want to be a well-appreciated worker who knocks himself out for the sake of the company. I want to be a guy who values his own work and loves quittin’ time.”

You’ve probably had a disgusting amount of questions like the ones I’m about to put towards you, and that’s another thing that annoys me—I’m a cliché. 17 months ago my boyfriend broke up with me, explaining that he was too young to be in a serious relationship. I know this is perfectly logical but I have never been able to get over it, even though I do understand his point of view. I am still very much in love with him. I know perfectly well that realistically no one really marries their first love, that realistically it wasn’t even a proper adult relationship but I feel as raw today as I did the day it happened. I’ve been diagnosed with severe depression and anxiety. I have regular nightmares about him. Last Easter I attempted suicide yet it failed. I’ve been sent to counseling, but I didn’t like it. I dropped out of university as I was too distracted and there is nothing I can throw myself into to make me forget it. The idea of him with someone else would kill me. I keep thinking to myself, I’m only 21 and I shouldn’t take this so personally and seriously but I do and I have no idea why. I know I need to wise up but I can’t.

Some say love’s like a drug, but we think it’s more like a (sometimes) innocuous mental illness; it doesn’t make you “crazy”—at least not necessarily—but it does give you weird thoughts, sometimes long after the relationship is over.

While those thoughts are hard to stop and easy to believe in, at least they’re not true. Like anxiety and depression, love has a weird way of keeping itself alive by changing the way you think and act, until it changes your beliefs. That’s when you’re in trouble.

You think there’s no value to life once love goes from bliss to bad, so you try to remember and revisit and talk about everything that hurts the most, even though that keeps it hurting longer. Each time you think the thought, visit the memory, and talk about your feelings, you grind the loss in deeper, and the pain makes you do it again. You can set a Guinness record for miserable pining (i.e., a lifetime) if love-thinking goes unchecked.

Love has got you treating yourself like shit, and there’s nothing noble or beautiful about that. You feel worthless, treat yourself as worthless by trying to kill yourself, and then feel more worthless for failing and still feeling miserable.

Remember, there’s nothing wrong with being needy. OK, you’ve got a sensitivity to love, and in the right situation, that makes you open to certain kinds of joy and poetic feelings that others miss. Like some traits associated with mental illness, it has its good side (if there was no such thing as depression, most of the good art in the world would not exist).

Besides, the most likely reason you have this trait of sensitivity is that you were born with it, so don’t waste time wondering why you’re suffering, what you did wrong, or what you need to do to change. You are who you are, and you happen to be vulnerable to lost love. You need to manage that part of yourself better instead of focusing on it and feeding its destructiveness.

Big Pharma has yet to release an anti-love potion, so take treatment into your own hands by challenging the thoughts and memories that keep the disease going; keep busy while accepting the sad fact that you’re miserable, you can’t control it, and you can’t stop it. Almost everything you want to do about it will make it worse, so force yourself to do the opposite.

Find a recovery coach, or a recovery support group, that can remind you that you have a self that’s independent of your sadness and loss and that you deserve to respect yourself for carrying on with your life, in spite of your pain, one day at a time.

If you ruminate, visit old haunts, or try to share your sad story, they can tell you to shut up and do whatever you’re supposed to do when you “slip.” Prepare to fight negative thoughts and feelings every day for as long as it takes.

You will recover, learn from your experience, and do better next time, but only if you accept the unfair burden of your disease. There’s no cure for love, but if you work hard enough, you can manage your mind again, and then maybe one day find a truly healthy relationship.

STATEMENT:
“Right now I don’t care about living, but I’ve never believed that the meaning of my life is much related to how I feel. I respect myself for doing what I think is right and being a good woman and that hasn’t changed. I’ll stand by that view for as long as it takes.”

My husband and I have been married two years. Before we were married, we had been living separately and co-parenting our then 4-year-old son (we had split up when he was 18-months-old because I suspected he was cheating on me). He became involved with the woman I suspected, moved in with her and got engaged all within a year of us breaking up. Then, she cheated on him and they broke up. We began hanging out with each other and “dating.” I broke it off with him when he admitted he did not consider our relationship “exclusive.” I moved on again with my life. Then eight months later he proposed marriage stating that he knew he had made mistakes but was now certain he wanted nothing more than to be with me exclusively for life. I have trouble getting our past out of my head and trusting that he will not abandon me for someone else again. We have trouble getting along sometimes and his passive-aggressive behavior bothers me. My goals are to get over my feelings of mistrust and to be able to communicate better with my husband.

Being abandoned feels terrible—the word suggests the helplessness of a newborn left alone on a wet rock—so don’t apply the word to yourself if you’re an adult unless you intend to abandon yourself, which I’m sure you won’t do unless you’re thinking too much about your husband.

Besides, you did fine without him before and you’ll do fine without him again, if necessary. Meanwhile, ask yourself whether life is better with him around, assuming that you can’t get rid of your suspicions. Put aside, for the time being, whether your suspicions are true or not; assume you’ll find out someday and, if you do, you’ll deal with it then.

One thing you don’t want to do is to get rid of your suspicions by asking him for reassurance or watching him closely. That’s a good way to kill your relationship, drive you both crazy, and improve my business.

It’s unfair you should have to live with painful suspicion, but as long as you decide he’s a worthwhile partner, it’s part of your job description. That’s what you get when you re-cycle a flip-flop guy, which is why deciding his worthiness is so important—otherwise, it’s a lot of suffering in vain.

Don’t blame yourself for your suspicions, and don’t blame him; you can’t help having your feelings and he can’t help stirring them up. All you can do is not make things worse (see above) by keeping your feelings to yourself and not being overt about checking his email.

Remind yourself that you’re independent and not a fool. If he strays, you’ll find out sooner or later. At that point, you’ll know it’s not because he’s “too young for commitment,” but because he’s too self-absorbed to be faithful. Luckily, you seem self-reliant enough to “abandon” his sorry self and move on.

STATEMENT:
“It’s hard to live with suspicion, but I can do it if I think it’s necessary for a good partnership, and not because I’m too needy to say good-bye to a jerk. I can live alone again if I have to. Whether my husband proves true or not, I respect myself for taking risks in a good cause.”

My partner cheated on me while I was pregnant with our baby, and kept ME the secret. He told lies about me and told people that we were no longer together so that he could openly date the other woman. I’m struggling to stop thinking about it all, and the whole ordeal has triggered a particularly intense bout of depression and self-harm. I have hundreds of questions I feel I need answers to, but my partner is 100% unwilling to discuss the matter, seeing it as “dragging up the past”. My goal is to be able to get through the day without memories of the betrayal and the gossip that surrounded it intruding on my life.

When a guy hides his relationship with you when you’re pregnant, you don’t have hundreds of questions that need answers; you’ve got a few simple, sad, unpleasant answers that need to be accepted.

After all, you’re not doing a PhD in trying to understand him. That’s a waste of time and, like most inquiries into the sad “whys” of this universe, a sneaky way of avoiding acceptance.

You could see it as him not being that into you, but the reality is that he’s not into anyone, at all, except for himself. At this point, the only important question is one you have to ask yourself, and it’s figuring out what’s the right thing for you to do, regardless of what your should-be-ex might think.

First, stop calling him your partner, because, as he made perfectly clear by his actions, he was a partner in sex, not life. Partnership means you work together and have each other’s backs. If you turn your back on this guy, he’ll move on to some other woman’s front before your shadow hits the ground.

There’s probably no way you can avoid some intense depression if you care about him a lot and expected more of him, but don’t make it worse by trying to figure out what went wrong, or where you failed, or why he doesn’t care any more. The only thing you did wrong was fool yourself about your relationship and his character and let yourself care too much. No big crime, but unfortunately, you can suffer horribly from such mistakes without ever really having done anything wrong.

So don’t make things worse than they have to be. It’s too bad you’re feeling depressed and suicidal, but the pain will pass. Nothing has happened that should lower your respect for yourself or change your priorities, and now that you know he’s not good for much more, you’re free to stop worrying about his ability to remain faithful and look elsewhere for someone who has that ability, period.

You’re now free to plan a better future; a lawyer can tell you how to secure financial support, friends and family can provide emotional support, as could a therapist or therapy group to address the issue of self-harm.

When a guy rejects you and acts like a total jerk, it may hurt more in the short run because you feel humiliated; the fact, again, is that you’ve done nothing wrong and he has. You’ve done nothing to be ashamed of, other than to trust someone who doesn’t know enough to know when he should be ashamed. The answer might hurt, but the truth will set you free.

STATEMENT:
“It’s scary to find out that you’ve let yourself trust someone who’s basically untrustworthy, but love is blind. Recovery is going to hurt like hell, but better now than later. I’d much rather be gullible and hurt than nasty and cold, so my goal now is to be a good mother and take care of me and my baby in a way that he can’t and never will.”

If you were to have a casual chat with her, my wife would seem sane and reasonable; she’s a fine accountant and mother, but ever since she flipped out 7 years ago and spent 2 weeks in the hospital hearing voices tell her the FBI was after her, she’s had paranoid ideas about my having affairs behind her back. Sometimes, she knows it isn’t true, or I can joke her out of it, or she’ll talk about it as a symptom of illness. Other times, I see her giving me an uneasy look and pulling away, and I wonder whether I’ll ever have her trust. I wish I could persuade her to try new medications and get her paranoia under control, but she resents taking or being told to take medication, so I don’t try. My goal is to get her paranoia under control and save our marriage.

It’s sad to see weird, intrusive thoughts that come from nothing but mental illness tear a love apart, but it happens. Love can’t conquer all, and one of the worst things it can’t conquer is a paranoid delusion.

Your partner looks and sounds like the person you always knew, loved, and counted on, but a sudden flare-up of suspicion where there used to be comfort and love means you may not really have a partner any more. It’s hard to imagine anything other than a fairy tale curse that could drive someone away from the one they love, but the weird neurologic disturbances of mental illness can do it; it’s a real life evil spell.

Unfortunately, you can make it worse by trying to make it better. If you express your love, sadness, fears, concerns, sincerity, anger, you name it—you can’t change how she feels, except to make her feel discredited and blocked, which leads to more paranoia.

If medication hasn’t stopped it by now, it probably won’t. Theoretically, it’s possible she might be helped by some medication not yet tried, but not likely. For one thing, medications don’t always stop paranoid thinking, and, for another, paranoid thinkers don’t always take their medication (because, surprise, they’re paranoid about what it may actually do). So pushing her to take it may do nothing other than to make her feel annoyed, controlled—and paranoid. You see the pattern.

Your best bet is to accept her paranoia, and your loss. Don’t push her to be different, just see instead whether life together can be bearable for her, or not.

Don’t let sadness make you, or the kids, feel like failures. Success isn’t staying together; it’s finding the best compromise that eases her symptoms while allowing you to work together, if possible. What makes this task heroically difficult is that it leaves little room for your own needs, but you have no choice.

In the end, you need independence and other sources of support. You welcome what she can give you, but you dare not ask. Learn to roll with the punches of her paranoia, and if you can’t and they knock you out, defeat is never disgrace.

STATEMENT:
“My marriage is dead and what I have is weirdly similar, but basically different and subject to change without notice. For any number of reasons, particularly the kids, I’ll accept what I must and take pride in doing so, but I do so knowing these circumstances are hard, possibly impossible, and nobody’s fault.”

For years (e.g. 9 years or more) our marriage has been almost completely sexless. Within the past few years, affection has largely gone out of the window too. Our relating is often bitter, and this happens in front of our poor 8-year-old son, too. I don’t think I can feel attracted to my husband again, even though I think we could be friends if he hated me less and trusted me more. My goal is to have a relationship with my husband that does not f*ck up our son, or a “healthy” separation from him which causes the minimum of damage to him (our son).

When affection and sex seem to have worn out of a marriage, you might immediately wonder whether or not the marriage is over. That, however, would be jumping the gun—a premature evaluation, as it were.

Before you go deciding a sexless marriage means no marriage at all, consider whether you’ve done all you should to fight marital fatigue.

That’s the fatigue that sets in from feeling like you’re carrying more weight than your spouse, letting him know, finding out he feels the same way, kindly offering to take over his job, and arguing to a standstill until things blow up again. It’s unavoidable in most marriages, at least those that do heavy lifting; after all, the main reason for marrying is to have someone to blame.

The “work” of staying married is to shut up about your negative feelings while trying to start something positive, like talking, or eating, or really anything that doesn’t involve finger-pointing. If you don’t, sex tends to stop. If sex stops on its own, the positive conversations are what keep the relationship alive.

Don’t figure out why you don’t feel like having such conversations; the reason maintaining marital intimacy is work is that you don’t feel like it when you start doing it and figuring out why just postpones the inevitable and makes it more difficult to start. Your efforts will either work or they won’t, but if they don’t, they will at least assure you that you’ve done your job and aren’t to blame for the great divide.

You may have good reason for believing your husband’s negative feelings are to blame, but don’t share that view, regardless of how true it is. If you want to improve things, talk about his positive contributions and what you’d like to improve. If he continues to act mean and surly, that’s too bad; you know you’ve done your best and your criticism is not responsible for his mean and surly side.

You may also have good reason for believing your husband’s behavior is hurting your son, and that’s another line of reasoning to keep to yourself. Criticizing the impact of your partner’s bad behavior on your child’s well-being has one reliable result—war—and to avoid war, you need to follow basic rules of diplomacy: describe his good parenting contributions and, after assuming good intentions for his bad behavior, suggest that it may be having a bad effect. Again, if there’s a surly reaction, it’s on him.

Your goal then is to keep your own fire under control and not add to his. That’s about the best you can do to keep things friendly: avoid amplifying hostility. If you’ve done what you can and the evaluation comes back negative, then unfortunately, your conclusion isn’t premature, but forgone.

STATEMENT:
“If things are as unfriendly as they are between me and my husband after I’ve tried all known forms of marital resuscitation, then I’ve got a sad fact to accept. I guessed wrong about how well he and I would get along in the long run, but that’s the only thing I’ve done wrong. Now I’ve got to figure out what’s best for me and our child and do it without a negative word. That, at least, is worth aiming for. “

I was always good friends with my girlfriend, even when she was into drugs, (that was before we were dating), because I knew she was basically a decent person and we got along really well. After she cleaned up, we became a couple and we were doing really well, but then she started back on drugs again, and I got nasty with her, and she decided I was mean and controlling and couldn’t be trusted and then walked out. I know we had something special. I love her and I’m good for her. My goal is to figure out how to revive what is basically a positive relationship.

For whatever reason, nurturing guys love to get paranoid, fucked-up girls to trust them. They’re the kind of guy/suckers who tend to worship at The Church of Our Savior of the Sad Sexy Lady. And become professional therapists.

Finding a trusting girl is like picking out a dog at the pound: just roll her over on her back (figuratively speaking) and see if she snarls, and if she doesn’t, you’ve met your new best friend. One thing that’s true with dogs and people is that it doesn’t matter if it’s genetic or traumatic; the trust you see is the trust you get.

Although it hurts to lose her, you’re better off not trying to win the trust of someone who’s put you on probation, unless the probation is for very, very good reasons. If the crime is that you hurt her feelings with angry words or criticism of her drugging, then ask yourself whether it meets your definition of a crime.

Remember, having to apologize or redeem yourself for the crime of causing pain, as opposed to a real crime, will have you feeling guilty and responsible for someone else’s feelings (and drugging) forever. If marriage is about having someone to blame, pursuing the trust of an untrusting, damaged girl is about love-slavery and blaming/hating yourself.

As long as your goal is to re-establish a trusting relationship, you’re asking for what you can’t have (cue the Rolling Stones) while simultaneously painting a target on yourself. Instead, you should just credit yourself with making a good try. After all, you thought you knew her and were more than willing to tolerate her baggage, but you couldn’t overcome her weakness for drugs and tendency to see critics as enemies, both of which problems started long before you came on the scene.

You can be sad that it couldn’t work, but you can’t blame yourself, and you shouldn’t bother blaming something that happened in her past or yours. It won’t change the present, and in the present, you two don’t work. The future’s not looking too bright, either; before you start hoping she can improve, use your common sense.

To improve, she must meet 4 criteria. First, she has to see that she has a problem that is truly hers. Second, she has to want to control her impulses, not express them. Third, she has to want to do this for herself, not for you. And, fourth, she has to be lucky enough, and strong enough, to accomplish this task.

What you’re saying is that, given this challenge, she blames her drugging on your disrespect and dumps you, then she’s 0 for 4 with an F on the improvement test. It’s not the answer you want, but it’s the answer you need (cue Rolling Stones again).

Instead of fighting to nurture your broken beloved, learn what you need to learn. No matter how much you love someone, you can’t change their negative behaviors or give them the will or skill to manage them. Date people for who they are, and if they don’t measure up, move on. If you stop trying to be the Sexy Lady Savior, you’ll find true salvation.

STATEMENT:
“I love this girl more than I’ve ever loved anyone and I feel her pain; but I’ve given our love a good try and I know it can’t succeed because I can’t heal her and she shows no sign of being able to heal herself. I respect my love and my ability to accept her, let go, and move on.

My father asked me to write this letter for both of us. I was forced to move into my father’s one-room apartment and live with him after I lost my job and ran out of money (I’m 40). I’m grateful he took me in, and I’m trying to make enough money to get out on my own again. In the meantime, we’re stuck with one another, and we can’t stop fighting. I want him to understand the fact that I can’t help having a terrible temper, being very distractible, and not having the energy to clean things up because I’ve been diagnosed with depression and ADD. He wants me to understand that it’s hard to put up with my being a slob and never cleaning up and that he can’t help getting furious. We both want to put an end to the hostility.

Asking for understanding from your father is a really bad way to try to reduce hostilities, and a really good way to increase them. And no, it’s not opposite day.

Sure, he’s your dad, but let’s dispose of the notion that parent-child relationships are always supposed to be perfect, and can and must be fixed if they’re broken. Just because you share blood doesn’t mean you should share an apartment or that you can expect to get along, if you do.

As for “fixing” your relationship…well, if your father was fixed, you wouldn’t be here, and that would be the best solution to your conflict. Otherwise, you’re his son, but that doesn’t mean you should be able to get along.

Just given your personality, and forgetting that you’re his son, there’s no way he‘s going to enjoy living with you, no matter what’s responsible for your bad habits or grumpy disposition. He’s not Ghandi, not young, and not living in the situation he bargained for when he retired to a place of his own.

If, in addition to not kicking you out and not setting your dirty clothes on fire, he’s supposed to show you understanding, you’re going to be disappointed. And your expectations may be the last straw that breaks his fragile self-control and unleashes his temper.

Yes, it’s tough being blamed for doing things you feel you can’t control, but when you don’t have a place of your own and are forced to rely on the kindness of strangers/hostile relatives, you’d better get good at apologizing and cleaning up your mess. It’s smarter than showing your benefactors a certificate of justifiable slobbishness (neatness dyscontrol disorder) from your shrink.

Remember, however, that a father/son relationship is a two-way street (or, in this case, highway to hell); it’s equally dumb for a father to expect his son to understand his anger when he never has before. Some sons are so touchy about anger and so full of their own that they can’t tolerate anyone else’s, so speaking about it just makes it worse.

You can both have a good cry over your unavoidably nasty relationship…and now that you’ve wept yourselves into acceptance of your situation, there’s lots you can do to manage the situation, beginning with resolving not to talk to one another—except, perhaps, about the Red Sox—until you’re no longer living under the same roof.

Stop thinking about what the other guy is feeling and how unfair it is; instead, focus on your own standards of good roommate behavior and try to live up to them. If you slip, try to do better, and praise yourself lavishly when you come close.

Again, you cannot and should not attempt to communicate yourselves into the parent/child relationship you “deserve.” Communication will just allow both of you to further articulate why you don’t get along in the first place. The more emotionally distant you are, the easier it will be to live close together.

STATEMENT:
“There is no way either one of us can be happy in this impossible but unavoidable living situation. I can’t help feeling angry and I can’t change his bad habits. It’s a lot to accept. If I can keep from making things worse, bear the pain, and do my work, it will be amazing, and so will I.”

I can’t get over the feeling of being a permanent loser since my husband divorced me 3 years ago after having an affair. I never saw it coming. I was a great wife and I loved spending time with the kids. Since then, I can barely make ends meet, I know I’ll never own my own home or a decent car, and my time with the kids is stressed by the fact that I’m working full time and always tired. Three years ago, I was living my dream and now there’s no hope. My goal is to understand how things could go so wrong.

One of the saddest things about this world is how easy it is for a good person to make a bad marriage with the wrong person. Marriage is the only true test of someone’s ability to be a good wife or husband, and unfortunately, some people get that far and fail.

You can love someone to pieces and feel the chemistry is perfect, but many attractive people lack the ability to be reliable and steady under the long-term pressure of kids and a partnership. Perfect in theory, bad in practice (aka, partnership and parenting).

Sometimes, the wrong person is obviously wrong to everyone but you. Other times, not even a thorough FBI investigation would uncover the flaw. What matters now is that you know what you’ve got, you’re better off without him if he’s really like that, and you’ve got kids to raise and a living to make.

Don’t waste time trying to understand your marriage because it’s over, you can’t, and trying to understand it is just another futile effort to avoid accepting that it was what it was. Spend 5 minutes with a shrink and you’ll discover what you already knew; that your ex was fickle and poor at sticking with responsibilities long before he met you, and/or that there were signs of bad chemistry between you before the affair came along. You may also discover he reminded you of your father or mother, but who gives a shit.

The point is, you did nothing wrong aside from picking the wrong guy. And until we can time-travel, that’s just something you’re going to have to live with, or really, live through.

Remember what you got married for, aside from love, companionship, and walks on the damned beach. You wanted the stability of pooled resources—time and money—for raising kids and protecting all of you from life’s usual crap. Well, your marriage gave you and the kids a good start, and you’re still better off than you would be alone, aside from the post-divorce hangover.

So forget about the good life you once knew and remember the good values you’re carrying forward. The divorce may have represented a failure in personal constancy or integrity for someone in your marriage, but that person wasn’t you.

STATEMENT:
“I can’t control the pain of loss, poverty, and missing past comforts; but I can be sure of what I was trying to do and how well I did it and I will not change. I may check out future partners more carefully. I may wish to win the lottery. I won’t change me.”