A heroine fix from November 9, 1998…

Dear Breakup Girl,

This is hard. I dated a guy briefly, and it didn’t work out. He understands this, but beyond us, his life is crumbling. He accepted a corporate job in computers at age 20, and hasn’t been able to let go of his old lifestyle. His friends are all musicians, some of them the best, and he’s the odd man out/in. He’s their rational, their accomplisher, their answer man. HE feels bad leaving the party early, he feels dedicated to his job. Now let me explain where I come in:

I love this man, dearly. He’s beautiful, with eyes that’ll melt your heart. He’s super-smart, but in an off-beat, real-world way. He’s been ill (ulcers) to the point of almost dying. He’s a heroin junkie. You see, when we broke up, he decided that getting back together would be too much for me, and felt he would drag me down. He’s proceeded to isolate himself from his friends most of the time, and has been using copious amounts of drugs. He has the $$$ to keep it up; he has the stubborness to ignore the warnings. He’s the best thing that ever happened to most of the people I know, his company, and maybe even people who don’t know him yet. I can’t help feeling guilty watching him die off like this. It won’t be long. And he’s pushing everyone further and further away emotionally. Recently his ex killed herself, blaming him in the “final” note. He’s provided me with e-mail (owns the server), a place when I’m lonely, money when I’m short, and compassion when I need it, and I feel so helpless. I know his time is drawing near, if he doesn’t stop. But I can’t make him. The more I try the deeper he goes. Do I walk, or do I force him to help himself? If he dies, there will be a void in many people’s lives, mine included. I’m sorry this sounds so cluttered, but, those are my thoughts.

— Melissa

BG’s advice after the jump!

Unsettled on November 2, 1998…

Dear Breakup Girl,

I have a problem. I’m almost 24, and am feeling very unsettled with life at the moment. Some major changes have happened over the last year or so. My relationship of 5 years ended, I finished University, made a cross-country move, I got a job, got laid off, got another job, changed my religion (from Christianity to Paganism) and made some great friends in my new city who all subsequently moved overseas. I now have no friends and am finding it hard to meet others (and yes, I have done all those things like join clubs etc).

But, that is not my problem. I want to travel. I am currently saving money so I can get going. I will be going to Scotland to meet up with one of my friends who left, and we will then backpack the world. Pretty much going wherever we feel like. I have wanted to do this for ages, and am not about to change my mind now.

My problem is this. I am reaching that age when people expect you to settle down, buy a house/apartment, get married, start really shooting up the corporate ladder etc. But, I am not in the least bit interested in all this mundane reality. Not yet anyway. However, I am finding increasing pressure to start settling down, look for a boyfriend and potential future husband and ease into full adulthood. The family (who I am once again living with to save money for my big adventure) constantly drop broad hints about this. But I am not ready, and quite frankly don’t know if I ever will be. At the moment I could quite easily spend the next 10 years picking olives in Greece, sweeping floors in Mexico and building walls in China. Is this vision unrealistic? Am I too old to be doing this now? Is 35 too old to really start your adult life? How do I make the family understand? All these questions! Yet, in my soul I know this is something I have to do for myself. If I don’t I will eternally regret it.

Any help or advise would be greatly appreciated.Thanks.

— Edana

BG’s answer after the jump!

Not staying friends on October 19, 1998…

Dear Breakup Girl,

I guess I don’t necessarily have a problem, I just keep running into him on a far-more-than-regular basis.

You see, my ex and I were best friends before we began dating. He wanted me to be his girlfriend … but on my end, I didn’t much care for the idea. I’d had a rough childhood of sexual abuse, and I had a baby at age 15 and gave him up for adoption, and such events finally led me to a life-threatening nervous breakdown, therapy, and the like.

Of course, he knew all of this, being my best friend and all, and he was so supportive of me. So, after receiving truckloads of love letters from the guy while I was on an internship half-way across the country, I decided I definitely wanted to give him a chance when I got back to college.

My first week back, we went out for dinner, and discovered we lived in apartment buildings right next to each other, both on the fourth floor, both facing the courtyard, and thus, we could talk through the windows, him from his kitchen, me from my living room. It wound up being one of those splendid romances that I will remember for the rest of my life. Never before had either of us shared a connection like ours. We knew it. We loved each other, and we didn’t doubt this in the least.

Well, that December I graduated from college, and he still had a year to go. We’d decided I would stay behind and work until he garnered his degree and we could move away together. La di da di da. You know the drill.

On Christmas Eve he told me he didn’t know if he could see me anymore, because the experiences that led me to the aforementioned depression “ate away at his stomach,” and he just didn’t think I was “pure enough,” and whatnot. And to paraphrase, but how did he know I would never be that depressed again someday?

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Not feeling friendly on October 12, 1998…

Dear Breakup Girl,

I’ve been reading your column and I’m under the impression that you’re a genius. So I now leave it to you to help make some sense of what happened, and how to understand why she resolved things they way she did. This girl Nicki and I did finally get together and went steady (after a years long courtship) during my second semester MBA year. When school was over I took her over to England for a week and took her out to see ‘Beauty and the Best’ and ‘The Phantom of the Opera.’ We had our own apartment to stay in for that whole week…and during that week she got to see all the sites, traveled to all the pubs, and toured everything with me…It was an investment that seemed well worth the money and effort I put into planning it. We had fun, she professed her undying love for me, she called it our little honeymoon before I went off to start work. So what happens? No sooner than when everything is going perfectly and smooth do things turn bitter.

I came back to College to pack up and she tagged along with me…that was nice, all five days we tried to prolong the daparture for as long as possible, but it had to be done…I had to work and start my next phase of life, which was 1000 miles away. As I left we promised each other to make this Long Distance thing work out…Well, not even a month had passed when she decided that she is too young to hold out for this and broke up with me…and hey get this. She still wants us to be friends like we used to be. I agreed like the spineless man that I am, I didn’t want to lose everything with her, you know.

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The Predicament of the Week from October 12, 1998…

Dear Breakup Girl,

Could you please give me advice on permanently removing a leech from my bruised skin?

I’m a 33 year-old, good looking, stable, professional, financially-secure, in-shape, blah, blah, blah, GWM. But I’m totally inexperienced in relationships. Last December I got together for coffee with a guy from the personals without a detailed telephone screening in advance (never do that — if he doesn’t have time to talk on the phone and says “let’s just meet,” run away!). He turned out to be really cute and masculine-looking, but with no job and living with a friend. So I knew that a relationship was out, but it was Friday night and I had no plans so I took him home. The sex was great. He was fun to be with. A week later he had a job so I decided to date him figuring he’d quickly find a place to live and all would be OK.

But then, I introduced him to an experienced friend who the next day told me “This guy’s stupid, shallow, a user and a manipulator. You are fated to get totally involved with him and destroy your life. Mark my words and don’t come looking for help later.”

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The Predicament of the Week from October 5, 1998…

Dear Breakup Girl,

Sorry for my verbosity, but after I wrote this litany of patheticness I felt like deleting any part of it would be like cutting off a limb. Please feel free to skip over any drivel you feel unnecessary.

I used to be pretty good at handling my romantic entanglements when I was younger, but now everything seems to be a big mess. I am really at a point where I am so confused and no longer trust my gut instincts. I have been on this manic roller coaster for almost a year and a half and I just don’t know what to do. I should be happy — I have a very successful career on Wall Street, am intelligent, creative, and have the means to do or go wherever I want. I have a wonderful family, supportive and caring friends, and I know that I am loved.

But my life is not perfect. I was divorced earlier this year after 4 years of marriage preceded by 5 years of dating. It wasn’t one of those messy-throw-all-the-china-at-each-other type breakups. We just got married too young (we got engaged when I was 21 — I am 28 now) and realized that we both changed and wanted different things. We tried to work out our differences, but it just wasn’t meant to be. So we cried, separated, cried, got divorced and cried some more.

People, you have no idea how much more there is after the jump

Lacking confidence on September 28, 1998…

Dear Breakup Girl,

I kicked my girlfriend out of my apartment at college because since we moved in together she has been sucking me dry of money. In only a month that we lived together I gave her $850.00 dollars. I feel I was the idiot. Well, now I am having a hard time having the courage to ask girls out on a date — yes, I fear rejection and honestly I have no confidence in myself to flirt or whatever. Seems like all the girls I’m interested in want the jocks or the ones with the new trucks. What should I do? I already turned down Model Search because I was still in a relationship — should I pursue that still?

— Rick

Dear Rick,

Does anyone want to tell Breakup Girl what “Model Search” is? Seems to me like we have enough of them, without having to go looking. Or, are some missing?

In the meantime, listen, Rick: you had a bum deal with that girl, and it’s made you twice-shy. But I think the balances in your security and confidence accounts might have been a little low even before then. I’m sure it was very nice of you to give her so much money, but it was also a little needy. On your part. Did you maybe think that getting an ATM card at Rick Bank was the only way she’d like you, need you, stay? You were trying, in your own way, to be the cash jock, the guy with enough money for the new truck. It’s all the same. Something to think about before you relaunch Girlfriend Search. And I’m hoping you won’t have to go looking too hard.

Love,
Breakup Girl

Holding it together on September 21, 1998…

Dear Breakup Girl,

My ex and I broke up about a year ago. We were mismatched in every way but one, and a lot of bad things happened. We still have a lot of mutual friends online, even though he’s told all his friends that I’m insane/delusional/dangerous. For my part, I did most of my most vehement bitching to people who didn’t know him.

A couple of days ago, he posted a long and uncalled for summary of some of the worst things that happened between us to a usenet group, because he thought I was snarking at his wife. (They’ve been married for a couple of months, I guess.) He’s under the mistaken impression that I’m conducting a smear campaign against him, when even my closest friends say that the worst thing they’ve ever heard me say about him is that I ought to have known better, and that he still owes me money. (He did, at the time. We’ve since settled.)

I just hate it that he’s implying that he has a life, simply because he and some fat blue-haired chick got married in the park; because I’m single by choice, and spending my spare time going out with friends, doing volunteer work and generally living the life I want to live, mine doesn’t count.

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To Sir with lust on September 21, 1998…

Dear Breakup Girl,

Congratulations on your site. I have a small academic problem for you. I am a graduate student who is perpetually falling for academics/professors — of both genders. I am quite comfortable with the gender part of it, but the academic part causes potential ethical problems, and in my experience, the need to constantly attempt to bridge unwieldy generational boundaries. I am 24, and the objects of my admiration tend to be at least around 35 or over with Captivating Intellects/Teaching Styles. Oh yes, and most already have partners…I am not attracted to people my own age at all, as we generally do not have the same mindset or priorities. Am I Mad? Just Unusual? Destined to spend the rest of my days a lonely young spinster prowling the corridors of the academy? This situation has already caused some emotional strains for me.

Thanking you in anticipation of a reply with footnotes,
— Girl Gradstudent

Dear GG,

You are neither as Mad nor as Unusual as you might like to (¹) think. For one thing, you seem to have good taste. Captivating intellect? Charisma? Good call! You’re off to a better start than the folks who write, “Dear Breakup Girl, The objects of my admiration are all dull as a box of rocks.” For another, you are, um, hardly the first young woman to fall for — or at least be attracted to — sharp, charismatic, Older men (women) who are ultimately unattainable (²). That’s why I think my response to you will apply to everyone out there who has considered — or entered into — an “Inappropriate Relationship.”(³)

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Making a move on September 21, 1998…

Dear Breakup Girl,

I like this boy I barely know, but I know him well enough to know his name. We are both in the same grade, 8th. I’m not the type of person to ask someone out, I’m afraid I’ll be rejected. Plus he’s going out with someone and I doubt he knows who I am.

All the other people say that I should flirt with him, say hi and stuff, but it’s hard on me cause im kinda shy. What am I supposed to do, walk up to him and just say, “Hi!” That’s kinda awkward for me.

His girl’s locker is in the same aisle as mine and he’s there. I never said a word to him, same for him to me. But if he breaks up, I KNOW for a fact that he won’t go with me. He likes those preppy girls that wear their hair in a bob, a messy ponytail, flares, (I wear flares) with those plaid or checkered button up shirts that they wear over white tees.

NO guy has ever asked me out in 2 years! I have a feeling that I may be ugly. When I look in the mirror, I look fine, but when I look in the 3-way mirror I look demented! My nose is crooked and everything.

What can I do to make it *normal*? How can I make myself look and feel better??

–Unloved

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