Double trouble on December 14, 1998…

Dear Breakup Girl,

My boss and I have this incredible chemistry between us. We get along so well, and he has many of the qualities I would look for in a man. However he is married (and my boss!). Lately, he makes a lot of comments about me, like jokingly, but like he is trying to see how I feel about him. Recently, he invited me out for Happy Hour Friday after work and told me that he’d like to spend more time with me, but can’t ask me to do things because his wife is jealous of me. (And I met his wife only once!) We haven’t spoken of any related issues since that night. He also said that night at the bar, that if he weren’t my boss and weren’t married he would like to get involved with me. But it’s almost as if he said that to see if I would accept those conditions, almost proposing an affair to me (my gut level feeling). I told him, “in some other dimension” we could get involved but not like this. We haven’t spoken about that night/conversation since then, but he constantly talks to me at work and I catch him looking at me often. I know the right thing to do is to NOT get involved, yet we are so attracted to one another. HELP!

— Meg

Dear Meg,

Three words: DON’T GO THERE. Fourth dimension? Not even there.

Attraction? Fine. Doesn’t mean you need to act on it. Two words: window shopping.

Incredible chemistry with your boss? Great. Then you’ll be an excellent employee. Right?

But if the chem has crossed the line from inspiration to distraction, then one word: transfer.

For a situation this complicated, it really is that simple.

Love,
Breakup Girl

Dear Breakup Girl,

I have recently found out that I WAS (is the key word) dating a recently married man for 4 months. I can’t help but entertain the thought of somehow letting the cat out of the bag and exposing this jerk. I noticed that this subject was just addressed on another site), and was wondering what your take would be on the following advise that was guaranteed to shrink the libido of the married ex? It stated that one should call the guy at work and tell him that you’ve written a 3 page tell-all letter to his lovely wife and then invite him to convince you not to send it. After he’s sputtered, pleaded and wet himself, sigh and say,”That was moving, but I have to get to the post office. Take care.” Then, sit back and know that this guy’s every move would be fraught with panic. He would end up crying,”Why me?” instead of the one who was lied to. I always value your advice and am interested in what you think.

–GingerAil

Dear Ginger,

Here’s what I think: don’t even think about it. No, scratch that. Do think about it. Just don’t do it.

Love,
Breakup Girl

This advice was originally published September 14, 1998.

It’s definitely not working, on February 2, 1998…

Dear Breakup Girl,

Eight months ago, my best friend/boss started sleeping with my husband of six months. After a minor nervous breakdown (in which I bought a convertible and dyed my hair blonde), I went back to work. My question is: Am I justified in referring to her to customers as a “badly-dressed Petri dish”? And what underhanded and nasty things do you suggest to continue in my quest to be a constant and bitter thorn in her side?

— Beth

 
Dear Beth,

One of the problems with the “Petri dish” metaphor is that your customers, like Breakup Girl, will not really be sure what you mean. But there are much more important issues here. Calling her mean names is — here it comes again — legal (in a First Amendment sense), but tacky. Breakup Girl has always discouraged “underhanded and nasty acts” as a means of revenge. Why? Because they make you look bad — to the people in front of whom you most want to look good: (1) the evildoer(s), and (2) yourself. When you look back, you feel worse.

The best way to get back at those who have done you wrong is to immediately be successful all areas of your life. You were on the right track with the car and the hair.

Love,
Breakup Girl

I could tell from the very first TV commercial for Obsessed that it would be a hit, and the weekend’s box office receipts have borne that out. First off, it’s been way too long since the last trashy she-stalker movie! (And Swimfan hardly counts since it was a teen movie.) (Erika Christensen, don’t cut me!) Plus it cleverly exploits the “white women are stealing our men!” meme, AND it features empowerment-you-can-dance-to diva Sasha Fierce herself! Movie magic.

Now then, as a public service for those of you on Team Larter, the LA Times provides a helpful list of Do’s and Don’t for the modern psycho-bitch on the go! A sample:

Do: Befriend a high school classmate. Move in with her family. Put the moves on her dad. Murder her mom and make sure it looks like a suicide.

Don’t: Flip out. Wreck the car. Then blame it on your friend. She’ll figure out you’re evil and push you off a balcony. (Poison Ivy)

Telling it like it should be on January 26, 1998…

Dear Breakup Girl,

I am a married woman in love with a married man. Do you think married people have the right to be in love with someone else? I never want to cheat on my husband, but I am very in love with the other man. Please help.

–Nano

 
Dear Nano,

Do married people have the right to be in love with someone else? Yeah. And the KKK has the right to march, and Hanson has the right to sing. These “rights” are principles; they don’t mean that nobody gets hurt. You’re doing your best to be noble, but clearly something is amiss. The question you really should be asking is: “Where did I write the number of that marriage counselor?”

Love,
Breakup Girl

Just one more thing — as promised — about John Edwards, now that BG is back from her trip to Elizabeth. I hesitate to add even this, given that we, as a blog (thanks, commenters!) and a nation, have said plenty. But just for the BG record, here goes.

Cheating is bad. GIVEN. No argument there, no intention of diminishing it on its face. Painful, too, is disappointment: finding out that those (dwindling few) whom we admire — for helping the humble! — have fallen slave to their own hubris.

But in the political, national, even human picture, this has only as much importance as we give it, which was way too much even before the maudlin mea-culpa-fest (which, huh, no one watched). It is not possible to name a political perpetration from the last eight-ish years that is less important than this. And yet we don’t hear Dick Cheney saying, “…All of which fed a self-focus, an egotism, a narcissism that leads you to believe that you can do whatever you want: you know, like lie your way into war” while he wells up to Woodruff. “Also, the baby? I ate it.”

Okay? Done. Keeping focus, readusting priorities; moving on. But — on the subject of oldish news about politicians and their spice — I’ll be happy to talk about this (or, hey, this) anytime.

Crap.

More later. BG’s busy with Elizabeth.

Advertising Age reports that The Parents’ Television Council (PTC) is wagging quite the stern finger at broadcast networks for undermining marriage, they say, by making affairs look much more interesting. Networks show sex between married couples as “boring, burdensome or nonexistent, while depicting extramarital sex as positive,” according to the PTC. “[Prime-time] verbal references to nonmarital sex outnumber references to sex in marriage nearly 3 to 1, and scenes implying sex between unmarried partners outnumbered similar scenes between married couples 4 to 1.”

Sure: Shows such as Desperate Housewives, Lipstick Jungle, and Sex and the City certainly have their philandering plot lines, even if they end up with Carrie ending up with Mr. Big. Sunday’s episode of Mad Men showed Don Draper having ho-hum coitus with his wife, while sultry, unmarried Joan Holloway had anything but. And let’s not even get into the implications of Swingtown. Of course, in fairness to writers — TV and otherwise — a happy marriage makes a happy couple … but maybe not so great a story. (At least once the reality-wedding show ends.) But still: have we come so far that it is no longer risqué enough to merely say “Sex Sells,” but that “Forbidden Sex Sells”? And does it not just sell, but also, you know, drive us to seduce the pool boy?

(more…)

Adultery lurks everywhere, among celeb couples and political leaders, our neighbors and even, on a bad day, our own relationships. New York Magazine, following up on the Spitzer scandal in its own back yard, recently weighed in on the matter, with a lot to say about American culture and the perhaps untenable emphasis we put on monogamy.

According to writer Susan Squire, marriage wasn’t made to handle all this pressure in the first place. The average life span is far greater now than it was 100 years ago, and back in those days, marriage was a more formal institution for breeding and family purposes only. It’s becoming more and more difficult for partners in a marriage to get the variety and sexual attention that they need. The American burden is the ideal that marriage should provide romantic love forever. “Marriage involves routine, and routine kills passion,” Squire says. Sometimes partners see an affair as the only way out of that rut.

That’s why Mira Kirshenbaum, clinical director of the Chestnut Hill Institute in Boston, suggests that not all cheaters are evil trolls. (more…)