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Predicament of the Week
In which Breakup Girl addresses the situation that has, this week, brought her the most (a) amusement, (b) relief that it is happening to someone else, and/or (c) proof that she could not possibly be making this stuff up.

Dear Breakup Girl,

A year and a half ago, I was in a long term relationship with someone who I planned on marrying. About 2 months before we were supposed to be engaged, I embarked on what I thought was a fling with someone I worked with (well, my boss actually). To complicate matters, he was a married man. Anyway, the fling grew more intense and my lover grew more fervent as my birthday drew closer and closer. My boyfriend and I were going away for my birthday to a really romantic place where it was pretty much known I would get engaged. Anyway, long story short. I grew careless and boyfriend found out. Of course a nasty breakup ensued. For my part, I deeply regret my awful actions and have dearly paid for them over time. My boyfriend gave me the opportunity to reunite with him but I chose my married lover over the years of work I anticipated facing in order to patch up the damage I had done. I didn't believe he would ever really forgive me. Also, I still believed myself to be in love with MM (Married Man).

Time passes. During the next year, I continue to work at the same place for MM while we are still together. He says he loves me, and every so often he dangles in front of me the idea he might leave his wife. He doesn't and I believe he never will. Nor do I want that because in the midst of this year of utter stupidity I have moments of clarity where I know spending my life with him would be horrible. Needless to say I suffer greatly, as anyone who engages in illicit affairs eventually does. I eventually come to my senses and decide to quit my job and start over. (My job pays very well and it's not easy to find one that will compensate equally). Well, as I plan on leaving, God or karma or whatever you want to call it has a big laugh at my expense. MM gets sick. Very sick. With an inoperable form of cancer.

So, out of guilt or a weird feeling that I owe him something, I stay. MM goes through treatment. Reacting badly to medication, his personality changes. He gets angry at me, and at the end of my ropes, not wanting to feel like a martyr anymore I begin to plan on leaving again. Eventually MM does get better, though slowly. He gets off the medication and starts to act like himself. In the meantime I try dating, which, in the city I live is a great big joke. I meet freaky guys who won't leave me alone and seemingly nice guys who stop calling after two dates. I go on countless interviews and get offered no jobs. I fall into a depression. I still see MM. I still work for him. (He's a workaholic and continued to work even through his treatment). Occasionally we sleep together. Sometimes I'm so sad I want to die. Seriously, I have a sense of humor about the whole thing and the incredibly horrible choices I've made but it's getting a little ridiculous. Karma being what it is, I would have thought I'd paid my dues.

So here we are on the cusp of a new millenium and I know I need to start with a clean slate. I'm trying to hook up with a company that I really want to work
at but the person coordinating the whole thing is incredibly busy and setting up meetings is not easy. And, I just met a guy. The Guy -- the man of my dreams. He seems perfect. We like the same stuff, he's cute, smart, etc. He calls me and I call him back and we talk for an hour. Unfortunately, as my luck goes, he's leaving the next day for a three-week trip. An hour after we get off the phone, he sends me an e-mail. We e-mail back and forth a few times and he says the sweetest things aboout how he can't wait until he gets back cause he wants to see me, he calls me beautiful. He gets my home number so he can call me on Christmas. He even takes down my address so he can send me a postcard from down south.

I walk on air for a day few days, eagerly awaiting his call. Nothing on Christmas Eve. Nothing on Christmas Day. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. I am now starting to feel like I'm doomed to repay my sins with a life on misery. Am I Sisyphus? Every time I try and get that rock up the hill, something comes
around to push it back down on me. I feel like I'm stuck in this job. I still sleep with MM because at least he's a warm body and sometimes the loneliness is awful. I just want to get out of here and meet a nice guy. I can't for the life of me figure out why a guy would say all those nice things and then disappear. Everytime I get a smidgen of hope, it gets dashed against the rocks like a battered lemming. I keep trying to get out of this, I swear, BG, but sometimes I wonder if all this bad karma will ever go away?

-- Victim of Karma

Dear Victim of Karma,

Okay, we're going to give that slate a good winter cleaning. After that, the only MM you should chisel thereupon should indicate the year in Roman numerals. Not the guy who's turned you into some sort of Dido.

How to get there? First, let's lift off a layer or two of bad karma. This Christmas guy? Of course he "should" call if he says he's gonna. It's completely galling that he didn't. But sweet as his e-mails/intentions, "just met" does not a call-on-Christmas relationship make. Not to mention: people get weird at Christmas. They just do. It's not real life. (I don't know about you, but I don't wake up every morning with gifts piling up under my houseplants and Jack Frost nipping at my nose.) Who knows what crumpled wads of wrapping paper from old relationships and "family stuff" he's still got saved in some psychic closet; who knows what "reasons" -- unrelated to you -- he might have for flaking? Furthermore, empirically speaking -- or perhaps even by rueful definition -- "perfect" guys have one tragic flaw: timing. Don't we always meet them when they're about to leave? But this one's coming back in a week or two. Give him another chance then.

Honestly, Karma, perhaps what you have here is your average case of "Why hasn't he called yet?" But you have -- understandably, humanly -- written Christmas Guy into the structure and scale of your very own epic. Of course this hot argonaut sailed away without a trace. Of course. It's all part of the drama, if you tell it that way.

That said, I also wonder if perhaps -- given, especially, that you set store by this thing called karma -- the guys who don't come through for you (at least not right away) can sense MM's bad mojo. Might the "seemingly nice" ones sense that you've still got more than a toe in a murky puddle from the past? Might the "seemingly nice" ones sense that you're not expecting them to call again? Maybe.

And about this MM. Oh, Karma. As long as you're stuck in that job/his bed, you are in some sort of Sisyphian hell. You climb [into his bed], and the weight -- of loneliness, of stolen comfort, of what you don't have -- gets heavier, not lighter. So then you slide back down, contact case and clothes wadded in one hand, shame in the other ... and you wind up lower than before.

How to climb in a different direction? Start by reading what I wrote last year, in a moment of codeine-free clarity, about the hollow solace of perma-pain. Pain hurts, but it -- along with its bacchic cousin, Drama -- also offers a golden fleece of familiarity and simplicity. (You were already onto this when you said you chose your married lover over years of work.) So keep plugging at that new job opp or, failing/stalling that, another. (I know the one you have pays well, but consider its cost.) Start telling yourself that (while of course we all hope his health is long and strong) you owe MM nothing; you already handed over your spirit. Believe that you can make it to a different other side, without the big rock. Leave Dido back in the last (B.C.)/twentieth century; vow -- and take action -- this year to found a new city, on new ground, with new hope.

Love,
Breakup Girl

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