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Dear Breakup Girl,

As a regular reader of your column, I'd always silently thanked the powers that be that I'd never had a problem dire or serious enough for me to put fingers to keyboard and beg you for your insight. Alas, it seems that my luck has finally run out.

I met Beth about six months ago, at a time when I was neither looking for nor expecting to find love, because I was planning to leave a few months later for an extended trip overseas. The last thing I wanted was the encumbrance and stress of a (very) long distance relationship as I wandered foreign lands. But after two months of being Just Friends with Beth, we both admitted that our feelings ran deeper. Six weeks of bliss followed (including those magic three words beginning with I, L, and Y), culminating in an excruciating goodbye. I asked her to wait for me 'til I got back, even though I knew it was unrealistic -- it looked like I was going to be gone as long as eight months. She (rightfully) said no.

Then I left, and it soon became clear that I didn't have the stomach to travel for eight months by myself, not with the way I felt about her. And though there was still no formal commitment, we both agreed via e-mail that neither one of us had the stomach to look for anyone else. Lengthy e-mails flew back and forth nearly every day, the relationship we'd had was maintained as strongly as it could be under the circumstances, and I felt secure. It's probably about now that you could start writing the rest of this tale of woe for me, BG ...

A few weeks before I was due to come back -- right around Valentine's Day -- the hammer dropped. She'd told me before about how guys hit on her in my absence and pretty much laughed it off. Then she met a character named Rick while tipsy at a club, and phone numbers were exchanged. From what I know, he's essentially a slightly younger clone of me, right down to the fact that we're both aspiring photographers. She ignored his messages for a while, then acquiesced and decided to hang out with him one night, telling me she was going to do so ... and that she might be a little interested in him.

In the space of a couple weeks, what we had went from awesome to weird and uncomfortable. 8000 miles away in Laos, I climbed the walls in frustration and helplessness. After some long, messy e-mails, a sort of agreement was reached: she would continue to hang out with him, it being her life to live, but she would explain the situation with me to him, and the two of them could be only friends until I came back and the two of us had a chance to see if things would pick up where we left off.

Just as I'd feared, Rick smiled, nodded, and ignored the stipulations by engaging in an blizzard of wooing. This "friend" started bringing three red roses every time they met, for crying out loud. ("It's just the kind of guy he is," she insisted. Uh huh.)

Fast forward a couple weeks, and I'm back home. She's hung out with him quite a bit and admits that she's got feelings for two people and that two people have feelings for her. Presto: instant unwanted love triangle. Result: she wants to see us both nonexclusively, at least for a while.

I don't think this is an attempt to shuffle me out of the picture, BG. I honestly think she's just equally torn. She's told me that she feels only "passion" for him, while she feels "mentally and emotionally connected" to me. I can't tell whether those are the words of someone who wants to be Just Friends, or someone who's on her way to figuring out who's really right for the long haul, or both.

Naturally, I hate this development with a passion, since I have almost nothing to gain and everything to lose. I've tried to hint that I'd like to see her exclusively, but I worry about pushing her away and into the arms of this clown. I'm 21, and this is the first time in my life that I've fallen head over heels with and laid my defenses bare to someone. The thought of having all that come to naught is too painful even to contemplate.

So what should I do? Should I deliver an ultimatum? Should I sit on my hands and wait? Should I walk away? (I hope not...) Should I let the air out of the tires on Rick's car?

-- Traveler

Dear Traveler,

Right. With "friends" like Rick, who needs boyfriends?

Still, no no no, leave the clown car tires alone. Here's the thing. I know you don't want to push her, but hey, at the end of the day (or of your love life as you know it, which is how you feel right now), which would you rather hear her say: (1) "I know exactly how you feel, and still I say no thanks," or (2) "Oh, Traveler, if only I'd known how you felt before I married Bozo and moved to Laos!"

I'll assume you'll pick #1. Otherwise, The Guy at the End of the Bar may (rightfully) want a word with you. Tell her how you feel, give her a dealable deadline for deciding, and then -- ow ow ow -- leave her alone.

In the ungodly, un-American event that she chooses (1), I would like to offer one correction to your penultimate paragraph. "Painful?" Yes. "Naught," no. Would you say that you would have wanted to live without those amazing flying e-mails? Without the flush of that first admission? Without that goodbye? You might have to decide, Traveler, that she was the girl with the magic beans. Who stood, waiting, at a very important destination, but not at the end of the worn road. As I told JB: When you weigh the magic beans in your hand, they remind you not of what you lost, but of what you have finally had for the first time, and what you've thus proven you can have again, with some other charmed companion. You are, I promise, on the first leg of a fabulous world tour.

Love,
Breakup Girl

 
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