< PREVIOUS LETTER   ||   NEXT LETTER >
 

Dear Breakup Girl,

A la Faust: "Ach, zwei Seelen wohnen in meiner Brust!" A la Sheila, "Whaaa, how am I supposed to decide?"

I've been with my boyfriend for four years and living with him for one. After all this time, I know four things:

1) I love him
2) He loves me
3) He is NOT the one
4) He IS the one

I have a crisis about this every three weeks (or is it every 28 days), and it has been going on for a year or so. I'm in my early-to-mid thirties, and I feel like I need to come to a decision soon. I always thought THE ONE would have more drive, less cynicism, and more family-orientation than my guy has. However, my guy has qualities that I don't reasonably expect to find in anyone else...like he's one in a million in terms of those qualities...and I love him dearly. I can't bring myself to break it off, yet I can't bring myself to come to peace with a decision to marry him. He feels I am the one, and he's ready to marry me if that's what I want. I go back and forth, moment by moment. I'm going crazy with these thoughts. What should I do?

--Sheila

Dear Sheila,

Ach! Too bad you picked Faust -- "Two souls live in my breast!" -- for your quotation/homage. After all, it's considered the chef d'oeuvre of Romanticism because it explores opposites ... without resolving them. This Goethe guy dealt in dualism; the only The One for him was The Bad One, and he's not gonna get you very far.

But actually, that is maybe where you need to go with this one. That is: to dismiss the notion that there is A Right Answer trying to bust its way out from between numbers 3 and 4, one at which you can arrive via Rational Thought. Itemized and pro/con lists have ceased to shed light, right? That's because your feelings are not going to all line up. How, indeed, could we leave someone we love? I mean, even if you decide that staying is untenable, leaving will still be (feel) unbearable. The latter doesn't mean the former is wrong. At the same time, remember that The One is not going to have everything on The List. That's not the definition of The One. IMPORTANT BREAKUP GIRL MAXIM: The One is who you say he/she is. Who may or may not look like The One you imagined. The One will likely have more than one wart; accept that Ones come with those, too. But if you marry out of mercy, or lukewarmth, that is when you sell your soul.

So remember, don't wait around to be struck by lightning on this one; you won't. You're in a messy, muddy woods. Quit trying to make the path go all straight, and instead, squint deep inside, and then way, way up ahead. Is that him on that porch? You tell me.

Love,
Breakup Girl

 
< PREVIOUS LETTER   ||   NEXT LETTER >