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Dear Breakup Girl,

I still love my ex-boyfriend. We were a couple for over four years, and he has it all: intelligence, decency, humor, feminist perspective, and oh mama is he easy on my eyes. He also loves me, though not in an in-love way. He really struggles with emotional intimacy, and that's part of what led to the breakup six months ago. He prefers to live in his own head a lot, where it's safe and he's in control. I understand this completely. It's dangerous to reveal your secret self even to your best-loved friend. But I was able to do this with him, to a degree I've never been able to before. I feel that if anyone knows my soul, it's he. I find the prospect of trusting someone else to that degree totally unappealing.

We've stayed good friends, really. We see each other constantly, and oddly enough, he's been the most helpful person during our break up: I said everything about all my doubts and pain and fear that most people in my situation would say to their best girlfriends to him. He has listened to me with patience and sensitivity, and has helped me move, look for a new city to relocate, and held me while I cried.

I am "going on" with all the cosmetic things you do to get past a failed relationship: making new friends, cooking for one in creative ways, doing all kinds of self-affirming nice things for myself, yadda yadda yadda. It's all so healthy, all so appropriate, but what I really want to do is hire a mariachi band to sing songs of longing under his window, fill his office with flowers, and create an artist's rendering of the satisfying old age we can share together if we could just find a way beyond the problems dividing us (in addition to the emotional intimacy, we struggle with money issues, my tendency to dominate since he is so soft-spoken, and our mutual tendency to be lazy instead of productive in our personal lives together). We've tried and tried without being able to work through these problems. But I can't accept defeat, even though outwardly I do. I feel frozen between option A: transitioning to the well-mannered friendship we seem destined to have and option B: pursuing him like a spunky 40s movie heroine until he is my sweetie again. How the hell do I figure this out? How do I go on when so much of me is still with him, whether I want it to be or not?

--Mimi

Dear Mimi,

Well, kid, I'd say that's the only way a girl should consider pursuing a man. Come to think of't, it's not a bad way to be with a man, either. Why, look at Rosalind and Cary, for Pete's sake. They're positively nuts for each other, and they never work a darn thing out. Don't mean to say your "problems" were nothin', but maybe they're also nothin' you can't live with ... if you and your fella can't live without each other. Meanwhile, though, I'd say you're still sore on account o'it's been only six months since the you-know-what...six months with lots of him in 'em. Why, you're still holding the key to Sad City. Give yourself a little more room to breathe, chickadee -- and if your heart's still singin' that serenade, then catch the crosstown bus to his window. And if he doesn't sing back, sister, then pack your bags with your head held high. I'd just hate to see a swell gal like you wastin' away in that ghost town called Limbo.

Love,
Breakup Girl

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