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SHOUTOUTS:

To Not-So-Mysterious Girl from Leslie:

I see The Ghost of Myself Past in your letter, and you know what? I finally paired up with a gorgeous, sweet, sensitive, considerate, funny, and smart boy who is also in perfect sexual tune with himself, and together we are exploring the boundaries of amazing sex within monogamy. I know there are so many guys with these silly standards about how many partners we've had, who are scared off by women like us who embrace our sexuality. But, I swear, out there somewhere for you, there is an enlightened boy [man?] who will LOVE IT that you are unskeeved about sex -- it will be a positive PLUS for him when he thinks about having sex with the same person for the rest of his life...

To Heartbroken in Ohio from Also Dumped When I Unpacked:

There is another possible explanation for why this guy freaked out. A few years ago, my aunt fixed me up with a great guy, and we had a really good time for a little over a month. We went out several times a week, talked and talked for hours, did cutesy, considerate things for each other -- the whole deal. One weekend I had to go out of town to see some family, and I was gone for three days. Two days before, on my birthday, he took me to dinner and gave me the most enormous bouquet of roses I have ever seen in my life. They were so beautiful that I took them with me on the trip. (Roses do travel all right for twelve hours in a car, by the way, if it's January). When I got back, he dumped me. (See the parallels? Great relationship, romantic things, go away, come back...get dumped.)

After a month or so, we finally talked about what had happened. He admitted to me, "When you left, I really missed you, and it hurt. It really bothered me that I felt that way, because it means I'm starting to really care about you, and you can control how I feel." He was too afraid to let anyone else control his life. That's why, four years later, he's still alone.

So maybe he's jumping from relationship to relationship, ending them all before they become something real. Someone (on a soap opera, but it's still true) once said, "Romance is easy, Love is hard." And a lot of people bail out when it starts to get too hard. Maybe he was one.

To BG from Adam:

Steffi's letter was a good example of a phenomenon I don't think you've really mentioned before. A lot of "dumpees" (Duderino, for example) whose ex finds someone new ask, "How could s/he do this to me?" Not to tell you your craft, but perhaps it's worth pointing out that the ex often isn't doing anything "to" the former partner. They're just living lives that happened to move on. It's not an attack.

Just two cents from the Plains.

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