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Dear Breakup Girl,

Six months ago, I met the love of my life, an Austrian businessman doing work for his Ph.D. dissertation in Chicago, where I live. We met via the "looking for new friends" personals, and it was love at first sight for both of us. Two days after we met, we jetted off to New York together. (He paid for it, since I'm poor, but there was none of that "kept woman" thing going on; we just enjoy in one another's company.) We also had incredible, incredible sex -- the kind you're supposed to have with your soulmate. Neither of us had had feelings for another person on such a scale: within a week or two he was telling me that I was the only woman he'd ever wanted to ask to marry him, and he did, though there was no ring or anything.

This super-passionate affair went on for a couple of months. We made tentative plans for marriage: he would live in the US first, then we'd move to Austria permanently. (We even discussed the number of kids we would have.) We spent as much time together as possible -- I even went along with him to San Francisco when he did a research trip (again, all expenses paid by him) because he said he couldn't be without me for even a weekend.

Then, just after the SF trip, he pulled away from me suddenly. First he said it was because he didn't want to live in the US. I said fine; we'll move to Austria right away. He still pulled away some more (said we should stop having sex until he was prepared to make a commitment, etc.). He had to go back to Austria anyway, so I thought that giving him "space" was better for the long run. He left Chicago in June, and he decided then to pay my way to go visit him in Vienna for a week in September (I got back just the other day) so we could evaluate our relationship. When I got there, even though he had no problem spending money on me, holding my hand, embracing me tenderly in public, being very emotionally intimate, or sharing the spiritual rapport we always had, he refused to have any contact with me sexually.

He said that the fact that I had "put pressure" on him to make a commitment just made him lose all his feelings for me. This is kind of ridiculous, since in the beginning, it was he who put the pressure on (always saying stuff like, "Let's go to New York; let's get married; you should learn German; we could honeymoon for a month in Bali...") Why has he done this? What did I do wrong? How many guys get that enthusiastic about marriage from the beginning and build your hopes up to ridiculous heights, only to dash them violently and to treat you like an unattractive, unsexy cow?

If that's not bad enough, he still wants to maintain a weird level of contact with me. I'm a writer and editor by trade, and I agreed long ago (when we were still "together") to help him write and edit his dissertation. He still wants me to do that because, as he says, "we make a good team" even though he supposedly has no love for me anymore. I don't know if I can do it without going crazy. What should I do?

--Jill the Unsexy, Unloved Pill

Dear Jill,

What will really make you feel unsexy and unloved right now is: working on his dissertation. No. Nein. Really can't tell you exactly whence his untenable latent weirdness, but I can tell you that it doesn't take a Doctor of Philosophy to tell you that you did nothing to cause it. Chalk this one up to a whirlwind, sister -- but not the kind with the cow in Twister -- and let me tell you this: Unsexy, Unloved Pills do not get whisked off into super-passionate transcontinental affairs like that. And this: next time you'll find someone who sticks around after setting you down.

Love,
Breakup Girl

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