Letters to the Editor
cstrother
Published Letters: 33 Editor's Choice: 4
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fwtini and Cary are both right
[Read the article: Will I lose my one great love because I acted on principle?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Shakespeare pretty much had the love thing down. As I recall he wrote that "men have died, and worms have eaten them, but not for love." But he also had characters doing the most outrageous things for romantic love. Or as Joni Mitchell put it, "all romantics meet the same fate, they wind up cynical and drunk, and boring someone in some dark cafe."
So, to me fwtini is correct. And I truly salute her for speaking up in gaggle of romantics. The extreme passion phase of romantic love does not, cannot, last. And no matter what, each of us has the capacity to fall in love again. And generally one better listen to one's heart and to one's head. Love is grand, but so is a satisfying career. Love conquers a lot, but love does not in fact conquer all, and it is good to figure in some practicalities.
But Cary is right, too. There seems to be enough on the table to really go for it, in a brutally honest way. The short term pain may be greater, but long term the removal of any regrets about what you did from this point forward, seems well worth it.
Watch it with the acid or whatever else you are taking though. The profoundity of the drug experience can get confused with the profundity of the interpersonal experience. As Dylan said: "Those dreams is only inside your head."
My probability take from what I read is that this relationship is likely dead. But that does not change my thinking. If it is, you will know and you will get over it.
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To LW
[Read the article: My boyfriend freaked out because I had a threesome]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]After reading your responses back to folks writing in, I think I am in love with you! I admire the fact that you were straight up without thinking through whether to lie in the first instance. That seems like a good foundation to a lasting relationship to me right there.
I thought of "Chasing Amy" immediately when I read your letter, too, and I do not think that I have anything I could add to what Kevin Smith had to say through the movie generally or as Silent Bob. As Kevin Smith has talked about, it was a signficant issue to him, and something he had to do some thinking about. And, to me anyway, he did some great thinking.
It sounds great that your actually got to couples therapy. I hope you have a good, honest-to-God couples therapist, and not some general practice psychotherapist that thinks they know how to do couples.
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Great Advice by Cary
[Read the article: My friend went to bed and her husband tried to seduce me]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I thought Cary's advice was spot on on this one. Obviously a great letter for discussion purposes, though. The unlistened to answering machine message is quite the teaser, though. And the writer's inability to bring herself to listen to it revealing of her difficulty in establishing boundaries, or more her feeling that she is not competent to properly establish boundaries. The other thing I wondered about was whether there was alcohol or even drugs involved. If the answering message is a profuse apology along the lines of "I really made an ass of myself last night, I must have really made you feel uncomfortable, I do not know what got into me, I was really not being myself." It seems to me that that solves things with the friendship going forward. People do stupid stuff. Shit happens, or does not happen in this particular situation, but this couple's house should be a safe place again. No need to tell the wife anything, I would not think. If the call is an invitation to continue the foot massage in a nearby hotel, the situation is very different, and in that case there are issues as to whether to tell the wife, but the couple's house sure is not going to ever feel like a safe place to be.
The problem it seems to me of not telling the wife there, is the same problem that comes up with alcoholism, and many other social ills, which is now you have a secret that takes on a power and life of its own. The husband has in fact set the writer up as an enabler. The friendship is being leveraged to keep the secret. I suppose one approach in that case would be to neither invest big emotional capital in telling or not telling the wife, otherwise the secret gains power.