Bodice Ripper author trying to mooch an ending off Cary...this is ridiculous!!!!!!!

The story was pretty dramatic and cliche, but if I were going to write in to Salon for advice on my long lost love, I would sure as hell make up some long story that my husband or friends wouldn't recognize, but still described enough about me and my circumstances so that the advice I recieved would be helpful. I might even go overboard and make my life seem ridiculously unplausable and dramatic.

I would just conclude that the letter writer is a bad liar. I would not assume that his story is totally unfounded.

I would take from the story that he's a guy who dated a girl he really liked and bonded with, but something happened and she was taken away from him and she initiated a separation, and the she asked him to renew the relationship and he said no. And apparently he has lived a full and rich life with all the early dating flings and later all the typical middle class trappings we would expect, but who ultimately has never stopped thinking about his first true love and what might have been.

If I were sending in a letter, and felt it was my one big leap of faith to find out the answer to my obsessive dilema, then I would give it everything I had and try to make sure the advisor had every detail of what my persona was like.

Now he's 40 and feeling lonely and feels death creeping closer and closer and wonders whether he is wasting his life not pursuing a woman he wants to be with again.

At that, it's a pretty typical story and worth answering. I think the answer from various people was that he should not look for fulfillment from others, but instead look for happiness within himself. I have to say that this rings only half true in terms of advice.

As someone who is in a loving but sexless marriage, I definitely think about what might have been if I had been a little more worldly when I met my now long lost love back in 1996. Do I have hobbies and passions? Sure I do. Am I happy on a daily basis? Pretty much. But is there an emptyness caused by the lack of passion between my husband and I? Yes, there is. I wonder what would have happened if I'd fallen in love with that guy from so many years ago and had stuck with him. Would I have just as loving a friendship / marriage with that other guy and a great sex life to boot?

I actually believe that as often as I remember past loves, they are also remembering me and wondering what would have happened. It is natural and only fair that they feel similar. If you dont' have confidence that they are thinking the same things you are intermittently, then that is the true test of whether or not it is worth getting in touch and renewing the relationship.

In other words, if you are honest with yourself and believe that they are thinking of you at about the same time you are thinking of them, then it is worth sticking your neck out and getting in touch. Life is so short. Too short to let go someone who still sparks your attention through distance and time.

It is not always pathos that fuels interest in long lost loves. It is often remembered passion.

Douchbag under age of thirty writes some bad fiction to advice columnist, advice columnist returns with slapdown of the year. Story over.

I read this story with a lack of care whether it was true or not, it was entertaining and plausible. I've known French guys who claim to have skateboarded down Lombard street at 2 am. Yes, you can surf underneath the GG bridge with a wetsuit. Obviously this person doesn't have a real issue he needs advice from, because he seemed to enjoy writing about himself so much. Maybe he just needs a photo of Fabio for the cover of his book.

Before I jump on the bandwagon and bash this literary narcissist with 3 weeks of sexual prowess I have to remember my own story which is true.

I kissed the woman who was to become my wife when I was fifteen in the back of a summer camp van comming from a week of white water rafting. We spent every summer together through high school until the first year of college when we parted ways. 7 years later, she found me through the miracle of the internet. I had traveled the world and was a struggling artist in San Francisco when she found me, a year later we were engaged, a year after that married. We lived in a house in the Santa Cruz mountains making wine at a 9 acre winery, then spent 3 months in Argentina. Everyday is a novel, but more real than this guy's story.

If this guy really does want to get in touch with his lost love, I would tell him to re-think that effort. If she really loved him, she would have found him by now. She must have realized back then in the hospital that all he needs is himself.

For those of you not from the Bay Area, San Francisco Bay is home to Alcatraz Prison, located on an island not far from the Golden Gate. One of the reasons this location was chosen was because of the near impossibility of swimming from the island to the San Francisco shore, which isn't nearly as far as the distance from one side of the Golden Gate to another. Because the waters are so cold, sailors know that one has a *very* short time to get a person who falls overboard back on the boat before s/he succumbs to hypothermia.

This is, without a doubt, the weirdest letter to Cary I've seen yet. Kinda entertaining, though.

I had a narcissist in my life. He made me the apple of his eye and the center of his heart and he claimed he loved me. But I knew deep down that he was in love with his own narrative of our love, his own part as the one who so greatly loved. I was a fiction of his imaginings. When I was "myself" in ways he did not like, he became upset or anxious. I rejected him many times and tried to get away, but he continued to cling to me and emotionally manipulate me. Finally I found my way out. I know that he soon married, that he doesn't love her and never did, and that he still thinks of me. I will never allow him to see me again, because I know that I am now another character in his life, the lost love, and I refuse to participate in any way, after all the drama I endured with him. He can write whatever ending he wants, but it will not be based on any more real-life interactions with me.

-- Sarah

What you have described here is your own Borderline Personality Disorder and not his narcissism. He became upset or anxious when you acted in ways he didn't like? Of course he did. I think everyone gets upset or anxious when our significant others act in ways we don't like. I could write a book about ways I act which upset and cause anxiety to my wife, but she's no narcissist.

I don't mean to pick your statements apart, but how does one actually "try to get away" without, say, getting away. I read that as you emotionally manipulating him, knowing full well that he felt more for you than you did for him. So you used that and "tried to get away" to what purpose. To get him back for some percieved slight?

I love my wife. When I met her a whole new world opened up for me. I realized I would never be good enough for you no matter how much I tried. I found someone who loved me for myself, warts and all. I still think of you though, and when I do it fills me with pity. Just enjoy your life and don't worry about mine.