Letters to the Editor
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Another. Fake. Letter.
Please, Cary. Wake the fuck up. Could there be any more cliches jammed into this missive? From "I spent a week in the country" to "Let's call him _____." Jesus, an entire letter without a single fact, just B-movie, Harlequin romance level cliches.
Gosh, "Torn," I guess you'll have to let your heart choose! Cary takes a couple pages when one sentence would answer a genuine letter: Grow the fuck up, loser.
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Man, that was wordy and not helpful
If your 31, you need to get married and have a baby fast. I know you think your biological clock gives you 7 years or something but you never know. 35 is really late in the game and to have a baby by 33 you need to get married now, so pick a man and get married. You've wasted enough time. You can have reduced fertility already.
Marry Joe. Wait, no first make him do a semen analysis at a fertility lab, no insurance, the real deal, with mortility, morphology and not just quanity.
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not that people are real estate...
...but would you rent the very first apartment a rental agent showed you? Buy the first car at the first dealership you visited? Etcetc...
LW says she's never been in a really serious relationship, at age 31. So why the rush to marry either of these two guys -- the very first men you've been serious about in your life? The fact that you've found two people you can be that deeply involved with that quickly suggests you might find a whole lot of other guys out there that you might like being involved with -- some of them much more so than either of these two characters. Why lock yourself into any one person so soon?
Especially given the (relatively -- this is a fact, not a judgement) late start to your dating career, the odds are you have a great deal to learn about yourself, about men, and about relationships. You have plenty of time, and an awful lot of options.
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Don't Choose
I agree with Cary. LW really shouldn't choose at the moment; and I don't think s/he wants to. I think s/he wants to be validated for not choosing.
I know what I'm about to say may sound too simplistic, but one really shouldn't choose these kinds of things. You either want to spend the rest of your life with someone or you don't. I'm not saying go blindly into marriage, but if you're asking, then you already know the answer. You shouldn't have to rationalize your choice. It sounds like LW is having a terrific time with Robert and Joe, but to think about making a commitment to either man is a mistake. If one thinks that divorce and/or an unhappy marriage is bad, that is...
It's not as though this person is in love with someone who is potentially or actually abusive or questionable in some other way. LW doesn't seem to be in love at all.
Once I dated a guy we'll call Mark. I had been crushing on Mark for a few years and finally we managed to get together. We went out for a while and had a pleasant time together; I thought Mark wouldn't be such a bad guy to marry. Then a friend mentioned another person, another so-called object of my desire. She said, "I know you like Mark and all, but what would you do if Jim seemed interested?" I said, "I'd have to break it off with Mark and somehow convince Jim to marry me." Well, that's exactly what happened.
Moral of the story is that you just know. If you don't "just know" then you have to take Cary's advice about long term et ceteras because the issue, then, isn't about love but about making a new family with someone. LW needs to choose not between two men, but between love and long-term prospects--which seem to be mutually exclusive in this case. If LW chooses love then s/he'll just have to wait for someone else.
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I Hope The Letter If Face
I have no idea if the letter is fake or not. But I hope that it is given how confusing and unhelpful the answer is. I'd certainly hate to think that I truly faced a serious problem and this was the best advice that I could get.
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If You Can't Pick One...Don't
I remember years ago, feeling lovelorn and desperate, saying to someone in a good relationship, "I don't have a chance, men have their pick of plenty of women who have all my attributes plus a great pair of legs." And he said, "You don't wind up with a partner because they have a set of attributes. You wind up with them because the two of you belong together." That shook the cobwebs out of my brain in a hurry.
If the LW is being pressured (either overtly or covertly) by one or both of these men to become exclusive with him, and she's not comfortable with the prospect, she should trust her instinct. Either this isn't the right man for her, or this isn't the right time for the two of them as a pair. You don't "pick" a life partner the way you "pick" a pair of shoes. It's more like picking out a pair of feet -- if walking with them makes you feel a beat "off," they're not "your" feet, no matter how "right" they look from the outside. But if they are your feet, something in you will tell you so.
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Torn between two lovers....
Feelin' like a fool, etc....
I've never thought so before - but THIS so is a fake letter.
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Fake
I have loved this column for a while now and never thought a letter was fake until now. Maybe that's the reason Cary totally punted the answer. There was no reality for him to grab on to.
The correct answer, of course, is neither.
Think of all the interesting and compelling letters he ignored to post this one and its mail-it-in response.
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Been there -- well, one at a time
I was madly in love with a man like the extrovert rocker. We spent three years together, and it was exactly as Cary says -- I was constantly wowed by him, a little in awe, a little competitive, a little uneasy. I adored him. It sure as hell felt like true love to me. I thought that we could make it work. Really, what I knew was that *I* would always try to make it work.
But I never quite felt he had enough time for me, I never felt like I was the top priority. In fact, I wasn't. I grew needy, I wanted a commitment, it never came, and one day the rug was pulled out from under me and my heart was broken, badly. (There's a lot to be said for a broken heart; I wouldn't wish it on anyone, but it's the making of a lot of people. It was me.)
Fast forward a few years, and in a couple of months I'm marrying a man like the introvert, the home & hearth. I feel loved and treasured and special and safe. I am nurtured and adored and cared for and I feel like the luckiest person alive. But I knew it soon after we met; I knew that this was the one. Like the other letter writers say, you can feel it, it fits, it just feels right, even when it's difficult you still just *know*.
Do you want to settle down? Do you want comfort? Do you want challenge and excitement? Do you want arm candy or armchair cuddles?
This isn't a hard choice, really.