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Monday, January 12, 2009 12:00 AM

The two-boyfriend problem

I miss the one I left, but I don't want the one I left him for!

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  • Monday, January 12, 2009 12:41 AM

    "...if I was down and aloof for more than two or three days..."

    Outside of this letter's Ibsen-referencing, self-congratulatory, quasi-operatic fussiness (which I actually found just as entertaining as a bad community theater production), this admission raises a red flag.

    You are down and aloof towards your partner for more than three days?? And this is a regular thing?? And you expect anything besides a fight by the end of the week?? News flash, any bad mood lasting longer than 24 hours is a signal that something is not right with you, and is due to no fault of your partner. Your boyfriend's expecting his girlfriend's sour mood to pass after a reasonable amount of time can in no way be construed as expecting everything to be perfect. And, as I learned from a very wise person a long time ago, only unintelligent people get bored; thus, your boredom with your relationship with laid-back dude is your problem, not his.

    Don't forget either that you're the privileged member of the love triangle, the one with the option to choose. This means that there are two others in the equation who are by definition in a perilous position. They both have feelings too, which you've clearly been stomping all over while only recognizing your own.

    Like Cary said, you've offered no more information on how you really are beyond the job interview bromides of "highly intelligent" and "intensely practical," so it sounds like you have some real self-examination to do.

    What you've shown won't cut it, either. "Ohh my, why do we do this to ourselves??" does NOT equal soul-searching. It's a cop-out through which you try to blame your weak character on the human condition. The correct question should be "Why don't I, dedicated humanitarian, ever consider the feelings of those closest to me?" Or in Neil Young's more pointed version, "Why do I keep fucking up?"

    There's nothing wrong with being 25 and clueless and wishy-washy. That's normal. But the only people who really progress past this stage are the ones who take responsibility for their own shortcomings and stop blaming them on others.

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