A number of years ago I had a therapist who believed that people were basically ambivalent about everything. This ambivalence could explain your attraction to, and repulsion from, the people in your life.

...at "burning man." Sounds like the three of 'em -- "brilliant" and "difficult," and "highly intelligent" in the most central casting way imaginable -- deserve each other. Why can't they just go on as three?

Sometimes I think I'm the only one who's ambivalent about everything, but maybe that's just narcissistic of me!

"why we did this to ourselves"? I think I is more appropriate.

I remember a horrible math problem in a college calculus class of mine... basically, the story went that as one of a couple fell more into love with the other, the other fell more out of love, and once the one was out of love, the other started falling back in love, and they had seemingly never-ending starcrossed cycles of love and disdain. And the problem made me very sad for the two lovers. They seemed forever stuck together in this endless cycle of coming together and going apart.

That's tragedy. But certainly there's not only one person for us in this world. Heal, and find someone that you are in love with while they are in love with you. You don't have to become a tragic math problem; my solution to the problem was they should really find someone else to be in love with. My prof didn't think it was funny and I got no credit on the problem.

Kinda sucks, but that's how love goes.

I'm not sure how I feel about what you just said... ;-)

Why would a smart, accomplished, focused woman always need to be in a relationship? and always longing for the ex?

Something's strange here, and I don't think it has anything to do with the boyfriends.

I had no idea what "Burning Man" was, but I noticed another reference on Salon. Marisa Belger, who wrote the article on nearly divorcing her husband because he lost his job (some nerve), met him at Burning Man. After reading this letter and Belger's article, and then checking the Burning Man site, I'd have to call "attended Burning Man" a big red flag. From the site:

"Burning Man is radically inclusive, and its meaning is potentially accessible to anyone. The touchstone of value in our culture will always be immediacy: experience before theory, moral relationships before politics, survival before services, roles before jobs, embodied ritual before symbolism, work before vested interest, participant support before sponsorship. Finally, in order to accomplish these ends, Burning Man must endure as a self-supporting enterprise that is capable of sustaining the lives of those who dedicate themselves to its work. From this devotion spring those duties that we owe to one another. We will always burn the Man."

The one guy was unambitious, so why is that a problem?

The other guy might end up being a Dr. Is being a Dr's wife your goal?

Can you evaluate men on anything other than their career prospects?

Maybe you should focus on your own career and try to have guys around you when you like their company, regardless of what how they pay the bills.

... get over yourself. This has to be the most pretentious letter I've ever read on Salon. Your all-consuming problem is that at 25 you can't decide which boyfriend to choose? Wow. What a tragedy! Get out the violins.

I'd like to see a letter where a 25 year old doesn't act & sound like they're 14.

The LW and her two men sound like the pretentious, psuedo-idealist pony-tailed grad student character in "Good Will Hunting" - remember him? He tried to score brownie points with Minnie Driver and her Ivy League friends my attempting to embarass Ben Affleck's blue-collar character...only to have Will Hunting / Matt Damon expose his alleged intellectualism as fraud.

Here in the my Midwestern town, folks lead much simpler lives. We don't aspire to cure the world's infectious diseases and then give up because, hot damn, that would be selling out to the Man! Nope - we go to med school or nursing school, and then proceed to do the best we can to help people.

We are not necessarily "intensely intelligent", and most of us will never earn a graduate degree in the Humanities or anything else. We are not the elite upper class illuminati.

AND YET: we meet kindred spirits amongst one another, fall in love, and get married. We do not see marriage as tying us down, or as some eeevil patriarchal scam from the (Burning) Man. Sometimes our relationships work out, sometimes they do not - but in the end we try to be honest and caring toward those who have our hearts.

Hell - we don't fret that much at all about the Man, "bourgeoisie" or any of those liberal academic boogeymen.

And we don't get so self-absorbed and egomaniacal that we fail to see that Love is about two people, not just the one gazing infinitely and adoringly at their navel...

Yup - love and life can be simple affairs. Unfortunately, no amount of graduate school or intense psuedo-idealistic intelligence can open the LW's eyes to this. Only good ol' common sense can guide you in the right direction, and that is one trait missing from all three players in this "Triangle".

I bet the decision to leave the recent ex-boyfriend actually came 3 months ago. It just didn't become clear until recently. If you keep thinking about ambitions, your own and someone else's, eventually you internalize it as an important consideration and act on it. Now all of a sudden other considerations start to appear. It doesn't mean that the decision itself was right or wrong. I can understand though that it can be upsetting when you realize what you are doing only later, but that's how most things happen in life.

Life for you doesn't really sound all that bad. Yes, breaking up sucks, for sure. The guy left you and/but you're still somewhat in love with your ex. You aren't taking your ex's calls or advances but in time, you'll get the itch to hook up with him.

A word of advice: don't date the ex for AT LEAST six months, maybe more (Dr. Joy Browne has a twelve-month rule, but I wonder if anyone can handle that). What I mean here is don't fuck him, blow him, have sex with him, don't answer his booty calls in the future. Purely platonic, casual relationship, is what you need, but be perfectly honest with him. Tell him you're worth waiting for.

You need time for yourself to sort it out. You'll get through it and it will be good experience. There are MUCH worse things that can happen to you and you certainly will learn this. But, you got to suck it up and be disciplined with your heart and head.