"When we initially met, he had told me of his desire to become a physician specializing in infectious disease, specifically so that his skills could be used in those areas most prone to infectious disease, i.e., the underdeveloped world. However, after a trip to Burning Man, he rejected his previous goals as meaningless and bourgeois, and instead decided that a nomadic life of teaching English in the Chinese countryside was truly what he wanted to do."

I've never, ever posted this before, but this letter is a fake. A set-up, a prank designed to see if it would slip under Cary's radar and be published.

Because even in the vast ocean of narcissistic, rich, privileged, whining, navel-gazing, feckless youth that is Since You Asked, these have to be the most nauseatingly precious people on earth.

Burning Man? Seriously?

PS if it was a true story, the reason LW is full of regret is because the boyfriend left her and not the other way around. She didn't get to control the end-game and it's eating at her.

Breaking up hurts at any time, but it can be especially painful in your 20s because you haven't learnt how well you do actually survive it yet. Also, I think that the heart and mind can run on very different rails - in your case the breakup with your most recent ex made complete sense given that you were avoiding each other for weeks beforehand. However the heart gets a shock when the separation suddenly happens, and it's not always easy or possible to reconcile the heart's and mind's view at that age. Really you just have to sit with it and try not to do anything about the situation while the hurt fades. There's also likely a little ego hurt there; he dumped me instead of me dumping him - and there's nothing abnormal or wrong about that feeling. The person in control quite likely heals faster.

What's happening is that a deeper part of you that you can't quite connect with knows all about its attractions and capabilities, and you're pretty much just along for the ride trying to work it out. Accept this and do use your intelligence to look for patterns and reconcile logical behaviour with your desires, but don't be too hard on yourself (let the rest of us do that! - Most writers are older than their 20s.)

I mean, I assume that if this is a real letter, the Salon editors made it somehow seem worse, but boy what a lot of material.

What is apparent here is that the letter writer is an appalling person, whose boyfriends, as they have woken up to it have successively dumped her -- first her "most beloved ex-boyfriend" who fled to China, not before (and this is pretty obvious) taking a deferral on medical school (assuming he had taken his MCATs.) Boyfriend number 1 has one should note some sort of pre-medical degree, sounds like a bio-whatsit if infectious disease is his thing. As far as the burning man thing is concerned, sheesh, they guy just worked his ass off to get good grades in a science program and is now looking at 7+ years of medical education -- I think he just wanted to have fun, away from a whiney, self absorbed and very self impressed girl-friend. To translate the description of him -- exceeding brilliant (umm I'm as dumb as a stump, but a good scientific training and a better legal one makes it easy to pass as brilliant) - eccentric (umm yes, do eccentric well, but actually dull and conventional), and emotionally aloof (umm don't get sucked into emotional whack-jobs fantasies.)

Next, boyfriend the philosopher has split, after as far as I can tell, being treated like shit for a month. A couple of things -- first, for my sine I know a lot of "philosophers" - sheesh come to think of it I have a philosophy degree ("Natural Philosophy" in fact (aka Physics, hence the BA and not BSc.)) Well what a shock -- this appears to be what she wanted. Frankly, I feel sorry for the poor schmuck -- here is is with a degree and a chunk of a masters degree in philosophy probably wondering "what now!" and holding off finishing up, so he can see if anyone might hire him (good luck) The best thing he could possibly do is vaguely sit out the recession in grad school -- and this would be a good idea even if his degree made him more employable, say by being Natural P, or Chemistry (there is a real shortage of old-fashioned bench chemists), or engineering.

But what really strikes me is that this creature, in her vanities, her self-image as some sort of Ibsen heroine, her intelligence (really?) is actually going into some sort of graduate program at the end of which it is proposed to foist her on some unfortunate third-world country as an adviser. Good grief, what will she do for the image of the United States. I mean is there anyone who reads this who does no see the letter writer as a horror (except for her perhaps)?

At the ned of the letter, the astonishing thing is that the letter writer seems to think she has a choice, between boyfriends number one and two. I don't think this is even remotely feasible -- frankly, I suspect both detest her at this point. I only read her letter and I already do.

Your long-winded letter reveals your problem clearly. You are not in fact highly intelligent as you believe yourself to be, but you are certainly immature. As such, you attract similarly immature boyfriends.

Your problems will resolve themselves in time. You will suffer some emotional distress in the process, but that is the price of growing up. Luckily for you, you and your boyfreinds obviously live in comfortable, if not privileged, economic circumstances, so that will be the only suffering you will have to experience.

The letter writer is 25??? How does one get to that age and still remain so self-involved, whiny and obnoxious.

On Maslow's hierarchy, she is about three.

Here's the advice I would have given her: until or unless you and your "boyfriends" mature, please take a vow of celibacy or use really, really good birth control.