I was thinking about 2 stories from my own life- the most recent one was with a man I had fallen for 10 years ago- I was deeply, utterly, totally in love after the first time we made love (although we had worked together for several years and talked about moving from friendship to love & coworker to lovers) and to make a long story short, it didnt work out, we both left the company, he never called me and I didnt want to be in a long term relationship but 5 years later, he came back into my life, told me he wanted to be together forever on the 2nd date and then proceeded to break my heart all over again, piece by piece for the next 2 years by not keeping his word or his promises so what was the lesson learned? Is there any meaning to it at all?

The second story was from my life in college when I was really close to a friend of mine and looking back now it is still really full of complicated feelings , but at the time I had no idea what I was in, what it meant to me, how she was affecting me, and when it ended I was so devastated, I must of been in deep denial about the end when we graduated from college and went separate directions in our own lives.

Love and loss... if I didnt go through those deep times of letting go with someone who could love me, I'd never have liked myself at all... although both experiences came with harsh reality lessons as well... guess that what makes them real and not just fantasies... Something I read recently on Salon letters was about listen to your heart then tell it to shut up and go with what your head says to do, like my mother...

Sure you got your heart broken, and that does suck rather badly. But it does happen to most people at least once, and many of those who avoid it never find love at all. I'd rather get hurt.

And you're already through the hardest part. The sharp pain turns to dull ache, the dull ache slowly fades to sad memories, which slowly fade to wistful fondness for earlier days.

And what you are left with is the hugely important knowledge that you both can love and be loved-- other men find you attractive! Hot men!

This guy and your broken heart are the best thing that ever happened to you.

HE lost YOU, and he deserved to because of the way he acted. He does not deserve you. Its good that you found this out fairly early, as opposed to after a year of dating, or three years of marriage.

Someone told me a few weeks ago that women never feel attractive or worthwhile on their own. They tend to wait until some guy finds them attractive-therefore-worthwhile, before they think they are. Apparently this guy did find you attractive, so the fact is that you are, and were before you met him, and will be again.

This someone also said that if one guy finds you attractive others can and will. Stands to reason.

I suspect the reason that you hurt so much is that you don't give your heart easily or often. And why would you? Its a precious gift. And it shouldn't be given easily to someone who treats you like this guy has.

I don't know if this will lessen the hurt, but you should know that it will eventually go away. You'll learn from it, and you'll be ready when the guy that does deserve you shows up.

Been there and your letter made me smile too.

Looking forward to a new and better guy for both of us.

I love you, Cary. This is the sort of reply that keeps me reading your column and subscribing to Salon.

Perhaps we, as a society, would find ourselves in these awkward situations far less often if we made a habit of getting to know people socially, intellectually, emotionally before ripping off our clothes and rubbing our genitals together. There really are some unexpected advantages to dating the "old fashioned way."

Having sex with people I'd only just met led me into this kind of situation a few times. I was usually like your guy, but once I was you. I usually felt like I was being given a role I hadn't asked for in somebody else's psychodrama. I didn't have a chance to help write the script. Even though we pretended otherwise, it was already written and my job was to play along. Once I played along for too long out of misplaced guilt. That was so awful that the other times I ran for my life at the first sign that somebody with low self-esteem had just pinned all their hopes on me. The result of all this is that I'm a permanently single embittered romantic, avoiding relationships because I can't trust myself not to hurt someone or get hurt. Hey, does anybody remember the days when sex was something you had with someone you'd got to know well first? Me neither.

Oh lord, I've been there.

I think this is exacerbated by your having your life repeatedly upended over the course of the past year, and you're desperate for something to hang on to. So, no matter how hard you try, there's that part of your mind that's locked like a steel trap around the one bit of happiness and hope you've felt in a long time - and it WILL. NOT. LET. GO!

When I was there, I, too tried everything - in particular, I therapized the everloving hell out of myself. And got nowhere. In this particular situation, the deeper I dug into my psyche, well, the deeper the hole in my psyche got.

Eventually, I realized that my raging unrequited love, howling internal emptiness, and screaming terror of being alone for the rest of my life dated roughly to the time in which I began taking birth control pills.

AHA!

Now, it would be quite a coincidence if you, too, had begun taking OCP's around the time that you had your affair with Poopypants. However, I'd guess that the attending craziness in your life has been more than enough to create the kind of internal chemical storm in which fear and obsession flourish.

I'm normally wholeheartedly against the "take a pill and it'll all go away" solutions ... but in my case, I did, in fact, take a pill, and it actually did (almost) all go away. Somehow, magically, after a couple of weeks, that iron-toothed bear trap in my mind that had been clamped so savagely around the object of my affection's metaphorical ankle just ... loosened. And then it opened, and I was free.

(Btw, a good reiki session has *sometimes* been known to do the trick, too.)