go on match.com - specify orphans only.

Because only orphans understand.

My mom did at the age of 12. My dad wasn't orphaned till he was in his 20's. But he lost his mom--and two little brothers to adoption--when he was only 8. I lost my mom in my 40's, my dad less than 2 months after my second wedding. I lost one of my sisters when I was 27, the oldest died 6 months before Mom.

There is something in all of us that wants somebody to take the place of the lost parent, or parents. I have a memory, still fresh and comforting, from after my mom's death. You can borrow it if it will help. My suggestion, though, is to find some experience that does the same for you. At the time of my mom's death, my now husband and I had been friends for over 8 years, and together nearly as long. I was reeling from the death of both my oldest sister AND Mom, and trying to fit into an extremely challenging job that was a poor fit.

The way I was dealing with it all was, in part, by leaning heavily on TLofML, and he didn't like it. I mean HEAVILY. About a month after the funeral, I was on a business trip to northern CA, and had a Sunday to spend in San Francisco. I went to Golden Gate Park, and walked and walked. At some point, I found myself walking down the path in the AIDS Memorial Dell, and reading the names on the benches. So many beautiful benches, and all of them donated in memory of people who had died from AIDS.

It felt right, in my state of mind, to be surrounded by beauty and by reminders of death. The redwoods, especially, were profoundly impressive to me: they were crooked and bent, but old beyond my imagination. I sat on one of those benches and thought about the storms, the earthquakes, the coming and going of humans that they had outlasted. And I realized that I had been trying to achieve the impossible.

I had holes in my life, torn there by the death of my big sister, by the death of my mother. And I was trying to force TLofML into that hole to fill it. But the holes that we suffer, when we lose someone we love, cannot be filled by someone else. My holes were sister-shaped, and mom-shaped. Man-who-loves-me is the wrong shape to fill those holes. So I realized that I had to wait for those holes to heal on their own, that trying to force someone else into them only prolonged the healing process. And I felt a great peace.

It's been almost 12 years since then, and there are still times that I feel the pain of their losses sharply. Hell, my daughter, who was 10 days old when my first sister died, is now 31. I still miss her, too.

I don't know what you need to stop trying to shove men into your parent-shaped holes. But I do know that you need to give yourself permission to let your parents go. Really let them go. You can start by changing your name for yourself. Yes, you are an orphan. But you are also a young woman. You are a young woman with ____colored hair, who likes ____ music, whose favorite author is _____. You do not have to define yourself by what is gone. Let it be part of who you are, not the totality of it.

And, for your own sake, please stop trying to write in the style of Cary Tennis. He sucks at it, why would you imitate him?

I'm sorry that you lost your parents.

From your letter, it seems like you want us to understand that your loss hurts really really bad, more than we could ever imagine, and that we will never understand or experience pain like yours.

I sympathize with your desire to make others understand that you are in pain. But the drama and the self-pity are off-putting because we all have pain and loss in our lives, and you seem to be saying that nobody understands loss, need, and rejection the way you do. You are not giving others the chance to empathize with you -- and worse, you are rebuffing others who might want to share their own pain because in your mind, it can't possibly compare with yours.

You make a couple of references to the "third world" -- saying that your cries are like those of a "third world widow" and that "orphan is orphan whether in the Sudan, Southeast Asia or the U.S." I'm guessing that real widows in the third would might feel that you don't understand how or why they cry. Orphans in Sudan might feel the same, because let's face it -- what happens to orphans in the U.S. is not the same as what happens to orphans in Sudan.

I'm sure you did not mean to be insensitive -- you were just trying to get across your pain by relating your experience to that of people who are living in actual poverty. But this is a gentle reminder that while I might not understand your suffering, others suffer in ways that you can't imagine.

I hope that one day you can approach romantic relationships as an enthusiastic choice rather than as something you desperately need to fill a hole in your heart. You can get there one day, but it will require a great deal of work. I hope you can find a really excellent therapist who will help you to work through these issues so that you can find happiness and fulfillment in relationships -- starting with friendship, because it sounds like you need stable and uncomplicated love from a good friend.

is really too much for me.

When I was 18 I was raped by a 33-year-old Frenchman and left in a ditch to walk 10 miles in the woods by myself back to town. Near midnight. No moon.

No one understands me, either!!!