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| May 31, 1999 CONTINUED |
e-mail to a friend in need
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SHOUTOUTADELIC!
Way to go on your advice to Pete (you know, the one who slept with 30 women). I am horrible, awful, terrible about giving my SO hell about his sexual experience with previous girl- friends. But then I read your response to Pete. And you know what? I realized that I TOTALLY do that because I feel guilty about my own previous experiences (although before this relationship I was closer to a rather adventurous nun than Petey). Anyway, no more for me. Nope nope nope.
In Breakup-Land, the ex's next girlfriend is always a Bimbo. That's just how it is. - BUT - All hookers are not stupid people, nor are they all drug-addicts. They are not ST-diseased rats or futureless women. Same goes for strippers. You don't need to paint with such a broad brush. A while back, I read this little gem from BG herself: "Morals, to Breakup Girl, are like some sort of divine duct tape. As in: 'I feel really bad and guilty and inadequate about something in my life/past. Rather than repairing the actual damage, I will pull myself together simply by making myself look better, by comparison, than other people. Yep, that oughta hold it.'" Maybe she's actually a bimbo, maybe not. Maybe the point is really that you feel upset and bad because of the whole lousy situation.
It sounds like you're going through the phase where even though you know what happened, part of your brain keeps saying "what happened? things were good..." And that part of your brain does not listen to logic. But one thing that I've tried to learn (that one part of my brain doesn't listen, either) is that just because you can remember what it felt like to be happily in love doesn't mean that you are still happily in love. It just means you can still remember it. The trick is to put those memories away until you can really recognize them as memories, not as stirrings of rekindled emotion. Good luck, and if it works, tell me how you did it.
BG is so right. When I left my ex-husband, I felt like I'd entered Oz -- new apartment, new job, new boys, new clothes, new boys.... Eventually you will feel suddenly and unutterably alone. You will hit the wall. Your current happy-go-lucky attitude will make the impact with said wall less painful. If you focus on the positive changes in your life post-separation, you'll return seemingly effortlessly to being just fine.
I have to agree with Lea [shoutout] on this one, and admit to detecting a sense of self-righteous smugness (as in "you may be his bedmate but I'm his true soulmate")on the part of all these "good ex-girlfriends" who just CAN'T understand why a new girlfriend would be, oh, just a TAD peeved at their constant calls, emails, hangings-on and the like. I speak from both sides of the fence in terms of experience; I have a great, great friend who is a guy that I dated over thirteen years ago -- our dating relationship was horrendous, our friendship is terrific -- but whenever he's had a serious new girlfriend in his life I have BACKED OFF...especially if it was someone I liked or thought was terrific for him -- why? Because I don't need her to be upset, him to be upset, and because I don't feel jealous or threatened by the new girlfriend -- simply very happy for him. In fact I'm still upset that he dumped his last serious girlfriend, who I liked very much -- so much that while he was dating her I had no problem giving their relationship whatever room it needed. Especially after I found out that she was somewhat threatened by me; she seemed to think that he was still physically attracted to me -- and I suspect that he didn't help much because it probably thrilled him to have her be jealous -- which made me DRASTICALLY limit my contact with him. My current boyfriend who is wonderful in all ways, except for the following, has a friend (not an ex, but a female) who I can't stand because I KNOW (though they both deny it) that she is desperately trying to get into his pants, and I do resent the way she constantly calls, emails, butts into our conversations, and generally hangs on him like a spare tire. I really, really don't think there's anything going on and he gives me no reason to feel insecure, so it's not jealousy I feel, it's ANNOYANCE. He has a tendency to feel overly sorry for people, and she takes excellent advantage of that -- always crying and complaining about her marriage and getting drunk (like, always) and begging for attention and getting mad when he pays attention to me if she's around. She's a leech and an albatross and a giant pain -- I feel like telling her, Get Over It, with me or without me he ain't doing you. Mostly I try to ignore her. So, in short (or is it too late for that?) I suggest all these "friends" re-examine their true, unspoken motives, really think about what a "friendship" is and get their own boyfriends -- or a life.
Hayduke writes: I agree the whole "shyness pill" approach is a real mistake, for two reasons: 1. I've been shy my whole life. I'm 30 now, I deal with it (surprise -- I became a writer) and just look at those scary situations (meeting people) as a chance for a real adrenaline rush, as it goes frightfully against all those shy instincts. Guess what? I've been told the shyness thing is a plus (if only I'd known that in high school!). I've come to see it as a plus too: I'm not a buffoon (well... at least I don't THINK I'm a buffoon), and when I work up the marbles to actually say something, I really mean it. 2. I've been taking an SSRI for about 18 months, in conjunction with therapy, for depression. That condition, I'm happy to say, has improved greatly. But I'm still shy. SSRI's are not magic. Anyone who thinks they're going to solve all their personality problems with a pill is sadly mistaken - and any doctor who prescribes them for such should be covered in deer ticks and run out of town on a thick rope of poison ivy. Oh, and eye contact may be the beginning of many great things, but it's often a dodgy prospect in New York...
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