Helping a friend on August 24, 1998…

Dear Breakup Girl,

I enjoy your advice immensely but I’ve never seen this issue tackled before. I’m a female friend of a wonderful guy who is in his mid-thirties, a doctor, funny, intelligent, handsome — and all that, but over the last two years he has developed an increasingly debilitating severe lower-back problem. He has no trouble getting women, but for the last two serious relationships he has had (both with women in their mid-twenties), one of which lasted about a year, and the most recent which lasted about 8 months, he feels that initially things go great but as the relationship progresses and he starts spending more and more time with his girlfriend, that she becomes aware of his “chronic pain condition” and how truly limiting it is – he spends a lot of time at doctors, a LOT of bed-rest with icepack on his back, TENs units — things like that. So he ends up not being able to do all the things that people dating can so often do — ie. go to movies, bike ride, travel, etc.

His last girlfriend just dumped him a few days ago saying that “some spark was missing.” Well, no kidding, he’s in a lot of pain, he get’s depressed, and he’s forced to be inactive a lot! He may or may not be able to have back surgery for his particular problem, and even then he will probably never have normal mobility.

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