gianni

Hello everyone. I ahve been seeing a girl for several months now, and she's fantastic, lovely, all the superlatives one can lay out. The thing that gets me, again and again, is that she insists on keeping up with her ex, who is currently in a mental institution. They were together for two years, and then things went downhill. Ultimately, he became severely bipolar, and ended up hitting her one night (I've seen the pictures she took of the bruises, and it definitely wasn't anything that might be forgiven--multiple strikes at various points on her body, bruises and scrapes on her forearms which were shielding the blows). He currently resides in an insitution. But she writes him and calls him and sends and receives letters to and from his parents. He sent her a valentine card, but cleverly so, as it was a child's type valentine card, with perforated edges and the compulsory cute little statement. She calls him. I don't know how frequently. They have, from my standpoint, no reason at all to talk to one another. He, for whatever the reason, abused her emotionally and then physically. This doens't leave much room for a casual friendship, in my mind. They have been apart for over a year. I've tried to bring up my concern, and she immediately becomes defensive. She insists that I'm judging him. This is the most disturbing part of the confronation. She worries not because I may find something at fault in her, but worries that I dont' think the guy who hit her is great. She admits she loves him, still. I'm not going to judge him. He may be a terrible guy. He may only have a terrible menatl illness. I don't know him. I imagine that he must have done something right to have been with her for 2 years, and I don't demand from her that she not have any feelings of tenderness for him. But I can't get past that she still tries to nurture whatever it is that she is nurturing with this guy, and I think at times she satiates herself with his illness, as it less painful to consider the relationship a failure because of that rather than because he rejected her and treated her poorly. Dammit. There is more in my head about this than I can reasonably write. I would appreciate any input at all.

Thepeople who are close to you are angry that you're so upset about something as inevitable as her beginning new relationships. This isn't a surprise. You've been apart for almost a year. Whatever messages she may have been sending, whatever games she might have been playing, did you really think she would just stop cultivating new romances? Whatever your therapist has said to you about her mindset may or may not be true. She mightwell have been treating you poorly, but that is besidethe point, which is that youve only now (it seems) internalized the demise of the relationship. This is fine, though. When I first fell for a girl, it took me about that long to accept it was over, and what sent me over the edge was also hearing she was seeing someone. But, I didn't let anyone see it. I was fuggin devastated, and from thatpoint, it probably took me more than a year to get over it, for atotal of morethan two years since the relationship ended. And you know, I deserved a little of what I got at the end. I was immature about the initial breakup, and made things harder for her, when she did actually love me but things made it complicated. I didn't respect what she wanted for the both of us (and initially, there were plenty of chancesfor meto make things right), and we will never speak to each other again. That was 7 years ago. Honor yourselfand whatever you two shared by letting it go. You can't fix whatever is wrong with her. If I were you, I would focus therapy sessions on what I myself need to improve on. There isn't any Karma, man, its just soemthign that happened, and things like that happen all the time. You can'tlive like she will eventually be punished, because there is every reason to think she is happier for leaving, and that any hurt she caused you is subsequenty on your problem. If you loved her, ina few years, the fact that she is happy without will be good news, in an "o I remember her" kind of way. PB is correct in that way; we've got to assume, always, that the choices of those we are close to will end up being what is best for them, and act accordingly. She's a lost cause, brother, and allowing yourself to go on consumed with whether her new man is tall or attractiveenough to beworth her time is pointless. The hurt you've got inside is yours and only yours; lean on your friends when you must, but the burden youve been carrying can only be yours. Live with it. it will make a you a better person, and then it will be gone.

I think that newts has had this happen to her and islooking for a reasonable explanation/evidence that what her ex has done will end poorly. I don't think she did this herself.

I don't know if you need pills or not. How long hae you had a problem with this? What is the nature of the stress you're dealing with? How long has it been since your last physical check up?

"is it remotely possible for a guy to forgive even after all this time has passed?" To me, and most people, there will never be a chance for forgiveness, though I am unfamiliar with the circumstance. My sense of it is, what with him calling all the time, is either he has lost self-respect, meaning you took that fromhim and he still flounders to regain it from you, or subsequent to this, is giving you innumerable opporutnities to regain his trust in even the most banal ways. It seems like your tardiness was genuinely unavoidable, but that doesn't matter to him, because your infidelity probably most certainly was. Do you want him back? If he loved you, the hurt you caused by straying may never fade. he will forget from time to time, and if he is a big enough man, will forgive, but it is a cycle. He will have to hurt and forgive everytime he remembers this. If you want him back, don't go near another man for a long time. He might consider that penance, the duration of which is entirely up to him. He might want you back, if only to give you another chance at trust again, not necessarily a relationship. He may realize that despite what happened, he is ridiculously mad for you, and his contact constitutes an interminable series of maneuvers to regain whatever trust he had. If you are stillnot 100 per cent over him, schedule the meetups yourself, arrive 15 minutes early for them, and saturate him with praise until her bores of it.

I don't think there is karma. everyone likes to think that the man who left them will end up fat, poor, and bald, and the women who left them will end up fat, poor, and married toa fat poor bald man. Nope. Sometime theman who dumped you finds a beuatiful caring woman and lives comfortabley, bald fat and poor, until he dies. Sometimes the woman who dumped you remains as beautiful as ever, finds another, and turns out fine. Being beautiful and happy i sno different than being bald and happy. Being left and miserable creates no energy in the universe. We've got our stories, sure, wherein someone who hurt us gets what they've got coming. But we've also got a lot of stories aboutsomeone who hurts us and disappears into a pleasing life that is entirely alien to us. It is something you've got to learn to live with. Karma implies a moral to the story, which is why hell is so appealing ot the wronged. Sometimes there is no hell, there is no moral, and we are all equally winner and losers. It is simply a bunch of stuff that happened. "it wasn't just speaking of taking someone's actual life. What he did to you killed you in a different way." I see the point but I still think it's a bit much. But hey! It sure makes me feel better. So the next time you find your self hoping that your evil ex gets theirs, just remember they'll go to hell for it" Empahty, have you got an Italian mother? My mother says stuff like this all the time, and god bless her, it's all thatkeeps her going sometimes. She is extraordinarily kind, and despite this, has lost children, been abused by a drunken mother, and cheated by a lying sister, and ignored by an aloof brother. My mother says this kind of stuff because she can't for the life of her bring herself to be unkind to anyone, no matter how badly they deserve it. She is a saint, and I love her to death. But like all martyrs, she is redeemed by a justice she can never be sure of, and certainly never witness.

"I would do my best acting ever to make sure my children felt safe, secure, and loved-- and witnessed mom & dad working out their problems rather than running away from them (with another dude)" I agree, for the most part. Whenthe marriage is ultimately dissolved, there are no winners, if it an affair, without abuse or any of that. My neighbors growing up wen through this. He had an affair for two years, he confessed. They tried working it out. I was talking with my mother about it (my mother and her were never really friends, but in the tradition of feminine solidarity, she saw her working in the garden one day and just asked), and the woman told my mother that it was a complete loss. The wife was unable to forgive her husband and so despite attempts to makeit work, she just couldn't get past it. Their kids, who were early teens, hated them both for it; theyhated him for cheating, andthey hated her for not being able to forgive it, and so the family pretty much fell apart. The man confessed, though obvioulsy he wasn't inthe right, and earned no respect simply for confessing. Thewoman was honest with herself but gave it a shot, and it didnt work. The children had a natural reaction. Subsequently, we saw a lot less of them.The husband left, one of the kids left withhim. Strange men showed up at her house andworked inthe yard, changed the oil in her car. The house went up for sale. An entire family disappeared. I am sure all ofthem wished everything hadn't happened. I am not sure if any of them wished there was a cover up. To this day, it is one of the strangest things I've ever seen, if only because it happens so frequently but i hadn't been paying attention. I know lots ofpeople hear these stories, and I still can't comprehend the volume of spouses that decide to mess around. It is a truly devastating thing. I can'timagine being in a family affected direclty by it.

Is this the ex you cheated on? He will never get over that. If so, he might be trying to give himself any reason at to believe in anything you said while together. Now that you've been unable to uphold something as simple as punctuality(regardless of your reasons for it), he is probably feeling some of the pain he felt when he found out you were cheating. It is partially his fault; there really is no reason to trust you again, in his eyes, and whatever he was hanging on to that redeemed the time you spent together is now gone. This was a very sterile, seemingly harmless test which you ahve now failed. If this is the guy you messed around on, why is he in contact with you at all?

Hi, I know faith is a very powerful thing, and very necessary for a lot of people. People, no matter what their actual belief, need that kind of strength. But honestly, from reading your posts, I think this woman actually desires a psuedo-sexual relationship with Jesus or God. She didn't go back to her ex because of love (unless i missed something), she wasn't being faithful to her love for him, she did it because of what her denominational interpretation of God had put forth. She was being faithful to that. Whatever her feelings forher ex may not have anything to do with him. I wonder if to her, they are the more concrete physical emblem for the transubstantiation belief. It is not actually a deity, but a tangible represenation of it. I worked at a restaurant a few years back, and one ofthe chef's was born again. Listened to a lot of christian rock. Some of the most zealous examples involved a lot of sexual, romantic imagery in connection with the christian god. If you changed "He" to just he or she, they would be songs about sex. And I don'tmean in the few degrees removed sense of "well, god is manifested in the people who follow him" way. I mean the actual, late night cinemax way. "So I guess my question is this...am I an idiot, first of all, from taking these new developments as a sign that she might be considering a reconciliation with me? And really, after reading all this, what would you all do, or what do you think I should do? " No, you are not an idiot. I get the sense that you are a man of a substantial spirituality. This is good, but I think it might ahve blinded you to some of this woman's pyschological warnings. the dead flower thing, too, is just plain creepy. It reminds meof those cliches involving a person stood up on prom night and keeps the corsage for decades, hoping the date arrives. I know it made you feel important, andthat you need to be validated by this woman. Honestly, it struck me as very morbid. Further, is the way she treats you actually in line with the teachings of her particular faith? Just because she is not sexing you doesn't mean it'sall hunky-dory, morality wise. But it bothers her only precisely to the extent that a display of her emotions keeps you hanging around. To me, a faith is just a beacon of qualities that one follows naturally and with experience. She is probably using her faithto justify whatever decisions she makes. "She leaves on Tuesday to spend a week and a half with the brother in law who a year ago, I am convinced he steered her towards leaving me for biblical reasons and reconciling with her ex." You cannot compete with the religious obligation alibi. Let them go. Let her be "saved" and let him become nearer to God by "saving" her. walk away. DO you what yo uneed to do the make peace with that, on your own, and let her go.

If you really want to get started, make sure you get some clips in hard print. It is very hard to be taken seriously at first if all you've written has only appeared on-line. You might have to do it for free, but take the time and do it well. Good writing will eventually be noticed. Also, become used to rejection. One of the pieces I've written was rejected at least forty times before being accepted, and it ended up winning an award in a major literary journal. Funnily enough, I submitted the same piece for an undergradte writing prize, and didn't win a thing; after the piece won the award, I emailed the notice to the undergraduate english faculty. Those clueless snots. Not that I am bitter.... I don't recommend freelancing, unless you've gotten into a nice little niche, or become notable for an accomplishment in the field you are writing about. For example, alot of poets don't make a living by selling poems; they become well-reviewed, and eventually they acquire critical credibility. At that point, they can live fairly comfortably freelancing. Journalism is the surest way to make a living at it, and it has its satisfying aspects but its a lot drudgery, and not the good kind, like writing a novel is. Like everything else, start small. A journalism degree or liberal arts degree might help, but aren't necessary. Most heavy hitting, major city dailies are staffed almost wholly by journalism school grads. Buy lots of stamps and envelopes, too. You'll need those. I hope this helps. I'm no seasoned veteran, but i've been doing it a while.

Thank you for the input. I really appreciate it. "You will probably never completely change the way you think internally but you should work on ensuring that your attitude is not overtly obvious to others. That should not be too hard." I agree. But somehow it is. I don't know why I feel such apprehension about making changes to the way I deal with people. Perhaps I've contemplated itinto the ground. My attitude causes me a lot of grief, at times generating very depressing view of the world. I'm just tired of myself, is all, and strangely embarrassed at having to change.

I am newly 26. Part of what has truly brought me to confront my problem is my age; its such a childish view of the world, and it hasn't really left me yet. Nomatter how much I wish to change this part of me, I am almost scared of doing so; my manner of relating to others has been this way for a while, and now it is almostas if they expect me to be a certain way, and changin that would be somehow embarrassing to me. "Without empathy you have the arrogance of youth" I am very arrogant about certain things. I think I have to be; ifI wasn't arrogant, I would have given up on what I do long ago, and never gotten to the point where the quality of my work is professionally validated. I don't want tohave this arrogance continue affecting other facets of my life, as it has, and I'm worried that it can't be controlled like that. "But I had some life experiences that knocked the wind out of me so to speak" Yeah. THis goes back to my arrogance. I've been humbled many many times, but without sticking to my guns, the work I've done that was deemed unworthy of attention would never be given recognition, as it now has. THe sticky part of all this is that my career has in many ways rewarded arrogance as persistence, but my personal life has suffered for it. In fact, I lost a number of important romantic relationships because I was so humbled that I was thrown into a fit of depression. I knew I had made too big a deal out of it, but it didn't matter at the time.

"I am sure the people whom you impress with useless facts don't feel insulted" You are right, I am sure they don't. I don't run around telling these people the things they are wrong about, as if some sort of oracle. It just bothers me. Its not something I'm proud of. "You will always be perceived as snobbish if you don't attempt to change" I know. A part of me is jealous of a lot of these types, the people who aren't, according to my current view, up to par. I've accomplished alot, but i don't feel the need to beat into everyone I meet taht "I've got a musicdegree," or hand them publications with my poems in them. I resent the notoriety they derive,which probably has a lot to do with my insecurity. I guess I'm under the impression that people should earn things, even things as stupid as being able to say they are in a band. They don't need to know the ins and outs of 20th century french classical to be in a band. Part of me expects that they should. "it would take just one comment I perceived as stupid for me to suddenly start disliking them and feeling repulsed... " This is where I am, pretty much. It is really hard for me not to do this. Somehow I equate an isolated, unintelligent remark with character flaws. How did you get hold of yourself? I'd really like some info. "I was overly critical towards others as well as myself." This too. I need to know everything about something I care about, and a fair amount about things I am just kind of interested in. I feel fake if I don't. "it is easy also to assume you know the answer to everything important." THis is also correct. Somehow i feel that because i've got a profiency in something like literature or music, i tend to think I've got a lot of other things figured out. This kind of thing gets reinforced at times, because it comes accross as confidence, which attracts people. They obviously don't hang around very long. "sounds like youre being a tad snobbish. people arent gonna wanna hang around you if they are going to think youre going to critisize them for petty things. try to be more open-minded and not let it bother you so much. you can tell your closest friends in confidence your annoyances but i wouldnt let it show on your sleeve kinda thing" I hear what you are saying, and i try to be open minded. It seems like I've gotten myself into this terrible habit, and while Iwant to change it, it is so difficult to up and switch your manner of interacting with people. I feel as if they will find me less sociable, somehow, or wonder if I'm stable. I really have been concerned about this in the past. I'm proud of myself for what I've accomplished, but I haven't beenable to accept that the abilities and accomplishments of others are different. I'm very guarded about the thigns I've been able to do, and I feel contempt for those who put their sensibilities on display. To me, it smacks of shameless girl/boy-chasing. It isn't that I'mbothered about thegirl things; I don't have trouble meeting girls, and I've felt like this regardless of whether I was seeing someone or not. MAybe I'm just a insatiable attention craver. I don't like that I get mouthy when I'm drinking around these types. I really have started to hate myself for it. THank you all for the replies. Please be patient with me.

Hello, I've had this problem for a long time, and I just don't know how to get out of it. I'm not a snob. I don't really expect everyone to have read what I have or listened to the music I listen to. I'm sure many people are more knowledgable than I. I still have a huge problem with people who should know something but don't. For example, I meet a bunch of guys who are in a band. They want to know the name of the group Smokey Robinson performed with. They don't know they are called The Miracles. Seeing as how they are in a band, I think they should at the very least know this, and since they don't, I think they are idiots. Another musical example: Ive got a minor in jazz improvisation, and when I see people who run around telling everyone they are in a band, and it turns out they only know about 5 chords, I literally think they don't deserve to even be allowed near an instrument. Is this kind of thing wrong? Is it wrong to expect people who call themselves musicians to know who Smokey played with, or to expect them tobe able to play more than five chords? COmpounding this, these peole are complete snobs about it--they look down on people who listen to Britney Spears and Dave Matthews, yet they can't be othered to learn their instrument or pop music history with any real proficiency. I feel like an a!!hole, and when I begin to show my disrespect, I look like it too. I thought I would grow out of it, but I'm inmy midtwenties and I still find all these people who bother melike this. I don't know. Maybe I've allowed myself to pursue the subjects I am passioante about too studiously, and I'm frustrated that people who also claim to be passionate about these things have such gaping holes intheir ability and knowledge. Any help?

"Incidentally, I ended up getting to know this girl. We found one another confiding in each other about the faults in each other's relationships (she was engaged at the time). " This talking about what is wrong with your relationships thing was a very poor choice. You have already started leaving your current the moment you began confiding in someone else, the moment you chose to speak to this woman instead of your girlfriend about your problems. She did the same thing to her fiance, most likely. Why pursue a relationship predicated on the deception and embarrassment of the people who love you? If you want to be proactive about your karma, leave your girlfirend, hook up with the new girl and wait until she confides to a different man about her problems with you. And then listen to her when she tells you that it was "incidental," but she couldn't help it because she saw a man at work and was "knocked for a loop." Option 1 is the choice. Talk to the woman who loves you about your problems, not the office girl you want to nail. Duh.