F*ck Feelings: One Shrink's Practical Advice for Managing All Life's Impossible Problems (2015)

chapter six

fuck love

Love is supposed to be the antithesis of hate and the ultimate solution to all of life’s problems, so it’s natural to idealize it, market it, and make finding it your life’s goal. Anything that’s strange, conquers all, and is Jesus’s idea of what you should do to your neighbor as you would to yourself must truly be, well, all you need.

In actuality, love and hate aren’t that dissimilar; both evoke the kind of passionate, heated, needy feelings that create more problems than they solve.

Sure, love has the potential to make you very happy, as it does when you’re in love, or being loved back, or getting a lucky chance to combine love and sex. That’s why it can also distract you with new worries and generate lots of yearning, unhappiness, and anger whenever something gets in its way.

Love can also push you to do things that aren’t good for you and are bound to turn out badly or make you act like a wuss, a schmuck, or both. It can cause you to forget your values and ignore realities about character, bad habits, and feelings you can’t change. That’s why love can be one of the ultimate obstacles to being a good person and finding lasting relationships.

Again and again, you have to face the fact that someone you love can’t love you back, or you can’t find someone to love when that’s what you want and need. Failed love almost always feels like a personal failure, so if you’re a good person who hasn’t found someone or can’t turn a loving attraction into a good partnership, you’re probably ready to ask a magazine, psychic, or even a shrink what you’ve done wrong.

Almost always, your lack of love isn’t because of anything you’ve done wrong. Life is unfair and the world around you stirs up intense needs while offering false satisfactions. If you’re extra careful and selective about loving and being loved, you’ll probably find yourself spending more time feeling lonely.

On the other hand, if you realize that love is a risky business and can accept pain, frustration, and hard lessons as unavoidable, you can survive and learn from your losses. You need never feel ashamed of wounds acquired for a good cause, and often your wounds will ultimately help you find loving relationships that are consistent with your values and are likely to last.

Remember, the true opposite of love isn’t hate; it’s indifference. If you care enough to find someone who’s right for you, not someone who makes you feel right, you’ll truly find what you need.

Finding Someone

Most creatures choose a mate based on two factors: the ability to procreate and the possession of a pulse. Humans are obviously a lot more complicated; we screw up by putting too much weight on appearance and spark.

In fact, if you value attractiveness when looking for a good partner, you’ll go on too many dates for the wrong reasons. If you’re not good at screening out the beauty- and lust-struck, you’ll end up wasting a lot of time. Sure, you’ll have hot dates and passionate encounters, but you’ll be distracted from looking for the qualities that make a good partner.

Couples bound by mutual chemistry can be blind to the fact that the relationship lacks qualities necessary for a partnership and enables red-flag behaviors that no partnership can survive. So attractiveness and chemistry may be good for generating hot affairs and cool couples, but they’re also good for driving up the divorce rate.

If you’re looking for a partner, look beyond attraction, figure out what qualities of character and personality you require, and be ready to ignore strong attraction if those qualities aren’t there. No matter how hot the package or interpersonal sizzle, remember what you’ve learned about what spoils a relationship, no matter how much you are tempted.

Since you’ve probably read a landfill’s worth of magazine articles on how to be more attractive or get the other person to like you more, and they haven’t improved your own garbagey love life, it’s time for a new strategy.

Learn how to define what you’re looking for, focus your appeal in a way that shows your strengths, and conduct an efficient search for a partner who won’t wear you out or waste your time. If you want bliss and romance, this strategy won’t work. If you want a partnership that’s as solid as a swan’s and won’t end in divorce, we can help.

Here are assets you’d like to have before you start dating, but don’t:

✵ A body that Photoshop couldn’t touch

✵ Access to a bar that does not admit men who watch porn on their cell phones in public, women named Amber, and anyone with an orange spray tan

✵ The confidence you once felt (briefly) when you fixed that hot girl’s phone after she started to cry

✵ A procedure that takes the shame away from flirting and transfers it to your unnecessary insecurities

Among the wishes people express are:

✵ To get better at putting themselves out there

✵ To find “the one,” not the next

✵ To change an attractive person into a responsible person

✵ To find a boy- or girlfriend and stop being just a friend

✵ To figure out why two people who are attracted can’t make it work

Here are three examples:

I don’t know why I have trouble meeting people. I’m willing to hang out in bars, but as an average-looking shy person, I don’t get approached by too many guys. If I do, then I don’t know how to flirt, so the conversations tend to be short. I’m a smart girl, I have a good job that I love, and I’ve got good friends who say I have lots to offer, but meeting guys, let alone cool ones who find me interesting, feels impossible. Maybe I need a makeover. My goal is to find someone, not be everyone’s friend.

My friends are getting married and I can’t find anyone I can see myself being with for the rest of my life. I can find girls to date, and even had a serious girlfriend for a while, but no one I could really see myself growing old with. I never really had a problem being the unattached guy, but the older I get, the more I feel like I’m being left behind. My goal is to figure out why I never click with someone or how to change my luck and find someone I really want to marry.

I get along well with women and have no trouble meeting and dating some of the coolest, most interesting women you could imagine. We have great chemistry, lots of laughs, and amazing sex, but then it always unravels the same way; they become supersensitive, tell me I make them feel unloved and ignored, and then get into a breakup/makeup cycle that drives me crazy. My goal is to figure out why I’m always attracted to the wrong woman and whether it will ever change.

You’ve probably read that the first step toward the right partner is to change something about yourself, be it your attitude or your waistline.

But if you get caught up in thinking about yourself, and what you can alter and why you’re doomed to die alone, you’ll lose sight of your goal; namely, to take stock of your strengths—i.e., the things you know you shouldn’t change—and figure out what you want someone for.

If you concentrate on what you want, not wanting to be wanted, you’re more likely to find someone who meets your long-term needs, wants the same things out of life, and won’t get on your nerves, at least not too much.

If you’re shy and relatively nonverbal, and find it hard to meet people or get them to think of you as anything other than a quiet pal, you may try the well-established route of looking for common-interest clubs and activities that help people get to know one another without having to get personal or make a lot of early eye contact.

If activities are not your style, however, use Internet dating sites to widen the field. As with a good cover letter for a job search, use a coach if necessary to create a brief, one-paragraph description of what you have to offer, and avoid the sites and apps that are focused on image. People searching for a mate based solely on looks are not the kind of people you have much use for.

Yes, most people may not be interested in responding, but you’re looking for that rare person who is on your wavelength and will know it, without your having to be sociable or charming in a way that you’re not. The Internet gives you the opportunity to reach those people, wherever they are, without having to waste time feeling rejected by people who like playful banter. You can find someone who is impressed enough by your basic credentials, goals, and interests to try out a conversation, someone who is checking out the fit, not the fun.

If you find yourself dating (but not wanting to commit to) women after you’ve experienced companionship, beach walks, and close feelings, then you’re looking for a dog, not a lifelong human commitment. Instead, ask yourself what you want out of living with a partner, given your experience of families, children, roommates, and close friends. Think about needing help in a crisis, building a family, and having financial security.

Put together a job description for the person you’re looking for. Then, if you decide you want a life companion, it’s because you’re ready to commit to what you need and you know the kind of person who might be a good fit, whether or not they make you buzz and tingle.

If you have no trouble meeting and getting attached, but always to the wrong person, remember that love is blind and just as likely to link you to a jerk as to a nice person. Once you have a good description of the person you need, learn to ignore that exciting initial burst, because, as you’ve learned the hard way, it inevitably leads to an infuriating crash.

Limit your dating to the kind of person who will make a good, reliable partner, not a fun, hilarious anecdote, then spend more time with the person you like best. Aim for good-enough attractiveness in a good, stable partnership candidate, not sweep-you-off-your-feet love in someone with bad credentials and a sad relationship history that you haven’t checked out. Romance is fun, but background checks and compatibility are what prevent divorce.

Don’t jump into a search by trying to change yourself and your basic traits and responses. Instead, use your experience to shape a search-and-interview procedure based on what you’re looking for in others. That is what a good matchmaker would do.

What you put into your search is what you get out of it. If you’re looking for short-term fun and excitement, then your search can be fun and exciting, but if you’re looking for something long-term and serious, it’s time to brace yourself not for a big makeover but for the tough job ahead.

Quick Diagnosis

Here’s what you wish for and can’t (always) have:

✵ Amazing attractiveness

✵ An easy time falling in love with the right person, while singing

✵ Access to good candidates through bars, weddings, and mutual friends

✵ Being most attracted to the person who is best for you

✵ No weakness for getting sucked into relationships with toxic people

Here’s what you can aim for and actually achieve:

✵ Compensate for your hard-to-match nature by casting a wider net

✵ Use business techniques to conduct a job search

✵ Don’t let attraction trump common sense

Here’s how you can do it:

✵ Use special techniques and consultants for headhunting hard-to-find candidates

✵ Create a list of necessary qualifications

✵ Gather information about reliability in past relationships, money management, and drug use

✵ Don’t violate your scoring system

✵ Recruit the best match, not the most attractive

Your Script

Here’s what to tell someone/yourself when you can’t find the right someone.

Dear [Self/Person Who Feels Love Will Lead Me to the Partner of My Dreams]:

I’ve tried to [dress both up and down/wear musk/lose neck fat] and still I haven’t found a [date/candidate to love/not-psycho]. Instead of relying on my [insert positive quality, and you definitely have at least one, even if it’s “all my original fingers”] to find me someone, I will use modern search techniques to find candidates with good [credit ratings/relationship histories/criminal background checks] and invite those interested in partnership to talk about a possible merger. I will not let feelings of personal rejection slow my search, and won’t give up until it’s done.

Did You Know … That Being Good Looking Can Be a Bad Thing?

At one point in most of our lives, we encounter an issue—from getting a speeding ticket to not getting a promotion—where we’re certain that none of this would be happening if we were just better looking than we are. The desire to be desirable goes beyond wanting to be wanted; good-looking people can get away with anything, let alone get anyone. To not-beautiful people, it always looks like the beautiful ones have it made.

The problem, of course, is that people crave beauty the way Gollum craved the ring, so if you do happen to be beautiful, it can be creepy and unpleasant to be viewed by the world as less of a person and more of a “preeccccciouss.”

Being too attractive might seem more like a blessing than a curse, but it doesn’t mean you have access to the best mates; if anything, it can mean the opposite. As a beautiful, shiny object, a good-looking person attracts more than their share of Gollums; i.e., impulsive people with wobbly values who just want to be seen with (and sleep with) an attractive person.

It’s a pain to keep them at bay while trying to find someone who actually wants to get to know you instead of keeping you in their grasp. Your suitors may normally date people who are very different from you in style, goals, and values, but your attractiveness persuades them, temporarily, that they want you instead. Good looks generate interest, attention, and activity—and bad matches caused by beauty-induced blindness.

If you’re unfortunate enough to be both attractive and sensitive to other people’s needs, you’ll sympathize with their longings and feelings of rejection—and then you’ll really just want to be alone.

The attractive may get out of parking tickets and into better jobs, but they also must develop the ability to ignore the yearnings of others and become tough and selective about whom they choose to interview and hang out with. So don’t assume that being better looking means having the best life, because the best life wouldn’t include being a magnet for some of the worst people.

Getting to Commitment

Many weddings aim to be public, romantic, and often insanely expensive demonstrations of eternal commitment based on a grand, shared love. The greater the love, the more extravagant the wedding, the louder the band, and the taller the chocolate fountain at the dessert table.

The problem with this logic is that commitment is not just the result of mutual love; true commitment isn’t to a person but a cause, be that revolution, saving the whales, or a marriage. For commitment to work, both parties should be united in dedication to their shared vision of a partnership and, yes, loving the partner they’ve found.

If you think commitment depends primarily on love, then you won’t know what to look for, in yourself or another, other than love. And love might be the key factor in committing to a pair of shoes or pizza topping, but not another human being. You’ll either get a messy breakup prepartnership or, worse, a bad partnership and later an even messier divorce.

The fact is, not everyone is built for commitment. Some very nice people prefer independence, don’t like to share life decisions, or don’t want or need the security or family life that commitment enables. More men than women fall into this category, leaving women in the unpleasant position of playing musical chairs for potential male commitment candidates, knowing that there are not enough for everyone who deserves them.

Then there are people who, no matter how much you love them, will drag you down if you’re committed to them because they can’t manage their lives; they shower risk and trouble on everyone close to them, which, of course, makes them sexy and more likely to find suckers who will keep trying to make a relationship work. They may want commitment, but you don’t need a crystal ball to predict the future for them and their partners.

Either way, don’t try to convince yourself or your partner that committing is the right thing to do until you’ve reviewed the facts and your values and goals and still think it’s a good deal for both parties. If that doesn’t persuade your partner to take the next step, you’ll know you gave it your very best try, and that she maybe wasn’t the best match for you in the first place. But if you both are committed to the vision you share and working together to make it come true, then blow way too much money on jewelry. You’re ready to propose.

Here’s what you wish you could find to turn love into commitment, but can’t:

✵ A way to change your feelings about family and commitment from “meh” to “gimme!”

✵ A brand of beer for your beloved that both tastes great and makes the drinker a responsible adult

✵ The name of the person who wrote the actual Book of Love (and his/her address, so you can hire someone to take him/her out)

Among the wishes would-be committers express are:

✵ To move a relationship to the next step

✵ To find a way, at any cost, to avoid having to break up and start over

✵ To get someone they love to see that commitment would be great

✵ To get someone they love to stop their bad habits and settle down

Here are three examples:

My boyfriend and I have been living together for two years, but when I bring up the subject of marriage, he says he’s not ready or just doesn’t see the point. We get along well and I’m sure he loves me, but he says we’re basically married already so why spoil what we’ve got with a new title? Also, he doesn’t see himself as a father right now, or maybe ever. I’d really like a family and thought he’d come around when he saw how well we get along and how easy I am to live with. My goal is to get him to commit himself to marriage and the good life we could have together.

I love my boyfriend but I’m not sure I want to settle down, or want kids, or want to live in this town forever. He wants to get married, and I feel I’m just twenty-eight and I’d like to see the world and have more experience, maybe even live in another county for once in my life. We’ve known each other forever, started dating five years ago, and have lived together for three years, and it’s all been great and progressing along, but for some reason, taking the final step and making it permanent makes me very nervous. My goal is to deal with the pressure he’s putting on me.

My partner and I have been together for a long time—over ten years, at our last count—but neither one of us cares much about convention or ever starting a family, so we’re happy to just keep things the way they are. We know that neither one of us is going anywhere. Our families, on the other hand, and you can add society while you’re at it, seem to feel otherwise. Neither my partner nor I have led particularly conventional lives, so you’d think they’d just take our decision in stride, but no; both his parents and mine are constantly pressuring us to “do the right thing,” often adding, “before we die,” just to rub it in. My goal is to get people to accept that my partner and I are fine with the union we have.

Commitment is often presented as a mental, military-style obstacle course; if you can just get over the wall of anxiety, survive the electrified mud pit of personal baggage, and leap through the ice pool of faith, then you’ll be ready to serve out your loving, eternal bond.

On the other hand, if you or your partner has real reservations that are making you reluctant to commit, then, like the military, you’re probably charging ahead into another endless conflict.

That’s why, if commitment isn’t happening, it’s your job to accept the possibility that there are good reasons for not going ahead, because the best way to win a battle is to avoid it in the first place.

If you love someone and can’t get him to commit, reassess whether he’s avoiding commitment because he doesn’t like it, or because he’s just plain incapable of it. Some people may hold back because they’re restless and can’t stand the idea of being tied down, and others may not want the kind of life or family their would-be partner desires. There are also people who like their pleasures, don’t care for work, and don’t want to make sacrifices for someone else’s dream. Even their mothers refer to them as “winners” with dripping sarcasm.

Your job, if commitment isn’t happening, is to consult a list of possible disqualifications. Gather information about past commitments, if any; unless your candidate is relatively young, you should be able to uncover a past-commitment story. If the story doesn’t feature the other person’s problems, or a problem that is under better control now than it was before, then keep history from repeating itself and move on.

Don’t let love, a desire to please, or an urge to prove yourself get in the way of your doing a good, businesslike, due-diligence evaluation of whether partnership would be in your interest, as well as whether your would-be partner is reliable and has the necessary qualities and values. Because if you have to talk, trick, or push someone into commitment, then you’re both committing to a world of misery.

If the mixed feelings about commitment are yours, and you feel pressured by your partner to make up your mind, don’t dwell on what she wants and how you feel about it. Instead, ask yourself what you want, and whether your life goals (aside from pleasing her) would be advanced by a partnership. Seriously consider whether you actually want a family, common assets, and a lifelong partnership. Then determine whether your goals and your partner’s match up.

Remember how you’ve managed commitment possibilities in the past; whether you’ve just avoided them, encountered possibilities that were bound to fall through, or had something good going and then ran away from it. Be as realistic as possible about any of your own negative behaviors that might interfere with partnership, and don’t assume you can change unless you’ve decided to try and made some progress.

If you think partnership is not right for you, of course you stand to lose a close relationship, but it’s better to disappoint now than later, and it will hurt less to end things before you’ve taken vows you know you can’t keep. Don’t fault yourself or your love and respect the fact that partnership is not for everyone.

If you and your partner both prefer to be nonpermanent partners, and it’s others who tell you that partnership is the only decent goal for good people, then your task is easier. In order to best manage the constant criticism, ask yourself whether there’s anything about this love relationship that is bad for either one of you, and that would be mended by settling down, sharing assets, and legally promising to stay.

Examine whether your current relationship puts one of you, or people who depend on you, at a disadvantage, either now or when one of you dies. Look at future worst-case scenarios to see if noncommitment could cause harm.

Once you’ve looked closely at the ethical and practical meaning of noncommitment and found nothing wrong with it, don’t enter into discussion or debate with friends and relatives who want to push you into marriage. You’ve considered their concerns, you’ve thought about the bad things that could happen, and you’ve done what you think is right. You’re comfortable making it clear that no further conversation on the topic is necessary.

Instead of thinking of the commitment as a battle, see it as a business; it has to make life better for both parties, in a way they both value, using practices they both approve of, and relying on qualities of discipline and reliability they both have. If those conditions are met, they’ll still be talking to each other, caring about each other, and even loving each other after they’ve encountered life’s shit together.

In the meantime, don’t make the quest for partnership a test of your love; make it a test of your intelligence and experience, despite whatever love, lust, or insanity you might be feeling. Stick to the basics of what you need and what you think makes a good partner, and the feeling that you are in basic training will vanish.

Quick Diagnosis

Here’s what you wish for and can’t have:

✵ Love being all you need to keep you together

✵ Certainty that, if you overcome fear and take the plunge, everything will work out

✵ A love so strong it can change personality problems, personality differences, and maybe the weather

✵ Family that is always accepting of an unconventional relationship, lifestyle, haircut, etc.

Here’s what you can aim for and actually achieve:

✵ Be in love, and nevertheless be able to do an objective assessment of your lover’s suitability for partnership and whether partnership is good for you

✵ Become good at avoiding love relationships with nonpartnership material

✵ Not feel like a failure, because finding a good partner is difficult and takes a lot of work

Here’s how you can do it:

✵ Assess yourself and decide whether partnership is really what you want versus something you’re expected to want

✵ List qualifications that a candidate must have to make partnership worth your while

✵ Describe the responsibilities and activities of the job your partner would need to take on

✵ Settle for nothing less than a good match

Your Script

Here’s what to tell someone/yourself when you’re making a commitment decision.

Dear [Self/Person Who Loves Me but May or May Not Want Commitment/Total Loser I Am Trying to Will into a Decent Person]:

There’s no question that our love is [true/strong/the best love that ever was in the history of all love forever], so now is the time for me to think about whether a partnership would be good for me and whether you would be a good [insert synonym for “boo”]. I’ve thought about whether I want [kids/life in the city/life in the country/a shared toilet and kitchen/a share of your college loan debt] and have decided it would be [good/bad] for me and you to partner up. Please give our commitment the same level of consideration, besides how much you like my [face/tush/laugh/entertainment center] and get back to me.

True and False Tests for Commitment

Changing for Love

For some people—particularly women; particularly women who watch too many Lifetime movies; particularly women who watch so many Lifetime movies they do things that could easily end up being the subjects of Lifetime movies—the ultimate fantasy is finding a diamond in the rough and polishing him with love and devotion.

Changing and nurturing the one you love, Beauty and the Beast-style, is a double love high, adding a layer of redemptive ecstasy to the natural pleasure of romancing a wounded outlaw. It gives you a feeling of power and affirms your own goodness, which is also what makes this kind of relationship attractive to certain priests and therapists, not just drama-prone ladies. In this context, sex takes on healing powers, in addition to providing physical pleasure.

Unfortunately, as time goes by and your more everyday needs establish themselves, you depend on your partner’s fragile ability to stay good, responsible, and sober to protect you from being hurt, humiliated, and dumped. Relying on your love to keep a damaged person whole and well-behaved is like expecting a trained bear to stay upright; eventually, after the music ends and the circus audience leaves, the beast comes down on all fours again. A trained bear is still a bear, and a loved person with impairments is still impaired.

If you love nurturing people (and many people in professions like nursing and social work fall into this category), changing someone for the better is a measure of success. If, however, you lower your boundaries and become overattached, and your nurturee’s change doesn’t last, your disappointment is likely to blossom into anger that feels as unacceptable as shaking a baby.

In addition, if you want someone to be motivated to change because he loves you, but then he doesn’t change, it must mean he doesn’t love you enough. You’re not just disappointed, you’re insulted, and left wondering whether the person you love would have changed permanently for someone else whom they loved more or who loved them better. In reality, the only person with the ability to facilitate that kind of change is a wizard or an exorcist.

So as tempting as it might be, don’t think of love as an instrument of improvement or redemption. Don’t measure love’s strength by its ability to turn a bad boy into the dream man. Ask yourself whether you can accept someone the way they are. If you can, and still love them, then congratulations; your story is not going to be dramatized on basic cable, but it is what you need for a peaceful relationship that is likely to last.

Here are some changes you wish your love could (but it cannot) make:

✵ Get someone to stop their drugging, drinking, or cheating ways

✵ Help someone who’s never been a talker to share their feelings as if you were a social worker

✵ Show a compulsive pleaser why it’s important to say no

✵ Get someone not to love you too much or not enough

Among the wishes people express are:

✵ To get someone to stop destroying their relationship, health, or job

✵ To get someone to see what they could accomplish if they were only more motivated, disciplined, or ambitious

✵ To stop someone from being a compulsive giver

✵ To change someone’s sexual feelings

Here are three examples:

I started dating my boyfriend in high school, when he was in trouble with the police and using drugs all the time, and I got him to take care of himself and take work seriously. Now we’re living together, and he works regularly, but he doesn’t have any ambition and sometimes, when he gets into a funk, he binges on drugs. He adores me and tells me he would have been on the street if I hadn’t rescued him, but I don’t see him taking his binging seriously, wanting to get help, or doing more at work than showing up when someone gives him a job. I feel guilty about pressuring him and damaging his self-esteem, but I don’t see how we can raise kids unless he’s more responsible. My goal is to get him to see why he needs to take sobriety and making money more seriously.

I always admired my husband’s love for his son from his first marriage; it showed me what a kind, nurturing man he is. What I didn’t realize before I married him, however, is that he has a hard time saying no. Whether it’s something his nine-year-old wants, or his ex gets the idea that he needs completely new sports equipment, my husband drops everything to comply. Often, he can’t afford the time or the money, so indirectly it impacts my budget and our time together. My goal is to get him to see that his ultra-responsiveness to his son and ex-wife isn’t good for our marriage or his son.

My wife was my best friend and dream girl when we were dating, and our relationship was the envy of our friends. After we had a kid, she went through a bad postpartum depression and gained thirty pounds, and now she spends a lot of time telling me what to do because she’s anxious about everything. This isn’t what I bargained for. She’s seeing a therapist, so don’t tell me she needs help. My goal is to figure out how to get back the woman I fell in love with.

Love can only change how we act, not who we are. It can make us blind, crazy, and happy, as well as very, very attached, but it can’t reliably alter our personalities, outlook, or sense of self.

If you acknowledge love’s limitations, you’re not belittling love, you’re being realistic about the fact that some things about character and relationships are beyond anyone’s power to change. That’s why you must be careful, when you have a choice, to love only what you’re prepared to accept and to accept only what is healthy.

The intensity of love may feel like a kind of authenticity that gives special meaning to both the relationship and to life itself. In actuality, that intensity can bind us to relationships that harm, belittle, and drain our commitment to what we value. That’s one of the major issues when love doubles as a rescue mission.

If your love began with a relatively unselfish desire to save someone from themselves, you probably failed to look for the other qualities you require in a good partnership, other than for your partner not to get drunk, suicidal, or otherwise destructive. When the thrill of redemption passed, you may well have found yourself disappointed by his inability to be ambitious or share your interests—but of course, that’s not what you bargained for or anticipated, since you were more focused on making him whole than making a life together.

Don’t then stay committed because of guilt or the responsibility you feel for the stability you’ve helped someone establish. Instead, respect your discovery of your own needs and ask yourself whether it’s realistic to expect your partner to meet them. If not, tell yourself that you’ve done a good job getting him started on the right path, but sooner or later, he must endure losses without relapsing, and the time has come.

Don’t blame him or yourself for the end of the relationship; respect what you’ve accomplished together and accept the unavoidability of loss as you both move on. Learn your lesson and make different choices next time.

Sometimes you don’t realize until you live together that the generous, nurturing qualities you admire in someone can also make him a pain in the ass. If he can’t limit his giving to his mother, ex-wife, kids from a previous marriage, that one weird neighbor, or even the kids he shares with you, you may find yourself feeling lonely, resentful, and probably guilty about resenting obvious niceness. The more you express resentment, the more you drive him to give to the people who expect nothing from him and are thus always grateful.

Rather than letting him know you don’t like to come last (and thus attacking his need to be appreciated), ask him to prioritize his commitments and budget his time and money. Urge him to consider how much time he wishes to spend with you, after thinking realistically about the claims and needs of others.

By accepting the limits of his resources and the fact that he will inevitably cause someone he values disappointment, he can gain an ability to give according to what he values rather than in reaction to whoever sounds neediest or most appreciative.

You may have to pull away, however, if he can’t budget enough for your partnership to make it worthwhile. If this happens, you’ll know you’ve done your best and haven’t let anger drive your decisions. Learn never to date someone who is compulsively nice and can’t say no, unless he acknowledges his problem and works hard to control it. Otherwise, accept that a relationship with someone who can’t say no to anyone is something you have to say no to yourself.

Even if you’ve chosen a partner you accept completely, life reserves the right to mess up the mix permanently with aging, illness, and trauma, so you may well find yourself wishing you could change something that hurts your partnership now but wasn’t part of the original package. You know it can happen, you promise to accept your partner no matter what, but you can’t control how devastating certain changes can be, like those caused by dementia, stroke, or addiction, or how you’ll feel after they occur.

Of course, try to get back what you had. If that fails, however, find the best compromise that’s consistent with your values. Your goal isn’t to be happy, but to do what’s right and tolerate unhappiness if necessary. First, however, you must assess the benefit and cost of staying together, including the impact on your spouse and family. Putting up with a few extra pounds is worth it; putting up with an altered personality or dangerous behavior may not be.

Love is wonderful when you don’t have to work at it and mutual acceptance is taken for granted, but love like that is reserved for fiction, pets, and inanimate objects. In real relationships—ones that involve work, kids, fatigue, and another human—it’s a bigger achievement to smile and keep your mouth shut about things you can’t accept or change, and have decided, for good reason, to bear.

Quick Diagnosis

Here’s what you wish for and can’t have:

✵ More strength for someone (who doesn’t know why they need it, except to please you)

✵ Discipline for someone who wants pleasure, including the feeling of being loved by you

✵ Better behavior from someone who has never behaved well

✵ Self-motivation from someone who is motivated by impulse and reaction to your feelings

Here’s what you can aim for and actually achieve:

✵ Search longer and more selectively until you find the qualities you know are necessary

✵ Change people with surgery or hair dye, not love

✵ Expect change if someone wants it for themselves, not for you, and shows results

✵ Accept people as they are, without necessarily being able to live with them

Here’s how you can do it:

✵ Never mix loving and rescuing

✵ Know what you need from a good love and make sure it’s part of your partner’s original equipment

✵ Always present the need for change in terms of advantages, not disappointment

✵ Know what you need to do, other than blame or complain, if change is impossible

Your Script

Here’s what to say about romantic changes that are necessary but unlikely to occur.

Dear [Unsatisfactory but Irresistible Friend or More Significant Other],

I will never understand why you can’t make the few small changes to your [character/substance habits/relationships/pants size] that would allow us to stop [fighting/living apart/going out together without knowing where it’s going] but I realize you love me and that no amount of [synonym for interaction, naked or otherwise] is going to change things. I will accept you the way you are and I will not pressure you to change. Our relationship will continue with [marriage/occasional visits/occasional messages via carrier pigeon].

Enjoying Healthy Sex

Given the pleasure we get from sex, particularly if we find a partner who shares the right sexual and personal chemistry, it’s hard not to regard good sex as a legitimate goal in life.

It’s also hard not to put a lot of value on sex considering that, in America at least, it’s everywhere; if there’s near nudity in a prime-time advertisement for fast food, there should definitely be some sexy full nudity in your own home.

Many therapists believe that accepting your sexual feelings is important to mental health, and argue that there’s nothing wrong with sexual pleasure between consenting adults now that birth control can prevent unwanted pregnancy and disease. They believe that if the little head is not happy, the big head will suffer.

Unfortunately, there are many things that can go wrong with sex, at least potentially, and the first is that we have so little control over it. Like the adolescent boner itself, attraction, performance, and chemistry are all random, sometimes unwanted, and often embarrassing and regrettable.

Remember, sex has tremendous influence over your identity and morality, whether you like it or not. Sexual preference, be it wrongfully stigmatized, like homosexuality, or justifiably stigmatized, like pedophilia, can put you on the social margins (or in a morally impossible position).

Strong sexual urges are impersonal and push the horny to treat other people as objects—indeed, like fast food. A strong wave of lust can sweep away concerns about the damage that may be done even if partners consent and have equally strong desires. Even if you’re eager and attractive and find lots of responsive partners, you can get hooked on a super-drug pleasure that causes endless breakups and betrayals and prevents relationships from lasting. You may be envied, but you’re really fucked, and not in the way you think.

If you’re horny and unattractive, you feel like a perpetual loser who is always being teased, excited, and then denied. When you aren’t feeling defective and envious of those who are getting some, you’re angry at those who turn you on by looking attractive and who rub your nose in your frustration, and that anger makes you uglier than any facial feature could be.

Even those lucky ones who find compatible sexual partners and stable relationships are almost certain to run into problems eventually when aging, hormones, or stress affect the intensity of their sex drives. Of course, it never occurs at the same time for both partners, which is why the test of a good marriage is not sexual compatibility but what you do with sexual incompatibility when it arrives.

So yes, sex is a major cause for sin if by sin we mean moral compromise, selfishness, and broken promises, and not just an abuse of social conventions from thousands of years ago. It’s hard to have strong needs, particularly ones that so directly involve other people, and still act like a good person. Sexual feelings take tons of management, and that’s not just a polite way of saying masturbation.

If you’re sexually frustrated, don’t assume it speaks ill of your character; you may be a good person managing a time of little sexual opportunity. Likewise, if you’re sexually satisfied, don’t assume you’ve got it made, since you may have compromised more than you should or have formed a relationship that will not work out well.

If you’re looking for good sex, you’re looking for the wrong thing in the wrong place; “good sex” is as absurd as the idea of using sex to sell burgers.

Look instead for as much sexual satisfaction as you can find while standing by your values and, when sexual satisfaction is not possible, in remembering what’s more important than sex to your self-respect. Just because sex is awesome and everywhere doesn’t mean that it’s actually everything.

Here are tools that sex therapists should be able to give you for a happy sex life, but can’t:

✵ A certain look that, regardless of how long you’ve been stewing in silence about your partner’s neglect, criticism, and disrespect, will put both of you in the mood, smiling and ready to go

✵ The key to exciting your partner and triggering orgasm, gleaned from years of patient study and ancient Mayan secrets, that works regardless of fatigue, tension, and medical disability

✵ Special cataracts that prevent you or your partner from observing wrinkles, fat, or those moles that look like cancer

✵ Universal, unlimited, constant child care

Among the wishes people express are:

✵ To figure out where their own or their partner’s mojo went and get it back

✵ To stop wanting some kind of sexual pleasure that is bad for them or figure out why they want it

✵ To figure out what they or their partner is doing to kill the mojo and keep it away

✵ To make a partner understand that they want sexual satisfaction—before they start seeking it elsewhere

Here are three examples:

After three children and fifteen years of marriage, my sex drive has plummeted. Even though my husband is slightly older than me and has a much more stressful job, he still has the libido of a varsity high school football player, so the discrepancy has become a problem. He tried to be sympathetic to my needs (or lack thereof), but I know he’s frustrated, and I do feel guilty about not being able to satisfy him or maybe making him feel unattractive or undesirable. The bottom line, however, is that I’m not feeling it, for him or anyone else, period. My goal is to figure out how to get myself into the mood somehow or get my husband out of it.

I feel bad about the fact that I’m not nearly as attracted to the guy I’m going to marry as I was to my former boyfriend. He was a jerk and our relationship was a train wreck, but I couldn’t get enough of him. My fiancé is a nice guy and I really respect him, but he’s not as attractive and the sex is nothing special. I wonder if I should be marrying someone I’m not more attracted to, and whether it’s fair to him. My goal is to feel more attracted or more sure about my choice of a partner.

I’m a nice guy. I take care of myself and make an effort to look good, and I’m polite to girls and try to treat them right. But I can’t get any of the girls I meet, at school or at clubs, to give me the time of day. It pisses me off, because they always go home with total assholes, and won’t even give me a chance because I’m not super tall or a male model or something. I just want to shake these bitches and ask what’s wrong with them that they’ll fuck losers but not nice guys like me. My goal is to get girls to see that I’m a good guy, or at least good enough to sleep with.

Since sex is seen as one of life’s natural functions, like sleeping or shitting, people often think there’s something wrong with them if they can’t feel desirable or attract sex. If they can just find the right makeover, guru, or carb-based diet to make them realize how beautiful they are, they will swell with confidence and finally be desired.

The problem, of course, is that sex doesn’t come as naturally to some people as those other natural functions do (not that sleeping and shitting come easily to everyone, either, or there’d be no such thing as laxative yogurt or the Ambien empire).

In real life, many people can’t be helped by a makeover, nothing makes them feel attractive, and their sexual feelings don’t jibe with the sexual opportunities they have. It shouldn’t be too much for them to expect to have sex, let alone happy sex or consistent sex, but it’s just not in the cards, and making a good sex life a goal just turns frustration into personal failure.

Over a long marriage, it’s not unusual for one person’s sex drive to fade far below a partner’s, and treatment doesn’t necessarily provide a remedy. It’s certainly worthwhile to check out possibly curable medical ailments, like thyroid deficiency, and sex therapy can help you overcome the sexual inhibition and discouragement that often follow poor performance. Even after all that, however, a fundamental difference in levels of desire may still remain.

If that’s the case after a reasonably thorough medical and mental health exam, don’t look too hard for further explanations or solutions, or you’ll exacerbate feelings of failure and frustration. Accept that such changes occur and answers don’t always exist.

It doesn’t mean your feelings for each other are less sincere or matter less or that your relationship is weaker. It just means that sex will require good-hearted negotiation and a willingness to do what seems best. It might not feel as great as it used to, but if marital peace is at stake, then lying back and thinking of England seems like a worthy sacrifice.

Discuss sex as a potentially positive force for maintaining a relationship, even when one person enjoys it more than the other. Seek agreement on the benefit of having sex, unless it’s painful. If you’re no longer interested, take credit in the giving of a gift. If you’re in the mood and miss being able to excite your partner, take pride in the gift you’ve been given.

It’s also not unusual to feel strong sexual feelings for someone who may not be good for you, and less than intense feelings for someone who definitely is. Obviously, if you put more emphasis on your sexual needs than your assessment of someone’s character, strengths, and reliability, you’re asking for trouble (and maybe orgasms, but mostly trouble).

Yes, there may be a guilty, accusatory voice in your head that wants hot sex and feels guilty for finding your nice-guy boyfriend not as hot as a bad boy. Remember, however, you’re the one who decides on the qualifications you require from a partner, and some level of attractiveness is a necessity.

Don’t compare him to Mr. Sexy. Measure him against all the qualifications you see as necessary. Then do what’s best for you, because that’s your job. The problem with the Mr. Sexys out there is that they rarely double as Mr. Decent Partner, or, sometimes, even as Mr. Decent Human Being. Congratulate yourself for choosing a gentleman over a jerk, even if you sacrifice a degree of sexual pleasure.

Sometimes frustrated sex is as dangerous as fulfilled sex, particularly for men who experience sex as a hunger that women have the power to excite and then refuse to satisfy. In reality, women are not responsible for your male sexual chemistry or frustration, so treating them as if they are responsible and owe you some satisfaction is a good way of turning yourself into an overbearing jerk in the grip of sexual road rage.

As noted in the beginning of this section, humans are not objects, so women are not food; you might feel hungry for them, but they did not necessarily sign up to be your meal. They can, in fact, make their own choices, and they don’t owe you anything. To further explore the fast-food-for-sex metaphor, they are not Burger Kings; you cannot have it your way.

Your goal in such situations is not to get sexist or angry, let alone get laid, because that won’t improve your attitude for very long, and it certainly won’t improve your standing with the opposite sex. Your goal is to accept that sexual opportunity isn’t something owed. It’s like luck. It just happens, like the weather.

Unfortunately, sometimes your luck is bad, and sexual hunger is hard to bear. In that case, get a therapist or coach to help you keep the negative thoughts under control and respect yourself for doing it with dignity.

Whether or not you’re happy with your sex life, sexual hunger and the need to feel attractive create endless moral dilemmas and the potential for fatefully wrong partnership choices. Never give priority to satisfying your sexual needs before thinking through what you actually control and what you believe is good for you.

Then, when you get laid, you’ll feel comfortable with yourself and your choices the next morning (since you’re also totally regular and had a great night’s sleep).

Quick Diagnosis

Here’s what you wish for and can’t have:

✵ Reliably great, mutual, satisfying, earth-moving whatevers

✵ The secure knowledge that it is always as good for them as it is for you

✵ A consistent answer to the call of the wild that you can count on

Here’s what you can aim for and actually achieve:

✵ An ability to turn down sex when you know it will hurt someone, including yourself

✵ An ability to think ahead and remember the past when there’s nothing but sex on your mind

✵ Values that put little merit on attractiveness and sexual success

✵ Respect that is unaffected by sexual nonperformance or frustration

Here’s how you can do it:

✵ Learn to spot real vulnerability (yours and/or hers) to possible damage caused by so-called casual hookups

✵ Avoid sex if it endangers your heart

✵ Draw on your past love/sex experience to list essential personal qualities and run-the-other-way red flags for candidates

✵ Make sure partners score a ten for character before you let their sex-appeal rating take over

✵ Take your time before jumping into bed, marriage, a nightmare, etc.

✵ List your standards of personal conduct and review whether you’ve lived up to them

Your Script

Here’s what to say about sexual opportunity and desire.

Dear [Self/Possible Partner],

I feel more confident and alive when I have [eye contact/conversation/sexy naked times] with someone [antonym for Next-Level-Disgusting] who’s attracted to me, but unfortunately, when I get involved with such a person, my [brain turns off/clothes fly off/life goes off the rails]. I will prepare for this state of brainlessness by [studying sexual ethics/avoiding STDs/conducting FBI-level background checks]. If I can’t get sex, I get [irritable/suicidal/the shakes] but I will try to take [cold showers/many breaks to jerk off/an inventory of my life and find other things that are at least as important]. If I don’t feel like sex, I feel [irritable/ugly/freakish], but I know I have the power to give sexual pleasure when it matters.

Hurtful vs. Harmless Ways to Tell Your Partner You’d Rather Not

Salvaging Lost Love

When love fails after seeming to get off to a good start, you feel like you’ve entered an evil, alternate dimension, and if you could only get back to where you were before someone meddled with space and time, you could get your relationship back, or at least keep things from turning ugly.

Maybe most people have a less nerdy take on the situation, but the urge to reset a relationship gone wrong is universal.

After all, if you felt wonderful before, you should be able to feel great again. The two of you just need communication, understanding, and maybe some sessions with a couples therapist and a trip somewhere warm with massage tables. Unfortunately, there are reasons that later-stage love goes sour that you can’t undo, even with a four-star resort or a time machine, and many of them are foreseeable from the beginning.

For example, love doesn’t usually survive a poor work ethic unless the person doing more than their share is unusually needy or unable to recognize the value of their own contribution. Love doesn’t tend to last when the lazy partner is an addict, self-involved, or unable to understand the needs of others.

If you have the chance to do a dirty job with someone before deciding to date—helping her move, nursing her through a flu, going with her on a trip to a no-star motel after twenty hours of driving—you might well spot this later-stage marriage land mine before triggering it. With simple detective work, you can also tell who is likely to fall out of love with you because that’s what she’s done with previous partners.

If it’s too late now, and your love is doomed by something about your partner’s character or values that isn’t going to change, trying too hard to salvage it can make you forget your own strengths and what you stand for. Failing to accept broken love is what makes failure personal and interminable, rather than just a natural and painful mistake.

Do your best to hold on to love, but when you know you’ve done your best to save it and it’s not working, do what’s necessary and let go. Ask yourself whether the problem is bigger than you are, and whether solving it is within your power. If it isn’t, the best way to restore love to your life is to clear the relationship and reset your schedule. Then figure out what went wrong, and apply your wisdom to doing better next time, but in Akron, not Acapulco.

Here’s what you’d like to find to save your love, but can’t:

✵ What you did wrong, so you can confess, repent, and never do it again

✵ Loving words, maybe from a song or poem, that will go well with flowers and begging

✵ A couples therapist who can get you to see the other person’s point of view, and vice versa, without triggering the usual fight

✵ A love potion and a nonlove potion, to be taken as needed by whomever you prescribe it to, including yourself

Among the wishes people with breaking relationships express are:

✵ To find a way to feel the same, or make the other person feel the same, as before

✵ To figure out why they were so stupid

✵ To get the other person to see what they have and why it’s worth saving

✵ To get the other person to see what they don’t have and why it’s worth walking away

Here are three examples:

I think my ex-girlfriend was sexually abused, and needed to know that she could trust me. I was very gentle with her, and I never loved anyone the way I loved her. What I can’t understand is why we were very close one day, and the next day she stopped talking to me and said we needed to take a break. I spend all my time trying to figure her out, and how I can get her to see how much I love her. Obviously, she needs more reassurance, but I don’t know how to do it. My goal is to understand how to make her feel loved and win her back.

I always had a good relationship with my husband, so it destroyed me when I found messages on his cell phone and discovered he was having an affair. He was very remorseful and says there was no issue, but that just makes me more mistrustful. I don’t think I can trust him again until I know why he did it. My goal is for us to get to the root of the problem.

When I broke up with my ex-boyfriend three months ago after a year of dating, I tried to be very clear, but not unkind; we had a good time together, but I didn’t see a future for us, so I wanted to move on. He was devastated and tried to convince me I was wrong for a few days, but I held firm, and he finally seemed to get it. The problem is that he now wants to “be friends,” but it turns out his definition of being friends is a lot like dating. He calls me all the time, keeps trying to make plans, and as guilty as I feel about saying no, I feel guiltier about saying yes because I’m just leading him on. My goal is to get my ex to understand that it’s over without having to really hurt him.

Because relationships can have a competitive element (e.g., who will win control of the TV, the right not to take out the garbage, custody of the kids, etc.), they’re often compared to sports, particularly baseball. That might work when you’re comparing sex to home base and rejection to striking out, but overall, the metaphor doesn’t totally work.

That’s because in baseball, when a team loses, there’s always the next game, and when the season’s over, there’s always next year. Hope springs eternal in America’s pastime.

On the other hand, when a relationship is in big trouble and not getting better—as in, all strategies have been tried and Hail Marys have failed—then there is no hope. You can’t improve or have a rematch the next day; you can only accept things as they are and decide what to do.

Of course, it’s human nature for you or your partner to keep trying, and propose one more talk, therapy session, or set of rules for ending hostilities or solving an issue that isn’t going to go away. Yogi Berra would agree that it ain’t over till it’s over, but don’t pretend it’s not over when it is.

If you want a chance to get back into the game with this or another franchise, however, you owe it to yourself to stop the bleeding, figure out exactly what went wrong, and either accept the team you have or start over. Obsessing or ruminating over what you should have done is a waste of time; learn from your mistakes and move on.

Some people’s love has a limited use-by date (see: borderlines sidebar here) and when trust is gone, the relationship is over, even though, as far as you can see, you did nothing wrong.

When she first loves you, she’s crazy about you because you’re better than all those prior lovers who always let her down, but when she sees you’re not the messiah, then she’s crazy with disappointment, or just crazy, period. Any anger, incomprehension, or protest you express is further proof you can’t be trusted.

Look into your ex-partner’s past, and you’ll discover similar trust swings. The first swing may well have been triggered by actual sexual abuse, but later swings, you’ll discover, involved lovers who were not abusive, but your partner experienced them as if they were. So you’re fucked, but you’re not alone.

While your heart is mending, learn to spot the warning signs so you won’t make the same mistake twice: e.g., intense intimacy right off the bat, a feeling of being a savior, if not The Savior, super sex (no offense to the Savior), and a string of evil past lovers. As we’ve said before, if a relationship begins with sudden or near-baseless feelings of love, don’t be shocked if it ends with sudden or near-baseless feelings of mistrust.

More complex is the problem caused by a partner—usually a guy—who loves you but is also impulsively responsive to exciting, shiny new relationships and endless sexts from someone-not-you. If you’re a nice, humble person, you may wonder what you did wrong, or whether there was a problem that you failed to perceive.

You will wish, very strongly, that you or a therapist could fish out an issue from your partner’s past or present involving hidden anger or unconscious needs that, once expressed and shouted or cried over, would never cause infidelity again. Unless your therapist is a genie, that wish will be in vain.

The good news is that your partner probably loves you as much as ever. The bad news is that the tendency toward infidelity, like one toward addiction, is not curable, and that’s what a good therapist will tell you.

Decide for yourself whether you can accept your partner’s having this kind of weakness and whether he recognizes having it and seems determined to do better at controlling it in the future. If he pleads and says it will never happen again, his thinking is as wishful/bullshitty as yours. If he says it’s hard to resist, but he’s going to join a twelve-step group to help him stay away from trouble, he might actually succeed.

What’s most important is not to take the problem personally or try to solve it once and for all. Once the anger has started to fade, decide whether your partnership—which you now know is higher risk than you thought—is worth continuing. You can salvage it if you wish, but what you’re salvaging is not what you thought you had in the first place.

Sometimes, of course, you’re the one who falls out of love, which is particularly likely to happen as you get to know someone who is not nearly as good at doing his share as he first seemed. That’s why the getting-to-know-you phase of a relationship is important and carries risks of heartbreak for both sides.

Your job isn’t to feel guilty for dumping someone and then to stick around to feel her pain, particularly when you began a relationship honestly believing it could work out. Review your conduct to see if you did right, given how you felt at the time. If you were honest and had good intentions, the pain of a breakup can’t be helped and shouldn’t be your responsibility.

Don’t try to “friend” your ex into feeling better, particularly when you see it prolongs their need to hold on to the old relationship. Say good-bye, putting your own judgment ahead of what your ex says is best and effectively putting her out of her misery. The difference in your perceptions is one of the main reasons you couldn’t continue the relationship and decided to move on.

Don’t try to salvage relationships if it doesn’t seem possible or desirable. As much pain as it may cause you or your partner, accept what you’ve got and learn from it. Then you’ll be much more likely to do better next time and find a love that doesn’t need to be salvaged because it had a better foundation from the beginning. You might need a rebuilding year or two before you win it all, but it’s the losing seasons that make victory possible.

Quick Diagnosis

Here’s what you wish for and can’t have:

✵ To avoid heartbreak for you or your partner

✵ To keep a good thing going or get it going again

✵ To not feel responsible for heartbreak

✵ To take all the responsibility for mending the break

Here’s what you can aim for and actually achieve:

✵ Not be a schmuck, even though you’re hurting and it’s probably unfair

✵ Do all the right things to communicate, figure out if you did anything wrong, make amends, and improve what you can (until you can’t)

✵ Accept it when you’ve run out of things you can try

✵ Decide what’s best to do with the pieces

✵ Spot the flaws sooner next time (assuming they could have been seen in the first place)

Here’s how you can do it:

✵ Shut up about your negative feelings and be patient, attentive, and understanding, even if you’re hurt, angry, and misunderstood

✵ Ask for ideas from friends, family, and, last resort (as they’re expensive), shrinks

✵ List what you can do to improve the relationship, then go down your list and force yourself to stop if your list is complete and things aren’t better

✵ Be judgmental—i.e., judge whose weaknesses are responsible for the breakdown—not in order to blame, but to decide what you can do

✵ Ask yourself what you want to do about this relationship if it is what it is

✵ Look for some way to improve your selection process next time, even if it means being alone for a long time.

Your Script

Here’s what to say when you’re faced with a relationship that’s ending.

Dear [Self/Unhappy-with-Relationship Partner],

I don’t want to [give up on/destroy/endure another painful second of] our relationship, but I’ve tried [expressing my feelings/shutting up about my feelings/making all the effort] and things aren’t changing. I will finally accept that we can’t change this relationship [in five minutes/with all the therapy-speak that ever was/if we’re arrested again] and decide whether we’ll live [together/apart/with one of us in witness protection]. Even if it can’t help me change this [synonym for shitshow], there may be a lesson here about what I need to make love work, and if there is, I will learn it.

Did You Know … What A “Borderline” Is?

“Borderline” might sound like a ye olde Madonna reference, but it’s also shorthand for a psychiatric term, “borderline personality disorder.” These are the people, usually women, who lonely, crazy-prone single guys often find irresistible.

The term was originated to identify people who seem to be at the borderline of psychosis. The condition is something of a first cousin to bipolar disorder in that both disorders entail wild mood fluctuations and intense feelings. While a bipolar’s mood cycle can take weeks, however, a borderline’s moods/feelings about you can move at the speed of light.

Borderline people quickly tear through friendships, careers, sex partners, and, more often than not, drinks and drugs. They see rejection everywhere, react before they can stop and think, and can’t tell the difference between feeling hurt and actually being mistreated.

Their dates (and friends and family) are always walking on eggshells, which makes sense when you’re dealing with someone who treats each thought and feeling as empirical truth; i.e., “I am attracted to that guy” quickly becomes “that guy is the best thing to ever happen to me and I must get his baby in me ASAP.” She is incapable of doubting her instincts, but she makes up for it by constantly doubting the motives of everyone around her.

Borderlines always get dates because most men are biologically drawn to very emotional women, even when they’re not being sexy. The initial excitement borderlines provide can be attractive, sure, but they cast a kind of spell—the intoxication of intense, mutual attraction—that makes you blind to the fact that the fun girl you met in the bar is not so fun anymore. You can’t see how the girl who decided after ten minutes of chitchat to have sex with you in an alley is not actually just “fun,” but somewhat insane, even as she tries to burn your house down because she knows you don’t think she’s as pretty as that girl at the drive-through at Taco Bell.

By the time you do finally figure it out, you may be so addicted to the excitement of starring as both hero and villain in her crazy drama that you ignore the warning signs in the next girl. Crazy becomes your new normal. Borderlines are addictively exciting, and it’s hard to say no to a girl who’ll jump your bones in a bathroom stall, or accept a dare to flash a cop, or drink you under the table. At least until she kills your dog.

So, men, if you’re drawn to exciting women but can’t understand why they always freak out on you, this is probably why. You might want to consider dating women who are more boring, or at least own some life insurance. In short, a borderline is many things, but she is most often known as the reason men think all women are nuts (aside from the ones that actually are).

Love and hate may feel like opposites, but they’re equally huge challenges to your being a good person who makes smart choices. Love can push you to ignore your own needs, get attached to the wrong person for the wrong reason, and feel like a loser simply because you’re loveless. Working hard at managing love doesn’t mean becoming supremely unselfish and generous in a totally unconditional, nonjudgmental way; it means becoming very judgmental about what you can expect from people and yourself and putting conditions on whom you allow yourself to get close to, love be damned. You can manage love successfully, but it requires lots of learning from painful experience and a willingness to do without until both your heart and your head agree that the right thing has come along.