Getting at the real issues

Dear Victoria Blunt,

What do you like in Victoria's Secret?

Sincerely,

Incredibly Bored

Dear Incredibly,

I like their new 'vintage' collection. Especially the dusty pink demi bra.

Doesn't anyone have problems in the wintertime?

The air is chilly this time of year

Hi Bluntster,

So here's the thing: I've got a great girlfriend, relatively new, about two months, she's totally into me, sex is great, conversations are lively, interesting, etc. It's a good relationship and I think it's going places. But, I know me and I know this other sort of feeling I've got and I've had before, and it's scaring me a little. It's just sort of a vague detachment, like nothing in the relationship matters to me. I don't feel like I care if it goes on for a month, a year, or ends next weekend. Could be wrong, but I don't think it would bother me. I like being in a relationship, I like having someone to go on dates with, I like having sex regularly, I like the process of getting to know someone, but I also feel like whoever that is is a blank--it matters to me that it's _some_ girl, but it doesn't matter to me that it's _this_ girl. I'm not invested in _her._ Get it? I'm more interested in her as vagina-owner than as individual. That's too crass a way to put it, and it's not true, but there's something to it, too.

My last few relationships have (surprise, surprise) fizzled and died because of this lack of attachment, variously interpreted as a fear of commitment, loss of interest, or my unwillingness to "work" for the relationship. Maybe it's because I grew up in an emotional desert, maybe it's because years ago my heart was shattered into a billion pieces, maybe it's my serious batch of self-loathing, maybe I'm just expecting the wrong things out of a relationship. Like, I consider myself pretty hard to get to know, and while I have a lot of close friends, I don't really feel like I make friends easily, and I guess part of the problem is that when I get a new girlfriend, most of the friend part doesn't really feel like it's there. Whereas before, back when I was capable of love and stuff, my girlfriend was my best friend.

I don't know where to go with this, but I want to say something more like, this relationship is super convenient for me, but I don't feel invested in it the way I feel like I'm supposed to be invested in it, and I don't know if I'm supposed to just give it time, be on the level about it at all, or what. I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do about this whole boyfriend thing when I'm not sure of my standing is as a friend, and then I'm scared about what if we don't really become friends what the fuck I do then.

Love,
Heartbreaker Collins

Dear Heartbreaker,

I’m thinking that some people would answer your question in terms of yr fear of intimacy. They might say, for example, that you should try letting this girl in, that you should see what you find once you have submitted to your own necessary vulnerability. I can see that. Having to love yourself before you can love and all that pop psychology wisdom everybody already knows. But I think that while, yes, really committing to someone can be a hard and awkward process, your problem might stem more from a fear of not having a girlfriend.

You know how when you leave a band-aid on too long, the cut under it never heals?* Well my sense is that- other than that earth shattering/ you complete me/you’re my best friend and lover romance you had going for you a few years ago- your last few relationships have been about the equivalent of sloppily slapped on bandages with which to hide loneliness and your fear of opening yourself up again. I’m guessing your relationship doesn’t have the fire you want out of it because the girl with whom you are entwined isn’t cutting it, and instead acts as a substitute for that sizzle on yr frying pan to which you actually want to wake. When we are in love, it is awesome, but then we break up, and it is sad. We feel lonely. We hate ourselves and others. We scrape ourselves back together. We try sleeping with other people. We lean on our friends for support. We try dating again. All these things are time honored traditions. But we have to try over and over and over again until we can really and truly pick ourselves back up and shake off the residue. The problem is when those initial attempts at dating turn into relationships out of convenience. Or worse, when you find yourself committing out of the belief that you’ll never find love again.

You know what Heartbreaker? You will love someone again. (That’s a little gift from me to you.) But you can’t find that person who can be both best friend and lover if you keep settling for girls that don’t cut it past being, say, pleasant. Yes, being lonely sucks and yes having sex is nice. But if that’s all this relationship is for you, then yes, I guess you do have to level with your girlfriend. It’s time to leave an opening ready and available for when some hot mama comes along and proves herself both girlfriend and bff material.

*This metaphor comes from my friend K. This holiday season, I like to give credit where it is due.

Irreconcilable meddling... and white boys on family

Dear Victoria Blunt,

I'm writing about my wife and her relationship with her parents.
We've been married for about a year but she still hasn't told them about me. This is fairly easy to do since they live on another continent and she has no relatives living here, only a local community of "countrymen/women" with whom she has little contact. (My wife moved to this country with her family as a young teenager, and decided to stay and finish High school/University here after they left.)

Her parents found out that I exist at all in a sort of roundabout way. She had been out of touch with them for about a year and had left her old apartment without giving any kind of new number or contact info. I guess they were trying to track her down, because her brother who is a few years younger than us and also lives "back home" found me on facebook. It wouldn't have been hard to find me, since her name and photo was all over my profile at the time; a search of her relatively rare name and our city brought me up as one of the only results. (I "cleaned up" and made private my facebook at her request after more relatives started contacting me looking for her.)

She urged me to not reply. I didn't add him as a friend (it wasn't his real account anyways--for whatever reason it was a second account with far fewer friends). I felt bad, so I did tell him my work email address and that I knew her, and that she was doing OK. From there her parents got my work email address and we have periodically exchanged brief emails where I told them in vague terms what she is doing with herself. At one point I also gave them her main email address since they asked repeatedly for her phone number and I felt really conflicted about always writing back negative or creepily vague responses to them. They have always responded to me in a friendly way and have even said that I should come and visit them with her one day.

My wife finally worked up the nerve to contact them on one of her parents' birthday a few months ago. Since then they have sent a few emails back and forth, and they urge her to settle down with someone since she is getting older, etc. At this point it's become pretty clear in their emails that they know we are in some kind of relationship and they have spoken highly of me a number of times.

So, I haven't been pressuring my wife too hard to admit that we are married, but every once in a while I bring it up. I feel like the time is right, if not necessarily this week, at least some time in the next little while! But she has remained noncommittal.

But here's the other side of it. We have both been in relationships in the past with people of the same sex. She was working for years to get the nerve to come out to her parents as a lesbian. This makes her feel weird about telling them she is married to a man (nevermind a white one). On some level, she has told me, she still wants to tell them she is a lesbian and have them understand that. It doesn't bother me, of course, but you can see how it makes it a bit harder to explain.

Should I push the issue of her telling them we are married? Every time I have to avoid it in writing emails, I just feel like I am making myself look worse at some future date when they do find out-- I feel like they might feel hurt, as if I didn't think enough of them to tell them.

Sincerely,

Tattletale Tom

Dear Tattletale,

I suppose there is a lot I could say on this issue. We could discuss sexual identity and how difficult it is for sexually fluid women to exist in a binary society. (Poor Anne Heche.) We could talk about the difficulties inherent in social networking sites such as Facebook. (Several ex-friends have found me - always a jarring experience. At least most of them got less attractive over the years.) Or we could talk about how to convince your wife to bite the bullet and tell her family about you. And you know, that seems to be what yr rooting for. But I don’t think I’m going to talk about that.

The thing is my overly friendly friend, your wife asked you not to engage with her family – and you did. She stopped speaking to them – and you started. What is it about her requests that left you confused? Or do you feel that you just know better?

As cute and cuddly as couples can be, it is almost always a mistake to assume that you know better than your significant other….ESPECIALLY when it comes to their family. I sense a severe lack of communication on the part of your and your wife. I’m not saying you did something awful; in fact it sounds like yr a pretty sweet guy and you wanted to make things right. But we can’t fix the mistakes of the people we love, and we can’t deny them the right to live out their lives as they so choose. When you got married you did not merge your identities and your rights as human beings. Do you know exactly why she stopped speaking to her parents? Maybe they really suck. Maybe they beat her or hurt her or deserted her - or maybe they’re pretty wonderful after all. I have no idea, but you should, especially if you’re meddling in her relationship with her family. It is essential that you and your wife talk about her feelings concerning the choice she made to cut off contact with them until you understand her position backwards and forwards. And then sweetheart, you’ve got to go along with whatever she wants. We go into relationships with baggage, and while you should be consulted with about said baggage, you should never be the one to decide when and where and how your wife unpacks it.

It is commendable that you care so much and it is cute that you seem to want her to reconnect with her family. But if you don’t trust her to decide for herself when she tells her family (if ever), then I’m going to go ahead and recommend couples counseling. I’ve never tried it (so I can't front and tell you it's totally awesome), but this is the sort of issue that might require a third party. Maybe she’s not communicating her position well enough or maybe this is just an all-around sore subject. Either way, don’t make a move until you really understand what’s going on, and you’re sure that what you do won’t leave you with a wife who cutts off communication with you too.

Let it all out honey

So I know I've been away a while. Again. I imagine that you'll be able to follow the frequency of this blog by measuring when people are usually on vacation. I am in grad school you know. I have like, a life and stuff. But despite that life and stuff, I was so dumbfounded as to what the expression of the following letter writer's face was as they penned the following, I couldn't resist posting immediately.


Dear Victoria Blunt,

There is a child in me that is so incredibly sad, so incredibly lonely, that feels so alone and can't understand why people won't come touch me, come acknowledge me, won't simply look at me and smile and say "that's goodness right there; I like that", why I can't have the same sort of response that a flower might get, or a painting, or a sunset, or the stars at night; anything that people look at just to look at and see wonder and beauty and mystery. So my persona tries to find pieces of those things, and tries to paint me with them; I go around collecting stories about new fascinating breakthroughs in science, beautiful myths, funny stories, anything that will get someone's attention and make them say "wow, I like that, that's goodness right there", and I try to wrap myself up in all these fragments of that and get people to notice them, I freaking jam them down people's throats sometimes, screaming please fu! cking notice this, so that at least someone said "wow, I like that, that's goodness right there" while looking in my general direction, even if they didn't see what I actually wanted them too. And all the painting and self-wrapping just ends up making sure that nobody will ever actually see what I want them to see. I used to drive around singing along with my favorite music, at the top of my lungs, and wish that someone could be there to see it, wish that somehow someone could watch me in that moment, not because I'm a great singer, just because I was feeling bliss, because I was freely flowing out, and I knew that to the right person, to someone out there, that would be beautiful, they would understand what that meant, they would know what they were seeing, and they would say it was goodness, right there. And I dreamed it would be a woman who would see it, and she would see me, and she would find me captivating, she would watch me breathless, she would watch me and smile, and she wouldn't want me to do anything else but what I was doing, she wouldn't want me to come up with something clever or witty to say. And I go around trying to give that to the people around me, I see people who are hurting and I slip out of all of my persona and I open to them immediately and I say to them that they are goodness and that I like what I see, and I mean it, I mean it just because they are hurting, and I think that if I do that enough someone else will do it for me, and maybe they would, if they knew. How do I fix this?

Sincerely,

Huck Hurting

Dear Huck,

Assuming that this question lacks irony for a second (which I say mostly at your request to be looked at like a flower), I am going to try to translate what it is you're saying into a more easy to answer question.(For the sake of relatability and all that.) So it sounds like you know you have a lot of qualities, you try to get people to notice them by being a good listener, you feel lonely ,and you try to be interesting but then yr still lonely.

Okay. Laboring under that assumption, I will suggest the following: while, sure, it's always fun to be around someone who knows stuff about science and has a decent array of comic material handy, most people are impressed by confidence more than anything else. This is what yr lacking Hucky. Try thinking more about your own opinions, and voice those instead of what you hear on NPR every morning. Instead of trying so hard to amuse people, demand to be amused. In general, be more demanding of your needs from yr friends, but only if you can really believe that you deserve whatever it is that you want. And if you don't have a whole lot of friends, get into therapy and figure out how to meet some. Do more for yourself so that you can start believing yr good: write a screenplay or start a band or get you PhD or start a charity to save South Asian elephants or send a short story to the New Yorker like that kid in Gossip Girl did. As soon as you start thinking yr awesome, other people will too.

And finally (if you were being ironic), I found you amusing (In a good way!)

If you try too hard with people, they can smell desperation a mile away - and they won't want to breathe in that awkwardness for too long. On the other hand, if you expect everyone to come to you, yr forgetting that we all have own own issues and loneliness and insecurities to contend with. And so: you forget about everyone else, start figuring out what you have to do to actually like yourself, and take it from there my friend.

Good luck!

I should spend less time reading gossip blogs and more time writing advice

Dear Victoria Blunt,

There is a woman that I've known for years who has become one of my closer female confidants. While we have hooked up a few times at the onset of our relationship, my initial wishes to actually date her were generally dismissed, but it didn't matter to me as I valued our friendship and had other women in my life to date seriously. At one point I even thought that dating her would be a bad idea considering some qualities that I am not terribly fond of. During our time as friends, we've certainly shared stories of our past relationships, and I've even hooked her up with some of my friends. So the other day when we were hanging out, she kept making comments on how the men in her life should be more like me, how we have such a great relationship, etc. And she clearly gave me the vibe that she would be open for me to try and date her.

But should I? Do I potentially ruin a good friendship to engage in a relationship that I might have wanted years ago but am unsure of now? I normally have a "no dating friends" policy just for this reason. Also, I should add that I'm dating two other women, so I would probably have to get rid of them.

Sincerely,

Troy Dyer

Dear Troy,

I saw a patient the other day - an older, homeless gentleman- who told me that a woman 20 years his junior has been checking him out at Walgreens for the past few weeks. When I asked him how he knew that she was checking him out (and he is rarely one to make such assumptions), he answered that 'you just know', and that she often went to the areas of the store he occupied at any given time. Now I am not sure as to the size of his local Walgreens, but in hearing this, it was hard to quell my doubts as to whether he was stating facts.

I'm not telling you this story because I don't believe your long-time confidante wants to date you - I am just pointing out that we don't really know these things until someone (rather bluntly) says so. It's not rare for me to tell a close male friend that more men should be like him and that we have a great relationship (after all, being amazingly awesome is a requisite for being my friend). That being said, let's take this at face value and proceed.

It sounds like you're not entirely sure whether you would want to date your friend, never mind knowing what you should do in order to start dating her. I wish you were here right now Troy (granted that yr not creepy in any way), because then, together, we could make a nice, old-fashioned Pros and Cons list. (My favorite!) As it is, yr gonna have to DIY. What makes this woman someone who could be more than just a friend? What was it about her that made you initially want to date her? What is it about her that made you think dating her would be a bad idea? How did you feel when you arranged for her to have a go with some of your friends? I think you want to figure this stuff out before you go any further, because if you decide she is someone you don't want to date, then yr going to have to dig in yr heels and spend some time on operation: save friendship. But that's prolly an issue for another time.

So let's say you decide she is in fact someone you can see holding hands with and smooching at the movies. (I don't know why dating reminds me of the 1950s or 8th grade.) What to do next? Because this woman kept things at a safe, vague distance, it would seem that yr going to have to be the one to take some initiative. So do what I always do when I'm nervous with someone I like: get drunk. Not grossly, embarrassingly sloshed, but a nice pleasant drunk where the two of you could end up making out on a couch without anyone feeling their heart pounding out of their ears. Ask her out to a dive or a lounge or yr couch, and have a few. (If yr in AA or don't drink, then just enjoy that feeling where yr heart is pounding out of yr ears. Whee!) And flirt and be charming and be funny and wear a snappy outfit. Then approach the subject jokingly. Tell her about the last few people you've dated, and why it's not going so great. Say that you wonder why the two of you never happened. When you say this, ACT CONFIDENT. If you pretend it's not awkward, chances are it won't get awkward. Maybe even wink, if she has a good enough sense of humor. But make her stick to the question.

And that's it my friend. She has to take it from there. Good luck!

My neglect

So I've been away from the computer for awhile, on account of a couple of trips and a whirlwind romance with sinusitis. I will resume answering your questions tomorrow. Feel free to ask away!

Vote today everybody!

If you haven't already, remember to get out there and vote (preferably for Barack Obama).

Apparently with proof you can get a free cup of coffee, a free donut, and a free vibe!

While that's sort of sad if you think about it, I say take the vibe and run with it.

Have a nice day! If you want to find me, I'll be at Grant Park in Chicago with the winner.