Spring Advice From Mom...

Dear Mom,

The whole world has Spring fever but I can hardly get out of bed in the morning to go to work. In fact, some days I don't. I hate my job. I hate my apartment. I hate my so-called boyfriend. I hate the fact that my 30th birthday is rushing toward me like a freight train. In fact, I hate my whole life. Please help.

-- Drowning

My dear,

Mom thinks drastic action is called for. A change in attitude or jobs simply will not help you at this point. You are mired in hopelessness and Mom suspects the energy to change has been long since sucked away by thoughts on what you do not have. She urges you to think of what you COULD have instead. If you can reach down and find a tiny spot still within you that wants to live life to the fullest, you are on your way. If it helps, think back to when you were a kid and the things that you dreamed of doing when you had yet to grow up. You can still do those things if you have the strength to follow your own heart and ignore what others think, and if you can reach out for help. Mom recommends that you do the following, in the order listed, to blast yourself out of the quicksand and into the orbit of a new life:

1) Describe your current life in all its disappointments. List those things you hate most about your life.

2) Describe your dream life: what you would be doing, who you would count among your friends, where you would be living, how you would be feeling.

3) List those current friends who are there for you. List those that seem most often to disappoint or hurt you. List family members who support you. List family members who tear you down. Now -- stop contacting those friends or family members who disappoint or hurt you. These people do not deserve an explanation, simply avoid them. Fill the days of your life with happier moments - or, at least, the potential of happiness.

4) Contact a therapist, preferably one recommended by someone you know and trust. Talk to him or her about what you have written and thought about. Tell them how much you want to change and ask for their help. Think of this as a spiritual tune-up, a sort of change of soul oil. We live in an impersonal, rushed, nerve-jangling world. The sanctuary of a quiet room once every two weeks is a necessary component of many people's lives. Insist on paying for this therapy so you value it to the fullest. Your life is worth it.

5) Change either your job OR your apartment as soon as possible. Then wait six months, and change the other.

6) Change the way you look: your hair color, your weight, your clothing style. You are going to be someone new and you need to look like someone new. If you don't know where to start, there are professional stylists who can help you.

7) Think back to your childhood again: what made you happy? Sewing? Sports? Reading? Music? Remember it, then find a form of it again in your adult life.

8) Finally, you must find a way to get out of your own head. This means becoming involved with helping other people. Find a cause you can get behind and volunteer. You'll meet new people -- ones who are unselfish and caring -- and you will find a way to put your own life in better perspective.

It takes awhile for all these changes to occur, but you will start feeling better immediately. There is a heady rush in saying, "I can shape my own life." And congratulations on facing your unhappiness head on. So many people make a career out of being unhappy, they live lives they hate -- and by the time they wake up and realize it, they have wasted so many years. You have decades and decades ahead of you: Mom wishes you luck in making the most of every moment.

Fondly,

Mom

Dear Mom,

I am a 24-year old woman and I have developed an obsession with my new roommate, another 24-year old woman. The bank put us together when we both joined their training program. I can't believe how much I think about her. This is way weird, it's far more than I ever cared about a man. I've tried transferring my crush to some of the men I work with, but they're just so boring and self-centered. Needless to say, this is a first for me and I have no idea what it means.

--Burning in Brooklyn

My dear,

Many people experience a rush of lust for their same sex around your age. Why? You have been through school and college, you have followed the pack - and now you are on the brink of becoming who you really are. There is a great freedom in that. For some people, desires that have been waiting in the wings now take center stage. For others, it is simply a time of experimentation. You could be straight, you could be bi, or you could end up on the cover of "Dyke Times". But only time will tell that and there is certainly no rush to label yourself.

For now, let's deal with the immediate problem. This is 2001. But you do work at a bank. And it's the beginning of your career. Can you see where Mom is going? You must not sleep with your co-worker, whether she is your roommate or not. And since I don't advise your sleeping with her, we can leave the subject of approaching her alone, now can't we? Which is a relief. Though for the record, I don't recommend making passes at people we believe are straight without a lot more encouragement than you seem to be getting in this case. There is, of course, the old, "Let's drink a bottle of tequila; men are shits" strategy, but that's no way to start a love affair. (It does, however, make a nice start to a one-night stand.)

Fortunately, you live in New York City. You can take a bite out of the Big Apple's forbidden fruit rather easily. Mom thinks you need to amble down to a few girl bars and test the waters there before you roll out this new way of thinking. Try Rubyfruit at Hudson & Charles Street after work one day. But don't blame me if you hate the décor or the music on Lesbian Music Night. Mom is not responsible for Melissa Etheridge's whiny voice. You may be surprised at who you see, of course, and you can always hope your roommate is parked at the bar locking tonsils with some strapping young girl. You may also be excited, or discouraged, or fascinated, or bored. It's only by doing it that you can tell.

As for your death crush: Mom regrets to inform you that crushes on members of your sex pass every bit as quickly as crushes on the opposite sex. This, too, shall pass. Alas. Aren't obsessive crushes wonderful?

Fondly,

Mom

Dear Mom,

I am in need of advice... with the understanding that you are not always super-serious with these sorts of things. At any rate, here's my problem:

First off, I'm a 29-year old male, and already prepared to face the fact that I may be an emotionally impaired scumbag. From reading your column, I sometimes get the impression you don't believe men are capable of owning up to this.

Roughly three-and-a-half years ago, I met this woman on-line through a message board, one thing led to another and I visited her once, she visited me once (we lived in separate states), and I ended up moving in with her. One thing led to another after that, and in a fit of spontaneity one evening I asked her to marry me. She said yes, we were married, and for about a year everything seemed to be okay. Not great, but okay.

Then I began going to therapy after what, for the sake of brevity, I will describe as a small nervous breakdown. I came to realize that I have some deep-seated emotional problems where women and commitment are concerned, and I am not entirely certain I am capable of truly loving anyone at this point, because I'm not even sure I like myself to any degree. I'm just too frightened of getting that deep. In my lifetime I have had a long string of lovers but nothing that lasted longer than three months, and with the longest of those ending in flames. Some of them simply ended because of a mutual loss of interest, a few of them have been me getting dumped, but a number of them are the result of me acting like a prick and just running away.

I have talked about all this with my wife, and the end result was essentially "gee, too bad you didn't figure this out BEFORE we married, huh?" I know that I'm hurting her, but she doesn't want me to leave, and she has made it clear that there won't be any "trial separation" business -- it's stay together or get divorced. I've brought up the idea of marital counselling twice before, but she never seems interested. I myself am in such an odd headspace at the moment that I don't know if I should stay with her. I don't see it as being fair to her. I'm not even sure I'm in love with her, but because of my issues I could just be scared to admit it to myself.

In the midst of such a situation, do you think it would be more honorable for me to divorce her, and give her a chance at happiness with a better man even though she insists that she could never love anyone else if I left; or stay married to her, and try and keep her happy as best I can, while both of us wait to see what comes out the other side after I'm through therapy? I feel responsible for not having faced my problems before I married her, so in a way I see it as my karma to stay with the relationship, and too bad if I'm not entirely happy. On the other hand, I might just be being stupid. Any other suggestions you might have, tongue-in-cheek or not, would be greatly appreciated.

Yours,
Lost and Stumbling

My dear,

You are a clever one, aren't you... you have sensed that by labeling yourself a possible "emotionally impaired scumbag", you will have beaten Mom to the punch and thus she will not attack on that front. Well, you are partially correct. Mom does not intend to attack you on that front. But that is solely because she does not believe you are necessarily an emotionally impaired prick (though she is not prepared to guarantee that you are not). What she does believe is that you are a human being struggling to make sense out of one of the great mysteries of life -- learning how to love yourself and how to love others. She also believes that you must spend less time beating yourself up, and more time learning how to address this issue and build yourself a happier life.

Mom is in the mood to be pithy, so please read her comments carefully. They may not appear pithy in length, but they damn sure cover a lot of ground. This unusual nod toward brevity means that you will be spared Mom's viewpoints on marriage, which differ greatly from the commonly-held beliefs about that particular institution and are based on a complicated theory involving biological urges, Cro-Magnon migratory habits, the 7-year itch, side effects of snoring - and the proven connection between sharing a bathroom and short attention spans.

Be that as it may, in your case, Mom's theory on marriage is not so important as the inescapable fact that you must untangle a whole web of issues in order to determine what actions you are going to take and when you are going to take them. Please know, however, that Mom can in no way make the decision for you on whether or not to end your marriage. It's your marriage, you got yourself into it, only you can make that call - and you will be the one to live with the consequences of your decision.

However, since Mom is not involved in your marriage and thus has the luxury of not being emotionally blackmailed by any of its participants, she will tell you what she thinks about your situation in the approximate order of your queries:

· At age 29, if you are questioning your maturity, you are way ahead of most men. This bodes well for your future. I salute you.

· People who question their emotional maturity and their ability to commit are almost always more loyal, loving and desirable than they think they are.

· Mom does indeed believe that men are perfectly capable of owning up to their emotional immaturity. She just regrets that a rubber hose and coffee enemas are often necessary components of this process.

· Moving in with someone after you have visited each other in person a whopping big total of twice is insane. This by-product of on-line romance is enough to make Mom want to throw roadblocks up right smack dab in the middle of the Information Superhighway. If it's not already obvious, this was your first mistake. You then tried to justify this foolishness by proposing too quickly under the delusion that this would add an air of fate-decreed legitimacy to your impulsive act. You must now own up to your mistakes so that you can honestly decide what price you are willing to continue to pay in order to atone for them. Personally, Mom believes that admitting one's mistakes and moving beyond them is an expeditious and honorable course of action.

· If your first year of marriage can, at best, be characterized as "okay, not great, but okay" then you are really settling there, buster.

· Small emotional breakdowns are the stuff of life and should be viewed as positive events: they help you break on through to the other side.

· Worrying about whether or not you are capable of making a deep-seated commitment to any woman is putting the cart before the horse. First, you must love a woman so tremendously that you want to make that commitment. Once the desire to commit is in place, then you should start worrying about whether you are able to fulfill your desire. Is the first condition in place here or not?

· If you are not even sure whether you love your wife, chances are good that you do not.

· Your wife is to be commended for knowing her boundaries and having the guts to speak them clearly: she is asking you to shit or get off the pot so she can get on with her life.

· Your wife is not to be commended for refusing marriage counseling. If she really wanted to stay married to you, Mom thinks she would readily agree. Does this make you feel bad or relieved? You decide.

· Her comment to you smacks of a commonly-held misconception that a troubled marriage is the fault of the person who wants out. There has rarely been a marriage that soured due solely to the dysfunctions or inabilities of a single participant.

· It is a common ploy of people not in therapy to view the treatment of their partner as proof that the partner is the emotionally impaired one, not them. Mom does not believe that facing your problems squarely should be viewed as such a weakness. In fact, Mom suspects that being in therapy is a sign that you are most probably more emotionally healthy than your obviously unhappy, yet therapy-shy partner. Mom suggests you keep this in mind.

· It is true that everyone deserves to be fully loved and accepted for who they are. Unfortunately, many -- if not most -- people are willing to settle for far less simply because they enjoy companionship, fear being single, or understand that the dating world is an ugly, ugly place. Unless you both agree that this sort of compromised partnership is preferable to any other scenario, however, the person willing to settle is asking a lot of their partner: you are essentially being asked to continuously pour water into a leaky bucket.

· Nonetheless, do not use your wife's decision to willingly accept your tepid form of love as an excuse to justify your actions or avoid taking action: you must decide what to do about this marriage based on what you want, not what you think your wife wants.

· Mom suggest you explore with your therapist why you feel that not recognizing your emotional issues before marriage now requires you to essentially dishonor these issues by failing to respect them and staying in a situation that may cause you pain.

· It is true that people love best -- and feel best loved -- when they have a firm sense of themselves, know who they are, and are confident enough to act accordingly (thus attracting people who truly love them for themselves). But this is a tall, damn order for anyone, especially a 29-year old who may or may not have had good role models growing up when it comes to love, commitment and compromise. Thus, you must ask yourself what sort of arrangement would work best for you, given your background and your true abilities rather than simply your desires.

· Marriage is not at all the ultimate symbol of emotional success for everyone. For some people, just being able to take a chance on love is a huge triumph. Whether it ends in marriage is beside the point. For others, marriage is almost a betrayal because it does not provide them with the comfort level they need -- and may well deserve, depending on their past. Only you can decide whether the structure of marriage is right for you.

In short, you must find your own way, based solely on your personal, well-explored definition of happiness. You must learn to define your ultimate goal in terms of what you may be able to change within yourself and what you believe -- at least this lifetime around -- can not be changed without exhausting effort, a great deal of failure and trampling on a lot of other people's hope and dreams. Sometimes, it is better to simply accept what is within yourself and cut yourself some slack. Most people don't reach that point until their forties, after they have spent a couple of decades trying to adapt to what other people expect. On the other hand, some people never stop trying to change for what they perceive as the better and, indeed, believe this perpetual journey to improve is the true meaning of life. Mom sees this particular approach as honorable, but she also believes that a constant focus on what might be often obscures the joy of what is. Perhaps deciding on what approach you believe in most is part of the choice you must make.

You have a difficult decision ahead of you. Mom hopes some of these thoughts will help.

Finally, just in case, Mom would like to close by saying that if you are that delicious little British 22-year old she was dating six years ago, dump the wife and please call immediately. Mom's operators are standing by.

Fondly,
Mom

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