How Come They Don't Have the Equivalent of Nicotine Patches For Emotional Obsessions?

[mallorys_camera]

On Christmas Day Max read me the riot act.

“Don’t ever see him, Mom! Don’t hang out with him, don’t talk to him, and for God’s sake, don’t be friends with him. He’s an asshole. You covered for him for years – “

“We’re just so compatible in so many ways,” I objected weakly.

“You always say that, but you know something? I never saw it. Never. You sell yourself so short, Mom. You’re amazing. You don’t need him.”

Of course I hadn’t told Max what was really going on, just texted him on Christmas Eve: I need a pep talk. Also on Christmas Eve, Ben and I kissed a few times – yes, with tongue – and more or less wept into each other’s arms about how sad it was that we hadn’t been able to keep it together, and told one another that yes, we would love each other forever – that kind of stuff. I will spare you the narrative details of how all this came about. More of the same, more of the same.

He needs me because Jayne LeGro, despite the manifest attractiveness of the Girlfriendmobile and the great deal on rent and the (presumably) plentiful blowjobs and leave us not forget the furniture, has no sense of humor and bores the shit out of him.

And I need him because I know so few people in Ithaca, New York. When you’re 58 years old but living a life more appropriate to someone in their late 20s/early 30s, it is very difficult to find people of your own vintage to hang out with. They tend to view me as marginal and flakey – which I suppose to a great extent I am right now. However, it was not always thus and I’m working very hard to ensure that it will not be thus in a year’s time. I am clawing my way back into the middle class! Hard work.

Plus, of course, three quarters of my income comes from writing and that is very solitary employment.

I am very sociable. I like to chat and hang out. I’ve been starved for opportunities to do this for close to two years now, and of course Ben is someone with whom I have a long history of chatting and hanging out. That tends to inflate his importance.

But Max, as usual, is 100% correct. I got the apology I’d long been waiting for; it ends now on a positive note filled with best wishes for the other’s happiness.

Time to move on. I wish now I wasn’t meeting Jayne LeGro tomorrow – whose eyes shot daggers at me when I tried to introduce myself to her the other night at the gas station. What was I thinking? She’s a small town girl with small town values. She’s not interested in being friendly with me.

“And Mom?” Max says. “If by some chance you did get back together with him, I would have a very hard time respecting you. I try not to be judgmental, but after all the shit he pulled for so many years, it would be very hard for me. I need you to know that.”

###

So I joined one of those online dating sites. Got messaged a few times right off the bat – two guys, one woman. They didn’t sound too awful. It’s a distraction, right?

And I think I’m going to spend next summer in New Mexico. I can help Jeanna run the drive-in, but more importantly I can lay in a stock of pleasant memories that don’t include Ben. I mentioned this to Robin who immediately said, “So you wouldn’t come back?”

“As long as you’re here and you want me to be here, I’ll come back. I like Ithaca quite well actually. But you’re old enough to understand that psychologically this situation is unhealthy for me.”

“I guess,” he muttered.

A few minutes later he asked, “Do you think I could spend next year living with Uncle Jon in Vienna?”

“I think it’s a distinct possibility,” I said. “I think we’d have to strategize.”

It would be great for him though. And for me. Though like all addictions, my addiction to Ben is very hard to break – I think of never seeing him again, and my eyes quite literally well up with tears.

Comments

[old-cutter-john.livejournal.com]

The problem isn't that you're in love with Ben; it's that you grew up with a system of rules that requires that you hate him, and the folks around you (some of whom learned that same system of rules from you) likewise require that you hate him. Feel what you feel. Do what you need to do. You. The kid on the trip. You don't need to hate Ben. You don't even need to hate Jayne. You just need to cut the cards.

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

Sorry, but I have no idea what you're talking about here. You don't know enough about me to have any idea what "my problem" is, and no offense but I think it's pretty presumptuous of you to pretend you do.

I don't hate Ben, nor is there any "rule" that says I have to hate Ben. As it happens, Ben is a psychopathic liar -- or at least he was with me. Every four months or so he would trot out a lie of truly epic proportions. Some of these lies were self-aggrandizing -- for years he maintained he was a founding member of a cult punk band named Flipper. Max finally caught him out on that one. But some of these lies actually imperiled our life together. because they involved finances.

Eventually these lies eroded my relationship with him, and clearly Max's relationship with him.

Possibly he has learned from this and will be straight with his current partner. I hope so for his sake.

[old-cutter-john.livejournal.com]

You don't hate Ben. There's a rule requiring a strong enmity between you and him, and between you and Jayne. It's part of the common culture. No one can escape an awareness of it. It affects you at least to the extent that Max has warned you that he'll judge you by your distance from Ben.

Ben is a pathological liar. He won't change. The world of a pathological liar shifts. There's nothing on which he could build a determination to change, that isn't subject to the same sort of shift.

You're going to have a relationship of some sort with Ben. Circumstances keep bringing you together. You're in love with him. He's in love with you — perhaps only when his world is shifted into that state; but when his world is shifted into that state, it's as real for him as for anyone.

A relationship with a pathological liar is difficult. Best avoided, actually. Max is right about that, for sure! But it's unrealistic to expect that you'll take it to that extreme, so you need to protect yourself. Cut the cards, as I say. And it wouldn't be a bad idea to cultivate a deep understanding of the world of a pathological liar. You'll be better able to protect yourself from Ben, however close you get; and someday you'll be able to write the character, perhaps even from a first-person point of view.

[anais-pf.livejournal.com]

OkCupid? :)

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

Yep! :-)

You've had good luck with it! :-)

[anarqueso.livejournal.com]

I've had good luck with it. The more of those idiotic questions you answer, the better the machines get at finding people who match your brain.

I'm with the kid on this one. Take care of yourself.

Mine turned up last night with yet another intelligent, amazing, good looking older woman? How does he do it? This one unnerved me a bit being Jewish with curly brown hair, but I figure if he's got mom issues he got them from someone else.

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

if he's got mom issues

Heh! The kid quoted at length above keeps turning up w/these very goyishe blondes. Clearly he's got mom issues too but they manifest differently.

[cwmackowski.livejournal.com]

Max's word about respect are powerful.

Good luck. I know it can't be easy. I wrestle with similar feelings about my former wife, but in the end, as much as I love her, I know the relationship wasn't healthy for either of us. Addiction is hard to break, especially if it feels like you have noone else at the moment. Hang in there.

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

especially if it feels like you have noone else at the moment.

My whole life is so dysfunctional at the moment that I'm kind of ashamed. But you know, you do what you can do to put it all back together one step at a time. If I start feeling sorry for myself, I won't be able to function.

Finding a casual friendship group will do a lot to improve my morale.

[purejuice.livejournal.com]

if you come to nm, we can meet!

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

Absolutely! Make the trip to Albuquerque at least once a month.

[misslam2u.livejournal.com]

And if you come to NM, you can make a two day trip back to Tyler and WE can meet.... or perhaps I could travel **GASP!**

[Error: Irreparable invalid markup ('<hug!!>') in entry. Owner must fix manually. Raw contents below.]

And if you come to NM, you can make a two day trip back to Tyler and WE can meet.... or perhaps I could travel **GASP!**
<hug!!>
guard your heart, friend.

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

If I drive, I definitely will look you up in Tyler -- although Las Vegas, NM where Jeanna lives is more on the straight shoot from Amarillo and the Panhandle.

Congratulations on surviving retail Christmas madness! Hope yr bonus was everything you wanted.

[misslam2u.livejournal.com]

Oh, my bonus went up in smoke somewhere about Dec 19, but it's ok.

Well, everywhere is far from Tyler, so maybe we could meet somewhere?

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

up in smoke

Sucky, sucky, sucky!

Definitely, we will meet.

[substitute.livejournal.com]

When you’re 58 years old but living a life more appropriate to someone in their late 20s/early 30s, it is very difficult to find people of your own vintage to hang out with. They tend to view me as marginal and flakey – which I suppose to a great extent I am right now

Oh wow. Identifying. Word. Yes. 46 here and feeling the same thing. I hope you find someone to be with who gets that.

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

I suspect there are more of us than we realize. Our lost tribe! :-)

It's just a matter of finding one another.

[slfisher.livejournal.com]

Good luck. Personally I found the online dating sites pretty useless, particularly once I hit 45. You do have the advantage of being far more conventionally attractive than I. I'll never forget the time I went through eHarmony, filled out all the questionnaires, to have it tell me there was nobody who met my needs on the western side of the U.S.

(As it turns out, it was right; my boyfriend [whom I met on irc, but who also turned out to be the brother of a friend and the brother-in-law of a good friend, as well as the friend of a good friend] lives in Connecticut.)

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

Second time you''ve brought up this "conventional attractive" thing, Mizz Sharon! You're gonna give me a complex. Not sure that it really matters at this point -- yeah, if the light is right I can still pull off Sophia Lauren in her early 40s. But look at what a mess my life is. Sigh. Try explaining to someone you've just met the saga of my last couple of years and you'll watch them back off nervously making the sign of the cross. :-)

I had a bad experience on eHarmony too. i filled out their questionaire on a whim a couple of years ago, got a little automated pop-up screen with words to the effect of Sorry, you're too weird -- there's nobody for you!

OKCupid seems a lot more flexible. I mean -- online dating sites strike me as very weird, but I've got to do something. Cannot go on in this emotional slump.

[misslam2u.livejournal.com]

Just a thought-- since the whole situation is so difficult to discuss, perhaps you could say, "There's a lot of stuff." and rather leave it at that until you know each other better? Or the line I used with Oxo, "Look, I have more baggage that Louis Vuitton, so let me know when you wanna discuss it."

I've been in the social situation you are, too... but I've just met some people closer to mine and Oxo's age. It has taken a long while. Actually, HE met them. They are coming to dinner on Friday. Their child is 25 and a law student at NYU. My child is 3 and will be throwing sushi rice all over at dinner.

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

Love the Louis Vuitton line!

Dinner party! What fun! What are you cooking?

The whole menu isn't set in stone yet...

[misslam2u.livejournal.com]

Black eyed pea croquettes with cranberry & red pepper salsa and crawfish dip (like crab dip, but with mudbugs) with Fritos for starters.

Then I haven't really decided about dinner... I wanted to do something Soul Food inspired...So components will be collard greens (probably with rice), sweet potatoes, Big Mama's cornbread, and a buttermilk pie in some incarnation and either a big catfish or perhumps a slab of pork, if I can get a hold of the "we don't torture the pigs" farmer friend I made at the markets last summer.

I think big corny, crusty, curly hunks of friend catfish are one of life's true things of beauty, and I make a KILLER tartar sauce. But since we are all so old, we certainly shouldn't be eating FRIED anything for God's sake. But still.... I'm a rebel :)

[slfisher.livejournal.com]

Jesus, you don't tell someone you just met the saga of your last couple of years.

Once upon a time, I was taking one of those Learning Annex classes. I had signed up for How to Meet People at Art Openings, but they cancelled that, so I ended up in How to Marry the Rich. And there were a couple of pretty useful things in it, actually. One of which was, you don't give people the litany of your bad relationship experiences early on, because what you tell them programs them. In other words, if you talk about abuse, you'll get abused. Instead, talk about what's valuable to you in a relationship, the good parts of your previous relationships, whatever. And don't badmouth the previous ones; just say something nice and vague. It's something I've been doing since then and it's really helped.

I mean, you ran away with the circus! you're a freelance writer! You had your own hot sauce store in Monterey! You're going for a Stegner! Those are cool, exciting things. Focus on those.

[mallorys-camera.livejournal.com]

Jesus, you don't tell someone you just met the saga of your last couple of years.

I need to embroider that on a cushion. :-)

[misslam2u.livejournal.com]

Do. Make it a nice little cushion with a big old Vuitton suitcase under it. All in petite point.