Ask Dr. Ding

Dear Dr. Ding,

I’m very interested to hear your response to a particular issue I’ve been dealing with for quite some time. The few people I’ve shared this info with have very little to say after they hear the whole story which might be because there isn’t anything TO say, but still, I’m feeling the need to do something about it. And unfortunately I’m too tangled up inside of it to determine the best way to handle it.

I am a single mom in my thirties. I’ve been divorced for almost 5 years (the divorce was a positive event for me) and my two school aged kids live with me. I haven’t really dated at all in those 5 years - tried the online thing and after countless failures realized that it just isn’t for me. Also, I haven’t ever really gotten too serious about trying to find someone to date - I appreciate the value of being alone and spending my time focusing on other things like my kids and career - so not being hooked up hasn’t really been a huge issue for me. Sure, I get lonely sometimes but it hasn’t ever consumed me.

Three years ago I met a small group of friends that I subsequently ended up spending a large amount of time with. I really loved these guys for many reasons and just couldn’t get enough of being around them. After a year or so I ended up becoming particularly close to one of the guys in this group. He didn’t seem to stand out when I first met him but the more I learned about him, the more I liked him. And that continued to grow and grow and eventually I realized that I had fallen completely in love with him. It was a wonderful realization and a tragic one at the same time. Wonderful because I believe that I’ve never really experienced romantic love before; my marriage was not about love and I certainly didn’t learn anything about it from my parents, so it was a great feeling that felt true and right for the first time in my life. Tragic because … well, because he’s married.

I know at first glance that seems like a no-brainer, “get away as fast as you can, this isn’t going anywhere and you’re only going to get hurt”, right? But it’s everything else about the situation that makes that *not* seem right. Also, everyone I talk to about this suggests the idea that I feel this way about him because it’s “safe”, and I think by that they mean that since there is no chance for a relationship I can experience these feelings without having to deal with relationship issues. That never feels right to me - I do not feel like I have a fear of commitment, I don’t feel like there is anything bad about relationships, as long as you’re with the right person, and now that I feel very confident in my ability to determine the right person, why would I be trying to sabotage my own chances to experience this? I *know* why my marriage failed, it makes perfect sense. I know I needed the past 5 years to learn a lot about myself and I have. I’m there now. So this reasoning never washes with me although I’m in no position to discount it 100%; apparently something is amiss here and since I don’t know what it is I can’t block out any possibilities.

As far as specifics about my relationship with him are concerned, you should know that we are very close. Here are some facts about us:

* It is definitely a two-way thing. The hardest part for me is that I do not understand WHY. I don’t understand why he shares so much of his life with me. I mean although I’d guess there are probably a few sacred issues just between him and his wife, he tells me pretty much every single thing that happens in his day-to-day life. I do not have any other friends that do this.
* We communicate all day long most days of the week.
* It has been this way for over 2 years
* When possible, we get together in person.
* Sometimes we stay out together until the wee hours of the morning just talking.
* We have long, serious talks about life’s big issues.
* We help each other.
* We listen to each other.
* We joke around with each other.
* People accuse us of “acting married” when they are around us.
* We seem to respect each other.
* He is always there for me.
* We have suggestive conversations - never about each other, but we often talk about sexual things and know exactly what it is that turns the other person on. We do this *a lot*.
* He always makes me feel good and important and … loved. He makes me feel loved, but I have no idea if that is what he feels for me or not. Everything else would suggest that this is a ridiculous notion and that I’m just being wishful - maybe I am, but somehow it just doesn’t seem that simple to me.
* We don’t have sex and we’re not having an affair.
* We never acknowledge or discuss the fact that we have an obviously unique relationship.
* He is a huge part of my life.
* When we haven’t talked for a while (relatively speaking), I sense that he missed me
* My kids know and love him.
* My friends know him. I’m sure most people that know me know how I feel about him, I’m not very adept at hiding my feelings. I’d have to say that *he* probably even knows how I feel about him which is just another layer of the issue that adds to my inability to understand it all - if you’re married and you know another woman has strong feelings for you, should you constantly be encouraging her?
* He seems to love his wife (of 9 years) and seems very dedicated to his marriage. As far as I know, she knows everything about our friendship and is fine with it. Most people find that hard to believe but we don’t hide anything or act any differently when we are around her than we do when we aren’t. She and I get along well.
* He and I never talk about this stuff. I’ve never been able to bring this up with him because I’m terrified of losing him.
* Having been through the unbelievable hell that is divorce, I do not want him to get divorced, but at the same time I want to be with him. I guess I keep fantasizing that when his kids are grown, he could leave his wife and grow old with me. And I know that sounds awful but under the veil of anonymity I might as well be truthful about my feelings. I think for now I’d just be happy to know what I really mean to him. Yeah, I *think*, not sure about that.
* One time he almost completely stopped taking to me for like a month (for his own personal reasons) and I became severely depressed. I was very frightened to realize the profound impact that his temporary absence had on me, and pondered the horror of his permanent absence.

I experience this relationship as if it were a romantic relationship without sex. I have no idea what it means to him. Maybe I’ve just never experienced a true friendship before. Is that all this is? Am I just being completely foolish thinking that there is anything out-of-the-norm going on here? What is the difference between friendship and a romantic relationship without sex? Maybe they are the exact same thing. If so how can I continue to be close friends with someone I wish was a romantic partner? How do I lose the feelings of frustration of not ever being able to make love to him? Would it be better to talk to him about this or to just continue to use his actions as cues to assume how he feels about me?

All I know is that I really don’t want to be without him, which is why I’ve been sitting on my feelings so far. Please let me know what you think.

Sincerely,

Clueless And Confused

Dear Clueless:

Dr. Ding is very glad you’ve written, because the situation you’re in is quite serious and tricky, so much so that I needed to run to the store to get bourbon in the middle of reading it…and Dr. Ding doesn’t even DRINK bourbon.

Diagnosis: you are having an emotional affair, which, more or less, is an affair minus the direct involvement one’s genitalia. Emotional affairs can be extremely addictive for the parties involved, because they are so much about self-deception, intruigue, elaborate guesswork, addictive fantasies, and not living in the present moment. They are also notorious for creating sprawling, horrendous, ratfuck life derailments. That said, I’ll respond to your concerns more individually.

He is sharing so much of his life with you because a) you’re an interesting, introspective, obviously fabulous human being, and b) he isn’t feeling listened-to in his marriage, which may be because c) at heart he’s a boorish navel-gazer who blathers on all emo-style about his very deep feelings and powerful, nameless longings to the point where his wife is just as happy to pass him along to you or anyone else who will listen. But I’m sure he gives “great hugs” or some crapshit like that.

Am I getting close?

Let me ask you something, Confused. Amidst all this intellectual masturbatory folderol, in between all these talks about “life’s big issues” has it ever occurred to you that he’s every bit as emotionally unavailable to you as your parents and ex-husband were? That maybe, just maybe, it’s the Same Shit, Different Day on some fundamental level here? And that this is why you’re absolutely right: it’s not at all “safe” as your friends would suggest because it’s so hopelessly, even gothically doomed to fail, and doomed to take an exquisitely ill-defined but doubtless agonizingly large amount of time and effort in order to do so.

Hang on a minute, I need to put on The Smiths and pour a small glass of absinthe. Ah, that’s the stuff.

Now then. Let’s review. He stopped talking to you for a month? Check. He doesn’t share feelings or thoughts about your relationship? Check. You don’t allow yourself to be emotionally honest with him for fear of abandonment? Check. “We seem to respect each other” is supposed to reflect some sort of neato-keen positive quality here? Check.

Ask yourself: are these behaviors of people in a healthy relationship? If you say “yes” you need to report immediately to the self-help section of Borders for intensive bibliotherapy and deprogramming. If you say “no” read on.

You probably either want Dr. Ding to suggest either option #1 or #2:

1) Go ahead. Indulge. Hang on to this utterly fascinating, emotionally mature, darling man for dear life. Keep scraping up those crumbs of his affection and sex-talking weirdness; then scurry home and in the wee small hours, making a cobbled paste with your tears and unborn dreams, try to sculpt them into something resembling a real relationship. Admire your handiwork. Dress it up in a little ruffled cape and play Phantom of the Opera. Patiently wait 40 years for his wife to die and for him to finally tell you he always thought of you only as a good friend.

2) Oh girl. Sac up already and drop it like it’s hot. Hit that glitter, work that Wonderbra, and go knockers up! Flaunt your best hoochie dress and find you a man of action, not some lameass who likes to sit around and tantalize/confuse/emotionally torture the living fuck out of a bitch, what with all his sexy deep thoughts and shizzle.

Luckily for you, Confused, Dr. Ding isn’t falling for it. Like many a plotline from Star Trek: The Next Generation, there is always another option.

3) Picture your fantasy: you and he are finally together, after he and his wife split up. You get married, or move in together, or whatever it is the young kids are into these days. A year into the relationship, he strikes up a friendship with another woman he meets through your mutual friends. They have the same groove that the two of you do now, let’s say: daily texts, emails, phonecalls, many late-night 1:1 conversations about wond’rous philosophical things. But there’s no physical contact. Uh huh. What u know about dat?

Is that the kind of relationship you want? Because, honeybritches, that’s the kind of relationship you’re going to get. And what’s more, he probably STILL won’t want to discuss it with you, either, because nothing will have changed. He will do you just like he did his wife. Guaranteed: he will remain every bit as appealing, yet pathetically unable to make an ethical relationship decision as ever in this scenario. And you know it. You know it or you wouldn’t be writing to crabbity ole hardass Dr. Ding.

Being honest about feelings as well as intentions is vitally important to the long-term health of any relationship, even one as psychologically cloaked and emotionally clandestine as yours is, Confused. If he can’t be open about his feelings and intentions within the context of your current relationship (or for that matter, within whatever semblance of a relationship he has with his wife), he damn sure ain’t gonna be able to do it later on. Is that what you want? If yes, stop reading and sign yourself up for Desperate Woman Week on Oprah. If no, continue.

It sounds pithy, but it’s so often true: as women (assuming heterosexuality in this instance), we seek the father we knew. Let me say it again. We seek the father we knew. Not the father we wish we’d had, or our best friend’s father, but the one that we were stuck with. And until we accept that this is what we’re doing and take active steps to change, the dynamic repeats itself in relationships. Ba da boom.

The neo-Freudians call this “repetition compulsion” which is essentially the idea that we tend to unconsciously seek out unfinished bidness, magically hoping against hope that it will somehow turn out different this time, by resisting all evidence to the contrary: this time I’ll be loved, this time he will stay, this time I’m going to be heard/seen/appreciated.

What we resist, persists. In other words, congratulations… you’re having an emotional affair with Morrissey, aka someone who seems emotionally quite noble and compelling and all achingly poetic and capable of handling your heart, but who is in reality very uncaring and highly unaware of you, and whose lack of spine is truly unappealing when viewed close-up. The bottom line is that consciously or no, Confused, you think this farcical and raggedy-assed fiction of a relationship is all you deserve. Why else would you put up with this level of emotional deception and heartache?

Until you either find a more satisfying relationship or raise your standards, this is what you will continue to choose. Let me know what you decide. I’ll be on the holodeck, confounding Moriarty and fighting tooth and phaser to not be assimilated into the Borg collective. Because resistance is not futile.

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