I’m so excited to be sending in my first question! I look forward to reading your response.

To provide a brief preface for this question, I am a (single-and never been un-single) guy who is close friends with Girl and Guy. Last year, Girl started liking Guy and asked me how to get through to Guy (they only knew each other through mutual friends). I clearly told her that I would not play match maker and would not interfere. Girl understood and she eventually made the first move but Guy always moved very slowly with dating stuff and didn’t really respond to her move even though he was interested in Girl. Eventually, Girl was getting so anxious that I pushed Guy to make a move and Girl and Guy have now been dating about half a year.

Recently, Girl and I got into an argument about how I should not feel uncomfortable at all about the 3 of us hanging out together. She had proposed bringing Guy to a plan that we had made together and I said no. Another time, I was there with Girl and Guy and their moderate touchiness made me feel pretty awkward and uncomfortable. If I was not single, this probably wouldn’t be too much of an issue for me. I simply feel very uncomfortable with being third wheel and the fact that I have two friends dating each other doesn’t make third wheel any better.

Clearly my preface was not brief but at least my question is:

How do you ask a couple – both of whom you are close friends with – to not act so couple-y or simply to become more understanding of the in-the-middle position that you are in?

Monkey in the Middle

Dear Monk,

I have to admit that I’m a bit confused by your question. You wrote to me as though asking how to broach the subject, but it seems like you’ve already had arguments about it — and are no closer to a solution. I can’t tell if you’re asking me to provide you with better arguments, so you can persuade your friends to change their behavior, or actually questioning your own approach.

Either way, I think the best place to start is the fight you just had. And the first step is to figure out why your friend reacted the way she did.

I don’t know the full story, so I may be wrong, but I have a hunch.

The way you describe your role in the development of this relationship doesn’t sound encouraging to me. Even though you care about both of them, you refused to help them get together, at least at first. And when she proposed that the three of you hang out, you turned her down flat-out before explaining to her that their behavior makes you uncomfortable.

As you’ve probably learned, you’re walking on thin ice already when you a member of the opposite gender on a subject related to sex. She may have felt like you were passing judgment on her for being in an intimate relationship at all, even if you didn’t say anything explicit to make her feel that way. In her position, regardless of what you were saying, I would have interpreted your approach — refusing to hang out with her if she invited her boyfriend — to mean that you might even have been repressing anger about her behavior the last time the three of you hung out, not just discomfort.

Think hard about it. Were you judging her? Did you use a tone, or a vocabulary, which somehow conveyed repulsion, disapproval, or distaste? If so, I can understand your friend’s reaction, even though your request itself may have been reasonable. If you want to broach the subject again, try doing it in a way that makes clear that you respect her choices. Phrase it in a way that allows you to take responsibility for your discomfort yourself: tell her it’s a character flaw of yours, that it’s probably because you’ve never been in a relationship, and that you wish you didn’t feel that way, and that you’re asking them to accommodate this weakness of yours as friends, not because they have an obligation to do so. Make sure she really gets the point, because your earlier argument is probably fresh in her mind. You don’t have to believe all of it; it’s just a token way of showing her that this isn’t about her moral character, but about your own comfort, and that at the end of the day you’re trying to preserve your friendship, not strain it.

Another thing I can’t figure out is how reasonable your request really is. You describe these guys as shy and say that their relationship has developed slowly, and you say that it was their “moderate touchiness” that made you uncomfortable. What kind of touchiness are we talking about? Making out, or holding hands?

The reason I ask is that Dan Savage got a great question a few years ago from a dom-and-sub couple who thought their families were being unaccepting when they refused to allow the pair to attend thanksgiving dinner while connected by a collar and leash. His answer to their (decidedly more extreme) question was that as open-minded people asking for acceptance ourselves, we’re obligated to accept everyone else’s sexual preferences — but we’re not obligated to participate in them. Taking a sex act out of the bedroom, even if your clothes are on, is an imposition on others, who may feel uncomfortable with what they’re seeing. Most PDA isn’t too much of an imposition, because we can just turn away; but it’s still a minor sexual event if you get caught off-guard, as much as looking at a pornographic pop-up or catching someone readjusting their pants.

As a New Yorker, I’ve come to approach PDA the way I think about busking on the subways. Even though it can be pretty unappealing at times, I’ve learned that you have to tolerate your share of what’s distasteful to you in exchange for occasional enjoyable experiences. And on a wider scale — personal gains aside — I do it because I’ve come to understand that New Yorkers’ shared ability to overlook the occasional offputting couple or act is what ultimately makes the city the romantic, musical place that it is, a place where anything can happen. It’s a social contract, and I vote in its favor by living here and going along with it.

When you’re at a dinner table, however, and you’re facing a couple, and they keep swapping spit like the ship’s going down, it’s not like a democratic (subway) platform; you’re stuck watching them, with no means of escape and nowhere else to look. It’s inconsiderate and unfair of them to put you in that position.

That’s why I need to know if their behavior is really sexual in order to give you solid advice. They’re comfortable with each other’s bodies, and they’re closer to each other than they are to you, so it makes sense that they like to touch to communicate affection and reassurance; but are we talking about non-sexual touching — anything from eating off of each other’s plates to sitting on each other’s laps: behavior siblings might share — or sexual touching — the gamut between a peck on the lips and a squeeze of the ass? Everyone has friends whom they wouldn’t want to see naked, no matter how much we like them, and they ought to have the courtesy not to make you imagine it, if that’s what they’re doing. But if they’re just expressing emotional intimacy, then what you’re really asking them to do is stop being a couple when you’re with them — which is asking for the impossible.

I don’t know the whole story, of course, but from where I’m standing, the fact that you didn’t help the two of them get together until this girl came to you on the brink of despair suggests to me that you really don’t want them to date at all. Most people will seize almost any opportunity to “play matchmaker” with their friends; instead, you seem to have been hoping it wouldn’t work out.

If that’s the case, you have my sympathies. There’s no one who hates being single as much as I do, and I know it can be hard to watch happy couples when you’re lonely.

Still, much as I understand your position, I’m telling you: you have to get over that. Because for every moment we’re happy and in love, most of us spend ten or more alone and struggling to hold onto hope. Ultimately, becoming embittered is the biggest risk we all run. Once you’re at the point where love itself gets you down, nothing will be able to pick you up. But if you adopt an attitude of wonder when you witness love, instead of taking it as a reminder of your own loneliness, you’ll be able to see it as an inspiration, a taste of the sweetness of finding what you’re looking for, and a testament to the fact that love does exist, however rarely — and as a result, you’ll be more prepared next time you have such an opportunity yourself.

I sincerely believe that where love is concerned, maintaining hope — getting over specific disappointments, but maintaining hope in the wider sense — is always, ultimately, the wisest thing to do. Even if you’re wrong, and you never find love, at least you won’t have had to live in the dark shadow of the belief that it can’t happen.

For what it’s worth, I’m not exactly happily paired myself right now, so I’m not saying this lightly. I know how hard it can be. It fucking sucks sometimes. But experience has taught me that being open-minded is a more enjoyable way to live.

The first time I really understood that was the summer before college, when I first read Great Expectations on the train to Merekesh (long story) and read the following passage in Chapter 46, in which Pip first visits his best friend Herbert Pocket and his new wife, Clara:

There was something so natural and winning in Clara’s resigned way of looking at these stores in detail, as Herbert pointed them out; and something so confiding, loving, and innocent in her modest manner of yielding herself to Herbert’s embracing arm; and something so gentle in her, so much needing protection on Mill Pond Bank, by Chinks’s Basin, and the Old Green Copper Ropewalk, with Old Barley growling in the beam,—that I would not have undone the engagement between her and Herbert for all the money in the pocket-book I had never opened.

For all of its gendered saccharinity, for all Clara’s domesticity, and Herbert’s patronizing suburban tour-guiding, that passage still speaks to the essence of affection to me. Pip is an orphan who’s never had so much as a kiss in his life, and whose heart has been mercilessly wrought and beaten by an octogenarian virgin hoarder for the bulk of his adulthood*; and yet somehow he finds redemption, not discouragement, in his love affairs of his humble friend. He manages to be happy for the Pockets and take their marriage as evidence that things sometimes work out — as food for hope — instead of letting it serve as a reminder of his own troubles. Pip’s childhood is so dark that he’s more than earned a right to be bitter; but what makes us love Pip, for all his failings, is that he overcomes it, and negates all the pain he’s experienced through his emotional generosity, instead of foisting it on others.

Writing this now, I realized for the first time that the reason that passage was so striking to me is that at the time, Dickens’ lifelong obsession with suffering-as-a-path-to-redemption was entirely new to me. It’s not an idea that’s discussed much these days. You see it most clearly in the original ending: when Pip runs into Estella in the ‘burbs a few decades later, he tells us, “I was very glad afterwards to have had the interview; for in her face and in her voice, and in her touch, she gave me the assurance that suffering had been stronger than Miss Havisham’s teaching, and had given her a heart to understand what my heart used to be.” (Emphasis mine.)*

Do you see what I mean? The view implicit there is a far cry from how most contemporary writers characterize suffering; since Freud people seem to have concluded, probably correctly, that the result of suffering is trauma and bitterness, not increased empathy.

Still, I like Dickens’ version better, don’t you?

-VVM

————————————————————————————————————————————————— * I’m sorry if I spoiled something for someone by reprinting this. There’s another ending, anyway. It’s a great book! Go read it, if you haven’t!!

The post How to Make the Most of Third-Wheeling appeared first on The Faster Times.

I’m a recent graduate from college, and I’ve tried out long term relationships, casual hookups, and the gamut in between. I absolutely prefer a committed and loving relationship to more casual ones. However whenever I’ve gotten myself involved in a really intimate and meaningful relationship it has inevitably ended, leaving me (as well as my partner) with so much fallout and bad feelings that the duration of the relationship can feel almost not worth it.

The casual relationships don’t mean that much, and they aren’t as exciting, but on the other hand nobody gets hurt.

My question is at this point in my life, where I know that I will not be marrying, and will not be spending the rest of my life with anyone, is it worth it to invest completely in another person?

Love is wonderful, but it’s also can lead to pain and confusion. Should I just wait it out until I get to a “marrying age,” or should I allow myself to continue to invest in relationships that will, when they end, totally destroy the happiness of myself and the person I’m with?

Thanks so much,

-W

Dear W,

I’m glad you asked that, because it’s a subject that I feel is often discussed by rarely addressed. Most conversations I’ve had about these matters tend to end with the conclusion that you can’t mix love and logic — a conclusion which strikes me as vaguely anti-intellectual and deeply unsatisfactory. For me, love is defined by its amenability to reason; love should be the place where you’re (finally!) no longer forced to choose between being happy and thinking too clearly, an intellectual resource that can’t be exhausted and which bears endless scrutiny. But then, I’m a philosophy major, and my ideas about love are probably not like most people’s.

The short answer to your question is “No.” You should not “continue to invest in relationships that will, when they end, totally destroy the happiness of [you] and the person [you're] with.” Partly because it wouldn’t do you any good, but also because the people you’re with, if they were aware of the ending you considered “inevitable,” probably wouldn’t accept those terms, either.

If I may submit a guess, I suspect that part of the reason the ends of your relationships are so painful may be your partners’ discovery that from day one you believed the end of your relationship was “inevitable.” That’s probably a surprise to your partners, because most people in your age group don’t begin relationships thinking about “when they end,” or “know” in advance that they “will not be marrying, and will not be spending the rest of [their] life[-s] with anyone.” You say you’ve been “invest[ing] completely” in these relationships, but it sounds to me like, as much as you’ve been investing, you’ve also been holding back. You write that “love is wonderful,” but the approach you describe doesn’t sound like love to me. Love is, of course, difficult to define, but I think most people would agree that love means wanting it to last forever, and it doesn’t sound like you’ve been feeling that way lately.

It’s okay not to be in love. I don’t mean to make you feel bad about that. Even the most romantic-minded people aren’t in love most of the time; like you, they’re often just searching for something they can’t describe, something they’re not fully sure exists. But it’s a real shame, to my mind, to give up that search, to infer that because you’re not in love now, you won’t be in the future — that because you haven’t yet met someone you could earnestly commit to, you’ll have to settle for whoever is around when you hit “marrying age.”

At the very least, in the future, I think you have an obligation to let the people you’re dating know that you’ve determined that you don’t want to with them forever — particularly because, at your age, if you don’t say anything, they’re likely to make the opposite assumption. The average American man marries at 27, and the average woman marries at 25. If you don’t say anything, I think your dates will infer that you haven’t outruled the possibility of marriage or an equivalent level of commitment.

Honestly, though? I think you should rethink your approach. I’m not sure why you believe that you “will not be marrying” until a certain time — especially since you claim to prefer “committed and loving relationships” and don’t seem to be making the classic argument that you need to do a certain amount of sexual adventuring before settling down — but I think you’re selling yourself short by committing the Humean fallacy (assuming that the future will be like the past). Nobody’s forcing your hand, W — there’s no risk here. You’re not going to get married until you decide to. It makes sense not to get your folks’ hopes up, of course; but it doesn’t make sense not to allow for the possibility that a person and an experience could change your mind and change your plans. If you keep dating people whom you know you don’t want to be with in the long-term, you’re depriving yourself of that opportunity.

Not all loving couples (or threesomes or whatever) share a mutual belief that they’re going to be together forever, but I would venture to assert that they share a lack of belief that they aren’t. That’s what it means, I think, to “invest” in a relationship — to make yourself open to the possibility of its success. (For more on letting others change your mind, see my “vintage” column about dating with deadlines and my more recent column about whether atheists can date the religious.)

I’m not telling you to get used to the idea of getting married younger than you’d hoped to; I’m telling you that you’ll be happier if you don’t exclude it just yet. There is no “marrying age,” and there are no rules; all there is are people and experiences, some of which may inspire us, or even change our lives irrevocably. If I were you, I would stop fooling around with people you know you’re not serious about, and try to stay open-minded, to retain the ability to make yourself vulnerable, no matter how many bad experiences you have — so that if someone shows up whom you could really commit to, you’ll recognize him or her and be ready. Even if it never happens, I think it’s worthwhile to refuse to settle, to keep looking for the real thing — because in the end, even if you fail, you’ll be happier knowing that you did what you could to find love, than if you give up before you give yourself a chance.

You’re going to be fine, W. I just know it. Hang in there!

-VVM

The post College Advice: Are Relationships Worthwhile? appeared first on The Faster Times.

I’m a recent graduate from college, and I’ve tried out long term relationships, casual hookups, and the gamut in between. I absolutely prefer a committed and loving relationship to more casual ones. However whenever I’ve gotten myself involved in a really intimate and meaningful relationship it has inevitably ended, leaving me (as well as my partner) with so much fallout and bad feelings that the duration of the relationship can feel almost not worth it.

The casual relationships don’t mean that much, and they aren’t as exciting, but on the other hand nobody gets hurt.

My question is at this point in my life, where I know that I will not be marrying, and will not be spending the rest of my life with anyone, is it worth it to invest completely in another person?

Love is wonderful, but it’s also can lead to pain and confusion. Should I just wait it out until I get to a “marrying age,” or should I allow myself to continue to invest in relationships that will, when they end, totally destroy the happiness of myself and the person I’m with?

Thanks so much,

-W

Dear W,

I’m glad you asked that, because it’s a subject that I feel is often discussed by rarely addressed. Most conversations I’ve had about these matters tend to end with the conclusion that you can’t mix love and logic — a conclusion which strikes me as vaguely anti-intellectual and deeply unsatisfactory. For me, love is defined by its amenability to reason; love should be the place where you’re (finally!) no longer forced to choose between being happy and thinking too clearly, an intellectual resource that can’t be exhausted and which bears endless scrutiny. But then, I’m a philosophy major, and my ideas about love are probably not like most people’s.

The short answer to your question is “No.” You should not “continue to invest in relationships that will, when they end, totally destroy the happiness of [you] and the person [you're] with.” Partly because it wouldn’t do you any good, but also because the people you’re with, if they were aware of the ending you considered “inevitable,” probably wouldn’t accept those terms, either.

The thing is, W, most people don’t begin relationships thinking about “when they end.” They don’t necessarily set out to get married before they know a person, but they don’t usually “know that [they] will not be marrying, and will not be spending the rest of [their] life[-s] with anyone.” I hate to be blunt, but I suspect that the pain you associate with the end of relationships is partly a result of your partners’ discovery that you never really believed it would work out with them, and that from day one you believed the end of your relationship was “inevitable.” You say you’ve been “invest[ing] completely” in these relationships, but it sounds like your partners are the ones doing the investing — and getting hurt. You write that “love is wonderful,” but the approach you describe doesn’t sound like love to me. Love is, of course, difficult to define, but I think most people would agree that love means wanting it to last forever, and it doesn’t sound like you’ve been feeling that way.

At the very least, in the future, I think you have an obligation to let the people you’re dating know if you’ve determined that you can’t be with them forever — particularly because, at your age, they might make the opposite assumption. The average American man marries at 27, and the average woman marries at 25. If you don’t say anything, I think your dates will infer that you haven’t outruled the possibility of marriage or an equivalent level of commitment.

Honestly, though? I think you should rethink your approach. I’m not sure why you believe that you “will not be marrying” — especially since you claim to prefer “loving relationships” and don’t seem to be making the classic argument that you need to do a certain amount of sexual adventuring before settling down — but I think you’re selling yourself short by assuming that the way you feel now (i.e., not in love) is the way you’ll continue to feel. Nobody’s forcing your hand, W — there’s no risk here. You’re not going to get married until you decide to. It makes sense not to get your folks’ hopes up, of course; but it doesn’t make sense not to allow for the possibility that a person and an experience could change your mind and change your plans. If you keep dating people know you don’t want to be with in the long-term, you’re depriving yourself of that opportunity.

Not all good couples (or threesomes or whatever) share a mutual belief that they’re going to be together forever, but I would venture to assert that they share a lack of belief that they aren’t. That’s what it means, to my mind, to “invest” in a relationship — to make yourself open to the possibility of its success. (For more on letting others change your mind, see my “vintage” column about dating with deadlines and my more recent column about whether atheists can date the religious.)

I’m not telling you to get used to the idea of getting married in the next few years; I’m telling you that you’ll be happier if you don’t exclude it just yet. There is no “marrying age,” and there are no rules; there are, however, people and experiences that inspire us and change our lives irrevocably. Stop fooling around with people you know you’re not serious about, and try to stay open-minded, no matter how many bad experiences you have — so that if someone shows up whom you could really commit to, you’ll recognize him or her and be ready.

-VVM

The post Is Dating in College Worthwhile? appeared first on The Faster Times.

No offense, but I never thought I’d have to write to an advice columnists about my problems — I’m the kind of person who’s introspective to a fault and very cautious in my personal/romantic affairs. Now, however, I think that’s working against me. I found your column by (of all things!) googling my problems in search of advice. It was your article on the difference between romance and friendship which lead me to think you might be able to help me (http://thefastertimes.com/collegeadvice/2009/11/23/college-advice-how-not-to-be-just-a-friend/).

In your article, you told the girl who wrote to you that she was founding her friendships the wrong way, and preventing men from considering her a romantic option. Like that girl, I’m in a lonely and frustrating spot, and like her, I’m a socially/romantically viable, likeable, attractive woman. However, in my case, I founded this friendship so long ago that sex, and even romance, weren’t part of my vocabulary. I’m in love with my oldest friend. My best friend. And he’s single. We both just graduated college, and he lives across the street from me. I see him every day. The thing is, I can’t just risk this friendship haphazardly, the way you suggest in your column; I need him in my life. This friendship means everything to me. I can’t explain it — I don’t have the words. But I think you know what I mean. The time we spend together is beautiful. The thing is, I’ve spent almost a year doing nothing about it and I don’t know how much longer I can take it. What do I do? I think we’re past the point of flirting and seeing what happens; I think I need to go all-or-nothing. But I just can’t bring myself to do it. I’d appreciate any advice you can give me.

Thanks,

- hate signoffs, sorry

Dear Thanks,

I’m going to be straight with you: I think you’re right that your choices are “all” and “nothing,” and I think you have to choose “all.” Why? Because you’re miserable right now, and you’ll only be more miserable if you keep doing this. And although being miserable over someone you love is beautiful in its own way, misery is misery, and misery sucks. If it doesn’t work out, it may take you years to get over it (and you’ll probably have to move); but that’s going to be the case whether you tell him or not, if you think about it. You might as well get a head start.

Because you’re eventually going to fall in love again. I promise. I know you don’t believe me, but think about it: you’re so young that the fact that you’ve fallen in love once already almost guarantees that you’ll be able to do it again. It’ll probably take a while — there are no shortcuts, unfortunately — but I have no doubt that it’ll happen for you.

The question, then, is how to approach this thing. I agree that flirting isn’t going to do it. However, if you’ve been in love for this long, and he knows you so well, I suspect that he understands your feelings, at least at a subconscious level. What you need to do is “raise the subject” in a nonexplicit way: wear something flattering, something sexy, one night; have drinks another night and talk about the kind of love you believe in and what it would look like. And then, after he’s had a week or two to think about all of that, make a move — physically. He’ll either respond or rebuff you, and you’ll have your answer. If he rejects you, you can talk about what it means later, or you can agree not to talk about it. If he’s been feeling the way you have, he’ll be thrilled. Who knows? He may even make the first move, if you make yourself clear enough. Either way, you’re on the path to happiness.

If he rejects you, I know you’re going to be tempted to pretend it never happened. I think that’s a really bad idea. I know that when you’re in love, it feels like just being around that person is enough; but the thing is, while you’re obsessed with him, you’re not going to be able to fall for anyone else, and you’ll only get more and more miserable. At the end of the long day, you’ll be happier knowing that you did everything you could to find someone who could offer you the love that you needed — even if you fail — than realizing that you never gave yourself the chance.

The wonderful thing about human nature is that it changes. We’re easily influenced, and our memories are terrible. Right now, you probably feel like your love is so central to your identity that you wouldn’t be yourself without it. And you’re probably right. But after a while, your identity will change, and you won’t be yourself — your current self, anyway — any more. And you’ll fall in love with someone who represents everything you now want to be. The most important thing for you right now is to trust in your own ability to change and adapt, to find and create beauty in the future that’s greater than or equal to what you have now. No matter how big the hole he leaves in your heart, I know you’ll find a way to fill it.

Best of luck.

-VVM

Send your questions about college life anonymously to VeronicaMittnacht@thefastertimes.com.

The post How To Tell Your Best Friend You’re In Love With Him appeared first on The Faster Times.

I’m worried about the state of my relationship. Honestly, this is already one of my issues – at every little problem, I jump to worrying about the state of my relationship. In retrospect, I always think, “Oh. I was just hungry,” or “I guess I was tired,” or even “Well, it happens.” But at the time, I freak out and think that every little thing indicates that we’re just not compatible. But what does it even mean to be compatible? We get along really well. He’s incredibly kind, understanding, loving, all that good stuff you want in a guy. But I am always questioning our relationship, with every teeny fight or blip. And we very rarely fight. I feel like I’m just such a negative nancy. I just imagine that relationships can never ever work, given most of the relationships I’ve ever seen have ended badly or continue and are going badly. So I see it as inevitable that things will go sour, and I defensively propel it. Or at least, I think I defensively propel it. But what if I don’t? What if we really are just not right, despite how great I think he is? How do you know you’re not right for each other?

Gahhh, Girlfriend Uncertain and Hurtin’

Dear GUH,

Everyone always says that nobody knows what goes on between two people except those two, and I think it’s true. But then again, those two people usually don’t know what’s going on, either. There’s nothing like a relationship to make you lose perspective. So without knowing much about your relationship, the best I can do is offer you some concrete standpoints from which to make the call yourself.

Think about how you feel from day to day. Do you worry about the relationship more than derive comfort and happiness from it? If so, for how long has it been this way? If it’s made you unhappy more often than not, consistently, thus far, then you have to either get out of there, or make some drastic changes. And you have to tell him, right away, that you’re unhappy. He’ll be hurt, but he’ll be glad to know.

As for your deeper doubts about whether relationships can work at all: to some extent, these are your own, and you should try to separate them from your opinions of his behavior and merit. Also bear in mind that to some extent, everyone carries these doubts around. About everything. Maybe the most we can ask of a partner is that he or she inspires us to actively suspend them.

Conversely, maybe entertaining wide and unfounded doubts about the durability of your relationship is a way of dealing with your own mixed feelings about him. The more loving, kind, and understanding he is, the harder it might be to admit that in spite of it all, you might not love him. How you feel is a separate question than whether he deserves love.

People sometimes say that you should only break up with someone if being alone would be better than being with them. If you ask me, that’s flawed logic. Being alone sucks no matter what, but sometimes you have to be alone for a while in order to heal, forget a little, and with luck, find something better. Being single is like purgatory: painful, but cleansing. Rather than thinking about what it’d be like right after you broke up with him, I think you should consider what you’d do six months or even a year later, if you can imagine that far ahead.

Try to envision it. You’re single and have a functional, independent life. You like yourself. You have more free time than you used to, which is nice. But you’re a little lonely, and you’re looking around. Do you look for someone like him, but without your shared history, or do you look for a completely different kind of personality? Is there something you need, irrationally, perhaps, but deeply, which he isn’t providing you with?

If the answer is “no,” then I think you’re better off trying to work things out with this guy. Your doubts are going to follow you no matter who you date, and people who’ll love you aren’t easy to come by. But if he isn’t what you want, there’s nothing either of you can do about it. Love isn’t fair sometimes. The kindest thing to do is face your feelings, think it through, and then talk to him.

-VVM

Send your questions about college life anonymously to VeronicaMittnacht@thefastertimes.com.

The post College Advice: How Do You Know When to Break Up? appeared first on The Faster Times.

As you know, economic times are a bit rough nowadays. Especially in New York City, it’s all about keeping up with the Joneses; but as a broke college student, I can barely keep up with the Joneses’ maids.

I think I may have found a solution to my money problems, but I’m a little hesitant. In my dorm and around all the buildings on campus, there are ads for companies “Seeking Special Egg Donors.” I’m almost 21, and they say that if I donate my eggs, I can help out a family AND make $8,000. That’s $8,000 more than I’m making right now! I’m nervous about committing, though. What if I have kids in the future, and they start dating my egg-kids? Will this make me infertile? Is it ethically questionable? Should I donate my eggs?

Fertile Fanny

Dear FF,

Egg donation is a fascinating subject, and one which isn’t widely discussed, so I took the time to talk to some people before writing you an answer. (I hope you’ll forgive the delay.) The more I thought about it, the more it made sense to me that the topic is so rarely addressed. I think most people find it too much to deal with — which is not a very smart way to go about making life decisions, although we’re all guilty of it, I’m sure.

Firstly, the obvious, technical advice: make sure to get the best possible medical information before you make your decision. I’m a little bit worried that your desire for spare cash might compromise your objectivity here. I’m not a doctor, but I know that egg donation carries risks for your fertility and your wider health. It may also carry risks for the offspring. Do your best to weigh immediate gains against long-term costs.

Nevertheless, while there are drawbacks to egg donation, there are also medical drawbacks to jello shots, and ADD medication, and hookah, and cigarettes, and resting your laptop near your genitals, and eating in the dining hall, and a lot of other things college students do regularly. I’ve found that moral condescension is often thinly-veiled as disproportionate concern for someone’s health (how often have you or your friends heard, “Aren’t you cold?”, or my favorite: “Don’t you worry about AIDS?”). The health component is there, certainly; but it’s a matter of emphasis. Similarly, my experience working in GYN has given me informal grounds for concluding that feelings of guilt can often manifest themselves as concern for one’s own health. A friend of mine put it bluntly: “Everyone thinks they’re dying when they first start having sex.”

The answer you’re looking for is a comparison of degrees, of relative advantages and drawbacks; we’re navigating subtle territory here. It’s also something of an obscure topic. As a result, little reasonable, objective analysis of your problem is available. You’re going to have to do that work yourself. I suggest breaking the question into parts, and then tackling them individually.

If the medical risks don’t offput you (and that’s a BIG “if,” and one I’m not qualified to advise you about), your next step should be to discuss or research your legal options. There are open donations, just like open adoptions, where you can contractually obtain the right to be a part of the kid’s life, should the egg-recipient conceive, eliminating the risk of your egg-kids dating your real ones — although I’m sure you could make a lot more than $8000 by marketing that premise for TV. You’ll also want to make sure you’re well-insured in case of malpractice, however unlikely that is. (And be really, reeeeallly nice to your doctor.)

The messy part is the ethical stuff. Making a decision about something like this forces you to commit to stances on a variety of questions. For instance, what, if anything, is the innate value of human life? Is there an elevated moral value to the creation of life, and the naturalness of that creation? What is our ethical obligation when we make decisions on behalf people unable to decide things for themselves? And how are any moral drawbacks counterbalanced by the benefit of helping a couple conceive?

Personally, I believe that while privileging the natural where reproduction is concerned is probably an instinct that once had evolutionary benefits, modern technology has rendered that advantage obsolete. I believe that reproduction is a physical and chemical process, just like everything we do. While it affects people’s lives deeply, in this case, the joy an infertile couple takes in receiving an egg makes egg donation an ethically beneficial act, to my eyes, unless it severely compromises the donor’s health. For what it’s worth, I’d say you’re in the clear.

But I’m just an advice columnist; in the end, it’s your call. I can’t help you with the ethical part of the decision. All I can do for you is point out that we can’t conclude that because more women aren’t egg donors, it’s an insane idea. Rather, I think that most people prefer deferring to custom over making the effort to answer these questions for themselves. The high market value of eggs is, at least in part, a reward for being among the few whom custom fails to intimidate, in my view. Do a little research, think about what you believe, and act on your intuition.

As a last remark, a word of financial advice: $8000 is actually a relatively low figure for egg donation. Personal ads or other services might be able to get you up to $20,000. A friend of mine actually made a bit more than that last year, although she claims she made more because she was a blond. Don’t sell yourself short.

Just do me a favor, all right, FF? Don’t spend the cash on an iPhone or a couple of rounds of drinks or a new wardrobe. Use it to make something beautiful happen. Buy yourself an instrument, or sublet a room with a view in your favorite city, or elope or something. Get out of the country. Learn another language. Get out of student-loan-debt, if you can. Or put it all away, while you’re still young, and retire on it. (It’s actually quite feasible. You heard it here.) The point is that this is a chance to make a concrete decision about your values, FF, to command your own life, to look it in the eye. It might also be a chance for an infertile woman somewhere.

-VVM

Send your questions about college life anonymously to VeronicaMittnacht@thefastertimes.com.

The post College Advice: Consider Donating Your Eggs appeared first on The Faster Times.

I don’t know why guys always see me solely as a “guy’s girl.” It’s really annoying because whenever I find someone who shares my same interests and who I get along with, but happen to be attracted to, it ALWAYS ends with me being “just a friend.” I try to show some feeling; I’m not 100% active about it, because I’m not stupid. I fear making bold moves that could potentially destroy the friendship. I’ve done this before and have completely failed. I’m cautious and know what I’m doing, but whatever things I deploy, whatever I say, whatever I do, I ALWAYS END UP BEING A FRIEND. To be completely objective, I’m not an unattractive person, so I don’t understand why if I bond with people over things AND am not unattractive, why it never works out. What could I be doing wrong?

Dear Friend,

First off, if I were you, I’d ask my own most trusted friends and exes to be honest with me and tell me what I might be doing wrong. I don’t know you, and there could be stuff I’m not getting from your letter which your friends will be able to point out.

That said, I have a strong hunch. My guess is that the problem lies in the way you begin these relationships. You say in your letter that you “fear making bold moves that could potentially destroy the friendship.” However, you describe your problem as arising when you “find someone who shares [your] interests,” meaning that before you met this person, you didn’t have a friendship. Do you see what I’m getting at? You defined your relationship as a friendship first, with the hopes that it would somehow morph into something more romantic, maybe through “things [you] deploy.” But you get timid because you don’t want to destroy the friendship — which you’ve just created. To me, this seems like a recipe for sending mixed signals. You’re annoyed that guys look at you as a friend rather than a lover, but you’re treating them that way yourself. Can you blame them for getting that idea?

Don’t get me wrong: attraction is attraction, and if you’re attracted to someone you’ll probably notice it even if you’ve set up a platonic relationship. But most of us maintain a handful of platonic relations that are sexually fraught and which under different circumstances might have had their romantic moments, even if they would have been ill-fated or badly-advised. Because this is too much to deal with on a daily basis, we set up mental blocks that allow us to balance our relationships in a functional way. This is a necessary part of monogamy, but it’s also crucial to the support of wider social structures, including the family unit. It’s in our blood. So you want to be very, very careful not to set up these blocks with a guy you’re interested in, because they can be powerful. Romance sometimes springs out of friendship, but in my experience, it’s rare, and there’s no point in creating obstacles for yourself.

I’m not advising you to shove your tits out and put glitter on your cheekbones whenever you go out (although that would probably do the trick, too, with a certain kind of guy). I’m getting at something much more subtle than that. I’m advising you to flirt. Present yourself as a lover first and a friend afterwards. This means small gestures that accentuate your femininity, flattering clothes that you’re comfortable in, good posture, and most of all, a fearless display of interest in one person above the rest. Look him in the eye. Ask personal questions. Touch him lightly while you talk to him. Be confident but also curious. Show him, wordlessly, that you know you’re desirable and that you’re equally sure that he is, too. Do it tastefully and I guarantee that even if they don’t bite, guys will be flattered by the attention.

Look, the way you’re doing things, you get far enough with these guys to notice that you share interests. They clearly like something about you. You just need to amend your technique so that you can scope out, at the very beginning, whether you also share an interest in each other. It’s surprisingly easy to figure out, actually. You’re still just as likely to be rejected — but at least this way it’ll only take a few minutes to determine if he’s interested, and if he’s not, you can cut your losses and try again with another guy.

You say that you’re “not 100% active about” showing your interest “because [you're] not stupid.” Honestly, from my perspective, it sounds like you don’t need any more friends, and could use some romance. But I won’t tell you that you have nothing to lose, because it’s not true; you stand to lose your pride, and that matters. You could easily get hurt, maybe irreparably. And in the end, I suppose you’re right — trusting another person with your heart is a very stupid thing to do, although it’s also very human and very beautiful.

But you know all this already. You’ve lived a little, and you have taken risks, and you’ve been hurt more than once — you wouldn’t be so frustrated if you hadn’t. But you and I both understand that you have to keep taking those risks if you ever want to feel less alone. If you didn’t sense that, you wouldn’t have written to me. All I’m trying to tell you is that your method of playing it safe isn’t working, and that, counter-intuitively, it’s actually a safer to put yourself out there from the start, and face the possibility of rejection early on, when it’s easier to deal with. If you build a friendship first, the stakes just get higher and higher, and the fall is always harder. Instead, keep your chin up, keep trying, work on your vibe, and do something stupid and rash and lovely, in a careful way. And then pick yourself up and do it again, and again, and again — until it works. I have total confidence in you.

-VVM

Send your questions about college life anonymously to VeronicaMittnacht@thefastertimes.com.

The post College Advice: How Not to be “Just a Friend” appeared first on The Faster Times.

I am Asian, and my boyfriend is Jewish. I am very happy about this for the most part, as I firmly believe that genetic diversity means good babies. However, interracial coupling does lead to some awkward moments. When we visit his predominantly white hometown, I often find myself the uneasy colored person. The worst instance was when we were at a packed Chinese restaurant, and the only other nonwhite person in the room was the waiter. I don’t know why this makes me feel so weird all of a sudden. I’ve never been particularly sensitive to this. Heck, sometimes I forget I’m not white. Where does this come from? Do you think this unease represents a greater divide in our relationship? WHAT DOES IT MEAN?

- Malaise-ian

Dear One M,

I spent a lot of time thinking about your letter when I received it. It’s not the kind of letter you can answer directly: there’s no easy or correct way to think about your racial identity or your boyfriend’s, and even if I offered you one, you’d have no incentive to take or trust my advice. The best I can do, I think, is start with my own experience, and try to frame the problem in new terms for you, in hopes that having another perspective will help you understand your own.

I’m half Mexican, but I grew up in New York, and like you, I often forget that I’m not white. (I look pretty white – more so than my sister and cousins.) Anyway, a couple of months ago, my boyfriend and I ordered take-out from an Italian restaurant he’d been going to for years. While we were waiting for our order, he started chatting with the host in Italian, which I can usually understand but don’t speak. Having nothing else to do, I set about trying to decipher their conversation, and in a few minutes I was so involved that I barely noticed the busboy with our food until he dropped the plastic bag in my hands.

“It’s yours, right?” he said, and I looked up at him. He was a dark Mexican man, about forty, with a youthful face bearing the unmistakable indio features I recognized so well from my mother and her family — a strong jaw, curving nose, square forehead, dark eyes – features I saw, though diluted, in myself. I noticed suddenly that while the host and waitstaff were all Italian, the kitchen workers were mostly Mexican. “Yeah,” I said. “Thank you.”

I couldn’t think of anything to say after that, and in the brief silence, I realized that I felt guilty, somehow, although I didn’t know why. Our eyes met for a tense moment. His gaze was unwavering and I was sure he knew what I was thinking, that he was accusing me with his glance — but before I had a chance to respond, or even look away, my boyfriend took the bag from my frozen hand and said, “Thanks, man. Ciao!” and we paid and left.

Later, after we’d cleared our plates, the Yankees had won something or another, and the dishes were almost done, I tried to figure out why I still felt so uneasy about the incident. I realized that what made me most uncomfortable wasn’t that I’d noticed that he was Mexican, but that I’d forgotten that I was, too — at that moment, I was just someone’s date, someone from out of town, someone hungry and tired.

Once I noticed that, it felt like a betrayal, because it’s a luxury, as an ethnic minority, to be able to forget your race, and it’s a luxury that the generation before ours never had. By forgetting my own race, I felt that I had forgotten the plight of those before me who hadn’t been able to forget.

After I’d spelled out my discomfort, it seemed laughable; what was I supposed to do, be guilty all the time? Feel out of place everywhere? Ironically, to my Mexican family members, I’m as white as they come, having learned Spanish in high school with the rest of my class (and mostly from a sarcastic ex-acrobat from Japan). I grew up in New York, I’ve never attended a quinceañera, and I can’t even eat salsa or chiles. But that, too, is part of the unique problem of children and grandchildren of immigrants: we’re caught between remembering our family’s unusual origins and purposefully forgetting them in order to focus on differences that matter more — and there’s no one to tell us how to do it. Even our own families often aren’t clear about the extent to which they expect us to retain our ancestors’ cultures and to what extent we’re supposed to adopt American ideas.

Still, we’re among the first generations who’ve had the advantage of being able to choose. Lonely as that choice can be, I think it’s worth the angst, you know?

-VVM

Send your questions about college life anonymously to VeronicaMittnacht@thefastertimes.com

The post College Advice: Why Does My Interracial Relationship Make Me Uneasy Sometimes? appeared first on The Faster Times.

Should you stop occasionally sleeping with an ex even when your friends tell you to stop if you don’t think you are hurting yourself? When do you not know if you’re hurting yourself? I was just talking with my friend [redacted] and she’s in a similar situation, except she knows that she is for sure in love with the guy, they just aren’t together right now. It’s complicated, of course. But the theme of what to do with old flames had never occurred to me before, because while I was attracted to my first ex-boyfriend, who I went out with for a few years, we had so much history that sleeping with each other after breaking up was always out of the question. What do you think?

- Ex-girlfriend still on campus

Dear Ex,

At first, when I read your letter, I thought you were asking two questions: How am I supposed to relate to an ex-boyfriend? And: How do I know if I’m hurting myself? I see now, though, that these questions are inextricably linked. Because it’s hard to be honest with ourselves about exes. It’s hard to know what we feel about them.

It has to be. If you think about it, you were weighing this person’s positive and negative qualities in your head somehow — weighing your feelings for him — until the moment you broke up with him. And before then, you had weighed in favor of staying with him. So while you may be sure of your decision, and may have been sure long before you acted on it, the scales are still in some sort of balance — d’you follow? Let me put it another way.

The problem is that it’s hard to reconcile the feelings you still have for an ex with the fact that you’re no longer going out with him. Despite all the reasons you broke up, there will always be what attracted you to him in the first place, what kept you there. And that was powerful. It’s hard to acknowledge that you weren’t completely wrong about him and also to know that you left all of that behind.

Psychologists call this kind of quandary “cognitive dissonance.” Cognitive dissonance occurs when we subconsciously hold two ideas which we know to be contradictory. The mind’s fascinating habit for resolving this dissonance is actually to change the more mutable belief into something not at odds with the stronger principle.

The most famous study involved subjects who were made to take a very boring test. After the test, they were asked to rate how interesting it was, and then they were offered, at random, either one or twenty dollars to lie to the next subject in the waiting room and say that the test was fun. A week later, they re-evaluated how interesting the test was. Surprisingly, those who had been given more money – that is, those who had more of an incentive to lie – generally felt the same way about the test a week later. However, subjects who had only been given a dollar, and who therefore probably felt that they lacked sufficient reasons to deceive the next subject, actually revised their opinions of the test over the interim week so as to negate the lie. Since then, more studies have confirmed the same effect, and psychologists have begun theorizing about how cognitive dissonance plays into luxury-product marketing, intoxication, cigarette addiction, and really just about everything.

It’s my pet theory that cognitive dissonance plays a big part in relationships. When you get really mad at someone about something small, it’s because his holding views so different from your own is at odds with the role he plays in your life — right? Or even at odds with who you think he is, who you need to think he is. Even if it’s just a little thing. And you end up sort of smoothing it over without resolving it, pushing the quarrel out of your mind, because it’s dissonant with your deeper feelings for this person, which you’re not willing to shake. Or maybe you’re disturbed by his attraction to someone really unlike you, because it’s dissonant with your belief that you’re what he wants. Or maybe the very fact that you love him is dissonant with who you think you are. You get the picture.

What I’m getting at is this: dissonance is going to be at its peak just before you break up with someone, but it doesn’t go away once the relationship is over. And so you deal with it by slowly revising your views, just as you did before the breakup, but to the opposite end. Trust me, I’ve been there myself, and I know that feeling, when you’re absolutely certain you’re over someone, and nobody seems to see it or believe you, and you think back on everything that used to move you and feel nothing — even look him in the eye and feel nothing — and you’re so damn sure that your friends’ and family’s skepticism just makes you feel alone.

The thing is, a couple of months or even years later, you’ll realize that the first time you thought you were sure, you weren’t sure — you weren’t over him yet. I know this sounds kind of patronizing, but you have to take my word for it — I really have been there. You’re not really over someone until you can find out that he’s moving to another city and not be upset, until you think his new girlfriend is cute, until you actually wear something he gave you without remembering its origins, until you don’t feel weird talking about him to someone you’re dating.

It’s okay not to be over someone. You don’t have to be totally over him to have new relationships, even to fall in love. It’s okay to think you’re over someone before you are, too — it’s natural. It’s healthy. But you also learn, after breaking your teeth a little, not to trust yourself when you think you’re over something.

Look, I might be wrong. I don’t know how big this relationship was for you or how you feel about it now. But the fact that your friends are worried, too, supports my hunch. For now, do yourself a favor: even if you don’t feel like dating yet, play it safe and sleep with someone you don’t have a past with. There’s just something about exes that makes it hard to know how you feel.

-VVM

Send your questions about college life to VeronicaMittnacht@thefastertimes.com

The post Sex With The Ex: Acknowledging Our Own Delusions appeared first on The Faster Times.

Dear Veronica,

I have a problem: I can’t stay awake. I think it started in my eighth grade Science class with Mrs. Wilkens. Halfway through neutrons and atoms and positivetrons my eyes would get heavy, my head would start to nod, and I would fall deep into sleep. It didn’t really bother me at the time; I even formulated a method for sleeping in class, which used to work well before I got to college. I would rest my forehead on my hand so it would look like I was reading the book beneath me, or cross my arms and let my head nod down so I would look concerned about the lecture. All of that worked fine, until I actually started caring about what I was learning! Now, despite all my efforts, I can’t stay awake, even though I want to! Today, for instance, I took coffee to class because I thought that drinking something, especially coffee, would keep me awake at least, BUT NO!!! I started dozing off! The more I slept the more I drank, but to no avail. I didn’t actually regain consciousness until after I had slept for 15 minutes and my body felt rested. The weirder thing is that I had slept a full eight hours the night before so there was no reason why I should’ve fallen asleep. This used to happen to me in seminars, but now that I’m making more of an effort I seem to be ridding myself of the habit. However, I still have the same problem in lectures, where I am only one of sixty students and I can see other people dozing off as well. Please awaken my college career from its death bed! This sleeping Lazarus needs his G.P.A. revived!

- Tired of being tired

Dear Sleepyhead,

My first thought is to ask your doctor to run a blood test. People who get tired easily often suffer from a vitamin or iron deficiency, blood sugar imbalance, or even viral infection. Also consider whether you might have a learning impairment which makes concentration difficult. Many sites offer questionnaires that place you on a diagnostically relevant spectrum and can help you determine, in a matter of minutes, if you ought to be seeking the advice of a professional.

In the mean time, there are a few material things you can do to make it easier to stay awake. The first is to have coffee before class, not during it. Coffee takes about half an hour to kick in and its effects last about eight hours, so a cup before your lecture should help a little. The second is to chew things — caffeinated gum or sucking candy especially — since this keeps the blood flowing in your brain. You can also get something spicy, like Mexican chile powder (which many people eat as a snack) or ginger or cinnamon candies, to jolt you awake. Shift in your chair every now and then. Try to follow what the professor’s saying and stay interested as much as you can. Get up and go to the bathroom if you feel yourself getting sedate, and splash some water on your face. Pinch yourself. Don’t get too warm or comfy. Keep getting a good night’s sleep, but wake up earlier, and make sure you’re wide awake before the lecture. Eat breakfast. Take multivitamins. It will only get easier as you behaviorally condition yourself into alertness. You’re already making progress — keep it up! Your GPA will definitely benefit.

-VVM

Send your questions about college life to VeronicaMittnacht@thefastertimes.com

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