Dear Sugar,
My twenty-year marriage fell apart. Whose fault? Mine? My wife’s? Society’s? I don’t know. We were too immature to get married back in the 80s and we both worked hard to avoid dealing with the unhappiness that was hanging over us.
But that’s in the past. I’ve had a few relationships in the three years since the split. One casual, one serious and one current. There was no issue with the casual one: I was up front about not wanting to settle down so soon. The second one started out casual and I actually broke it off when she got serious, but I couldn’t stay away and promised to consider long term plans with her. I also told her I loved her after a year of avoiding that word, the definition of which I don’t really understand. Predictably, I balked when it came time to piss or get off the pot and I lost both a lover and a friend in her.
Now I’ve again met a woman with whom I click very nicely. We have been dating and being intimate for about four months. She’s going through a bitter divorce and wasn’t looking for a commitment. That sounded perfect, but in reality neither of us was interested in dating more than one person, so here we are in an exclusive relationship.
She sounds like she’s falling in love with me, though she won’t say the word. I am avoiding that word as well, but clearly we’re both thinking it. I’m afraid of saying it out loud, as my experience shows that word “love” comes loaded with promises and commitments that are highly fragile and easily broken. I see people toss that word around so lightly, as if it were a hug between friends.
I guess my question to you is, when is it right to take that big step and say I love you? And what is this “love” thing all about? Good luck to you in this challenge.
Best,
Johnny
Dear Johnny,
The last word my mother ever said to me was love. She was so sick and weak and out of her head she couldn’t muster the “I” or the “you,” but it didn’t matter. That puny word has the power to stand on its own.
I wasn’t with my mom when she died. No one was. She died alone in a hospital room and for so many years it felt like three quarters of my insides were frozen solid because of that. I ran it over and over it in my mind, the series of events and choices that kept me from being beside my mom in her last hours, but thinking about it didn’t do a thing. Thinking about it was a long dive into a bucket of shit that didn’t have a bottom.
I would never be with my mother when she died. She would never be alive again. The last thing that happened between us would always be the last thing. There would be the way I bent to kiss her and the way she said, “please, no,” when I got close because she couldn’t any longer bear the physical pain of people touching her. There would be the way that I explained I’d return in the morning and the way she just barely nodded in response. There would be the way I got my coat and said “I love you,” and the way she was silent until I was almost out the door and she called, “love.” And there would be the way that she was still lying in that bed when I returned the next morning, but dead.
My mother’s last word to me clanks inside me like an iron bell that someone beats at dinnertime: love, love, love, love, love.
I suppose you think this has nothing to do with your question, Johnny, but it has everything to do with my answer. It has everything to do with every answer I have ever given to anyone. It’s Sugar’s genesis story. And it’s the thing my mind kept swirling back to over these five weeks since you wrote to me and said you didn’t know the definition of love.
It is not so incomprehensible as you pretend, sweet pea. Love is the feeling we have for those we care deeply about and hold in high regard. It can be light as the hug we give a friend or heavy as the sacrifices we make for our children. It can be romantic, platonic, familial, fleeting, everlasting, conditional, unconditional, imbued with sorrow, stoked by sex, sullied by abuse, amplified by kindness, twisted by betrayal, deepened by time, darkened by difficulty, leavened by generosity, nourished by humor and “loaded with promises and commitments” that we may or may not want or keep.
The best thing you can possibly do with your life is to tackle the motherfucking shit out of it. And, Johnny, on this front, I think you have some work to do.
But before we get to that, I want to say this, darling: I sort of love you.
I love the way you wrote to me with your searching, scared, knuckle-headed, nonchalant, withholding dudelio heart on full display. I love that you compelled me to write dudelio, even though—on top of the fact that dudelio isn’t a word—I am morally opposed to the entire dude and dude-related lexicon. I love how for five long weeks hardly a day has passed that I haven’t thought: But what about Johnny? What will I tell Johnny? I love that one recent evening when I was lying in bed with my man and he was reading the New Yorker and I was reading Brain, Child, I had to stop and put my magazine on my chest because I was thinking about you and what you asked me and so then my man put his magazine on his chest and asked what I was thinking about and I told him and we had a conversation about your troubles and then we turned off the lights and he fell asleep and I lay there wide awake with my eyes closed writing my answer to you in my head for so long that I realized I wasn’t going to fall asleep, so I got up and walked through the house and got a glass of water and sat at the kitchen table in the dark and looked out the window at the wet street and my cat came and jumped up on the table and sat there beside me and after a while I turned to her and said, “What will I tell Johnny?” and she purred.
I always knew what I would tell you. Not knowing wasn’t exactly the problem. What I was mulling over is how I’d get at the layers of things your letter implies to me: the questions you didn’t ask that stand so brightly behind the questions you did.
You aren’t afraid of love, sweet pea. You’re afraid of all the junk you’ve yoked to love. And you’ve convinced yourself that withholding one tiny word from the woman you think you love will shield you from that junk. But it won’t. We are obligated to the people we care about and who we allow to care about us, whether we say we love them or not. Our main obligation is to be forthright—to elucidate the nature of our affection when such elucidation would be meaningful or clarifying.
And in your case, it will be. You asked me when is the right time to tell your lover that you love her and the answer is when you think you love her. That’s also the right time to tell her what your love for her means to you. If you continue using avoidance as the main tactic in your romantic relationships with women, you’re going to stunt not only your happiness, but your life.
I encourage you to do more than throw up your hands in your examination of “whose fault” it was that your twenty-year marriage fell apart. It was no one’s fault, darling, but it’s still all on you. It would behoove you to reflect upon what went right in that relationship and what went wrong; to contemplate how you might carry forth the former in your current and/or future relationships and quash the latter.
There’s a saying about drug addicts that they stop maturing emotionally at the age they started using and I’ve known enough addicts to believe this to be true enough. I think the same thing can happen in a long-time monogamy. Perhaps some of your limited interpretations about what it means to say the word love are leftover from what you thought it meant all those years ago, when you first committed yourself to your ex-wife. That was the past, as you say, but I suspect that a piece of yourself is still frozen there.
A proclamation of love is not inherently “loaded with promises and commitments that are highly fragile and easily broken.” The terms you agree to in any given relationship are connected to, but not defined by whether you’ve said “I love you” or not. I love you can mean I think you’re groovy and beautiful and I’m going to do everything in my power to be your partner for the rest of my life. It can mean I think you’re groovy and beautiful but I’m in transition right now, so let’s go easy on the promises and take it as it comes. It can mean I think you’re groovy and beautiful but I’m not interested in a commitment with you, now or probably ever, no matter how groovy or beautiful you continue to be.
The point is, Johnny: you get to say. You get to define the terms of your life. You get to negotiate and articulate the complexities and contradictions of your feelings for this woman. You get to describe the particular kind of oh-shit-I-didn’t-mean-to-fall-in-love-but-I-sorta-did love you appear to have for her. Together, the two of you get to come to grips with what it means to have an exclusive, nicely clicking, non-committed commitment in the midst of her bitter divorce and in the not-too-distant wake of your decades-long marriage.
Do it. Doing so will free your relationship from the tense tangle that withholding weaves. Do you realize that your refusal to utter the word love to your lover has created a force field all its own? Withholding distorts reality. It makes the people who do the withholding ugly and small-hearted. It makes the people from whom things are withheld crazy and desperate and incapable of knowing what they actually feel.
So release yourself from that. Don’t be strategic or coy. Strategic and coy are for jackasses. Be brave. Be authentic. Practice saying the word love to the people you love so when it matters the most to say it, you will.
We’re all going to die, Johnny. Hit the iron bell like it’s dinnertime.
Yours,
Sugar
38 responses
Sugar hits the nail on the head every time. Beautifully written as always =]
Awesome, Sugar…just awesome.
Love is more than a feeling. It’s a verb, too. It’s actions and words and it’s not for people who are scared of getting hurt. Because you will get hurt if you love. (Notice I didn’t say you might get hurt.)Great job, Sugar.
omg. this makes me weep. i love this sugar.
(Whoa, there’s another Danni who reads the Rumpus? Hi other Danni, you with two i’s!)
Sugar, you have turned the advice column into an art and an exercise in spiritual growth. I love that you don’t just offer your advice-seekers a solution to a compartmentalized issue; you address the entirety of their being and help people learn to be better people. I love you, Sugar!
I love you Sugar.
Sugar, your wisdom and empathy is breathtaking.
Sugar, you are right, and you are awesome.
“You aren’t afraid of love, sweet pea. You’re afraid of all the junk you’ve yoked to love.” In a nutshell.
I love that you thought about this for five weeks. I figured it just wasn’t an interesting enough letter. Thank you, Sugar. I sort of love you too.
This is my favorite sugar yet. I love that you spent weeks thinking about your answer, that it kept you up at night.
When I got married, the second time after a bruising first one, my Dad (with whom I had not been able to talk over some difficult feelings between us because he’d lost most of his language to early-onset Alzheimers), sat in the ceremony patting his heart saying “I love, I love”. It was both a blessing and a statement of his being, his most basic humanity. I was reminded of this by your column. So, I am patting my heart and thinking to you. “I love, I love”.
Sugar, for the win!
beautiful. thank you.
the tears are rollin’. i can’t even express the words….
Brilliant. I would love it if someone could call me on my shit with this much insight and compassion.
All you sweet peas! Thank you. I’m truly grateful for the kind words and the love. What a beautiful story about your father, Sarah. And Johnny, my heart leapt when I saw you’d commented too. I love you sort of even more now. Good luck, darling.
There are times I think I’m a pretty good writer. And then I read stuff like this and am blown away by someone who really brings it. Beautiful and heart-true. And Sarah, your story about your father has me sitting here in tears. Thank you both for putting this out there.
LOVE.
Holy WOW. I don’t say this lightly. If this isn’t one of the best things I’ve ever read, it’s pretty darn close.
Good job, Sugar, as always. All right . . . [guy hesitation] I love you!
Sugar,
This piece just melted or widened my own heart. Thanks especially for pointing out how a miserly heart shrinks a life. And I love musing about how we can constantly reinterpret, reshape, rekindle the whole concept of love instead of clinging to outgrown definitions and fears….
Ah, this hit close to home. I seldom withhold; I am an open book for better or for worse. But I have tolerated it from someone who meant more to me than anyone before. And I don’t think he even understood it, and the only time he could really say how he felt was after it was all over. How silly, and how hurtful it had been…giving without anything being reciprocated. And continuing to give, regardless.
I feel like you are the wise older sister I never had and want to be.
WOW! Truly awed. Floored. Gobsmacked. I had to sit very still after reading that and think about what I’d just read. And now I’d better read it again.
thank you sugar. a big, loving thank you.
You are my teacher and an inspiration. Thank you and I love you.
Sugar, you always supply me with the best quotes for angsty midnight e-mail rants. Thank you. You are the wisest woman I know.
I can say love like it ain’t no thing in situations where it’s sorta like that. At a meeting, hug a fellow addict, say, “I love ya man.” And mean it. Mean it cause I actually care and want the best for them. I tell my family I love them – and they drive me fuckin crazy. Talk about food, movies, books, and a car that rumbles in the night and I say, “I love that shit.” But I don’t know how to say it to someone I actually love and not have it “yoked” to all the junk I’m dragging from every damn relationship I’ve fucked up before. Sugar, you wrote this beautifully – you did Johnny and all of us who dick around with the “L” word a huge favor – maybe now I’ll actually say it to that woman I’ve been meaning to. Yet maybe what’s more likely is I won’t and then wonder why.
I have probably read this column 15 times in the past two weeks and I get something out of it every time. I kind of love you, Sugar. Your mom would be proud.
Oh, Sugar, you hit it time and time again, but on this run through, the bell tolled for me…
What would you say to this man’s *partner*–to the one who knows how they feel and what they want to say, but can fully see that their partner is having their own neurotic struggles with that L-word, and who feels they must hold back in order to not knock the whole house of cards down?
I love you Sugar. You make my heart hurt and expand with happiness at the same time. You make me want to go home and kiss my husband and tell him how much I love him. I never expected to find an advice column that makes my eyes well up with tears on a regular basis. You’re beautiful. xo
I mean this in all seriousness- I think I am going to get the phrase “Hit the iron bell like it’s dinnertime” tattooed on my body.
Your posts usually cause a reaction (a good one), but that statement caused a visceral one, and I love it.
Thanks for being a gem. I look forward to more columns in the new year!
Again, you got me. I’m printing the last two sentences to look at them often. Thank you.
LOVE THIS!!!
I love you, Sugar.
I told one of my ESL students this afternoon that I loved her. She looked very surprised. Well, she started out the class by bringing my stuffed grape leaves and Persian cucumbers. She later informed us that she was a retired elementary school teacher. What’s not to love?
Since we were discussing success this afternoon, we had a huge list of successful people on the board. I put this student’s name above Bill Gates and drew little hearts next to it.
I really should put your name on my board too, Sugar. You’re amazing.
Wonderful.
Good timing to read this now… i’m just about to tell my husband I want a divorce (literally tonight!!!) and have been reacquinted with the man who was my best friend from fifteen years ago. It’s fascinating and terrifying to not feel the same love for my husband anymore, now just a compassionate sympathy. And to feel little things popping inside me like soda bubbles because I’m so inspired and curious about my old/new love. About our future. There are so many transitions to pass, so many confusions and anxieties. I’ve been the one in the dark from withholding in my marriage. How do I not project that past onto this present? how do I enjoy the sloppy of new trust? All I hear is “caution” “do it right.” I want this transition done yesterday so I can enjoy my hard work and love and feel loved!!!
dear sugar, i have just come upon this column a few days ago, and read your book in a few hours. it completely floored me, in the best possible way. i realized how big i could be, in love, in life. and this post in particular really hit home for me. i have read and reread it a dozen times by now, and i keep reading it and getting more out of it. so beautiful, so true. thank you, sugar!
Dear Sugar, reading your incredible letter to Johnny, I felt like I was watching you dance beautifully and with utter control along a tightrope slung across a fathomless and very familiar chasm. Which is to say, I’ve been madly in love with Johnny more than once in my life, spewing out true love and passion and friendship as I do, and struggling for years on end to figure out why he did not reciprocate. Or *was* he reciprocating (as he often claimed), and I was just too selfish/damaged/dorky to perceive it? *Years* of my life have dropped into that misty chasm, never to be regained. And now, to hear you actually speaking to Johnny, and seeing him clearly, and speaking the truth — part of me never thought any woman ever got to say what you’ve said. Reading your words is like watching a woman slay the kind of dragon that is not at all cute or romantic, and that needs to be slain, and hardly ever is.
Sugar, I love you for that final line, and everything that came before it.
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