Dearest sweet peas: It’s become my tradition that every time I reach a new decade of columns I do a Q&A, in which I whip out shorter answers to several questions instead of the usual longer, single question column.
Enjoy the read and come back for more next week.
***
Dear Sugar,
What’s it all about?
Wondering
Dear Wondering,
It’s all about love. Trite, but true. Today’s column is about love too. Romantic love, specifically. I didn’t intend for it to be that way. I intended for there to be one question about how an attractive 34 year-old woman might go about getting laid sans love. I wrote the answer, but I’m not yet satisfied enough with it to publish it, even though it features advice from an old cowboy I met twenty years ago. I intended for there to be another question about poetry and which ten books of poems you should read, but my answer went on so long that it didn’t fit into this column that’s allegedly, but not actually, a brief q & a.
Yours,
Sugar
***
Dear Sugar,
Last year I met a guy who is wonderful, though I recognize he has a lot of growing up to do (he’s 24). We get along well, have a similar sense of humor (which is sort of rare for me), and have great sex. After nine months, I still get a tingle in my gut when I see him. Our relationship started casually, but over time we got to know each other and became ourselves around each other. We can cook together and be silly and go on adventures and read to each other and have sex on the floor and then make a cake and eat it in bed. In the beginning, I was okay with us not being monogamous, but once our relationship became more than a fling, I realized I wanted a commitment. We talked and he told me that sleeping with just one person could get boring, but that he clearly likes me or else he wouldn’t spend time with me. He said he was afraid I would change him somehow—turn him into someone he’s not. I didn’t understand him then, and I still don’t. Am I just dense? He likes me, but not enough to say he likes only me? Maybe it’s that simple.
We still see each other pretty often, just now without the sex. I care for him, but I don’t know if I’m foolish to stick around to see where it goes. Am I torturing myself by keeping him a part of my life?
Best,
Needs Direction
Dear Needs Direction,
I have a lot of letters like yours. Most go on at length, describing all sorts of maddening situations and communications in bewildered detail, but in each there is the same tiny question at its core: can I convince the person about whom I’m crazy to be crazy about me?
The short answer is no.
The long answer is no.
The sad but strong and true answer is the one you already told yourself: this man likes you, but not the way you like him. Which is to say, not enough.
So now you get to decide what you want to do about that. Are you able to be friends—or even occasional lovers—with this man who is less crazy about you than you are about him without feeling:
a) bad about yourself
b) resentful of him or
c) like you’re always aching for more?
If the answer is not yes on all three counts, I suggest you give your friendship a rest, even if it’s just for the time it takes you to get over him. There are so many things to be tortured about, sweet pea. So many torturous things in this life. Don’t let a man who doesn’t love you be one of them.
Yours,
Sugar
***
Dear Sugar,
I’m crushing in middle age. That’s pretty much it. I’m middle aged, married, and crushing on a friend. And it’s full blown, just like in high school, sweaty palms, distracted, giddy, the whole she-bang. So far it has gone no farther than flirting and I really, really know better. My question isn’t what should I do (I’m pretty clear I should behave), but what should I do with all this delightful but distressing energy?
Crushed
Dear Crushed,
Steer clear of the object of your crush and use that “delightful but distressing energy” to reinvest in what matters most to you—your marriage, it seems. Do something extra sweet for your spouse this week. Have sex tonight and make it hella hot and good. Go for a long walk or a lingering dinner together and lovingly discuss how you’re going to keep your love as well as your romance strong. You’re clear you don’t want to act on your crush, so trust that clarity and be grateful that you have it, sweet pea. My inbox is jammed with emails from people who are not so clear. They’re tortured by indecision and guilt and lust. They love X but want to fuck Z. It is the plight of almost every middle aged monogamous married person at one time or another. We all love X but want to fuck Z.
Z is so gleaming, so crystalline, so unlikely to bitch at you for neglecting to take out the recycling. Nobody has to haggle with Z. Z doesn’t wear a watch. Z is like a motorcycle with no one on it. Beautiful. Going nowhere.
Yours,
Sugar
***
Dear Sugar,
I’ve been involved with a married man for the past several months. I am also married. I’ve been married for eight years and he’s been married for thirty-three years. I’m 36; he’s 61. We’ve known each other for years and had an intense attraction (physical, emotional, professional, intellectual, spiritual) for most of that time, but managed not to act on it until recently. Then we started seeing each other for passionate little rendezvous that included hot heavy petting but never more. We decided we would leave our spouses to be together, and set the wheels in motion.
About a month ago—a few weeks before we were each going to move into private spaces so we could finally consummate our years-long lovelovelove for each other—he and his wife called me up. “I do not love you,” he droned into the phone like a robot while she coached in the background. She got on the phone and told me that our relationship was bullshit, a fantasy. I cried into the phone, told him I did love him, apologized to his wife, who had been my friend, and hung up.
Three weeks passed without a peep from him. I bawled and cried and squalled like a monkey every day. I decided that my marriage was beyond repair after this relationship. I’m taking my own place in a month.
My married boyfriend contacted me last week to apologize and to tell me that he did—and does—love me, but that he and his wife are endeavoring to rebuild what they had, though he has little hope because he’s in love with me.
I STILL want to be with this guy. I know he’s acted terribly in so many ways, as have I, but I have deep forgiveness in my heart for him. I think he is in the incredibly difficult process of deciding to be with me, which will be devastating for him because it requires that he dissolve the business he built with his wife and rearrange his life completely and reimagine who he is in the world. That is a lot to do. Here are my questions:
1) Am I a total scumbag because I think the rightest, truest thing in the world is for this man to devastate his decades-long partner, who is a wonderful person, to be with me?
2) Is there any possibility of this relationship being any good whatsoever, given its weird and destructive beginning? I have no experience with this, having a history of mostly emotionally stable relationships with available partners. Can something so fucked up turn out okay?
I have a tremendous amount of weird hope that this is going to work out great for this man I love so much and me. I want to plunge in and recklessly love him to pieces! I have a bottomless well of goodwill for him, and I’m just waiting for him to come and drink from the well. Should I get my head checked?
Adulterous Dope
Dear Adulterous Dope,
You poor thing. I’m sorry for your heartbreak. There are many questions woven into your letter in regards to how this love tangle you’re in might unknot itself, but you asked me only two, so I’ll get right to them:
- You are not a total scumbag because you think the rightest, truest thing in the world is for this man to devastate his decades-long partner, who is a wonderful person, to be with you, but you are a fool to think that you know what the rightest, truest thing is for anyone but yourself. Your lover must decide if destroying the life he’s made with his wife in order to create a life with you is the rightest, truest thing for him. It might be. It might not be. Your opinion about this matters little. Just as your lover’s wife can’t fully imagine the “years-long lovelovelove” you and her husband have for each other, you cannot fully imagine what goes on between the two of them. It wasn’t a robot who called you up and said he didn’t love you, sweet pea. It was your beloved paramour. He’s mixed up and conflicted—perhaps because he’s scared about all he’ll lose if he ends his marriage; perhaps because he realized he loves his wife in a different and more powerful way than he loves you. Only time will tell which is truer. Meanwhile, there is only the painful information that he has so clearly given you: that, at least for now, he wants to stay with his wife and rebuild his marriage, regardless of his feelings for you.
- Because of this, your second question—about the possibility of your relationship working out given its destructive beginnings—is moot. Of course it can. All sorts of bright shiny couples have emerged from enormous piles of reeking love crap. But it seems to me that you’re the only one stepping out of the dung, sister. That man you love? He isn’t anywhere near the barn. He’s up in the house on the hill, home with his wonderful wife. I’m sorry to say it, but I think you’re going to have to ask a different question, the one only you can answer: how you’re going to live your life without the man you love. This involves some suffering. But you will be okay, dear one. I can see your future okayness so clearly it’s like an apple sitting in my palm. Just do your work and live your life and squall like a monkey until you can’t squall anymore. The good thing about a squall is that it blows all the enormous piles of reeking crap away. It leaves behind only the rightest, truest things.
Yours,
Sugar
***
Dear Sugar,
I’m getting married in July. Why do I feel totally aggressive and angry? How does anyone get through this event?
Aggressive
Dear Aggressive,
My guess is you’re the bride and that you feel aggressive and angry because you’re in wedding planning hell and you’re caught up in all the expectations, outdated fairy tales, overpriced products, and irrational beliefs that one adheres to when one believes it possible to flawlessly orchestrate the behaviors, conversations, drinking habits and outfits of a large group of in-laws, out-laws, friends, strangers and coworkers while simultaneously having a meaningful and intimate exchange with your sweetheart in front of an audience. It is not. Or at least it’s not possible in exactly the way you’re imagining now, sweet pea. I’m quite certain that whatever you’re all worked up about these days—the colors of your napkins, the invitation that should or should not be sent to your mother’s cousin Ray—matters little and whatever will actually happen on that day in July when you get married will positively blow your mind.
Your wedding is going to be a kick, honey bun, but only after you accept that it isn’t something to “get through.” Perhaps it might help to stop thinking about it as the perfect “event,” but rather a messy, beautiful, and gloriously unexpected day in your sweet life. My own wedding was really something, though for a good stretch it appeared that everything had gone to hell. As our one hundred or so guests arrived, it was pouring rain and we’d made no rain contingency plans for our outdoor wedding. Mr. Sugar realized he forgot his pants sixty miles away, back in the city where we lived, and I realized I forgot the marriage license. My mother-in-law arrived dressed like a sheepherder from Biblical times if sheepherders from Biblical times wore teal and one of my old friends pulled me aside to grill me about why I hadn’t chosen her to be a bridesmaid. I couldn’t find the bobby pins I’d brought to pin my veil to my hair and then once other bobby pins had been purchased, in a mad dash relay effort that involved two local drugstores, I and seven of my girlfriends couldn’t get the god damn veil to stay on my head.
Many of those things seemed calamitous at the time, but they are now among my most treasured memories of that day. If they hadn’t happened, I’d have never run down the street in the rain holding Mr. Sugar’s hand laughing and crying at the same time because I was going to have to marry him in a dingy library basement instead of on the banks of a beautiful river. I’d have never felt the way it feels when everyone you know volunteers to drive at an illegal speed to retrieve a pair of pants and a piece of paper. I’d have never known what a Biblical-times sheepherder might look like in teal, or that important piece of information about my old friend. And I wouldn’t have been so distracted by getting those god damned bobby pins in my hair that I didn’t realize the rain had stopped and Mr. Sugar had discreetly enlisted our guests to carry one hundred white wooden chairs a quarter mile, from the terrible library basement back to the grassy spot on the banks of the beautiful river, where I hoped to marry him in the sunlight and did.
We all get lost in the minutiae, but don’t lose this day. Make a list of everything that needs to be seen to and decided and worried about between now and July and then circle the things that matter the most to you and do them right. Delegate or decide on the other stuff and refuse to worry anymore. Let your wedding be a wonder. Let it be one hell of a good time. Let it be what you can’t yet imagine and wouldn’t orchestrate even if you could. Remember why it is you’ve gone to so much trouble that you’ve been driven to anger and aggression and an online advice columnist. You’re getting married, sweet pea! There’s a day in July that’s a shimmering slice of your mysterious destiny. All you’ve got to do is show up.
Yours,
Sugar
24 responses
Ah, love. A blessing and a curse. And, to paraphrase Lucy Van Pelt, all anyone really needs is love, but a little chocolate now and then doesn’t hurt!
Aww! Sugar I love YOU! Great advice and a lovely little story about your wedding day. Thanks for sharing.
I’ve thanked you multiple times already, but I cannot thank you enough. Gorgeous advice and gorgeous writing. Gorgeous woman, even though we don’t know your face.
<3,
Aggressive Kristin
Geez, you made me cry again, but in the most beautiful way.
Your last answer is so perfect and honest and amazing that it makes me want to organize picketing groups for all those big wedding expos with your quotes on the signs.
Why do your supposedly shorter answers hit me just as hard as the longer ones? Because they’re just as honest, true, loving, and compassionate. Me. Crying. (Again).
Thank you.
I love your advise to Crushed. Until you are in, or more likely, until you’re out of an affair, you do not know that it is not only cheating on a spouse, but cheating on a relationship. Things stay shiny and gleaming for far too long, and this makes it all too easy to mistake each other as perfect.
And Adulterous Dope, I feel your pain and I’m sorry, but Sugar is right. It’s been decades for me, and I still get phone calls with the sentiment. Yet he still chooses his wife. I’m so glad I understood long ago that he made his choice and it wasn’t me. It freed me to make my own choice, and it’s not him.
Sugar, you da best. Thanks for writing.
Sugar, life is better with you sprinkled on top. (I happen to know you are in the crust as well)
Ahhhhhh. I’m planning my own wedding right now and that last one made me tear up. As usual. Spot on advice, Sugar. And I am SO happy we are having a destination beach wedding with no wedding party – just family and friends who want to have a vacation with a wedding thrown in. But now I kind of hope something goes just a tad awry . . . for the memories. 🙂
The last reply hit me in a glorious way. My husband and I had the most fantastic, fucked-up, messy, beautiful wedding ever. I tell stories of it to every friend that I find in tears or panic attacks as they plan their weddings.
I’ll share it here, just because I think you’d understand. I’ll share the ‘bad’ things first, cause that’s usually how I do it. Makes the big reveal more fun. ;P
My bride’s maid (my younger sister) was not cleared to fly half-way across the country to be in my wedding, because she was 8 months pregnant. She was 16.
My matron of honor’s dress was discontinued, requiring us to ship it in from another state and have it altered about 6 sizes down…a week before the wedding.
My mother forgot to pay for the wedding dress. She did pay me back.
My mother was ripped off for my flowers. She paid for them and they never arrived- the clerk she paid denied all knowledge of the transaction.
The cake was the wrong cake- wrong colors, wrong insides, delivered without the extras I had paid for like a tablecloth, a knife, a server. They just put it on a table and left.
I was 30 minutes late- due to running out of gas. My cousin drove me to the site and I think we nearly killed a woman in the car next to us who asked why she was so dressed up and she replied, “We’re late to her wedding!” and pointed at me.
When I arrived, I realized that we had forgotten the vows that I had spent months getting perfect.
…We also forgot the computer with all the music.
During the ceremony, my matron of honor realized she’d forgotten the rings in the car and had to run and get them. She then gave the wrong one to the groom’s man and had to exchange them.
Now. All that to share the good.
I was walked down the aisle by my father-in-law, who smiled at me and said, “Just breathe, sweetheart. You’re going to be a great daughter.” Having had no father worth the title, it was all I could do not to cry then.
My mother-in-law folded 1000 origami paper cranes to bless our wedding with good luck. She had a couple extra, and those were our boutineers.
I recited the ceremony from memory (a handfasting/wedding ceremony) with my husband doing a call-and-respond. It was only about 15 minutes long but it made everyone laugh and cry. It was sincere and funny and heart-baring and beautiful and ridiculous and perfect. It was beside a lake and our music was the soft lapping of the water and the calls of birds and frogs.
As we walked toward the reception, a pair of cranes flew across the lake. Our photographer caught a picture. It was sunset and the sky and water were aflame, it reflected in the crane’s white wings.
I never once noticed the rings being confused. I only found out about it upon reviewing the pictures and video and being very, very confused about why I had a vanishing bride’s maid! =P
Our reception was taken up by laughter and bawdy advice. We were teased in good-nature because a topsy-turvy relationship like ours couldn’t have been affirmed any better than a topsy-turvy wedding that was wrong and perfect.
“Z is like a motorcycle with no one on it. Beautiful. Going nowhere.” Brilliant. And Panda, you’re two last sentences were positively Sugar-esque!
“It’s all about love”….a writer friend of mine and I met for coffee this morning and discussed the effects of professional jealousies that you covered in a previous column. And his description of what mattered in life extended more broadly but with a similar perspective.
He said, and I paraphrase, the main difference between landing a six-figure book deal and not is in the quality of drinks you can afford to order when you go to a bar. You still have to get up in the morning, you still have to deal with daily crap. You still have to write and you will probably still have the same insecurities. Your life will be easier financially but unless you were struggling to cover basic needs before, the money isn’t going to make a big difference. It’s all the other stuff–the people, your passions–that will make everything else more vibrant and meaningful.
You really do have a talent, Sugar. And yes, you are right about the motorbike with nobody on it. I might write that on my wall in nail polish. As a reminder. Keep doing the do, my friend and we’ll keep reading.
“Z is like a motorcycle with no one on it. Beautiful. Going nowhere.” Yikes!
This is dead on. Even your short answers hit me in the heart and knock me out. Long live Sugar.
Im so glad i discovered this column, it is so profoundly grounding! Ironically i came across it from googling “Tyra Banks’ Nose-Job”.
I don’t know what I would do without this fucking column in my life.
I’m going to cry for a whole day when you stop writing, Sugar – hopefully a day that is a long, long while in the future. You’ve shared so much of yourself that I (and I suspect, all your other fans) trust you implicitly and the sheer hope that seems to radiate from everything you write seems real and earned and tangible.
PS – That is hilarious and perfect, Rodney. I found Sugar when I had three other tabs of porn up on my screen (I read through the archives instead of coming and cried for an hour.)
This entry totally makes my day.
Oh. My. God. I’ve been reading through your archives, and for the second time in a week you’ve punched me in the gut with insights so trenchant and personal that I can’t avoid facing them.
See, I’m in love with someone who just doesn’t feel the same way about me, who broke things off with me after dating for a year (but then we were back on, and then off, and then on…) I know, *know* that someday he will realize what he’s lost and regret it, but for now.. he needs to be by himself to figure his shit out. Or, he will just keep distracting himself with shiny new toys so that he doesn’t have to. Either way, he won’t be here with me – chooses not to be here with me. And this hurts so very, very much.
I’ve spent the past few months arguing and fighting for our relationship – but he’s already moved on, in his heart. Already let go. You make it so crystal fucking clear. Time for me to let go as well, and move on. Figure out where to go from here, when the person who makes my heart and body sing just doesn’t want to be with me, at least not enough to give up his fantasies about being available for the ‘perfect’ woman who will come along. (the one who makes the small voice inside him say “yes”).
Thank you. For your clarity, your directness. For caring enough that it reaches out across the internet and into my heart and gives me a hug along with the cold truth.
There is another option there for Needs Direction – it may be that her lovely, wonderful 24-year old boy IS committed and isn’t monogamous. Until the conversation actually occurs, it seems like a mistake to me to assume that non-monogamy equals non-commitment for all people. Whether a committed non-monogamy would work for Needs Direction is another question, but be careful of assuming too much. For some of us, commitment is a more varied and complex issue than exclusivity.
Tracey,
Oh, honey. Do I feel your pain. I have been in that hell, that horrible “he dumped me” hell. Allow me to be the person who delivers the stinging, much-needed truth to you before you get even more destroyed by this dude.
He will meet that woman someday. Maybe even soon, now that he’s let a relationship that’s not right for him go and probably knows what he really wants now. I’m sorry that it’s not you. But, baby, it’s not you. And someday, you will meet someone for whom it IS you, who sings and shouts and dances the word YES with every fiber of their being in your presence, and you won’t miss this guy who dicked you around for a year AT ALL because someone who sees you, loves you, and above all, VALUES YOU, will be there in his place.
(Hopefully, you will see yourself, love yourself, and value yourself, too. That’s how you attract someone who is down with your loveliness and won’t play ping-pong with your heart. That’s where you go from here. The land of YOU.)
P.S. Not trying to do Sugar’s job, here, just couldn’t ignore that raw-heartedness from someone who’s in a situation that I’ve lived through, seen both sides of, and could write the travel guide.
i just discovered your column and feel like it’s christmas come early- your loving, empathetic, honest soul is beyond amazing, as is your warm, encouraging, and compassionate writing style. i’m crying, and laughing. thank you so much for all you do.
Thank you, Sugar. I’m getting married soon. Your words will help carry me through.
My second wedding to a man I loved involved quite a few things to be done but I am not a drama queen. The funniest part of the wedding was as I preparing to meet my beloved at the restaurant I was at home and as put hairspray on my head the smell seemed different, It was then that I realized that I had deodorized my hair, and hair sprayed my underarms. It made me laugh so hard and realize that all that matters is that we are marrying each other no one else.
I feel like my future self wrote that last question about getting married in July. Your advice, Sugar, made me cry tears of relief.
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