Salon Columnists | The woman I love is a Gingrich conservative

About a year ago I met the woman of my dreams -- witty, creative, beautiful -- and we fell in love with each other. The trouble is, we're completely different. I'm a liberal, she's a Gingrich conservative. I'm outgoing, she's more inward, more contemplative and a lot shyer. She functions during the day, I at night. She needs a lot of sleep, I don't. And she's so restricted, all the time. Some of these are very abstract things, except when you fight about them all the time.

On New Year's Eve, we decided we needed space. We tried breaking up, and it didn't work. We needed each other too much. Then things got so bad that we couldn't function and we split for three days. We got back together again for two wonderful weeks, and everything was wonderful. Then the fighting started. And it was too much for me to handle.

I am too tired, too hurt from all the fighting. I am still very much in love with her, and she with me. But we can't go on like this. Is there a chance left for us to be happy together? Dude, I would appreciate your input.

Rob

Dear Rob,

If you can't go on like this, then you can't go on. Fighting with the one you love isn't a good way of life. If you two feel that you need each other, I have to wonder what you need each other for. I recommend giving up this romance that has caused you so much pain. Give it up as you'd give up a bad gin habit: Each day you go without her makes it easier to go without her another day.

Dear Mr. Blue,

I just turned 27 years old and have been involved for 16 months with a girl I went to college with. I tell her I love her, though I very seldom feel that I do, yet I cling to her like a scared child. I feel like we looked at each other and said, "Hey, we're in love, let's get married, that's it." Sometimes I feel we're in love and would have a good life together, other times it feels horribly staged and phony. There is another woman I've been crazy about for six years, who plays me hot and cold. Won't return my calls for two weeks and then we'll see each other, then not see each other for an entire year and then do the same thing all over again. Should I break up with my girlfriend and wait for the other woman to come around? Is it normal to feel so dreadfully ambiguous about one's relationship?

Stuck

Dear Stuck,

You've crossed the borders of ambiguity and entered the land of active resistance, and you've rekindled this old flame in order to scorch yourself loose of the new girlfriend whom you have promised more than you can deliver. Don't promise her any more. Let your old proclamations of love cool off. Tell her you're scared. Tell her you feel like a phony. You don't have to be dramatic about breaking up. Just be a friend and don't play her along.

Dear Mr. Blue,

I'm a copy editor trapped in the job of a reporter. I enjoy writing, but I don't like reporting: For me, story generation is like crawling across Belgium, and picking up the phone to call a source is like putting contact lenses in for the first time. I'm really struggling in my job. But the local newspapers don't seem to value good copy editing. I could try to move into magazine or book publishing, but I have no desire to live in New York City. I think freelance writing would be like reporting except scarier, and I'd burn my eyes out with hot pokers before taking a job in public relations.

Directionless

Dear Directionless,

A talented copy editor can find work, believe me. There is a dearth of them, and good ones can work freelance from almost anywhere via fax and phone and FedEx. But you have to be good: the sort who picks up typos and grammatical glitches and flabbiness and unclarity like a magnet picks up iron filings. Writers recognize these people instantly, as do editors, and so they're in demand. You're needed, like a good plumber is, and now you just need to advertise.

Dear Mr. Blue,

Since I was 10 or 11, I've been having a recurring dream, which threatens to undo me. The one constant in the dream is a lovely girl with mocking eyes who, unlike the others of her tribe, has no interest in learning how to fly. She stands and laughs as I try to teach her.

I've spent thousands of hours over the past several years fitting this dream woman out with all the details of a life. And I've gotten so carried away with thinking about her (and her ups and downs and friends and enemies and the crime her boyfriend is bent on committing and how she's dealing with the baby that's due in four months and so on and on) that it is liable to hurt my livelihood. Last Sunday, I got up around 7 a.m. and immediately started thinking about "Intermingled Emily." After a while my stomach growled and I looked at the clock and realized I'd been sitting daydreaming for more than 10 hours. Lately she's all I think about. If I weren't writing you this letter, I'd be thinking of her now.

I'm finding that playing with an imaginary person in my mind is a hard habit to break. It's harder than quitting drinking. I have a social life and a decent career, good friends, a girlfriend, but what to do?

Obsessed

Dear Obsessed,

Maybe you're a novelist who hasn't felt the need to take the final step and write down the story. Maybe you're a full-fledged lunatic. In either case, the dream does you no harm, it seems, except to eat up acres of time. My gosh, to be able to sit and daydream for 10 hours straight is a tremendous feat of imagination. I don't know a single soul capable of that. It is a useless feat, but then how useful is most writing? One man's dream is another man's boredom, but I say, enjoy it, if it's enjoyable. If, in a few years, you should find yourself living alone in a bus at the end of a long dirt road, a bus full of empty bean cans and populated by cats, where you sleep in a refrigerator carton, write to me again, but so long as you have a girlfriend and a social life and do your job, what's the harm?

Dear Mr. Blue,

I'm a female grad student in literature who's studying for comps. Last summer I taught literature and creative writing to underprivileged high school students and really enjoyed it. One book in particular ("Ellen Foster" by Kaye Gibbons) opened up one of my students, who confessed to me that she had been raped as a child and hadn't told anyone. I got her into counseling, helped her to start writing about her experiences and guided her toward going to college.

Trouble is, she lives in the same town I do and has taken to dropping by unannounced. She brings me gifts, tells me I saved her life and calls me quite often. She's not stalking me or anything, but I've felt tremendous guilt over my sudden change of feelings. At first I wanted to help her, now I want her to go away and live her life with her newfound knowledge. Will I ever make it as a teacher?

Studying like mad in PA

Dear Studying,

It's in the nature of teaching that you will be a surrogate mother and aunt and sister to emotionally needy students, one after another, and surely you'll do what you honestly can do for them. God seems to lead people into teaching who have that capacity and to reroute the arrogant jerks into radio, or politics, or surgery. Children are terribly sensitive, and a calm word of advice, some praise and recognition, can turn a person's life around. We all know that's true. I had teachers who I admired so much and who, simply by extending themselves a little and being friendly for a few minutes here and there, levitated my feet off the ground. But you can't pick a person up and carry her. You can't impersonate a friendship. You can only do what you can do, and as a teacher, you'll always be struggling to know what that is and what the limits are.

N E X T+P A G E +| You could sign on as a seaman on a tramp steamer, but a therapist with a box of Kleenex might be more practical