Dear Sugars,
I’m a 22-year-old man who is soon graduating from college. I have a job lined up, I’m creatively fulfilled, healthy, physically fit and surrounded by friends and family who are supportive of me. I’ve been in a relationship for the past 18 months with a woman who was my best friend for a few years before we began dating. We come from completely different cultural and religious backgrounds, but we’ve agreed to work through our differences together. I’m totally in love with her, but there’s one problem: For some time now, I’ve felt unimportant and excruciatingly lonely. I’m not being treated the way I want to be treated.
When we argue it ends with me being apologetic and sad and with her acting aggressive and angry. I frequently feel as if I’m walking on eggshells around her whims. I struggle to articulate my needs and feelings, but when I do, I’m careful with my words because I fear her reaction.
Our conflicts tend to follow a pattern: I repress my feelings and deflect my emotions until I finally tell her how her behavior makes me feel, then she snaps, puts distance between us, and follows with hurtful texts, emails or simply silence. Because I experience severe anxiety, the silence especially feels like an abyss.
Is this normal? I’ve suggested counseling, so she has a safe space to unpack habits she picked up from a physically abusive childhood, which I understand might be the reason she is the way she is when we argue, but she’s not receptive to the idea. I love her, but I don’t know what else to do. Any advice? — Lonely Lover
Cheryl Strayed: The most important sentence in your letter is this: “I’m not being treated the way I want to be treated.” Its clarity is far more meaningful than your love for your partner, which is quite frankly beside the point. Love is almost always present, even in the most abusive relationships. But it must not be the gauge by which you measure the merits of this (or any) relationship. You know what should be? How you’re being treated. When you’re being treated badly, there are only two reasonable things to do: end the relationship or convince your partner to stop doing it. You’ve already attempted the latter. You’ve repeatedly told your partner that her behavior upsets you and she hasn’t changed. You suggested she see a therapist and she declined. So now it’s on you, Lonely Lover. Do you want to continue having an intimate relationship with a woman who makes you feel “unimportant and excruciatingly lonely”? Let the answer to that question be your guiding light.
Steve Almond: Here’s another sentence worth repeating: “I’m totally in love with her, but there’s one problem: I feel unimportant and excruciatingly lonely.” I’m specifically interested in how the two parts of this sentence are interacting. Why would you be “totally in love” with someone who makes you completely miserable? That’s the central mystery here. You already know what you need to do about this relationship. It’s explained in black and white in your letter. What really matters here — the work you have to do — resides in finding a new way to experience romantic love. I say this because the real danger here, Lonely Lover, is that you’ll simply find another partner who treats you the same way. Love isn’t supposed to be easy. It’s an imperfect struggle to be seen and heard. You don’t need a partner who’s perfect. But you do deserve one willing to be in that struggle with you.
CS: You ask us if your dynamic with your partner is normal. It isn’t, if by normal you mean healthy. In healthy relationships, one partner doesn’t feel as he or she is walking on eggshells around the other. One isn’t fearful to express concerns or feelings. Steve’s right: relationships aren’t easy. They’re often full of conflict and annoyance and struggles to understand one another. But healthy relationships don’t make us feel disregarded and lonely, at least not for long. You say you and your girlfriend have agreed to work through your differences together, but you describe a woman who is unwilling or unable to have a simple conversation about them. See the truth in your own words, Lonely Lover, not ours. You don’t have to stop loving your partner if you decide to break up with her. It’s clear she has healing to do and, if she decides to make efforts to do that, you can support her as a friend. But you don’t have to continue being emotionally victimized by her. You can wish her well while opting to distance yourself.
SA: Obviously, you get to decide whether to end this relationship. It may be that you’re able to tell your partner how you feel in the relationship, and something will shift — within her and between the two of you. That could happen. But if it doesn’t, you need to remember that breaking up isn’t something you’re doing to punish her, but to save yourself. My hunch is that your partner hasn’t fully processed the trauma she suffered as a child. Thus your conflicts reawaken that trauma, without even meaning to. She’s not ready to be in the kind of relationship you need. I suspect that confronting this truth makes you feel all kinds of guilty, as if you’re abandoning someone who needs your help. But you have to recognize that her struggles to treat you with kindness and respect were ordained by her past, not created by your present. There’s nothing you can do for her until she’s ready to deal with the open wounds of her history. The best you can do is to be honest with her, and with yourself, about your need to find a romantic love that nurtures you, that empowers you, that makes you feel important and excruciatingly seen.
