Of course, I didn’t want to get out of the pool then. I swam around and around, circling my mother, as we laughed with joy and surprise, both of us wishing we’d known sooner that all it took for me to do this was for her to let me go. I swam so long that my mother got out while I swam to and fro, from where she sat on one side of the pool all the way over to the other side of the pool, which seemed then impossibly far. When I got there, I’d look back at her and yell, “I’m on the other side of the pool!” And she’d smile and say yes, there I was—all the way over on the other side of the pool!—and then I’d swim back to her and do it all over again.
I think you need to do a little something like my mom did after her weeks of patience, Crowded. You need to fling your sons away from you so they can learn how to swim. You must tell them to move out. They are not ill. They are not in crisis. They are not children. They are two adults capable of providing for themselves. Their bubbles will hold them up. You must demand that they trust that.
When you tell your sons you will no longer allow them to live in your house, it will probably come as a surprise to them. It is a shock to be flung away from the very person to whom one has clung to for so long. But I’m quite certain it will turn out to be a healthy shift for all of you. Much as your sons no doubt love you, it seems clear to me that they don’t see you as truly separate from them. Your needs matter little because it barely occurs to them that you have any. They moved into your house without asking you because they don’t really consider that house yours—they believe it’s theirs too, that they have a right to it because it belongs to you, their mother. Theirs.
They have not separated themselves from you on a fundamental level. They want you to leave them alone and to refrain from telling them how to live, but they have not yet perceived that you have a life of your own too, one that their presence, at this point, thwarts. They don’t yet see you as an adult with a right to privacy and self-determination.
This is not because they are bad men. It’s that they need to go through that final stage of development—one in which the child truly separates from the parent—and it seems they need a push that only you can give. Remember when they were toddlers and everything was “Do it myself! Do it myself!”? I’ve never met your sons, but I’ll guess that like most kids, at a certain stage of development it was important for them to perform tasks that you’d once done for them—opening doors, buckling seat belts, zipping up jackets. Children demand such things because they must, because their very survival depends on their ability to learn how to be self-sufficient.
For a mix of reasons I can only guess at—emotional immaturity, financial stress, your own enabling tendencies, grief over their father, youthful self-absorption—your sons have resisted the final stages of the do it myself impulse that begins in the toddler years. They’ve realized it’s easier to let you do it for them. By asking them to move out of your house, you’re telling them you know that they can do this too. You’re doing your sons a service by asking them to leave. You’re demonstrating your faith in the natural course of things: that they are now capable of thriving without you.
Evicting your sons from your house does not mean you are evicting them from your life. As their mother, what you owe them is unconditional love, emotional support, and respect. Asking them to move out of your house does not mean you will not help them in any number of ways over the years. Your son who’s recently become a father, for example, may particularly need your support as a caregiver to your grandchild.
The point is, you get to choose what you wish to provide when it comes to money and resources now. You raised those boys into men. You paid your dues. It’s time for you to allow your sons to pay theirs. It’s only once you fling them away that they can do this, that they can see how it feels to float, how you look to them from that distance on the other side of the pool.
Yours,
Sugar
THE TRUTH THAT LIVES THERE
Dear Sugar,
I’m a twenty-six-year-old woman who has been married for nine months. My husband is forty. His wedding proposal was terribly romantic, like something out of a movie starring Audrey Hepburn. He is kind and funny. I do love him. And yet …
He’s only the second person I’ve been in a serious relationship with. Throughout the wedding planning process I had second thoughts about settling down so young, but I didn’t want to hurt or embarrass him by calling off the wedding. There are so many experiences I fear I’ll miss out on by staying married to someone older. I want to apply for the Peace Corps, live all over the country, teach English in Japan, and yes, date other people. These are all things I was giving up when I said, “I do.” But it’s only hitting me now.
I feel stuck. I want to leave, but I’m also terrified of hurting my husband, who has been so good to me and who I consider my best friend. Sugar, I’ve always played it safe: I picked the safe major, accepted the safe job, went ahead with the wedding. I’m terrified that leaving my husband will mean I finally have no excuse for why I’m not living the bold, experience-rich life I’ve always dreamed of.
Sugar, please help me.
Playing It Safe
Dear Sugar,
I am a messed-up woman. I bear the scars of much emotional abuse, some physical abuse, and one sexual assault. I have an addictive personality, flirt with anorexia, OCD, and I don’t know what it’s like to live without the flush of adrenaline in my body from chronic stress. I’m vain, self-absorbed, depressed, angry, self-loathing, and lonely. Routinely.
I was raised to think I was a filthy person and God would only love me if I behaved. I mostly behaved. Then I met a man who told me God would love me anyway. I converted to fundamental Christianity and married the man. I was eighteen. That was seven years ago.
He is, for most intents and purposes, a good man. He means well and he loves me, but he suffers from the faults of most young men in our religion: the head-of-household syndrome. I’m expected to be a certain way, so I am. He doesn’t realize he does this unless I tell him, and I’ve stopped bothering to tell him after so many years. But I am not really that person, and the longer we’re married the more trapped and broken I feel about burying the real me, the messed-up person I already described. He knows all my scars, but as a Christian he doesn’t understand mental illness at all. He pleads with me to trust God more. He says if I just try harder, he knows I can get better. He says I have such potential.
I don’t blame him for my discontent (entirely). We were told we were too young to marry, but despite my own misgivings, I married to prove everyone wrong. We’re both incredibly stubborn. I thought if I could be the person I was supposed to be, I would make myself okay. I would be better. It was a lie I told myself.
I love him. I don’t want to hurt him. But I don’t know how to stop this charade, how to heal, or how to make him understand. I spent a week in a psych ward for depression a few years ago because I just needed to put the brake on and knew that the only way to get through to him was something drastic: either I killed myself or I got help. I got help. However, the mask was back in place as soon as I was released, and my therapy was a joke. Nothing changed, and I feel myself reaching the breaking point again. I no longer have any urge to kill myself, and can recognize my own warning signs, but I do need a break. Pretending is tiring. My health has suffered over the past few months. We finally bought our first house, and most days I sit around it weeping.
I have thought of leaving so many times, but I don’t want to hurt him. He has worked hard to allow me to stay home (though we have no children). If I left, he would become a pariah in our church community, where we are currently leaders. I don’t want to do that to him. He does not believe in divorce, unless I cheated on him. I no longer know what I believe. I have tried talking about how I feel before, but we’re on two different planets. If I confronted him about how I feel now, he would feel betrayed by me, and I would feel horrible. He in the past has refused counseling, saying our/my life is great and we don’t
need it, even if I do. My fear is that, as usual, if I say something, we seem better for a time, and the cycle continues. I am tired of the cycle.
Where is the line, Sugar? When you want the life you have to work but it doesn’t, and you aren’t sure it can, and when you want a completely different life, too, which way do you go? Do I stay and rub myself out until maybe I am the person I was always expected to be? Is this just what it means to be an adult? I never had a good example of a marriage until I was already married, in my in-laws, and we do not look like them. But could we, in time? How long do you try?
Signed,
Standing Still
Dear Sugar,
I am a woman in my late twenties who has dated the same guy for almost three years and lived with him for almost a year. All of my friends seem to be getting married, and I feel as though I should be considering marriage too. However, the thought of marrying my boyfriend makes me feel panicky and claustrophobic. He has mentioned once the possibility of us tying the knot, and I think he sensed I was not comfortable discussing it, so he didn’t mention it again.
I’ve not had many boyfriends—one steady relationship in high school, a few very short-lived relationships post-college, and now this one. My boyfriend is the sweetest person you will ever find, and we have some things in common, but I find myself fantasizing about dating other people. I find my respect for my boyfriend waning. I don’t know if this is a temporary feeling, or if this relationship is not meant to continue for the long term. I’m bored with him and I’m afraid I will get more bored as time goes on. I’m also afraid that there really is no one better out there for me, that I should be grateful for what I have, and that anyone I would be seriously interested in would be unlikely to be interested in me in the same way (seems to be the case, judging from experience). I hate feeling like I’m doing my boyfriend a disservice by not loving him as much as he loves me.
What do I do, Sugar?
Signed,
Claustrophobic
Dear Women,
I chose to answer your letters together because placed alongside each other I think they tell a story complete enough that they answer themselves. Reading them, it occurred to me that allowing you to read what others in a similar situation are struggling with would be a sort of cure for what ails you, though of course I have something to say about them too. I struggled with these very questions mightily in my own life, when I was married to a good man whom I both loved and wanted to leave.
There was nothing wrong with my ex-husband. He wasn’t perfect, but he was pretty close. I met him a month after I turned nineteen and I married him on a rash and romantic impulse a month before I turned twenty. He was passionate and smart and sensitive and handsome and absolutely crazy about me. I was crazy about him too, though not absolutely. He was my best friend; my sweet lover; my guitar-strumming, political rabble-rousing, road-tripping sidekick; the co-proprietor of our vast and eclectic music and literature collection; and daddy to our two darling cats.
But there was in me an awful thing, from almost the very beginning: a small, clear voice that would no, no matter what I did, stop saying go.
Go, even though you love him.
Go, even though he’s kind and faithful and dear to you.
Go, even though he’s your best friend and you’re his.
Go, even though you can’t imagine your life without him.
Go, even though he adores you and your leaving will devastate him.
Go, even though your friends will be disappointed or surprised or pissed off or all three.
Go, even though you once said you would stay.
Go, even though you’re afraid of being alone.
Go, even though you’re sure no one will ever love you as well as he does.
Go, even though there is nowhere to go.
Go, even though you don’t know exactly why you can’t stay.
Go, because you want to.
Because wanting to leave is enough. Get a pen. Write that last sentence on your palm—all three of you. Then read it over and over again until your tears have washed it away.
Doing what one wants to do because one wants to do it is hard for a lot of people, but I think it’s particularly hard for women. We are, after all, the gender onto which a giant Here to Serve button has been eternally pinned. We’re expected to nurture and give by the very virtue of our femaleness, to consider other people’s feelings and needs before our own. I’m not opposed to those traits. The people I most admire are in fact nurturing and generous and considerate. Certainly, an ethical and evolved life entails a whole lot of doing things one doesn’t particularly want to do and not doing things one very much does, regardless of gender.
But an ethical and evolved life also entails telling the truth about oneself and living out that truth.
Leaving a relationship because you want to doesn’t exempt you from your obligation to be a decent human being. You can leave and still be a compassionate friend to your partner. Leaving because you want to doesn’t mean you pack your bags the moment there’s strife or struggle or uncertainty. It means that if you yearn to be free of a particular relationship and you feel that yearning lodged within you more firmly than any of the other competing and contrary yearnings are lodged, your desire to leave is not only valid, but probably the right thing to do. Even if someone you love is hurt by that.
It took me ages to understand this. I still can’t entirely explain why I needed to leave my ex. I was tortured by this very question for years because I felt like such an ass for breaking his heart and I was so shattered I’d broken my own. I was too young to commit myself to one person. We weren’t as compatible as we initially seemed. I was driven by my writing, and he begrudged my success in equal measure to his celebration of it. I wasn’t ready for long-term monogamy. He grew up upper middle class and I grew up poor and I couldn’t keep myself from resenting him for that. My mother died and my stepfather stopped being a father to me and I was an orphan by the age of twenty-two and reeling in grief.
All of these reasons are true enough in their specificity, but they all boil down to the same thing: I had to leave. Because I wanted to. Just like all of you do, even if you aren’t ready to do it yet. I know by your letters that you each have your own lists, but all those words on all of those lists boil down to one that says go. I imagine you’ll understand that at some point. That when it comes down to it, you must trust your truest truth, even though there are other truths running alongside it—such as your love for the partners you want to leave.
I’m not talking about just up and walking out on your partners the moment the thought occurs to you. I’m talking about making a considered choice about your life. I desperately wanted to not want to leave my ex-husband. I agonized in precisely the ways you are agonizing, and I shared a fair piece of that struggle with my ex. I tried to be good. I tried to be bad. I was sad and scared and sick and self-sacrificing and ultimately self-destructive. I finally cheated on my former husband because I didn’t have the guts to tell him I wanted out. I loved him too much to make a clean break, so I botched the job and made it dirty instead. The year or so I spent splitting up with him after I confessed my sexual dalliances was wall-to-wall pain. It wasn’t me against him. It was the two of us wrestling together neck-deep in the muckiest mud pit. Divorcing him is the most excruciating decision I’ve ever made.
But it was the wisest one too. And I wasn’t the only one whose life is better for it. He deserved the love of a woman who didn’t have the word go whispering like a deranged ghost in her ear. To leave him was a kindness of a sort, though it didn’t seem that way at the time.
It wasn’t until I’d been married to Mr. Sugar a few years that I truly understood my first marriage. In loving him, I’ve come to see more clearly how and why I loved my first husband. My two marriages aren’t so different from each other, though there’s some sort of magic sparkle glue in the second that was missing in the first. Mr. Sugar and my ex have never met, but I’m ce
rtain if they did they’d get along swimmingly. They’re both good men with kind hearts and gentle souls. They both share my passions for books, the outdoors, and lefty politics; they’re both working artists, in different fields. I argue with Mr. Sugar about the same amount as I did with my former husband, at a comparable velocity, about similar things. In both marriages there have been struggles and sorrows that few know about and fewer still were and are capable of seeing or understanding. Mr. Sugar and I have been neck-deep together in the muckiest mud pit too. The only difference is that every time I’ve been down there with him I wasn’t fighting for my freedom and neither was he. In our nearly sixteen years together, I’ve never once thought the word go. I’ve only wrestled harder so I’d emerge dirty, but stronger, with him.
I didn’t want to stay with my ex-husband, not at my core, even though whole swaths of me did. And if there’s one thing I believe more than I believe anything else, it’s that you can’t fake the core. The truth that lives there will eventually win out. It’s a god we must obey, a force that brings us all inevitably to our knees. And because of it, I can only ask the three of you the same question: Will you do it later or will you do it now?
Yours,
Sugar
TOO MUCH PAINT
Dear Sugar,
Up until a few months ago, my dating life was always sort of black and white. I’ve either been in a serious, monogamous relationship or I’ve dabbled around with one-night stands or random, no-strings-attached romps with platonic male friends. Recently, I’ve entered the strange and magical world of casual, nonmonogamous dating. I’ve met a few guys who I enjoy on an intellectual level, as well as sexually. I’m learning a lot about my own sexuality through interacting with distinctly different partners, and I feel like I’m finally discovering that part of myself, which is awesome.