Hi! I’m Freya, the editor of Tough Love, and today I have not one but two exciting announcements.
First: We have merch! A limited number of Tough Love tees have landed in the Free Press store. Click here to order yours today—and if they sell out fast enough, I promise I’ll campaign to add Tough Love caps (and totes and journals??) to the mix.
Second: Do you really want to get your letter in front of Abigail? Well, next week—for one hour only—I’ll be giving advice on how to do just that.
It probably won’t surprise you to learn that Abigail gets way too much mail to be able to read it all herself (you know she’s writing another book, right?) So it’s my job—and my privilege—to go through the Tough Love inbox every week, and pick a handful of letters to send her way. Abigail then chooses who she’ll reply to. I can’t always predict her decision, but if you have questions about getting your letter to her, post them on this thread, in The Free Press Forum. I’ll be answering as many as I can—live!—at noon ET on July 30.
The Forum, like Tough Love, is just for paying subscribers. If that’s not you yet, click here! And if you’re planning to write in, thank you. As I often say to the readers whose letters we publish, the column couldn’t happen without the Free Pressers who are willing to share their deepest worries—and hear some hard truths.
But now, without further ado, it’s time for this week’s installment, in which Abigail politely asks an uncertain man: “Is it possible that you’re just a tad self-involved?” Onward! —Freya Sanders
Abigail,
I have been dating a lovely, nontoxic, 34-year-old woman for six months. Unlike other women I’ve dated in the past, she doesn’t have any apparent red flags. She is an overall wonderful partner. She gave me a mind-blowingly amazing gift for my 40th birthday, the type of gift I’ve always dreamed of: She had contacted all my friends and family (some of whom she didn’t know) and put together a beautiful book with all their nice words about me. She is there for me when I need her. She legitimately wants to hear about my life. She is, objectively, the best partner I’ve ever had. She is also family-oriented, wants children, and shares many of the same values that I do.
So why do I always feel so exhausted and depressed after we hang out?
I sometimes feel like our conversation doesn’t flow as easily as I want it to. I am easily triggered when I say something—anything—that doesn’t get an immediate response, or when we are cooking dinner together and I try to banter but am met with mostly silence. She tells me she needs to focus, that she wants the output of anything she does to be top-notch (and that if we talk too much, it won’t be). But I feel unseen and unheard when my words aren’t being met with more words. I feel the energy spiraling out of me, and I leave our interactions often more depressed than I was before they started.
I want to get married. I want to have a family. I’m nearly 40. But I’m afraid of being trapped in a marriage where I feel like I can’t express myself in the way I typically like to—with consistent conversation. I wonder if I could find someone who would make me happier, who I’d feel more comfortable with. I’ve had that in the past, but other, worse red flags doomed those relationships.
I know I might be the problem here, but I also wonder if getting out is the better strategy. And yet I also worry I will just find a woman who gives me the type of communication I’m looking for but has other challenges—and then I’ll go through the same cycle, all over again.
What should I do?
—Daniel, 39
Daniel,
Allow me to admit: We’ve all been there. We have all said good night to a perfectly good person at the end of a perfectly fine date, wondering why the thought of him elicits less excitement than the prospect of a fresh manicure or the vision, through a store window, of a brightly colored purse. The heart wants what it wants—or else it does not care, as Emily Dickinson once wrote to a friend.
So much voguish relationship lingo swirls inside your head, Daniel. The “nontoxic” girlfriend who presents with no “red flags,” a “wonderful partner,” who also makes you feel “triggered” and “unseen and unheard.” None of it clarifies anything important about your need for love. All of it adds to your confusion.
It brings to mind Walt Whitman’s “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer,” in which the speaker describes proofs and figures “ranged in columns” before him, all “charts and diagrams,” overexplaining everything but illuminating nothing. The solution? Leaving the lecture and staring up in silence at the stars.
