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David McElroy

making sense of a dysfunctional culture

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My best advice: Choose the person you don’t want to live without

By David McElroy · September 12, 2013

I love you

You might be surprised how much email I get from people looking for advice about how to choose between two romantic choices. It all started last summer after I wrote about the dangers of losing both romantic choices if you refuse to make a choice. I had no idea this was such a common issue.

I wrote that article last year after meeting a young woman named Ashley who was trying to decide between two men who both loved her. With most articles I write, a piece will get a huge readership in the first week if it’s ever going to become well-read, but then it doesn’t get a lot of readership after its first few weeks. A popular article might have thousands of readers in its first week and then almost nobody in the months to come. The article about choosing between two loves was very different.

That article wasn’t one that was passed around and linked by hundreds on Facebook, but it’s attracted a steady stream of people reading it every single day since then. Even after a year, it’s a rare day when that article isn’t read at least 50 times. And people almost always find it through search engines. Just to grab one random search string that brought someone to the page on Wednesday: “how to choose between two women you love.”

I’ve been thinking about this a lot this week because of a particular email I got from a young man last week. We’ll call him Ben, although that’s not his real name. Ben told me — at length — about the two women in his life. One is his current girlfriend and another is a long-time friend who’s been more than just a friend. Ben and the current girlfriend are “taking a break” for him to think about what he wants.

I noticed something interesting as Ben described the two women. His current girlfriend sounds really impressive. She sounds like the sort of woman who you’d like to take with you if you were interested in impressing your friends and family. But when he describes her, it’s almost as though he’s reading someone’s resume and expecting for us all to be impressed. He sounds almost as though he wants himself to be impressed with her. He sounds as though he admires her and is impressed with her in some respects, but he didn’t talk about anything that sounded like a real sense of connection.

When Ben talked about the other woman, he talked more about how they personally connect. She doesn’t seem to have the “impressive” attributes that the first woman does. She might be more flawed, but she also has more future possibilities for growth, according to Ben. With this one, Ben talked about their shared interests and the things they like to do together, whereas he mentioned that the other woman wants him to do things he doesn’t enjoy.

What would you tell Ben? You don’t know much about the women involved, and I’m not going to give too many details here since it’s Ben’s private life. But even with what little I’ve told you from what Ben wrote to me, doesn’t it seem pretty clear that he already knows which one he really wants?

In the article about Ashley, I told the story of what I did in a somewhat similar situation five and a half years ago. (I’ll let you read that for yourself if you’re interested in seeing how badly I messed up. Being honest about my own mistakes seems to make people believe I could have insight for them. I hope they’re right.) I had two women who loved me. I knew who I wanted to marry, but I didn’t want to hurt the other woman — and I think that’s a key to a choice like this.

I told myself five and a half years ago that I didn’t know what to do. When I look back on it, I did know what to do. There was one woman who I didn’t want to hurt. There was another woman who I didn’t want to live without. I couldn’t achieve both of those goals, so I ended up hurting them both and losing them both.

I think your heart usually knows what you really want. Your head might have a different agenda, but I think the heart is generally wiser. The heart usually knows that there’s one of your choices who you truly don’t want to live without — even though making that choice might mean hurting someone else.

So what happened to my feelings about the two women who I lost? As for the one I didn’t want to hurt, I haven’t heard from her in four and a half years. I don’t know what’s going on in her life and that’s fine with me. I liked her as a person and enjoyed her at times, so I wish her well. But my life hasn’t been changed by having her out of my life.

As for the one I should have married, I think about her every single day. I can’t help it. You could argue that there’s no telling what would have happened if we had married. Maybe we would have had trouble. Maybe, but my heart believes that we would have worked out our issues and been fine. My head and my heart agree that my life would have been better with her in it, and I even think her life would have been better with me in it.

I should have asked myself a simple question five years ago: Who do you not want to live without?

The answer would have been clear. It would have required me to hurt someone (who was going to be hurt in the long run anyway). But it would have been the right question to ask — and my heart knew the answer, even if it didn’t like what the truth required doing in regard to the woman I didn’t want to hurt.

So I would ask Ben who he doesn’t want to live without. He’s still young, so it’s possible that he can envision his life without either of these women. Maybe they’re not important enough to him. But when I read what he has to say about the two women, it sounds as though he can envision living without the first woman more easily than he can envision living without the second one in the long run.

Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe he would answer the question differently. But I think it’s the right question to ask. I think the answer would tell him the truth about what he really wants.

I never again heard from Ashley — the young woman in last year’s story — so I don’t know whether she made a wiser choice than I did. I hope she did. And I hope Ben comes up to a decision that will save him from looking back in the future and regretting living without the one he doesn’t want to live without.

Good luck, Ben.

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On a live awards show Sunday night, one man made a joke about a female celebrity. The husband of the celebrity was offended and hit the man who made the joke. Or maybe it was staged for entertainment. Who knows? Who cares? Social media is full of discussion — and even arguments — about this idiocy today. This baffles me. Let’s assume for a moment that the event happened as reported. People have been having such idiotic fights ever since there have been humans. Half the bars in the world see such brief dustups regularly. It simply doesn’t matter. The fact that so many people believe they need to talk about this — or even need to have opinions about it — is more evidence of the bizarre media brainwashing that convinces many to care passionately about brain-dead trivia. Your life will be happier and saner if you focus on yourself, your family and your friends, not on whatever scripted (or spontaneous) bilge that the media wants to pipe into your home.

I’m in the middle of migrating this website to new servers this week. This means you might encounter some unexpected behavior until I get all the bugs worked out. Clicking on my links (including this one) might cause your browser to give you the message that it’s a site without a current security certificate. It’s not actually unsafe, but there’s something which isn’t yet set up for the security certificate. I apologize for any such errors you might encounter while the process is going on. If you notice any problems with content which didn’t migrate properly, I would appreciate you letting me know the details at davidmcelroy@mac.com. Thanks for your patience.

I often wonder what animals think when they look at us and consider the society we’ve created. Yes, I know this is fanciful and unrealistic, but what if they could? Would they be astounded at how we treat each other? Would they be disgusted by the ugliness and pettiness which fill so many of our daily interactions? The truth is that I’m feeling pretty disgusted with humanity tonight. I made the mistake of reading some online interactions that I should have avoided — and it sickened me. The people involved appeared to be vile and stupid and arrogant. I wish I could pretend they’re a tiny minority, but I know better. It’s times such as this when I most need to escape much of “civilization” and disconnect from their world. If humans are going to be worthy of “ruling this planet,” we have a lot of growth to do. And I fear that growth is nowhere in sight. So my buddy Thomas, above, and all of his friends would be right to judge us harshly — and to think, “Why do you folks get to be in charge?”

I should have expected this, but I honestly didn’t. The article I wrote last week about disagreements over treatment for autistic children brought me angry emails. You could almost call it “hate mail.” Of the five emails about it so far, two have been to tell me that I’m wrong to even listen to critics of the most popular therapy for autistic children — and the other three tell me I’m wrong for not condemning the treatment as the “obvious” abuse it is. If you read the article, you know I didn’t take a position on the issue, because I simply don’t know enough to have an opinion. But by talking about the issue, I stepped into a heated controversy. The emails from the two sides convinced me of nothing. But they did give me even more empathy for the unfortunate parents who have to figure out for themselves where the truth lies for their children.

Have you ever had what you thought was a new idea — and then discovered that “old you” had the same idea years ago? I had that experience tonight. And it’s been wonderful. I came up with an idea tonight for a very short satirical film that would be a promotion for a fictitious college. The point is to make the college promote — as good things — everything which is actually terrible about most modern colleges. Then I remembered a fake college that I invented back when I was in college. I had created student recruitment brochures and various newsletters back then, so I decided to call my “new” college by the same name I’d invented years ago: Ochita College. As I searched my computer for any old material I might still have about Ochita from the past, I discovered an email I sent to someone in 2009 — outlining essentially the same idea which I came up with tonight. Since I didn’t remember writing that, it felt like magic. So my next film project just might be this one instead. If all goes well, you might soon see “Ochita College: Your Future Starts Here.” This should be fun.

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