Most of the email I get from readers here is asking for advice, so this was very different.
Amy was very direct. She told me she had started reading my articles a couple of years ago when her marriage was falling apart. She’s 28 now and divorced from a man she said was a terrible choice for her.
As she continued reading what I write — about love and life and my own needs — she started wondering if she and I might be interested in each other.
“I know this is very presumptuous,” she wrote, “but when I read about what you want in a wife and a family, I keep thinking we want the same things. But you’ve made it obvious you still hold love for someone from your past. I don’t know if you’re willing to find someone else yet, so I thought I’d ask.”
Amy had a number of interesting and insightful questions. With her permission, I’m sharing some of our correspondence with you.
Shame almost got me fired — and shame still haunts me years later
How do we often know things which we shouldn’t really know?
I feel anger and hurt, but I mostly wonder how I came from this man
We’re neither friends nor enemies, just strangers who share the past
Society needs storytellers to help make sense of a changing world
My bad teen poetry suggests I’ve always hungered for missing love
‘This path leads to somewhere I think I can finally say, I’m home’
When love finally dies, it’s like a fever breaks and the pain is gone