News — Self-Help

After nearly eighteen years of a fairly stable relationship, I learned that my husband had begun an affair with a girl thirty years his junior.  Stunning for anyone, yes, but more so was that my partner, whose judgment I had always respected, confessed that he and the girl had actually never met.  Several sites linking her to German porn made no difference; he was convinced she was his soulmate and promised to marry her within two weeks of their email correspondence.   A few months into the rocky navigation of all attempts to save a doomed marriage, my son's best friend shot himself in the head...

Like everything unknown and in the future, I had romantic visions of parenthood.  Having traveled all over the world, experienced all sorts of people, culture, and heartbreak by the time I was 22, I envisioned the awesomeness of sharing my life experiences with my daughter and son.  I had really lived my life, gathered wisdom beyond my years, and was ready to be a parent.  I had so much to share with these future children of mine, and would be better than most at making sure they were happy, and was sure I could somehow prevent them from experiencing some of the more...

When you are someone who manages to get along with practically everyone, it’s unnerving to meet a person that you just can’t seem to budge. The other day, a good friend and I were having lunch in a local cafe, and the subject of dealing with impossible people came up. A couple of years earlier, she’d had a fluke accident after her Rhodesian Ridgeback dog had spotted a deer in the backyard, lunged at it, and dragged my friend along with her. Sylvia ended up with a broken hip, and in the hospital and rehab for months. During her stay,...

Date someone after you've been out of the country for a year and starved for intellectual companionship. Even though he's kind of dumpy, wears the same pair of too-tight black Levis for weeks on end, and sports a hairpiece at the age of 30, convince yourself that he’s attractive enough.  When you first take a shower at his house, ask for a towel.  When he gives you a shredded orange rag from the floor of his closet, pretend that it’s funny. Ditto for the t-shirt covered with dog fur.   Pretend the pyramid of dirty tissues you find is amusing...

I found myself (not so) suddenly single – technically, “without a partner” is more accurate – in the summer of 2014. Those who have gone through something similar know about all of the stress that goes along with a rather ugly end to a marriage that lasted more than a decade. It was a deep shock to my system, without question the worst thing I had ever had to deal with in my life, though I would soon come to see that it was better than continuing to struggle in a relationship that had become severely toxic.   I was...