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Green Tea With Envy
My boyfriend
of 10 months has had a female best friend for six years. They’ve
never dated, but they share many interests. She’s a warm, friendly
person, and I like her, so the three of us hang out occasionally. My boyfriend
also spends a lot of time alone with her, and although he never hides
this, I feel threatened by their relationship. I’ve tried to get
into the stuff they’re interested in -- herbal medicine and crystals
and things -- but really, it would be a feigned interest on my part. I
feel they’re soulmates, and any day, will profess their undying
love for each other -- even though my boyfriend has professed his undying
love for me, and goes on and on about wanting to marry me. Still, last
week, when I watched those two talk at a party, it took everything I had
not to leave in a total rage. Do I tell him how jealous and angry I feel?
Or do I go with my fear that they’ll someday realize they love each
other and break up with him before our relationship goes any further? --Friend Forecaster
It’s the rare dermatologist who throws in a heart transplant with every blackhead extraction. Few car mechanics offer a seaweed facial and a leg wax with every tune-up. Meter maids never wash your car and vacuum the floor mats before they give you a ticket. And, the next time you’re in the emergency room, just try to buy drapes and a coffee table. Sure, they’ll save your sorry life, but they won’t even sell you a plastic pool chair.
Welcome to The Age Of Specialization. These days, it takes more than
one person to meet another person’s needs -- unless that person
has only one need: to sit cross-legged, until they die, in a hermetically
sealed room, staring at the other person. Since you aspire to be one man’s
own personal desert island, you’d better forget about “just
being you.” Consider hiring some writers -- a diverse team -- to
script everything you say and feed it into a little earpiece. Let’s
see -- maybe Chris Rock, Chris Elliott, William Shakespeare, Gore Vidal,
Fran Lebowitz, and the Dalai Lama. Then again, if Shakespeare appears to be between agents, and Chris Rock’s
agent is harder to get on the phone than Shakespeare’s, you could
try acknowledging that nobody can be everything to anybody. In fact, two
people might be more likely to stay together if each occasionally has
something to bring to the relationship that the other didn’t experience
firsthand 10 minutes prior. This notion does go directly against the old
blob-style tradition of relationships, in which two interesting individuals
merge into one increasingly uninteresting couple-mass...eating, sleeping,
moving, and thinking as one. That isn’t love -- it’s solidification.
Instead of living in fear that he’s going to leave you, accept
that he very well might -- for his friend or for one of thousands of other
women who believe that carrying around a pocketful of polished rocks will
lead to more than a trip to the tailor. Chances are, however, that he
thinks you have something they don’t (scientific skepticism, one
would hope). For best results, express your concerns in a soft, sweet
voice, unaccompanied by flying china. To keep your cool, keep this in
mind: His departure, if any, is unlikely to kill you. Well...not unless
he leaves a bunch of pebbles in his wake, and you trip and die of a brain
hemorrhage before you can get to the emergency room to inquire about purchasing
a shower curtain.
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