Relationships
I will be out of the office for the rest of the week. Yes, vacation.
But I’m leaving you with …
1. A new podcast episode featuring a recent high school graduate who explains how not to break up with someone before college. It’s a funny and relatable story about how this young woman was dumped by her now-ex-boyfriend, a senior, one year ago – and how it all went down right before prom.
There are feelings, lessons, questions, and, with some perspective, a lot of laughter. This guest does a beautiful job philosophizing about how high school relationships can be so important and temporary at the same time.
2. An update from a 2019 letter writer who wrote to us about a relationship that seemed to be ending. The headline was, “It’s hard to break up after so much history.” Turns out, sometimes the best way to save a relationship is to write to an advice column, and then show your partner the letter. The update:
Hi Meredith,
I’ve thought about your response a lot over the years and wanted to say thanks.
In your reply, you suggested that in a lot of ways, my initial letter was basically me practicing my breakup pitch to my boyfriend, so in kind of a weird fit of desperation, I just … showed the entire Love Letters post to him.
We read it out loud, discussed your very thoughtful response, and then went through every comment. We cried some, laughed a lot more, and ultimately decided that we both really needed to be in individual therapy. We both had to grow up a lot faster than we would have liked, and that pressure made it hard to just relax into being who we wanted to be as adults, both on our own and together. I wanted to feel silly and 20-something, not because of something I needed from him, but because neither of us ever really had that chance.
I’m thrilled to share that we are very happily married. We found a huge amount of joy in rewriting and reclaiming our goofy falling-in-love days. I was hurting when I wrote to you back then, but your guidance really made a difference. My husband is wonderful, and I am so so proud to be married to him. We, of course, will both keep working on all the flaws we have, but we are a perfect fit for each other. I am also not nearly as horrible of a person as some of the comments made me out to be, I promise. There was no cheating, no boredom, no rom-com obsession, just some really hard life stuff. Thank you to everyone who encouraged me to get some more support in my corner.
One commenter asked why I couldn’t just be a silly-20 something with my now-husband — they were absolutely right. We gave ourselves permission to take adventures and chase the life we wanted for a few years before getting married, and it worked. It turns out the “story” I was looking for (meeting your husband in college and not realizing it, standing by each other even when things got really rough, and getting to fall in love all over again) actually has a pretty great ending.
Thanks again,
(Happily) Stuck on the Past
Have a great rest of the week. Remember, I would love to read your relationship questions. Send me some good letters to the form or to [email protected] to ponder while I sit in a beach chair.
– Meredith
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