39 Comments
Mar 7, 2022Liked by Heather Havrilesky

Oh Heather! You did it again, for years I read your column and occasionally even wrote to you bemoaning my own singleness and despairing at what to do. But somewhere along the lines I stopped looking at myself as a problem to be fixed and started thinking about what I felt was lacking and could give myself. I turned 40

last year and man was I bummed out, still not as successful as I wanted to be, as thin or as happy. I had a reality check that I needed to give more of this to myself so I did, I worked hard, and my business started to take off, I invested in myself, eating better, working out and making time to do things I liked. Still it didn’t improve as much as I hoped . Then in September I fractured my skull, I live thousand of miles from home and had to lean on my friends a lot. I realized how lucky I was but still it made me feel lonely that there was no one special to take care of me. Then two months later I went to a friends Halloween party, a man arrived and immediately something in me perked up, my intuition said you just talk to this man. So I did and long story short he’s now my boyfriend and a wonderful one at that. It’s all been so much easier than any of my previous interactions and I understand what people were telling me to hold out for. Why am I sharing this? I think because for a decade I wrote messages to Heather wondering why my life was not what I wanted and when I did bold things and they failed I blamed myself and shrank again but I still did them and in the end things really did turn my way. I just hope anyone reading this can know you can try, you can fail, you can even break your poor head and it will all be ok. Today I wish you all the courage to try, the patience to wait for what you want and the ability to give yourself solace when it does not. And thank you Heather somewhere along the lines your excellent advice sank in.

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Mar 7, 2022Liked by Heather Havrilesky

Best installment ever?????

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Mar 7, 2022Liked by Heather Havrilesky

Once you integrate more daring into your life, it will become so good and sweet and colorful that you will never ever want to go back. Dare now!

And Polly, your book is the best kick-ass book on marriage ever. As a trained shrink, I've read a bazillion things about love and marriage and partnership and blah blah blah. All of them are more related to best practices on how to herd sheep than what marriage is in real life. You remind us that among the daily tedium, there is magic to be found. Reality can actually be sparkling, if you dare look at it directly, as it is. Your book is a poem to love that I devoured in less than 2 days. It will stay on my nightstand forever for all to see. Never stop being who you are.

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Oh the glitter and the glamour, the Sex and the City sparkly nights. My initial reaction reading the OP’s longing was annoyance, until I realized I was rejecting myself. I was a kid growing up next to glitz, reading Los Angeles magazine in my hand-me-downs, dreaming of sexy rich celebrity life. Cartier and Spago and Chanel. And somehow I was lucky enough to swim in those lanes for awhile as a young adult, spending a couple of years partying with stars and eating at the swankiest spots, dancing ‘till dawn with the young A list.

It’s completely empty. It’s a facade, like an Old West movie set. It looks aammaaazing from the outside, but the conversation is not more scintillating, the romance isn’t more scorching, the friendships aren’t more heartfelt. After awhile I hated it, I hated the industry with its superficiality and backstabbing (holy crap does the industry attract narcissists), the same gossip passing along like coins, the pervasive fomo even from the people who have “everything”.

There’s not a better place where everyone is smarter and chic-er and kinder. It’s not NY or London or L.A. And just how witty and stylish do people need to be? Rich people aren’t happier, they just have more stuff. I completely believe the studies that claim that past a level of meeting needs, money brings UNhappiness; the truly rich that I’ve met are not remotely happy, and are made isolated and mistrustful by their wealth.

So before you pack up for Manhattan or wherever, OP, visit in a airb&b for a month or something. See if the rose is really gilded, or if it’s just another place, filled with the same old people and problems. The architecture is awesome, but the rats and roaches are hiding in the corners. When I was young I hated sayings like “bloom where you’re planted” or “where-ever you go, there you are”. I wanted more than this provincial life. Now I think provincial life is pretty cool - but mostly that there’s not provincial life and big-city life…there’s just life.

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Mar 7, 2022·edited Mar 7, 2022

LW, I really want to assure you that by no means are you “behind” by not being settled down approaching 30. I just had my second baby, a week before I turned 38. He took literally a single month to conceive, with no interventions, and he’s totally healthy & perfect.

I met my husband just before I turned 29. Ironically at the time I had decided I was happy alone and didn’t want to get married, but for some reason I agreed to go on a blind date set up by a very new acquaintance who barely knew either of us but decided we should meet. I’d never EVER gone on a blind date in my life and I still don’t know what possessed me to agree to that one.

All this to say, just keep living your life and making progress — the fact that you’re already in therapy to deal with your perfectionism and anxiety is huge. I waited until I was in my mid-30s, had become a high-functioning alcoholic & went through a harrowing period of suicidal ideation, before I realized I needed help. Which brings up another point — finding your person won’t automatically make life perfect (not that you implied it would, I just think it’s important to point out). My husband is the love of my life, my best friend, and the funniest & kindest man. I still needed to sort my own shit out and have a nervous breakdown before I could get to a place of truly being happy and accepting myself.

30 is so so young. Your best years really are still to come, whatever they look like.

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About to turn 42...LW - trust me there are worse ways to wake up than "alone at 40"...my only regret is not spending my 30s figuring out what I wanted for myself and being honest with myself how I really wanted to live. Not just the boxes I felt I had to check. So I ended up in a horrid marriage that luckily blew up epically but set me free. I now live the life I want. From the outside does it look like what you are supposed to want to have? Not particularly. Anyway - whatever it is you truly want for yourself - go after it. It often won't work out. But what I have learned in the 12 since I turned 30 - what is meant for me has always ended up being for me. Just trust the process and keep moving forward.

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It makes me so angry how your book is reviewed. I haven't read it yet because I don't care about marriage, but what's happening to you and your book is not fair. I'd say it's striking a nerve, but that says more about our culture than the book itself. Especially because people only use the book to talk about something bigger - "wife hates husband". Agree with everything you have tweeted. You are an inspiration and our culture sucks and needs to change

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Mar 7, 2022Liked by Heather Havrilesky

had to double-check to see if i didn't write this letter in a fugue state! the writer touched on everything i'm feeling as a woman that just turned 30 while watching all of my family and friends settled down and start families. the monthly reminder that the time to become the one thing i've always wanted to be, a mother, is slowing slipping out of reach. the panic and regret about wasting a whole decade before i can remind myself of all that i gained. trying to psych myself up for another mediocre date with an online dating match whose name i'll 100% forget by the next morning. the fear and self-hatred that keeps me from pursuing men i'm actually interested in because i'm certain they'll find me lacking. the nagging feeling that maybe i've been on my own so long that i won't know how to make room in my life for someone else (sharing a queen size bed with someone - after all this time of taking up as much space as i want?!?)

you're not alone, letter writer. and it was nice to learn that i'm not, either. cheers to trying to figure it all out.

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THIS IS SO TRUE. I spent my 20s, 30s, and 40s failing at ALL THE THINGS.

I founded an alternative artspace in San Francisco with a malignant narcissist, who went apesh!t when I tried to organize a show via a guy who knew Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and burned the project down. I got assaulted by a gang in my cheap and dangerous neighborhood where I lived to afford studio space, and half of my friends ditched me immediately afterward.

I dated a fabulous man who was a perfect partner on paper but I didn't love him, so I moved to Mexico to figure it out, make art and write. I had a torrid affair with a compulsive womanizer who shattered my heart. The art didn't particularly sell, the book didn't find a publisher and the relationship didn't work out. I moved to NYC, couldn't get a job or a gallery, started another artspace, found another relationship; it ALL crashed and burned. I met a guy at 39, had a kid at 41; he turned out to be a man-child who financially and emotionally abused me.

And the failures kept racking up. I'm in my 50s, single mom, no longer a professional artist, struggling to build a business, re-create support networks when friends move away or pass away or drift away, wondering if romance is a thing of the past and if love is a delusion.

AND I HAVE NO REGRETS. All these adventures have been thrilling and intense and fascinating and harrowing and I've learned SO MANY THINGS I didn't know I needed to learn.

Because life is about getting to EXPERIENCE THINGS. All the things. The exhilaration and the misery, the hope and the despair. Experiencing failure is the thing that connects us with our humanity, and with one another.

I look at my old friends who have stable jobs and stable marriages, homes in the suburbs, successful kids and vacation houses, and think, "That wouldn't suit me at all." I'm glad for them, and glad I am NOT them.

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Mar 7, 2022Liked by Heather Havrilesky

STANDING OVATION. I read this one out loud. FUCK YES.

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This is everything I needed today! At the age of 44 I've just suffered my first big 'public' failure (I've failed a million times before in smaller ways but I've always found a way to spin it to not seem so bad, more for me than anyone else that cared). I left a decent job to start a new one which was going to the THE ONE - the big step up, lots more money, profile, responsibility etc, this was going to be the big career move that put me on another level and of course I told everybody. Then something happened that changed it all. I should have started last week and I haven't, and I don't know if I will. I have never felt more of a failure in my entire life and have spent the past two weeks feeling sick, ashamed and convinced that everything I've worked for is lost forever.

So thank you for this, as I read it I literally felt myself coming back to life and the gloom lifting. I'm going to set myself back up for many failures to come.

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Mar 7, 2022Liked by Heather Havrilesky

I listened to your book right away. I laughed. I loved it.

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I bought it, devoured each and every chapter, left a review—I love your book so much! Disney has ruined an entire generation (possibly more!) peddling the “happily ever after” mythological narrative. You are ripping the seams of a collective illusion, exposing the messy machinations of real life struggle. I’m cheering you on and sighing with relief. I’m not alone with wild road trip! I have a hilarious and embarrassing family story that almost ended badly with a taser in Indiana. Anyway— your book is necessary. In a world that loves fantasy and denial no wonder you’re ruffling feathers.

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I really needed this! I moved back home to California last year after living out of state for a decade, and it’s felt like just one disaster after another since I got here. I might even lose the job I moved here for due to backwards California recall politics. I miss my friends and my old apartment. I wonder every day if I made a mistake, but then I think, you know at least I fucking tried! As much as I miss my old life, it wasn’t enough for me. I have a good sense of how my old life would of turned out. Now the future is a little more wide open.

Also I just finished your book! I loved it and laughed out loud so many times reading it.

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I love your dumb book so fucking much, Heather. The whole thing is honest and genius and funny and the second-last paragraph made me cry and cry. I hope your book gets all the readers it deserves.

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My Gawd in Heaven, Heather!

This essay changed my thinking, woman!!!

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