“Should I Dump This Guy?”

You know exactly what you want right now, and it has nothing to do with who you’re dating.

The Lovers (1929), Yves Tanguy

Dear Polly,

Should I dump this guy I’ve been dating for three months?

I just turned 30 a few months ago. Transparently, my twenties kind of sucked. I was in a career path I didn’t like. I was living in a West Coast city I loved, but left during the pandemic, and despite many opportunities, never returned to. Honestly, I just kind of burned out. I had a lot of promise and little to show for it. I spent a lot of my twenties depressed and angry. I kept leaving jobs, kept traveling non-stop, kept having optionality at the front of my brain. I wanted to be a writer, it’s all I want, to write and make great art, but I have little to show for it.

Last year, after a lifetime of being mostly single, I fell for a bearded guy I met when I showed up three hours late to a bar crawl. It felt like I was in “Before Sunrise,” but he was dealing with a lot of family tragedy and it didn’t matter how many times he biked me five miles out of his way so I wouldn’t go home alone, he was never mine. Meeting him inspired me to get more in life. After working hard and saving a bunch, I decided to quit and walk away from my shitty career. I didn’t know what I was going to do next, I just knew… not this.

Right after I quit, bearded guy sat me down and told me, after hours of me waffling on what I should do next, that maybe my life was somewhere else, that I had been everywhere and done everything, and maybe the braver thing would be to commit and really be where I was. That I had so much where I was and he couldn’t believe I couldn’t see it. Then he told me he didn’t want to date me. Again.

I traveled, then I crashed out and got severely depressed. It took me four months to realize what I’d done — that my career prospects had been limited, that I would have been better served getting a promotion, that I would have been better served doing anything else. That I’d essentially fallen in love with a friend who didn’t want to be with me. I completely fell apart.

I spent the next few months getting back to myself. I went on meds. I took a meditation class. I started working one day a week at a pie shop. I got a consulting gig. I started a weekly illustrated blog. I draw every day. I have a list of 387 reasons my life is good. I joined a cycling team. I got a desk at a co-working space. I started to realize my life, which included lots of friends and some savings and a family that loved me and a life in a bikeable, affordable city with a giant arts scene and space where I could work part time, actually wasn’t all that bad. And in the middle of it all, I started going out with a guy I met last summer at a group bike ride. I wasn’t planning on dating, it just… happened.

New guy is great. He is funny and sweet. The sex is impeccable, best I’ve ever had. I like cuddling with him. He understands my career nadir. We like to go on adventures. He’s incredibly considerate. He cooks me breakfast, he always sets up multiple fans when I come over because I get hot at night, he remembers things I said because he writes them down. I like that we talk about when things are awkward. I like that he plans things, like a progressive date night. I like that he has passions and interests and is great at making things. He has a great sense of design. He is supportive of my creative interests and wants to help me leave space for them. He seems open to kids because I want them, he wants a longer term thing. It’s awesome! This lovely thing fell in my lap. I like talking to him. I like sitting on the couch naked with him eating cake. Sometimes I think I love him.

But I’m getting a sense that maybe it’s not all the best. He’s 12 years older than me. He has some whiny tendencies, especially around a friend group he’s in. He yells at cars when they’re behaving poorly to pedestrians. He is really fed up with work drama right now, and I heard him complain about it all night, and I’m like, I get it, but can you let it go? He apologizes when he gets into “Eeyore mode” as he calls it, and it’s not that often, but I just find it annoying, someone being dour and awkward about everything. It feels like he blames things on the world when his life isn’t working out, and it’s not always that way, but I just.. don’t want to be around that? Sometimes he’s a little prescriptive on things, like what we should order for dinner or how I should do a thing, although he takes my opinion when I push back or suggests something else. Superficially, he’s also kind of short and bald, not usually who I go for. I also feel like I missed a window to live in London or Brooklyn, even though I like living in an affordable mid-sized city where I could build a thing.

(Also bearded guy texted me again and I just remember how deeply I miss him, how talking to him expanded my brain.)

The thing is Polly, I just want to be a writer. I want to create and make. I want to live in a dense city, but I also want to live in a bungalow with a yard and a dog. I want to start a small business. I want the kids. I want the partner. And this guy… he’s lovely! Really! I’ve been so single, and he makes my life better, and I want to give it a go. But. Man. Idk. I just need to take this creative ambition in me seriously, because I haven’t for years, and it’s made me miserable. I don’t want to slide into another life.

(I realize the writing isn’t totally related but even having him sleep over messes with my routines. But that seems like a silly thing to dump someone over? I also have been single for so long…. I’m worried the problem is me.)

Help!

Am I The Problem Or Do I Just Not Like This Guy That Much Or Am I Just Projecting?

Dear AITPODIJNLTGTMAIJP,

The guy you’re dating is a regular person, one who can fuck well and makes you breakfast. He sounds great in a rare way but only you know how you feel, and your feelings are obviously still percolating. Be patient with yourself.

Bearded guy is interesting but he’s not really in your life. He’s a symbol of something you want but can’t have. If he weren’t a symbol, if he were real, he would be far less interesting to you. It’s impossible for you to believe that, I know, but believe it anyway. And if he were your boyfriend, he would also (for sure, frequently!) become dour and blamey, and on top of that, he would sometimes disappear to give some new girl a ride home on his bicycle. I don’t know why I suspect this, but I do. He’s the kind of guy who texts you just as you’re moving on.

That guy is always like that. He’s not in your life. He’s just THAT GUY. He isn’t relevant.

NEVERTHELESS, it’s sometimes nice to have that kind of symbol around, so you can pretend that something romantic and brilliant is just out of your reach. You can tell yourself that you might someday be able to win the romantic, brilliant, glowing orb of a life embodied by the bearded guy, you just have to work very very very hard, concentrate, focus, channel your energy, usher all of your imagination and sensuality and blast it at one single point on the map.

But you never win. The glowing orb symbol is always floating far away, and somehow it includes the hidden promise of LONDON and BROOKLYN. There is zero baldness and shortness and awkwardness in the orb, because it’s ENTIRELY IMAGINARY.

But we writers looooove imaginary things! Plus, having a symbol in your life can make it easier to focus and work hard. Sometimes a symbol can help you write more often. Sometimes it makes you more open to the world around you, too. Sometimes a symbol can help you to grow, even when that feels painful.

I am not against symbols, orbs, imagination, or dudes with bikes who make you feel like you’re in a scene from “Before Sunset.” But when a person is a symbol and not a real person, often you’ll feel a sense of emptiness and confusion when you think of them. The deliciousness of their interesting ideas and clever insights will evaporate, leaving questions: Who the fuck was that guy? What did he even want? What did he get out of any of those experiences? Was he truly a friend to you? Why is he texting you right now?

Here are some much more important questions to ask yourself: Why do I need to have fifty alternative options open to me at all times? Why do I want fifty million things at once? How will I ever finish a truly great piece of writing if I keep my head crowded with five to ten imaginary distractions at all times? Why do I insist on questioning what’s in front of me while idealizing what’s out of reach?

Our high-capitalist universe cultivates around-the-clock FOMO. Resist it. Ground yourself where you are WITH ALL OF YOUR SENSES. Nothing will guarantee your happiness more than learning to do this. It doesn’t matter where you are — mid-sized city, Brooklyn, London, Fuckyville. Learn to relish the present moment.

Your questions about your current boyfriend are just forms of resistance — resisting life in one place at a time, resisting giving up on glowing orbs, resisting the hard, slow work of writing, which is excruciating and painful and takes so much focus and consistency. Trust me, I’m not saying THIS IS YOUR MAN and I’m not saying THIS IS NOT YOUR MAN. I have no idea and no insights there. The only thing I know is that you’re not ready to dump him and you’re not ready to marry him.

In other words, there aren’t big questions to ponder about him at this point. It’s only been three months!!!!! He exists in your life in a real way, which is nice. You can see him clearly for what he is. He tells you who he is. The sex is great. You like him. You’re not sure if you love him or not, but that question is rattling around inside your head and it’s noisy in there, so you’re not going to solve it intellectually. Meanwhile inside your heart, a cake is baking or collapsing. Let it continue to bake or collapse. Be patient. Let your body exist in this uncertain place without judgment or impatience. Enjoy the sex and the companionship for a while without questioning it.

I’m not pretending to be some peaceful Buddha who is above these things. The truth is that life is DRAMATIC even when you’re old and settled. Each day asks something new from you. When you’re dedicated to feeling everything, when you’re devoted to being fully attuned to the world around you, you’re also open to THE EMOTIONAL WEATHER that blows in and out without warning.

Speaking of which: This morning, it was gray outside. I wondered if it would rain, so I checked the weather on my phone. Then I checked the weather in Los Angeles. Then I zoomed in on my old house in LA. Then I closed my weather app and opened Google Maps so I could get the street view of my old house in LA. The latest photo is from 2024, three years after we sold it. For some mysterious reason, the new owners chopped down the one tree in the front yard and in the photo, there are huge chunks of TRUNK lying around where my flowers and green grass used to be. Now the yard I watered and mulched is mostly dirt and dried weeds. A few of the native plants I put in ten years ago survived; they’re enormous now because they were built to thrive in the desert.

I was never built to thrive there. I know that now. But I loved it there for 23 years in spite of that fact. Sometimes you’re torn but you stay grounded in one spot anyway because that’s what life demands of you. I almost moved to NYC when I was 31 years old but then I met someone in LA (who turned out to be a nightmare) and after that I met my husband and then I was stuck in LA. Good things can get you stuck the same way bad things can. Every single day of your life includes compromise.

I love North Carolina and I thrive like a native SWAMP MILKWEED here. But I’m a writer just like you are. I have a rich imagination so I’m always living fifteen lives at once. This morning I had a lot of questions about why the people who paid a huge sum for our old house would’ve chopped down the one tree in the front yard and then left the trunk strewn about like that. Why don’t they use the irrigation system we painstakingly installed? Why don’t they bother to clear the dead plants from the front yard? Why are their curtains covering all of the windows? Don’t they ever open the curtains and stare out at the beautiful old high school across the street, with the mountains behind it and the swaying eucalyptus trees beside it and the bright blue sky above?

So then I pulled up the Google street view from 2021. Incredibly, my husband is on the front porch, wearing a mask! Google happened to get a photo of him, how weird is that?! In the street view from 2018, the grass in the front yard is bright green and lush, and yellow flowers are blooming by the front wall. I remember what it felt like to live in that house with my two big dogs (now dead), and my nine and twelve year-olds (now 17 and 19). I miss that life. I miss living in a sprawling desert city with all of those crazy LA humans, with their brash voices, their wild desires, their endless longing.

I fell back in love with LA this morning. I want to visit but I’m too broke. So instead, I took screenshots of my house in 2021, 2018, 2017, 2011, 2008 (before we bought it). I texted the 2021 photo to my husband. Then I got out of bed and put a load of laundry into the washing machine and boiled water for tea. I looked out at the wide expanse of green grass in our front yard, flanked by dogwoods and crepe myrtles and Japanese maples. It’s going to be 97 degrees today. There might be a thunderstorm tonight. I love the weather here in late August and early September. The air is heavy. The cicadas and tree frogs form a chorus. The cumulus clouds are moving works of art.

But I also want to sit by the front window in my old house in LA and watch the kids arrive at the high school. I want to walk down the hot, brilliant sidewalk to pick up my kids from the elementary school. I want to carry my younger daughter’s backpack for her while she tells me about the boy who had a meltdown in class and the girl who threw her juice box at the wall during recess. I want to listen to my older daughter practice piano while I play Candy Crush on my phone.

You’re a romantic like me. You will always be torn between one place and fifteen other places. Let that bring you more conviction, more desire, more imagination, more freedom, not less. Don’t buy into the flat FOMO that our shitty culture feeds you through your phone. Instead, relish the contradictory passions that live inside your body. Celebrate your conflicted mind and your tender heart. This is who you are: A dreamer. A sensualist. A fearful, fragile soul. A robust, resilient adventurer. A writer.

Your mind is often a battlefield and your heart often feels way too much. That will never change. You’ll be this person forever. What will change is your ability to ground yourself in one place and let it be enough for now. You might not be ready to do that yet. Let the cake bake, motherfucker! Take your head out of it. Stop doing math and live where you are and WRITE ABOUT IT.

WRITING is the most important thing right now. NOT boyfriends or bearded dudes on bicycles.

Write a novel about a bearded man in London and a short, bald man in Brooklyn and a depressed rat in Fuckyville. Write about the fine details of being 30 years old and wondering what will complete your picture at last. You can write journal entries about these things, but I also want you to write dense, weird, unlovable prose (with drawings!) and strange overly sentimental poetry (with doodles in the margins!) and intensely angry essays about how life will never be enough for you (to go with an oil painting of your disgruntled face!).

But after you write and create and let your colorful feelings fly, ground yourself where you are. When your boyfriend speaks, notice how you feel inside your body. Be more curious about yourself and about how he feels. Listen to him and learn what he’s made of. What is it about his anger that you don’t like? Are you afraid of anger in general thanks to someone angry from your childhood? Do you fear that you’ll end up with someone who can be whiny and depressive? Do you think you need someone in your life who’ll buoy you without expressing their own needs and desires? (This is a legitimate thing to want and it’s possible to get it, but it comes with a whole different set of troubles and frustrations.)

In order to bake the cake inside your heart (or destroy it, lol), focus on being present to what’s here. Attune yourself to your body’s reaction to your boyfriend’s stress. Notice your underlying anxieties. Ground yourself in the moment and soothe yourself a little so you can hear his words a little more clearly. Use this time of UNCERTAINTY as an exercise in showing up and feeling where you are.

I have no way of knowing if this particular man is right for you. I don’t think you have any way of knowing that yet, either. I think you need to live where you are without dicing it into tiny cubes. Dice it into tiny cubes in your writing instead. Create a character who embodies everything BAD about your boyfriend, then create another character who embodies everything GOOD about him. Experiment. Let them talk to each other. Make them fight each other.

All of your ambivalence is art waiting to be made. That’s why it’s healthy for people like you and me to write. We can’t move in straight lines like other people. We have to become anguished over the smallest things. It’s okay to do that. The key is to relish it instead of turning it into one math problem after another. Math problems like “Should I dump him now or next week? Should I move to Brooklyn or London? What kind of writing should I do? When will my writing matter and who will it matter to?” don’t add up to anything at all. These are just forms of procrastination.

What adds up is RELISHING EXACTLY WHO YOU ARE WITHOUT SHAME.

How do you do that? You welcome whatever you’re feeling and you pronounce it ACCEPTABLE. You embrace what’s here, whether you’re a little angry or annoyed or afraid or unsettled or overly optimistic or deliriously inspired. Relishing EVERYTHING YOU FEEL is a daily practice for a writer. In order to continue writing, you require strong sensations, raw enthusiasm, and an almost foolish desire to show your FULL SELF. You have to honor your unique, restless soul.

That’s what I love about being a writer. I have to be fully engaged with what’s in front of me while also living inside my head at times. I have to get lost in a maze of old Google street views, surrendering my morning to waves of nostalgia and longing, and then I have to say goodbye to my daughter before she leaves for high school.

Every day, I’m knocked over by tidal waves of strong emotion. I meet my deadlines and I drift. I love my life and I want more, too. I want more and more and more, like every other flawed human on the planet. My job as a writer is to honor my essential nature as a ravenous, insatiable savage.

So stop trying to either BE SETTLED or REFUSE TO SETTLE. Embrace exactly where you are for now. Love your ambivalent soul with more ferocity, with more devotion. Don’t nail down the rest of your life. Nail your ass to a chair and write with everything you have. That’s all. Do it today and tomorrow. Dare to believe in who you are, in all of your restless madness. Dare to believe that you can do this — this impossible thing, at this impossible time.

Has it ever been harder to write than right now? Sometimes I don’t think so.

Writing requires belief. That’s what makes it so hard. I have to find my religion again and again, day after day, sometimes by drifting, sometimes by daydreaming, sometimes by sitting where I am and looking at what I have right now. Each day, writing asks something different from me. That’s where the variety I crave comes from. That’s where your restless mind wants you to live, too.

But even when you’re feeling impatient and ambivalent, you have to RESPECT IT. You can’t say “I wasted all morning taking screenshots of Google street views when I should’ve been writing!” You have to say “I miss the desert,” and “I loved having little kids” and “Soon there will be no kids in this house anymore” and “I feel sad” and “It’s good to feel everything” and “I am just a SWAMPY MILKWEED, waiting for the next thunderstorm.”

What kind of plant are you? What weather do you love the most? What do you miss from your past right now? What are you the most afraid of? What’s electric about this moment, in this room, at this minute of your life? Will you write today or not?

I can answer that last question for you: You will.

Polly

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