This is the hard part, of course. The part where you don’t get to simply float along in the la-la land of your true love while hoping what’s really not good at all will get magically better. This is the part that numerous others have confronted with their own beloved partners who must change in order for their relationships to survive—people who have said you must stop abusing alcohol to be with me, or you must stop snorting cocaine, or you must learn to manage your anger, or you must not belittle my ambitions, or you must be honest or this just isn’t going to work.
These ultimatums require us to ask for something we need from another, yes, but ultimately they demand the most from us. They require us to acknowledge that the worse case scenario—the end of a cherished relationship—is better than the alternative—a lifetime of living with sorrow and humiliation and rage. It demands that we look ourselves squarely and hard in the eye and ask: What do I want? What do I deserve? What will I sacrifice to get it? And then it requires that we do it. In fear and in pain and in faith, we swim there, to wherever that is, in the direction of real life.

http://therumpus.net/2011/10/dear-sugar-the-rumpus-advice-column-87-in-the-direction-of-real-life/

I’ve written often about how it is we have to reach hard in the direction of the lives we want, even if it’s difficult to do so. I’ve advised people to set healthy boundaries and communicate mindfully and take risks and work hard on what actually matters and confront contradictory truths and trust the inner voice that speaks with love and shut out the inner voice that speaks with hate. But the thing is—the thing so many of us forget—is that those values and principles don’t only apply to our emotional lives. We’ve got to live them out in our bodies too.
Yours. Mine. Droopy and ugly and fat and thin and marred and wretched as they are. We have to be as fearless about our bellies as we are with our hearts.
There isn’t a short cut around this, sweet pea. The answer to your conundrum isn’t finding a way to make your future lover believe you look like Angelina Jolie. It’s coming to terms with the fact that you don’t and never will (a fact, I’d like to note, that Angelina Jolie herself will also have to come to terms with someday).
Real change happens on the level of the gesture. It’s one person doing one thing differently than he or she did before. It’s the man who opts not to invite his abusive mother to his wedding; the woman who decides to spend her Saturday mornings in a drawing class instead of scrubbing the toilets at home; the writer who won’t allow himself to be devoured by his envy; the parent who takes a deep breath instead of throwing a plate. It’s you and me standing naked before our lovers, even if it makes us feel kind of squirmy in a bad way when we do. The work is there. It’s our task. Doing it will give us strength and clarity. It will bring us closer to who we hope to be.
You don’t have to be young. You don’t have to be thin. You don’t have to be “hot” in a way that some dumbfuckedly narrow mindset has construed that word. You don’t have to have taut flesh or a tight ass or an eternally upright set of tits.
You have to find a way to inhabit your body while enacting your deepest desires. You have to be brave enough to build the intimacy you deserve. You have to take off all of your clothes and say, I’m right here.

http://therumpus.net/2011/09/dear-sugar-the-rumpus-advice-column-86-tiny-revolutions/

What’s at the root is the fact that you failed to recognize and honor your own boundaries. You tried to have it both ways. You wanted to be the woman who could be friends with a man she’s not over, but you are not that woman. I understand why you want to be her, darling. She’s one cool cat. She’s the star of the show. She doesn’t take anything personally. But you are not her. And that’s okay. You are your own fragile, strong, sweet, searching self. You can be sad a guy you sort of fell for didn’t fall for you. You don’t have to be a good sport. You don’t have to pretend you’re okay with sharing your interesting and beautiful friends with The Foxy Fellow, even if you feel like a puny asshole not being okay with it. You can say no.
But the thing is, you have to say it. You have to be the woman who stands up and says it. And you have to say it to the right person too. Not to the lovely friend who can’t possibly keep the promises she’s made to you while swimming in the shared waters of your wishy-washy ache for affirmation and orgasms, but to the man himself. Yes, The Foxy Fellow. The one who is, but who is not, your friend. You have to live with the uncomfortable reality that it’s from him—not her!—that you need time and space. And then you have to take it, hard as it is, come what may.

We all like to think we’re right about what we believe about ourselves and what we often believe are only the best, most moral things—ie: of course I would never fuck The Foxy Fellow because that would hurt my friend! We like to pretend that our generous impulses come naturally. But the reality is we often become our kindest, most ethical selves only by seeing what it feels like to be a selfish jackass first. It’s the reason we have to fight so viciously over the decapitated head of the black-haired plastic princess before we learn how to play nice; the reason we have to get burned before we understand the power of fire; the reason our most meaningful relationships are so often those that continued beyond the very juncture at which they came the closest to ending.

http://therumpus.net/2011/09/dear-sugar-the-rumpus-advice-column-85-we-call-this-a-clusterfuck/

I wish all the time that the right to space and time to heal, solitude to re-center and sovereignty over doing what one has to do was treated as exactly that: a right, a fundamental right that each person has in the aftermath of a break-up or betrayal. I understood a long time ago that I am not the cool cat who doesn’t take things personally: I engage intensely, and must disengage cautiously.
It isn’t selfish to do this. It’s self-preservation.

http://therumpus.net/2011/09/dear-sugar-the-rumpus-advice-column-85-we-call-this-a-clusterfuck/#comment-180569

Yes! I wish all the time that the right to space and time to heal, solitude to re-center and sovereignty over doing what one has to do was treated as exactly that: a right, a fundamental right that each person has in the aftermath of a break-up or betrayal. I understood a long time ago that I am not the cool cat who doesn’t take things personally: I engage intensely, and must disengage cautiously.
It isn’t selfish to do this. It’s self-preservation.
Not all my friends and lovers have understood this. Not everybody understands that amputation isn’t about cutting someone else out – but cutting away the part of yourself that contains your obsessive, lovesick, heartbreakingly powerful need to burn yourself down with the torch you hold for them. It isn’t seen as the socially acceptable thing to do. But strangely enough, that porch metaphor is the same one that visually occurs to me whenever I have to. I know that, when the hurt heals, I may set places at my table for everybody ever involved in the interest of fun and bounteousness and the sheer love of life. But who remains, after the party, sitting on my porch with just me and a nightcap – what I see when I imagine it, now that IS my moral compass.

http://therumpus.net/2011/09/dear-sugar-the-rumpus-advice-column-85-we-call-this-a-clusterfuck/#comment-17846

MICHELLE CHAVES SAYS: July 14th, 2011 at 10:03 am Dear Dad, Keep writing.

LYNNE SAYS: July 8th, 2011 at 9:20 pm Thank you for speaking the truth about your life to us. Even anonymously, there is something powerful about speaking the truth– not only for us readers, but for you. The tightness in the throat eases a little. You find you are not as alone as you thought. You are upheld by invisible hands. You sound like a writer. I want to tell you that there is something you can do that can be particularly helpful for writers; I know this from my own experience. It’s this: every day, write a letter to your son. Try it for a month, maybe, just to see. Your daily letters might turn into something else at times– who knows what– and you can let that happen, paper is safe. But start out with the love and the letter to your boy. And please know that love is never wasted.

http://therumpus.net/2011/07/dear-sugar-the-rumpus-advice-column-78-the-obliterated-place/#comment-152960