Big 4-0

I have a wonderful daughter but no love or romance, and life just sucks.

Published November 18, 2002 3:05PM (EST)

Dear Cary,

So, I just turned 40. So far, it sucks, thank you very much.

There's something about a "magic number" birthday like 40 that brings the suckiness of one's life particularly to mind.

Not that there aren't a couple of bright spots. The brightest is my almost-6-year-old daughter, who lives with me three-fourths of the time (the other one-fourth she's with her mother, 1,000 miles away). Another is my job, which (despite the usual level of political bullshit and general aggro) is pretty damned fun most of the time.

But I'm finding that a life that consists of sleeping, getting the kid ready for school, rushing to work, picking up and feeding the kid, and sleeping again -- well, it really leaves a lot of room for improvement.

I admire myself for my commitment to doing the best I can for my kid, and (most of the time, except for the darkest parts of the night) I think I really did do the right thing in fighting like hell to have her go to school in my city (and thus to live the majority of time with me). But a part of me keeps whispering that if my kid remains my "only reason to live," that's ultimately going to be destructive for her (and incidentally for me).

Meanwhile, romance is nonexistent -- there's been nobody since my daughter's mother booted my ass out of the house a couple of months before our daughter was born -- and my "sex life" consists of furtive wee-hours masturbation to Internet porn and very occasional (when the kid is out of town) trips to sleazy strip joints.

I never did date much -- each of the relationships I've had was instigated and pursued by the woman involved -- and whenever, now, I think about trying to get involved with anyone, I run up against internal arguments that I can't rebut: 1) I don't know how. 2) I can't see that I have time or room in my life. 3) Who'd have me anyway -- a porn-using, over-40, tied-down-with-kid, chronically depressed geek?

Over the past dozen years, I've tried breaking out of my destructive patterns with a variety of tools -- psychopharmacology (antidepressants), a couple hundred SAA meetings, group and individual therapy, "men's work" -- and it's all helped a little, but not enough, and going back for more seems as if it would be way too much work for way too little payoff. (Except for the antidepressants, which I keep up with and which probably keep me from completely imploding.)

So I've just kept on truckin' as best I can -- as I say, in the past six years, the kid's been a great motivator. But it's starting to feel as though I'm not ever going to get unstuck. And, frankly, another couple dozen years of this kind of stuckness is not something I'm willing to live through. What really aches badly -- and makes it suck the most -- is the loneliness of it all. (At least, that's how I justify asking you for advice.)

Is there a way out of this that I'm missing?

Stuck

Dear Stuck,

I was very moved by your letter, because I recognize your thinking and the pain that comes with it. I am moved toward a kind of anticipatory grief, as though I see where you are headed in a dream and I cannot catch up with you to tell you to turn. I am chasing you with only a cane to help me hobble over the stones and you are heading faster and faster toward the edge of the cliff.

What sucks is not your life. What sucks is suicide. What sucks is that you are simultaneously inches away from accepting your life as it is and inches away from jumping off a bridge. Compassionate detachment is hard to maintain in the face of that. It is hard to maintain a safe distance when you say that "another couple dozen years of this kind of stuckness is not something I'm willing to live through."

So let me talk to you as a brother, as a fellow who has walked that dark, oppressive corridor where it is hard to breathe and hard to move. Let me talk to you as someone who doesn't care to be delicate, but who cares very much for you and the girl.

You say the Sex Addicts Anonymous meetings helped a little but not enough. How do you know what is enough? How do you know where you would be without them? Is it enough that group therapy, individual therapy, men's groups and SAA kept you from suicide, from arrest, from incarceration, from losing custody of your daughter altogether? It may not feel like it helps enough, but if you're depressed, you can't rely on what it feels like. Your feelings aren't going to tell you the truth; your feelings are going to lead you to a room in a cheap hotel and tell you to put a noose around your neck. You need something better than feelings: You need reality.

And how do you know it would be "destructive" if your daughter were your only reason to live? How many reasons do you need?

Basically you need to make little improvements in your life, and little adjustments in your expectations. You need to bring your life and your expectations closer together, so you're not living in that airless void between is and should. Make incremental improvements in your life; make incremental adjustments in your expectations.

I'm no expert on psychology, but I can say that cognitive therapy helped me stop using language to reinforce my depression; it helped me construct a new, kinder interpretation of reality. I know that your feelings drive your language, but I also think your language feeds your feelings and that you can change your language to starve your feelings of their false bravado of bleakness. How about making your language more neutral, more factual, pulling it out of your mental shop of horrors? Instead of saying that your wife booted your ass out of the house, how about just saying that you and she split up. Instead of saying that your life consists of just sleeping, rushing, feeding, rushing, sleeping, try saying that you have a very busy and full life.

And instead of saying there are three internal arguments that you can't rebut, why not try rebutting them? The first one, in fact, is eminently rebuttable on its face because it's meaningless: "I don't know how." Of course you know how. If you didn't know how to get involved with someone you could never have gotten married. The worst you could do is just repeat what you did the first time. The worst a woman could do is boot your ass out of the house, or, to use our modified language: The worst that could happen is you form a relationship and then it comes to an end. How bad could that be?

The second assertion is also easily rebuttable. Many single working parents find room in their lives and time for relationships. What is so different about your life? Are you on a book tour? I'm sure you could find the room and the time.

The third assertion is not really an assertion, but a question. What woman out there, indeed, would be interested in an intelligent, employed single father, evidently smart and tough, who is managing tolerably well with his share of human challenges? You have enough grit to take care of this girl, and that's admirable.

I'm not saying you have to be happy. I don't even know if it's within your power to be happy. But I think it's within your power to stay well back from the brink of suicide and hopeless depression. Maybe that's just as good as it gets. Maybe it'll have to be.

As I said, I was very moved by your letter. I don't think there's some way out that you're missing. I think you know what to do and you just need to be reminded. Stay in touch with your groups. Exercise. Eat right. Get enough sleep. Keep taking your antidepressants. Remember: Your daughter won't let you down. And some of us out here, if you just stick around, we won't let you down either.

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Want more advice from Cary? Read Friday's column.


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