Dear Self...

Dear Self,

You are not Carrie Bradshaw.  I know you sometimes like to think you are, what with your love of shoes and your studio apartment and the fact that you’re doing this whole “writing a column” thing now, but you are not Carrie Bradshaw.

Big and Carrie are not a great love story for our time.  They are terrible role models who made millions of women (or maybe just you) believe that if they just waited it out, kept being available and kept ruining perfectly good relationships that could have made them very happy, that eventually, a self involved and unavailable jerk would come around and realize that you were the best thing that ever happened to him.  Self, that is not going to happen.

You deserve better than to keep investing your emotional energy in a man who has proven time and time again that you’re going to come in second, and that’s on the good days.  Being where he needs to be for work and not where you are is a choice he made, so please stop thinking that maybe if you just do something differently, he’ll choose you instead, because he won’t.  Men who love their careers more than they love you do not change; he’s not going to wake up one morning and realize that you’re the one and fly to Paris to rescue you from your Russian boyfriend, or whatever.

Self, you don’t need to cling to occasional scraps of affection, desperately hoping that they mean something.  Not being ignored is not even close to the same thing as being truly cared about.  Being given the extra toothbrush head or a purse you don’t like is not a reassuring sign that he thought of you, it’s a sign he didn’t think enough of you to give you a key or get you a gift you’d actually enjoy.  Don’t settle for a man who “wishes he could be there”, keep searching until you find one who will be there, always.

When a man pops up in your life every time you might just be getting over him and standing a chance at being happy, that is not a sign that he is The One.  It’s a sign that he has really terrible timing.  (Seriously, Self, the fact that he started talking to you on gChat while you’re supposed to be finishing this column is coincidence and nothing more.)

Do yourself a favor and learn from Carrie’s mistakes.   Listen to your friends.  When they’re screaming at you over lunch, telling you not to go back to him for the second time (or the fifteenth), listen.  Sure, you know him better than they do, but that doesn’t mean you have more insight into the situation.  Let their objectivity be your guide.

Love yourself enough to realize that you deserve a man who loves you.  Stop believing that you’re unworthy and then cementing this belief by staying with a man who doesn’t think you’re worthy either.