My Dream Relationship Ended. How Do I Learn To Let It Go?

Hi Dr. NerdLove,

I’ve been a huge fan of yours for a decade now–you gave me such thoughtful and kind advice when I struggled with “losing” my virginity years ago (“Good Girl Gone”). It helped me immensely, so I’m back for more dating advice.

For the last five years, I thought I had life figured out. I had what I thought was a wonderful relationship, finished my doctorate, and landed my dream job as a professor in a beautiful part of the country near my partner’s family. I hoped marriage and starting a family would be our next chapter, both things I’ve wanted forever. But when my institution offered another tenure-track professor job to my partner as he finished up his PhD, I learned that he had vastly differing expectations for our respective futures.

My small, well-paying, polytechnic university was good enough for me, but not nearly prestigious enough for his professional goals. Even though it was close to his family and me, in his eyes, it was “fine it’s my only option.” While we had discussed our future goals endlessly, he didn’t know if he’d ever want marriage or children. When I realized that he might never be in a position to know if he wanted a long-term future with me, I ended it. In our breakup conversation, his exact words were “but part of me wants a future with you.” I’m hopeful that somewhere out there is someone who will enthusiastically want a future with me…but what if it’s too late?

I really love what you say about a relationship not being a failure just because it ended. I think my ex and I tried our best despite incompatible life goals and values. I’m not angry even though he became someone who decided my feelings, communication needs, and problems were never “serious” like his. Post-breakup, I’ve spent time with friends and family, continued to do things that bring me joy, and even been on a few dates. Ending it was the right call, and I feel mostly at peace. But I’m also worried.

My question for you is: how do I let go of the idealized future and timeline I’ve had for years? It’s clear that marriage and children are not in the cards for me when I thought they would be. I just turned 29, and I’m afraid that my window is closing for having biological children. I don’t want to jump into another long-term relationship right away, but I live in a small community of mostly conservative white retirees, so I’ll have to cast a much wider net and look harder to find someone my age with similar values. How can I reconcile the desire to enjoy being single (teaching study abroad, traveling, being optimistic about the future, all the things my ex didn’t want to do) and the need to pursue a serious relationship with someone kind, intelligent, and family-oriented before it’s too late?

Begin Again Blues

Alright, this is going to be a fairly quote-and-aphorism-heavy response, BAB, so stick with me for a moment. I promise it’ll all make sense.

There’s a saying I’m fond of: “man plans and the gods laugh.” One of the hardest and harshest truths we can ever face is that the universe (or God or the fates or the Wheel of Time or whom-or-whatever) doesn’t take our plans and goals into consideration as we move forward into the future. Sometimes we get lucky and we find a groove where our future plans are able to stay fairly consistent and life unfolds more or less as we hope. Other times, life will jam a stick straight into the spokes of our plans and we get thrown ass first into the brush and have to figure out what we’re going to do now.

This, I’ve noticed, happens the most often to people who are determined to have life figured out. The people who have a very solid idea of how the world will be, the direction their lives will go in and exactly how they’re going to get there. The problem is that irony, not gravity, is the strongest force in the universe and the more your vision of the future is set in stone, the more you tempt fate. If someone has a ten point plan to ensure that they have seen the future and it will be exactly this, the greater the odds that something is going to step in and say “Absolutely fucking not“. Usually around step three or four.

The problem is that having an idealized vision of the future and holding onto it for dear life requires a level of control that you or I or anyone simply doesn’t have. If our vision for the future is such that only one particular outcome is acceptable, we have to prepare for disappointment by virtue of the fact that we simply aren’t Doctor Manhattan. There is no system so rigorous, no plan so carefully plotted that chaos can’t leak in. In fact, to quote a wise man (GNU Terry Pratchett), “Chaos is found in greatest abundance wherever order is being sought. It always defeats order, because it is better organized.”

Any vision of the future, if you want it to come to pass, needs to be one with a certain amount of flexibility built in… up to and including being willing to scrape it all and start over, because the requirements for that particular future are no longer in effect. This doesn’t mean that the future you hoped for was somehow “wrong”, nor does it mean that you made a mistake, or that you didn’t work hard enough, believe hard enough or dream hard enough to make it come to pass. It just means that you, like the rest of us, are mortal, rather than a god. And even the gods aren’t able to control fate; there’re entire pantheons dedicated to this and their attempts to dictate futures never end well for them.

(Looking at you, Odin. Lookin’ at you.)

It always sucks when you realize that you have to give up on a dream, especially when that dream has been one you’ve been holding onto for so long. And while we can’t control the future and dictate terms to the universe, that doesn’t mean that we can’t or shouldn’t be sad that a dream can no longer come true. So I think part of how you need to let this dream and timeline go is to treat it for what it is: a death, of sorts. The future you – the one who was going to be in THIS place at THIS time with THIS family and spouse – is gone. That future family will not be. That’s something to be sad about. You don’t want to let this change destroy you, because I promise you it is not the first nor the last time that you will encounter this, but it’s good to grieve it. Let yourself mourn these days of futures past in the graveyard of other dreams that you had to let go of along the way. Mark it’s passage and give it the farewell it deserves. It may be a future that will never be, but in some ways, it’s one that will always there because you will remember it fondly if wistfully.

As with many other losses, letting yourself have that moment of saying goodbye is what allows you to let go. And in letting go, you’re allowing yourself to dream a new dream and build towards a new future… even if that future isn’t the one you’d initially hoped for or expected. And that’s okay. There’s nothing wrong with being a little sad about it, any more than it not coming to pass means that you weren’t “good enough” somehow.

However, in doing so, you also want to make sure that you aren’t inadvertently holding onto a future that’s less of a dream and more of a nightmare. It’s all too easy to think that, since the way we time as linear, we exist on a schedule. Achieve this by X date, accomplish this by Y time or else you’ve DONE IT WRONG. SOMEHOW. The idea that we’re “supposed” to be at certain stages of life or hit our marks within particular time-frames is a construct, an artificial attempt to define reality and bend it to our will. But those schedules and time frames are man made, not laws of nature. At most they reflect cultural values, not reality. And if you’re busy worrying that you missed your window because time marches on in a linear  fashion, then all you’re doing is borrowing misery from the future instead of attending to your present.

But here’s the thing: “always in motion, is the future,” as the sage once said. This truth is actually something to take comfort in. The future you’re now worried about – the dolorous one, the Project Wide Awake that you’ve been trying to preempt – isn’t any more set in stone than your previous one. The worst case scenario you’re afraid of is no more destined than the nuptual bliss you’d imagined with THAT particular person at THAT time. The future isn’t written and still has the capacity for being better that what you fear… or even better than what you previously imagined.

So take a bit of time and mourn the loss of that dream. But at the same time, as you mourn, give a little thanks for that dream too, because the loss of that dream is what is going to enable you to move to a new future dream. One that could well fit your needs much better than the one you had to say good bye to.

The key is to realize that since the future is always in motion, you need to be able to move with it, instead of being firm in only accepting one possible outcome as best. In many cases, what you think you want may well not be what you actually want. Or it may be what you want, but it isn’t what you need. And unfortunately, the only way to truly see this is in hindsight; it’s easy to look back and see “oh, right, if Sad Thing X didn’t happen, I wouldn’t have been on the path to Happy Thing Y instead.” Since you aren’t someone who can see the Matrix or plot the exact number of flaps of a butterfly’s wings are necessary to set off the hurricane across the world, you have to be able to bend and flex and flow as you move towards the future. Time, you see, flows like a river and fruit flies like a banana and if you want to move to a future, you need to be adept at flowing yourself. You don’t want to plant yourself like a tree and demand that time stop for you, you want to be like water.

Like the master said: “Empty your mind.
Be formless, shapeless, like water.
You put water into a cup, it becomes the cup.
You put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle.
You put it into a teapot, it becomes the teapot.
Now water can flow or it can crash.
Be water, my friend.”

Build that adaptability into your future. Be open to changes and realizing that what is true now may not be true down the line. There will be challenges, yes, because entropy comes for us all. But challenges aren’t the same as impossibilities. It means learning how to adapt, how to shift gears and to change to suit the moment. Become the cup, if you’re poured into a cup. Become the tea pot if you are poured into the teapot. Flow, rather than allow yourself to be dammed up and stagnant.

The future is yet to come, and trying to fit yourself into a specific timeline OR ELSE will only make things harder. Let your dreams be flexible. Pride yourself in your ability to adapt and grow as circumstances change and meet the needs you may not have had previously. The fact that they are new needs doesn’t make them bad; having to let go of old goals and dreams doesn’t make you a failure. It just means that this one future didn’t come to pass, but others will.

Be water, my friend.

All will be well.

Hi Doc, 

I am a woman who was sent an article by a male friend about how the chess world is hostile to women. He asked my opinion and I replied “well, I wouldn’t say hostile, but I do routinely have to fend off a lot of unsolicited attention, nothing I can’t handle, it can be tiresome sometimes.” Discussion ensued with some specific examples given. Then, my friend looped in a mutual friend – a very high-level tournament director I will call MCO (Male Chess Official) –  to ask how women should deal with unwanted attention as far as when to notify an official, and what actions the official might be expected to take. I was reluctant to talk about this with MCO, as I had specifically said I never even thought of lodging an official complaint over anything that had happened to me. However, I still got sucked in somehow and our exchange devolved into the exchange below. (Name changed, exchange distilled. Punctuation deliberately unedited!) 

MCO: Some women want it both ways.  They dress and act in certain ways to draw attention from the male species.  Then they don’t like it when men they are not attracted to are attracted to them!  Part of the price of casting the net wide is that you have to accept that you may get hit on by men you are not interested in. The female has a responsibility to politely decline (the male cannot reasonably be expected to read a mind) and the male has the responsibility to buzz off. Where that line is can be difficult.  I’m sure we’ve all heard stories where the husband says I had to ask her out several times before she agreed and now they’ve been married 50 years!

ME: Women should be able to dress however they want without anyone assuming that they are “casting a wide net.” Maybe you should re-train yourself to think of it as “dressing how she wants to dress”? 

MCO: I did say dress AND act. I am not going to fault a man (or try to retrain a man) for “taking the bait” even if that bait was not intended for him.  And I am not going to say that somehow a woman who dresses to attract/impress has a right to be offended when the attraction picked up an unintended target! 

ME: The picture you seem to be painting is that of a woman dressing and acting provocatively then taking offense at an innocent overture from a man. I don’t know that I have ever seen or heard of a woman becoming offended unless an overture was overtly crass or inappropriate – and even then, most women will not reply uncivilly. Have you had a different experience?

MCO: The short answer is that yes I have had different experiences.  I also have friends who have had different experiences, so its not just me.

Doc, what are your thoughts here? I have a very high amount of tolerance (empathy even) for awkward nerdy guys who interpret fleeting, accidental eye contact as flirting, but I am at a loss as to how to respond reasonably to my friend at this point, other than to apologize for anyone of my gender who has been unkind to him or his friends… which I actually did but now regret, ugh…

All the best – love your column, never thought I’d actually write though,
Check Doesn’t Always Imply Mate

There’s a lot to unpack here, CDAIM, but I’m kinda wondering if maybe the entire suitcase shouldn’t just be tossed out entirely.

What’s interesting to me – in an anthropological kind of way – is how the verses may change but the song stays the same. If I were to swap out the community – change “chess” for, say, Dungeons and Dragons or video games or comics or just “geek culture” in general – without changing another word, people would almost certainly have had the exact same experience, practically word for word. It all comes down to the same basic idea that X – where X = a particular community – is ultimately “for boys” and women who participate in it are not just intruding but have to expect a certain amount of mistreatment. In fact not only should they expect it but they need to respond to it gracefully because, at the end of the day, their purpose there is a thing to be consumed, rather than a participant and equal who has the right to be there on the same terms.

It’s also kind of telling just how ossified MCO’s beliefs are, seeing as he apparently can’t bring himself to believe that women don’t dress exclusively for men – even when they put on their favorite sexy dress and a full face of makeup. As hard as it may be to believe, sometimes women do stuff for themselves… including dressing up because it feels nice to dress up sharp and feel like you look like a million bucks. Just as importantly, however, much of what they’re getting from men isn’t attention so much as domination and intimidation and putting women in their place.

There’s also quite a bit of ego – call it “main character syndrome” – inherent in the idea that a woman choosing to exist in physical space, dressed in any particular way, is an invitation to a particular man or many. The same applies to the idea that he gets to decide what is crass, rude or unwanted; it’s a hell of a thing to say “You’re not allowed to be upset because I have decided that I was being a perfect gentleman and you are ungrateful for my attention.”

One wonders how MCO might feel if he were being inundated with offers and come ons from women he found unattractive, or from men, for that matter. After all, men dress and act in ways to cast a wide net and so you can hardly be surprised if a woman who repulses him or a man were to hit on him relentlessly and then tell him to quit working his pretty head into a tizzy over it. After all, if someone wants to tell him how nice his ass looks in those pants, isn’t it ultimately his fault for wearing those pants and acting in such a way that people took the bait? After all, you can hardly expect men to be mind readers. Really, the only way to know for sure is to invite him to some cozy corner or empty bathroom for a quick round of Sanz’ Shocking Endgame Sacrifice if ya know what I mean…

Though it’s also a sign of how little responsibility he puts on men in this, as opposed to all the onus on women. Apparently it’s ok for men to not be mind readers, to not put in effort to actually figure out if their attention is wanted or to, y’know. Keep it in their pants and let someone else make the first move. Saying he won’t fault or retrain a man for being obnoxious and intrusive and that women don’t have a right to be offended by boorish behavior because she should “expect” it is… well, that’s honestly not far off from “what did you expect when you were alone with him” and “what were you wearing?”

I also side-eye just how many different experiences he and his friends have had. While I do believe that people can make honest mistakes or misunderstand things in good faith, the amount of blame he puts on women and the excuses he makes for his friends make me question either his honesty or ability to accurately gauge what happened. Or, for that matter, to recognize that maybe, just maybe, he or his bros were dead wrong.

Unfortunately, as the saying goes, you can’t reason someone out of a position when reason didn’t get them there in the first place, nor can you expect change from someone whose self interest lies in NOT changing or progressing.

So what do you – and people in general – do about this?

Well… that part’s harder, because there’re no easy or simple answers. Part of the problem is that this is an issue of culture within the chess community, and changing a culture takes time. Not to mention, the suggestions I could come up with may not necessarily be useful to you since I have very little experience in chess tournaments. So take my suggestions with appropriate levels of salt.

My first suggestion would be to vote with your feet and your presence. If some tournaments or events are going to tolerate shitty behavior or won’t act on complaints from women, then I would say to not go to those. However, that may not be feasible for you depending on how the tournament scene works. If you’re expected to progress through those specific events to get to higher tiers, then this would be a de facto penalty to you for not being willing to tolerate harassment and boorish behavior.

Another possibility would be to push for change – ideally from both the top down and the bottom up. A combination of women being willing to call out bad behavior for what it is in the moment, men calling out their bros and telling them to be better and the higher ups laying down the law goes a long way towards making changes in the community. And I want to emphasize the importance of having other men speak up and call out bad behavior, especially in the moment. Guys may not listen to you or other women, but they often will listen when men speak up… even if they’re saying the exact same thing you did. It’s shitty and it’s sexist but it does make a difference.

Of course, this does require a perfect storm of those factors coming together as well as being willing to deal with shitheads pushing back or trying to turn changes in accepted behavior into yet another front of the culture war, which can be daunting. But then again, even making people more aware of the issue can make a difference; greater scrutiny brings greater pressure to improve.

One thing that might help would be to have a code of conduct ready to go, if only as a model for what you’d like change to look like. One of the favorite delay-until-people-look-away tactics that people like to use to stymie progress and change is to say “well, you fix it, if you’re so smart”. Being able to slap an example on the table and say “here you go” is a powerful riposte. In this case, you may want to look to how other organizations have handled similar issues. This is by no means a solved problem by any stretch, but many organizations and event-planners have started implementing stringent and detailed codes of conduct and acceptable behavior, including a chain of responsibility for both reporting violations and enforcing the rules. CONVergence, for example, is a general sci-fi/geek interest convention, but it’s widely seen as having a model for better codes of conduct and behavior. Similarly, Penny Arcade Expo has been quite good at making their cons a more inclusive space with uniformed PAX Enforcers who are easily identifiable, and taking bad behavior seriously instead of letting things slide because of an old-boys club and the like.

If the tournament that MCO was part of doesn’t have a similar code of conduct – or a tendency to let things go because “boys will be boys” and they don’t want to “ruin someone’s promising chess future” or whatever – then bringing this up to the tournament organizers would be my first stop. But if they refuse to take it seriously… well, unfortunately, then we’re back to “trying to change a culture from the ground up” without the support from the top down as well.

I will say that, absent a sort of sudden decapitation of the heads of any particular tourney, that change and improvement will likely be frustratingly, teeth-grindingly slow. The Titanic couldn’t turn on a dime, and it’s equally as difficult to get hidebound institutions to shift. But just because something’s difficult and frustrating doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing anyway. It just may be a case of planting a seed that you may never see grow into a tree in your time.

Oh, and one more thing: it’s not on you to apologize for your gender if they may have mistreated your friend. Your gender as a whole didn’t mistreat him, an individual did; it’s on her to make things right if necessary, not on you to do it for her. It’s not as though there’s a systematic, cultural problem of a majority of women mistreating or duping men at chess tournaments or what-have-you. If he’s capable of seeing the acts of other individual guys  at these events as being the act of a single person and not the male gender as a whole, then he’s equally capable of giving the same consideration and individual agency to women too.

Good luck.