Context important in assessing woman’s past secrets

Dear Carolyn: Recently, I began an invigorating flirtation with a woman at work — movies, jogging after work, dinner at home, etc. Last week, she told me she’d been involved in an extended affair with a married man three or four years earlier. She was also living with another man at the time. The news came as a huge disappointment, and I’m wondering how much importance to attach to her history of lengthy deception.

I think there’s a risk of your blowing this out of proportion, so I’ll be conservative and put its importance somewhere between “staggering” and “colossal.”

Integrity isn’t just a four-syllable word. If this woman doesn’t have it, the jogging better be awfully good.

Note the flagrant use of “if.” I could argue that her long-term deceptions guarantee she’s integritystarved, but that would deny her the opportunity almost every one of us wants out of life at least once: to be able to make a godawful mistake, to have an epiphany as a result, and to be accepted ever after for both the epiphany and the mistake, and not merely for the mistake.

So about that epiphany. Did she have one? Specifically, did she treat her behavior with the appropriate dose of self-loathing, and is she living proof that it worked? It isn’t too early to tell; just recall what else she said when she delivered the news. Context speaks louder than words.

Dear Carolyn: I’m in a longdistance relationship with someone younger and still in school. I want to spend the rest of my life with this person, but I worry I am a crutch keeping them from getting to the same point in maturity where I am now. How can I stop enabling dependence without harming our relationship?

Be willing to harm the relationship. Sounds callous, but look at it this way and it’s the only unselfish course: Which is better, to want what’s best for each other at the possible expense of your relationship, or to want the relationship at the possible expense of each other?

If you believe your student belovedness isn’t ready for long-term commitment, end the commitment. I know some will cry condescension since it appears you’re deciding unilaterally what’s best for your younger, lessmature partner.

But you’re really deciding how to look out for yourself. Either you’re comfortable with this person’s maturity and independence, or you think she/he has a way to go. Either you think staying together is healthy, or you think freedom will be. Either this person makes you happy as-is, or it’s better, for you, to stay in touch but see other people. Just be honest in how you word that: “I want you to choose me after you’ve lived more of life.”