I read someplace that it is a sign of mental illness if you know the right thing to do and cannot bring yourself to do it. That sounds to me like most of the planet must be worthy of institutionalization. I mean, is it really such an unusual situation if you know that the guy you’ve been dating for over a year is completely wrong, bordering on detrimental, for you, but you still cannot bring yourself to end it?

Please help —
Searching for Strength

I’m 19, and about to start a second impoverished year at East Coast
Pretentious College for Gifted Trust Funds. Long time ago (five years in 19-year-old-speak), I meet Ms. M. We’re great,
we’re rocking, we’re friends like nobody’s ever invented friends before.
Sophomore summer of high school, she meets this Guy at summer camp. She
tells me through the wonderful medium of email that They Are Gonna Get
Married. A mutual friend, who actually physically witnessed the dynamic
duo, reports that Guy is little more than a pressuring sleaze in a flannel
shirt.

Punchline, you ask? They Got Married. Yep, a month after we all graduated
high school, which makes a little over a year ago. Somewhere around junior
year, he left/got kicked out of home, and came to live with Ms. M and her
parents, showered with love and affection and Orwellian distant threats of
“do not criticize this relationship or suffer the dire consequences.”
I kept my mouth shut as best as I could, but my pulling away and mutters of
dissention caused me and the now Mrs. M to break off, and violently,
bitterly and finally. (Sort of.)

Okay, so I don’t like Guy. In fact, the word “loathe” isn’t too far off,
and it ain’t just for jealousy’s sake either. He was a juvie sort of guy,
the happy-go-lucky sort who burned swastikas into roads (I wish I was
kidding) and for the piece de resistance, joined the Army, which I
really loathe and now puts Mrs. M in that time-honored tradition of
unhappy Army wives. She arranged her college to be near his base. She
didn’t tell me the date of their wedding, or when she left town. So I
bitterly picked up the pieces, clutched my remaining friends to my heart,
and went east.

Come September 11th. A day or two after, she emails me, extending a laurel.
I grab at the chance, miserable to repair and rebuild what was lost. Time
passes and finally she writes back essentially, “No, we can’t. I’m still
too mad at you.” For, I guess, breaking the code of silence that she was
always right, that she would prevail, that Mrs. M and Guy would be
together forever in their teenage bliss. So, I crawl into bed and get out
sometime in March. I forget, I live, I’m fine. My birthday rolls around, just
before I make my way back west for the summer. She sends a card.

I caved. I’m like that.

So, contact re-established, I find out in the course of four emails that 1)
Guy is getting kicked out of the Army. 2) She’s dying to come back home. 3)
She’s taking a leave of absence from school because 4) Guy wants her to.

Now, the question (yeah! I got to it!) is, she is dead set on coming home.
My home in the fiery desert. Where I still come to actually relax. And we
are supposedly friends again. But I know I cannot let myself be weak
again and not speak up. Do I tell her I don’t want to see her if Guy is
there? Do I avoid her completely and let her justify my disappearance
(correctly) as immaturity? I can’t stand seeing someone with their back
broken like this, especially one of my old good friends. And even if I saw
her alone, without her Guy guard, is it even within my rights anymore,
after so much passed possibilities, to get her to see the light and think
about herself? God knows, I do enough of it. I care about her, Sars, I
really do, and the time comes where we have to take it to the boxing ring
again and I don’t want to go in like a weakling. I’m not like that
anymore.

Teenage Wedding In The Old Folks’ Home

Here’s my situation: I have a boyfriend that I have been with
for two and a half years, and while we have had our rough spots, things
are, all in all, pretty good.

Well, the other day out of the blue I received an anonymous
email — I don’t recognize the sender’s address or their handle —
that, plainly put, told me that my boyfriend had been carrying on
a secret relationship with someone else out of state. Coming out
of nowhere, I was shocked and hurt.

Unfortunately, my boyfriend is on vacation with a group of his
buddies — they’re on a cross-country motorcycle trip — and when he
called me last night, he could tell I wasn’t being myself and
asked what was wrong. I told him about the email, and that made him
upset. I have never had reason to distrust him about anything, but
the fact I even read it and was hurt makes him feel that I am
calling his morals into question now. I’m not, really; I just
think mine was a common reaction for seeing something like that
come out left field at you. He tells me he hasn’t slept with
anyone else, and hasn’t been with anyone since we’ve been
together. He suspects that the note is from someone who has taken
an interest in me and would like nothing better for me to dump him
so this person can pick up the pieces.

I’m pretty confused, Sars. Should I take this email with a grain
of salt? Or is it strange that my boyfriend should be so upset
with what it said?

At the end of said email, the anonymous person said they could
offer proof. What do I do?

Baffled in Atlanta