Maybe You Should Talk to Someone

“My friend, all you do is talk about this woman. At our age, who doesn’t come with enough baggage to bring down an airplane? You think you’ve got nothing? You’ve got a dead wife you talk to every day and an aunt in the loony bin that nobody mentions. You’re a good catch, but c’mon. Who do you think you are, Prince Charming?”

Her marriage. Her family. Her work. She could still have a version of those things in Holland.

“The nature of life is change and the nature of people is to resist change.”

often it’s just as much about what the change represents—failure, rejection, betrayal, the unknown, and a different life story than the one they’d expected.

Julie nods. “I feel guilty for putting him through this and jealous that he gets a future,” she says, adjusting a pillow behind her back. “And then I feel guilty for being jealous.”

“I think you’ll benefit more from understanding why this decision is so hard for you.”)

I imagine that Matt feels trapped in time, newly married, young, wanting to live a normal life and start a family, all the while knowing that what he has left with Julie is temporary. He sees his future as a widower, then as a father in his forties rather than his thirties. He probably hopes that this doesn’t go on for another five years, five year

“Before diagnosing people with depression, make sure they’re not surrounded by assholes”),

spare people’s feelings, even though the boat needs rocking and your compassion ends up being more harmful than your honesty. People do this with teenagers, spouses, addicts, even themselves. Its opposite is wise compassion, which means caring about the person but also giving him or her a loving truth bomb when needed.

I feel lighter, relieved of a burden. Sharing difficult truths might come with a cost—the need to face them—but there’s also a reward: freedom. The truth releases us from shame.