Rejection

A loyal reader asked me recently about loneliness, and I tossed off a quick response: “… in general, I don’t think of loneliness as one of my key issues.” Predictably, within a few hours of sending that e-mail, I began…

I’ve never “broken up with” a distant buddy. The nature of these relationships is almost structurally overdetermined not to get old for me. But several of them have ended. This was in some ways the most painful/interesting: There was a…

I had no reason to expect our date to go well, or even to happen. Once before, we planned to meet. She stood me up. Well, not exactly. My schedule changed too, so maybe it was mutual. (Though she started…

There was a time when I thought that I was hard-wired to push any woman away, to demand so much that a woman inevitably would run for the hills. And I think I was, pursuing women who would respond to…

Here’s a little vignette. It just happened. I was in a pizzeria, grabbing a slice. I’ve been trying to eat a little healthier, trying to shed a few pounds that I put on in recent months, and trips to the…

There is one thing in life I fear more than anything else. One feeling worse than any other: the pang of rejection. It is, for me, bodily. In its anticipation, my heart quickens, my chest tightens, my shoulders hunch, I…

If you’ve spent a lot of time in therapy (or maybe just if you pay attention to yourself a lot), you’re familiar with the following phenomenon: the situations, relationships, behaviors, which you tell yourself you most want to avoid, you…

I’ve written a fair amount about my favorite fantasy and my fondest sexual memory (which together provide all sorts of information as to what Jack Morin, Ph.D. (that’s apparently his name), the author of The Erotic Mind, calls my “core…

I have competing urges when it comes to writing about T, about our relationship, about our sex. I’m proud of us, and like a little boy with his penis, I want to show off the things of which I’m proud.…

“Do you think you’re a sociopath?” she asked. “No,” I replied, not having to think hard. And it’s true.  In all of my deepest, darkest, most dishonest years, it was vital to me that I believe the lie I told…