Dear Jerrah,

I'm writing to let you know I burned out on a girl again. I'm also beginning to wonder just what the latest of these rejections means for me. I scare women, we've established that. Lord knows I scared you. But the things that scare you are seemingly the essential parts of me-- an earnestness that translates into creepiness, little gestures of affection that are often read the wrong way in the world of sexual politics.

People are obsessed with finding their Other, saying aloud that he or she doesn't have to be perfect yet thinking exactly the reverse. Then when faced with imperfection, they buckle, they break. They can't or won't seem to remember just what it is that made you special in their eyes, just what it is that they saw in you. And you're the one cursed with all the remembering and all the regret.

You want to try the experiment of simply being friends but they see your feelings, your intent and these things threaten them. You want simply to be with them, see them, and everything you say and everything you do is always heard and seen in the wrong light. The things you used to be able to talk about when you were "just friends" are the same things you can't talk about now, even when they're talked about with other friends. You become an imposition on their time, which has suddenly become more important to them than it was previously. And they say hurtful things and you say hurtful things and it just spirals into worse...

It's so easy to change people's views for the worse (hurt them), so hard to change people's views for the better. We tell ourselves love isn't about changing the other person but that's what we expect when we engage in loving.

I don't know, Jer. If a person's character is destiny, and if it's nigh impossible to change it, then it's quite safe to conclude that some people are simply never meant to marry, or love another on intimate, personal and sexual levels. I'd be better off hiring prostitutes to bleed off my libido since no one wants to share herself with me in that meaningful way.

My heart knows this isn't true in spite of the evidence in front of me (you know how well the logic of "evidence" damns). Maybe I'll have some proper answers one day. Or maybe I'll be writing you again about this exact same impasse a year from now.

In the meantime, I hope you are well.

Dex