I wish you all good things.

November 7, 2024

Brian,

You’ve been on my mind. I’ll let it go after this.

I’m not sharing this wisdom out of selfishness, or because I imagined there was anything that would come of us besides a lovely friendship, which I do admit, I was very much looking forward to, but that has nothing to do with my motive here. I’m sharing this because you are a quality individual, and I think perhaps if you’re new to all of this. You may not have the personal experience to know these things. Please heed my words.

I’ve paid an incredibly high price for making an emotional commitment to someone with whom I’ve not taken the time to develop a stable, lasting friendship. Furthermore, It is a mistake to cut off communication with your women friends because you believe you’ve entered into an exclusive romantic relationship. It’s dangerous. No thinking woman would ever expect her partner not to have friends of the opposite sex, it’s unrealistic and self-sabotaging. And incredibly selfish and shortsighted. (Can you tell I’m speaking from the pain of personal experience???)

There are few things I can claim with absolute confidence. One of them is that you cannot expect one person, particularly not a romantic partner, to meet all of your emotional and intellectual needs. Without a friend group, you are rudderless in…