Exercises in Thought: I Ran a Relationship Advice Column at Amherst/I Fell in Love at Oxford

Sweeney: I Ran a Relationship Advice Column at Amherst

Hello readers of The Amherst Student! I hope the beginning of the semester is treating you well. You’ve no doubt noticed that my writings were altogether absent from these pages last semester. Well, I have an explanation: I was channeling the whole of my opinion-forming capacities into a relationship advice column.

The original plan was to assemble the staff required for a syndicated paper on all things love and lust (tentatively titled Amhours Of Amherst) with circulation throughout the greater Pioneer Valley. Unfortunately, critical members dropped out early and it ended up being more of a blog subsisting on whatever material I could scrounge up on a biweekly basis. Even my pared-down one-man operation, however, soon fizzled out, though not for lack of effort. I just wasn’t as good at giving advice as I thought I’d be. Here are some samples of the clientele I was dealing with: Tell me where I went wrong, or where I could’ve gone right.

*

Hi!

I was wondering if you might have some perspective on this issue I’m having. I’ve been dating this guy for about three months now and he’s super sweet and cute and fun, and I can’t believe how easy he is to talk to. The door is always open and it’s awesome.

Lately though, I’m really struggling balancing being vulnerable in the relationship and protecting myself — or not even protecting myself, more like feeling confident and safe in myself. Like I said, we’re three months in, and there are so many things about myself I’m ready to tell him, and when I think about telling him, I really feel like it would be so easy, so much easier anyway than it was in past relationships, or even with my parents, or anybody. But when I actually open my mouth to do it, it’s like there’s a block.

When that happens, what I feel is … Damn. I wish I could objectively say what I felt without all this other junk that’s in my head. Like, OK, I’ll give you an example of what would be a good thing to say: I’m a pretty accomplished person, right? I do well in my classes, professors have gone out of their way to say they’re impressed with my research, I have a lot of meaningful friendships with people I admire and love. I’m not bragging, or if I am, so be it. Sometimes I’ll be taking a shit in the Science Center bathroom and I’ll think to myself, I’m worthless, and I’ll get up and look in the mirror and there’s no way of looking at myself that makes it not true.

You see what I mean? When that happens I’m not one bit less proud of everything I’ve done, and (not but!) I feel that way. Both things are true even if they can’t be, and that’s what my life is like, and it’s something I’m curious about and I want him to be curious with me. That’s what I want to tell him, anyway — but when I open my mouth, I start crying and he hugs me and that’s good but it’s not what I meant at all.

I’m sorry if this was kind of confusing. I figure ultimately I just need to get over myself, but if you do have any perspective, I would love to hear from you! Thank you!

Clark

*

Hi,

I’ve been with my boyfriend for just over a year. Our anniversary was two weeks ago. We saved up to go to an Italian place out of town, we split the bill and it was a great night. Every two weeks, we go out and eat somewhere and maybe watch a movie. We have decent conversations regularly and good conversations intermittently. Sex is good. I’m still attracted to him.

But I’m attracted to other people! I just am. Last weekend I was at this party, and there was this guy, not even dancing, just in the vicinity of the dance area doing a half-shoulder shrug jig thing, and he was holding a Natty Light and I could see the water droplets condensing on his hand and I swear to god I literally shuddered. It was insane.

I’ve thought about opening up the relationship, and yeah, the conversation would definitely be a little awkward, but I really believe we’d be mature enough for it, and there’s even a chance he’d be willing to go that way. But I don’t even want an open relationship. I just want to experience something intensely exciting, for a bit, and I want to be completely invested in that experience.

I love my boyfriend. I’ve grown so much being in this relationship, and I’m so grateful for that growth, and I’m still growing probably. But it’s like…what I’ve grown to realize is that I don’t need to be in a good, loving relationship. I really don’t.

I think I’m gonna break up with him.

All I want from you is the truth: Do I suck?

Catherine

*

Hello,

Been a rough freshman year. I always had trouble talking to girls in high school and my sense of things was that it would be easier in college but for me, it’s just not, or it hasn’t been yet anyway. It’s not like I’m a complete loser, I’ve had a few hookups here and there, but it’s all generally been a little tepid, and nothing’s ever led to anything, and I have no clue how to make it lead to anything.

I feel like the first step has to be being confident when I approach and talk to people. Even if the conversation doesn’t end with a hookup, much less a relationship, I feel like that’s what I gotta be if I’m ever gonna start enjoying any part of it. If I’m being completely honest, I’m kind of put off being in a relationship relationship at this point in my life anyway, because I had one girlfriend in high school and things started well, but I came out of it feeling like I was too weird to be dating anyone. I don’t know if that’s her fault or a thing with me or both (probably both, right?), but it’s definitely a part of why I’m having issues now. So I’m not really interested in relationship advice first and foremost, but maybe that will change.

So yeah, if you have anything to say about being more confident, either talking to people you’re attracted to or to anybody, I’d appreciate it.

Josh

*

I’ve been thinking about mimetic violence logics. Basically that’s like revenge, but it’s also the idea that the harm done has to be repaid in full — eye for an eye. Also the idea is that the violence can’t ever be closed off, but to the contrary, it recurs cyclically. You take my eye and I take yours and we don’t just call it even stevens, you know, maybe you’re itching to take my arm next and so then I’ll make a lunge at yours and so on. And this is the stuff of the Old Testament and Icelandic retribution sagas and Elizabethan revenge plays and mob movies and all the most compelling drama of the past 2,500 hundred years and why? How much satisfaction is there really in doing unto others as they have done unto you? Not much, and I guess everyone involved knows it too: They’re just in it because they don’t have any other choice. And I guess that’s what we learn, that we shouldn’t sacrifice our having a choice so that we can do something that matters."

But I think they get it all wrong, I think there is a satisfaction to be had. I think the satisfaction of revenge must be that moment of looking like someone more than they looked like themselves. Of course you paw the eye out, everyone hears about that, but the real triumph is the nostrils flared for them alone, the white teeth which they bared for you and which you now flash back in near-blinding effacement of their own terrific shape. I’ll admit it’s a satisfaction you gotta be brave to own up to but undoubtedly it’s the “look at me look you” that’s sweet, sweet, and if the two keep looking the other closer and closer it is not as some say because there is a fine line between hate and love, but because on the fine line there is an illimitable suspension of likenesses by which we coldly tremble, observe, dart at one another in dim nameless side rooms and we might call that love but it is not necessary that we do, when we’re there it is not necessary that we call anything love, and by the time we call it anything it will already be too late and far from a curse tumbling down from forever it will be a kind of mercy.

That’s what sex is like for me. Am I doing it right? If I’m not supposed to, ask please don’t respond.

Alex

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Hi,

Once I was at a park. I was walking to the car with my mom and dad. Nearby there was a couple with their dog on a leash. It was a big white dog, and since at the time I was very much afraid of dogs (I don’t know when or why that stopped being true) I’d been on guard all day. Now however I was leaving with my parents’ protection at either flank — but as I passed, the dog broke free of its leash (or maybe it wasn’t ever on a leash) and started chasing me. My parents perhaps tried to scoop me up but I was off, running to the parking lot, and being so frightened and having such bad vision, I slammed into the wooden fence lining the park. I don’t know what happened with the dog (I think it stopped chasing me, or maybe it wasn’t chasing me in the first place), but it was that chase that gave me my first black eye and thus prevented me from going to Chuck E. Cheese.

Recounting this episode now, I guess I don’t remember it all that well. But there’s a lot about my childhood I don’t remember, things I should remember and things I shouldn’t but that I think I would anyway. To me it’s inexplicable. It’s like one day I decided most of what was happening to me wasn’t worth remembering. Well, there’s no way that’s true. In any case, not remembering my childhood well is one of the few things I’m ashamed of.

I guess I thought I’d remember that story about the dog better because I was afraid. But I didn’t.

For five months I have been in a wonderful relationship. He is so kind, and funny, and smart, and good at everything. I love doing anything with him. I want to remember all of it. I’ve told him how much I want to remember and so he knows.

It’s hard to explain. It’s not that I feel I don’t deserve it. Or maybe ‘deserve’ is the wrong word altogether. It feels like being a part of something bigger than me, or maybe it’s just something that’s about me more exactly than anything else ever has been. It’s probably both.

I guess I didn’t know I could be a good person. I compliment him on his outfit and it makes my whole day. I give him flowers and I nearly burst into tears. I sit with him on the porch and it’s game over. There I am. That’s who I wanted to be. I don’t know what to do with myself.

Recently I looked out my window and saw a girl in her yard playing with a translucent parasol in a light drizzle. She would turn around left twice, and then the other way, then back. She fell to the grass, and as her hand still held to the white handle, her laughter traveled down her arm and shook the drops from the taut cloth.

I don’t know what to do. I don’t even know what I’m asking. I feel stupid asking for help like this, but it feels stupider not to. I’m not going to be afraid.

*Unsigned*

***

And here were my responses:

To Clark:

Just keep trying. It seems like you’re in a good place.

To Catherine:

I don’t know enough about this particular situation to say whether or not you suck in light of it. What I can say however is that you probably do suck, at least a little, and, regardless of this situation, it would be of great benefit for you to start believing now what most people need to come to terms with sooner or later.

To Josh:

Try not to get too in your head. Notice something that interests you about the person you want to talk to and express your interest; if you can’t notice anything, pick someone else.

To Alex:

I’m glad you’re asking, but in this case I don’t think I’d be deflecting responsibility to suggest that the person to ask really should be your partner(s). Different people are into different things.

To Unsigned:

Sounds good to me. Keep it up!

Never heard back from any of them, and at the end of the day I just wasn’t bringing in views (which equals no sponsors) – but I don’t know, I thought I was doing alright, morally speaking. What would you have said?

Carroll: I Fell In Love at Oxford

Ah, it’s so good to be back, but it’s even better to see you again.

My life recently has been marked by clichés. During my semester abroad, in the winter to summer of 2024, underneath the dreaming spires of Oxford University, I turned over the familiar phrases in my head — “Distance makes the heart grow fonder.” “You never know how much someone means to you until they’re gone.”

First, there was that familiar feeling that I was in over my head, like the opening scene of a coming-of-age movie. After my transatlantic flight, I sat on the Oxford Airline bus departing London Heathrow airport. I looked out the window to find dozens of sheep in between long cobblestone fences, grazing the British countryside on a dull gray morning. At that moment, I felt as if I had snapped out of a dream. I realized that I was thousands of miles away from home, in a foreign country, where I knew no one and practically nothing about where I was going — what have I done?

Moreover, my time abroad also had that classic pattern of the naive college student who leaves the nest and, at first, struggles to adjust to the various particularities of the new culture (even if they are ultimately minute), but who ultimately becomes a more independent and flexible adult afterward.

But more than any other clichés, the one that rang the truest was that, from the moment I stepped foot on British soil, I missed you more than anything else.

At first, I missed the little things that make you special: the accent, the greasy, salty, oversized portions of food, the different license plates from each state, the street signs. But all those were really just signs pointing towards my larger spiritual longing for you, America.

Yes, I didn’t realize that I was such an American until I left America. I didn’t realize how much I loved America until I left America. I have definitively self-identified as a patriot in the past. (And I would be remiss if, in this campus and cultural climate, I didn’t qualify that I believe that one can love America because of the core promises it continues trying to fulfill, even when it falls short of those promises.) But my passion for America has grown more than tenfold since I was separated from it. And, even then, of all the places to visit, the United Kingdom is one of the few which is not vastly different from the United States. After spending five months away from my birthplace and home, I fell in love with America at Oxford.

If a cliché still has meaning and rings true for you, should you still call it a cliché? Or should you call it an aphorism? Whatever; even if the idea that studying abroad makes one appreciate their home country is trite, so be it. That was my experience. Obviously I now have a greater appreciation for different cultures and places, but absolutely nothing compares to the renewed passion that I have for the United States. Out of all the immigration and customs lines I waited in throughout my travels in Europe, none were quite as long, hot, and physically unsavory as the line I waited in at Chicago O’Hare airport as my semester abroad ended. But it was the sweetest immigration and customs line of my whole life. It was filled with people of all creeds and colors but which were all distinctly American, and I really felt the beauty of America’s diversity at that moment. Even if this message is cliché, and it has been beaten to death in pop culture and student blogs, some things do just have to be experienced firsthand to be learned.

At some level, my newfound love for America is more irrational than not. I don’t doubt that I love certain elements of America (or just America itself) just because I was brought up here, just like how I love certain elements of New Jersey because I’m from there. They’re familiar, associated with home, and thus comfortable. At another level, my love for America is way too rational, bordering on a pedantic nerdiness. I breathed a mental sigh of relief upon landing in the United States, appreciating the presence of an enumerated bill of rights and a president elected through the power of the people. (Can you believe they’re still hashing out the monarchy debate in the Oxford Student newspaper?) I’m not some jingoist ultranational fanatic after my time abroad. But I do have a renewed emotional connection to this place. I had to step away from America to properly observe its spirit, the same way you might need to step back from a painting to appreciate its composition. And wow, America is so beautiful, and strange, and exceptional, and grotesque, and brilliant. Some people go abroad and want to stay abroad, which changes their life. I know my life has been changed insofar as I know I want to stay in America, because I realized I’m an American at heart.

Granted, studying abroad has changed my life in further incredible ways. I will refer to one particularly impactful way which happens to be relevant to this column: Going abroad gave me the space and time to think. Life at Oxford (at least how I lived it) was slower and simpler compared to the average overloaded and overcrowded American undergraduate schedule. Of course, during term, I had much thinking to do about coursework as I staggered under the weight of my tutorials. What is more relevant, however, is the six-week spring break between terms where I had nothing to do except travel and think about myself as I journeyed across Europe. It’s another cliché that some of the best study abroad experience comes from being outside the classroom. But I insist that this is nonetheless especially funny given that I chose to study abroad somewhere I’d be locked up in a library for most of my time there.

Thinking about yourself and your life is one of the most valuable activities to spend your time on, and I believe in it strongly enough to take the space here to elaborate. We are steeped in a milieu that prioritizes tangible career readiness on resumés overloaded with internships, jobs, classes, volunteer hours. Spending hours in reflective thought on the trajectory of your life is, at best, hard to distill for an employer or graduate school hiring committee, and, at worst, risks making you feel “unproductive.” Yet I want to be clear that I’m advocating for the opposite of participation in this frantic rat-race. I’m not advocating for what we currently call “self-care,” nor for an extreme manifestation of it as “bed rotting.”  I’m not advocating for that curious phenomenon that befalls us Gen-Z’ers with nothing to do, the state of “depressive hedonia” seeking pleasure by scrolling or consuming, all of which has the effect of preventing us from thinking.

If there’s anything I would recommend to the thoughtful Amherst student — and particularly to any newly-minted freshman who happens to be reading this curious article — it would be to sit or walk in nature or some other beautiful place with no music or podcasts in your ear and to think for hours and hours. (Ideally, you can do so while traversing the ancient monuments of Europe, but make do with what you have.) See what bubbles up to the surface of your mind and think about why it does so. Where have I been, where am I going, how do I feel about it, and why? What is meaningful and what is meaningless? What legacy do I want to leave? Ideally we would have days and weeks to do this, but as students in 2024, we may have to suffice with hours.

Reflections on thinking aside, what’s clear, tangible, and distinctive about my experience abroad is that I fell in love with my home country. I am resilient and adaptable enough that I did enjoy my five months abroad, befriending a new group and engaging with life in a variety of ways. The United Kingdom, and the University of Oxford, is a lovely place to study abroad. You should study abroad if you can. But one of the biggest takeaways from my experience abroad is that I love America, its people, its failures and successes, its laws, its promises, its hopes and dreams. I will think and fight and die for this place.