The human species is rapidly changing! Mostly not for the better, obviously, but some “futurists” believe their particular demographic (overeducated overpaid youngish professionals starting to worry about mortality) has already begun the process of becoming superhuman mutant cyborgs. Are you kind of depressed that you didn’t get around to doing grown-up adult-type things until you were already (technically) middle-aged? Maybe it’s okay, because you are the first generation of this new technological human-synthetic revolution! Or maybe you will physically and mentally deteriorate the way humans have always declined, unless they were lucky enough to be killed in a war or wiped out by a plague or eaten by saber-toothed tigers.

Experts are offering many cyborg scenarios in many media outlets frequented by those who are worrying a lot about the downward spiral of life. Let’s examine our options!

Cyborg anthropologist Amber Case, on CNN.com: “A cyborg is not Terminator or Robocop, but the experience of everyday life that’s been altered by technology. Everyone that uses technology is a superhuman. It’s not so strange anymore because it’s the norm — most everyone else around us is also a superhuman. The only time we notice it is when our devices run out of power. We’re all super humans until our devices lose energy.”

Evgeny Morozov, of The New Republic, in the New York Times: “If you trace the history of mankind, our evolution has been mediated by technology, and without technology it’s not really obvious where we would be. So I think we have always been cyborgs in this sense. You know, anyone who wears glasses, in one sense or another, is a cyborg. And anyone who relies on technology in daily life to extend their human capacity is a cyborg as well. So I don’t think that there is anything to be feared from the very category of cyborg. We have always been cyborgs and always will be.”

Times of India: “Professor Kevin Warwick, celebrated as the first cyborg (a superhuman who has both biological and artificial parts in the body), is best known for being the world’s first human to have a chip surgically implanted in his arm and conducting experiments on himself. […] Now, he’s planning implants in his brain which can enable telepathy.”

Rebecca Greenfield in The Atlantic: “Google Glass now has a glasses-of-the-future competitor called the Vuzix smart glasses M100, which look about as cyborg-ish as Google’s wearable computer invention, giving us pretty much no hope for a non-robotic version of these things, ever. If either of these products catch on, it looks like we’re destined to a future with droid parts on our faces, as you can see above in Vizux’s version and to the right with Google’s Project Glass creation. Even on pretty women that look is straight out of the Stars Wars sequels that haven’t been made yet. Maybe one day android fashions will be in and computer face accessories will separate the hip from the square.”

Jon Mitchell at ReadWrite.com: “And if the folks we’re competing with are determined to go the mutant route, do we even have the choice to opt out? […] More to the point, companies are starting to realize these technologies could offer a tempting performance boost to their workforce. If it suddenly becomes profitable to hire jacked-up cyborg mutants, what do you think that’s going to do to the job market for your typical Homo sapiens?”

“The mayor’s chief ally on the commission is Bob Welsh, known as Bicycle Bob because he spent years pedaling around town on a girls’ blue coaster bike handing out political flyers and railing against “big money interests.” During the Mariel boatlift, he met newly arrived refugees and handed them Spanish-language joke books that he had written. Bicycle Bob was elected this past February, beating Armando Oliveros, a former commissioner whose time on the dais was interrupted by a prison sentence for money laundering.”
 — “South Miami: a city where weird things are always happening.”

by Joe Berkowitz and Joanna Neborsky

Planning the end of a relationship is probably the closest many of us will ever get to knowing what it’s like to plot a murder. Will they see it coming?, you wonder. Some of us are careless, impulsive relationship-murderers, and so the breakups happen spontaneously, the time and place as random as Clue cards. Others plan it all out, postponing, buying time until the perfect opportunity, thinking over the most humane method. Maybe you’ll wait for the vernal equinox on account of your partner’s Seasonal Affective Disorder. But then he or she might forever associate the sadness of the breakup with cherry blossoms and freshly graffiti’d “Nurse Jackie” posters, and who wants to do that to another person? The longer you wait, though, the more you have to pretend everything’s fine, which is a fancy way of lying.

Oddly enough, the most honest moment in a relationship usually arrives once it’s over. It’s the “speak now or forever hold your peace” part of the wedding, only inverted. You tell the couple why they’re terrible for each other, and the couple is you. Suddenly, the preceding months or years have an air of unreality — like they never happened at all or turned out to be one long Christmas Ghost hallucination. When my last relationship ended, it didn’t seem possible that, mere days before, I’d have probably dove into traffic to save a person I’d now dive headlong into a mound of summertime garbage just to avoid seeing at a crosswalk. Of course, being newly single sort of feels like diving into a pail of garbage all the time.

The first few days of being alone again hit like OxyContin withdrawal. Or, at the very least, like a juice cleanse. Only instead of toxins leaving my body, about a shallow lagoon of Merlot floods into it. All the many things I took for granted about the relationship appreciate in value as they suddenly become unavailable. So many inside jokes and dumb little rituals lined up in my mind like a continental breakfast buffet, wheeled away by an overly officious concierge just as I arrive, famished.

This absence manifests itself everywhere. I’m keenly aware of a certain G-chat window’s negative space on my computer screen all day. Unfortunate coworker fashion choices go criminally underreported. The pertinent details of which falafel place I did for lunch are lost to the ages. My day’s narrative simply loses its primary audience, as though cancelled due to low ratings and frequent profanity. I could continue the broadcast on Facebook, dispatching glossy post-breakup PR or the romantic distress bat-signal of Sade lyrics, but being heard is not the same as feeling known. Nothing can substitute for the presence of an actual human person who knows most of your secrets and still somehow wants to make out with you.

The interior of your average Love Cocoon is generously swathed in a level of comfort usually extended only to newborn infants and Greek shipping magnates. When this sensual haven falls away, returning back to the larger world is disorienting. You blink your dewy eyes in the light. You can’t quite remember who you are, and nothing makes any sense. It’s like snorting bath salts while suffering from Memento-disease; there’s bound to be collateral damage. Merging with another person until you become each other’s spirit animals subtly changes you in a bunch of ways that quietly annoy everyone else. The metamorphosis chips away at any individual quirks that might abrade the relationship. Gone is the part of you that used to make up silly songs in the shower or found kombucha kind of disgusting. Instead, there’s this new you, smoothed-out and cocooned. You forget what you’re really like, having opted for what one person likes you to be like.

After you leave the Love Cocoon, it’s bewildering to be out there; this new sanded-down you who is not really you. But then, like someone who has defected from Scientology or the Borg, you get your old identity back. Your rough edges return, extra stubbly. Perhaps some habits discarded during the relationship remain that way, but these mostly pertain to hairstyle. All the other decisions you now have to make alone again force you to reconnect with the person you were, the hardwired you, and take control of who you’ll become. Whether it’s any improvement at all is another story.

It’s never too hard to tell who else at the gym has recently gotten out of a relationship. There’s a certain languid collapse in one’s squat-thrust that scans, even viewed across the room, as psychological freefall and not sore trapezii, or lackluster iPod shuffling. The recently single can pick out their fellow sufferers in the armada of manically red exercise faces. Thousand-yard stares burrow through sweat-flecked mirror-walls as lost souls attempt to SoulCycle. We carry heavy burdens on our shoulders while carrying heavy burdens on our shoulders. The pain just feels appropriate. At a moment fraught with so many lingering uncertainties, such as whether my own romantic instincts in fact hate me, the one thing that makes undeniable sense seems to be self-flagellation via Bowflex. The gym serves as a sanctuary that gives time a familiar shape outside of the simmering booze-cauldron that is my apartment, and instills me with purpose. However, I can barely stand to acknowledge what that purpose is, or why I feel like my former girlfriend and I have entered some sort of cosmic swimsuit competition in which I am hell-bent on nabbing the sash and scepter. Instead, I ignore the obvious. I convince myself I’m just blowing off steam, and that if I happen to become more presentable along the way, it’s just icing on the cake I’m probably not eating.

If it weren’t for newly single people, the New York City Marathon would be reduced to a summit of SuperMoms and emotionally centered Kenyans. Almost nobody would sign up for Improv 101 class. Your company’s throughput would decrease by at least 37%. Nobody is more deliriously ambitious than a person slowly stirring out of post-breakup malaise. You survey the landscape of your life and determine which other areas of it are also in shambles. Some patsy has to take the fall for any lapses discovered, so naturally the entire relationship is reframed as a time when some Jezebellian interloper brushed away your potential with a smudge stick. In this alternate history, which reads like self-penned fan fiction, any surplus career drive or side projects were diabolically pre-empted in favor of Sunday afternoon sex-naps and the many street fairs foisted upon you. But now you are unburdened by such pesky intrusions; now you are going to begin a bold new relationship with yourself and you are going to be amazing. You pamper yourself, splurging on jaunts to Reykjavik and rare Air Jordans; generally acting like you’re trying to get in your own pants (and succeeding, wildly). Any residual soul pain leftover from the remembrance of your Machiavellian ex can now be channeled into the thinly veiled novel you’re writing, or at least your efforts to get through Infinite Jest. Without any pesky human distractions, you and your new other half — also you — will continue unimpeded on the path toward world domination, provided the two of you never discover the Internet.

In the fantasy version of new bachelorhood, anyone you’ve ever had a romantic thought about has been vision-boarding your breakup the entire time, in such a way that somehow registers as more flattering than creepy. Every fetching stranger on the subway always wanted to talk to you, but intuited your betrothed status and respected its boundaries, much as it pained them. Then suddenly you’re single again and the truth reveals itself: everything is basically the same and also you’re a major narcissist. Meeting people still requires trying, or officially not-trying while still trying super hard. Either way, friends waste little time in urging you to get back on the horse — a suggestion flattering neither to those who might comprise the horse, to horses themselves, or to you with your equine dating pool. Whether you feel ready or not, a new charge seeps into the air at some point, ushering in the return of semi-meaningful eye contact with passersby. It might take a while before you decide to open up and let rejection back into your world, but at least whomever you do verbally glitter-bomb will have never heard your opinions about the afterlife or emoji, let alone grown tired of them. Unfortunately, the fantasy version of such encounters may end up resembling the more traditional genre of fantasy, where warrior-princesses kick hobbit asses.

The newly single go everywhere accompanied by the flapping of red flags. Not without good reason either. Even the most monogamy-inclined among us might emerge from a break-up acting like Amish teens on Rumspringa. Nobody is above that temptation and everybody knows it. In fact, the most acceptable way to avoid any romantic commitment is probably by saying “My name is Ryan Lochte” or “I just got out of a relationship,” either of which is ironclad. But it’s a weirdly hollow thrill to hit it off with multiple someones in the gloaming of a break-up’s emotional wasteland. It makes the experience of dating feel as mechanical and low-stakes as a videogame; specifically NBA Jam, where scoring multiple times in a row sets your avatar on fire, allowing you to breezily sink 3-pointers with minimal exertion. Whenever I’ve ended up living la vida Lochte post-breakup, it’s never been with anyone I really wanted it to be — whether that was an actual person with a social security number, or some idealized Other who makes sexy balloon animals at parties and is “Breaking Bad” conversant. Instead those people often end up serving as a kind of reverse prison lineup — “No, none of these” — helping you to develop a sort of composite sketch in negative of the thief you hope will snatch your affection.

One day I wake up and I’m no longer newly single; just the standard version, with no helpful qualifiers to imply a McRib-style time constraint. At first, there was a novelty. I was back on the market! Possibly in the hands of a no-nonsense realtor with reasonable rates! A few months later, I feel less like any kind of hot property than I do a rustic fixer-upper opportunity, bursting with potential and euphemisms. The mere ability to ask out alluring strangers again — perhaps via pretend dance floor lasso — is no longer enough motivation to do so. Instead, I wait for very particular signals or circumstances, only to discover I’ve misjudged them horribly. I resume my usual complaints: Meeting people is difficult. Games are stupid but somehow necessary. Dating is a process by which humans determine irreconcilable differences — a verbal Myers-Briggs test administered in the dank corners of dimly lit bars. Spend enough time unattached, though, and it becomes your default setting, rather than a freestyle respite from the well-rehearsed dance of a relationship. Some people are so good at being single that they decide to go career with it, forever freelancers. Others are so eager to be done with the unknowingness of it, they barrel into every date as if playing a version of Are You My Mother?, wherein every prospective person seems like The One. But if planning the end of a relationship feels like plotting a murder, then planning the start of one feels more like donning a suicide vest. There’s an element of giving up, and also of a callous willingness to take out a few innocent bystanders. Then again, the sooner you settle for any old relationship, the sooner you’ll be resurrected newly single. And maybe you won’t squander it this time. Once more into the breach, my friends. Welcome back.

Previously in series: My Superpower Is Being Alone Forever and My Superpower Is Being Alone Forever: Party Of One

Joe Berkowitz (text) is a writer living in Brooklyn, if you can even believe that. He also has a tumblr.

Joanna Neborsky (art) makes books and animations about books. In this poster she catalogued the life of the bachelor Flaubert. You can buy it here.

Actually, Farhad Manjoo makes a few good points in his Slate screed against the overuse of “trolling.” Because, yes: some people who look like trolls are just trawling, for pageviews (or book deals, or maybe sex, who knows what dark things people want). Like for instance, if you have to say “Sure, my piece and its headline were hyperbolic,” then you are probably just trawling the Internet with a big, loud net, but you are not actually trolling, because you do believe what you are saying. Despite being hyperbolic. Which, understandably, gives readers confusion.

And then probably some famous trolls aren’t actually trolls! It sometimes happens that people believe crazy, impossible things. The problem is that then those beliefs (like, say, that rape in colleges is an overblown media phenomenon of women’s self-victimization) lead those that hold them to dumber and/or even wronger beliefs and then they don’t have much of a functional moral framework anymore. Then they are Lost To Us. Bad beliefs are gateway drugs to straight-up trolling.

Then concern trolls like Times Christian Ross Douthat, who practices a “love the sinner… BUT” brand of societal concern trolling, are worse. Mostly because their “concern” work is in service of trolling us back in time at least a century. Or at least before our infernal gay marriages happened.

But Tina Brown’s Newsweek. Man, that is just an opening session of the Troll Model U.N. pretty much.

by Awl Sponsors

We team up with Braun to talk to Dave Rubin about his favorite Built to Perform possession.

“In a high performance world, Braun creates innovative designs built to last 7 years. Braun profiles 15 innovative guys in an intimate look at their life passions and the unique objects of design and durability that power their life.”

Photo: James Ryang

Making his way from the bottom to the top, Dave Rubin propelled his stand-up comic career from the honing grounds of The Comedy Cellar to co-founding the New York City-based club The Comedy Company. In a maneuver equal parts hustle and ingenuity, Rubin teamed up with a band of fellow Comedy Cellar alumni to create a secret filming of a news program parody ironically staged at the famed NBC studios.

With a nod from NBC, the public access program prevailed as the cheekily coined, “Anti-show.” After publicly coming out as gay in 2006, he became known for turning the gay stereotype on its head. Rubin’s irreverent mix of politics, celebrity interviews and current events transcends sexuality, serving as the genesis for the hit comedy podcast, The Six Pack. Collaborating with radio host Ben Harvey, The Six Pack features a cross-section of guests and topics, catapulting it into the top 10 most downloaded comedy podcasts on iTunes.

While the future basks in the bright glow of touchscreens, Dave Rubin waxes nostalgic with his Built to Perform possession, a 1989 Sega Genesis that serves as a 16-bit throwback to a simpler time.

1) How did you first become a comic and what was one of the hardest things about breaking into the industry?

I’ve been doing stand-up for about 14 years, which seems like a long time to everyone except stand up comics. It’s an art that takes relentless reinvention to get really good and it’s the only art form where you have to practice in front of a live audience. Imagine if a painter or a sculptor had to get immediate approval from an audience right after a stroke of the brush or a move of the clay. Stand-up is special that way and it’s also probably why so many comics are bonkers.

Photographer: James Ryang

As for breaking into the industry, I’d say the hardest part is staying true to yourself while trying to find an angle that’ll lead to success. I think I’ve finally found the right route. Now I just have to not screw it up.

2) How did you meet Ben Harvey and what inspired the podcast show, The Sixpack? Why do you think the two of you work so well together?

Ben and I met at a network that needn’t be mentioned — kinda like Lord Voldemoort. They tossed us in a room and said do something and we just got right to it. Four years later, I’m incredibly proud of how we’ve created a show that has found a fantastic audience, built a successful business and given us room to explore creatively without having to check-in with “the man” (though, who is the man, really?).

3) What do you think sets The Sixpack apart from other LGBT themed shows?

We happen to be gay, big damn deal. I’d much rather people know that we’re funny, relevant and interesting. But it’s weird for me to just say that, so I’d say check out the show and find out for yourself. I’m sure we have a website or something.

4) Who are some guests that you think really stand out in the LGBT community and who has been someone that you look up to?

My favorite guests have mainly been other comedians and we’ve had a ton of great ones. Joy Behar, Richard Lewis, Sandra Bernhard and Jackie Mason are just a few. For me, it’s not that important that they do anything gay in their act, they’re doing enough by coming on a show that is aimed at the gay crowd.

Though she hasn’t been on the show, I once tweeted at Rosie and she showed up at the restaurant I was at and we shared a beer. That’s kinda better than being on the show.

5) Your prized possession is a Sega Genesis 1989. Where were you when you first bought it and how long have you had it for? Why is it your most prized possession?

Photographer: James Ryang

I remember the exact day since it was my 13th birthday, June 26th, 1989. My Mom took my brother and I to Toys ‘R Us and we bolted down to the video game aisle, grabbed the paper that had the price on it and ran to the register. I totally remember the guy going to the locked-up glass video game section and taking out the system.

It really is my most prized possession because I can fire that thing up at any time and suddenly be transported back to a world that is long since gone. None of my adult problems exist in that 16-bit universe. It’s just about whether the Lakers will beat the Celtics in NBA Live or how many coins Sonic can snag.

It’s a time for me to shut off my brain and just jump back to something I once loved. It’s a slightly less poetic Rosebud from Citizen Kane, I think.

6) What made Sega better than Nintendo?

It was the next step in evolution. We went from 8-bit Nintendo to 16-bit Sega Genesis. That’s double the bits! As Kramer said in Seinfeld, “with air conditioners, it’s all about BTU’s.” For early ’90s video games, it was all about bits. Actually, I’m not sure what it’s about anymore. Now you have to strap something on and break a sweat while playing. That ain’t right.

7) In one sentence, tell us why you couldn’t live without your Built to Perform possession.

I couldn’t live without my Sega Genesis because I need something that I can still beat my nephew in.

Are icequakes the cause of the mysterious sound oceanographers call The Bloop? Sure, why the hell not.

We can all agree that outside of America’s two cities where it’s plausible to live without a car, the people of the United States could do with a little physical activity now and then. Americans used to climb stairs and roll pickle barrels and wrassle the neighbors and tar the roof and dig the potatoes and all other kinds of labor that kept the heart healthy and the buttocks muscular, but now something-something cars computers video games taco bars, and just look at us. That’s why some officials decided to have a seminar in Washington about the crisis of inactivity. Can’t make it? Oh that’s all right, you can “catch the live stream” from the comfort of your computer.

“In order to ward off the hangover, Rohsenow suggested to HealthDay to drink lots of water and take a painkiller with aspirin or ibuprofen, but not acetaminophen (Tylenol), because it can cause liver damage when combined with alcohol. Drinking more to keep the hangover at bay, however, hasn’t been studied, and seems counterintuitive, she pointed out.”
 — Yes, Science Lady, it seems counterintuitive unless you’ve actually ever done it, in which case it is sometimes the difference between life and death (or, at least, moaning on the couch or doing somewhat more ambulatory moaning). In any event, this article is about how college students (and, presumably, those of us who are older or less educated) “who enjoy cigarettes during a night of heavy alcohol consumption are at a greater risk of having a hangover the next morning compared to students who skip the cigarette.” Researchers are not sure why this should be the case, but the simple answer is that it is because cigarettes are awesome and alcohol is awesome and when you combine two awesome experiences you offend the universe with your joy so it does what it can to see you suffer. And that is why smokers get worse hangovers. I’ll see you in Stockholm next December.

Photo by Dmitry Melnikov, via Shutterstock

Tony Fletcher discusses his Smiths book There Is A Light That Never Goes Out with the delightful Rob Sheffield at Book Court. A number of Jews tell stories for six minutes at the 92Y. The comedy podcast “How Did This Get Made?” takes it live at The Bell House. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah play and Sapphire reads. (NOT TOGETHER, but, !!! That would be kind of amazing.)

Appearing here Wednesdays, Turning The Screw provides existential crisis counseling for the faint of heart. “Because, like it or not, your days are numbered.”

Hi, Polly,

I work at a new(ish) & great job surrounded by commercial artists in film, many of them high-functioning crazies/social misanthropes like myself. I’m still married (thankfully) to a wonderful & forgiving wife (also an artist) and we have two small boys.

Last year I made the horrible mistake of having an affair with a coworker. Six months prior to that, my wife and I had hit a point where neither of us were sure if we were in love with each other and the daily grind of kids & work had strained our conversations down to concrete tasks only. Due to my job, there was a long period where we’d live apart for months at a time, with me away at work, her in the house with the kids — and both of us checking out of our relationship little by little, emotionally and physically. Nothing extramarital happened then, but this kind of physical & emotional estrangement set the stage for last year’s foul up when I headed to a new city to scout for a place for the family to relocate. I would be separated from my family for three more months, seeing them once a month. I soon found a place, and was left with two months to “enjoy the new city.” I went way too far with that.

This coworker was fun, attractive, smart, a decade younger than my wife and available. She knew I was not, but, thanks to the incessant partying and my own shitty “judgment,” we wound up initiating a relationship with the agreement that this would end as soon as I moved out of the new city into the new burbs, where I would try to sort things through with my wife. I was a total asshole. My coworker’s heart got broken, and badly. So did my wife’s when I told her. Even more selfishly, I allowed my coworker to rely on me to try to comfort her, which didn’t go well for anyone — more sex & co-dependency. I encouraged her to see other men. Later on, she said she was ready to be my kids’ stepmom. Eventually it ended, amicably enough, I guess; she dumped my weak ass after I told her there was no way we could be together without my trying to be a single dad for a while. That would take a couple of years, and she shouldn’t wait up. Surprisingly, we remained friendly, and meanwhile my wife and I managed to work through it all & I’m so, SO, thankful for that.

Months later, I got a sobbing call from my coworker and she told me that she had been having another affair with another coworker for the entire time that she was turning to me for emotional & sexual support. She was telling me because this guy’s wife was intent on trying to ruin my home life when she found out. At the time I was shocked and angry. It got worse when I realized that this guy, my mistress, and I had spent most of last year hanging out, and they never let on to me that this was happening. I had suspected, but this woman had denied it flat out, and I had believed her. I wound up telling those two that I was glad that he was there for her when she needed someone. I was disappointed in everyone including myself, but I didn’t want to hear from his wife. And I didn’t.

The thing is, I couldn’t handle this. Like, at all. It drove me nuts for some reason. I thought we were all close friends, but they couldn’t tell me until they got busted by his wife. I got really angry with her and let her know it. Then I felt guilty for feeling angry with them. Those two avoided me at work while they vanished into their relationship (he remains married), which made me resentful. The shaming and blaming started at the studio, and it was those two against the world, confessing all, me trying to close gaps with other friends on my own. Those two invited me out a few times, but the woman was never comfortable with the idea of my wife showing up, and she said so. Clearly. Meanwhile, I got to see those two practically making out in the hall. I developed latent anger issues, joined a kickboxing class in earnest. I finally gave up trying to be socially adjusted at work (it was backfiring anyway, I became passive-aggressive), so I stopped going out, turned down invites, etc., and concentrated all of my positive self on my household. My wife and I grew closer, found love again after talking it all out, banning concrete tasks from our talks if we went out without the kids and the like. She even took responsibility for her side of the gap that appeared in our marriage. Wonderfully compassionate. She set the bar for me.

Meanwhile, these two coworkers barely talked to me at all. When they did, I came off as resentful, which I was — but I couldn’t understand why I was. This lady often laid her situation at my feet with “I was only funny to impress you.” and “It only happened because you broke me, but you didn’t deserve what I did to you.” Drove me nuts. She made poor choices, as did I. I didn’t make them for her. She wanted to talk to me when she and the guy were having relationship issues, and I told her I didn’t want to know and she should keep it light if she wanted to talk. Meanwhile, he avoided me entirely, which suited me fine. His animosity waxed and waned, but he never explained why. I suspect he resented the attention from the rest of the studio, but I didn’t kiss and tell — other people they had told about their affair had. Eventually, she quit the job for the other coast, for personal reasons. Among the other innocuous things said in her last text to me was “I’ll miss you.” I hardly saw her in person outside of meetings for weeks prior, we never had IM’ed or texted about anything of substance, and she had avoided coming to my office during that entire time. I texted her that I didn’t hate her like she thought, I wished we had been better friends after it all, but I wouldn’t miss her as much as I thought I would thanks to her avoiding me for a month, and I asked her not to text me for at least a week or two, and then do so if she felt like it. This was just recently, and I now feel horribly guilty all over again.

So, now, I’m trying to follow-up with this guy she left behind, my former pal. I have no idea what their relationship status is. I just let him know that I feel like I’ve been acting like a passive-aggressive douche (I had sent him some texts I regret, it’s true) and if he was ready to catch up, I was. We’re getting a beer together tomorrow. I think. Haven’t heard from him yet.

Should I even bother? What’s the point? I feel like I’m acting like a passive-aggressive nutjob over nothing.

Film Fallout

Dear FF,

Have you ever heard of Rotten Island? It’s a terrible, rocky place depicted in a children’s book by William Steig, a place that’s covered in gravel and volcanoes, inhabited by hideous flying insects and nasty monsters with jagged teeth who growl and bite and push each other off tall cliffs. When a beautiful flower appears on the island, the nasty inhabitants flee in fear, repulsed by the pretty thing.

You and your buddies would really love it on Rotten Island. You could flirt and fuck and avoid each other and text to apologize and threaten each other and fuck again and get angry and text to explain that you’re only angry because you miss each other and fuck again and push each other off tall cliffs. Splat!

Either your wife is pathologically patient, or you lie to her constantly, which means you may as well have never stopped fucking your freaky, attention-seeking, flying insect mistress. Or maybe your wife is just too distracted by the beautiful flowers at home (your kids, I mean. Oh yeah, them!) to worry about what you’re doing out there, among the volcanoes that spit poison arrows and double-headed toads.

Clearly, you should’ve learned long ago that any further contact with those miscreants from Rotten Island was a bad, bad idea. Yes, you fit in well with them, that much is obvious, with your confused, bloodshot googly eyes and your twitchy, lizardy skin and your petulant hissing and spitting. Somehow, though, you’ve managed to trot out this creepy, pustule-covered self to your wife, and she still loves you. Incredible! So you’ve been offered a second chance to remain in a land of rainbows and flowers, where there are home-cooked meals and innocent, funny children and no scary insects sending passive-aggressive texts. Praise the sweet, merciful Lord on high!

So what do you do with your second chance? You stomp all over every pretty flower in sight with your giant, filthy claws. Now please, read this sentence that you wrote, which is a thing of Gothic, grotesque glory: “I texted her that I didn’t hate her like she thought, I wished we had been better friends after it all, but I wouldn’t miss her as much as I thought I would thanks to her avoiding me for a month, and I asked her not to text me for at least a week or two, and then do so if she felt like it.” You couldn’t paint a more deliciously awful portrait of your deeply insecure depravity if you tried.

So, do you belong on Rotten Island or not? That’s the question you have to ask yourself. Because if you want to ignore your two kids and your very kind wife and spend the rest of your life fucking and texting and shoving people, that option is available to you. There are always hissing harpies and sea donkeys and double-headed toads around, belching and shoving and fucking to their hearts’ content. Their lives are very “exciting,” if lying and backbiting and two-timing and confessing are exciting to you. Rest assured, the excitement never ends! Your flying insect mistress? Why, she’ll exchange texts with you until the end of time, trust me, as long as the subject is her — how much you do or don’t long for the high, flapping whine of her approaching wings, why/how you’ve dodged her drooly proboscis, what your wife thinks about her twitching thorax these days.

If you’re sure that Rotten Island isn’t the place for you, then you’re not to contact either of those freaks ever again. Never, ever. No Facebook. (Unfriend right now.) No nothing. Polite, necessary exchanges with the double-headed male toad, at the most. No beers, no apologies, no friendship. No. More. Words. You also have to be honest with your wife from this point forward, about everything. Every single stupid lie, even about tiny little things, screws up a marriage. Put the rotten intrigue behind you (No more sexy conversations with coworkers, no more flirting, no more “Why, if I weren’t married…”). Try very hard to live in a way that doesn’t constantly compromise your self-respect.

If you’re not in therapy, you should be. If you are in therapy, you should get a new therapist and double up on your sessions. You are very confused about your emotions and your culpability. You never owed those two anything, but you kept crawling back to them for more insanity. The problem with being as confused as you are is that you don’t trust yourself, you lie to the people around you (because you don’t trust that anything you say won’t sound insane), and, as a result, you can’t really connect with anyone.

I don’t care how good things happen to be with you and your wife and your family, you’re not remotely in the clear yet. You’re missing some crucial bits of understanding, self-knowledge and self-acceptance that make a sane, loyal, committed life possible. If you really want to be true to your wife and kids, you need to work really hard with a therapist to become the kind of person who doesn’t hide from and lie to the only people who are loyal and true to him.

Or, return to the gravelly hillsides and shoving matches and fire-belching volcanoes of your dreams.

Polly

Dear Polly,

I dated a guy in college for about two years. By all practical accounts, he was a horrible partner. He cheated on me, failed to make time for me, was a bad communicator and routinely chastised me in front of his friends. But like all good-for-nothing first loves, he was dark and intriguing and had his moments of kindness. Although we live in different cities, we have sporadically kept in touch and have both been in relationships since parting ways. I feel like I have become a much more competent and discerning person and have repaired much of the psychic damage he did.

He was recently in my city for a few days for work — one thing led to another and we were in bed together. He has mellowed and I’m less willing to take his shit so the handful of days we spent together were surprisingly lovely. The sex was dirty/fun/maybe a little shameful and soul sucking. (As Lord Alfred Douglas says, “Of all sweet passions Shame is the loveliest.”) We have continued to be in touch since his visit and I mentioned that I was planning to be in his city in few months to visit some old friends. He invited me to stay with him. I would rather sleep in his bed than on a friend’s couch. Part of me wants to continue this pattern of flying back and forth across the country to have nostalgia sex, but another part of me wonders if this could undo all the emotional healing and maturation I did after dating him. Ugh.

Help?

Reunited and It Feels Disconcerting

Dear RAIFD,

A very wise woman once told me, “The right plane can’t land if the wrong plane is blocking the runway.” Although it can feel pretty good to have the wrong plane in your runway (ahem!), it’s no good.

That reunion-sex glow you feel now comes from feeling proud (and reassured) by the fact that 1) your ex still finds you attractive and b) he seems to dig your funky new swagger. This prideful thrill will fade the second you land in your ex’s city for more bad-plane fuckery. He’ll be far more indifferent and demeaning, you’ll be far less swaggery and sure of yourself, and the whole thing will almost immediately begin to mimic the shittiness of the original relationship. Repeat this bad pattern a few more times, and you’re stuck on Rotten Island with the enormous insects and the scheming sea donkeys.

So yes, fucking this guy is the absolute perfect way to undo the emotional healing and maturation you’ve achieved since dating him. What’s nice, though, is that the second you tell that broken-ass plane to get the fuck off your runway, voila! You are far happier than you were before. You are no longer a woman who accepts sloppy sex with a damaged ex. You have standards, and a clear runway, sparkling in the mid-day sunshine, beckoning shiny new planes to land.

Polly

Are your friends inconsiderate? Is your spouse unfair? Do you expect too much? Write to Polly and find out!

Previously: Ask Polly: Why Do Guys Dump Me Like a Hot Potato?

Heather Havrilesky (aka Polly Esther) is The Awl’s existential advice columnist. She’s also a regular contributor to The New York Times Magazine, and is the author of the memoir Disaster Preparedness (Riverhead 2011). She blogs here about scratchy pants, personality disorders, and aged cheeses. Photo by Desrosiers Photo.