Maybe You Should Talk to Someone

by Lori Gottlieb

One morning, as I drone on about Boyfriend, Wendell scoots to the edge of his couch, stands up, walks over to me, and, with his very long leg, lightly kicks my foot. Smiling, he returns to his seat. “Ouch!” I say reflexively, even though it didn’t hurt. I’m startled. “What was that?” “Well, you seem like you’re enjoying the experience of suffering, so I thought I’d help you out with that.” “What?” “There’s a difference between pain and suffering,” Wendell says. “You’re going to have to feel pain — everyone feels pain at times — but you don’t have to suffer so much. You’re not choosing the pain, but you’re choosing the suffering.” He goes on to explain that all of this perseverating I’m doing, all of this endless rumination and speculation about Boyfriend’s life, is adding to the pain and causing me to suffer. So, he suggests, if I’m clinging to the suffering so tightly, I must be getting something out of it. It must be serving some purpose for me. Is it? I think about why I might be obsessively Google-stalking Boyfriend despite how bad I know it makes me feel. Is it a way to stay connected to Boyfriend and his daily routine, even if it’s only one-sided? Maybe. Is it a way to numb out so I don’t have to think about the reality of what happened? Possibly. Is it a way of avoiding what I should be paying attention to in my life but don’t want to? Earlier, Wendell had pointed out that I’d kept my distance from Boyfriend — ignoring clues that would have made his revelation less ...