speaking Lashon Hara
1:01 a.m.

I'm in the process of getting hired at a decent job. It looks like I won�t have to move back in with our parents, as long as we are able to get a loan from your family and pay off our bills.

So why do I still feel so sick to my stomach?

Well, maybe the fact that I haven't eaten well for the last four days is part of the problem. And the wack air-conditioning problems (it's not working again). And I�m still worrying about money and that electric bill and so forth.

But actually, I'm really feeling ill because you are not here and there's so much up in the air about our relationship and our upcoming move. (I can't remember ever having undereye circles, but I have them now.) I keep vacillating on what I should do about everything. Every song I hear reminds me of you and makes me cry. I think of lines from love poems I wrote about you and I cry. I think of how you broke down when I did in the closet after that horrible argument, and remember us crying and holding each other, and I cry. I see a Burger King sign and think of how much you adored those chicken breakfast sandwiches and I cry. Most of all, I think of how miserable it would be to not have you in my life every day, for every week to be like this one, and I cry.

I am just really... lost. I adore you. You�re only person I can imagine being with for the rest of my life, and you said the same about me in the closet the other night, and I desperately want to make that happen. A year ago, I felt like we were on the same page. You were slowly opening up to certain ideas (like marriage, and possibly having kids) and we talked about your transition and about our interest in Judaism. You gave me this ring, which you said was a sort of promise that someday, you�d give me another kind of ring, when you felt like you were ready.

But now, you seem so scared. Skittish. And I hardly ever see the tenderness, the quiet, affectionate sweetness in your nature that drew me to you. Where�s that boy who translated a whole book of Neruda for me and sliced his finger on the sweetest Valentine�s Day dinner ever? I want you, I want that boy I fell in love with, but I don't know how to get you back, and it's killing me.

I have been analyzing my recent behavior, too. Of course, some of the things I do are silly and dumb and I am sorry. But some of the things I�ve done are really uncharacteristic of me.

It all comes down to this: I feel like you're not being faithful to me. Not like you're actually having physical, sexual contact with others, of course�I don't believe Lizzie's accusation that you tried to kiss her, and neither does anybody who actually knows how shy you are�but I feel like you're being emotionally unfaithful.

Sometimes I feel like you save all of the "good stories" for your friends, and if I didn't overhear you on the phone, I would never get to hear them.

It hurts me that you don�t blink an eye when Betty refers to you and her as if you were one unit, with your special nickname�but yet you are always throwing, �It�s not like we�re MARRIED or something!� in my face. Why is it okay for you and your best friend to be one unit sometimes, but not for you and I to be one unit sometimes?

It also hurts me that you frequently devote twenty minutes to talking to somebody else on the phone, even if the phone call interrupts something you and I were doing, but if I want you to sit down next to me and ignore the phone for twenty minutes, you get angry with me.

And most importantly, it just kills me that you�ve divulged some of the most personal details of my life and our relationship to all of your friends. I don't mind you talking things over with a trusted best friend or a therapist; I obviously do that, too. If I didn�t, I would go crazy.

But others? Now that you've parted ways with your favorite group of friends, the backstabbing bitches are using these intimate details to torture me. I guess I wasn't just crazy or "paranoid" when I felt that you might be gossiping about our relationship and about me.

For example, I've never seen you say something positive or affectionate about me in your journal, yet you're perfectly comfortable writing a secret entry that tears me down. And I have the feeling that it was the same when you were with them in the flesh. That you only presented the side of me that makes them call me "your lame, retarded, clingy girlfriend, who YOU TALK SHIT ABOUT BEHIND HER BACK CONSTANTLY," and makes them think I hated Betty, and all of that fun stuff. I mean, obviously, you don�t think I am that retarded because you still love me. So why don�t your (ex-)friends know this?

While Lizzie really needs to work on her writing skills, she's right on one account: when you talked to these friends about me, you were probably just "talking shit" rather than simply seeking support in a difficult time.

I think you said something the other day about how you didn't see the difference between "venting" and "talking shit" about your friend/partner. I think there is a bit of a difference between these two terms, but there's *definitely* a Good Way and a Bad Way to discuss your relationship with others.

Venting, to most people, is closer to seeking support or brainstorming, I think. It is what I do with my best friend or my mom; venting is discussing big, important issues when I need support. This is a productive and positive thing. It's not about revealing embarrassing details about your partner. And in my experience, it's generally tempered with other positive comments like, "Oh, but he was so sweet the other day; he left a love note on my dashboard after he borrowed my car."

But "talking shit" is basically just gossiping about the flaws and shortcomings of your partner. It's telling your friends dirty little tidbits about your partner and your relationship. It's also called "scandalizing," as my therapist once described it.

Jews call gossip "speaking Lashon Hara"; it's traditionally considered equivalent to/worse than murder and adultery, and transgressors with an "evil tongue" (the literal translation) are to be cut off from the World to Come.

It�s got a bad reputation for a reason: this kind of talk is not productive but destructive. When you talk about me that way to other people, it puts my life up to judgment, when it isn't any of their business, and friends tend to accept anything said as gospel. They usually won�t give the victim of the gossip the benefit of the doubt. (Witness Adriana and Alexa being so certain of Lizzie�s sainthood lately.)

Also, as I�ve found out firsthand this week, being privy to gossip like that makes people feel like they know you, and gives them an invitation to interfere, even though a) the story may have been exaggerated, b) the person telling the story may have misunderstood or misinterpreted it, c) the person being spoken of may have acted unintentionally or d) the person being spoken of, for some reason unknown to them, may have been justified in what they did.

I�m not perfect or anything. I admit that I have been guilty of the "evil tongue" many times. But almost never in relation to you. You are too important to me, and I want everybody to love you like I do.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, if you have a beef with me, I wish you�d get home and communicate with me instead of airing my dirty laundry, every little bit of it, to your friends.

I want to address something else. You've said that I refuse to have those important kinds of discussions with you "unless it's on [my] own terms," and that I force you to have big discussions late at night when we�re about to go to bed and you�re tired. This just isn�t true. At times I�ve tried to initiate discussions in the car, or when we�re just sitting around reading or watching TV. Most of the time you brush me off. Or the phone interrupts us, and you just get up and answer it instead of letting the voice mail take over.

Also, it may seem like I�m the only one setting the �terms� of our discussions, but that only happens because you rarely initiate any kind of serious discussion by yourself. The exceptions are these: a) you�ve gotten to a breaking point and you�re ready to explode or b) I�ve told you that I didn�t want you to go out that night because I hoped we could have some time together to talk and reconnect. In the second scenario, you expect me to drop everything and sit somewhere uncomfortable and have a discussion right then, when all I meant was that I wanted us to have a night to ourselves, with no interruptions, so we could have a long, leisurely discussion over the course of the evening. (Possibly after a nice bout of sex, when you will almost certainly be more open, relaxed and receptive to what I have to say.)

But if I do oblige on these occasions and start to talk about whatever, you act angry and impatient, expecting that we will somehow be able to work through some huge issue in ten minutes so you can still go to that friend�s house. That is no way to start a productive discussion, and I, (knowing that we�re not going to be able to talk anyway because you are angry with me and therefore emotionally shut down,) let you leave like you�d wanted to in the first place. But then I suspect that you�ll go and meet your friend(s) and immediately start to apologize for being late, saying that I was being crazy and controlling again. Perpetuating the endless cycle of Lashon Hara.

And that's why I'm having trouble trusting you. Every time you leave the house (or answer the phone and then leave the room) when we haven't resolved a certain issue, I feel like you just don�t care about me or our relationship. Or I feel like you're going off to complain about what a horrible person I am. Then when you'd get back home (or get off the phone), as you�ll recall, I'd feel frustrated and, well, cheated-on, which caused me to lay those huge guilt trips on you.

I am so, so sorry for that. I realize now why that happened, and why I felt betrayed when you'd go to peoples' houses without me. Believe it or not, I actually enjoy having a certain degree of independence. I know that sometimes, everybody needs a break from your partner, and that you must feel excessively "pinned-down" because you don't have a car right now and can't come and go as you please. I think we should really work together on how we can balance your need for independence with my need for togetherness. I�m willing to do whatever it takes.

yours, always--

S.

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