Carolyn Hax, January 15 2024: “Is it smart to move for a boyfriend who ‘doesn’t ask me not to’?”

Are you the best thing that's ever happened to you? Really???

Link to the original letter here.

My take: To recap, the LW’s boyfriend is moving far away, and she wants to stay near him. To follow him she’d have to give up an opportunity for herself. When she asks him if she should, he doesn’t ask her not to, but he stops short of “please come.” What should she do?

This is a good question, and Carolyn’s answer is sound, though I think “why don’t you talk to him,” which she kind of buries, ought to go first. Apart from that, though, Carolyn says what needs to be said, and she’s kind about it, too, which I appreciate.

But Carolyn also publishes “readers’ thoughts,” and the first of these really can’t pass without comment. The reader writes:

“Loving relationships are wonderful, but they don’t really stick until you’ve invested in yourself and your life to the point where you are the best thing that’s ever happened to you. I married, then divorced, the ‘best thing that has ever happened to me.’ Years later, I have the best partner I could imagine because I’m my own partner first.” (Italics are mine.)

For most of us, loving relationships are the warp and woof of life. They’re powerfully associated with happiness, the lack of them is just as powerfully associated with sorrow, and their foundation is steadfast, mutual, and generous care for the other.

This is why not too many people would say they’re the best thing that ever happened to themselves, or that they’re their own partner first.

That said, people who do say that are out there, and if you’ve lived long enough, you’ve known a few. How well do you like them?

Exactly. So why did Carolyn make space in her column for a reader who wants more of them?

Chance this letter is fake: I believe the LW. The problem here isn’t the letter, it’s one of the answers.