In which things get better, then much worse

Chicago was magical. HB and I completely reconnected and found again in each other the joys of the strong mutual attraction that brought us together in the first place. There is just a naturalness between us that I've never felt before with anyone else. In person, we joke and laugh and can talk about anything. We're essentially the nauseating couple you want to punch because they are so nauseatingly in tune with each other.

His family was fantastic as well. I was worried about meeting them in the context of everything between him and me, but I had no need. I usually do really well with families, and his was no exception. His mother is a bit kooky, but I could appreciate her in the short interactions I had with her. I loved his dad, who is such a jolly old man in love with computers. We definitely connected over some nerdy talk about our shared dislike of C++, and he could truly appreciate my passion for hardware design over software development. HB has two older half sisters who are around 40, and a younger sister who is my age. His younger sister is my favorite, and I felt she and I connected the most, but I got along with all of his sisters. I could envision a future in which they would be my sisters too, and everything felt right.

And I wanted all the things that felt right. So I left Chicago asking HB to give us another shot. He was tired and exhausted, feeling like he was always trying so hard to keep me interested in him and engaged with this relationship with less-than-successful results. He was dubious why this time would be any different but did agree to try again.

A couple of beautiful happy weeks go by, during which he found a job in Chicago. We were so excited, and it felt like this long and hard road is finally coming to an end. He gave his notice at his current job, with his last day being mid-November, and booked flights to leave China permanently by Thanksgiving.

Then things started to get worse.

My birthday was last week, and Broadway surprised me with my favorite cake, tiramisu from a fancy dessert place. He left it for me in my office fridge, but not before taking a bite out of it first. When I saw it the morning of my birthday, I broke down in tears and cried in the bathroom for 15 minutes. I still care about him so much, and I kept asking myself why I can't just be happy with what I had. Why did I need to go and make things so complicated? Broadway loved me so much and made me feel so special. Why did I have to be so stubborn and selfish?

That got me thinking a lot about what I want in a partner. I know that I won't find someone who is 100% perfect--that's simply impossible. So I will find someone who is 80% perfect, and whose 20% incompatibilities with me aren't a big deal. They're things that I would be okay with, and put another way, I'd be willing to settle on those 20%.

Broadway's 20% are completely different from HB's 20%. In fact, Broadway's 20% are a part of HB's 80%, and vice versa. If I could combine Broadway and HB, I would have a 100% perfect man. But individually, whose 80% is better? Whose 20% is worse? I couldn't answer that question, and that really shook my resolve to be with HB.

In parallel, I've been having this "thing" with a guy in my new friend group for a while now. We first met back in June (well, remet... I mentioned him briefly in this entry). We'll call him my Special Friend. Special Friend and I flirt, a lot, but nothing has ever progressed beyond flirting. I think we both welcome the attention, and on occasion, at the end of late night drinking sessions with the friend group, he and I will hold hands or have our arms around each other. While sober though, we've gotten lunch a few times, but they're always within the bounds of a friendship, and we never talk about the times when we are drunk.

Even without HB in the picture, I'm not sure I would pursue anything with Special Friend beyond flirting. He doesn't know about HB and so wouldn't know I am technically off-limits, and yet he has not made any moves, so I feel that he feels the same way: fun to flirt, but not enough interest to take it further. HB is insanely jealous of Special Friend (no surprise), but I always tell HB when I plan to hang out with Special Friend. Aside from our occasional lunches, Special Friend and I never hang out on our own.

A couple of weeks back, I found myself one of the last 2 people left at his house following a night of drinking. The other girl got up to leave, and I followed, except she left rather quickly, and I couldn't get my jacket and shoes on in time before she was already out the door. Now alone with Special Friend, who was drunk, he stood between me and the front door and tried to kiss me. I definitely wanted to kiss him back, but I was sober and knew better and resisted the urge. He said some nice and sweet things about me and told me that if ever I want a nice guy to hang out with, he'll be just down the street (we live just a few blocks apart).

The next tday, I nervously told HB that Special Friend asked me out (not mentioning his having tried to kiss me), and HB was happy that I turned him down. He was however, very unhappy that I wasn't able to tell Special Friend that I have a boyfriend. "Thank you for the interest, but I have a boyfriend." Yet it was something I was unable to bring myself to say, to admit that I was attached and take away future flirting chances with Special Friend.

Last night, Special Friend's friend circle (which overlaps with mine) planned a huge apartment crawl for Halloween, ending up at Special Friend's house. I found myself in the exact same situation again, one of the last two people remaining at the house at 3am. Except this time I was drunk. The other person got up to leave, and I followed. He left in a hurry, and I couldn't catch up and it became just Special Friend and me, alone. He stopped me at the top of the stairs leading to his front door, leaned in and kissed me.

Not being sober, I didn't have enough resolve to pull away. We made out for a long time, and he asked me to stay over. I did have enough sense to leave at that point, came home, drank some water and went to sleep. The full implications of what I had done hit me when I woke up this morning and realized that I, once again, cheated on my boyfriend.

I didn't want to tell HB, so instead, I broke up with him. It hurt to have that conversation, but he said he saw it coming. He's felt my aloofness all through the last couple of weeks. I told him that our being together was always a battle for me as I fought against my desires to be single and out flirting with other guys like Special Friend. He said that he knew I was always fighting that, and he's honestly a little tired of fighting for me and being nervous wondering about what might happen every time I hang out with Special Friend.

I haven't had enough time to process this breakup yet. I think I will be happier, just from the lack of obligations and constraints associated with being in a relationship. But I am devastated about HB and me. He has so many great qualities, and I've never felt as comfortable with anyone as I do with him. That will be so hard to find. He's finally moving back to Chicago, where we'll get to see each other so much more than we do now. I feel like I'm throwing something away right at the moment when it will start to get great. And I'm throwing it away because it's easier to break up with HB than it is to tell him I made out with another guy.

Oy.

Things that are on my mind (Part 1: boys & career)

1) HB

I leave for Chicago this Wednesday to visit HB for almost a week and for his sister’s wedding. We talked pretty extensively last night for the first time in seemingly forever. We laughed the hardest when we joked about how to introduce me to his relatives at the wedding. He might say something like, “This here is my friend. We’re just friends, and you may never see her again. But yes, we’re staying in the same room together at the hotel.”

I told him that I like him well enough as a person, but can’t manage to look past the things that bother for me to consider him seriously as my boyfriend still (I never did say boyfriend anyway, even at the beginning). He got a bit defensive again, asking why things like misspelled words and lack of tech-savviness would be such big deals to me.

So I finally broke it down: those aren't that big of deals, but they are just the symptoms of the underlying problem, which is a big deal. I told him that I can’t get past how differently our minds work and how he doesn’t measure up in the ways that I’ve always use to judge people around me. I told him that I've been trying to see his talents for what they are worth and to remind myself he is good at things that are unconventional to me, that I need to see value in new things that were never on my radar before. But I haven’t been successful in that quest and honestly have a hard time assigning value to the things that he considers himself to be good at.

I guess that was my euphemism for “I don’t think you’re smart. We don’t have to be smart in the same way, but I need to see worth in the ways that you are smart. And right now, I just see nothing.”

He didn’t understand my implied message, and I didn’t want to burden him with a blunt accusation right before he gets on a 13-hour flight. We both debated whether I should just skip going to Chicago altogether. I said that my reasons for still going are 1) to see if things would be different in person, but I don’t have high hopes of this being the case, and 2) honestly, I want to fuck. He said he understood that we’re not really together anymore, and he’s seen that for a long time, and he’s gotten himself to a place where he can “take it or leave it” with regards to the relationship. He’s sad that I see us as just friends, and he wishes that weren’t the case, but he also hasn’t asked me to not come to Chicago because he wants to fuck, and we fuck so well together. So, honestly, that’s great. I’m glad everyone is on the same page, and that we’ll be getting busy in Chicago.

2) Broadway:

I broke down and emailed Broadway mid last week. I’d been having more and more doubts about our breakup, especially as things with HB got worse and worse. (To answer GH’s question on the last post, no, I don’t generally have a pattern of going to a new man in order to escape from old ones). I think in this case, I realized that no one is perfect, that I will have conflicts with anyone I date. It’s a matter of how much I am willing to work with the situation and in some sense, how much I’m willing to “settle.” I’m not 18 and idealistic anymore that there is ONE prince-charming out there who is perfect for me. There are many people whom I can work with as long as the fundamentals are in place and I stay true to my values.

So in that sense, Broadway was good on many of the major fronts. I need someone I can consider my intellectual equal. I need someone I can count on. I need someone who doesn’t need babysitting. I need someone who will care about me no matter how hard I am to deal with. I need someone who can solve problems with me, and not create problems that I would need to solve. Broadway provided all of that. What he lacked were certain social graces (I was always embarrassed by how long-winded he could be, especially at parties when some unfortunate soul mistakenly asks him the slightest question about his research), social confidence (these two are probably related), sexual passion (he had a healthy appetite for sex, but just didn’t know how to show it and to effectively engage me sexually), and lack of optimism about life and the world. I don’t need someone to tell me everything is great about the world, but Broadway was full of cynicism and took that to the other extreme and thought everything was dark and grey.

I emailed him to ask how he was, and to give a rundown of updates in my life and how I’m working to improve myself lately. We’ve been emailing a bit back and forth, sometimes serious, mostly cute and jokey. I’m contemplating asking him to sit down and talk, where I would propose that we give things another shot, but with a greater emphasis on open communication and on going to couples therapy to work on the things where we clash. Visiting HB in Chicago definitely complicates this, and is partially why I haven’t asked Broadway to sit down yet.

3) Job search:

Started seriously job-searching a couple of weeks ago. It’s taking a lot of time and just overall causing all kinds of stress due to the general vagueness and uncertainty of looking for a job. I’m plagued a lot by not knowing what I really want to do. I know I don’t want to keep doing research the way that I’ve been doing it in grad school. Understanding basic science is not enough incentive for me on a daily basis to be motivated enough and to be productive. I need to see more immediate real-world applications in my work. So I thought I might enjoy science policy and went to Beijing for 6 months to do climate change policy (science policy AND the environment! What’s there NOT to love?). But in the end, it was a ton of fun to be in Beijing, not so much fun doing the policy work. It was a lot of report-reading and report-writing, and at least in the environment I was in, not a lot of teamwork. I need more hands-on, field work type of work, and in the absence of that, I need to be working with a lot of people. I honestly felt claustrophobic in front of my computer screen all day, every day, and none of the excitement I thought I’d be feeling working on something so important and so relevant.

So I went back to looking at careers in science industry: pharmaceuticals, consumer products, startup biotechs. The problem with science industry is that I don’t have the science credentials. I don’t have pages and pages of publication records to show off what I’ve done in grad school (in fact, what I’ve done in grad school is to avoid my research as much as possible). I do have a lot of pretty substantial leadership experience and of course all my policy stuff (I also interned in a prominent Senator’s office doing healthcare analysis at the peak of all that healthcare reform stuff). My advisor claims these provide an image of a well-rounded scientist, good for my intended trajectory of a managerial path in science industry. The recruiting company reps whom I have talked say similar things. However, when it actually comes down to granting me interviews, nobody does, and that's really upsetting.

They tell me this is what they are looking for, that so-and-so company hire the *whole* person and not just the scientific experience/training. But then, why can't I get interviews? I feel like they look through my resume and still can't see past the relatively sparse science credentials and decide they would rather go with a "safer" candidate who excelled in grad school. So now I’ve also added consulting to my list of companies to pursue. They claim to value leadership and soft skills and really only see scientific training as analytical training. I feel like a sell-out, applying to consulting firms. I don’t like trying to talk-the-talk in a suit, and I'm still a nerdy scientist at heart. But I’ve gritted my teeth and gone through with it, written the coverletters, submitted the resumes. Lo-and-behold, the first firm I submited a resume to granted me a first-round interview. I have to do it over the phone because I'll be in Chicago later this week, but that's better than any of the science industry positions I've applied to. I’m just sad that I can’t get past the screening process to get interviews and be the scientist that I came to grad school to be.

4) Graduating:

This has been a hard hurdle for me all along. I didn’t think hard enough about the types of projects I wanted to be working on when I started grad school (and not sure I thought hard enough about whether or not I actually want to go to grad school period while in college). So I’ve been stuck in a rut for a long time, for maybe as long as the past four years. I recently met several times in near succession with my advisor, who is great at extracting the big picture from things. We managed to come up with something that could salvage the work I’ve done so far into a thesis. I have one last set of experiments to run to test a set of hypotheses predicted by some computational work I did after getting back from China, but I have maybe 20% faith that the hypothesis will test out to be true. I’m not sure what will happen the other 80% of the time.

I’m now entering my 7^th year in this PhD program (granted I took off those 6 months to go to Beijing), and that’s just demoralizing in general. I’ve been doing the SAME THING for 7 years. I need to get out of here and move on. Despite that feeling of panic and of needing to get out, I can’t seem to wake up in the mornings with enough motivation to get myself to lab and thaw cells and set up assays and run experiments. My motivation needs serious help.

Other things I’m thinking about coming in Part 2 (frisbee, friends, my knees, groupons)