How to Leave a Loser

By this time, all of Pretty Lady's friends should need no convincing of her qualifications regarding the titular topic. Pretty Lady, sadly, is an increasingly renowned expert on Losers. The Losers she has known, moreover, are not a homogenous lot; nor do they resemble the garden-variety loser in superficials. You know the one I mean--the pot addict, the drunkard, the perennially unemployed, the spendthrift, the wife-beater. No, Pretty Lady's taste in Losers has historically been wide-ranging and exotic. This is partly the reason she has been able to convince herself that each successive Loser was not a Loser at all, but merely a misunderstood genius. Some of them were geniuses, in fact; this does not affect their essential Loser nature one jot.

So Pretty Lady believes it is best to start with the basics: how does one recognize a Loser, when one is entangled to the point where one's Loser radar is hopelessly snarled in a miasma of erotic enslavement, emotional attachment, intellectual fascination, and codependent rationalization?

The answer to this question is, realistically, one doesn't. Not until the time arrives. One's friends can point it out, one's family can complain, roll eyeballs, and disinherit all they like. A Loser-addicted lady will not even notice. She will regard it as her job to defend the Loser against his detractors at all costs; this is merely her duty as a Good Faithful Woman.

So let us re-frame the question. What does one do when the love and light of one's life, that misunderstood genius, that special individual that only You are capable of understanding truly, that flawed god in human form, is turning your life into a thoroughly ungrounded roller coaster of increasingly infrequent blissed-out highs, punctuated by ever-deepening troughs of screaming misery?

Now I've got your attention.

A hallmark of Loser-addiction is the circular nature of your interactions. Well Pretty Lady remembers those tequila-soaked 3 AMs, the maudlin renditions of "Take a Pebble," the angst-ridden confessions of hopeless attachment, the reconcilatory passions, the snuggling amongst a mound of blankets. Well she harks back upon those hung-over dawns, with Coke and lime, beef stew and tortillas for breakfast; after this the contemplative, healthful explorations of hidden Spanish ruins in the rain. Even better does she recall the sudden moments when her lover abruptly disappeared, because he was entertaining yet another woman Pretty Lady hadn't heard about. A new one, an old one, they were all the same in the end.

Or the surprise visits from the Zen monastery--no expense spared on ten-year-old whiskey, the healthful jogs on the beaches, the deep conversations on esoteric matters, the grocery shopping, the impromptu dinner parties, the hijinks in the bathtub--followed by months of enlightened Zen silence.

Or the mutually supportive, mutually beneficial partnership--the Friday evening dates at Home Depot, the renovations, the potting of plants, the mutual massages, the outdoing one another on maternal clucking and cooking of healthful meals, the sushi splurges, the relaxing weekends upstate, mutually worn out from such mutually harmonious hard work. If it weren't for those periodic, rage-filled, irrational, abusive rants upon the evils of marriage, the lobotomizing effects of spiritual practice, and the basic sexual undesirability of Pretty Lady, a mutually satisfying relationship might have continued indefinitely.

So then the question becomes--when one of the Losers described above has worn you to a hysterical shred, when you must break the cycle or die, but you are still hampered by the fog of irrational yet overwhelmingly compelling attachment, what do you do?

Leaving town is a good option. Seriously. Leaving the country is even better.

If this is not possible, remember this axiom: It is not possible to change another person. It is only possible to change oneself.

The one immutable characteristic of a dyed-in-the-wool Loser is that he cannot bear personal growth. He creates these cycles of artificial drama because they create the illusion that something is happening, while allowing him to remain mired in his own battered infancy of the spirit. Not only can he not countenance genuine change in himself, he cannot endure it in other people.

So if you, his adoring punching-bag, make the choice to become a healthier, happier, more functional person, the overwhelming likelihood is that he will make it easy for you to leave him, by leaving you first.

If you find yourself shackled to a Loser, then, you must start with a simple action geared to your own personal benefit. You may join a gym or sign up for a yoga class. You may join a book club; you may take an independent holiday. You might decide to spend four hours a day arbitrarily ignoring your Loser. You could clean the clutter out of the corners of your apartment.

Once you have gotten into a few of these habits, the balance between you and the Loser will have subtly shifted. You will have a glow about you; you will not be so susceptible to sudden yankings upon the heartstrings. The Loser will not like this. He will yank harder. He will pretend to capitulate to therapy; he will throw one of his bi-annual 'I'm-going-to-quit-smoking-tomorrow' parties. He will dramatically jettison one or two of the less-consequential Other Women. He will write a thoughtful letter from the monastery. Anything to lure you back into the cycle.

You will, of course, be lured. But you will not cease going to yoga class. Eventually you will become so balanced, healthy, and centered that you will calmly ask the Loser to stop treating you like a psychic spittoon.

It is then that the yoga will come most in handy, because this request will cause the Loser to lose his shit. He will claim that you are an irrational, hysterical mess. He will make dates with five women in one week. He will sign up for a six-month Zen intensive in the Mojave desert. He will, in effect, cast you into the deepest soul-wrenching trough of screaming misery that he has ever done.

And you will look around the trough, think, "This looks familiar. In fact, I'm getting sort of bored with it," and climb out.