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Since You Asked (the column)

Is sex a “disgusting, wicked drive”?

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Dear reader, Sometimes a comment on a column can sound like a cry of agony, and a cry of agony can sound like a question. So today I respond to the below comment, posted on last week’s column. The author apparently read my 2006 Salon.com column on suicide which after 15 years still attracts fresh readers and comments. (The comments section is still open!) Ugly hunchback May 17, 2021 at 9:39...

Is my boyfriend cheating on me?

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Hi Cary, I have huge trust issues and it’s affecting my relationship with my partner of 3 years. My trust issues have stemmed from my childhood for many different reasons and to top it off, last year I found out my step dad had been abusing me. My partner has never given me a reason to not trust him. He says he has his morals and knows deep down he has never done anything wrong. His dad cheated...

My Mother the Narcissist

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Dear Cary, I hate my family of origin.  I recently discovered that I grew up in a mostly narcissistic family, with a narc mother who subtly but persistently projected her own guilt and shame and anger about her situation onto us, her six children.  During those childhood years, we – my siblings and I – felt so much compassion for her suffering. It seemed like almost overnight our...

I’m in love with a memory

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Dear Reader, I’m doing it again. I’m going long. In the past, in my blessed twelve years writing the advice column five days a week for Salon.com, the most commonly remarked-upon flaw in my work was my tendency to overwrite, to write long, to repeat myself, to go off on tangents (see what I mean?). My friend and mentor David Talbot, bless his soul, never gave me much trouble about it, perhaps...

Are you at the end of your rope?

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Do you feel like life will never return to normal? Does the future seem like a dim, unending nightmare of isolation? Do you fear that the habits we have acquired will forever dampen the bright spontaneous spirit of social life? Does despair feel like the only realistic response to world conditions? I know many people feel this way. I myself, having survived the COVID-19 disease, having spent...

Serene in the noise of catastrophe

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How to balance our grief about the pandemic with the desire for happiness and normalcy? How to remain whole and vital and strong when the world seems to be falling apart? Where is the line between staying informed and obsessive news-watching? I ponder these things in this week’s podcast. If I were bodily able and living in the States, I think I would feel the need for action: volunteer at a...

I’m apathetic! I never get around to anything!

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Dear Cary, I used to read your Salon column religiously and was sad when it stopped. Frankly I had no idea you were still doing advice via your own website, so I am thrilled to have discovered this! I have a question about apathy. For years it has been my most loyal companion. I have dreams, visions, I have talents – all of which fall short because I simply do not get around to anything. Most...

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