[button link=”mailto:[email protected]” newwindow=”yes”] Write for Advice[/button] Cary’s classic column from THURSDAY, SEP 12, 2013 Can a devout Muslim and a Jewish atheist have a happy marriage? Hi Cary, I was born in the States to a conservative Muslim Indian family. My mother, younger brothers and I moved back to India when I was around 11, while my (very...
[button link=”mailto:[email protected]” newwindow=”yes”] Write for Advice[/button] Cary’s classic column from TUESDAY, APR 8, 2008 It’s not like I picked him up off the street. I’ve known him for 20 years. Once he was my boyfriend. Cary, I made the mistake of letting a homeless man move in with me. Now I can’t get rid of him. I’ve known this man for over 20 years. At...
Dear reader, Now I feel like my dad. My dad grew up in a time way before mine, as dads tend to do. He would make allusions and we kids wouldn’t get them. “What? Who was Gracie Allen?” “Why,” my father would say, “she was George Burns’ partner!” Good old Burns and Allen. These days you can’t really know who knows what. A noted novelist of my...
[button link=”mailto:[email protected]” newwindow=”yes”] Write for Advice[/button] Cary’s classic column from Friday, Feb 6, 2004 I’m married to a wonderful man, but he doesn’t seem to share my fear of financial humiliation. Dear Cary, I have been spoiled with a very happy life. I am 26, married to a wonderful 34-year-old man whom I love more than anyone in the...
[button link=”mailto:[email protected]” newwindow=”yes”] Write for Advice[/button] Cary’s classic column from Wednesday, Apr 16, 2008 Now my life is all screwed up and nothing works. Dear Cary, I turn 31 in a couple of weeks, and I feel like I’m unable to get my life together. I thought I would’ve had things sorted out by now, but I don’t. I don’t feel a whole lot more...
Dear Cary, Please help me process my murderous rage – a rage i suspect others share as well. I’m sorry you don’t seem to be on Salon anymore. You were pretty much the only reason I bothered with that site so I haven’t been in ages. I’m not 100% sure whether you’re still doing this advice thing or what the new protocol is, your site seems to indicate...
[button link=”mailto:[email protected]” newwindow=”yes”] Write for Advice[/button] Cary’s classic column from SUNDAY, NOV 22, 2009 I think I’m a writer, but fear paralyzes me Dear Cary, I feel paralyzed and stuck in a rut. I recently graduated from college without a clear path and a hazy focus at best; I am lost and confused and can recognize that I self-sabotage any...
Hi! It’s me, Cary! How ya doin? I’m out of the pool eating toast and thinking about the novel. I’m committed to finishing by the end of May. I have it all planned out. It’s practically done! Finally. Plus yesterday I finished my application to Yaddo, thanks to my Finishing School commitment. It was a long day but I got it done before my 6pm writing coaching appointment...
[button link=”mailto:[email protected]” newwindow=”yes”] Write for Advice[/button] Cary’s classic column from FRIDAY, JUL 15, 2005 Mom and Dad say if I don’t lose weight, they won’t find me an apartment for grad school. Dear Cary, I am a 24-year-old young man who lives with his parents in a wealthy suburb of a major American city. I graduated from college three years...
[button link=”mailto:[email protected]” newwindow=”yes”] Write for Advice[/button] Cary’s classic column from WEDNESDAY, OCT 8, 2008 It’s taken me a long time to accept what my therapist has been pushing at — but I think I’m ready to act in my own interest. Dear Cary, I’m troubled. At long last, my therapist did something I sensed she meant to do a long time ago...
[button link=”mailto:[email protected]” newwindow=”yes”] Write for Advice[/button] Cary’s classic column from Thursday, Dec 16, 2010 The avalanche of presents leaves me cold, but I feel guilty for opting out Dear Cary, I know this is a trivial problem but I’m fretting about it. I am single and I usually see my sister and her family at Christmas. There are eight...
Dear Cary, My husband of 16 years and I have never made an official list, but it’s always been accepted that were we to have, in some fantasyland, the opportunity to sleep with a certain few adored famous people, the sin would be exonerated. (I should mention here that over the years both of us have had our indiscretions with plain old normals, and while the aftermath has never been fun...
[button link=”mailto:[email protected]” newwindow=”yes”] Write for Advice[/button] Cary’s classic column from Wednesday, Oct 15, 2008 I shouldn’t have looked in her diary, but maybe it’s best that I did. Dear Cary, This summer, my girlfriend went to Central America for three months. She was in spotty contact with me the whole time, saying it was difficult to...
[button link=”mailto:[email protected]” newwindow=”yes”] Write for Advice[/button] Cary’s classic column from SUNDAY, APR 10, 2011 We talked and I thought he was up for this, but now it looks like he never was Dear Cary, I am a 33-year-old married mother of one. While the discussion of having more children was always sort of tabled for my husband and me, after hearing...
[button link=”mailto:[email protected]” newwindow=”yes”] Write for Advice[/button] Cary’s classic column from Wednesday, Oct 12, 2005 How can someone so special on the Internet be such a drag in real life? Dear Cary, I have this friend. Let’s call her Susan. Susan and I became friends online several years ago, through mutual (in person) friends. For several...
[button link=”mailto:[email protected]” newwindow=”yes”] Write for Advice[/button] Cary’s classic column from THURSDAY, AUG 6, 2009 I thought I could learn to love being a stepmom, but I don’t Dear Cary, I’m probably one of the most unromantic people who ever lived, and have always cringed when someone says they found their “soul mate” or their “one and only,” because...
[button link=”mailto:[email protected]” newwindow=”yes”] Write for Advice[/button] Cary’s classic column from TUESDAY, OCT 9, 2007 I’ve been a cheater since my very first boyfriend and no one has ever found out. Cary, I am a cheater. I’ve never had a boyfriend or husband that I didn’t cheat on. When I was younger, it would just be making out behind a boyfriend’s back;...
[button link=”mailto:[email protected]” newwindow=”yes”] Write for Advice[/button] Cary’s classic column from Friday, Sep 30, 2005 We’ll sit around with nothing to say, eating takeout food. Dear Cary, I know this is pretty early, but I’m already freaking out about hanging out with my family during Christmas. My family consists of my mother, my father, my brother and...
[button link=”mailto:[email protected]” newwindow=”yes”] Write for Advice[/button] Cary’s classic column from FRIDAY, JUL 8, 2005 I fathered a child when I was a screwed-up loser and kept it secret all these years. Dear Cary, Boy, did I screw up. About 13 years ago, I fell for a friend of my sister’s and got her pregnant. I was at this point in my life a loser. I had...
[button link=”mailto:[email protected]” newwindow=”yes”] Write for Advice[/button] Cary’s classic column from Tuesday, Nov 30, 2010 I put my boyfriend through hell. How can I stop? Dear Cary, My problem is that I’m a pretty crappy girlfriend. I have been in a relationship for over a year with someone that I really care about. He and I met in graduate school and have...
So after taking some time off I felt drawn to connect with others in the world who are suffering and so began again reading letters and writing. I am perplexed and moved by this letter, and as frequently has been the case, I wish I knew more, but the details, I decided, are for the letter writer to clarify for herself. We don’t need to know the details. Only she does. Dear Cary, I...
I had always swung for the fences. Swinging for the fences means doing the absolute best job I could, every day. That meant spending four to six hours a day at the keyboard, trying and retrying, phrasing and rephrasing, searching for the right answer, looking for at least one bright linguistic spot, one trope that would make the column ring, that would elevate it above the dross and sloppy speech...
[button link=”mailto:[email protected]” newwindow=”yes”] Write for Advice[/button] Cary’s classic column from THURSDAY, JUN 25, 2009 We got caught making out and now my mom’s all like you have to break up with him if you want to keep living here Dear Cary, My name is V and I’m 18 years old. I have a boyfriend and he’s 18 years old too, but the situation here is that my...
I am not going to edit this. I am just going to write from the heart and the mind and the memory. Writing for money and writing as a cultural activity are not the same thing and there is rarely a happy relationship between the two but every once in a while they come together and when that happens a writer is wise to leap for joy. It has happened for me only once or twice. I have known since I...
[button link=”mailto:[email protected]” newwindow=”yes”] Write for Advice[/button] Cary’s classic column from WEDNESDAY, MAY 18, 2005 My deceptions are elaborate and crazy but I can’t seem to stop. Dear Cary, I don’t really know what good this will do; I just think I need to tell someone, some soul, the truth about who I am. Ever since the 10th grade or so (I’m just...
[button link=”mailto:[email protected]” newwindow=”yes”] Write for Advice[/button] Cary’s classic column from TUESDAY, SEP 9, 2008 Divorced, they’ve been squabbling in courts for over a decade. Dear Cary, I write this letter to you with the hope of gaining some clarity in a situation that it appears I cannot remove myself from. My parents have been divorced for more...
[button link=”mailto:[email protected]” newwindow=”yes”] Write for Advice[/button] Cary’s classic column THURSDAY, OCT 4, 2007 03:10 AM PDT I don’t believe in God but I want to allay her fears. Hi, I am the father of a 13-year-old daughter whose mother has been taking her to an evangelical Christian church her whole life. Her mother’s family is entirely Christian. I am...
[button link=”mailto:[email protected]” newwindow=”yes”] Write for Advice[/button] Cary’s classic column from SUNDAY, OCT 17, 2010 We grew up differently. I got great guidance from parents and friends. He kind of drifted. Now he’s in a tough spot Dear Cary, I have something of a quandary with a friend of mine. He’s my oldest friend, we’ve known each other since we were...
[button link=”mailto:[email protected]” newwindow=”yes”] Write for Advice[/button] Cary’s classic column from Tuesday, Apr 12, 2011 After all I’ve been through, I snapped. I don’t want to apologize, but I want my family back. Dear Cary, In the past three years, I have had a great deal of loss. My father, both grandmothers and my 36-year-old brother died. My mother had...
[button link=”mailto:[email protected]” newwindow=”yes”] Write for Advice[/button] Cary’s classic column from THURSDAY, JUN 9, 2005 I know he would have wanted to give me more money, but his will left everything to her. Dear Cary, I’m 34. My father passed away a year and half ago. He remarried when I was 15 but started dating my stepmom (SM) when I was 9. Dad and SM...
[button link=”mailto:[email protected]” newwindow=”yes”] Write for Advice[/button] Cary’s classic column from WEDNESDAY, MAY 6, 2009 I have a history of depression and I’m back at my parents’ — but I have an Ivy League film degree! Dear Cary, I am a week shy of my 25th birthday, and I am back living in my parents’ home. I have a degree from Harvard and a year of...
[button link=”mailto:[email protected]” newwindow=”yes”] Write for Advice[/button] Cary’s classic column from TUESDAY, JUL 1, 2003 No one told me how disappointing and boring married life is! Dear Cary, I am a 34-year-old woman, married for about 14 months. If I had known how disappointing and boring marriage would be, I would never have done it. What is worse...
[button link=”mailto:[email protected]” newwindow=”yes”] Write for Advice[/button] Cary’s classic column from THURSDAY, AUG 23, 2007 We were sharing household duties, but then things got out of whack and now I’m ready to bitch-slap my hubby! Dear Cary: My husband won’t do his laundry and I want to bitch-slap him. Yes, this is coming from a middle-aged...
[button link=”mailto:[email protected]” newwindow=”yes”] Write for Advice[/button] Cary’s classic column from THURSDAY, DEC 13, 2007 We have three small children and I am devastated. Hi, I need desperate help, please. My husband died of cancer a week ago. The day after his funeral, I learned he’d been having Internet sex, which didn’t stop there. He met up with...
Advice: Only bullet points now? Thought: Can advice column be written in bullet-point form? If yes, how? Possible methods: Brainstorm ideas Use flow chart method i.e. if my boyfriend does not love me I will: go to grad school trash his paperbacks get a therapist how to get a therapist gather list of possible therapists use insurance company list ask friends for referrals if no friends, ask cousin...