A woman emailed me recently because her boyfriend had broken up with her and she was hoping it was because he was adopted. She’d read my blog post “How to Date an Adopted Person” and wanted advice. Her email was long, and it was followed by others. I didn’t read her emails because I have enough chaos in my own life without stepping unnecessarily into the chaos of others; instead, I sent her the name of a therapist who was also adopted. A week later the woman told me she’d had an appointment with the therapist and still had questions she hoped I could answer.

Even Lucy charges a nickel for her advice. 

I told the woman she was asking a lot of me, and that I’d done the best I could by offering her a therapist recommendation. She wrote back immediately, apologizing and thanking me.

(The fact is the woman offered to pay me but there was no way I was going to take her money. I mean, really, what could I say to get her boyfriend to come back? But her request and beating heart keep crying to me, and so I am writing this in response.)

I think about this woman who is anguishing over her beloved’s behavior, and I think about the men who might have written to someone like me who had written about dating an adopted person with similar questions. Is it me? Is it my beloved? Or is it adoption? I think about how long their emails would be as the men frantically tried to get down what had happened, the long, winding stories of how we ended up great to insane or from I love you to Goodbye, or worse, not even goodbye. Nothing. Disappearance. 

My answer would be Yes. It is you. It is your beloved. It is adoption. 

The key actions we are dealing with when we are talking about an adopted person is disappearance and abandonment. Think about how you might live your life if everything was uncertain, if the ground you were about to place your foot suddenly disappeared, if the food you were about to put into your mouth suddenly disappeared, if the car you were driving suddenly disappeared, if the life you were living suddenly disappeared.  What if all of these things you counted on without even thinking about it abandoned you?

Maybe go back and read those scenarios again and take the time to imagine each one. What if these things had all happened once in your life but then life went on, would walking, eating, driving, living be forever affected for you? What if the ground/this bite of food/this car/all I am surrounded by disappears again? Am I safe in this body? In this life? Can I keep going with this kind of fear in me?

Is life even worth living if you can’t trust the ground beneath your feet? I mean, it gets exhausting, wondering every single time you are about to take a step, Am I safe? Am I going to fall into a pit this time? 

Imagine dating a person whose brain has these types of thoughts, Am I safe? Am I loveable? Am I real?  Imagine dating a person who has these thoughts but has them unconsciously, so that neither one of you knows these thoughts are an issue. 

I mean, come on. We need help, both adopted people and those who want to date or live with or marry us. 

One thing to keep in mind is to imagine for the adopted person, more than likely (there have been no studies I know of on this so I don’t have any proven percentile numbers to offer you) somewhere in their brain the moment the mother disappeared is looping on repeat, flooding the body with stress hormones. 

This is helpful information. What is the opposite of abandonment? One antonym is repossession. This is interesting to me. I saw Repo Man. I know some people have the job of repossessing cars that were not paid for as promised. To repossess is to take back. But how does this apply to dating? You have to have had to possess to repossess, logic tells me. Dating, I would hope, is about getting to know, learning another, more than it is about possessing. 

 Another antonym to abandonment is to adopt. Well, that’s awkward. I never ever ever said I wanted to adopt a boyfriend or a partner. That’s just gross. I mean, if you can adopt your partner, that means you can treat your adoptive siblings and parents like romantic partners and that makes me want to throw up because society has taught me to feel like that. 

Let’s keep digging and look for another antonym for abandonment by comparing two sentences: My mother abandoned me at birth and My mother kept me at birth.  

I think we are getting warmer here. I think the key to dating an adopted person is keeping them. 

What does this mean? It means, be a rock in a wild sea. It means, when they stand up in a restaurant and leave you sitting at the table because you said something that offended them, you don’t immediately call it quits. When they burst into tears and yell because you are ten minutes late picking them up, you don’t tell them they are overreacting and drive away in a huff. It means you get therapy so you are clear on who you are so when your beloved does or says something that makes you feel crazy, you can know there’s a good chance adoption has walked into the room and it’s time for the big guns: empathy, understanding, therapy, communication, skin contact. 

To date an adopted person is often to be dancing with a Mexican Jumping Bean: the outside looks normal, but inside there’s a thrashing worm that makes your sweet bean move erratically and want to get away from their insides. To date an adopted person means you hold all of humanity in your arms: our fear of death, our fear of loss, our fear of being alone, in a super-concentrated form. To date an adopted person is to drink your tequila straight. You aren’t messing around. You want to kiss life smack on the lips and hold it while it does what life does, goes up and down, shakes you off, runs after you, loves you with all that it is, goes away, comes back, spits in your face, sings to you. 

I realize I’m not giving any real advice. I’m talking around the list of the things you can do because I don’t know what they are or I do know and I’m afraid they won’t work. For me to meet someone for a relationship that would have a fighting chance, I would need them to understand my fear and my insecurities and to meet me in that field, but I would also need them to believe I was strong and independent and wildly perfect. I would need a tennis partner who could hit the ball as hard as I can and then not call it a game when I suddenly get exhausted and lie down on the court and cry. I would need someone who would lie down next to me and hold me even if I was kicking and screaming and pushing them away (Of course, this gets a little tricky because sometimes I am pushing you away because I really, really, really want you to go and so this is where therapy and an incredibly grounded sense of self comes in handy—I mean, when you catch a fish and have to grip it to take out the hook, you have to hold a fish that is thrashing for its life—but how do you know if the adopted person you are holding is thrashing because they are a Mexican Jumping Bean and are fighting the agitation of worm deep inside or they are thrashing because they feel you are about to rape them and really want/need to escape?) until I was ready to stand up and play again. 

This is the point where I want to say, Oh, forget it. It’s too hard. That is why I’m single now. That is why I’m not dating. For now, I’ve given up. I don’t see how a person can deal with my fear of and desire for attachment. I don’t see how I can deal with those things in relationship. I’ve failed so many times. Every time. 

I will catch my breath. I will try again. Soon. Soon. And I will work on wanting intimacy enough to let go of fears I have held on to for what feels like forever. I will work on being willing to change. I will work on thinking it’s better to be in the complicated challenges of relationship than it is to feel in control by myself. 

To the woman who emailed me, my advice is to give your partner who ran away space. I always went back when I felt I had blown it. I always asked for a second and sometimes a third and fourth chance. If he loves you enough to face his fears, he’ll knock on your door, and if he doesn’t, I don’t think he wants it enough for you to keep suffering over what you believe could be.