Do I Really Need TWO Eyebrows?

Dazzling Reader:

I’m going in for cancer surgery tomorrow.

Tonight I’m spending in toasting, extolling, and bidding farewell to my left eyebrow, and I will be turning today’s question over to you. Our correspondent’s “soulmate,” her “perfect partner,”— a chap who has written her “boxes of poems,”—has given her a bad “shock,” and she needs your advice.

Of course, I’m gonna miss my left eye brow. It had such a great working relationship with my right eyebrow. The two of them went everywhere together. Anyway, I am hoping y’all handle this letter for me. The surgery, by the by, is not the “bad” cancer surgery. It’s the “good cancer” surgery called MOHS—named after the nice fellow who invented it—and it’s the medical procedure where they take a big trowel, dig the cancer out of my face and throw it in the trash can. Or, specifically:

Mohs surgery is considered the most effective technique for treating many basal cell carcinomas (BCCs) and squamous cell carcinomas (SCCs), the two most common types of skin cancer. Sometimes called Mohs micrographic surgery, the procedure is done in stages, including lab work, while the patient waits. This allows the removal of all cancerous cells for the highest cure rate while sparing healthy tissue and leaving the smallest possible scar.

They found a bunch of those squamous buggers hiding in, around and under my left eye brow during the time my cataracts were being flung into the trash can, so, this is just a note to say, the correspondent’s “guileless” boyfriend wasn’t so guileless after all. I gave her a quick E. Jean answer, but she requires the Conflab’s love and tenderness and a big wallop of your do-able Conflabbian advice.

See you soon! Love to everybody! And now, here’s the letter:

Dear E. Jean:

Long time reader, first time writing, but I need your brand of help after the most shocking breakup in my almost 36 years.  (I also hope you are doing well and thank you for bringing so much joy into my life.) 

I have been in a relationship for nearly five years—including living together in a one bedroom apartment during the pandemic!—with a man who I thought was my soulmate, the perfect partner.  We communicated easily, he was so open and adoring with his affection (I have a whole BOX of poems, saved flowers, you name it), so thoughtful, such a good listener, so supportive of my dreams.  No major fights. Our only hurdle has been distance as he’s away working on his PhD.  

I have stacks of letters/poems in which he talks about wanting to spend his life with me. Two weeks before the greatest shock of my life, he was sending me pictures of rings and telling me how much money he was saving for a ring (I wanted nothing! I didn't care about getting married, which he knew, so it wasn't like a high pressure situation). He was making flight reservations and planning a birthday trip for me this winter, and then, about a week ago, I get a message from his thesis advisor's wife. She and I had dinner together multiple times and have our own baby friendship.

She said, “Hey, I heard you and (redacted) broke up, I'm so sorry, we always really liked you and love you both, hope everything's OK." 

I immediately text redacted: "Hey, your advisor thinks we broke up! How FUNNY! I wonder what you said that led to such a silly mixup!"

My text was totally reasonable considering he FaceTimed me the night before after a late flight "to see your face before you fall asleep" and was as loving and normal as always. 

He immediately FaceTimed me. He was the angriest I've ever seen him. He said: "I can't believe he said something. I was flying in tomorrow to tell you. I've been thinking about this for four months. It's not what I want." 

E. Jean! I thought he was joking! I offered to quit my job and move, to go to counseling (which we had, in happier days, agreed to do if we ever had problems because we were so committed to each other!).  I asked if there was anyone else and he said no. I believe him. It's just me he doesn't want. I asked why he had been acting so loving and normal, saying everything was great and planning for the future. And he said he wanted to figure out for himself how he felt before telling me. 

Have you ever heard of anything so cruel?

I just don't think a breakup should be a shock like that, he was treating it like a surprise party or something. I guess he was planning to fly in, give me the emotional whiplash of thinking he was surprising me with a visit, just to break up with me? Without even a "we need to talk" to give me a head's up? He couldn’t manage to prepare me with an "I’m not happy/the spark is gone/the distance is getting to me"? No nothing. 

I'm just in shock. I also am struggling because I had NOTHING to complain about. It was a wonderful relationship; I had no discontents, he had no annoying habits, I thought he was IT. I was so happy for so long.  And now, with the way he's done this, he's not only taken my future, but he's also ruined my past—I can't look on this as a happy relationship, because I don't know who he was, how long he was lying, how much of the relationship was a lie, how he could say he loved me. 

I also always said the thing I loved most about him was that he was totally without guile, so direct and open with me. Ha!  There wasn't even a "I'll always love you, we had great times.” All I got was "I feel like I wasted your time and I feel bad about that.”

After nearly five years!  How do I get over this? How do I not seal off my heart forever?  How can I even process this five-year relationship ended in a ten-minute FaceTime?  I don't know how to move on. Please help me. —Sara Is Too Sad To Come Up With A Clever Title

Sara! My Dear, Dear Luv!

I don’t know exactly what happened, whether it was the gods, the devils, the DNA, the fates, the long-distance, the genes, the neurotransmitters, the electrical impulses, the throbs, the erections—but I know this: