Better Than Nothing But Not Best
Dear [Mentat],
Taking what you can get until you find better is perfectly okay, so long as you communicate to the woman who loves you that this is precisely what you’re doing. My friend [Emmy] is a better-than-nothing in my life right now, and she knows that she’s not ultimately what I’m looking for. She wishes she was and only grudgingly accepts that she isn’t. Yet she still comes here, and we have a wonderful time. She benefits from her involvement with me, even though that probably won’t lead to marriage or anything more committed than it is at present. I don’t lead her to think that anything more is coming, and routinely discourage such thinking on her part. Her friends tell her that I’m using her. But she responds that I treat her very well, that I’ve been very open and honest about my feelings, and that even if it ends tomorrow, while she might be a little sad, she won’t think that I was exploiting her. If only we could find dream girls who gave us these terms.
I think I could live day to day with a goddess. I wouldn’t mind being her better-than-nothing, and wouldn’t need to be the best. Well, I mean, I’d like to be the best in her eyes, but I could still find much happiness in her arms, even if she only considered me a stop-over.
I doubt you could ignore her weight [if she was too heavy]. But that’s something you’d have to figure out for yourself should the opportunity ever arise.
