So we're obviously scrapping the bottom of the barrel with these letters;
who would have thought a sex column could get so boring.
someone needs to come up with some new perversions to juice things up, stat....

....what? Come on.

Waiting for the "...and you can buy my book for Kindle on Amazon Prime."

HDISO doesn’t sound like she needs the input of a relationship guru, she needs a life / career coach.

HDISO you spent seven years mining the relationships you had from say 22 to 26. Most of us get through that time and are able to process things without putting our lives on hold for the better part of a decade. That may speak to a more fundamental psychological issue you need to address (without rehashing your feelings and thoughts about those old relationships). It is curious, however, that for the past 2.5 years you’ve been in a relationship and have agreed to get married , and yet feel so adrift. Does your fiancée know this?

In any event, you should seek the advice of a career counselor, who can help you think about how to make some choices about picking a career path. I would definitely recommend figuring some of this out before you get married.

Interesting to contrast this post with today's Savage Love column.

I'd look at the advice there: Hold yourself accountable. You didn't "find yourself" in a new city, unskilled, unemployed, anxious, and bereft - you moved to a new city, you didn't spend the time learning useful skills, or a job. Your situation didn't just happen to you, they're a pretty clear result of the decisions you made. As able as you were to create this condition, you're just as able to create other ones: skilled and capable (at something); decent enough to have friends and a love life, etc.

It'll probably take you plenty of therapy to get there, but it's a guided hike up a hill, not scaling the Cliffs of Insanity: almost everyone can make the journey.

Before even reading Dan's response, I was thinking: How much of HDISO's situation is from shame about her past life and how much is from being unemployed and friendless in a new city? I'd put the weight on the latter. She's just suffered a disappointment in that the book she's been working on for so long has been rejected.

Here's what you do: Get a job, any job. Anything that will give a schedule to your days, a reason to wake up, and get you in contact with people. Meanwhile, think about what you need for long term employment. Put it another way. Get a low paying job while you get ready for a higher paying job. You might need education, some classes, some volunteer work in your field.

You have your partner in the new city. Great! Start building a larger circle of friends. Make friends at that new low-paying job. Join something like a sports team, a knitting circle, a group that works with animals. Invite people over or out to a movie. This is good advice no matter what one's life looks like a the moment.

Finishing a book, even an unpublished one, is terrific! I've never done it. Dan's correct that you should put it aside for now, but while it's sitting on the shelf, read other books like it, see where they differ, and turn a cold editorial eye towards your own. Are others more sensational? More literary? Have more action and less emotion? If you really can't think of a way your book could be improved to be more sellable, shop it around to a different editor. Consider online publishing, a blog, magazine installments. Put aside the big dream (book deal!) and break into becoming a writer some other way.

As for that affair ... ah, youth. Can you find something good in the memories? Does some of the sex still make you flutter, give you something to fantasize about? Did you learn some hard lessons? Start turning the ended-badly experience into something good. You'll get there.

Start Over, you have genuinely to start over. Or believe you've already started over. You're about to get married. Isn't that a bigger deal that your mistakes and misadventures, however formative, of your early 20s? Why keep living in the past when, in practical terms and, let's hope, in terms of your feelings, you've gone beyond the entanglements you got caught up in then?

There is no reason you should not tell your fiancee anything you've told us about your memoir or your understanding of your journey. You were hurt when the editor dropped it? Of course you were--there was so much you had invested in the book. You feel you're the person you are because you were hurt in an illicit, self-destructive relationship in your 20s (with another woman)? Yes, sure--and there will be a sense in which your partner knows that already and still loves you. Do you feel you haven't evolved beyond the person you were, when you were in the grip of turbulence and maybe acting selfishly or irresponsibly? It would seem you have evolved, in that there's no hint of your being emotionally or actually unfaithful to your partner. Why is it, then, that you're not more in the present, and more looking forward into your future, with her?

There are a lot of jobs you can do without having any “skills”. Start at the bottom and work your way up.

My cosmic vibrations are sending me a vision of LW's dumping the fiancee to pursue Ms Fan. Perhaps that's because the letter feels rather disjointed.

Burn that book.

Venn @8: :-D

HDISO, I feel for you. London is expensive; no wonder you're anxious. Focus on developing a career. I was roughly your age when I retrained to be an accountant -- and as you may have heard, accountants are going to be in much higher demand in about two years when every business person, large or small, has to file quarterly returns. If you're reasonably organised and good at all with numbers and software, go do an accountancy qualification! It's a job you might not "love" but it'll help you pay those skyrocketing London rents.

As for your past, from your timeline you were working on and pitching this book two years into your current relationship. Was it long-distance at that point? Have you spoken with each other about your pasts? If not, why not? (She has one too, and I'm sure it's not all roses either.) You have the advantage of being able to just hand her your book to read, if you decide she should know the whole you. Don't rush into marriage if you feel there are important parts of you that you haven't shared yet. And maybe get some therapy to help you let this decade-old part of your life go.

Nicely put, Sport @4. I agree that LW has plenty of opportunities for self-improvement lying within her reach, and all will require her to take the first step toward moving out of her current funk.

BDF @10 not a bad idea, and definitely better for her to share the book with her fiancee before their marriage rather than afterward, if she feels guilty about how she handled prior relationships. I had a flashback of the 40-something Leo Tolstoy spending most of his wedding night telling his innocent, 18-year-old bride in great detail about all of his previous sexual exploits as a single upper-class gentleman in the mid-1800s. Not exactly a turn-on for his new life partner.

HDISO spent seven years trying to put her history into a form she could sell to the public...but hasn't been able to talk about it with her actual, real-life partner?

being a massage therapist is very personally healing work, too, and a good way to sort intimacy issues, and evolve emotionally during training. And partners love supporting it!