Do You Believe in Love At First Sight?

Dear E. Jean: Okay, so earlier this year I was hit by a thunderbolt. Twice. It was love at first sight and second sight (and every sight). I’m at a marketing company. He’s at an ad agency. The relationship between our two firms has not gone well, and other than seeing him at two meetings—there was a lot of eye contact—our paths have not crossed again. I can’t get him out of my head! A friend told me, “You’ll bump into him again when the time is right.” But I’m afraid to let this pass! —Aware How Pathetic This Sounds

Miss Pathetic, My Petunia: Please tell your beautiful friend that Auntie Eeee says she’s an idiot. Her phrase “when the time is right” reminds me of the namby-pamby “If it’s meant to be, it will happen” (a cliché lobotomized by Jennifer Lawrence in American Hustle). It’s the kind of dum-dum thinking that holds women back. The “time” to meet the dude, of course, is now.

Give a bow-and-arrow party. Prepare an archer’s fairy-tale meal of bread, cheese, and tankards of mead, and invite 20 people, including the chap. Everyone brings a photo of a person they hate—you all take aim and happily shoot them. As to what you wear? Miss Fate herself wears a French twist. This is why we call it “a twist of fate.” But because you are making your own fate, you may wear what you please! Life is not too short. We just waste so much of it waiting for men.

This letter is from the Ask E. Jean Archive, 1993-2017. Send questions to E. Jean at [email protected].