The beauty of selling out

“But where does personal confession leave the men who are involved in our lives? In a tough place. In my case I asked them all, but especially the one I loved most, to put my right to self-expression before his desperate desire for privacy. Well, I asked and then I didn’t give him much choice. The way he saw it, I rewrote our history and he had no control over the outcome. And, perhaps even worse to him, I turned our very real feelings into the plot of a book.

So do I regret writing it? No. Do I feel bad about it? Often. Did I feel bad when I was writing it? The whole time. I would sit at my computer remembering an argument, a night of passion, a tender secret moment — and think “No, no, I can’t write that.” Then I wrote it anyway. Strangely, my desire to communicate with and prove my worth to hundreds of potential readers I didn’t know — and never would — became more important than the feelings of the man who I claimed to love. In justification, perhaps I had a story to tell. I wonder if really I was driven simply by vanity.

[…] But with that I have to accept that I did choose to sell out the men I claimed to care about — and no excuses will change that. I may get e-mails from strangers, but I will never hear again from the man I hoped would be the love of my life. And I don’t blame him.” Bridget Harrison, author of Tabloid Love a tell-all book about her private life.