Eric Oliver

And I had this very romantic idea that there was some perfect person out there who, if I could just meet that person, they would complete me.

They would fulfill all of my needs and all of my longings, and they would provide me with that sense of psychological stability that would just anchor me.

And if that was a big part of knowing myself and figuring this out was, oh, finding that right person.

And what ended up happening, ironically, was that I had a series of failed relationships and bumpy relationships, and I realized...

If I was going to have a successful relationship, I actually needed to figure myself out first because in a lot of ways, I was my own worst obstacle for getting the love I so desperately wanted.

Well, yes, there was that part of me that was longing for connection and attachment and love and that feeling of just great effervescence.

And yet oftentimes, as soon as I started getting close to someone and their full humanity started getting revealed to me,

I would freak out and I would find other parts of me pulling back in fear and finding myself being avoidant and saying, oh, this is a real human being who I'm in relationship with.

This isn't the magic elixir and something must be wrong because surely, you know, it wouldn't be bumpy if it was right.

Yeah, I struggled through grad school like all graduate students.

You know, there was a lot of work, a very long time for a very uncertain outcome.

And I got my first job at Princeton.

And that shocked me as much as all those people around me, I think.

And I get to Princeton, and I'm like, this is, as far as an academic goes, this is as good as it gets.

And I get there, and it's this wonderful university, and I have these amazing students.

And I get there, and my life kind of falls apart.

A long-term relationship I had been in ended very abruptly.

I suddenly found myself really depressed, living alone in central New Jersey.

I barely knew anyone.

And all of this pain that had come from kind of the earlier stages of my life really welled up in me.