Can't Help Myself: Lessons & Confessions from a Modern Advice Columnist

by Meredith Goldstein

Overview

A disarmingly honest memoir about giving advice when you're not sure what you're doing yourself, by the woman behind The Boston Globe's Love Letters column.

Every day, Boston Globe advice columnist Meredith Goldstein takes on the relationship problems of thousands of dedicated readers. They look to her for wisdom on all matters of the heart- how to cope with dating fatigue and infidelity, work romances, tired marriages, true love, and true loss. In her column, she has it all figured out, but in her real life she is a lot less certain.

Whether it's her own reservations about the traditional path of marriage and family, her difficulty finding someone she truly connects with, or the evolution of her friendships as her friends start to have their own families, Meredith finds herself looking for insight, just like her readers. As she searches for responses to their concerns, she's surprised to discover answers to her own. But it's after her mother is diagnosed with cancer that she truly realizes how special her Love Letters community is, how this column has enriched her life as much, if not more than, it has for its readers.

Can't Help Myself is the extraordinary (and often hilarious) story of a single woman navigating her mercurial love life, and a moving and poignant portrait of an amazing community of big-hearted, love-seeking allies.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781455543779
Publisher:	Grand Central Publishing
Publication date:	04/03/2018
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	5.60(w) x 8.50(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Meredith Goldstein is an advice columnist and entertainment reporter for the Boston Globe. In 2009, she began writing Love Letters, which inspired her memoir/essay collection, Can't Help Myself. Meredith was raised in Maryland, and lives in Boston with a David Bowie doll and a full-size cotton candy machine.

Table of Contents

Introduction vii

1 Help Me, Help You 1

2 You Make Me Wanna Snoop 16

3 The Rachels 34

4 The Company Ink 52

5 Fangs 68

6 Behave Yourself 85

7 The Salon 101

8 Man Up 113

9 Cursed 126

10 The Nucleus 138

11 Draco 151

12 Sickness and Health 167

13 Ring Watch 185

14 Dad 196

15 Grilled Cheese 211

16 Yo-Yo Ma 223

17 IRL (One Year Later) 243

Epilogue 248

Acknowledgments 257

Editorial Reviews

01/08/2018
Goldstein, who writes the popular “Love Letters” column for the Boston Globe, assembles her favorite entries from the column’s nine years of publication, along with details from her own life, in this heartfelt look at the life of an advice columnist. In the memoir portion, Goldstein recalls a particularly difficult breakup, followed by her mother’s diagnosis with stage-4 cancer and the grueling years of treatment during which Goldstein served as her mother’s primary caretaker. The excerpted columns cover topics ranging from “work spouses” to online dating to striving for friendship after a breakup, and include some of the more thoughtful comments left by readers on the Globe’s website. The book’s strength is the way Goldstein shows the blurring of personal and professional boundaries from the unique perspective of an advice columnist. She admits to making mistakes: for example, lashing out at a recent cancer survivor whose letter expressed annoyance at her caregiver husband—a complaint that hit close to home for Goldstein at the time—and feeling like a “certifiable fraud” for answering sex questions during a bout of celibacy. Though Goldstein includes some ancillary details that occasionally steer the book off course (notably anecdotes about her sister’s relationship woes), her story of coping with her mother’s illness is moving and tenderly wrought. The book will appeal to loyal readers of advice columns—particularly Goldstein’s­—but be forewarned, this book is a tearjerker. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

"The book's strength is the way Goldstein shows the blurring of personal and professional boundaries from the unique perspective of an advice columnist....her story of coping with her mother's illness is moving and tenderly wrought."—Publishers Weekly

"A witty, entertaining memoir [that offers] guidance on the precarious integration of life and love."—Kirkus Reviews

"CAN'T HELP MYSELF is everything we need right now. Meredith is hilarious, smart, and-as you will learn-gives excellent advice without judgment. By the time I got to page two, I was already asking myself, 'how are we not friends?' Every page is a combination of relatable, funny, cringeworthy, and helpful. This book is evidence that none of us is alone, ever."—Alyssa Mastromonaco, New York Times Bestselling author of Who Thought This Was a Good Idea?

"Meredith Goldstein's warm, witty memoir about tending to an ailing mother and fraught love life while giving sage advice to strangers, offers a new perspective on the eternally confounding questions of love, sex, and friendship."—-Ada Calhoun, author of Wedding Toasts I'll Never Give

"To say this book made me laugh and cry doesn't do justice to how many times it made me snort and deeply moved me. In this hilarious and heartwarming quest for answers, Meredith Goldstein is as wise as she is fallible, as compassionate as she is prescriptive, and a true maven of the heart."—Faith Salie, author of Approval Junkie

"Witty and engaging..."—BookTrib

"Funny...moving, and deeply relatable."—eHarmony

"A touching portrait of a single woman navigating the difficulties of life and love for both herself and thousands of others."—Spirituality & Health Magazine

"By the book's end, we are rooting for her to help herself, and applauding all the help she has given to dozens of others."—Lilith Magazine

From the Publisher

2018-01-23
A relationship columnist fuses sage advice with dispatches from her own personal life.After getting unceremoniously dumped by her boyfriend, Boston Globe entertainment reporter Goldstein (The Singles, 2012, etc.) jumped at the opportunity to pen her own recurring online feature devoted to the local Massachusetts dating scene. "Love Letters: debuted in 2009, and the author shares the inaugural letter from a frustrated woman concerned about her boyfriend's commitment potential. The column came equipped with a "robust comments section" in which readers shared their reactions, and which Goldstein liberally shares throughout. Featuring a lively mix of experiences in love, dating, intimacy, and other topics, the column became an immediate sensation, and the author's inbox crested with pleas for counsel. Despite a lack of psychology acumen, she parlayed her talent for dispensing rational advice to family and friends directly into her writing. This made her accessible, shrewd, and relatable, and her real-world advice leveled the playing field with the everyday people who read (and responded to) the column. Goldstein is at her strongest when tackling such issues as platonic workplace relationships, managing the sting of rejection, uneven sex drives in a relationship, and risky interoffice romances; all of these are issues the author has encountered and overcome. As the years progressed, her reading audience and popularity ballooned along with her confidence level in dispensing advice. She tackles the ethics of relationship snooping, age-related woes of the heart, and pornography use while periodically dealing with the trolls in the comments section. Goldstein's hybrid of guidance and confessional turns poignant when she discusses her mother's cancer diagnosis and she is relegated to finding "extreme escapism" tactics and time with a caregiver support group to balance the emotional toll of the situation. Charming chapters on sex and her reluctant re-entry into the dating world strike another harmonious balance of breezy and informative.A witty, entertaining memoir offering guidance on the precarious integration of life and love.

Kirkus Reviews