Dear Mike Cares, how would you answer this Dear Prudence? *case of the queer beer.

Dear Prudence, How do you grieve the person you thought someone was? I’m a bi woman, and I dated “Theo,” a straight man, for the past four years. When we got together, I thought he was smart, kind, gorgeous, and a good ally. He was generally a good partner to me, and we’d been moving towards marriage. Around June, he seemed to really start talking about gross TERF and anti-trans rhetoric, and it was clear he’d been following it and believing it for a while. No amount of real data seemed to change his mind, and I was very upset. I realized that one, I don’t want to be with someone who buys into that, and two, more selfishly, transphobia is a tip-of-the-iceberg issue to push against queer rights generally. And I’m queer. I broke up with him in August, and though he wanted to stay close, I asked for a clean break. But we live in a small city, and I’ve heard that he’s been heading even more towards some incel/transphobe/culture wars stuff. I miss our relationship, our planned future, and him as a person, deeply. But I guess what I miss the most deeply is the person he was in 2019, who happily joined me for Pride parades and shut down gross comments at bars. I’m heartbroken he’s gone, even though he’s still here. How do I move on?

— Missing Him

Dear Missing Him,

Based on your letter it would seem your entire world revolves around being bi, queer, proud, and pro trans. Not a word on your actual relationship with him. His world may have included other things, so rather than seeking the why, you remain cloaked in your rainbow flag demanding he should have melded seamlessly into your rabid activist mindset. If what you miss most about him is his happily “joining you for Pride parades,” then you are so blinded by your beliefs that you can’t see other things right in front of you, like his needs. You never even brought home a hot lesbian for a threesome, did you? As a bi-sexual girlfriend, it is your duty to conduct yourself in a bi-sexual manner with the man you love. In hindsight, you should have just stayed proud but just less loud. Some men are simple-minded and just dumb animals at the end of the day. You might like shouting “I’m Queer and I’m here,” but he might like shouting “Who cares that you're Queer, go fetch me a Beer!”

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