Dear Prudence,
For a while, I’ve been dating someone who is somewhat famous. He has no ambition of becoming any more famous than he is, but it is still required due to his job and is a slight burden on him. At first, I thought it would just be a fling, but he’s talking about getting more serious. We’ve kept our relationship mostly private, so I’ve stayed out of the public eye, and I want to keep it that way. I want absolutely no fame. I think it causes only trouble. I’m at a weird place mentally. My close friends keep telling me that I might regret not dating him because we are an amazing fit, and to some extent I’ve internalized that, but here’s the problem: I regret all of the major decisions I have made in the past 10 years.
These were not poorly thought-out decisions, and they sort of seemed good on paper. But far too slowly, I realized that the situations I had found myself in had become toxic and that these decisions had ruined every area of my life, some of which will be ruined forever. Then, along came this guy, and some of those areas got better. But I’m worried that being in the lime light will end up causing things to be worse by the end. That it will make certain areas of my life, like my career and health, worse. It’s not like I can reverse the decision, either. Once it’s out that I’m his love-interest (something the media seems very interested in knowing), I can’t take that back. Any future employers will always see that if they Google me, whether we remain together or not. I’m worried about being threatened or doxed online, not because I’ve done anything wrong, but because some people are just horrible. So I guess what I’m asking is whether you think I’m overthinking and being unreasonable. Is it idiotic to give up such a good guy for the possibility that, in the end, it would make my life even worse than it was before?
— Romance Ruined