Dear Captain Awkward,

So, this friend is someone I’ve known for nearly a decade. We went to college together, we were roommates during and after college together, we’ve collaborated on work together, we hang out weekly, we have certain holidays we spend with each other . . . that sort of thing. We’ve had our ups and downs, but arguably our relationship with each other is the best it’s ever been.

Problem is this: friend is very unhappy about her dating life. She has never had a significant other in all the time I’ve known her and has barely gone on dates — not for lack of interest in having either, but from a seeming dearth of potential partners. This is inexplicable to me, as she’s not a bad catch in many departments and can be a very likable, funny, cool person with undeniable talent, but the fact remains that she has been unhappily single in all the time I’ve known her. And yes, “unhappily single” are her own words, not mine.

Many of our mutual friends have gotten married in the past few years, which only reinforces her feeling that there’s something wrong with her. While I’d say that priorities re:hanging out probably do change after getting married, I can’t help but agree that many of these friends didn’t really stay in touch or spare her much consideration even after the honeymoon phase was over, which was kind of crappy of them. She says she feels abandoned and like she’s still in high school, which is a hell of a thing for someone in their late twenties to feel about themselves.

Basically, Friend feels really bad about herself and depressed about her life situation, and anger and unhappiness about this have led to some friction and oversensitivity on her part to the point where I don’t even hold hands with my boyfriend around her (yes, she has complained about this at times). Since I didn’t date or have relationships until comparatively late in our friendship, I think she always assumed that she at least had one friend that wouldn’t leave her for a relationship (she said as much once) and initially reacted badly to my boyfriend for that reason. She has since apologized, I try to accommodate her feelings within reason, and she’s warmed up slightly to my S.O., but it’s a little stressful at times. We’ve commiserated in the past about the weirdness of dating, the unhelpfulness of people telling you to be happy on your own when you actually WANT to be with someone, and so on, so it’s not like we don’t talk about the situation.

Here’s the problem — or, more accurately, the new problem: boyfriend and I just had the Talk last week, and we’re planning on getting married within the next two years. We decided on doing the formal proposal thing around Christmas while visiting my family. I’ve told only one person, an old friend who is hugely supportive of us tying the knot. The issue is how and when to inform Friend about our engagement — she’s one of my closest people and would expect to be let in on the secret as soon as possible, and indeed would be hurt not to be told relatively soon (related things have been an issue in the past). At the same time, I’m literally her last friend to get married, and I’m worried this will begin another fugue where she feels terrible about herself.

How do I break the news compassionately? Or am I just being a wiener?

yrs,
Ms. Wiener

Dear Ms. Wiener:

You’re not being a wiener. You have ample evidence that your good news may be met with ill will, and the fact that you are dreading this so far in advance of when it needs to be said is a sign that this friendship is a bumpy one.

However, you are not getting married AT her. Your romantic happiness does not subtract from the sum total of happiness available to others. And her feelings about your happy announcement are very much her own. If she reacts badly to your news, those are her feelings that she is having, not something you did to her or need to apologize for. Not one bit.

Jealousy happens. We get rejected from the film festival and someone we dislike gets in and for a second it’s easy to see it as something they are doing to spite us. Another common problem I see in advice columns is people who are struggling with infertility having trouble being happy for friends and family who get pregnant. Burning hot jealousy and shame and resentment and bitterness is real. But feelings and behavior are two separate things. We can sit with our feelings and respect them, and we can also decide how we behave toward others. And the correct thing to do, even when you feel jealousy and bitterness, is to show happiness for your friends when they are happy and lucky. If you can’t do a minimum amount of “Congratulations!“, absent yourself from the conversation until you can.* If your response to “Guess what, I’m getting married!” is “Cue the sadness spiral of sadness! I demand that you deal with my pain now, at length and in detail” you are the one who is acting like a wiener.

I also think that friends with happier news can be sensitive to their friends’ situations, as you are trying to be.

My advice is to tell her when there is an official proposal/engagement the exact same way you would tell friends you expect to be happy for you and let her feelings be her feelings. Perhaps send an email to her and several other close friends at the same time and don’t put a lot of time into singling her out for a serious talk.

If she gets angry at you for announcing your engagement, you are well within rights to say “I am not getting married AT you, can you try to be happy for me?” and bail on the conversation for a bit. I have a lot of anecdata that suggests that close friendships survive (gasp!) marriage, but I have a theory that those are the ones where people don’t treat the other friend’s marriage as a referendum on the friendship or anything but “I wanted to marry this dude and also be your friend, still.” It’s not like you could solve her problems by not getting married, right? Or that it would be worth it to not get married because it would make her feel a tiny bit better about herself (but still hate herself, really)? You’re gonna do it, so do it totally without apology.

I hope she gets some therapy and treats her depression like the real soul-sucking demon that it is, and I hope you guys remain close, but that’s not something that you can control with the announcement of your nuptials. Just tell her in the same chill way you tell everyone and hope for the best.

And congratulations!

*We can’t always control our reactions or predict how news will land with us. Fortunately any good friend worth their salt should be able to roll with an honest: “Congratulations! I am happy for you, but this news is hitting some of my own issues strangely and I need a second to pull myself together. I’ll circle back to celebrating in a bit when I feel less weird.” If you need to hide someone’s social media feed because it’s All Baby or All Wedding, All The Time that is also a totally understandable way of taking care of yourself. You don’t have to lie, you just have to not vomit your despair all over your friends at their happy moments.

Hey Captain Awkward…

So! I used to be BFF with this guy. I eventually ended things after it took a turn for the weird – he became incredibly demanding of my time and attention and started telling me things that, frankly, freaked me out. Our friendship ended after we took a trip together, during which I became increasingly uncomfortable with how dependent he was. I needed space, and I took it. And I guess he was pretty pissed. When I came to my hometown for the summer, he started showing up at my house, calling all the time, that kind of thing. I got a letter and several emails demanding that we ‘talk about this.’ I was freaked out and resolved to avoid him for, oh, the rest of my life.

Anyway, the rest of my life lasted… awhile. Eventually, we began talking again (I don’t really remember how this came about, but we’re from a small town so, you know… you run into people) and I thought everything was cool? We talked. He seemed to be in a better place. We were never close again, but we were friendly enough and hung out a few times without any weirdness. He remained friends with some of my friends and became quite close with a couple of them. I haven’t spoken to him in awhile, but, before recently, I would have said we were at least on friendly terms.

Cut to the present day, when I finally learn his version of what happened between us. Namely, that I threw myself at him, was
rejected, and (I guess) was too humiliated to face him again. I know some people believe his version of events. He is a skilled liar when he wants to be. Honestly, this is the second time I’ve found out way after the fact that someone lied about me and everyone took it as truth and just didn’t tell me. But at least the other time, the person said we had sex – so I could pretend it was at least a little bit flattering.

I feel humiliated now, in keeping with his story. I know that if I were a cooler person, I would just accept that I know the truth, and that is all that really matters. But I’m not cool, and I’m upset. I will see this person again, and likely over the holidays… it’s the
nature of the hometown beast. Before I learned this, I would have just said hi and chatted for a few minutes. But now I know this thing. What should I do if we run into each other? Is it even worth it to confront someone over something that happened years ago? Is it super not worth it to confront someone who knows extremely sensitive information about you and is prone to spreading bad vibes throughout the land? Am I deeply uncool for being so incredibly bothered by this?

It’s definitely not “uncool” to be angry that your former stalker is spreading lies.

I think working really hard to correct the record will be more effort than you want to put in and definitely more attention than you want to send his way. Here are some steps for you:

1. Block him everywhere online without explanation. Block his phone number from your cell (there’s an app for that). He deserves nothing from you.

2. If he gets around your safeguards and contacts you, give him one “I don’t want to be friends with you anymore. Please don’t contact me”. Then NEVER respond to anything he sends you ever, ever again. 

3. If you run into him somewhere in your hometown, excuse yourself from the room/scene as quickly as you can. You can actually get by for quite a while without anyone realizing you hate someone’s guts simply by walking out of a room whenever they walk into it. Give a nod if you feel you have to for politeness sake, but get out of there.

4. Straight up ask your closest friends to stop inviting him places where you know he’ll be. You don’t have to protect his privacy.

5. Say you can’t get away, and he brings up the story with you again in front of other people, say “But we both know that’s not true, X. It’s really weird to me that you’d lie about that,” and then leave the situation. Say to your friends “Sorry, it’s too awkward for me to be around him.”

6. Did you find out his story from him or from someone else? If someone else brings it up to you, say “Whoa, that’s actually pretty far from the truth. It’s so weird that he’d lie.” Then change the subject. In other words, don’t worry too much about correcting the record in general, but if it does come up, tell the truth and don’t be shy or feel like you’re the one making it weird. He made it weird when he lied about you.

I’m sorry this is happening to you. What you had was a friend who turned into a stalker who invented a face-saving lie about you to make himself feel better. Have nothing to do with him, feel no obligation to be nice or go along with anything he says, and don’t feel embarrassed to stand up for yourself with the people who matter. You’ve done nothing wrong and your feelings of anger and violation are more than justified.

Eff that guy. I know it feels stressful now, but imagine the freedom in knowing that you don’t have to spend one more second of your precious beautiful life with this shitbag.

Behind a cut for discussions of sexual abuse.

Hi Captain Awkward,

  I don’t know if you appreciate trigger warnings, since most of what you deal with sounds like it would apply, but this letter is about my dad who molested me.  

When I was starting puberty, my dad molested me.  I told my mom, but she told me to tell him to knock it off if he was making me uncomfortable, and there was a resulting crapfest when things were ‘discovered’ years later.  He promised he never touched my younger sibling, and that he never would.  I knew nothing about the possible recourse you could have about this until he told me that if I told authorities, he’d go to prison and be murdered there, and my family would be ruined.  This is a preface to him doing the same thing to my sibling after I moved out.  I wish I had warned my sibling, but … I totally failed there.

A while ago, there was another explosion of family drama during the course of this, in which he really proved to me that he’s still a pretty fucked up person (and he was worse than I knew before), and my sibling and I both cut off contact with him for our well-being, and I now pay lots of money for therapy, since apparently repression isn’t working?  My mom (who wants us to make up) told me he’s thinking about moving pretty far away and living with his family, but he doesn’t want to leave until he’s settled things with us.  Here’s my dilemma (it isn’t whether or not I have to settle things with him; I hate to say it, but my life is just a lot easier): my extended family contains a whole ‘nother generation of kids.  And as an uncle, he could plausibly be seen as a potential baby-sitter.  None of them know.  Now, I’ve (mostly) given up on pressing charges to protect other people, because it would be terrible and miserable, and I… honestly don’t know that it would do any good (if you think I’m wrong, feel free to chime in; I feel pretty hopeless, though).  But, I do think I should pick one of HIS siblings, and explain what the deal is.  Whether or not it is appropriate, I feel incredibly guilty for what happened to my younger sibling, who I thought I could protect without saying anything to.  My dad’s side of the family has been encouraging me to mend fences, and they’re kind of old school, no airing the family’s dirty laundry types, and though we’re not close, I’m worried about them alienating me over this, or accusing me of lying, or… thinking it’s no big deal?

So, I’m not sure what to do.  Is my instinct in talking to one of my dad’s siblings a good one?  Is there something better I can do that would actually protect other kids?  Does that mean pressing charges?  I don’t even know about the statue of limitations (it’s been more than a decade since he abused me like that) or anything in my state.  If it is okay to talk to my dad’s sibling, do you have any script suggestions?  You’re really good at those, which is why I wrote in.  Honestly, whether or not he’s changed in the past year (alleges my mom), he was pretty unstable last year, and without giving you even more identifying info, I just … I think he could hurt someone else.  He was emotionally and verbally abusive basically my whole childhood and adolescence as well, and his family remembers him from before he was like this.  My goal is not to make his family not accept him, and although I understand I can’t control other people’s actions, I don’t have an adequate model for what they might do.  Ignore me?  Disown him?  Continue to shove the dirty laundry in the kitchen cabinets and hope nothing bad comes of it?

Any advice?  I just wish someone would have looked out for me or my sibling.  This sucks.
Thank you.

What is your mom’s favorite condiment? Ketchup? Sriracha? BBQ sauce? Mayo? I need to know so I can pour it all over this bag of dicks I’d like her to eat for the way she failed to protect you and your younger sibling when you bravely told her what your dad was up to and for the way she is pressuring you now to “make up” and making the question of whether your dad stays or goes all your problem. So here’s your first script:

“Mom, there’s no way for Dad to ‘settle things with us.’ He molested us. We don’t have to forgive him or settle things. Closure is something he needs to get for himself, by getting treatment for the fact that he rapes children and making sure he is never around them. That’s not something we have to forgive, and fuck you for pressuring us about this. If you and he really cared about settling things, you would both inform (family where he’s moving to) that he’s in treatment for being a pedophile and make sure that they don’t leave their kids around him. That would at least show me that he WANTS to change. I am done helping you cover this up and smoothing this over.”

Run it by your therapist, rehearse it, change it as necessary. Maybe before you talk to your mom you can tell the story to close friends and people on Team You just to get it off your chest and stop carrying it by yourself. Maybe you need the experience of being believed and listened to before you try to slay the dragon in its lair.

The whole thing where your dad’s family is “old school, no airing dirty laundry”-types is a translation for “It’s okay if people in our family rape each other, we have this way of using silence to pressure victims into keeping quiet so that no one has to feel TOO awkward at the holidays.” So, also, fuck those people. And fuck the idea that “We’re a family!” somehow erases fucked up things that people do to each other and carries an obligation to forgive and to continually expose yourself to creepy assholes in the name of some greeting-card idea of what family is. If your family wants to have those Hallmark holidays, maybe they shouldn’t rape each other.

Modified script for your dad’s family:

“It’s sweet that you want us to mend fences, but our dad MOLESTED us, and that’s not something I feel like forgiving right now just so you can feel okay about it. Howabout I won’t go anywhere that he will be, and you never ever bring this topic up with me again and also do your part to make sure he is not around kids ever again. That’s probably as mended as we’re going to get.“

If they treat you like you’re lying and you’re the one making it weird, they have just delivered a clear message that they are not safe people for you to be around. Tell me where to send those bags of dicks. There is so much pressure on you to keep silent in order to preserve everyone’s feelings but yours, what if you didn’t try to save their feelings? What if you prioritized your own safety and told the truth and let people believe what they want to?

If they say you’re lying, you can say “Don’t you think I wish it weren’t true? Do you think it’s fun to have to tell you this? Believe whatever you want. I will not be in the same room with that guy ever again, for any reason, and if you are smart you will stop him from ever being around kids.”  And then walk on up out of there and go to where there are people who believe you.

One thing you may well hear is “Isn’t that ancient history?” or “But that’s all in the past now, why can’t you move on?” or “Can’t you just forgive and forget?” or “We don’t air our dirty laundry in public” or other sentences from Silencing Techniques 101: Guilting the Victims into Going Away.

Answers:

“Unfortunately the memories are still fresh, and I can’t erase them just to make you feel better about it.”

“Yeah, I wish I could just forget what happened, but I can’t. I didn’t get raped AT you.”

“I will never forget. Maybe someday I’ll be able to forgive, but that’s not really your timeline to decide.”

“Yeah, this IS a super-uncomfortable topic. You know what else is uncomfortable? Having your whole family side with your rapist so that they don’t have to feel awkward.”

“What’s worse – raping kids, or telling the truth about rapists who rape kids? Because from the way you’re talking about ‘dirty laundry’, I almost think you think it’s worse to tell the truth than it is to rape somebody. Are you sure that’s the hill you want to die on?”

If you don’t want to get into details with family, a good blanket script might be “I’ve decided it’s better for me if Dad and I don’t talk anymore, and probably the less we talk about that the better you’ll like him.“

I’m paraphrasing an old comment here, I think by PFC Marie, along the lines of “You think I’m afraid of an awkward social situation? Motherfucker, I’ve been RAPED. You think sitting through a weird Thanksgiving dinner is somehow worse than that?“

Can you and your sibling talk and make a united front and decision about this? I think that would be a good idea if you can swing it. That is someone who will DEFINITELY believe you about what happened. I think it’s possible that this family probably has a lot of sad and tragic secrets hiding out. Stuff like what your dad did doesn’t happen in a vacuum. So other people besides you might benefit from your refusal to just shut up and take it for some stupid idea of family unity. You might find a whole pocket of family members who have fled the main group and who are hiding out on the sidelines like you.

As to whether you have a moral obligation to tell other family, I’ll refer you to this post by PFC Marie. The post and the comments are pure gold.

But I may as well tell you now, I believe any sentence that has “moral obligation” in it is trying to fuck with you. Not that I don’t believe in moral obligations. I have some! But they are obligations I have made, for myself, per my own code of conduct. As far as I can tell. The thing is, it’s hard to know sometimes whether your “moral obligation” is a value you personally hold, or actually just a socially sanctioned whipping stick that’s crept into your head.

I bristle whenever I hear the moral obligation line, because it seems to me to be the nicer, more benign end of the victim-blaming stick. Nobody’s telling you the abuse was your fault, okay, that’s progress, but if the abuse ever happens again, somehow that’s on you? You couldn’t control or stop the abuser, okay, but give it, like, ten years and you can stop him now? As if being abused is a great power that also confers great responsibility? The person who has the most responsibility is, obviously, the abuser. After him comes everybody who ever had some inkling of what he was doing — this ranges from anybody who ever heard him make a rape joke and said nothing to people who straight-up knew. They have a moral obligation to stop him. After that we radiate outwards, to a society that does not take abuse seriously. After that, only after all those people have failed in their moral obligations, do we come to you.

Of course, that all sounds nice and pretty as a philosophical bent, but the awful truth is, a victim has the best knowledge of what was done, so hopefully, their disclosure will have the most impact. So you can feel that moral obligation pretty heavy, I know. I don’t think you should do this. I don’t think you have to do this. I don’t think you’re bad if you don’t do this. But you yourself are the best judge of how safe you are. What kind of consequences do you envision if you disclose? Can you handle them? Will they be worth the relief you feel at speaking out? What if nothing happens? What if everybody ignores this, and he goes on raising his girls like nothing happened? Will that still feel worth it? For me, it would, but I am me and you are you, and you get to decide this yourself. I would like this to be a world where you can speak up about this; I think it’s the right thing, but you’re not in a right world.

To that end, I’d suggest that you consult a lawyer and/or a social worker and ask them about the legal implications of revealing what your dad did to your family, statute of limitations, etc. Why not become as informed as you can?

The sad truth is that molesters rape serially. We know this. So if you could inform family in a way that feels safe for you and your sibling, then it’s not the worst idea in the world.  Maybe your therapist and your sibling and you can compose an email together and send it to the parents on that side of the family. One possible script:

“Relative,

This is a very uncomfortable topic, and I’m sorry to have to burden you with it, but I heard that my dad is moving out your way and I think someone in the family needs to know our story.

Dad molested sibling and me when we were between the ages of ____ and _____. We told our mom, but she was more worried about the possibility of jail and tearing the family apart than about protecting us, so we didn’t press charges.

To my knowledge he has never sought treatment or admitted what he’s done. He’s definitely lied and said he wouldn’t do it again and then broke that promise. We don’t want to start a witch hunt, but we did want some other people in the family to have the knowledge they need to protect their kids.

Sibling and I are both in therapy and we are both as okay as you can be after something like this. Please don’t feel obligated to respond in any particular way, or at all if you don’t want to. We know this must be extremely difficult to hear, but we had to take a chance that we could save other kids from what happened to us even at the risk of making things uncomfortable.“

If you could send something like that, it would be extremely brave and it may well help other kids. It may not – you kind of have to leave it in the hands of the parents from there – but you can know that you did all that you could.

So.

What happened isn’t your fault.

You don’t have to make up and play nice.

Fuck the whole idea of “family unity” or other people’s peace of mind. Nobody gets peace of mind until YOU get peace of mind.

You’re not obligated to “prevent an abuser” from abusing – that’s pretty much on the abuser to do, but if you can bring yourself to inform someone about what he did you may be a force for good. The most important thing is your own recovery and safety.

If people push back and accuse you of lying, you can say “Ok, believe what you want. I’m done here.” They aren’t making you liars, they are making it known that they are unsafe and can’t be trusted.

Your dad sucks. Your mom also sucks and is not to be trusted.

Hi Captain Awkward,

I have a best friend who’s already like a brother to me. He’s married and they’re expecting their first child. However he’s still struggling to make his ends meet. Hence I only get to see him once in a while. Usually when we meet, we have good and sometimes profound conversation, but not this last time.

Expecting a delightful conversation, I brought him some coffee which I think is very good and I know he likes coffee. He’s excited and fixed a cup for himself (I didn’t because I had my fair share that day). At first, our conversation was good.

But things got weird after a couple of hours. He said that his heart was racing due to the coffee. After a quick probe, I found out that he poured too much coffee, hence the caffeine reaction. I never got that reaction because I usually have only 1 teaspoon of that coffee.

I asked if he wanted to go to hospital but he said no. Because I was worried, I stayed with him while he uttered same words over and over again about this coffee was so strong that it made his heart and libido race. Then he told me he could not take it anymore and asked for my “assistance”. I told him no because we’re friends and I could not do such thing for a friend. He asked me if he could touch my private part … and I said yes, although reluctantly (partly I felt guilty for giving him the coffee). No penetration nor orgasm involved. I felt nothing and the whole time, I was watching a TV show and tried to not to feel weird about this.

This was the second time after a long time ago. In previous time, only once, he was given some traditional potion – which has a viagra-like effect – by friends, I feel I could understand why. I mean, boys play prank on each other, that’s not a new news. And I  didn’t sweat too much about it that time.

This time, logically I still can try to understand.

I see myself as a  rational person. I know how sexual urge is irrational and uncontrollable, especially if spouse currently cannot accommodate this need. It gets much harder to control if you don’t have enough sleep. Logically I understand this part.

But it feels weird. I wonder again and again, why previously I didn’t have problem but this time I did.

I know I cannot get rid of this feeling right away. I don’t want to be in contact with him right now and I think he understands (by not trying to contact me as well).

My question is… Can friendship survive things like this? Will eventually everything will return to the way it was?

-Wishing for a Time Machine

Dear Wishing:

What your friend is doing is called being full of shit.

BULLSHIT. Lies. Malarkey. Excuses. Manipulation.

Sexual feelings are powerful and sometimes unexplainable.

Sexual actions are always within our control. Always. They are decisions we make about what to do with those feelings.

He could take Viagra or other stimulants that gave him a 12-hour boner, and he would still be able to control himself.

Script for you should he get back in touch:

“Wow, Friend, you’ll understand if I’m still feeling super-weird after last time we hung out. For the record, caffeine doesn’t make people have to have sex, so please get that looked into or at least stop using at an excuse to try to get it on with me.”

I think you’re going to want to look for a new friend.  And maybe think about your own desires and how you’d like to act on them or not act on them. This whole “It just happened” thing has a limited shelf-life. In other words, the reason you feel gross and that you want a time machine is that your friend is manipulative and trying to trick you into sex while maintaining some sheen of deniability as to what happened instead of owning up to what he wants. Which is not your fault, but don’t repeat the experience unless you actually actively want to have sex with him.

Dear Captain Awkward,

I have decided to end my 4-year relationship with my boyfriend. Throughout the last 4 years, despite my best efforts to convince myself, I have never been truly passionate and enthusiastic about this relationship, though we’ve definitely had some good moments. He on the other hand has been extremely invested in it. I have also recently had the opportunity to work abroad for a year, and had the chance to become independent and learn about myself and what I want for my life.

This, coupled with a long distance relationship that gave me the space to think, led to the realisation that, what I always felt to be a niggling sense of something being wrong, was that this relationship is not what I am looking for. I feel bored, unstimulated emotionally and intellectually, burdened, as well as extremely guilty and feeling like I am the worst girlfriend on earth. I feel that I have outgrown this relationship.

This is the first real relationship we’ve both had, and I know that it will not go down well with him at all. In fact he will probably fight tooth and nail to keep it going. This has happened before, on a previous occasion I tried to break up on. What happens is that he tries to convince me that I am in fact wrong about why I want to break up, and the issues I raise are things that “can be solved” and “we just have to work together”. If I were to tell him that, for example, the future I envision for myself is very different from his, he would counter with, “Oh that is not a problem, I can always change myself to suit you.” or “How would you know if you have not tried?”

The last time we went through this rigmarole, his arguments got me so upset and confused that I was unable to stand my ground and became a melting puddle of strong irrational emotions. I also felt compelled to say cruel things that are not really true, such as, “No I never loved you really, I was just convincing myself I did.” in order to not give him the ammunition to counter me with. All that made me so upset and miserable I went right back to him the next day.

So, Captain and Team Awkward, I need some advice on the following fronts:

1) How do I clarify my reasons for wanting to break up to myself, so that I am able to stand my ground and not melt into a puddle of emotions when he tries to counter me with his arguments?
2) Do you have suggestions on how I can get him to stop arguing about why I am wrong and he is right and we should not break up?
3) How can I tell him that sustaining a relationship is mutual, and you cannot just force someone to “work together” with you when they want out?

Thanks!
Please Let Me Go

Dear Please Let Me Go:

Once you make the decision to break up with your boyfriend, the relationship is over. It can be a unilateral thing. You don’t have to get his input, his agreement, or even his opinion. You don’t have to have airtight reasons. “I feel like breaking up with you and want to be done,” is its own reason. It is a great reason! I like how clear your letter is that this is a done deal.

The fact that you’ve tried to break up before and he’s guilted and browbeaten you into staying is actually very liberating information in my opinion. Because not only do you not have to stay with this guy, you are now free from any obligation to try to remain friends or even in touch, and you are also free from the obligation to do this in person.

I know, I know, after four years, you *should* be able to break up in person and etiquette suggests that it’s the right thing to do, but he’s already proven that he won’t go quietly and you know that it’s not a good scene for you. So look, I am waving my advice-columnist Wand of Pardon. Use email if you want to. Or a letter. He will complain no matter what you do, so make it work for you.

So, steps:

1. Before you have the conversation, rescue any stuff you really need or want from his place and write off the rest. Things to care about: Hard drives, computers, really expensive/irreplaceable stuff. Things to let go: T-shirts, cds, tupperware, anything that was less than $100.

2. Take ALL of his stuff (even trivial stuff that you think he won’t care about), put it in a box, and get it ready with a shipping label.  If he wants to get your attention, that random mix CD he made you once will suddenly become hugely important and a reason he NEEDS to see you RIGHT NOW. So put it in the box and get it out of your life.

Then compose an email or have a conversation. If you do this in person, I suggest:

• A neutral place that is not anyone’s home, like a park bench.
• Have a person to pick you up right afterwards or a place you need to go so that you can plausibly leave once you’ve delivered the news. You do NOT owe him your time while he endlessly processes of his feelings. You do NOT owe him hearing his case for you to stay.

Script for conversation:

“I know this won’t be good news, but I am ending our relationship. I know we talked about this before, and you convinced me to give it another try, but this time I am confident that this is the right decision for me.“

(Let him talk, adapt as necessary)

“I am sorry, I know this really hurts, but it’s also the right decision for me. There’s nothing you can do or say to change my mind, so let’s agree to wish each other well and make a clean break.“

If he wants to stay friends, a good answer is:

“I don’t think I can make a good decision about that right now. Let’s take a good 6 months off from talking or spending time with each other and give ourselves time to really heal and move on. We can always see how we feel then.”

However, whatever gets you out of that conversation is the right answer. If you need to say “Sure, of course we’ll be friends” in order to get the hell out of there and then later reconsider that decision, go for it. You get to change your mind!

If you send an email, here’s a possible way to adapt the script:

“Dear __,

I know this won’t come as good news, but I’ve decided that it’s time to end our relationship. I know the last time we talked about this you convinced me to give it another shot, but I want to be clear that I’ve thought carefully about this decision, and it is a final one.

I’ll be returning your belongings to your shortly. My plan is to make this a truly clean break, so I won’t be in touch for at least six months while I heal and move on. Thank you for respecting this decision, even though it is a painful and difficult one. I truly wish you well and am grateful for the time we’ve shared together.”

And then you don’t talk to him anymore until or unless YOU feel like it.

A breakup with a person who respects you and is kind and considerate to you doesn’t have to be the end of the world. You get the crying done, exchange the stuff, work out the logistics, talk about neutral stuff, and do the best you can.

With a person who won’t hear you or believe you or who uses every contact as an excuse to manipulate you and beg you to get back together, you may have to get fairly strict – filter emails, block calls/texts, unfollow on social media, do not respond to communications until the person chills out and goes away. It feels cruel, but every unwanted contact you have just keeps him engaged and hopeful and keeps you having unwanted contact. Closure is something for him to find on his own with time. You have closure when you end it.

Let him tell himself any story he wants to about what happened and why. If he wanted you to be more understanding and nicer, he shouldn’t have browbeaten you into sticking around the last time you had this conversation. He can paint you as a heartless jerk, and you can be the heartless jerk who isn’t dating that guy anymore.

Your letter is great. You know exactly what to do. You just needed a pep talk. We got your back.

As of 12/7 comments on this discussion are closed.

Hello Captain!

I need a script for talking to my girlfriend about what she wants in bed. She’s eighteen and I’m twenty and we’ve been together for four years. Neither of us really experimented with other people before we met each other, so we’ve done most of our sexual experimenting and maturing together. The problem is, we’re still having big communication problems.

The first issue is that, over the past year or so, my girlfriend has started to think that she might be a lesbian. She says she’s attracted to girls and not guys, and has explicitly stated that she’s not physically attracted to me. I think this might be part of the cause of the second issue.

The second issue is, my girlfriend never gives me an answer about whether or not she wants to have sex. She never gives me a solid “no” and she never gives me a solid “yes”. We tried employing a direct consent method where I would ask her directly, “Do you want to have sex right now?” but she would never give me an answer. Instead, she says things like, “Honey…” or “Maybe…” or “Tomorrow, okay?” For a while, she told me she didn’t want me to ask; she just wanted me to do what I wanted. Of course, that backfired, because I could never tell when she was actually into it and when she wasn’t. 

None of her feelings on the matter come up until after we’ve already had sex. I never know if she wanted it or didn’t want it until sometimes hours or days or weeks afterward, when she’ll tell me either that she liked it or that she didn’t actually want to have sex. She gets angry with me during these times and says that I’m using her body, or that I expect sex too often, and then she’ll stop sleeping with me as a way to set me straight. 

Captain, I know that my girlfriend is well within her rights not to have sex with me, and if she wants to have sex with other people instead or not to have sex at all, that’s okay. I love her and we’ll find a way to work it out one way or another. But I can’t do anything to help her feel safe and happy with me if she doesn’t tell me what she wants. If asking her directly doesn’t work, what should I do?

Thank you for taking the time. 

Sincerely, 

Yes Means Yes

Dear Yes Means Yes:

There is a lot of badness here. At this point, with your history, you should not have any sex with your girlfriend unless she herself initiates it or responds to your request by smiling from ear-to-ear, taking your hand, leading you into the bedroom, and removing your pants while saying things like “This is awesome” and “Yes please!” and “More!”

I can imagine your response to the above suggestion:

“But, Captain Awkward, if I didn’t initiate sex then we’d never have sex!“

You are correct, this is probably what would happen if you stopped initiating sex. This is because she does not want to have sex with you anymore.

She says explicitly that she is not attracted to you and that she might be gay. These are what are known as dealbreakers. She refuses all the time, indirectly.  ”Just do what you want, stop asking me” does not equal “Fuck me now, you magnificent bastard!” It means “Giving in is easier than fighting/explaining why/dealing with the constant badgering.”

You asked for a script about talking to your girlfriend about what she wants in bed. She’s TOLD you what she wants in bed. What she wants = NOT YOU. If you literally can’t tell whether or not someone is into what is happening in bed, the answer is “They are not all that into it.”

Further translations:

Tomorrow* = no.

Maybe later = no.

I am not attracted to you = no.

I am maybe gay = no.

You’re using my body! = no.

You want sex too often, maybe I’ll just stop altogether = no.

Anything but “Yes!” or “Yeah!” or “Okay!” or “Get over here!” or “Take off your pants!” or enthusiastically touching you = no.

You say “Captain, I know that my girlfriend is well within her rights not to have sex with me, and if she wants to have sex with other people instead or not to have sex at all, that’s okay,” and you’re using the lingo of “Yes means Yes” which sounds really nice, except for the part where you keep pressuring her and having sex with her even when she clearly does not want to and then try to argue that she wasn’t PERFECTLY clear so how you are you supposed to know what to do since this is basically her fault for not being a better communicator.

It’s not surprising that she might not have actually fully internalized that she gets to refuse sex with you, since she says no all the time and then finds herself having sex with you anyway. So I have to ask: If she broke up with you because she’s not into you anymore, would you go quietly? Or would you convince her to stay the way you convince her to keep having sex with you?

You want to do the right thing for both of you? Break up with her. Make it clean, final, and irrevocable. “Girlfriend, I care about you but this isn’t working for me and I want to break up.”  Even if she says she wants to stay together and work on the problem, I don’t think love and good intentions fix this thing. It’s hard to break up with your first love and your first sex partner. But she needs to be free to explore her actual desires (and figure out what they are) with a partner who doesn’t badger and coerce her. And you need to see what sex looks like when someone actually wants to be there with you. She can do better than “constant coercion” and you can do better than “grudging submission.”

And since you have a bad track record of wishful thinking and coercion in reading signals about a partner’s willingness to have sex, I suggest you make enthusiastic consent your absolute personal ethic going forward. Without forthright, clear, explicit, demonstrated consent from a partner, you don’t have sex, period.

Recommended Reading:

• Jaclyn Friedman’s What You Really, Really Want: The Smart Girl’s Shame-Free Guide to Sex and Safety
• Heather Corinna’s S.E.X.: The All-You-Need-To-Know Progressive Sexuality Guide To Get You Through High School and College

*In a good relationship where people are having enthusiastic, regular sex, “Tomorrow” means “Tomorrow!” In this relationship, it definitely means “no.”

Dear Captain Awkward,

In a few months, my big sister’s getting married, and I’m a bridesmaid. Awesome!

The problem is that my estranged father will be there, and I legit cannot be around him.

My parents are divorced and Dad was always weird. When I was 16, he and I had a massive argument where he physically hurt me and I ran away. That was the last time I saw him. He mailed many long, convoluted, ranting letters about how horrible I was and how he would set me straight. I never responded. Mom had my back, and Dad disappeared.

But just before my eighteenth birthday, he cleaned out my savings account. It was full of money given by my late grandmother, before she died, for college. There was nothing legally we could do; the money was gone. Mom just gets by, financially, so I took out loans for college, and am paying them back. They’re large, and it’s tough, and it still stings, and when I as much as THINK about Dad I start to get angry.

Now, Sister also hates Dad, but they’re in touch. He would probably disown her, too, if she didn’t invite him to her wedding, but (probably to cement his invitation) he mailed her a VERY large check when she got engaged. Sister’s totally sympathetic, and I’m not angry at her for inviting him. She’s seating the two of us far apart at the reception, and sticking him with one of his annoying colleagues so they can keep each other occupied.

But a couple weeks ago, Sister grudgingly passed along a message from Dad saying that he hopes I’m doing well. This is the first communication we’ve had in years. It didn’t make me happy.

What do I do if he weasels through Sister’s precautions and tries to talk to me? My instinct is to run away, but he’s notorious for trying to drag people in, against all social etiquette. And though I like to think I can stay cool under pressure, I’ve got my own temper issues and if he won’t leave me alone, I’m very, very likely to yell at him.

I really don’t want to ruin my sister’s wedding. Or, be a part of my dad ruining it.

Sincerely,
Bitter Bridesmaid

Hey Bitter Bridesmaid,

I don’t know why people think that weddings magically make people un-hate each other’s guts or magically behave like grownups. If your sister is…optimistic…enough to invite your Dad to the same party as you, she gets what she gets, and as the hostess, the worry about whether he’ll use her special day as an occasion to ambush you into an unwanted reconciliation is pretty much on her shoulders. Fortunately, a wedding can’t be ruined unless the couple somehow fails to be married to each other by the end of the day.

The best thing is to say very short, noncommittal things and be brief, polite, and perfunctory. “Hey dad.” “Wasn’t it a lovely wedding?” “The weather is nice today.” And then be elsewhere as soon as possible. Do not get drawn into long conversations, hugs, family photos that include him, talking about the past.

If he pushes you – tries to suck you in, tries to bring up old issues, will not take no for an answer, makes a scene of any kind, I want you to respond politely THREE TIMES. “Dad, this isn’t really the time or place. Let’s just enjoy the wedding, ok?” Repeat it like a robot.

If he will not stop, or he makes a scene, after three attempts to shut him down I give you permission to hand him the following message on a card that you’ve written up before the wedding and are keeping in your purse just in case. Say, “Dad, I thought something like this might come up, so I brought you this letter. Let’s go back to enjoying the wedding.” And then walk away. Far away.

“Dad, you may have noticed that I don’t want to talk to you. The reason for that is not a mystery! When I was 17, you stole $_______ from me. If you are serious about having a conversation with me, pay that money back and apologize. If you make amends and return what you stole, then MAYBE we can have a conversation like civil adults. Until then, I can’t even contemplate talking with someone who caused me such harm and financial hardship, and I am asking you directly to leave me alone.”

GOOD THING BRIDESMAID WORE PURPLE SHORTS UNDER DRESS TODAY.

You can present him with this bill any time he ever tries to talk to you again. “Hey, Dad, so where’s my $_________? No? Okay, goodbye.” He’ll probably never pay you back. He has a million bullshit excuses stored up about why that-wasn’t-really-his-fault-and-now-you-are-just-an-ungrateful-jerk-who-only-wants-his-money blah blah blah he’s-the-real-victim-here blah blah blah. So, the odds are that you’ll never have to talk to him. Your sister can help here, if she wants to put herself in the middle so much. “Yeah, Dad, sorry, she’s really still mad about the college fund. Maybe you should just pay her back and stop bugging me.“

I know it’s somewhat taboo to talk about money in this way and I’m focusing on the money to the exclusion of the abuse & neglect you suffered at his hands. My reasoning is that you can’t ask him to go back in time and be less of an ass. You probably can’t ever get him to acknowledge his part in what went down between you and why your relationship became so fractured. But you know that he knows that you know that he STOLE x amount of $ from you. It’s a crime he can answer for that can stand in for the whole.

So if the guy is actively trying to push his way back into your life, I think you should be totally unashamed and unshy about asking for a literal dollar amount back and using the words “thief” “stole” and “mine” when you discuss it. You can’t act like everything is okay between you because everything is not okay until he makes restitution. And this isn’t some shameful secret that you have to cover up. If he appeals to other relatives and tries to get them to pressure you to feel sorry for him, be blunt. “You guys know that he stole my college fund, right? Until he returns what he stole, I really can’t talk to the guy.” It’s rare that you can cite a LITERAL price of admission for a given relationship, so, um, relish it?

Oh, by the way, if he DOES pay you back, once the check has cleared, have ONE lunch. And then you’re done forever if you want to be. He was an adult who had a lot of choices about how he behaved, and you hating his guts is one of the predictable consequences of those choices. That doesn’t really get erased with money.

If you had met up with your ex that day, this would have been the expression on his face. Still feel guilty?

Hi! This is very sweet, right? But don’t spring it on someone the first or second time you meet them. Friend-date people for a little while and if you’re meant to be friends you will totally figure it out.

Dear Captain Awkward:

I ended my first romantic relationship earlier this year. I’m in my early 20s, still in college. He was 10 years older than me. Long story short, we had met during the previous summer and had been attempting a long distance relationship. We talked constantly. Though he was needy and was borderline smothering me at times, he was sweet and fun. We finally met up again in early spring and everything seemed fine. Shortly after, he decided to tell me that he had slept with two other girls while we were apart. To get them to sleep with him, he told them that he had feelings for them. I was disgusted and called off our relationship. Still wanting to be amicable, I left the door open for a future friendship, but I told him that I needed some time. 

I wish it ended there. After a few months, I contacted him again. In a moment of loneliness and weakness, I wrote him a letter apologizing for cutting it off so abruptly. I also apologized for not being expressive enough-I’m not lovey-dovey and I tend to be shy about expressing my true feelings around men (Somehow, at the time, I felt that I had caused him to cheat on me-which I now realize was HIS decision. I have no control over his actions.) I missed him, and I wrote that I wanted him back in my life. Note that I never expressed any desire for a romantic relationship, and I had previously said that I wanted to be friends in the future.

After a month of casually e-mailing back and forth, he suddenly sent me a text message asking to meet me somewhere near my school. After a few texts back and forth, I found out that he had traveled cross country to see me, without warning. A trip to see me would have been long and costly. I panicked. Clearly, what he was doing was beyond being “friendly”. My entire mind and body seemed to be screaming: “Do.Not.Meet.Him!” I didn’t. I sent him an e-mail to leave me alone, and everything finally ended there.

I never wanted to start a romantic relationship again. I had only wanted to start our friendship over again. Was I leading him on? I’m still beating myself up over this. I hate that I had to hurt him, but at the same time, I don’t want to see him again. I felt that he was trying to pressure me into doing something that I didn’t want to do. He proved that he would always think about his own needs/desires first, not mine. But I still can’t justify my own behavior. Was I in the wrong?

Love Rookie

Dear Love Rookie:

Your former dude mistook your friendly email for a romantic gesture, so he made what he thought was a big romantic gesture in return, except really it was a stalkery gesture. That isn’t about you “leading him on,” that’s about a story he told himself in his head about what you wanted and about what would happen when he showed up. You say you felt like he was trying to pressure you into doing something you didn’t want to do. You felt correctly! He was in fact a “needy & smothering,” high pressure and manipulative guy! Who lies about his feelings to get girls to sleep with him, which constitutes actually “leading someone on!” You learned what he was like the first time you parted ways, and then you tried to give him another chance to be in your life as a friend, and he blew that other chance.

Maybe, after getting dumped the second he hit the UK, Lloyd Dobbler grew up and stopped being such a smothering, clingy weirdo. That’s not really Diane’s problem to solve, though.

You did the right thing by not meeting him. Your instincts, the ones that said “Aaah! Too close! Too weird! Don’t meet him!” were protecting you. Maybe from danger. Maybe just from an extremely uncomfortable confrontation with a guy who thought flying across the country at the drop of a hat was a normal thing to do. That’s the Gift of Fear at work.

I’m sure it was very hurtful to him when you did not want to meet him, but that’s not your fault. He set himself up for a fall and seriously overstepped your boundaries. Hopefully he will learn to save giant, romantic gestures for people who are actually interested in his giant, romantic gestures.

Since he has not gotten in touch with you since you asked him to leave you alone, I think you’re safe from further pop-ins, but it might make you feel better to block him on email & social media and see if you can block texts and calls from him on your cell phone. It’s one step closer to leaving him and everything about him entirely in the past.

I don’t think you did anything wrong here. You get to change your mind about people. You ESPECIALLY get to change your mind about people as a direct result of their actions. So why are you beating yourself up?

Well, there’s the whole idea of “leading someone on” to contend with.

I think it is cruel to deliberately toy with someone’s feelings for fun like, for instance, lying to them about your emotions in order to get them to sleep with you, which your ex-boyfriend did to people. That is bad and he should feel bad.

But what mostly happens is that people are in the middle of working out how they feel, or they haven’t figured out how to express their feelings. Maybe they want to be more into someone than they are, so they try to psych themselves up to date someone and then realize later that they aren’t that into it. They get put on the spot and don’t feel like they can say no. Or maybe they are just having fun flirting, or they have a different level of interest in someone than that person has in them at a given time. I’ve definitely really liked someone after one date and then not been so into them after date two or three, and I’ve definitely been on the other side of that, where I like them more the more time we spend together and they like me less. Navigating that stuff can be painful, and awkward, but it’s just part of being human.

This movie has totally grown on me as a movie about the power of Wishful Thinking and Entitlement.

The badness comes when the other person puts on their Entitlement Goggles and runs everything you say through the Wishful Thinking Translator. The Wishful Thinking Translator adds deep, heavy meaning to all interactions. And it also translates things you say into things that the Wishful Thinker gets to have: Your time. Your attention. Your affection. Your pants.

Say you have a nice time hanging out with a new acquaintance or date, and this conversation at the end of that.

Other Person: “Do you want to have dinner sometime?“

You: “Sounds good. I’m a bit swamped at the moment, though. Can I get back to you next week?“

Wishful Thinking Translator: “She promised to definitely have dinner with us next week. Time to start scanning Yelp reviews and making reservations.”

Say you remain swamped, stuff slips your mind, and you don’t actually call the person to get together next week.

Someone who really likes you but who is not using a Wishful Thinking Translator on what you say might feel a bit bummed, like, hey, maybe she doesn’t really want to have dinner. They might check in in a casual way, like “I’d still love to make a dinner plan, maybe on X day? Let me know when your schedule clears up.”

If you really like them and want to have dinner, you’ll probably reply and try to set something up. If you don’t want to have dinner, you’ll hopefully send a reply saying so, but if you don’t, both parties will figure dinner was not meant to be and drop it until you do get in touch.

Someone who is using a Wishful Thinking Translator is angry. You promised you’d have dinner, precioussssssss. You owe them dinner gollum gollum gollum. If you do not actually have dinner with them, you are a flake and a mean person who “leads people on.” They will come across as needy and smothering in trying to set up that dinner. And if you say “Oh man, I am so sorry, I am still really swamped” you’ll get a passive-aggressive “I BET YOU ARE” or “If you don’t like me, you can just tell me. You don’t have to LEAD ME ON like EVERYONE ELSE.” This is because when someone is speaking Wishful Thinking and the other person is speaking normal speech, refusals or failures to connect or follow up get sent directly to the Jerkbrain where they receive the worst possible interpretation. “She didn’t reply to my email or call me to arrange dinner = I AM HORRIBLE AND I SUCK AND NO ONE WILL EVER LOVE ME.“

The bummer is, I think most of us have been on both sides of this interaction. Someone we like agrees to get “coffee sometime” and we pump our fists in the air because Coffee, It Is On Like Donkey Kong! And then coffee never happens, because OBVIOUSLY WE SUCK AND NO ONE WILL EVER LOVE US. If we react to the person from that place of extreme self-doubt & entitlement, our reactions will be disproportionate and weird. We will creep them out.

When you’re on the receiving end of someone else’s extreme wishful thinking, it can really mess with your head. A seemingly innocuous interaction will end badly and leave you feeling bad and second-guessing yourself. Like, were you being a flake? Do you lead people on? You’re a nice person, and you don’t want to be someone who leads people on, so should you just go out with them one more time to show that you’re not like everyone else? (No.) Or apologize in some way?  (No.) All they did was try to do something nice, right? So why are we so creeped out? It’s not fair!

A manipulative person will use that tiny bit of self-doubt to wedge themselves into your life. They can’t have your freely given affection, so they’ll appeal to your sense of fairness and desire to be a nice person who doesn’t reject people who make nice gestures, like flying across the country at the drop of a hat to pay you an unwanted visit. Gavin de Becker calls this “loan sharking”, and commenters here call it “favor sharking”: Doing something for someone that they didn’t ask or want you to do, and then acting as if it entitles you to a favor or time or attention or affection in return. When someone’s attention feels strange and unwanted, it’s important to cut through all the favors and expectations of niceness and ask yourself, bluntly: “Do I want to spend time with this person? No? Okay, then, let’s all believe in the no.”  Love is subjective and unfair. Manipulators will do almost anything to cut you off from asking yourself that question and saying a clear no. They will do anything to make it about abstract things like “fairness” and whether you “led them on” and what their expectations were. They want it to be very difficult to say no. Sometimes you have to cut people off in a way that feels quite cold and brutal, both to you and to them, and it sucks. But it’s better than staying involved with someone you don’t want to be involved with.

Remember this: It is not your job to anticipate and manage every possible iteration of other people’s feelings. It’s your job to figure out what your feelings are and be true to them.

And so often, accusations of “leading someone on” go hand in hand with male entitlement and slut-shaming. “You smiled at me/wore a pretty dress/have had sex before/have had sex with ME before/looked like you might have had sex with someone at some previous time/said you’d go out with me again/kissed me/fell asleep in the same room as me…..and I interpreted that as being some kind of written contract with my penis.” It’s a way of making someone else’s desire for you and wishful thinking about you all your fault, to try to guilt you into doing what they want. So if someone uses the phrase “You led me on” or “I bet you just lead guys on” or “Are you leading me on?” see it for what it is: EXTREME NO-GOOD RAPE-CULTURE BADNESS. It’s a neg. It’s designed to get you to spend more time with and/or sleep with someone who senses that you don’t actually want to sleep with them. It is, in the words of Admiral Ackbar, a trap.

You’re suggesting that you “led him on”, and I’m suggesting that you are not a bad person because you’ve internalized some of our fucked-up culture into your head and think that “leading someone on” is actually something that can happen without malicious, deliberate intent. Intent that you did not have, ergo, you did not lead anyone on.

Good news: Your self protective instincts are fully operational!

Letter Writer, this ex of yours sounds like a major manipulator, and I’m betting that he did a real number on your soul and you’re still sorting through the aftermath. I bet the way he treated those other girls is also telling about some ways he treated you. People like him are great at making you second-guess yourself. I’m here to tell you that his unplanned visit to your campus was not friendly, it was not romantic, and it was way out of line. I’m here to tell you that you were smart to break up with him, kind to want to mend fences, and extremely smart and self-protective to mistrust his motives and stay away from him. Your self-protective instincts are fully operational! Now what remains is for you to get the last of him out of your system.

Suggested steps:

1. Block him on every conceivable communication outlet. I don’t think you should have any more contact with him ever again. I don’t think you guys will ever get to a happy, friendly place where everything feels good, so make a completely clean break and do what’s best for you.

2. If you find yourself worrying about this, and cycling through memories and thoughts of him, stop and say: “There is nothing to forgive, but I forgive myself anyway.”  Or write that in a journal 1,000 times. Or write a letter to him that you don’t ever send. Do some ritual thing to make a break with the past.

3. Channel residual guilty feelings into being nice to people that you want in your life. Volunteer. Buy a friend pancakes.

4. Talk it over with a counseling pro. I think this guy probably got into your head in more ways than one, and it may take some time and a trained, friendly ear to get him back out again. If it’s affecting you to the point that it is messing up your moods and your life, it’s worth doing whatever you can to lay it to rest.

5. Be nice to yourself and spend time with awesome people who make you feel awesome.

Love,

Captain Awkward

Hey Capt., 

Cliff notes. My sister got pregnant three years in a row, giving birth to three healthy babies by c-section. With baby 1 she was put into bed rest almost immediately and I was assigned to make sure she didn’t jeopardize her or the baby’s health. This was a difficult task only made worse after the birth because it meant an additional 4 weeks at the least. Around 2 weeks into that time I broke down sobbing. My sister threw me out and my parents let me have the morning off before insisting that I return to make sure my sister hadn’t hurt herself. 

Continuing into the next two pregnancies I was told I had to stay with my sister because my parents were afraid for both her mental and physical health. This involved me sometimes driving 3 hours daily back and forth to my sister and her husband’s apartment. Where I was welcome by my sister but resented by her husband for being there and also for not doing enough while I was there. 

I am realizing that I was depressed. Slowly over the last few years I’ve been trying to recover. And I’ve felt like I have been. (In part thanks to this blog.) 

Now my sister is pregnant again. It’s been the easiest pregnancy yet. When I told my mom I was not going to do what I did before she said that yes I would. I felt like I had been slapped. I tried to tell her no but she told me it’s family. I told her a little desperately that if she didn’t want me to resent that baby and my sister even more than I already did she wouldn’t make me. She just repeated the family bit. 

That was a little over a month ago. I am depressed. My sister, who had already spent christmas at my house, wanted to spend the week following new years here as well. I told her no, and I told my mother I can’t do it. I am depressed and I just can’t face it. My mom offered to pay for me to take off for a few days so that my sister can come and spend the time here.(My Mom and I live together.) She says that she understands that I am depressed but she thinks my sister is too and she might need to come up to get some relief. 

Captain Awkward, I am being asked to leave my own house. I am being hounded by my mother to find a quick fix for my depression. And I am sincerely at a loss. Can you help me? 

-Just empty.

Dear Empty:

While new parents and people recovering from surgery can definitely use the help and support of their family and friends, it’s not something that can or should be compelled. If your sister needs care, it’s her job to sort out a solution that works for her. She can collaborate with her husband. She can collaborate with your mom. She can ask friends. She can ask you to help in a reasonable way, like, occasionally babysitting your nieces and nephews or coming down to spend quality time with her. She can seek her own mental health care for her own depression. She is the boss of her own situation. She is not the boss of you.

Your mom is also not the boss of you. Bluntly, if your mom wants your sister to have round-the-clock company and care, your mom is welcome to get her ass to your sister’s house and provide that care. She (and your sister and her husband) are also perfectly free to HIRE that care. Nannys, babysitters, home health aides, college students who can do light housecleaning and run a few errands all exist. Being the (I assume) unmarried, childless sibling does not turn you into the family servant. Your life didn’t stop or become unimportant when your sister became a mom, and it troubles me how automatically your folks assume that you’ll be down for the job given how badly it went last time. Caregiving is WORK. We do it for the people we love to the extent that we can. But it is work, and the burnout rate is high.

I think you are very smart, and very brave, and very right to draw a line on how much and what you are willing to give. I think it is a very radical and awesome act of self-care to speak up as you did. Your family might frame it as selfish, but you are allowed to prioritize your own mental health and your own well-being, and to do what you can to make sure that the arrival of a new niece or nephew is a cause for celebration rather than abject dread.

As I see them, your priorities right now should be to a) treat your own depression and take it absolutely 100% seriously b) to refuse outright to take on the burden of your sister’s care right now. You can repair relations with your family when some boundaries have been established, when the current crisis of caregiving has passed, and when you feel your feet under you more strongly.

Recommended steps:

1) Please find some kind of mental health treatment if you don’t already have some in place. Now. That is your number 1 priority.

2) Pick a script or two for saying “no” from the list below and use it anytime your mom or sister brings up the idea of you helping. Repeat until you can change the subject (or until they drop it). Leave the conversation if necessary.

3) If you want to preserve a good relationship with your sister, try to find ways of interacting that are about things you enjoy & have in common. If you have the means and you feel up to it, hire a babysitter so that when you do drive three hours for a visit you can take her to lunch and a movie and catch up instead of getting sucked into her household chores. Send her a thoughtful gift like pretty pajamas or her favorite tea or fresh flowers. Hire a housecleaner for the day. Freeze a bunch of soups and stews so that they have good meals around when the baby is born. Have a phone or Skype date every couple of weeks to chat and catch up. Also, encourage her to take her own mental health care seriously and treat depression like the illness that it is. There is a lot you can do to be supportive and helpful short of moving in or hosting her around-the-clock.

4) Be really nice to yourself.

Keep this in mind: If the relationship is strained right now despite your best efforts, you are not the one straining it. Your sister & mom are straining it by having unreasonable expectations and demands.

Scripts

Wait until your mom or your sister makes a request (or communicates the assumption) that you’ll drop everything and help out. There’s no need to even talk about it again until then, right? Then, here is a starting script for your mom and one for your sister.

“Sister, I love you, and I want you to be supported and well during your pregnancy, but I am also feeling depressed and depleted and need to focus on my own well-being right now. I’m not going to be able to host you here right now, and I’m also not going to be able to travel out there to you the way I did in the past. I want to be very up-front about that so you and (husband) can make some other arrangements so that you can have the help you need.”

“Mom, I love Sister, but I know for sure that I am not going to be able to help out the way I have in the past. I need to be honest and up front about that now, so that everyone can make other arrangements. I really need you to take me at my word on this and not pressure me. Sister and I (& nieces & nephews) will have a better relationship if I can offer what help that I can give on my own terms.”

(listen to what they say)

(process it)

“I understand if that was not what you wanted to hear and if it will take a little time for us all to process everything. Thanks for hearing me out. Let’s change the subject to something else, ok? How is (x subject change thingy)?”

Next, I’ve included some responses that you can use if they try to pressure you. The important thing when dealing with someone who is trying to manipulate you is to keep it very short and very clean. Avoid offering reasons or explanations or get drawn into lengthy discussions where the other person can try to “solve” your reasons or argue with them. You want to go full Bartleby the Scrivener here. The fact is, you prefer not to, and you don’t actually have to, so you won’t.

“But she needs you!“

“I am telling you this now, so that you can find another solution.“

“But she’s family!“

“I won’t be able to help this time, so you should make another plan.”

“You’re just being selfish!“

“I need to make my own health a priority right now, so I won’t be able to help.”

“You’re not really that sick!” or “Are you trying to compare your problems to hers?” or “You just need to snap out of it!“

“Wow, that’s a pretty hurtful thing to say. Nonetheless, I’m not going to be able to help (sister) right now, so you and she should make another arrangement.“

or

“I’m doing my best to work on my mental health. Believe me, I’d like this to clear up even more than you would. Until it does, this is my reality, and I’d appreciate it if you did not pressure me anymore about this.” 

“Don’t you love your sister?“

“I do love her, and I love my nieces and nephews, but I’m still not going to be able to help this time. You guys should make other arrangements.”

“But how are we supposed to _________?” + :list of woes that you are causing with your selfishness that they’d like it to be your problem to solve now, aka, “Forced Teaming”, where they try to make their problems into shared problems:

“I don’t really have a good solution to that. I hope you can find something that works for you.“

Bonus catch-all script:

“That’s not going to work for me, but I hope you can find something that works for you.”

Rehearse, if necessary, with a good friend or a counselor so you can get the words out.

And let’s unpack the statement “But we’re a faaaaaaaamily” when it’s used to manipulate you into something you don’t want to do. Your sister is family, and if she needs you, maybe she needs you. But you also need something from her, and from your mom: You need respect for your boundaries and some time and space to get your head together. Why are other people’s needs automatically covered by “faaaaaaamily” but yours are not? An interesting question, no?

Also, I get the sense right now that you guys communicate through your mom a lot. Your sister expresses a need to your mom, and your mom passes the news/orders onto you, adding an extra serving of Mom Guilt and Family Obligation along the way. I think it might be a good idea to talk to your sister directly. Establish some kind of regular contact with her where you guys talk or email or IM. If she has requests for help, encourage her to make them to you directly (and to hear your “no” directly, or work out some solution for what help you are willing to provide directly) rather than going through your mom. It will help you clarify what expectations belong to your sister and what expectations are being manufactured by your mom. I think your mom is a bad negotiator on your behalf, especially the way she promises/suggests your help in advance and then badgers you to deliver. Taking her out of the middle of this relationship might help you and your sister find an equilibrium.

It can be tricky to manage this, especially when the habits of communication have been ingrained for this long and you’re basically trying to train your family to interact in a different way by modeling different behavior, but here’s a rough guide:

• If your sister asks you for something directly, that request exists. You can consider it, honor it or refuse it, and communicate about it with her. “Can I come stay with you guys for a few days?” “Sorry, it isn’t a good time right now.”
• If your sister’s request comes through your mom, that request does not exist. It does not exist until your sister asks you directly. Until then, it’s just speculation or chatter. So when your mom passes on a request from your sister, you say “Mom, thanks for letting me know, but if that’s the case I’d like to talk to Sister directly about it. She should call or email me and we’ll talk.”
• If your mom brings it up again, and your sister hasn’t contacted you, just say “I haven’t heard from her about that. As soon as I do I can make a decision.“
• If you do talk to your sister, treat the request like it doesn’t exist until she brings it up. You are literally refusing to hear messages that are passed from her by your mom. Over time you can tell her exactly what’s up – “Sister, if you need something from me, just ask me and we’ll work it out. When mom tries to broker some deal between us, it always goes badly. Thanks.” She’ll either respect that or she won’t. If she won’t, you will totally ignore her requests that come through mom.

This accomplishes a few things:

• It puts the decision about whether you’ll accede to the request off for the moment.
• It’s makes it a discussion between you and your sister, not between you and your mom.
• It takes your mom out of the negotiator position and takes away some of the reward for pressuring you about it. “Cool, mom, Sister and I will talk about it. What’s on TV tonight?” Her role as your mom is obviously important, but her role as the manager of the relationship between you and your sister needs to become totally unimportant.

I suspect that the whole thing with your sister wanting to visit again is such a clusterfuck because your mom already told her “Yes” or invited her without asking you and now feels pressure to make it happen by any means necessary.Instead of paying you to leave your own house so that sister can catch a break, howabout your mom travels to where she is and rents a hotel room? Sister can stay at the hotel and have a day or two of privacy and mindless television, her kids can get time with Grandma, and you can have your own house to yourself. That sounds like way more of a win-win to me. I don’t know why your sister and your mom automatically default to the solution that is the most inconveniencing for you.

This is primal stuff that isn’t going to get resolved overnight, so don’t skimp on the “be nice to yourself” step, ok? You deserve all the care and consideration in the world, and don’t have to abdicate your own needs here.

Dear Captain Awkward

I’m currently in a happy poly relationship where me and this other individual are dating the same person (X) whom we both have a primary relationship with (the girl and I have a secondary relationship). X recently proposed to us but, for a very good reason, will officially marry Y (the other girl) and will marry both of us in a private joining of hands ceremony. While I love both of them very much marriage terrifies me and I can’t really articulate why. It’s more like a general feeling of no I don’t want to do that. The problem is I don’t feel like I can say anything to X because I don’t want to scare him away from marriage- it’s complicated but basically X didn’t want to get married again ever but outside circumstances have forced the issue and while I’m thrilled to hear he’ll marry Y I wasn’t thrilled to hear that it came with the added secondary wedding.

Thus how do I bring up the fact I don’t want a marriage ceremony even after saying yes because I was drinking and it was a shock and I didn’t want to ruin the moment? Also how do I bring up the fact that I’m holding out for someone I could see myself being married to as opposed to my current two partners whom I can see being with for the rest of our lives and being very good friends with but I frankly can’t guarantee that we will always be romanticly and/or sexually tied? Finally how do I get out of the secondary marragie without jeopardizing the first marrrage which is rather important that it happens? 

Uncertain about marriage

Dear Uncertain:

You actually seem very certain about marriage, in that you do not want it. Therefore, under no circumstances should you marry (even in a not-legally-binding fashion) anyone. Here is your script:

“I really want you guys to get married and am happy for you and I love you both (all?). However, now that I’ve had a chance to sober up and think it through, I don’t want to participate in any kind of marriage ceremony of my own, and would like to stick with our current jam.”

You don’t actually have to give any reason beyond “I don’t want to.” Having a general feeling that you don’t want to get married IS a reason, nay, THE reason to not get married. “I can’t really explain why, but I know that I just don’t want to.” Marriage, outside of the legal status, means different things to different people. If this isn’t what marriage feels like or means to you, then don’t do it.

If somehow that jeopardizes the first marriage, that’s not your problem. X also gets to decide that he does not want to get married. If your withdrawal is enough to scare him off, then he maybe doesn’t actually want to get married. Which is a great reason to not get married.

Whatever health insurance/work visa/Green Card/spouse exemption from testifying in court/tax deduction reason that this marriage “needs” to happen, it can happen without you. If the others pressure you about this, and try to make it your fault or blame you if the whole thing falls apart, they are WAY out of line. You’re not stopping them from doing whatever they want to do, and if they don’t want to do it, then they must have some reservations of their own that weren’t created by you.

This is because relationships aren’t transitive! Isn’t the whole poly jam is that X and Y can have their relationship, and you and X can have your relationship, and you and Y can have your own kind of relationship, and you all get to define and negotiate your own boundaries for what that means and what you want to do? That means that YOU, Letter Writer, get to define YOUR own boundaries for what kind of relationship YOU want. Which means not marrying anyone you don’t want to marry. If something is not working for YOU, then it is not working, period.

The sooner you speak up and rip the bandaid off, the sooner they can go about planning their wedding, perhaps with you as celebrator-in-chief.

Dear Captain Awkward,

My partner left his wife a year ago. (We’re all polyamorous, and our relationship began with her blessing and permission.) She was emotionally and verbally abusive to him. I had lived with the two of them for many years, and I moved out when I finally recognized the abuse, and admitted to myself that the situation was not improving and not going to improve. It was one of my hardest decisions, and I felt I was abandoning my partner. I thought that when he recognized the abuse for himself and moved out (a year later), things would get better and he would cease contact with her. Instead, he spends time with her every week, because he wants to stay friends with her. And he admits this is at least partly out of fear of what she might do if he doesn’t. He also claims to be testing his ability to maintain boundaries with her, so that he doesn’t “get into a relationship like that again”.

This is hard enough, but he keeps pushing me to talk with her as well. He thinks I would somehow benefit from talking with her, despite the rage and outright hatred I feel towards this person. I accept his right to decide who he wants in his life and how. I accept that he doesn’t want to talk about the abuse, so most of our circle of friends doesn’t realize how bad things were, or why I want nothing to do with her. But damn I’m sick of being told that I need to learn forgiveness for a person who does unforgivable things.

I want to continue being here for my partner and helping him heal. I’ve also recently recognized that when I lived with my partner and his wife, she was also emotionally and verbally abusive to me. This compounds my difficulty in dealing with the situation. My Team Me is very small, because most of our friends don’t know about/understand/recognize the abuse, and I don’t know how to talk with them without saying more than my partner wants known by our circle about what he went through. He doesn’t believe he’ll receive support because he is a man who was abused by a woman.

Any advice from you and the Awkward Army would be appreciated so much. I feel like I’m suffocating on secrets and expectations.

Can’t Forgive

Dear Can’t Forgive,

This is a rough situation. The good news is that relationships aren’t transitive. If your partner wants to unwisely carry on a relationship with his former abuser, that does not automatically obligate you to have a relationship with her, too. And if you need to reach out to a trusted friend or two and be honest about what happened to you, you are allowed to ask for that support from your friends. You can do that without disclosing your partner’s business. You are also allowed to seek friendships that do not touch on your partner at all.

Here is a script for your partner:

“Partner, to be honest, I find it very troubling that you remain so entangled with your ex-wife, and I sincerely wish that you would cut off contact with her and let yourself heal and move on. But I also realize that is your decision, and that you are allowed to manage your relationship with her in whatever way you choose. But I absolutely draw the line at having any interaction with her myself. She abused me. I don’t forgive her. I don’t like her. I don’t want to know her anymore. So please do not ask me again to spend time with her, and please look into some counseling so that you have a safe place (that is not me) to discuss your interactions with her.“

As for talking about it with friends, you can tell your partner:

“Partner, I don’t want to spread your business around among the friend group, but I am not going to lie and pretend everything is great.”

With friends, you can say “Partner still sees his ex-wife sometimes. I prefer to avoid her entirely. I don’t think she treated either of us very well.” That’s honest and to the point. You don’t have to go into why if you don’t want to. But you don’t have to lie and pretend that everything is great and that you all want to hang out – I mean, they know he got divorced, right? They can fill in the blanks themselves that there was some reason for it.  And find SOMEONE you can talk to. This is eating you up.

I understand why people feel sensitive about revealing abuse they’ve suffered and worry that people won’t be supportive, so I would never pressure anyone to disclose if they are not comfortable. But shame & silence helps abusers cover up what they did, and you don’t have to conspire to keep this lady’s secrets when they affected you, too.

Hey Captain Awkward,

I am the LW of the “how do I break up with my mean ex who scares me?” Recently I have received harassing emails and blog comments from his new girlfriend telling me I am a liar and a bunch of other such things. Also telling me to stop “making up stories of my abuse.” 

I emailed her back and said, “Sorry you do not believe me, but I am not lying. I am blocking your email so you cannot email me again.” Is there a script I can use that is better in case she tries to contact me again. 

I am really upset about this. Not so much because she doesn’t believe me/he is lying about what he did but because it is dragging up things I want to forget. 

Thanks, 
Not Making It Up

Hello again, Not Making It Up. I am so glad that you are out of that relationship, and so sorry that he has spun his girlfriend up to harass you by proxy. She’ll probably find out soon enough that you were not making things up, and the thought of that is just so sad to me. I can’t wish that on her, not for anything, even if she is being a jerk to you.

I think what you said to her was just fine. Going forward, my advice is to block her from leaving comments on your blog, and if she contacts you again, just don’t respond at all. Every time you respond, your ex-boyfriend gets the satisfaction of knowing that he’s got your attention again. He’s using her to try to manipulate you, and stories of you to try to manipulate her, so that both of you have to think about him and each other and feel crappy, because he is an abusive lying shitmitten.

If you leave it totally alone, eventually they’ll leave you alone when they figure out that they can’t capture your attention. Someday you’ll probably get a message that says “Sorry, you were right about everything.” Hopefully this will all be so far in your past that your first thought will be “Wait a second, who?“

In the meantime, they’ll probably find ways to ping you now and again. Each time, delete/block whatever it is to the extent you can, do something really nice to yourself, and congratulate yourself for getting out from under the thumb of this guy. Your life is so much better now, right? And so much better than this lady’s is. You are brave and smart, and you can definitely handle and outlast this.

Dear Captain Awkward:

A friend and I are in an awkward situation. Both of us share the same ex who is also in the same broad social circle (online social groups & conventions), who has turned out to be what I would call a stalker in the wake of our breakups with him. She dated him first; I dated him a few months later. My breakup with him was partly due to the fact that he was still hung up on her. He would read all her public tweets/blogs/etc. and try to make them conversation, so I concluded he was not ready for a relationship with me, and I ended it fairly early. 

Well, now he is also reading up on me. My friend and I, who both did not maintain friendships with him after our breakups mainly due to his clinginess, have both been told by other mutual friends that he is maintaining the same strangely close, stalking attention to any public accounts he knows to be our own, and will inevitably try to make one or both of us the topic of discussion when he can.

My questions for you are first, is this stalking? And secondly, what recourse do we have against this, if any? My opinion is that he’s stalking us, but my friend questions that because he is doing it in this strange, roundabout way, where it’s entirely likely that if we didn’t have these mutual friends, we’d never have realized he was doing it. It’s certainly an unhealthy obsession, and it’s definitely uncomfortable. Is there anything that can be done, or do we simply have to hope he eventually gives up and moves on?

It’s right on the verge of stalking. It’s probably not enough for any kind of legal recourse (though you document it anyway in case it escalates) and whether it fits the definition partially depends on whether he wants you to know what he’s up to in order to upset you or force you to think about him. Is he bringing you up with mutual friends in the hopes that they’ll mention him to you?

Good news, the definition of what he’s doing isn’t important. His intent is only marginally important. The fact that it’s making you uncomfortable is important.

Here’s how I would handle this:

Block/ban him anywhere you can, and never, ever respond to anything he says anywhere you can’t. If you run into him in public, do whatever you have to to not be alone with him. Say you’re at a con and he follows you or starts horning in on conversations where you are (trying to use the camoflauge of the group and your reluctance to cause a scene), don’t be afraid to cause a scene. Walk away. Report him to an organizer. Say to him (or have a friend say to him for you): “Ex, this is a big event, and I’d like you to go find some other people to talk with. I am not interested in catching up or comfortable in having you close by.” Then do not respond to anything else he says. Ignore him completely. Also tell your friends what’s up, so they can rescue you if need be. 

Many online communities have rules about how members can interact with each other. Take a look at your terms of service, and/or check in with one of the mods. If his behavior is crossing the line (where he’s bringing you up or linking to you in every thread), the mods may be able to put him on notice and edit/delete certain posts. If something like that happened here, or there was a situation where the person was responding to everything you said in a disconcerting way, I would at very least put that poster on permanent moderation and delete all references to you in their posts. If I notified them at all I would say “Your mentions of and responses to x poster have become excessive, to the point that it is creepy and disruptive to the community. If you want to keep posting here, find a new topic.” Any response other than “Sorry” and not doing it anymore = immediate banning. It wouldn’t have to even be creeping you out to creep me out, and I would never even reveal that you asked me to do it. “Freedom of speech” means you can’t be locked up by the government for expressing an opinion. It doesn’t mean you can’t be kicked out of a party where you’re peeing on the carpet.

While how he interacts with your friends isn’t actually your problem to manage, they may be understandably at a loss for how to handle it. When the topic comes up, let your friends know how very, very uncomfortable you are with his continued attention and ask your friends to immediately change the subject if he brings you guys up with them. “I thought it was creepy when he did it to Friend, it’s definitely even more creepy now that it’s me.” They should give him zero attention/approval/sympathy around anything to do with you. And if they feel able & comfortable, they should let him know exactly why. For example:

Him: “I saw that LW and friend wrote that they had fun seeing you last week.”

Them: “Huh. Have you read The Twelve yet? Do you know if it’s as good as The Passage? I hope that if they make a movie they won’t try to cast it with white people.“

Him: “Did you hear what I said? I was asking about LW and Friend. Do you think they’ll be at the con next month?“

Them: “Yeah, I heard you. Okay, this is awkward, but you bring them up to a degree that makes me uncomfortable. I hope you can find someone else to talk to about them, but I’m not the right person. Let’s change the subject  - read anything good lately?”

If he persists, “Yeah, dude, I’m sorry, but that was a serious request. Let’s pick this conversation up another time, ok?” and they should bail. No wallowing, no rehashing.

Someone who is actually a good friend to him can level with him. “You seem seriously hung up on these ladies, to the point that I think you should talk to a pro about your feelings. This level of engagement with someone who broke up with you isn’t normal, and I think it’s hurting you and stopping you from moving on. Whatever you decide, I know that I don’t want to discuss them with you, so, new topic.”

In the (sad) best-case scenario he is not malevolent, just fixated and obsessed – the behavior of checking up on you and the mentionitis has become a habit that he can’t break on his own, and he really needs some help to overcome it. Limerence can make a person feel temporarily crazy – I know I’ve definitely kept unhealthily picking some emotional scabs instead of letting time and distance turn them into scars, and it took good friends being very, very blunt to help me snap out of it. That doesn’t mean you have to put up with a single bit of it, or be the one to steer him towards help.

It’s important that your friends own the discomfort themselves and don’t pass on the news that YOU are uncomfortable. Not because you’re not uncomfortable, but because letting him know that (perversely) rewards the stalking behavior. Stalkers have temporarily abdicated shame, so “She is seriously freaked out and grossed out by the way you are constantly mentioning and keeping tabs on her” passes through the Wishful Thinking Translator and comes out the other side as “She’s thinking about me!“

The Gift of Fear suggests that if you do not respond at all, eventually he will become fixated on some other unlucky soul and leave you alone. It’s hard to do when he keeps popping up in your peripheral vision, but it’s the only way to shake him.

Hi Captain Awkward,

A few months ago, I met a guy who works in my field through a professional networking event. Since then, I have noticed that he has such a brutal case of White Knight Syndrome that he will actually create Drama just to “save” the women who happen to be in his presence, including myself.

I only see him at business events (barely once a month), but it’s becoming more and more of a problem for me since 1) it is a small scene professionally, 2) he believes our passing acquaintance means we are BFF and thus FEELINGSDUMP and DRAMA in public from him every time I see him, 3) I’m just starting off in this field, and 4) because of 2), other networking attendees believe he and I are friends, thus making any attempts at networking that much harder for me. (Did I add that I am an introvert?) They see his unprofessional conduct, believe we are friends, and believe I am just like him. I don’t want him in my life at all! When I met him I was polite, but I didn’t know he would repeatedly try to violate my boundaries and neither do most of the organizers of these events. These events are also happening in public spaces such as bars and restaurants.

Any tips on what I could do next time he shows up?

This guy is missing a key self awareness receptor. Since he will behave so strangely in public places where he is theoretically there to create professional opportunities for himself, it is pretty safe to say that he is impossible to embarrass into acting cooler.  It is also safe to say that subtlety and hints will not work.

If you have a way to email him, wait until the next event is scheduled and then try sending this beforehand:

“_______, this is awkward, but I prefer to not interact with you at future meetings of the (group). Your behavior at past meetings has made me very uncomfortable, and I am certain that I do not want to be friends or have any kind of social or professional relationship with you. So next time we see each other at (events), let’s say  a speedy, polite hello and then focus on meeting and catching up with other members.“

Key points:

1) You don’t want to be friends.

2) You are giving him a face-saving mode of behavior for going forward.

He will almost certainly respond with some version of “WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY?” or “What behaviors, exactly do you mean?” This type of guy can never, ever read that email and say “Wow, I guess she really doesn’t want to talk to me, so I will not try to get her to talk to me and deal with my sadfeels about that on my own.”

You will not respond. You will never respond. You will filter anything he sends to a special folder that bypasses your inbox entirely. You do not owe him a personal “How Not To Be” consultation in response to his Rules Lawyering about what you don’t like about his behaviors. Stick to the facts, the main fact being, you don’t want to interact with him anymore for any reason. There is nothing he can do to make it up to you. The only thing he can do is leave you alone.

If there is no way to contact him ahead of time, or you don’t feel comfortable doing so, or you want to give it one more try to see if you can figure out how to avoid him and try some other tactics, you’ll have to wait until the meeting. Available tactics:

• Physically move away from him. Stay on the other side of the gathering at all times. If he comes up to the conversation you are in, say, “Please excuse me,” and go find a new conversation across the party. If he sits down next to you in a restaurant, change seats. You can always excuse yourself to the ladies’ room and come back and take a different seat. More tips for ending conversations with people are here.
• Say something to him. “I don’t want to talk to you. Please go find someone else to network with.” “You are standing too close.”
• If he tries a FEELINGSDUMP or unscheduled DRAMADELIVERY, say “I do not want to listen to this” and walk away in the middle of it.
• “It feels like you are avoiding me.” “Yes, I am avoiding you.” “Why are you avoiding me?” “Because I don’t actually like you, and I am here to meet other people in our field.“
• Do your best to connect individually with other people at the meetings. Get their contact information, ask them out for drinks or coffee or lunch. This is what you came for, don’t let him derail it! Once they get to know you a little they will be on your side. Would you rather hang out with the White Knight of Drama Castle or with the cool, chill lady?
• Practice the 1,000 basic stupid unfair safety practices that women have to follow because of men like this dude: Always let someone know where you will be when you are likely to encounter him. Have someone walk you to your car or public transit after the meetings, and text them to let them know you got home safely. Document (but do not respond) to contact from him. Read The Gift of Fear (with the usual caveat to skip the domestic violence chapter or take it with a shaker of salt). Tell someone what’s happening. Being rejected may make him escalate his behavior for a short time, so take that possibility seriously.

Also, say something to one of the organizers.It is their job to make their meetings safe for all participants.  ”____ has really latched onto me and is making me very uncomfortable. Is this typical behavior? I don’t want to make things awkward for you, but I really need him to leave me alone at these things. I’ve asked him directly and he is not getting the message. Does the group have rules about this sort of thing?“

If you did send the email and he still approaches you, be very blunt. “I asked you to leave me alone. Please go talk to someone else.” If he does not go away and keeps pushing, then IMMEDIATELY find one of the organizers. “I asked ____ to leave me alone, but he accosted me.” This is the kind of thing that should get him banned from their events.

If you are the organizer of something like this, and someone like the LW tells you that a member is harassing her, it is your responsibility to step in. “(Clingy Entitled Dude’s Name), whatever has happened in the past is not important; LW does not want to hang out with you at events and you need to respect that. There are plenty of other people here, please focus on them.“

Chances are this is not the first time he has done something like this. I don’t think the group thinks that you are exactly like him, and they will quickly figure out that he is not your friend if you stop humoring him and if you speak up. And remember, you are not “creating drama,” either by asking him to back off or by bringing his behavior to the attention of the organizers. He is creating drama with his bad behavior.

To steer this away from Gift of Fear territory, I’ve had situations like this arise with college roommates and coworkers. Sometimes people are clingy and insecure and latch on too tightly without even realizing it. My freshman roommate wanted us to eat every meal together and tag along every place I went. If someone stopped by to invite me to a party, she assumed that they had invited us to a party. If I put my shoes and coat on, she would start putting hers on too, not even knowing where “we” were going. In grad school I did an internship where a fellow intern, who I dubbed “The Lonely Libertarian,” wanted to eat lunch together every single day and hang out after work every single night. It did not help that we lived on the same street. Both of these people were nice enough, not dangerous stalkers or proto-stalkers, and I liked many things about them. But both had a tendency to tag along places I went and then hang out in my blind spot all night, never leaving my side, and I HATED it. In both cases, hints & subtlety did not work, and I had to be pretty blunt along the lines of “I like you, but sometimes I want to eat lunch by myself, or go places by myself, and I need you to wait until I specifically invite you.” Both times this was received as a total and utter rejection, which was uncomfortable but gave me some much-needed breathing room, and both times I was able to somewhat repair the relationship by letting some time go by and then doing a once a week “I’d really like it if you came to lunch with me tomorrow” and carving out some time specifically for them.

Just before I started this blog (in fact one of the things that made me start the blog), was a situation where someone was trying very hard to be my friend. She was smart, funny, kind, perfectly nice and cool, friends with many of my friends – There was nothing actually wrong with her and she did nothing wrong! But I wasn’t feeling it. I wasn’t excited to make plans with her and the nice things she did for me made me feel crowded and uncomfortable. So I decided to African Violet her, and wrote her an email that basically said “You are nice and have done nothing wrong, but I’m not feeling the pull of wanting a closer friendship with you and am not really enjoying our one-on-one interactions. Can we just agree to run into each other at parties, where I will be very happy to see you, and not try to hang out otherwise?” And you guys, she was so cool, in a way that actually made me a little bit regretful, because she says “Well, obviously it sucks to hear that, but sure, okay.” Now we into each other at parties twice a year and I am indeed happy to see her. She could have decided that she hated my guts after that, and that would have been an okay, legit decision on her part. That was the risk I took. I did not want to hurt her feelings, and I didn’t want to make things difficult for her socially, but I also didn’t want her to keep doing nice things for me that I could not reciprocate.

Letter Writer, I 100% back your “I don’t want you in my life at all” play with this guy, but I wanted to tell those stories for other people who are chafing under the attentions of a Cling-Or. You can sometimes reset a relationship by speaking up bluntly and asking for what you need.

Dear Captain Awkward:

Quick backstory: my mom and stepdad babysit my daughter for free one afternoon a week while I work (I telecommute the rest of the time). My mother offered to do it right after my daughter was born and I was thrilled. I’ve checked in with both of them a few times to make sure they’re still ok with it, and they’ve responded enthusiastically every time.

Lately things have been weird. A few weeks ago I had an appointment before I went into work and I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to take the baby, so I asked Mom ahead of time if they could take her a bit earlier and she said yes. I told her I’d let her know for sure if it would be at the usual time or earlier, but forgot to call when I’d promised, and then my phone died just after I left my appointment, so I ended up showing up at the usual time (without calling) and apologizing profusely to both of them for making them wait around for me. I was expecting them to be annoyed, but I don’t feel like it was a HUGE deal – it was an honest, though inconsiderate mistake on my part, and I promptly apologized for it. 

When I got there Mom berated me for half an hour until I finally got a word in edgewise to ask her what she wanted me to do, other than apologize and not do it again. She told me that she needed to vent at me because she was angry, and she needed me to show more remorse. I apologized again and prepared to leave, but on my way out Stepdad confronted me (he’d been in another room, not out of earshot, for the preceding conversation) and began an identical tirade. I cut him off almost immediately and told him that while I was sorry for inconveniencing them, I really couldn’t stay to talk right that second because I had to get to work.

Ever since that afternoon, Stepdad hasn’t spoken a single word to me. I tried to talk to Mom about it, but she simply said that Stepdad is angry for good reason and that I should apologize to him more. I feel like an asshole, but also kind of unfairly treated, and I’m not sure how to move forward, or how to deal with this should something similar arise in the future. Though obviously I will be more considerate going forward.

My best guess about this is that your Stepdad feels like you dismissed him when you left without listening to him because you had to get to work. In his mind you owed it to him to listen to everything he wanted to say. But you DID have to get to work, so I don’t know what could have solved that moment, really. You’re not a child who has to sit still for a finger-wagging lecture, and the total silent treatment seems disproportionate.

It could also be that he doesn’t want to babysit anymore and is seizing on this as a pretext. But because he hasn’t said so in so many words and is choosing to use the Silent Treatment, all we can do is guess. It could mean “I ate a serrano pepper that I thought was a jalapeno and now my mouth hurts so I can’t talk.” Or “I am in a pissy mood and don’t feel like chatting.” “There is some ongoing fight I am having with your mom that this inadvertently played into.” Pro-tip: If you make people guess about your feelings and desires, they might guess wrong, and that will piss you off further. Oops!

A few things I’d suggest:

• Buy them a thank-you gift, like a gift certificate to their favorite restaurant. Write an apology note to go with it. “I am sorry, Mom and Stepdad, that I inconvenienced you, and especially sorry that I could not stay and talk things through that day. Please enjoy a night out on me.“
• Tighten up your game with how you schedule things with them. Be extra on time for any pickups and drop-offs, schedule things far in advance. I’m sure you were doing this fine before and that this was a one-time thing, but if there is anything you can do to show them that you are hyper-aware and respectful of their time, do it. When someone’s pissed off at you, running 5 minutes late because of traffic will feel like “SHE ALWAYS TAKES ME FOR GRANTED AND IS AN HOUR LATE ALL THE TIME FOR FUCK’S SAKE” to them.
• This is cheating a little bit, but if you have a partner and s/he gets on well with your folks, let that person handle the logistics of scheduling childcare for a little while. Then call your mom just to say hello & see how she’s doing. Take her to lunch or to some social thing she’d like. Your folks might feel (fairly or unfairly) like you only talk to them when you want babysitting, so put a little nurture into the relationship and see if it doesn’t improve.
• If your mom and your stepdad stopped babysitting your daughter, what would you do instead? Do a little research so you are not so beholden to them and feel like you have other options. Do you have a partner whose family or friends could take her for that day? Can you hire help or send her to daycare for that window? I realize that this looks like giving a possibly reluctant Stepdad what he wants without a fight, but this is both your child and your livelihood you’re talking about, so whatever shakes out in your relationship with your folks you need to make sure that both she and you are taken care of.
• Go ahead and make alternative arrangements for looking after your daughter for a period of a few weeks. Give them a break from babysitting her and you a break from worrying about this. Don’t make a thing of it, just say “I won’t need you to take ___ this week, thanks!” You don’t have to tell them your alternative arrangements or why. This isn’t Discussion Time, this is Re-assessing The Situation Time. This is Giving Everyone A Little Space To See If Things Resolve On Their Own Time. If they’ve been feeling taken for granted, this will alleviate that and show them that they can actually ask to stop being caregivers if they want to. If they really love having her and miss seeing her every week, this will help that sink in.
• After this break, talk to your mom. “It’s really helpful to me when you look after (daughter), and I know she loves spending that time with you. But I definitely don’t want to inconvenience you and Stepdad or wear out your good will. In a perfect world, how would you like this to all work out?“
• If your mom says “We would still love to have her and continue the old arrangement!” take her at her word and resume normal interactions. If Stepdad has a problem, they can work it out between them. You don’t have to manage everything about everyone’s feelings!
• If she brings up reservations, you will be in a position to say “That’s fine! We can make alternate arrangements and find times when you can just visit with her without the responsibility.”

In the meantime, when you run into your Stepdad, greet him normally and briefly and then don’t engage with him beyond that. When someone doesn’t really want to engage with you and is showing that to you, it’s important to be respectful of that. See: Previous letter. Maybe he just needs to be mad for a while, and that’s also okay. But he is the one who is acting strangely by not talking to you at all, and you don’t have to reward the Silent Treatment by continually auditioning for the person’s approval and trying to read their mind. If there is no way you can apologize or make up for what was, seriously, a one-time miscommunication about an hour or two of extra time on a day they were scheduled to babysit anyway, and you’ve done your best to make amends and apologize, the decision about whether he talks to you again or how he feels about you is really out of your hands.

One more broadly applicable question here is, “How can I be sure that someone who is doing me a favor really wants to be doing me that favor?“

I think you have to take people at their word. Your mom volunteered to do childcare, so she wants to do childcare. You are safe to assume that she wants to do childcare.

And then you have to check in with them periodically and ask if everything is okay. Which you did. And they said it was. So it is.

And then you have to trust that they are adults and will speak up about their own needs and boundaries if things change. Which maybe they will not, but if they don’t, you can’t manage that for them beyond a periodic “Is this still okay?” check-in where you give them the opportunity to raise any concerns. Periodic = Every six months or so, not every single time you see them or you talk. Constantly second-guessing people and asking “Are you sure? Are you REALLY sure? Are you SURE you’re sure? About being sure? Are you positive?” is irritating and unnecessary.

Morning, Dear Captain:

I have a friend who I suspect is battling some pretty severe anxiety/depression problems. It makes her extremely defensive and difficult to be around, because literally anything you say can trigger FEELINGSBOMBS packed with rusty nails of self-pity that then require tedious removal and soothing via her preferred social media channels. She gets really upset if you criticize her in any way, even gently and constructively, and also if you don’t thank her effusively for doing things nobody is demanding she do. 

She has mentioned multiple times she doesn’t feel comfortable straight-out talking things over with friends or therapists, so instead she drops the aforementioned FEELINGSBOMBS at random times and expects everyone in our social circle to flock to the resulting explosion with armfuls of sympathy. I have made it clear she’s welcome to contact me whenever she’s feeling down, but so far she has refused, repeatedly choosing what seems like a very immature and manipulative way to handle her need for affirmation. It is really starting to grate on me and at least two other mutual friends, driving us away when she seems to need emotional support more than ever. 

She and her partner have done me some real favors and I appreciate them. We have interests in common and when she’s chill she’s fun to be around. It’s a friendship I would prefer to preserve if at all possible. How do I nudge her into getting the support and help she craves without carpetbombing our social circle?

–A shellshocked friend

Dear Shellshocked:

Here is your plan of defense, are you ready?

Reiterate what you said above, “Friend, I’m sorry you’re in a sad way. Please call me or email me if you’re feeling low and we’ll set up some time to get together, okay?“

Decide that you will contact her periodically to catch up every once every week or two weeks. Make this interval whatever you actually WANT to do to maintain the friendship.

Then hide all of her social media feeds so that you don’t see them. You can mute her on Twitter, hide feeds on Facebook, etc. Also, Facebook has a setting where you can put someone in a filter category where you are nominally still “friends” but they can’t see anything you post.

The truth is, you don’t enjoy interacting with her on social media. It is possible to like someone without like-button liking them. So you are allowed to reshape your communications so that you avoid the ways you don’t enjoy interacting.

She will notice, for sure. By checking in with her pretty frequently you’re hopefully sending the message that you like her and want to communicate with her. But yeah, it might get lost in her desire for immediate public group feedback and sympathy. If she asks you directly: “Did you see where I posted x?” or “Why didn’t you comment when I posted x?” I recommend: “I’ve been taking a break from following social media so much, so I must have missed that. What’s up?“

You don’t have to get into why if you don’t want to. The whole thing about social media is that it passes by very quickly, and you will almost certainly miss things.That shit’s ephemeral, yo. Which is why it is a bad place to have emotional discussions. That you will be missing from now on!

I suggest that you try this out for a few months and see if anything changes. I wouldn’t necessarily tell your mutual friends what you’re doing right away – the “I haven’t been following social media so closely, what’s up?” script works for everyone, and you don’t want to organize a mass shunning. You just want to try something different and see what happens.

You can’t control anyone else’s behavior, you can really only control your own and hope for the best. Asking her directly to handle things differently when she needs a sounding board is a pretty smart and respectful and adult way of behaving toward your friend, and your attempts to say, “I respect you and love you, friend, but this is not working for me, could we try something else to make sure you get what you need?” were not mean or over-critical and you didn’t do anything wrong. But it didn’t work, so now is where you try changing your own behavior and seeing if it changes the flavor of the interactions. Maybe she’ll figure out that social media isn’t the way to get your attention and try talking to you directly when she needs something, to the benefit of both of you. Maybe not – in which case, you’ll have some much-needed space.

Related:

• I lent an ear to a friend, how do I get it back?
• But you owwwwwe me!

And thank you to everyone who has donated in the winter pledge drive so far!

Before we jump into sad, serious things, Gollum dreamed a dream (of coming to your party?) Courtesy of my friend @spyscribe. You guys watch The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, right?

Now, some letters about living situations gone bad (#451) and very, very bad (#452).

Dearest Captain,

I need some help with relationship ambivalence.

It’s been 3 years and we live together. This is going to sound awful, but I recently has the thought that I am better than him at almost everything. He is extremely unsure of himself and is very dependent on me. He needs help/frets about making even the tiniest decisions. His indecision about inconsequential things used to be something we joked about, but now I just feel very smothered. He often makes his problems/feelings my problem or responsibility. I have had the occasional moment of, “this is definitely right for me”, but more often I have had doubts about whether I really want to be with him.

Here’s the wrench: My whole life has been in a shake-up recently. In the past two weeks, I found out I am losing my job (a job I REALLY love), found out I didn’t get accepted into grad school, then, last week I witnessed a stranger’s death. I was one of the first people to stop and help him. I stood over him as he died, before medics even arrived. The experience has really had a profound effect on me. I was very disturbed by what happened. BF knew I had all this going on though that didn’t stop him from wanting to have a big relationship talk about feeling that we’ve been in a “rut” for the past week. This was two days after the stranger’s death. 

On one hand, I feel like I should not make any major life decisions in such a period of upheaval. On the other, I get the feeling I am being tested and have a gut feeling towards making changes in my life. 

I have a gut sense telling me to end it, but I can’t *rationalize*why because everything seems fine between us. He is a very kind person, intelligent, insightful, sweet, cute, great sense of humor and he loves me very much. We live together very harmoniously. On the downside, he has depression that he has never attempted to do anything about. Recently, on my urging, he agreed to talk to a psychiatrist and then asked me to give him the number to a psychiatrist. Later, he blamed me that he hadn’t called because I never gave him the number. This is the kind of responsibility-shifting that really upsets me and makes me sad. 

In my society, there is a slavish devotion to “rational” thinking and I doubt many of my intuitions. Then here I am being the one who is indecisive and generally at-sea!

I have no idea what to do and could use a little wisdom! 

Private Secretson

Dear Private Secretson:

Your vague gut feeling that you want to end it IS the reason.

You don’t actually need a reason other than “I am not so happy here with you.” In fact, hanging out waiting for (or looking for) a clear, incontrovertible reason is going to destroy any and all affection you have left for this person. So your letter doesn’t sound awful to me. You’ve been through a traumatic experience, and you have a partner who is making that harder rather than easier. You are living with someone who makes you stressed out and tired. It’s okay. You can go!

Look at it this way:

You could break up and move out now, while you still have *some* affection for each other and can hopefully be kind and respectful throughout the process.

OR,

You could wait until you detest him and are fleeing the relationship like the scene of some horrible crime.

Someone doesn’t have to be objectively awful for you to not want to be in a relationship anymore.

Intern Paul is handsome, and smart, and funny, and will get you Gatorade and Cheez-its when you’ve been sick, build you a computer from scratch, and take care of your cat when you go out of town.

We dated for a few years, and then lived together, and we found out that we made each other less happy. We were in the exact state of ambivalence that you describe – I like this person so much! But I am not sure I want to be here for the long-term! So I am looking for a reason to end it, or a reason to stay! Everything that happens between us takes on a larger significance because it is part of a decision matrix! Am I happy? What is happiness, anyway? How much happiness does a person really need? Surely this is good enough? Moving in and then out again was an expensive and heartbreaking lesson, but we learned what we were supposed to learn from the experience, namely, “Do not marry.“

It’s really, really hard when things don’t work out like you planned. But it is okay to want and work for and change things to get happiness.

So I suggest that you reach out to your support network. Talk to someone about the death you witnessed, talk about your job loss, do everything you can to take care of yourself. Spend a little time looking at your finances & figuring out where you will go if you leave. Call your family, call your friends, work on your resume, find someone’s couch or guest bed you can sleep on for a little while, and make a solid landing for yourself. And then sit down and have the hard conversation.

“Partner, I am so sorry to have to say this, but I have decided to break up with you and find another place to live.”

He may ask why. This is natural and should be expected. People have a right to ask why, but they don’t have a right to know why, or be convinced about why. They don’t have a right to have why proved beyond a reasonable doubt.

What I suggest is that you not use this time to name things about your partner that you dislike. Once you’re done with a relationship, you don’t owe him an exit interview/life-tutoring session, and it’s mean to turn it into a list of reasons you don’t love him anymore. A good script is “Partner, I’m not sure I can articulate a good reason. But I know that my feelings about the relationship have really changed and it is time for me to end it.“

The question “Why did your feelings change?” is a hard one, and not one you can ever really answer to another person’s satisfaction when you’re trying to get out of a relationship. If you’re getting broken up with, you’re not stupid or weak for wanting to know that. What makes love stay? What makes it fade? We like to think that if people gave us a list of concrete things we did wrong we could know what to improve to guarantee that this pain of loss and rejection will never happen to us. But it doesn’t work that way. Closure, self-awareness, self-improvement, self-forgiveness come later. Those are things we give ourselves when some time has gone by, not something someone can give us on their way out the door. We think we want those lists of things we did wrong in the name of understanding, but hearing them during a traumatic moment means they tend to stay with us forever as “things that are true” about us that we can gnaw on in our most vulnerable moments. But we are changeable beings  - what makes us a bad fit for one person might fit beautifully with another.

Hi there Captain, Sweetie and Commander! 

I have a seemingly simple breakup question. I am in a relationship with a kind, caring, gentle manchild and I am sick of it. I want OUT. I can’t even imagine that there is a single thing that could happen that could change my feelings about this. We have tried, but he has never lived outside of home before moving in with me and I can’t stand his lack of independence, motivation, hobbies, interests, job, and friends.

The problem I have however is this; we live together and he has nowhere else to live. This is my house, in my name, and I can’t/won’t leave it. I need it for my kids! So he needs to leave. The trouble is, he has no friends or family and nowhere to go, or a job to pay for a place. How can I do this? Whenever I try to get him to leave he pulls the mental health card, which I understand because I have mental health issues as well but I think he’s doing it manipulatively. Basically I just wish he would pack up his stuff and go pleasantly, but clearly that’s not going to happen.

How can I kick him out when he has nowhere to go?

Fifty Shades of DONE

Dear DONE:

There are two questions here. One is “How do I break up with this person?“

The other is “How do I get him out of my house?“

Honestly, I think what you need right now is:

a) a savings account  for a security deposit and 1st month’s rent somewhere new. Do not tell him you are doing this, this should be a surprise that comes only when he is out of the house or has agreed and is actively planning to get out of the house.

People give the whole alimony thing the side-eye nowadays, but I think it has a legitimate place when people are financially intertwined and are making plans based on promises and assumptions of a shared future. While this is not an obligation, if the person you are breaking up with is financially dependent on you, and you are in a position to create a modest, temporary “If I’d known you were going to break up with me, I would have maybe put a little more in savings instead of buying you that awesome Christmas present/paying off your student loans/buying new living room furniture, Jerkface” fund, I say, do it.

b) Team You: family, friends, a counselor or therapist for you, and an attorney.

c) The beginning of “Team Him”, starting with a social worker who can help him address the mental health issues and maybe find him some housing, even a group home or halfway house situation, and

I would start with the lawyer and do nothing until you have engaged one.

I say this because:

• There are legal implications to evicting someone from a residence, and you should know what they are and make sure that you are following the letter of the law so that it doesn’t come back to bite you. We do not know where you live, we are not lawyers, we don’t know how long you’ve been living together and what your agreements were like. Even if we did know those things, and even if we were lawyers, we would not be YOUR lawyers. Commenters, please do not try to give specific legal advice. The Letter Writer needs to call an actual lawyer where s/he lives, tell that person all the specifics, and work within local laws, and nothing we can say is a substitute.

• Whatever relationship you have had with this person in the past, once you’ve asked them to leave and they won’t move out, this person is now in an adversarial relationship with you. If he were going to cooperate with you, when you first brought up the subject (after initial shock wore off) he would have said something like this: “I am very sad and also very scared about what happens next and where I will live. I feel overwhelmed – can I ask your help in coming up with a plan & a timeline so that I can find a new place to live?” 

You could have dealt with that, right? But he is refusing to deal with it at all.

If your employer has an Employee Assistance Program, one of the things they often handle is legal referrals.

Once you’ve talked to the lawyer, I think it might make sense to handle the breakup in two distinct stages.

First, can your kids stay somewhere else for…a weekend? A week or so? Longer? I think your lawyer will have advice that says that you cannot/should not vacate the residence for any reason, but you might want to get your kids out of the way during difficult conversations.

Then:

“Partner, I am breaking up with you. Our romantic relationship is over.“

He will ask where he is going to live. You can say “That is a separate discussion, but as of now, you should sleep ______ (guest room, sofa, basement) and store your things in (closet/storage space).“

The breakup is a final decision. Your bedroom? Is closed. Your persona around him? Robotic, detached, repeating statements like “I don’t know the answer to that, but I do know that I don’t want to be your girlfriend anymore.” “I realize that this isn’t good news, because (mental illness, worries, etc.) I can’t solve those worries for you, but I do need to be honest about my feelings.“

His attempts to manipulate you are an example of “forced teaming” –  manipulating someone by trying to make problems into shared problems. Sounds like you’ve been dealing with a lot of this as your ex tries to make the question of you breaking up about where he will live. The fact is: You don’t want to be with him anymore. Where he lives is a separate issue, and not a precondition.

Your lawyer will have advice on how to officially notify him that he must leave, how to make a timetable, how to enforce that timetable, how to handle finances, your lawyer and a social worker will maybe figure out how involve your city government (access social safety net, mental health care).

This is an honesty zone, so let me say right here: This guy might end up in a homeless shelter. Or, depending on how pronounced his mental illness is, a state-run mental hospital.

And placing him there will seem unbelievably cruel, and he will let you know this every chance he gets.

He may threaten to harm himself.

Do while we’re being cruel and cold, put this in your back pocket.

1. Someone who threatens suicide to manipulate you, is committing an act of emotional terrorism. “I will murder someone if you don’t do what I want.” If he harms himself, it will not be your fault. He will be proving that he is someone that will do violence rather than break up with you in a clean, respectful way. You don’t have to negotiate with (or remain engaged with) people who threaten violence.

2. Once upon a time this guy had enough…intelligence? Charm? Wit? to get you to fall in love with him and want his company all the time. He had something going for him, even if you don’t think so now or it didn’t hold up to further scrutiny. What did he do before he met you? Where did he live? He didn’t spring out of a hole you dug in the back yard like that weird Timothy Green movie, right? It might help alleviate some of your guilt to remind yourself of this. In The Gift of Fear‘s”how to fire people” chapter, de Becker talks about making people feel like they have other options.

This is a really hard, sucky situation and I think it will take some time to extract this guy from your house. Protect yourself, protect your kids, use every single resource that you can find, and stay true to the truth, which is that you don’t want to be with this guy anymore.

This is a very smart post on moving on and setting boundaries with an ex from Jenn Vicious at In Our Words:

“There’s this thing that sometimes happens when people break up but still care about each other: they want to continue working on things that were problems in their relationship. Don’t do that. My opinion on it is that if you break up with someone, then you are done working out the problems in your relationship. You are more likely to get to a place where you can genuinely care about each other as friends if you actually stop relying on each other for the same support you provided when you were together. You have to change your patterns of behavior, change the expectations you have of each other when you interact. It isn’t easy, but if you didn’t know that you needed to do it, you probably would have stayed in the relationship.”

(Bolding mine) That’s my opinion, too, which is why I say to not use the moment when you break up with someone to critique everything about them that you don’t like. You don’t have to make a case to someone about why your heart moved on, you just have to tell them your decision and then figure out how to live with it. Also, it’s true that when what someone wants (you!) is fundamentally different from what you want (not them!) there is no magic way to extricate yourself without hurting them.

And now, a letter:

Hello Awkwards:

I’m a 22 year old single female student studying library and information science. I’m a gamer, computer – roleplaying and boardgames it’s all the same.

I also don’t drink alcohol. My family thinks it’s a bit weird but prefer it to an extreme in the other direction and don’t bother me about it anymore, strangers and friends however are a different story. Most assume that I’m either religious (in some strange way), on a cleanse (HA!), a recovering alcoholic or even pregnant.

The thing is that I just don’t like the taste and if/when they find this out it’s no longer accepted for me to abstain. It’s always just this one beer or drink or wine that is going to convert me. And I like hanging out with my friends when there’s drinking. I can watch out for everyone and still have an awesome time with just soda. Still someone always asks and I always have to explain and then be pestered.

“It’s to bitter” I will say and they will reply
“Ah but this drink/beer/wine is different, try it”

and no it’s not it maybe sweet compared to other but that doesn’t make it actually sweet or remove the aftertaste of alcohol.

And I never send out the signal that this is something I want solved. I don’t desperately want to get drunk, I’m not in dire need of a drunk Yoda to guide me in the way of the drink. And not to make light of others problems but when I have to compare to trying to convert others to your faith/sexuality just to make them stop trying to enrich your life it’s gone to far- can someone give a way I can try to convince people to leave it alone without referring to these sensitive and more serious issues?

Please help a frustrated absolutist

Dear Frustrated Absolutist:

Try this:

Person: “Would you like some wine?”

You: “No, thanks. How is (subject change) going with you?”

Don’t elaborate, don’t explain why, don’t justify it. You said in your letter that you feel like you always have to explain when you turn down alcohol, but you don’t actually have to explain. Be very casual and treat them like you expect nothing weird will happen, and most people will accept subject change and not even realize it. Of course, there will be exceptions, so if someone ask again, try this:

Person: “Are you sure you don’t want some? It’s really good.“

You: “No thanks. So, tell me about (subject change).“

Again, do not explain, justify, or elaborate. It is none of their business why you don’t drink, and elaborating on why invites them to try to make the case that it’s not that bad or tastes like angel sweat stirred by a unicorn. If the person still doesn’t get the hint, and if you like absurdity and are snappy with a comeback, try:

Person: “Why, are you pregnant or something?“

You: “Hahaha, yes, ever since I was kidnapped by demons. They warned me that alcohol could really speed up The Summoning of The Dark One, so I’m trying to lay off until the Day of The Blood Harvest is complete. So, about (subject change)…“

or

Person: “But why?“

You: “It makes my personality implant malfunction, and trust me, you DON’T want to meet (stage whisper) Leviticus, the Hands-y Science Professor.”

or

Person: “But you should totally drink! It’s fun and refreshing!“

You: “I believe you! I’m starting to run out of subject changes, though, so I would *really* like the next one to take.“

If you are not so snappy with a comeback, or want an all-purpose strategy, here is my actual recommended strategy if someone gets pushy about why you won’t drink:

Be done talking to that person for the time being. You said no TWICE. “No” is a complete sentence. If someone is just not hearing your “no” and steamrollering over it, one possible solution is to just walk away from the conversation. There are lots of people to talk to at parties. You can decide how much of an issue you want to make of it. You can go “gracefully“or ungracefully , i.e., “Hey, good talking to you” and excuse yourself from the conversation, or “I’ve said ‘no thanks’ twice now. Is there a problem?“

Sometimes it’s good to engage with people and explain to them sincerely why what they are doing is out of line, as in, “Hey, do we really have to have this conversation again? Because it’s exhausting and boring. Stop trying to convince me of something I already know and get to decide for myself.“  Other times, the most self-caring thing you can do is to get yourself away from people & conversations that stress you out, and save your energy for people who make you feel good. Other times, you can just blink at them incredulously and remain silent until they fill the awkward silence with something less intrusive and terrible. “I’m sorry, what?“

Because: The problem is not you not wanting to drink, or why you don’t want to drink. The problem is people hearing “no thanks” and taking that as the opening stage in a negotiation. And I think it is good for everyone to recognize when that is happening and have strategies for shutting the conversation down.

You’re not weird for not drinking. They are weird for taking “I don’t drink” as an invitation to sell you on drinking. Analogous: Someone is not weird for being a vegetarian, or having celiac disease, or being a vegetarian with celiac disease. The person who hears “I’m a vegetarian and I have celiac” and responds with “But have you tried this sandwich of ground animal parts on a whole wheat bun? I think it’s really going to change your whole outlook on things!” is committing a massive, massive faux pas. And that faux pas is coercion. Which we need less of, both generally and around food/drink specifically. Whenever someone behaves like that, I wonder, are they really THAT insecure about what they like? If the people in your life love drinking so much, they can do it without your validation or participation. Someone making a different choice than you would make is not invalidating your choices.

Now, your friends and family should know that you don’t drink, and they should be respectful about that. Which means, warning you if something has alcohol in it, and not making you explain yourself about it, or, if someone is badgering you about it they should also step in and say “Yeah, she doesn’t drink. So, howabout (subject change)?” as well. If they make fun of you or shame you, shut it down, not because you should drink but because people shaming you about choices that have nothing to do with them is shitty.

Dear Captain Awkward:

I have had a very complex life in the last couple of years. I have gone from having a fairly normal life in regards to health and then I went on dialysis. Since that point I now have a kidney transplant.

My girlfriend currently has a really hard time wrapping her mind around the changes in lifestyle that I have to live. She almost finds my precautions somewhat unbearable.

What should I do? She also makes fun of my situation or lightheartedly jokes about it.

Unfortunately they don’t offer empathy transplants.

Was your girlfriend with you since before the changes? Because I would imagine that watching a partner go through dialysis and a kidney transplant would make it sink in that 1) Hey, you could have DIED 2) Following your doctors’ recommendations carefully is  serious business. If she met you after the changes, maybe the seriousness of it hasn’t really sunk in. Which isn’t an excuse, but it gives you a place to start in deepening her perspective.

If you want to try to make things work with this person, I think there is both a Big Serious Talk to be had and some day-to-day scripts.

The daily script is, when she makes a joke, to say something like “Whoa, that really hurts my feelings.”

After you say that, be quiet, and listen to what happens next. There is going to be a very awkward moment, and it is not your job to smooth it over – the awkwardness is the way that you get to the resolution. If she stops, apologizes, and changes her behavior, that’s a good sign. If you’ve been putting up with the jokes for a while, it may take a few tries for it to sink in – you are subtly changing the “rules” of how the relationship works and some people don’t get it right away. You can openly acknowledge the rule change with “I know I usually let it go, but….” or “I know you mean that as a joke, but….” when you say things like that, it really hurts my feelings. Can we find another way to talk about x issue?“

If after saying that her jokes hurt your feelings, she doubles down on the joking, or starts justifying why it’s okay for her to make jokes that hurt your feelings, she is pressuring you to ignore your healthy routines, she calls you “too sensitive” and tells you to “toughen up,” or for whatever reason the conversation ends with you apologizing to her for bringing it up and being upset, here there be Evil Bees.

I would try that script several times before escalating to the Big Serious Talk. You will get some information about what you’re dealing with that will help you have the talk, and you’ll get some recent examples of the behavior that bugs you.

The big talk is telling her what you went through, how painful and scary it was, and why these lifestyle changes are very necessary for you, and asking her directly for her kindness and support and to lay off the hurtful jokes. There is also some asking to be done about her point of view, one way to start the talk is to maybe ask her how things are affecting her. “I know we’ve been through some changes, and I get from the jokes that you make that you’re still really processing them. I know it was hard for you to see me go through that crisis. Can you tell me a little bit about what it’s been like for you? In a perfect world, where you get everything you want, how would our relationship work? Is there a way we can make the relationship work better for both of us?“

I don’t think it’s okay for a partner to belittle you for having needs, or make jokes about your health needs, or laugh off your very real concerns and issues, and this way of opening the conversation might seem way nicer than she deserves. My reasoning is this:  When you have to have a very difficult conversation, it helps to treat people as you want to be treated. You are modeling good behavior by being up front about your needs and asking her to articulate hers in the hopes that she will rise to the occasion.

In the most generous possible interpretation of her behavior maybe the jokes are her way of getting uncomfortable feelings out there that she didn’t ever feel safe to talk about when you guys were in full “gonna die, can’t talk now” mode.  A drastic change in diet or energy or what activities you do does affect the other person in the relationship, not to mention being a caregiver or watching someone you love go through a huge medical crisis.Whatever happened to her during that time was definitely happening to you way more, obviously, but *something* was happening to her and maybe she needs a safe place to talk about how scared she was. If she is a new partner and wasn’t with you during the time before the transplant, maybe she doesn’t fully understand what happened and how serious it was, and needs to be told explicitly what it’s like for you.

Your health needs and not-being-belittled-by-someone-who-says-they-love-you needs trump her feelings, obviously. But the best way to figure out if this is a My Girlfriend Is Bad At Communicating vs. My Girlfriend Lacks Empathy situation is to ask outright and give her the opportunity to surprise you with doing the right thing.  This talk might be a much needed way to process everything together and find a way forward. If it goes well, consider seeing a couples counselor where you can have an ongoing conversation about this and really work on communication.

Sadly, it may be the time you find out that you guys are really not on the same page. Maybe the changes in your lifestyle really are “unbearable” for your girlfriend. That is something she gets to decide, and she gets to leave and seek another partner. But she doesn’t get to hang around and be mean to you. If you open up and she makes fun of you, laughs it off, and keeps going with the jokes, realize that there are people out there who won’t treat you this way. And if she for one second implies that “someone in your condition” is lucky to have her and that you won’t be able to find anyone else, run (or wheel yourself, or crawl) for the nearest exit. That is a big, bad sign that she is emotionally abusing you, and that is 100% never okay.

Reminder, monthly London meetup is tomorrow. Sorry for not posting this sooner, guys! It’s been the week of 1000 meetings.

Dear Awkward Army,

London meetup this weekend, 23rd March!  All welcome.

11:00 am onwards, Leon restaurant, 36/38 Old Compton Street, London, W1D 4TT.

The venue so far has worked out well, so I’m sticking with that.  They’ve also offered us 25% off all our food and drink.

Map: http://goo.gl/maps/i9COr

Leon have a variety of good food at very reasonable prices – for central London, anyway!  Menu here:http://www.leonrestaurants.co.uk/menu/

This branch has an accessible toilet, and we’ll be on the ground floor in the back (around behind the food service counter).

I have long brown hair and glasses.  I will bring my plush Cthulhu to use as a table marker.  It looks like this: http://www.thinkgeek.com/product/7cb0/

My email address is kate DOT towner AT gmail DOT com

As discussed at previous meetups, I am happy to teach people to knit, so if you want to start or want help, bring something along!

By the way, I think it’s likely the April one will be on the 20th rather than the 27th, sorry about any confusion.

Cheers,

Kate

 

And now, a letter.

Hey Cap (and friends!),

There’s a little bit of background to this, but I’ll try to keep it short.

I have issues with my family. I guess you could say I’m the “black sheep” in a way. I’m the middle child, the only creative person, the only one who could be described as liberal, and (perhaps most importantly) the only one to inherit my mother’s bad depression, with a side of social anxiety. Add to this a big old heap of emotional abuse from my father and, later, my stepmother (who is thankfully gone now).

When I was in high school, I went through a lot of trouble, including self-harm, that was more or less ignored, and I didn’t do very well in school despite having clear potential. It was only later when I asked my parents about it that they said yeah, they always sort of knew that I had depression, and knew that it was holding me back, but they didn’t want to bring it up with me at the time because…they haven’t given a solid answer. As far as I can tell, they kind of sacrificed my academic future on the altar of not having an awkward conversation with me.

A few months ago, I moved out of state to live with my boyfriend and see about continuing into college now that I have things more under control. But every time I talk to my parents or my brother and sister, it seems like they have nothing nice to say at all.

I love my brother and sister, but every time I chat with them, they seem to be always upset with me. “Why haven’t you called us? Why haven’t you called Dad? You need to call us more and not be so ungrateful. You don’t even want to be part of the family.” Even putting aside the fact that they know I have a lot of anxiety when it comes to talking on the phone, I don’t understand how being busy up here and not able to contact home every day counts as ungrateful.

Then, the other night, a minor disagreement on Facebook randomly spiraled into them accusing me of hating our father, of not wanting to be a part of the family, and of being selfish in even moving away. These overtures were common before I’d moved, but now it’s been magnified so that they’ve become outright vicious about it.

I’m out of a toxic environment, but now the environment is starting to follow me. How do I tell my brother and sister that I still love my family (I really do!), but they need respect my decisions and treat me like a person?

Oh goody, when your abuser recruits others to do their abusing for them.

I want to review a few things about abuse (which includes neglect and/or emotional abuse). Well, I don’t want to. But I will. People can grow up in the same household and have two totally different experiences of what happened. Your brother and sister are probably being wound up by your dad, and investing in this story about how they are the Good Ones and you are the one who causes problems. And your leaving affects the stories they want to tell themselves about how they grew up. If they grew up in an awesome place, then why are you leaving it? And if they didn’t grow up in such an awesome situation, and you can just walk away from it, then they could theoretically walk away from it, too. But they aren’t, so are you like, judging them by making a different choice? Or leaving them alone to deal with JerkDad on their own, which is somehow “unfair”?

None of this surprises me, is what I’m saying. Abusers need to control the story about what happened, and will go to great lengths (including deputizing others and making them miserable by proxy) to keep that control, because it’s a way of controlling you. If your parents had gotten you help when they noticed you harming yourself, they risked that you would tell other people what it was really like in your house, which may have had real consequences for them or the imagined consequence of “someone somewhere thinks they are not very good parents.” Maybe you would have moved out, and been outside of their control. Maybe you would have gone off to school, and learned things, and been outside of their control. Maybe people in your town would have given them the side-eye at church. Or, maybe they saw you hurting yourself and they just didn’t give a shit, and now that you’re old enough to tell the story I and everyone reading this thinks maybe they weren’t very good parents. That cat is out of the bag, Letter Writer, so take care of yourself now that you are out of the house and have that agency for yourself.

Honestly, who knows or cares what their logic is. You don’t actually have to know in order to make good decisions for yourself.

Here’s what we do know:

1. Many people don’t get the whole “making a different choice than you is not an attack on you” thing. You left. They could leave too, if they wanted to. If they choose to stay? Great, enjoy that, then! Not actually a referendum on love or a reason for yelling.

2. Starting a conversation with someone who calls you with WHY DON’T YOU CALL MORE, JERK? is a good way to get people to call you even less, because why put up with the hassle? Telephones, roads, emails work both ways.

3. Living where you are living and putting some distance between you and your family is a good decision for you right now.

Your family doesn’t have to be horrible for that to be true, by the way. Some people grow really well while staying very close to and entwined with their families, but some people need to go off on their own and really break away for a while before they can come back and figure out an adult relationship with their folks. The stayers aren’t better people than the leavers, and the leavers don’t necessarily grow up better than the stayers – it’s just, whatever your situation is, you need to do what is right for you.

It sounds like your family sees you as a perpetual fuck-up. Guess what? For much of my adult life, mine did, too. They wouldn’t use “fuck-up”, they would use “We’re very worried about you,” or “We don’t understand your choices (to seem to fail at everything).” For a lot of my 20s, when I was really struggling with depression and figuring out what I wanted to do with my life, being around them for long periods of time would make me start to feel like a fuck-up. And then it would be self-fulfilling – I’d be so miserable and wound up that I would be in a reactive mode because I was so ashamed and on-edge all the time. If you’re constantly criticized, you start to react to people as if they mean to criticize you even before the words come out of their mouths, so it’s easy to launch the “Why are you being so dramatic/exaggerating/blowing things out of proportion/I was just asking/jeez, overreact much?” brigade and the you feel more like a fuck-up because you’re being gaslighted into believing that having normal reactions – stress, aversion, shoulders-up-around-ears, being on guard are somehow your own fantasies and not reactions to the constant criticism that’s being leveled at you.

You know what was a great decision for me? Moving really, really far away and staying there, and seeing them in smaller doses.

I just spent a few days with my folks last month, and we’re on much better terms now and it was mostly a great visit. But by the end of it, my dad’s constant mansplaining had escalated to the point that he took my toast out of the toaster, put it back in “correctly,” called me “stupid” for not being able to find the correct drawer where knives were kept on the first try in a kitchen where I don’t live, and actually SCREAMED at me for microwaving food for what he deemed to be an incorrect amount of time. Screamed. Spit flying and hitting my face. Screamed.

And that was a “great” visit. And if he read this (I don’t think they read the blog, they’ve never mentioned it, and I’ve never mentioned it to them though I don’t hide my actual identity), he’d tell me I was overreacting and blowing the whole thing out of proportion. Because screaming about things like “where we keep the knives in a rental kitchen” is normal in his world, so normal that there is a 75% chance he does not remember it at all, and I was raised to think that was normal. I would be the “emotional” one for being mad that someone screamed in my face (and having to walk out of the room and go cry privately and text my boyfriend because I honestly felt like I was going crazy), and he would be the rational one, because…he is a dude. A dude who gets so upset about microwave times that he screams. Rational!

And then I left, and I went to the small quiet room, where no one screams at me, ever. And if someone in my life now screamed at me, they would not do it twice, because they would not be in my life anymore, because screaming at people over trivial shit is not okay. I learned that by leaving home, pretty much forever, which was not without costs and anxiety and working hard to schedule visits so that I can get in and out with a minimum of screaming. Going home & maintaining that relationship means trying to always make sure I have a rental car, or schedule time with friends who live nearby so I have a break, and ALWAYS having my phone with me so I feel connected to people who don’t yell at me, and sometimes, honestly, Xanax. It means when they are nice and pleasant it makes me doubt my own reality, like, do I really need to keep my shields up? Am I being unfair? Ohhhhh wait, there is screaming about trivial stuff again, nope, it’s okay to keep my guard up. It also cost years of therapy to learn how to interact in a healthy way, keep my temper (or lose it more selectively), and be able to disassociate from what was happening and remind myself that their vision of me is not me. It also cost long periods of not interacting with them, with the explicit message “If you are not nice to me, I will not be around.” Eventually it worked and made everyone try very hard to be nicer. But I won’t ever lie and say it was easy.

Alphakitty said something really great in a comment yesterday:

I think part of a mother/father’s power to hurt comes from the Pedestals of Infallibility young children are encouraged to put their parents on. Even once we grow up and learn that our parents are just people, with biases and baggage and all that, we still invest their opinions of us with greater Truth and weight than we would give anyone else’s opinion. It’s all swirled together with the “Mother/Father knows best,” and “we only want what’s best for you” (even though their values probably aren’t quite the same as yours, so their definition of “best” is not going to match yours), and an implication that “we know you better than anyone else, even you” (though parents’ opinions of their offspring are often a) outdated, based on behavior/characteristics the “child” has outgrown, and b) distorted by their own values and their need to believe certain things about their kids).

Your parents, and your brother and sister, DON’T KNOW YOU BEST. And they don’t know what is best for you – they proved that when you needed help and mental health services and they just kind of forgot to hook you up with them. And this story that they have about how you are a fuck-up is not the only story, and not a story that everyone will have about you. And I think you were smart to get far, far away from them.

I think that now that you are away, you should do a couple of things:

1) Find (or continue) treatment for your depression.

2) Put your brother, sister, dad, and anyone else who makes you uncomfortable in social media jail. There are ways you can stay “friends” with someone on Facebook but make it so they can’t really see anything you post or do on Facebook. Or, consider unfriending them, or making a second profile where you connect with people you really want to. “I love you, but I refuse to get in Facebook fights. From now on email me at _____.“

3) Filter their emails and phone calls so that you choose to interact with them at specific, regular times. And possibly cut off all contact for a while, if it helps you gain some distance and perspective. For a long time, this is what I did: I would call or hang out periodically, and be pleasant as long as they were pleasant. When the first mean thing was said, I would leave the conversation and not interact again for a period of (generally) 1 month. 2 mean things? 2 months. 3 mean things? 3 months. It was not perfect, and it was very hard and painful and took a lot of psyching myself up and second-guessing on my part. But it was pretty essential in reminding myself: “Whatever happened in the past, I do not have to stay in conversations with people who are rude to me.” Sometimes I would just excuse myself, “Sorry, out of time to talk, catch you soon!” and sometimes I’d say “This conversation is really starting to stress me out, so I’m going to end it now” – it depended on how mean it was and my overall stress level.

4) Repeat “I am not responsible for everything they feel” until it sounds believable.

5) If you want to, say something like “I am really happy and excited to start school. I am taking a break from communication for a while while I get settled, and I’ll be in touch when I’m ready.” And then let them feel about it and react however they want. They will not like it, they will not understand, they will be mad, but it might still be what you need in order to feel okay.

6) It may never be okay. It will always hurt a bit and feel weird. That’s because abuse is destructive and it ruins everything, not because you are a bad mean ungrateful daughter. Your family is blaming you for things they did to you. Not okay.

7) The rest of your family might not believe you or see it your way. “But that’s just how he is…” “But I deal with it, why can’t you?” “You’re exaggerating.” “It’s not that bad.” Well, maybe it is that bad, for you, and they don’t have to agree for you to do what is right for you. It would be awesome if your sibs could be your allies, but if they aren’t, admit it and disengage. “We think you’re the worst, so move back here and prove you love us, or we’ll think you’re the worst” isn’t really a compelling proposition.

8) Kick ass at your studies and enjoy your new life.

Image from likecool.com

Hi there,
An online friend and I were innocent email buds. One day, we start DMing which leads to texting/phone call. It gets sexual. Tells me he has a live in girlfriend but doesn’t ever say “maybe we shouldn’t go there.” It progresses to constantly talking, texting, gchatting. 2 weeks after we started he flew here for a weekend.

Knew he had a gf, he told me they had major issues ever since she moved in. I asked him to please break up with her and figure that out ASAP. He went home and 2 days later he told me he would regret leaving if he didn’t try to fix their relationship. But wanted to try with me too. The waffling about what he wanted continued for 4 months. We saw each other again, talked constantly. We’d both try to cut each other off at points, it NEVER stuck.

Throughout I would threaten to tell her, push him to leave. I regret all the manipulation. In the fall, he decided that he couldn’t handle it. He cut it off, came crawling back. I let him. He’d become my emotional crutch. I fell into deep depression, constantly beating myself up. 

Finally he said I severely hurt him by threatening to tell her, he could never really forgive me, give me a real chance. I said I’m done, cut off contact. Though did demand he tell her. I wanted him to get left. He did tell her, they have stayed together so far.

So was left feeling insane and sad. I did some controlling things that I’m not proud of. Jerkbrain: I’m an awful person who not only hurt this man but someone else too. I acted absolutely unreasonable on more than one occasion with this situation.

How I can start to forgive myself? Some people may always think I’m seriously shitty and I have to get over that but having a really hard time being okay with everything. Especially because I really did care for him. We had some seriously intense emotional and physical chemistry and I really thought I loved him at one point. I know this pit of despair may eventually dissipate but I am so ashamed of myself and tired of feeling like I’m the bad one.

And her friends have openly cried for revenge against me and told me I should be scared. They have stayed together so I guess I can understand why I’m the target and not him but it’s really frustrating that that’s the tactic. Which is my other question, how do I reconcile my desire for justice against him? I am just so pissed that he’s essentially had no consequences.

Thanks.

Good news, there are a few people in this story who deserve the “bad one” title more than you.

#1 is Cheater McCheaterson, who can’t just fucking cheat but has to also drag you along on the entire rollercoaster of his dysfunctional relationship and its aftermath. He was the one with a girlfriend, and he was the one with a greater responsibility to her, either to pass on a relationship with you if that was their agreement and his choice, or to make a clean break with her. He was totally capable of telling you “You are awesome, but I have a girlfriend, so I don’t think we should chat so much.” He was totally capable of telling her, “I met someone and I want to explore that, even if it means we break up.” He chose neither of those things, because he wanted to have a girlfriend and a relationship with you and ride everything out for as long as possible. It’s not shocking that things got messy, and he doesn’t have to be bad or evil to get in over his head, but he did not help this situation. I don’t think your threatening to tell his girlfriend (or even actually telling her) would have made much of a difference in the end. It’s a weak position where the only strong play you really have is to get the hell out of there and leave them to each other.

#2, #3, #4 are anyone who tells you you should “be scared” because you fell in love with a dude who spun you a lot of confusing lies and empty promises.

The Darth Vader boyfriend or girlfriend isn’t necessarily evil or deliberately malicious. We’ve talked a lot here about warning signs, and those are certainly red flags for when you are getting involved with someone, but for me the characteristic that makes something a Darth Vader situation can only be seen afterward, when you see how much you strayed from yourself (your own best interests, your own ethics, your own standards for how you want to be treated) and how often you made excuses for the other person’s behaviors to preserve the relationship. My Darth Vader was not awesome in his behavior, and was quite manipulative, but what makes me look back with shame and horror was my own total desire to be manipulated and hear only what I wanted to hear and also behaviors that tended toward, frankly, stalking. Darth Vaders, however they work, create an altered headspace where we are not our best selves. And while we are always responsible for our actions, we have to find a way to forgive ourselves in order to get free of that headspace.

Right now, the only things that fix this are time, distance, and sitting with some uncomfortable truths until you gain something like perspective and can tell a story about this that doesn’t hurt.

Step 1: Cut off contact completely with this guy and everyone who knows him, including these friends of his girlfriend. Use whatever e-blocking tools you have to do, but do whatever you can to make sure you travel in completely separate worlds. You can’t worry about threats if you don’t know that threats are happening because everyone involved in this story is dead to you.

Most importantly: Don’t try to be friends.

You’re not friends, and you won’t be friends. The best part of you wants to find a way to preserve the good in all of this, and to make everything feel less wasted and wrong. Like, if you can be friends, it will all have been worth it. Something can be saved! Beware this instinct. Mostly what gets saved is his ability to believe that he’s not a bad guy, and his ability to reach out to you for emotional support and keep you engaged in his drama. What gets lost is your ability to put it behind you, by getting as angry as you need to get before you can heal. It keeps the little jolts of attention, and let’s face it, addiction going as the texts and messages come in or leave you bereft when they don’t come in.

Step 2: Repeat this until you believe it: Having great chemistry does not by itself make someone a good partner for you. People have to be kind, and considerate, and respect boundaries, and when it comes down to it, they have to choose you.

This isn’t a story about how you would be together if it wasn’t for this lady and her threatening friends, this is a story about a guy who liked you well enough but didn’t want to be with you. You were actually involved, even if you didn’t have some kind of official relationship status called “girlfriend” or “primary partner” or whatnot. It is a break-up, so mourn it like a break-up. Give yourself permission to feel sad, and bereft, and royally fucked over by fates.

Chemistry (love, lust, that instant recognition that here be your people, “intensity”) does mess with people, and people treat it like some inexorable force that temporarily abrogated all decision-making skills and swept them away. You aren’t the first person to be here, nor is he, nor was I when it was my turn to be in these shoes, but eventually the cloud clears and the question of “should we actually be together” comes up. Are you actually together? Would this wishy-washy guy who didn’t choose you in the end actually make a good partner? The answer to both of these is no. If you were supposed to be together, you would be together, and it would have gone easier than this.

It’s not the kindest or most comfortable thought, but it’s important to get yourself out of the headspace of “If only….!” and worry over the good times you had and try to stretch them to cover you now. Feeling: We were so great together! If only! Fact: But he didn’t choose me, and we are not together.

The first time you teach yourself to put the factual wet blanket on those feelings, it really hurts. Because you are basically taking The Golden Retriever of Love to the vet and “sending it to live on a nice farm where there are horses” or whatever your parents told you was the euphemism for “we killed the dog when you were at school.” Murdering hope fucking HURTS. But this guy has shown you again and again that he is not a good repository for those hopes, and having hope where he is concerned does not help you. Over time, if you can get in the habit of nixing the obsessive “But if only!” thoughts as soon as they come up, the fact of “But we’re not together” gets a friend, and that friend is “And I only want to be with people who really want to be with me, and who will come at me correct.“

Step 3: Letting go also means letting go of the desire for revenge. The desire for his life to fracture the way it feels your has is understandable, but it keeps you engaged with him. It doesn’t seem fair, but it is actually entirely, cruelly, beautifully fair: .His reward or punishment is exactly the same as everyone’s – he has to live in his own skin and find a way to move forward with his life.

Step 4: It’s not a good idea to tell his girlfriend what happened, no matter how much you may want her to know, but tell SOMEONE. Deal with this overall cloud of depression you’ve got going on by dealing with it as depression. Get counseling. Tell someone the whole story, the highs, the lows, the hopes, the feeling that something beautiful was completely twisted and wasted, the missing piece in your day that used to be filled by this drama and how nothing feels right afterwards. A therapist or counselor can sort through what happened and help you take ownership of only what is yours (what can be learned from and changed in the future) and let go of what belongs to other people (his responsibility toward his girlfriend). Speak, and get it out of your system. Be good to yourself.

Step 5: Let time do its work.

This is what a good outcome looks like. Not you back together, not him suffering, just someday, you will tell a story about this time that goes like this:

“I got involved with a very charismatic guy who had a girlfriend, and things got very messy both between us and for my own mental health. I’m not proud of the way that any of us behaved, but mostly I’m really glad that it’s over.“

And you won’t have to go into the details or chew them over, because it will be well and truly in the past.

Jolly’s great comment to Monday’s post is going to be very relevant to these seemingly very different questions:

“You also don’t necessarily have to bring some of these things up in one big confrontation about The Whole Pattern Of Her Sucking. You could just make a point of standing up for yourself when she does the trampling behavior in the future. Next time she interrupts you, interrupt her back with a big, assertive, “EXCUSE ME, N, YOU ACCIDENTALLY INTERRUPTED ME WHEN I WAS IN THE MIDDLE OF A STORY. ANYWAY, BOYFRIEND AND I…” She physically nudges you out of a circle? Cut her off with a tap on the shoulder and a big, “EXCUSE ME, N, BUT YOU JUST PUSHED ME COMPLETELY OUT OF THE CONVERSATION. I AM MOVING HERE, HOW ABOUT YOU SIT HERE.” Don’t sound angry, just be very direct and assertive. You see what she is doing, everyone else sees what she is doing, good chance she also sees what she is doing, and just thinks she is being sneaky. Or maybe she has no idea. But either way, there is nothing wrong with a strong verbal reminder every time she attempts to trample completely over you, to let her know that she is “accidentally” being completely obnoxious. 50/50 whether she will embarrass herself in a huffy rage, or quietly correct her behavior. Either way, it will probably go some way to keeping her from continuing this kind of garbage.”

Yes. It is hard for more reserved people to get into the habit of speaking up in the moment – we’d mostly prefer to observe quietly, analyze later, and plan our next social interaction as if it’s a military campaign. But learning to speak up in the moment is a great, great habit to develop, and it is above all a habit – developed over time, requires practice, doesn’t have to be perfectly executed to be effective. Let’s dive in.

Dear Captain Awkward:

My roommate is the worst listener I’ve ever met. If not listening (or not conveying that she’s listening) were an olympic sport, she’d have more gold medals than Michael Phelps (hyperbolic, I know, but actually.) 

I avoid conversation with her because when we do talk, she talks over me. Sometimes I’ll make a statement, and as soon as I’m done speaking she’ll ignore me and move on to a new topic. When she is listening to me, sometimes she’ll try to guess the end of my sentence, and start speaking over me. 

I feel like this is somewhat related to her patronizing or condescending behavior. She has taken on the identity of “The Caring, Maternal One” in our shared group of friends. To her, this means badgering people about how much they’ve had to drink when we go out, and why smoking is evil and unhealthy. While sometimes rants like this are useful, hers are always unwarranted, and seem to come from a place of superiority. She is covertly judgmental of my behavior when I drink. She’ll make comments like “I’m so proud you didn’t drink too much!” all because of one experience where I drank too much and spent the night vomiting. I was pretty embarrassed about it at the time, and learned from the experience. I don’t think bringing it up over and over is warranted. 

Maybe I should add that roommate has ADD, and takes prescribed medication for it. While I know that a lot has been said here about how mental illness/related issues are not an excuse for hurtful behavior, I was wondering if that might have something to do with her inability to focus on what I’m saying? Maybe this isn’t related at all? Perhaps some lovely person who has more insight into these issues could enlighten me. 

I’ve lived with my roommate all this year, and we’re living together next year (this is set in stone–the housing forms are signed). Generally we get along fine, but I feel like I spend a lot of time feeling frustrated by these issues. Thus far I’ve kind of been ignoring it, and recognizing that we just have to live together, we don’t have to be BEST FRIENDS 4EVAH. Should I bother to bring it to her attention? How should I go about this?

Talked At And Over (#468)

Dear Captain Awkward:

Hello, 

I am in a longterm poly relationship with a man. We are really solidly together, and supportive of each other’s outside dating life. 

A few years back we met Friend, and husband and her flirted like nobodies business. This was cool. 

She then got jealously possessive of Husband. If he talked women, or flirted, Friend would behave poorly. She even shoved a woman off of his lap once, making it a “joke”. She started introducing herself as our wife to folks. She is straight, and I am generally female identified, so that caught me off guard. 

I told Husband it bothered me. He was supportive, and thought, perhaps it was because she wanted to be in a relationship, and acknowledged his attraction/flirting. He put it all on the table and asked her out. He did so in a very low key way to make sure he was open to her rejection, and still voiced his value in her friendship. 

Instead of saying no, Friend came to me presenting the situation as if Husband was cheating. I told her she had been flirting with him, so he decided to ask if she wanted more than that. She avoided any real response, and I had to tell Husband her reaction. We assumed that would be the end of it. 

She still came over to hang out, but unilaterally treated Husband venomously, to the point that folks in our friend group wanted to know what was going on. 

We stopped hanging out with her, and “just didn’t have time”. She could be great to me, but it’s not fun watching someone spit snark, passive aggressive comments, and just say mean crap to someone you love, so I didn’t want to hang with her either. 

She’s just showed up out of the blue like nothing has happened. We decided that perhaps her own troubled dating history didn’t allow her to reject someone without making them a villain. Husband swallowed the hurt of having her be so nasty to him, and moved on. 

The problem? Now she’s back to flirting with him, being overly jealous of his attention to other women, and being actively sulky when he point blank refuses to flirt back. She’s introducing herself as our wife again, despite repeated corrections, and actually crawled on a bed in front of Husband making sexually explicit comments.

We haven’t addressed this with her at all, because she is poor at communicating, and quite honestly, we are both gun shy about her reaction. Flirting is off the menu, and she can be a friend, but nothing more. She just won’t stop even when we correct the situation. 

Any scripts either of us could use?

Bewildered Bystander (#469)

Both of these questions should be filed under “Setting boundaries with people who are bad at understanding boundaries, and who will probably not respond well to having a big talk about it.“

“When you ____, I feel _____” conversations are for relationships that you are very invested in, and where you think there is a reasonable chance of the other person Getting The Clue Already.

Sometimes, after you’ve had that talk, or when you don’t think that talk will work, it’s not worth delving that far into it. It’s a pretty common fallacy among educated sorts that if we could just make people understand the things we know, they would see the world as we do and behave as we would. It’s frustrating because sometimes it works beautifully, but other times we just have to say “self-awareness is not transitive” and figure out how much emotional energy we want to invest in getting oblivious people to wise up and change their ways. It is freeing to realize that it really doesn’t matter if they understand why their behavior is wrong, and understand where we’re coming from when we ask them to change it. It matters that they stop doing the bad thing.

So, #468, I don’t know if you will get your roommate to realize what she is doing and change her overall pattern of behavior, but I do think you can change the dynamic somewhat by catching her when she’s interrupting you and calling attention to the behavior. There is a several step process that you can try out.

Step 1: Interrupt her right back, and say: ”Roommate, you interrupted me. Did you realize?” And then launch back into your point as if you expect to be heard.

If she listens, great. Success!

Step 2: If she zones out or interrupts you again, after being reminded/corrected, find a way to end the conversation. She’s obviously not interested in having one. You can pick this up another day, when you have the energy to start over again.

If she catches on to what is happening, i.e.- “Why are you walking away from me?” say “You interrupted me several times, and I got frustrated. It seems like we should pick up this conversation another time.“

You brought up her ADD – she may have genuine trouble focusing. In that case, if she spaces out, it is on her to say “I‘m sorry, I am having trouble focusing on what you just said. Can you start from the beginning?” If your stories run long, and you guys agree to it, she might reasonably ask you to invoke the Three Sentence Rule. Some people can’t read social cues for legitimate reasons. But everyone can understand when a friend says “Please don’t interrupt me, I don’t like it,” and try to be more aware of their behavior.

It’s not on you to lay out a multi-step process for her to stop interrupting you. You are not her Life Tutor. You gently called attention to the behavior, and when it continued, you took steps to enforce the boundary by removing yourself from the conversation. You made it clear that if she wants to have actual conversations with you, she needs to listen better.

It is better if you remain focused on the present, restart the clock with each interaction, and give it a little bit of time. If this goes well, she will start to catch herself.

As for the comments about your drinking/Mother Hen stuff, I agree, that is pretty frustrating. Employ a similar approach of calling out the behavior when it happens. “Actually, that’s pretty patronizing.” “I would prefer to leave that incident firmly in the past.” ”I don’t need to be monitored or congratulated for not drinking, thanks.”  Use short, declarative sentences. Resist the urge to over-explain or justify. And then shut down further conversation. The point isn’t to make her understand your point of view, the point is to make it unproductive and unsatisfying for her to go down these conversational roads in the first place.

To preserve this as a workable roommate situation, I suggest finding some kind of mutual activity or ritual (like, a shared TV fandom) where you spend a set, scheduled, structured time together every week. You could even break it down to a daily thing – my former roommates were pretty great about a) NO MORNING TALKING (<3!)  b) 15-20 minutes of “How was your day?” at the end of the day before separating to our introvert corners, and c) periodic roommate dinner or movie/live theater outings. What you are doing is finding some friendly, cordial, casual social glue that gives you a series of positive interactions to build on. What you are also doing is mentally resetting the relationship (and the expectations around said relationship) from “intimate friend” to “roommate with whom I wish to remain on good terms.” Once you’ve put in your set time every day/every week, give yourself permission to check out and invest your emotional energy and share your important stuff with close friends who don’t interrupt and talk down to you.

Letter Writer #469, it seems like you are already correcting this person, who I will not call a friend.

The suggested steps for you are very similar, though there is one extra step that for sure needs to happen:

Recognize that this lady is not actually your friend, and that you don’t actually like her or being around her.

Stop making excuses that she’s not that bad. She’s that bad. Dudes don’t have a monopoly on creepy. Inappropriate touching or flirting when you’ve been specifically asked not to do that stuff is downright creepy. Therefore you should minimize contact. If she’s part of the scene you’re in, whatever, 1) plenty of people who share a pastime or a scene aren’t bosom buddies and find a way to politely co-exist 2) minimizing creepy behavior that’s allowed to persist within a scene is actually good for everyone in the scene.

So.

Don’t invite her to anything at your house.

Don’t accept any of her invitations. And don’t make polite “we’d love to but we just don’t have time” excuses. Don’t give a reason. “Want to do x with me?” “No thanks.“

If you need to have a breakup conversation, have the conversation. “Hey, ______, we really tried to make things work when you started coming around again, but it’s really not working for us. Sorry, I realize that’s not good news, but we’d prefer not to hang out anymore.” And then let her feelings about that be her feelings, expressed/processed in the Land That Is Elsewhere.

When you do run into her at, say, mutual friend’s events, say a quick “Heyhowyoubeen” and then go talk to people you like.

When she does a thing that you don’t like, make the boundary clear and explicit. “Please don’t touch me.” “I don’t want to talk about that.” “That makes me uncomfortable.”

It seems like you are already giving her verbal corrections, but the behavior is continuing, so here is one step I would add:

She gets one verbal correction. If she persists or does whatever it is again, LEAVE. Walk away from her. Leave the room. Leave the party. Leave. Or ask her directly to leave, or get the hosts of whatever it is to ask her to leave. You don’t have to actually explain yourself or get her to understand anything. If you want to say something, be terse and direct. “I asked you not to that, and it’s making me very uncomfortable. I am going over there. Do not follow me. I would like you to leave now.“

I sense that you are polite, easily embarrassed people who want to help this person who you used to feel affection toward save face. You guys are straight shooters who have excellent communication skills and excellent boundaries. Unfortunately, she is trading on that reluctance to make a scene and your general good manners as a way to crap all over your boundaries. If a scene needs to be made, make the fucking scene already. “STOP.” “I DON’T LIKE THAT.” “YOU SHOULD LEAVE NOW.”

Sometimes, if you can establish a pattern of “Hey, knock it off” it can be a way to set up a “Listen, we need to talk” discussion where you delve deeper into patterns and issues. It’s especially useful in resolving certain kinds of conflicts at work, where you have to create a paper trail that proves that you asked someone directly to stop the behavior. But “Hey, knock it off” has a power of its own.

All communication styles can be abused by people who use them in bad faith, and it is good to consider others’ feelings and the consequences of your words before opening your mouth. But for over-thinkers, we tend to want to manage every part of every interaction and other people’s feelings about that interaction. By far the most common question I get is. “Person is violating my boundaries in the following terrible ways. How do I get them to stop without hurting their feelings?” And the answer is: You ask them to stop, and you let their feelings be their own. The flip side of this question is “How do I ask someone out in a way that guarantees that they will be happy about it and won’t reject me and things will never get awkward?” Again, the answer is: You ask them out, and you let their reactions to that be their own. Other people’s feelings are important, but they are not the total boss of you. To be so self-effacing that you think that asking people to stop interrupting you, or to stop crawling all over you at parties, or to hang out sometime constitutes you doing them some kind of emotional violence is a kind of egotism – you are giving yourself WAY too much power to control the future and other people.

Sometimes people do react very badly to these requests, and they treat you as if you are doing them emotional violence. Sometimes you say “Hey, knock it off” and the other person hears “YOU TERRIBLE PIECE OF SHIT WHO CAN’T DO ANYTHING RIGHT.” That is their jerkbrain talking, not something you did. It doesn’t feel good to learn that you were hurting someone’s feelings or making them feel bad, but it’s incredibly manipulative to answer “Please don’t flirt with me, I am uncomfortable” with “You hate me and I can’t do anything right” and force the person whose boundaries you’ve been violating to comfort you and rebuild your self-image.  When someone reacts disproportionately to a simple request (like Alice), it’s hard to hang back and let them get as weird as they want to and then still stand up for the thing you need. When someone tells you that you are stomping on their boundaries, the hardest thing sometimes can be to separate what they say from the messages of your own jerkbrain and give an adult response that doesn’t vomit your feelings all over them. Both of these are emotional skillsets that are part of having adult relationships, and I think that even if they weren’t installed or nurtured from childhood, they can be learned.

I don’t have a rubric for always knowing when and how, a lot of this is trial and error, but I do know that a) speaking up for yourself will usually not end the world, b) you can survive making a mistake, and  c) you can survive someone else’s displeasure. There is no prize for being the most world’s most accommodating person. And if there were a prize, it would be “hanging out with people who walk all over you, being afraid to speak up, and silently seething at them, forever.”