We’re only evil stalkers *sometimes.*

Hi Captain!

I’m having a bit of a boundary issue.

About six months ago, I ended a one-year relationship that had become deeply dysfunctional. My boyfriend at the time was very depressed, was using drugs, and was by turns distant and emotionally cruel. I still care about him a lot and I know that most of what he put me through was a result of what he himself was going through – but, I have taken care of myself and moved on. I’m in a healthy relationship now, and I’m very happy. 

The previous boyfriend is currently trying to get his life together, and I’m so glad that this is the case. I know that he can be an amazing person when he’s not in the dark place he’s been in. Unfortunately, he’s not better yet, and while I’ll be prepared to be friends with him when he is, I’m not equipped to take on the role of support system while he pulls himself up. 

He’s not really taking “no” for an answer. He contacts me frequently, even after promising not to, even after I have told him to stop. He talks to my friends – our non-mutual friends – and leaves posts on my blog. He goes back and forth between being remorseful to the point of grovelling and saying cruel and hurtful things. I’m not ready to deal with all of this, so I have stopped acknowledging him completely and until further notice. 

The biggest problem is that we have some mutual friends, and he thinks of them as his territory. I met his best friend while we were still together, and we’ve become very close; I also became close with another of his friends post-breakup (though in the early stages, when it looked like we were going to be able to keep things friendly). I feel like I’ve earned my place in these people’s lives, and they in mine, but I know that it’s hard for him to stop fixating on our time together when I’m always in his periphery, and that he feels like I have stolen them. 

I don’t want to stop being friends with these people, but I do want my previous boyfriend to leave me alone so that I can stop being caught up in all this toxicity and so that he can get better. Can I have it both ways, or do I need to cut my losses?

Rock and a Hard Place

Dear Rock:

I think the kindest thing you can do for yourself is to cut one specific loss: The hope that you and this ex will ever be friends again.

I don’t think you will be. And that isn’t your fault; he’s way too fixated on you and doing some disturbing things to get your attention and to try to control you. That’s not what friends do, that’s what obsessed dudes do. I have been driven to weird and boundary-violating behavior by unrequited love, and the only thing that allowed any kind of friendship to continue was me immediately stopping all unwanted contact and chilling the hell out for a long, long time.

Also, it’s very nice and forgiving that you want to chalk up the cruelty to his bad headspace and addiction issues, but this is still a person who, when the chips are down and things are stressful, releases that stress by being mean to you. Almost everyone who has ever been involved with an addict or a mean person has the same story to tell about this “amazing” person when they’re not drinking/depressed/studying for finals/looking for a job/grieving/using and treats the bad behavior like a massive aberration. I’ve done it, you’ve done it, many of us have done it – there is Good Ex (the one we love) and Bad Ex (the demon that comes out only sometimes and isn’t really his fault because brain chemistry/bad childhood/poorly socialized/substances) and we tell ourselves a story that our love & loyalty can defeat Bad Ex and leave us only with Good Ex. Bad Exes tends to LOVE this story and really spin it out with beautifully crafted apologies for bad behavior that end with you apologizing to them for not being forgiving and accommodating enough.

I would like to put forth the thesis that Good Ex and Bad Ex are the same (“cruel”, boundary violating, untrustworthy, unsafe) person, and that there are people who don’t say mean, terrible things to each other when they are stressed out or sad, and the story of the Amazing! Guy With the Wicked Dark Side is a toxic story that we’re all sort of culturally addicted to. I know that you’ve moved on, and are happy (SERIOUSLY, GOOD JOB, THAT WAS PROBABLY NOT EASY), and you did all the right stuff, and there were very good reasons you loved him, and you are not wrong or stupid for wanting to be as kind and understanding and hopeful as you can be in the aftermath! These are GOOD qualities! They are just easily manipulated by untrustworthy people and easily bound to the story of the fucked up guy who finally was understood sufficiently by the right woman that we all watch every week in 1,000 separate refractions on the TV. I don’t want to see you making excuses for or trying to hold onto a happy ending version of this or bending over backwards to be fair for the sake of someone who is cruel to you. That cruelty isn’t drugs. That cruelty is HIM, and choices he is making.

Let’s weigh the relative “crimes” here:

• You’ve stayed friends with nice people you met through your ex.
• He, in turn, is deliberately and repeatedly communicating with you against your wishes, often in a cruel and emotionally damaging way.
• Yet you’re the one who is worried if what you’re doing is ok and trying to manage the situation better.

You are doing a smart thing by ignoring all communications. I would go several steps further:

1) BLOCK all methods of e-communication, including banning him from making blog comments. If he’s using the phone to text and call you, get a new number that you give only to friends (and ask them not to share with others). Keep the old number and a voice-mail box turned on for a while so that his calls get sent somewhere and he thinks they are getting through. If you need to, have a friend or family member hold onto Old Phone so you have a document but don’t have to deal with it. Make the decision that you will never respond to any communication from him and stick to it.

You may think you owe him a “re-setting of expectations” conversation, like you said once that you wanted to be friends someday but that’s no longer on the table. You don’t actually owe him that. “Closure” is a lie, and he is the only one who could ever, ever give it to himself.

2) Ask the people who are your-friends-but-not-mutual-friends to do the same. Script: “Dear friend, I’ve asked my ex to leave me alone, but he keeps trying to find ways to contact me including reaching out to people like you. The best thing you can do to help is to block him on social media, document but don’t respond to any communications that get through, and don’t pass information  - either about me to him, or about him and his contacts to me (that’s what he wants you to do). Hopefully this behavior will die down soon as he stops getting the jolts of attention that he’s seeking, and he can focus on his own recovery. This is really sad and not a little bit scary, so thank you for your help.”

3) Mutual friends, especially someone who is his best friend,  are obviously trickier. I think if you try to keep a friendship going with these folks it has to have some parameters, like:

• We don’t discuss ex when we hang out.
• Don’t pass information about me to ex, or ex to me. Let those things be separate.
• It would be great down the road if we could all be friends again, but the stalking behavior is really freaking me out and making that feel impossible, so please, no pressure or even discussion about that right now.
• You (Letter Writer) are going to hang back from events/parties/social scene stuff where ex is likely to be for a while to give him some space so he’s not running into you everywhere. I know this is ceding “territory,” but it is actually a cool thing to do  if you know that someone is struggling with seeing you and holding it together. Sometimes it’s not about fairness, sometimes it is about this person hurting and needing to feel like there are safe spaces they can go. You already won by getting out of the relationship and being happy, you don’t have to “win” every party. I think this is also safer choice for you, unless you like looking over your shoulder for this dude and the prospect of many crying & yelling scenes at parties.

Good news, if your friendship with these folks is really a friendship that is based on mutual interests and comfort and meant to survive the long-term, it will survive these parameters. If the friendship is really about bonding over the drama of dealing with ex and being his caretakers, or if these friends help their old friend keep violating your boundaries, it will not survive them, and that will be hard and painful in the short term but ok in the longterm as everyone disengages and moves on. I am sorry you are dealing with this. You are good, you are doing everything right, and it takes a long time and a lot of perseverance to shake off an obsessed ex-partner.

At least they aren’t trying to get you to marry him…yet.

Dear Captain Awkward,

My problem boils down to this: can I say no, or do I have to be polite? 

I’m not a social person. I don’t have friends at the moment. The reasons for that are many –mostly boiling down to living at home again while I look for a job. At school, I had close friends I still talk to over the internet, but until I get a more permanent job with fixed hours I don’t have a pool of people I can talk to in a neutral space where I can happily make friends. I’m fine with that. But my parents believe friends = happiness.

My parents recently hired a 20-year-old decorator (I’m 23) and the three of them think that we should be friends. Apparently he saw my books and “knew” he could have an intelligent conversation with me, which he can’t get from his other friends. He also thought it would be nice for me to have someone who would ask how my day went. I said no.

From what I’ve seen and what my parents have said, he seems like a good guy. He’s intelligent, has had a pretty crap life so far, and what he’s made for himself despite that is impressive. He also has ADHD and a tendency to talk and talk and talk, which is exhausting. It seems like the biggest plus point in his favour with my parents is that they sympathise with him.

He calls me by my family nickname instead of my actual name, although I’ve asked him not to. He makes jokes about my quietness (usually the typical “you never shut up, do you?” and “can’t get a word in edgeways around her!”) that I can’t respond to with anything but silence. He phones once or twice a day; I refused to give him my number so he calls the house. He’s turned up on the doorstep unannounced twice. And I don’t know if this is normal behaviour or not. Very few of my friends ever came round to my house. But I feel unsafe when alone there. I’m constantly on alert in case he appears.

So I avoid him and then feel bad, because he’s just very enthusiastic and he can’t help his ADHD. Why should I judge him for that? I think I’m being paranoid, picky, or a sullen, uncommunicative, ungrateful cow towards a young man who just wants to be friends. I know I’m probably abnormal for not wanting to make friends right now, and I shouldn’t be so fussy, but I really, really don’t want to spend time with this man. 

So – what can I do?

Probably In The Wrong

Dear Probably:

I don’t think you are even a little bit in the wrong. There are situations when close friends “just drop by” each other’s houses (and in college when house = dorm room, that is much more likely) but it’s not normal for someone you just met, and calling twice/day is definitely way too often!

And do you want to know why it is way too often?

I mean, there is no objective standard for measuring these things.

I mean, some friends somewhere probably call/text/gchat each other more than once a day and everyone has a different idea of what “normal” is.

He is calling/dropping by way too often because it is too often for you. And the correct barometer for measuring whether this amount of contact is too much is your personal subjective feeling that it is too much. That is in fact the only correct way to measure this.

There is also only exactly one compelling argument or deciding factor in the whole “should this guy and I be friends?” question.

That factor is not whether your parents feel bad about you missing friends from school and trying to set you up.

That factor is not whether your parents went to some trouble and meant this whole thing kindly.

That factor is not how this guy felt when he saw your books, or the effort he has put into becoming friends, or how much he’d like to become friends.

That factor is not whether rejection would make him sad or hurt his feelings, or fuck up your parents decorating schemes.

That factor is: Do you like this guy and want to be friends with him? It sounds like you don’t. Then “No, I don’t” is the only acceptable answer, reason, argument that anyone should need to end this thing that is making you feel stressed and unsafe.

There are two conversations to be had here. I am not sure which order they should happen in.

Parent Conversation:

“Hey, parents, I know you meant well when you tried to hook Decorator and me up as friends, but unfortunately I don’t actually like him. I don’t want to mess up your professional relationship, but I am going to ask him to stop calling or coming by to see me, and I’d appreciate a day’s notice if he’s going to be around so I can make it less awkward and arrange to be at the library or something.“

The cool response here is: “Whoa, we’re sorry. That is very awkward, but of course we’ll do whatever we can to make it easier on you.“

The coolEST response here is “Whoa, we’re sorry, that is very awkward, but of course we will do whatever we can to make it easier on you” + taking on the responsibility of letting him know.

Well-meaning. Smart. Annoying as fuck.

That would look like this, incidentally: “Your interest in our daughter was very kind, and we had high hopes that you would become friends.Unfortunately she’s let us know that she doesn’t want a personal relationship with you, so we’d like to keep it strictly business from now on. She especially would prefer it if you not stop by the house and come only at prearranged times when we’ve scheduled work. I told her we could count on you to respect that.” + subject change to work.

You’re a grownup, obviously, an can handle your own difficult conversations, but as the people with a professional and ongoing relationship with this guy it’s not a terrible idea if they delivered the news.

Chances of the cool response based on what is in your letter?

Low. Very low.

So brace yourself for derailing responses.

• “He’s not that bad.”
• “Take pity on him.”
• “But he has had a bad life and can’t help being annoying. Have a little compassion! Is that how we raised you?”
• “He hasn’t done anything wrong, exactly, has he?”
• “It’s not a crime to be nice and friendly, right?”
• “This will make it weird for our wallpapering scheme.”
• “Just give him a chaaaaaaaaance.”
• “y u so picky?”
• Etc., etc., etc.

I don’t know if it’s a gendered thing, or a busybody parent thing, or a thwarted matchmaker thing, but the subtext behind all of these derailing questions is the possibility that they’ve invited someone into your life who is creeping you out is harder to take than the prospect that you might just not be nice and accommodating enough and that’s somehow why this isn’t working.

I think “He drops by too much and it makes me feel scared and uncomfortable when I am alone here” is actually good information for your parents about what you need to feel safe in your own home. Those are your instincts trying to protect you! Maybe from an actual predator! Okay, more LIKELY from a really annoying dude who is going to talk at you for a long time, but a) people with really poor understanding of boundaries are not good people to have dropping by the house uninvited and b) you get to decide your own safety threshold. If you feel unsafe around him, if you’re always on edge worrying that he will drop by, he does not actually have to ax murder you to prove objectively that those feelings are important and worth listening to.

Anyone else think that Mr. Collins/Mary Bennet was the great thwarted love story of the book? 

However, your feelings of unsafety might not convince your parents if they are in the middle of bringing a full derail at you and try to “logic” (or, let’s face it, bully and pressure) you into remaining friends with him so that they can save face. In my experience, people who don’t get this REALLY don’t get it and will keep looking for “facts” to try to pressure you into doing what they want.

So one recommended strategy is (once you’ve mentioned the safety concerns) to refrain from explaining it too much. “Sorry, I just don’t like him. I would prefer not to interact with him. I definitely don’t want him ever to come here when you are not here, or when it is not strictly about work, and I definitely want the option to be somewhere else or at least not socialize with him. I recognize that it’s your house and you get to invite who you want to. I don’t want to make it any more awkward then it has to be, but I feel very strongly about this.”

If they keep pushing you, some good scripts to have in your back pocket:

• But I don’t actually like him.
• But since I don’t like him, why are you so invested in our friendship?
• Yes, it is bad news, and he will probably be very hurt. But if you try to force me to be friends with him, I will be very hurt.
• I will do my best to be civil, but the best way to make sure that everything remains civil and polite is to minimize how much time I have to spend with him and get him out of my life as soon as possible.
• It’s really weird that you are so invested in this.
• Unfortunately, “pity” is not a good enough reason to be friends with someone you don’t like.

The guy sounds painfully socially awkward and a bit clueless and like he could really use a good friend. He’s really enthusiastic at the thought of being your friend, because maybe it’s been a long time since he’s connected with anyone, and probably doesn’t mean to overstep his bounds so much.

Ha, did it feel like I was guilting you for a second there?

What you need to keep in mind is:

• Many socially awkward people are lovable and people that you want(!) to have in your life. Hello, look around at where we are. Hi, awesome folks!
• That friend doesn’t have to be you. You don’t owe him anything – not making up for his sad life, not as a trophy of what he’s made of himself, not as a favor to your folks, not as your weekly Reaching Out To The Awkward Charity Good Times!

You don’t like him. You don’t have to. That’s enough of a reason to not be around him. No guilt necessary.

The next conversation is for the Unfortunate Decorator.

There are lots of ways to let him know that you don’t want to interact.  The simplest and most direct (and ultimately the kindest) way is this:

“Decorator, this is very awkward. I know you are putting a lot of effort into befriending me, and my parents meant well by introducing us, but unfortunately I am just not feeling it. I would prefer not to be friends, and I definitely need you to stop calling or dropping by the house to see me.“

You don’t need to give any reason beyond that, though phrases like “Sorry, I just don’t think we connect” and “I don’t want to get to know you better” and “I just don’t like you that much” are handy in your back pocket if he pushes you. If he’s un-self-aware enough to push you, he deserves a blunt, honest answer.

When you’ve been really raised and conditioned not to say no, learning how to say it is a process and it’s good to give yourself some practice. There are lots of ways that you can (and probably are) indicating “no” to this guy. For example:

• If he is at the house to see your parents or do work and starts monologuing at you, excuse yourself and go to your room and shut your door. Or go for a walk. Make it clear that you’re not down to listen to his long speeches. “Sorry, I am not interested in hearing about this.” “Sorry, I don’t want to talk to you.” Be blunt, walk away.
• If he’s calling the house phone for you, and you’ve never told him to stop calling, tell him now. “I don’t want to talk to you on the phone, please don’t call here asking for me.” Hang up. Don’t pick up the phone or come to the phone. Don’t ever answer a call from him.
• If he stops by to see you, tell him once  (through a window or screen door, don’t let him in): “Why are you here?” He’ll either say it’s for parent/work/house stuff, in which case you say “Well, they aren’t here. Why don’t you call them tomorrow and arrange a time in advance? Stopping by is really not ok.” Or, he’ll say “I wanted to hang out/see you/lend you this book/show you my etchings.”  To which you can say, bluntly, “Yeah, I don’t like you stopping by like this, it makes me really uncomfortable.” Shut door or window, go back inside, wait for him to go away and your shoulders to come down from around your ears.
• You don’t have to claim to be busy with something particular, act glad to see him, or be friendly or polite.
• If he asks your parents about what’s up and tries to pressure them to pressure you, it’s a perfect opening for the big conversation with them.

An acceptable response on his part is some variation of “Wow, that is not good news and I feel very awkward now, but of course I understand and will respect your wishes. So sorry to have bothered you” and then peace-ing the fuck out of that room and conversation to lick his wounds later.

There are several uncool responses. One is an emotional outburst involving the words “But whyyyyyyyyyy” or “Give me a chaaaaaaaance?” or demanding a logical, objective reason for your feelings or a list of his supposed errors so that he might correct them or any flavor of pressure on you to reverse your decision. Let’s keep a bit of perspective here, he’s not someone who is or who has ever been close to you, so why would you owe him a long consult? You don’t need to deal with whatever embarrassment or hurt feelings he expresses, or apologize for any of it. I suggest you deliver your news, wait a beat, and then absent yourself from the situation and leave it for others to deal with.

Important safety note:

It is best if rejection conversations takes place when someone else is home. If he drops by when your parents are not home, do NOT let him into the house. Go outside to have it, if you want to, have it through a (locked) screen door, but under no circumstances let him into your space. Chances are that the threat he poses is more of a “Will sit on your couch crying and talking at you for hours” kind of thing, but isn’t that enough reason to make sure he stays outside? Respect your own feelings of distress and fear around him, and limit his physical access to you.

SUPER important safety note:

If you have these conversations with your parents and with him, and he keeps dropping by and trying to insinuate himself into your life, he is indicating that the threat level is raised from “annoying” to “really actually very unsafe.” If he shows up when your parents aren’t home and the visit was not pre-arranged or work-related, do not let him in. Document the conversation you had, document the visit (with a photo, maybe, or just write down the day and time), and consider calling the police to report trespassing. At this time your parents should terminate any contract they have with him and ask him, in writing, to refrain from visiting the premises. Recommended reading: The Gift of Fear.

A happy ending here is that you and your parents and the Unfortunate Decorator have a few awkward conversations. When he comes by to work on the house, you exchange a brief “hey, what’s up” and then have no further interaction with him. He does a good and speedy job with the decorating and definitely does not install any hidden cameras to watch you sleep.

A totally acceptable ending is that this guy feels uncomfortable and steps back from the decorating job and your parents have to find someone else to work with, hopefully having learned an important lesson that you can’t even make 5 year olds be friends with each other if they don’t actually like each other.

An unhappy ending is you having to grit your teeth and smile at someone who invades your space because your parents would feel weird about picking an unsuitable friend for their grown-ass daughter.

Before diving into today’s letter, I wanted to put out there that people have requested an update from LW #354. While there is never an obligation to respond once your letter is answered here, if you are comfortable with it people would like to know: Are you okay? Can you pee on the regular now? You haunt our dreams.

Now, today’s letter:

Hi there, CA!

I’ve been getting a lot of feedback lately, from people I trust, that I’m a Chaos Muppet. I’m one of those people who weird things happen to: Things break when I’m around, weird accidents happen, things are lost.

I’m using the passive voice because, when I analyze how things went wrong, I realize that I didn’t *overtly* break that thing, or cause the accident or lose someone’s this-or-that. But because people see me as chaotic, I tend to get blamed first and apologized to later. The other day, I was making soup by blending it in a friend’s Cuisinart. I overfilled the container, water leaked out and dripped through the stove top into the stove below, shorting out a beloved vintage oven. It was totally an accident, but I do stuff like this!

I need to change this dynamic. How can I be more responsible? How can I stop this swirl of chaotic weirdness around me? My friend, whose oven I have probably ruined, said he thought I make these things happen unconsciously, to cause drama. How can I know if this is true?

I need a place to start. My work life has always been great, and my finances/living situation are in good order. It’s just in my personal life…shit happens to me and I want it to stop.

Signed,

Clumsy Lover

Dear Clumsy Lover,

I’ve been sitting on your letter for a while, waiting for the right metaphor to come to me. Then I mainlined a ton of Call The Midwife on Netflix, and she arrived.

I love this fictional woman.

Meet Chummy!

She is wicked clumsy, and extremely uncomfortable in her own body, and sort of sows chaos wherever she goes without meaning to. When we first meet her, her self-consciousness is so great, and she is so worried about screwing up and on edge all the time that she does actually break things and cause accidents.

But [MILD SPOILERS]

…once she comes into her own a little bit, and, very importantly, surrounds herself with people who see her good qualities and validate them, she relaxes. Later in the series you meet her hypercritical mom and see immediately exactly where she got her un-confidence. By then you are so in love with her wicked sense of humor and compassionate & competent way she practices midwifery that you can’t even remember the clumsy person she was.

[/END SPOILERS]

I am a clumsy sort myself, and never so much as when I am around my constantly “optimizing” and “correcting” dad. That dude will stand over me as I load the dishwasher, critiquing the placement of every fork and dish. On my recent trip to see my folks, he freaked out when I microwaved something for 15 seconds longer than he would have (we’re talking: veins popping out in forehead and spitting when yelling here). He called me stupid for not being able to immediately find utensils in a rental kitchen where I don’t live, because apparently the effort used in opening several drawers to find a paring knife was totally wasted. OMG I WASTED DRAWER-OPENING EFFORT. Other things that needed to be “optimized”:

• Which coat I wore – did I really need a coat? Did it need to be that coat? Would that coat be slightly too warm? WE MUST BE EFFICIENT ABOUT OUR COAT SELECTION AT ALL TIMES. IT IS NOT LIKE WE CAN JUST CARRY COATS THAT ARE TOO WARM IF THE WEATHER WARMS UP, PEOPLE.
• Did I want to sit in that seat in the minivan? Wouldn’t this seat be more comfortable?
• Did I need a light on while I worked? No? Howabout this one? Howabout this one? Howabout maybe just a little light?
• At one point the dude took my toast out of the toaster where it was toasting and re-arranged it to the “correct” toasting position.

Throughout the visit, my dad treated me like someone who could not be trusted to select my own coat and make toast. And over the four days, though I did stand up for myself and not just take it, I deteriorated into feeling crazy and needed to call my boyfriend for a reminder that I was not. I am a calm, organized traveler with many passport stamps, but flying back I was double- and triple-checking every single detail – Is that really my gate? Is my flight leaving on time? Did I remember my ID? I know I showed my ID to the check-in person, but did I maybe lose it between there and security? Where were my house keys? Did I have them FOR SURE? I was so on edge that I became clumsy and unable to think clearly and unable to trust myself. In the past, I sometimes dreaded visits home so much that I would become very accident-prone – tripping and falling, forgetful, dropping things, having trouble focusing on driving or loading change into a vending machine – in the weeks before. My “role” in my family from growing up is to be the girl who is really book-smart but completely lacks any life skills or common sense and who can’t be trusted to make toast, which is why I moved very far away and have a 3-4 day maximum on visits. It took a lot of therapy for me to stop seeing the constant criticizing and correcting behaviors that freak me out when I’m home as totally normal and totally all my fault. It turns out that when I am far away from my folks, I am perfectly capable of toast making, utensil-finding, and jacket selection and have little cause to question these abilities.

So, while there are many reasons stuff might be happening to you, one thing I suggest is to take the temperature of your relationship with these friends and your own comfort level around them. If they are watching you with the expectation that  you will fail at things and using you as the scapegoat for why things get lost or broken, if they spend time looking for examples of how you are a “chaos muppet,” it can quickly become a self-fulfilling prophecy and very difficult for you to change that story. You say this yourself in your letter: “But because people see me as chaotic, I tend to get blamed first and apologized to later.”

Let’s take the case of the oven. You made a simple mistake that turned into some serious damage to a friend’s stuff. At that point, the right thing to do is to apologize and then ask what you can do. Can you help him find a repair person? Can you offer to pay for some of the repairs? Can you make a genuine effort to be more careful in the future?

Once you’ve offered an apology, made amends, and made an effort not to repeat the same mistake in the future, that’s all you can do.

Crap gets spilled on stove-tops all the time. An unwatched pot boils over. Counter space is limited so we use the stove top as additional counterspace (I do this ALL the time). Quantities are misjudged. A shaky hand slips when pouring the hot water into the tea-kettle. The mistake you made with the Cuisinart and the liquid could have been made by anyone, especially and including the oven’s owner. Yes, it sucks to feel like your friends are careless with your nice things or to have something precious ruined, but if this friend tries to make things about How You Are As A Person vs. a simple mistake, I would say to your friend what I wish I had said to my dad, namely:

“The damage to the stove might be able to be fixed, and I will do all in my power to see that it is repaired. The way you are speaking to me now is damaging our relationship, and that might not be so fixable.”

Because the suggestion that you subconsciously cause these disasters in order to cause drama is, frankly, dangerously close to gaslighting.

I mean, I believe you that enough chaotic stuff is happening that it’s freaking you out, but I also think that a good friend doesn’t make it about blaming you. They say “Friend, you seem really distracted and off your game. What’s going on with you? Are you ok?“

You don’t have to be anyone’s Private Pyle.

When someone makes you feel like a continual fuck-up, you act like a continual fuckup, because you are so tense and worried and uncomfortable. Luck is not with you in their houses. Your mojo doesn’t work around them. You say yourself – Your work life is great. Your finances are great. You are a perfectly capable person in many areas of your life. So what is it about these particular folks & spaces that are not great? I don’t think it’s necessarily you, or your subconscious. I think it’s that you have friends who have somehow decided that it’s your role to be a scapegoat among them.

So, yeah, my first suggestion is that you look at your overall relationship with these people. When did this story about you as the Chaotic One start? How do you feel when you hang out with them? Do you look forward to it or does some part of you dread it? Trust the dread, Clumsy Lover; it might be telling you something. It might help you to log “chaotic” events and your & other people’s reactions to them in a journal. How were you feeling when it happened? How did people react? What patterns exist? How often is this really happening? How often is it happening when you had nothing to do with what actually happened? Do they seem really invested in telling this story about you?

In my family, my younger brother* (who has a lot of developmental delays and probable mild fetal alcohol syndrome from his birth mom), lived 100%  in the scapegoat role, so one of the ways we used to insult each other was to describe a fuckup as “Pulling a (His Name).” Nowadays I think it is pretty seriously wrong and abusive to use a family member’s name as a casual synonym for being a total disaster (Thank you, therapy!), though I think it is a depressingly common pattern in dysfunctional relationships and a depressingly easy habit to get into if one person is the designated Private Pyle and you’re sufficiently terrified of being treated the way that person is. It’s common enough that I must ask: Do your friends describe it as “Pulling a You” when they lose something or do something clumsy? If so, you might have a Surrounded by Assholes problem.

My second suggestion is to start resisting the stories where you star as the Seed of Chaos. I am stealing this from an old comment thread on abusive behaviors, but try adding “you think” silently in your head whenever one of these friends implies there is something wrong with you. After a while doing that, start speaking up. “I am really sorry you lost your keys, but I don’t think that the inherent darkness of my soul was the cause – it’s actually getting pretty unfunny when you guys suggest there is something deeply wrong with me.”

The third thing I suggest is some self-care.

a) Go to the doctor and get a check up, and especially take a look at emotional health. Tell your doc what’s going on and how you feel about it. Increased clumsiness/forgetfulness/inattentiveness might be a symptom of something else going on. We don’t diagnose conditions through the internet here, but I’m sure a lot of readers with ADHD or other executive processing issues are reading your letter and nodding at the familiarity of what you describe. I’ll allow discussion of those things here as long as they are describing the commenter’s own experiences and steps taken. “When I found out I had (condition), it was because of x, y, and z events, and this is what I did about it” = okay. Encouraged, even! “It sounds like you might have (condition), so you should ______” = 100% Not Okay.

It’s not actually a rule that you have to have your shit 100% together in order to be loved or valued by your friends.

b) Look at your stress levels. Are you eating enough, sleeping enough, getting enough fresh air/contact with people you like/down time to read and watch TV? When we’re overloaded, we rush or try to do too many things at once, and rushing turns to mistakes. Stress, PTSD, and being overwhelmed or exhausted can push us into dissociative states where it is actually unsafe for us to do things like drive, operate heavy machinery, knives, or anything involving precision. So some of your self-care might be paying more attention to your moods and bodily needs, and checking in with yourself before you do something complex and making sure you can concentrate on every part of it.

c) Do what you can to practice mindfulness. Even if you only do it a few times a day at first, try slowing WAY down and concentrating on every detail and step of what you are doing. Each footfall on pavement. Your breathing in and out. Washing & drying each dish.

d) Reach out to people you like who make you feel great & comfortable, and avoid people who make you feel brittle and clumsy. Even if your friends are genuinely expressing concern and not gaslighting you and you really like them, some people just bring out the worst in you or aren’t good at being on your side when you’re in a bad way. Knowing that “I’m in x headspace, so I shouldn’t really be around y person (or activity – like drinking, or, participating in a welding montage to turn an ordinary car into a tank so that you can help the helpless while hiding out from a corrupt government that smeared your name back in ‘Nam)” is part of self-care.

Readers, what do you do to regain focus and turn things around when you feel chaos bubbling all around you? What would you say to the Letter Writer’s friends if you were in their position of being called a “chaos muppet”?

*He moved far away, too, and is (mostly) ok.

Hi Captain,

I have a friend, we’ll call her Jane. Several years ago, when I caught her first boyfriend making out with another girl at a party, I told her about it (I figured if my house was on fire, I’d want to know, right?). She claimed I was just trying to break them up because I was jealous (I wasn’t), told me to F-off and then just stopped talking to me.

Fast forward a year, Jane apologised for her behaviour and we were sort of friends again, and had caught up a few times. I saw her second boyfriend in a shopping centre with another girl, holding hands and kissing, and he saw me. Remembering how she reacted last time I tried to tell her her boyfriend was cheating, I said nothing to her. A few months later she somehow found out (I think it was from a message from his phone, don’t know and I suppose it doesn’t matter) that he was screwing around and confronted him, and he asked her why she hadn’t said anything about it earlier, since he figured she would have known for months after I told her I’d seen them. When she found out that I knew and had said nothing, she turned on me again, saying that if I was a good friend I would have told her and stopped her from being hurt etc. This time I decided to cut contact.

Now, just after the same apology/tentative friendship renewal as last time (8 months or so after the previous incident) I have heard from a mutual (and reliable) friend that boyfriend number 3 is also sleeping with someone else. At this point I am not sure what to do. Should I say anything, or keep silent? If I say something, what words do I use? I kind of feel like I’m in a no-win situation as she will hate me either way. I get that her relationship isn’t any of my business, but at the same time, if I had a boyfriend and he was cheating on me, I’d want to know about it.

This isn’t the first time she’s cracked it at me for something that wasn’t my fault, and she always comes crawling back a few months later, saying how sorry she was for the way she treated me, but she still keeps repeating the same behaviour. I just feel like I am being used as her emotional punching bag, and though we were close friends through high school, I am starting to wonder if the friendship is even worth maintaining.

Thanks for your help,

Catch-22 (aka Always in the Wrong Place at the Wrong Time)

Dear Catch 22:

What if you asked the mutual friend (the one who told you the information) to tell Jane directly what’s up? Probably enough time has gone by since you first heard (this question has been sitting in the old inbox for a bit) that this option has gathered as much awkwardness as all other options, but if this ever happens again, keep it in mind. Script: “Whoa, that’s heavy news. Do you think you should say something to her?” “What do you think you‘ll do?” I put emphasis on the “you”  in the scripts as a reminder not to let it turn into a forced teaming situation where now that it’s shared it’s a joint problem or let the mutual friend assume you’ll handle it now.

Honestly, I think you have enough of a track record with Jane around this topic that you get to decide to make her boyfriends and their cheating ways into Firmly Not Your Business. Since your information is secondhand anyway, I think you get to treat it like it doesn’t exist unless you witness something with your own eyes. It doesn’t make you the world’s awesomest friend, but maybe it’s time to categorize her as “a small doses friend, someone it is nice to run into periodically at parties” and keep deep talks or personal subjects out of it as much as possible. You don’t have to cut people off forever after an unpleasant interaction, but it’s good to know what they’re capable of and set your expectations and boundaries accordingly.

Say you do witness something, and you do know for sure that your friend has an expectation of monogamy and such behavior would not be cool with her.

If you know the cheater, one thing you can do is speak directly to them. “Hey, I wish I could unsee that, but I can’t, and I won’t keep your secret or lie to my friend about it. Unfuck your shit, bro.” (By the way, that one dude you saw kissing & flirting at the mall was a master of deflection and manipulation when he brought you into that conversation and blamed her lack of knowledge of what he was up to on you. Bravo, Darth! I hope no lady ever touches your special parts again.)

If you end up telling your friend, try, “I wish I could unsee what I saw, but I can’t. I saw ________ (what you saw). I told him directly that I was not going to keep secrets from you. Let me know how I can be supportive.”

It’s not cool for Jane to take things out on you the way she has been. I think you are correct that your friendship cannot survive any more travels through the cycle of blame and apologies. If she tries to use you as her emotional punching bag again, bail. And if she comes back and apologizes, it’s more than okay to say “Hey, let’s not do this again. Sometimes a friendship just runs its course as people grow and move on, and it’s time to let this one go.“

P.S. Poor Jane. Those are some gross, untrustworthy dudes and I really feel for her. It sounds like she’s pretty jealous and insecure in the way she treats you, but one thing that makes a person jealous and insecure is CONSTANT JERKY CHEATING BY PEOPLE YOU TRUST.

Dear Captain Awkward:

An ex (X) asked if I had reservations about X hooking up with a mutual acquaintance (A). I told X my reservation/opinion. X then told A what I said. A is angry and upset

On one hand, I gave an opinion when asked based on my knowledge of situations involving A. But on the other, regardless of my intention, A got hurt, and I do not know A that well, so what I said could of course be totally wrong. I wish A had not been hurt, and it was not my intent.

I am thinking it over and trying to figure out if there is something I should have done instead. I am really stupid about human relationships (so often I don’t grasp what people find stunningly simple/common sense), and I would like to know how to address situations like this correctly in the future. Any insight or advice you have is truly appreciated. Thank you.

Honest but Awkward

Dear Honest but Awkward,

You gave someone you were close to an honest response to a question they asked. If X had not asked your opinion, you would have kept it to yourself. But they asked, and you trusted that it was a sincere request, so you were honest. You also, I’m guessing, trusted that X. would not pass these reservations onto A.

I don’t know if your reservations about A. were fair or reasonable or anything about them.  Whatever they are, you can’t unsay them, so if A. brings it up with you, all you can do is apologize. “It was an opinion expressed in response to a direct request from X. I obviously don’t know you that well and could be way off base. I am very sorry that my words hurt you.“

Keep it short, keep it sincere, tell the truth, but do not get sucked into discussing it further. If A. wants to know why you had that opinion, or wants to pick at the affair, it’s okay to say “I think enough damage has been done and am not really up for further discussion. I am sorry that I hurt you.” And then end the conversation.

And then you back way off from hanging out with A. and let them make any further moves toward repairing the relationship. Think of A. as a strange cat – let the cat approach you, don’t pull the cat out from under the futon and make it accept your pets.

The person making the trouble here is X.

If you are friends with your ex, it can be a good practice to let them know if you seeing one of their friends (once there is something definite to tell, don’t share fantasies). That’s a shitty thing to be blindsided by. “Just so you know, A. and I went out on a date and are going to keep doing that. I wanted you to hear it from me and I didn’t want it to be a surprise.“

It is probably a bad practice to ask your ex for dating ADVICE or PERMISSION about dating one of their friends. You are totally putting them on the spot either to be okay with it or pretend to be okay with it, or, if they express reservations like the LW did, you turn them into the bad guy for having honest feelings. If you are exes who are good friends, chances are you’ve had to put a lot of old feelings and old conflicts aside and do some hard work at focusing on the present. Consulting them too much into your current dating life is like opening the whole can of FEELINGSWORMS again.

I realize there are exceptions and that the poly folk have entire books devoted to this, but if you are asking an ex for permission or dating advice about one of their friends, really examine your motives. Are you giving them a true opportunity to refuse their approval or refuse to comment? Would their refusal really change anything about what you intend to do? Do you already suspect they will react negatively but hope you can push a token “Yay for you? I guess?” rubber-stamp out? Do you need to date your ex’s friend AND feel like a super-swell person who is 100% approved of at all times that badly? Either you’re all adults here and it’s okay or you know some reason that it’s really not okay. Chances are you’re going to do what you’re going to do anyway (the crotch wants what the crotch wants), so politely inform but don’t seek or expect approval.

Letter Writer, if you and X have that kind of friendship where this is okay, then it was in bounds. HOWEVER, I think it is, without exception, bad practice to ask for someone’s honest assessment & opinion of another person and then pass the badmouthing onto that person. This is where X screwed up and made your life super-awkward.  You gave an opinion when asked. X made sure that A. knew that opinion, even though they knew it was negative. Who fucked up here? X.

Most of the time, you shouldn’t say something about someone that you wouldn’t say to them. But between trusted friends, honest references need discretion in order to work.

For example:

“I’m thinking of becoming roommates with Q. You guys roomed together for a while, what was that like?”

If it’s a friend you trust to behave with decency and discretion, you tell them honestly that Q constantly ate all your food and always had the television or radio on and doesn’t understand what dishwashers are.

If it’s a friend you think will go immediately blab to Q about everything you said, you say something like “Hrm, it wasn’t really for me, but do whatever works for you!”

The trustworthy friend will tell Q “Thanks, but I think I’m going to find another situation!” without naming you as the reason.

The untrustworthy friend will blame you as the reason it is falling through and transfer Q’s disappointment to you. Surprise! That, by the way, is the very definition of creating drama. “Someone who is not me totally disapproves of you, listen to what they told me!” UGH.

Not all secrets deserve keeping. Not all peace deserves keeping. But not everyone deserves your full, honest opinion, either, and a habit of passing on hearsay is a quick way to stop deserving it.

Letter Writer, however it all works out, what you can take from this is:

• Your relationship with A. might not recover. That is mostly not up to you at this point. The words are out there.
• Your beef here is with X., “Hey, if I’d known you were going to pass that on, I wouldn’t have said anything, so thanks a bunch for making everything super-awkward!”
• X. is not someone you can trust with your honest opinions, and it is okay to put them off the next time they ask for one.
• You can do that explicitly – “The last time I told you what I thought, you detonated a giant drama bomb. NO THANK YOU,” or just by refusing to comment at all. “That seems like none of my business, but I hope it works out how you want it to.

I don’t think you’re “stupid about human relationships”, I think you were put in a bad spot by someone with maturity & discretion problems.

Spoiler: Whether or not she caught the train, her shit would have worked out pretty okay in the long run.

Hi Captain Awkward,

My mother and my boyfriend HATE each other. I know you’ve heard this all before, and until now I’ve learned to just deal with it. Until now.

My mother is my supporter, I am currently a 19 year old undergraduate, about half way done my B.A. My mother has supported me my whole life, she always babied me. I didn’t have to work, pay any bills, as long as I was in school and getting good grades all was okay. Then this summer my long distance boyfriend from France, who I’ve been dating for 1 year and a half decided to come visit for a few months in our house. This is where they started hating each other. This won’t change no matter what, she even kicked him out of our house just last week, because they argue about stupid pointless things. Even though it has only been a year and a half, I love my boyfriend more than anything in the world. I know I want my future to be with him, and its important to me that I start my future with him.

My mother began agreeing that she would support me as long as I am in school, but recently she’s changed her mind. Now, either I go live with my boyfriend in France for 1 year (firstly, I don’t speak french so University and working is not possible), and then support myself in University in my homecountry Canada, or I am unable to live with my boyfriend for another 3 years or so. My mother has made it clear that whether were in the same city or not, if she’s supporting me, I am not allowed to live with him, and even if I attend school and live with him, her support for everything is gone. I need your help, because my mom is not someone you can sit with and have a reasonable calm conversation. She is illogical, and for her, as long as she’s paying, she doesn’t care what I have to say unless I’m doing exactly what she says.

Here’s my issue. Do I stay in school and stay in long distance/ not live with my boyfriend and basically say whatever to my relationship? I don’t want to do this because he makes me so happy, and I want to be able to live with him, we’ve been trying for this for a year to transfer schools to be together. Or do I go to Paris and then go back to school in Canada and depend significantly on him, and loans from the government? Should I leave school all together, and work until I am stable and can pay for myself? This option is also hard for me, I don’t know if I could do it. I’ve never supported myself and I know absolutely nothing about it, how would I make ends meet with no savings, no money at all?

Cautious Canadian

So, basically, “solve my entire life, my two most important relationships, and my economic future in a blog post, please?”

I cannot promise to do any of that, but maybe I can help you form a basis for making a good decision.

I don’t know your mom or your boyfriend or what these arguments were about or who was starting them. It is possible that your mom is being unreasonably controlling and trying to sabotage your relationship with a really good man, and that this is a story about how you fight for your autonomy & your right to choose who you love. It is also possible that your mom has a little bit of age, experience, & distance from the situation and sees something about him that you do not. Maybe your boyfriend is an argumentative tool who picks a lot of fights. Maybe she thinks he doesn’t treat you well or that you will be unhappy. Maybe this is a story about a concerned parent wanting you to complete your education and figure out who you are and what you want outside of the context of some guy, even if he is a good guy.  Maybe this is “I love you, but I do not think you are ready.”

Using purse strings to control & compel the personal life of an adult someone who is not you is:

a) Doomed. Even if the controlled person outwardly conforms to the rules you lay down, your relationship with them is destroyed forever and they will never trust you again. This is what your mom is risking by making this ultimatum.

b) A point in favor of narrative #1.

I can relate. When I was 19-20, I was involved with a guy I’d been with about a year. My second year of college we were long-distance, with me in DC and him in New York. My mom did not really like him and definitely did not want me taking the bus up to New York to see him. It was fine if he visited, but she did not want me to be running around New York when I was supposed to be studying (quite expensively & at considerable financial sacrifice to her) in D.C. I visited him anyway, she found out, and she threatened to pull financial support. Into this story-stew, shake a giant shaker of slut-shaming, teen pregnancy fears, and Catholic guilt & judgment and stir it up reaaaaaaaaaal good.

Guess what.

1) I think she was wrong to use money & education as a bargaining tool to control my sexuality & romantic life and it damaged our relationship severely.

2) That guy was an awful boyfriend and she was completely right in her assessment of his character & whether he was worth my time.

I don’t think my mom reads this blog, but just in case:

YOU WERE RIGHT ABOUT GREG

HE TURNED INTO A CLINGY STALKER

HE WAS TERRIBLE IN BED

THE MEMORY OF HIM MAKES ME CRINGE

MY GRADES & COLLEGE EXPERIENCE WOULD HAVE BEEN BETTER IF I HADN’T GONE TO NEW YORK SO MUCH

Letter Writer, you are not me, your mom is not my mom, your dude is not that dude, but that’s been on my chest for a while and if we solve nothing else in this post, I appreciate the opportunity to say Happy Mother’s Day, 1993-present. To counterbalance, a family member met her current husband when she had just started college and “her whole life was ahead of her” and a lot of voices were telling her not to settle down just yet. She took the lumps & the judgment, did what she thought was right, and in return got the love of her life.

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My mom’s mistake was to try to control when she could not persuade. And that is one of your mom’s mistakes here, too. (There are others. We’ll get to them). And this relationship & these questions are things that you might want to sort out, at length, with a mentor or counselor.

However badly designed, your mom has put some choices in front of you and issued you a test. That test is called, “Okay, How Badly Do You Want This Dude?”

It is but one essay question on a larger test that you were always going to have to take eventually. The bigger test is called “What Do You Want Of This One Life That You Get?”

With the caveat that I think your mom is wrong to try to control you in this way, I want to try to look at this test as a thing made up of things that you would have to figure out for yourself anyway.

• Where do I want to live?
• What do I want to do?
• Is this guy a person I can make a happy life with?
• How will I support myself?

Here is your terrifying/comforting thought for the day:

Even if we could answer all these questions “correctly” right now, today–

Even if we could make a pretty good guess at an optimum path that will make you the most happy in the long run–

The only way to really know is to choose something and see how it works out.

Terrifying: Mistakes carry real costs. Opportunity costs, sunk costs, relationships strained to a breaking point, and time that you will never get back. You got exactly what you wanted and then found out you wanted the wrong things.

Terrifying: Things are always in flux and many things are out of your hands. You can prepare very hard and make yourself a good candidate for a certain career….and still not get a job. You can swim in a lake and a bacteria can swim up your nose and eat your brain from within. People get sick, die, leave you. Tornadoes. People who drive while texting. Men in expensive suits behind expensive doors making expensive decisions. A butterfly flaps its wings on the other side of the world and the envelope with your resume in it accidentally falls behind the file cabinet.

Comforting: These questions are asked and answered over and over again in the course of your life. The “right” answers will change because you will have changed.
Plenty of people have chosen the wrong partner, the wrong college major, the wrong place to live, the wrong roommates, the wrong paint color, the wrong career, the wrong pants for those shoes, etc. and lived to tell the tale and do better.

I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story.  From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked.  One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn’t quite make out.  I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose.  I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.  ~Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar, Chapter 7

Sylvia Plath

Sylvia was eating from a pretty privileged fig tree. Certainly not everyone has the same crisis of “All the choices are awesome, how do I pick just one?” But your choices are not horrible, either. Keep going to school with full financial support of your mom and no need to take out student loans, on the condition that you do not share an address with this guy vs. Take a year off from school, live in Paris, make sure that this guy is really who you want to be with, at the cost of supporting yourself much sooner than you planned.

Here is a helpful process for me when making a big decision, developed from one part therapy, one part storytelling, and, weirdly, about four parts management consulting.

1. If I choose this, and everything goes really well and works out exactly how I want it to, what does that look like? What is the fantasy/best case scenario/perfect world version of this? Does that seem like a good goal to have in the first place?

2. If I choose this, and everything does not go well, what does the worst case scenario look like? What do I stand to lose? How likely is it to happen?

3. If the worst case scenario happened, what would I do?  DO NOT SKIP STEP #3. STEP #3 IS WHERE POWER, RESILIENCE, CONFIDENCE LIVES.

4. What are the questions I still need to ask myself? What research do I need to do? Is there some way I can expand my information base to anticipate potential problems and set myself up better to succeed? Are the logistical issues (money, space, time, etc.) surmountable?

5. What is the real obstacle here – The risk, the cost, the thing I am not seeing? Where is my blind spot?

6. What would Old-Me tell me to do? On my deathbed, what will I regret NOT having done? This is the call to adventure

If we were to take your dilemma briefly through that process, here’s what it might look like. These are not meant to be comprehensive or even likely. This is just storytelling. What *could* happen?

Team France

The Dream: You move to France with your boyfriend. You find some kind of au pair or tutoring gig, your housing & visa situation works out, you spend the time that you would have spent on your schoolwork studying French and becoming fluent in it. Taking some time off from school gives you some more clarity and focus about what you do want to study if & when you go back. Gaining independence and distance from your mom helps you gain breathing space and confidence in your own abilities. You figure out how to apply for grants and loans and some way of supporting yourself and/or continuing your studies, leading to [vague future happiness]. You and your boyfriend are incredibly happy together, and you feel confident that this is the person for you. Or, maybe things don’t work out between you, but you are confident that you tried and know more about what you want from life & love.

The Nightmare: You burn your bridges with your mom, and then…..You hate France. You hate this guy. You hate croissants. You need to break up with him and come home and admit that you made a mistake, but your mom enacts your worst “I told you so” nightmare. Now you have no dude and no promise of college and no mom’s house to go to. So you stick it out in a bad relationship. Or you leave him and find yourself stranded. In France. Student loans and debt force you to stay in bad situations, bad jobs and curtail your freedom.

I’m not going to go through all of the questions – that’s between you and your journal and actual discussions with your boyfriend and your mom – but I do want to say two things:

-Being 19, not quite sure what you want to do with your life, and having no parental support or safety net describes A LOT of people’s circumstances. Couch surfing, roommates, a string of part-time jobs, thrift stores, furniture you find in alleys, rice & beans, work-study jobs, student loans, military service, scholarships, night school etc. - If you had to do it, you could do it.

-The “what am I going to do with my life?” question is not going away whatever you decide.

Team Debt-Free Degree

The Dream: You finish your degree. You figure out what you want to do when you grow up, or at least what you want to do next, or, at least a thing you can do for money while you figure the rest of it out. Because you have parental support and no student loans, you are able to take on many internships, volunteer opportunities, and interesting projects that you might not otherwise have had. You are also able to throw yourself into student activities and non-study related passions and friendships. You keep seeing your boyfriend- long distance when you can, visiting when you can. Maybe he manages to transfer to your school. Eventually, you find a way to be in the same place at the same time and start your lives together, and you feel confident about the health of something that can survive so much time and distance. Or, you break up, which is sad, but you meet someone else at the student newspaper or at your theater group and that person is also great. You leave college debt-free, having gotten the most you can out of your education and having tried out many interests.

The Bad Dream: You feel constantly torn between your boyfriend and your college life. You spend all your time Skyping and writing emails and fantasizing about the future at the expense of the now. You miss out on friendships, opportunities, and experiences because you are tied to the future and the distant. You wonder constantly if you are doing the right thing and should have made a different choice. Your relationship with your mom is full of controlling behavior and resentment. The conflict with your mom and distance from your boyfriend drag you down and affect your mental health, and you spend three years of your life feeling resentful, depressed, and torn.

Again, not going through all the questions here, but DO NOT SKIP STEP #3. Step #3 is where you have power & agency, always, no matter what happens. There is no shortcut for Step #3, and no one can do it for you – even if we listed 10-,000 helpful & exciting suggestions, Step #3 is not complete until YOU can articulate what YOU would do if things went wrong.

I am going to cheat and tell you about Step 5 (What is the real question or obstacle here?), as I see it reflected in your letter.

I do not think that you feel particularly invested in or confident in your studies and in your ability to take care of yourself away from your mom’s influence and protection. You cannot quite envision the future where you know how to take care of yourself. “I’ve never supported myself and I know absolutely nothing about it, how would I make ends meet with no savings, no money at all?”

Whether or not you stay or go, I think that is the question you must work on. You don’t have to solve it immediately – there is no shame in not being ready to leave the nest and in needing some time and help to figure this out, and college is a good time and place to do that. You are right exactly where you should be, so don’t use that as a stick to beat yourself up with.

I said earlier that being controlling isn’t the only mistake your mom potentially made here, and that we’d circle back. So here’s my (rhetorical!) question: How the hell did your mom raise a 19-year old with no confidence in her own abilities to take care of herself and no idea how jobs and money actually work?

Because one way I used to win arguments with my mom when she was judgmental or worried-in-a-way-that-basically-adds-up-to-judmental about my choices is, “Well, you either raised me to be able to handle this or you didn’t. I guess we’ll find out.” (She did).

It’s awesome to take care of your kids and provide for them and give them a safety net, but controlling parents can foster dependency pretty hard. If that’s what is going on here, it’s another argument for sorting this out with a counselor. However the problem originated, “but that’s how I was raised by my controlling mother” does not age well as a thing you say out loud to people who are not your therapist.

I’m not under the illusion that capitalism = freedom, or that having good skills and education automatically leads to a paying job, or that the ability to get and hold a job is a statement on a person’s value. We know too much to believe in that anymore, and you’re not stupid or naive to be anxious about this aspect of planning the future. But the ability to earn a living (or at least envision a future where you know how!) is a kind of freedom. It’s the freedom to say “Mom, I am sorry you feel that way, but this is the right choice for me.” It’s freedom from finding yourself in a foreign country dependent on some dude you even aren’t sure you like anymore.

Whatever you decide about France vs. school this year, work on building autonomy and confidence. Get a part-time job – ANY job – and earn a little money with your own sweat. Learn some concrete, practical skills that someone might pay you for at some point down the road. Those skills don’t have to be tied to any college major or degree. Fully half of my professional skill-set comes from managing and being a part of performing arts groups. Seek out counseling & advising through your school, if available.

Finally, if I do all the work of putting my choices through a detailed analysis, and I still don’t feel like I can decide, I add a 7th step. When that fails, I go to an 8th step. I know, they conflict directly with each other. Life is complicated.

7. In the absence of a clear right choice or best choice, which choice preserves the most options for me down the road?

8. I’d generally rather regret a mistake than stay stuck and afraid forever.

I wish you well, Letter Writer. This is an exciting journey that you are on, and these are big, hard questions that you are tackling in a brave and honest way.

Is this what you are looking for in a spouse? If so, rethink your entire personality.

Things you should know going in:

This is a two-for.

I am not calm, collected, or unbiased about this topic.

#506

Dear Captain Awkward,

Been married 14 years, I think happily. We are affectionate, and sympathetic to each other’s problems, and want to help each other out. No kids.

My problem is that I’m unhappy with our household division of labor and I can’t make Spouse understand. Somehow, over the course of our relationship, I became responsible for 100% of our at-home meals – planning, shopping, cooking. I try to mitigate this burden by preparing larger portions on weekends so that we can have leftovers for dinner during the week, but it doesn’t always work; maybe the recipe doesn’t yield as much as expected, or maybe it turns out to be awful and I have to throw away what’s left – plus, cooking with an eye for leftovers really limits the available recipes. So inevitably I’m left scrambling and stressed a couple of weekdays per week, not to mention all the time I put in on my supposed days off. And on top of that, Spouse often (once or twice a week) has off-site gatherings in the evenings, meaning that I have to come home from full-time work and immediately get their dinner ready so they can eat and run.

This wouldn’t be a such a problem except for two things. One is that I’m not sure that Spouse offers an equal household contribution elsewhere. It’s true that they deal with most things related to the outside world: vet appointments, travel arrangements, calling contractors/repairpersons, things like that. I’m introverted and really don’t want to do those things, so I’m grateful that Spouse does them. But does it balance out the day-to-day grind of shopping and cooking?

The second is that Spouse flatly refuses to make any changes to this arrangement for any reason. “Can you maybe be responsible for dinner one set day a week?” No. “Can I just have an official day off once a week and we can fend for ourselves?” No. “I’m feeling a little fat – can I have two weeks off from doing the cooking for both of us so I can try out a diet?” No. (The worst is when they pull out the “but I like it when you cook for me, it makes me feel loved” argument. That drives me BONKERS.) Every so often I just can’t take it anymore and I break down and talk about how the arrangement is ruining my life, and all I get is “You poor thing, I’m sorry this is hard for you” and then everything is the same the next day.

What do I do here? Are there some magic words I can say to get Spouse to get them to realize that this arrangement is unreasonable? It is unreasonable, isn’t it?

Does Mad Men make you feel nostalgia for the Good Old Days? OK POSSIBLY YOU MIGHT BE AN ASSHOLE

Dear Letter Writer #495:

I am sad to say that I do not think that there are any magic words that will make this division of labor more reasonable. You have asked, straight up, to make a different division of labor. You have tried, respectfully and straightforwardly to renegotiate the terms of your marriage. You have used your words like a boss and been flat out refused.

Your spouse understands. They have just decided that it would be easier and more successful to manipulate you than to make a sandwich once in a while.

You eat dinner 7 times/week. Multiply 7 meals by 14 years and you get 5110 dinners cooked by you.

I assume you ate out some of those dinners, or sometimes back in the day your Spouse cooked every now and again, but I also assume that you’ve made many breakfast and lunches, so I feel pretty good using a number around 5,000.

Have they made 5,000 vet appointments? Have you bought a zoo? Perhaps you should marry a veterinarian who can see to your hypocondriac animal farm.

Have they made say, 3000 vet appointments for the menagerie, arranged 1,000 home repairs and planned 1,000 vacations?

Unless you are doing SELFISH ASSHOLE MATH with IMAGINARY NUMBERS I find this equation to be unbalanced.

Now. Marriages do not have to be 50/50 partnerships where every task is split exactly evenly in order to work. People do negotiate different arrangements based on their different strengths and needs. So let’s head off the “My spouse does all the cooking, but I swear I am not an asshole/they just like cooking/I do all the laundry/Don’t tell us how to live our lives!!” justification right here. Whatever domestic division of labor makes sense for you and makes everyone feel like they are doing their share and being loved and respected and taken care of is a good and workable one.

“I’m the perfect servant. I know when they’ll be hungry and the food is ready. I know when they’ll be tired and the bed is turned down. I know it before they know it themselves…and also this is an actual JOB with an actual PAYCHECK.”

There are several problems that make the Letter Writer’s situation extremely unworkable.

1) You, Letter Writer, feel it is unworkable. Blanket statement: It is unworkable because it is unworkable for you. It is exhausting you and making you angry & resentful.

2) You have asked your spouse to make very reasonable accommodations (accommodations that would still have you shouldering the majority of dinner-cooking) and have been met with contempt & manipulation.

It makes your spouse “feel loved” when you rush home from your full-time job and put dinner on the table. In my most generous possible assessment of what is happening, there is some primal “this is what a family feels like” thing around being fed/eating together As A Family desire that is being met for your partner. However, I get the sense that it makes you feel pretty fucking unloved when you ask for a break and it is refused. And maybe your dreams for “what a family is” involved being fed sometimes.

So not only is your relationship one where you do the majority of a daily task that involves a great deal of time, mental energy, and drudgery, but it is also a relationship where you are not allowed to renegotiate any terms or ask for things that you need. You say it’s a good marriage, and I am sure there are many good parts (There would have to be. 5,000 dinners in a row. Jesus.) but the ability to renegotiate and ask for things you need is a pretty essential part of a good marriage, in my opinion.

If you can see a marriage counselor, I think this is an issue worthy of it. This relationship could benefit from some serious renegotiating of roles and from dragging some assumptions out into the sunlight and examining them.

• Script: “I know we have talked about this, but the dinner thing is still really bothering me, and I would like us to see a counselor who can help us work something out.“
• Script when/if you get resistance to the idea of counseling: “Yep, we will pay some stranger $100/hour to work this out. That’s how important this is to me, and that’s how angry and upset I am about this.“
• Script for if spouse refuses outright: “Well, I’m sorry to hear that. I’m going to start seeing someone on my own in that case.” Then do so. During the dinner hour.

I don’t think you are going to get any more mileage out of asking your spouse to change. You’ve done that work and been refused.

Which leaves me with some suggestions that *might* help you reset things but will not be easy or without friction. Let me say for the record that anytime you are doing this much managing & strategizing about a relationship it is an indicator of major, major trouble and that this is work you should not have to do.

I think “could you cook one night/week?” or “could we fend for ourselves this week?” are reasonable, specific requests.

But I think re-setting the relationship will require getting 1) more specific 2) with small, specific requests, that are 3) backed up with action.

When you go to the grocery store, buy a few more:

• Sandwich makings
• Frozen one-step meals that just need to be microwaved/thrown in a skillet or an oven
• Cans of soup
• Healthy but substantial snacks – cheese, crackers, hummus, carrot sticks, apples

“I agree, sir, I am a veritable Swiss Army Knife of companions and would make an excellent catch!”

…than you usually do. You want the house to be stocked with a few things that can be turned into a meal with 15-20 minutes of effort or less. Also collect a few takeout menus from local places and stick them to the fridge or in a prominent place.

Once you have a few things in the house, start with your extremely specific requests. Except, you don’t have to actually ask permission, so think of them less as requests than as you telling your partner how things will be.

Stick to the current week. In fact, in the beginning, stick to the current day. Pick a day when your spouse has that regular evening commitment. I suggest that you do this as a text message during the workday or some other way (like, right before one of you leaves the house, or as an email) to keep discussion to a minimum.

Script: “I forgot to tell you – I won’t be home right after work today, so you’ll have to make a sandwich or heat something up. See you tonight!“

Keep it terse. Resist the urge to give detailed descriptions & directions of what food to make or otherwise mother this person. Repeat after me: “Fucking adults can make a fucking sandwich if they are fucking hungry.” You don’t have to swear AT your spouse, but let the anger out. It will feel good. Include zero apologies or justification.

Then, don’t be home right after work.

• Go to the library.
• Visit a farmer’s market.
• Attend a poetry reading.
• Go to the movies.
• Go the gym.
• Take a long bike ride.
• Have a drink with a coworker or friend.
• Check out a Meetup in your town.
• Have a drink by yourself and read a good book.
• Schedule a haircut, massage, or other self-care service for that time window.
• Put on zombie makeup and wander around in a shopping mall like you are an extra in Dawn of the Dead until mall security kicks you out.

While you’re making these changes, it’s a REALLY good time to sign up for a class or a new activity that will regularly take you out of the house one night a week doing something only for yourself.

If this goes well, you will get very little friction. Your spouse will want to know where you were, probably, and you will have a cool place that you were.

If this does not go well, your spouse will give you sadface and ask 10,000 questions and talk about how unloved they felt eating a turkey-on-rye alone for 15 minutes before they rushed out the door.

This is a manipulation strategy. It can be an unconscious one on Spouse’s part, but it is one. A person who behaves this way is trying to create a lot of friction & difficulty for you so that it’s easier for you to just give into what they say. “Where were you? Who were you with? I couldn’t find the mustard, where did you leave it? How can I make a sandwich without mustard? You know I like mustard. And you got the wrong kind of bread. And I don’t like Progresso Soup, I like Healthy Choice. You know I like Healthy Choice, so why did you buy Progresso? I just feel more loved when you cook for me. It’s important that we eat dinner as a family every night.”

Please (with the help of a counselor, if you can) learn to recognize this for what it is and withstand it. The message you want to send, with your silence or “I’m sorry that you feel that way, I really wanted to catch that show before it left town” non-apology) is to show the other person that this kind of manipulation won’t work. Stay calm. Do not apologize. Do not argue or get sucked into logic or reason – this isn’t about that and there is no winning. “Cool, next time I’ll buy the soup you like. The ballet was fantastic!“

In the beginning, do this every now and again. Don’t ask for a night off from cooking, TAKE a night off from cooking. Give as little notice as possible. Keep the fridge & cupboard stocked to minimize excuses. Meet groans and complaints calmly and don’t let them change your mind or suck you into apologies or unwinnable arguments.

Oh nothing, just feeling the extreme fierceness of Helen Mirren today.

I said already that this is a good time to find some kind of weekly class or activity or self-care ritual that is just for you? Let me say it again. Theater season tickets. A concert series. Join a choir. Find a D&D game. Don’t ask Spouse to fend for Spouseself.  Just find an airtight reason to be elsewhere and reset the de-facto arrangement.

This is a baby steps thing. This is the beginning. First you change the dynamic by making it so Spouse has to fend for Spouseself once in a while. Then you show them you cannot be manipulated back into doing 100% of the food prep, even if they give you lots of guff. Then you see how you feel. Is it getting better? Is all this work & tiptoeing around worth it? Then you re-negotiate the terms of your marriage, hopefully in a way that holds onto the “affectionate, sympathetic” part.

Which leads me to our next question, #507

Once upon a time this person was on Team You but I don’t think he is anymore.

“….he’s just hiding in his room, playing games or watching YouTube” while you do all the housework and evening parenting? If you hire a cleaning person (and a nanny, presumably?), will he be working extra hours to pay for that so that y’all can afford it? You dropping out of school is somehow a viable option, but him going into the other room and taking out a load of trash and wiping down the counter is not? You are supposed to study and keep an eye on children at the same time, but he cannot watch YouTube and keep an eye on children?

You mention his anxiety, which, sure, is probably a factor that affects energy levels and housekeeping and capacity to be around small children. And I would imagine that he has some shame around this that is contributing to the avoidant behavior.

BUT BUT BUT I know lots of parents who have mental health issues, including anxiety. They deal with this by going to the doctor and doing whatever they can to make sure they stay on top of their shit. They build in breaks for themselves – to faff about on the internet, to be in a quiet room for a little while – so that they can be present for their children and their partners. I don’t think anyone has an obligation to *be* mentally healthy, but I do think that people in relationships – especially domestic partnerships, especially PARENTS – have some obligation to work on their own issues so that they can be there for the other person. He has done something approaching his share of the housework before, and occasionally pitches in with a task here and there, so he’s not incapable or unaware of what needs to happen. I think it’s worth checking in to say “Are you okay? Do you think if you went back to therapy/adjusted meds you might feel more able to do this?” but I also don’t think you can count on that as a reason or as a way that things will get better. I’d suggest couples’ counseling, but where would you fit it into your schedule? You could spend a lot of time working out the exact proportion of “just can’t” vs. “Don’t wanna!” going on with your spouse, but in the meantime you would still be shouldering all the work. This stress is harming you, and I can’t imagine that your kids don’t notice that their dad avoids them and that their mom is about to break.

You had a good past with this guy.

You have an incredibly shitty present.

And he has told you, flat out, that it will not get better and that it is on you to make any and all changes here. To quote Miss Oprah: When someone tells you who they are, believe them.

All signs point to: DO NOT MARRY

Like, take the wedding date off the calendar, stop planning it, tell people it’s been postponed indefinitely.

Whether that leads to him moving out, you guys ending the relationship, or is a wakeup call to him that this is a serious problem, I don’t know. I think relationships can survive temporarily hard times if people love each other and commit to working through it. I don’t know how they can survive when one partner just abdicates from everything and tells you the future won’t be different.  You can’t take your marbles and go home in a shared home.

Communication-wise, you could try specific, direct, timely requests. Big talks around “I need you to help out more!” once you get overwhelmed leaves “more” as a theoretical thing. So, when you need to study, what if you physically carried the kids into the room where he is on the computer and said “I need you to watch them for the next hour while I knock out some homework, thanks” and walked away (maybe to a coffee shop or library)? Do you trust him to step up for that hour? (If not? Again I say, DO NOT MARRY). You could set a timer, Unfuck Your Habitat-style, and ask him to help you focus-clean for short bursts, 20-30 minutes at a time and do a little each day. That might make things feel less anxiety-making for him and give it more structure. This still involves you doing the “mental energy and organization” portion of housework and parenting, which is still unfair, but has some hope of taking the pressure off a little bit. Family Cleaning Hour is also something you can model for kids and get them to participate in as they get older.

I don’t know how fixable either of these situations are for the Letter Writers. When one partner makes an extraordinary power play, like “No, I will not cook, ever, and I will not let you NOT cook for me” or “You’re on your own as a parent and a housekeeper, despite working and being in school,” there is so much entitlement and contempt and coercion there that I do not personally know how you come back from it without dropping the “If this does not change I will leave you” ultimatum.

If anything, maybe these letters can form a cautionary tale to young people who are just forming domestic partnerships for the first time.

That tale is: You can have all the great sex and great conversations and feelings of love in the world! But if you live with another person, making a happy life together means that you must do your share of mundane household stuff and make some kind of fair, equitable agreement about how that stuff will work out. Sometimes love means cleaning up cat puke or making the other person a sandwich or filling out the “Eat” notepad on a regular basis. Before I lived with a partner who did not have a lot of interest or competence around food preparation, I did not understand how very, very angry the question “What’s for dinner?” in a certain too-casual tone of voice could make me.  Asked enough times in a row, that question can murder all of your love for a person and turn your dinner into a constant diet of FUCK YOU.

Not everyone grows up in families where this stuff is handled functionally or those skills are taught, so it doesn’t necessarily come naturally or easily and it can cause a lot of anxiety and shame and depression (and be exacerbated by those things). That is okay. You can learn it! You can learn it together. You can work on it a little at a time. But you have to accept that no one is more “naturally inclined” toward cleaning a toilet. Everyone can learn how, it’s everyone’s job, and the toilet must be cleaned whether or not you feel like you’d be good at it or want to.

“Things don’t just ‘work themselves out.’ Other people work them out, and you just think they worked themselves out.”- June to Johnny in Walk The Line

This stuff doesn’t fix itself just because you have an emotional connection and pantsfeelings for a person. It takes sustained effort and out loud conversation about boring stuff like toilets when you’d rather be watching YouTube videos or having awesome sex. Avoiding it doesn’t mean that you live in a magic world free of mundane responsibilities like toilet cleaning, it just means you have a dirty toilet and one of you is angry all the time.

The best blanket advice I can give about this is, if you’re thinking about moving in with someone, but somehow all practical discussions and negotiations about running a household, money, logistics, etc. become deferred to “later” or “why worry about that now?” or “it will all work itself out, why we gotta talk about it?”, DO NOT MARRY or share a roof. The relationship is not necessarily unsalvageable, perhaps it you will work it out in time, but it’s a good sign that you’re not quite ready.

This is still very much a gendered issue. I know it. You know it. Letter Writer #406, very scrupulously used only “spouse” and no gendered pronouns, but how many of you pictured the LW as a woman and the spouse as a man? Me, so much so that I had to physically go back and delete he, him, etc. out of the first draft of my answer. They don’t have to actually be a heterosexual couple for their dynamic to be very, very illustrative of that kind of conflict and power imbalance. Which is still going on, as so many young men and women, raised by feminists, reading all of the articles about fairness, knowing all the pitfalls, are STILL falling into unfair and anachronistic divisions of labor at home.

I think one way to fight against this is for people to really understand that there is no normal. There is no default setting for who does what around the house. You get to make up your own normal, and you get to negotiate it explicitly ahead of time, and you get to re-negotiate it over and over again as things grow and change. My folks and I have our issues, but let me praise them roundly for creating and modeling what an equitable relationship looks like. My dad was the youngest & only son in a Greek family whose mom lived to feed & take care of her kids. When he married my  mom, a registered nurse who later went on to get an MBA in health care finance and run entire nursing home facilities and units of hospitals, Yia-Yia panicked because she was worried her precious baby would starve in the hands of this non-Greek feminist. And I think in the beginning my mom tried to be SuperWife who comes home from a nursing shift and fixes her man some pork chops. But it quickly became untenable, and somehow they found a different way of handling things.

In case you were wondering? Being a chef = also a JOB.

Throughout my childhood, my dad got home from work earlier than my mom and had a rock-solid predictable schedule. So he was the one to take us to soccer practice and get dinner on the table during the week. Mom would handle weekend dinners. We all packed our own lunches and at cereal/toast/fruit/yogurt/fend for yourself breakfast except for Sundays. Mom does the laundry. Dad mows the lawn & does yardwork. They split cleaning tasks equally (with a lot farmed out to us as weekly chores when we lived there), do renovations & take care of the extensive vegetable garden and landscaping stuff together. They took turns taking us along on errands or for outings, leaving the other parent with some alone-time in the house. When my mom was in graduate school while we were in high school, she came home at night every night to a clean house and dinner waiting for her on a covered tray in the microwave or fridge, because that’s what you do when your partner is the one with a harder schedule.

My dad did not know how to do much cooking or taking care of a house in 1968, but he learned because he loved my mom and didn’t want to be parented by his wife. They figured out, as a team, what kind of life they wanted to have and they slowly negotiated how it would work. And they renegotiated it periodically as their lives changed.

If a more “traditional” division of labor feels good* and make sense to you, by all means, do that, but don’t do it as a default. Negotiate it. Verbally work out how and when everything will be done.

Negotiate this:

Ideally, before you live together.

Then again, once you live together and have had a chance to see how your plan is working.

Then, periodically, to check in.

Then again, AT ANY TIME, if something is not working or if something changes. Both of these Letter Writers are perfectly justified in having a “This worked before, except really it didn’t, and now it’s really not working, so let’s figure out how to fix it so we can stay on the same team” conversation right now, 10 years in, 14 years in. Someone who is on Team You says “I hear you, ok, how can we make this work?”

Get down into the nitty gritty details; that’s where the Devil lives.

Once again, it’s Pledge Drive Week, where I shake the tip jar and ask people who like the site and who have a few $ to spare to contribute a little something. Non-tax deductible gifts can be made  through PayPal or  via Dwolla (for which you must be in the USA with a bank account). These drives really end up being bread and butter for me during lean times between adjunct teaching and help me save up for purchases like a new computer, so I greatly appreciate the support people have shown so far. Thank you!

*Do not, please, feel the need to defend or justify it in my comments section (If you’re happy then it’s working!) or use any kind of gender essentialist language (“But ____ gender is just more naturally suited to ______!”) in replying to this.

Hello everyone! How are you? I am completely destroying my cat’s sense of safety and object permanence packing up my entire apartment for a move this week. All the comments in the spam filter are actually spam, so it must be time for another question. Shall we continue the Labor Day holiday with a work topic?

Dear Captain,

I have worked in my office for 8 years. My colleague has been here over thirty. He’s in his sixties, I’m thirty. I thought he was one of my best friends though we’ve had our issues before. Let me explain. No, there is too much, allow me to sum up.

We do the same job in a support team. For a long time, I’ve been taking on more stuff because I’m asked to (and because I actually like to feel like I’m doing my job to the best of my ability) and he’s been excluded somewhat from tasks he likes. I don’t know why this is – it’s certainly not my doing or responsibility, but the digs he gets in makes it clear that he thinks I take everything on (I can be prone to this and work against it…) and it’s basically my fault and there’s a giant conspiracy against him. If there’s a conspiracy against him, I’m not part of it. Which I’ve said a million times.

Sometimes the way he talks I think he has absolute contempt for me. He doesn’t like me being bossy (who would?) but he doesn’t pull his weight or step up to the plate to *offer* his services. The number of times I’ve walked past his desk and he’s just on the internet… or sometimes reading the newspaper! I’ve not said anything to our boss because I don’t want to get him into trouble… and because I feel it would make things worse anyway! All this, incidentally, while I’m tearing my hair out trying to get things done by deadlines etc.

I feel like what he wants is for people to go to him and say ‘Will you do this/help us with this?’ but he won’t offer, won’t put himself forward. When people do? He’s grumpy with them. So more and more people come to me because they know they’ll get a more positive answer… and he doesn’t really keep himself up to date with changes so oftentimes can’t answer their questions anyway!

He sits grumbling that he never gets asked to do things/attend meetings/whatever but when he IS included he then complains that he just sat there useless! All the while, getting in digs at me. He says he can’t be bothered fighting my ‘need to have fingers in all the pies’, to which I have responded that I don’t want fingers in all the pies (i’m inquisitive certainly, but I truly don’t feel that way, but it seems to go that way mostly because he won’t step up and because there’s nobody else). I try to fight the urge to do everything and I thought I was doing much better with trying to spread the load. Apparently not, or not enough/in the right way for him.

Have I mentioned that no matter how I approach things with him, he always seems to interpret what I say or do in the worst possible light? In fact, I do most everything with a view to not upsetting him, not making him irritable or grumpier…. which often means not even *ASKING* him to help out with things because a: I know he will just say no and b: he’ll accuse me of being bossy… then he gets angry because he sees ‘me doing everything as ‘him being left out’.

And all the while he’s sat there saying he doesn’t want to be there/wishes he didn’t have to work in this dump anymore/doesn’t get how *insert project here* works.

So I feel constantly like I’m on eggshells with him. And if he’s pissed at me, he’ll be nice as pie to everyone else and speak to me in monosyllables, which makes me feel about two inches tall.

Last year, he complained to our manager about me being bossy and know it all and opinionated, I think… and at the time I basically apologised, said I’d do better, and didn’t go back with my laundry list about him because I will always assume that I’m in the wrong. It was only later that I thought ‘hang on a second…’

I KNOW I can be bossy, especially when I’m stressed myself. I seem to construct everything at work around a fear of screwing up, which isn’t exactly healthy, so when it’s very busy or I feel like everything’s on me, I do get anxious. Since the last run-in, I’ve tried REALLY hard to regulate my weaknesses. It seems he doesn’t care/hasn’t acknowledged this. I can’t help wondering now that it’s not that I’m patronising/condescending/bossy, but that he will always interpret it that way because he chooses to. But I don’t know because my mind is being yanked in a million different directions and now I’m terrified that everyone thinks that I’m those things as well.

We’ve talked about all this before. I’ve tried to stress to him that I’m never looking to do things to make him feel bad, that I don’t do anything with a mind to making his day worse. I’ve also said that he needs to be direct when he feels I’m doing those things… but he does the same passive-aggressive thing as always.

I deal really badly with passive-aggression (see also: my mother). I know this. I try to do better. I am trying so hard to be the best human I can be and it just seems like it’s all for nothing. I do not know what to do, how to approach any of it!

I don’t feel I can talk to him because he’ll blow up, so I sent him an email trying to explain my side as gently and yet as honestly as I could. He came back and said my email was condescending, that he is way more productive when I’m not there… I just wanted to be honest for once and got accused of condescension, being confident/rude/pushy.

I don’t know… am I a mean bitch, or is it that he won’t accept anything but the responses he wants?

I have no idea what to do, Captain. I really don’t want this to be a thing with our manager again, or to affect my reputation with other people at work – if it hasn’t already – and I’m also scared that actually, everyone else thinks I’m those things when I really try not to be and I’ve been trying so f**king hard to regulate my lesser demons.

Yours,

Terrified Yet Increasingly Unwilling To Be His Doormat

Dear Terrified:

The fact that you are walking on eggshells around this person and signing yourself “Terrified” is giving me a lot of information. That information sums up thusly:

• Whatever bond you shared in the past, your coworker is now actively sabotaging you and your work.
• He wants you to be scared, miserable, and walk on eggshells.
• I don’t think there is a fix where you guys are friends again, so what we are going for is neutrality and distance.

Let’s start with a trick out of Suzette Haden Elgin’s The Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense…At Work. When someone says seems really out there,  it helps to stop for a second and imagine “What might that statement be true of?” You don’t have to agree with or validate their point of view. You don’t have to inventory your faults or take any responsibility on yourself. All this is is arming yourself with information by figuring out how your antagonist is perceiving the situation and what the stakes might look like for them. In this case, for whatever reason, your coworker feels threatened, insecure, and miserable at the shift things are taking in how work is assigned and how much he feels his work is valued. Nobody likes to be sidelined or feel powerless. Age-ism is a real thing, and maybe he is the victim of it. It sounds like some of these decisions are coming from the top and out of both of your control, but let’s just list them as a reason he is validly not feeling super-happy at work right now. It is not cool if your bosses are trying to move you into a somewhat supervisory role over him without making that official, or setting you up as competitors. How he’s reacting to the situation is becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. He feels sidelined, so he acts like he’s being sidelined, so your bosses sideline him. Which, if you are your boss, would you rather deal with:

A) The pleasant, enthusiastic person who tries hard at work and seeks actively to get along with others

vs.

B) The cranky mean guy who does the minimum and complains a lot about everyone?

You don’t have to solve any of this or be responsible for any of this. You’re just surveying the territory here. Keep in mind, your coworker may not feel in control of how work is going, but he does have control over not being a jerk to you. I don’t think it is accidental that you, a younger woman (going by your email addy & photo, correct me if I am wrong), are the target of his hostility. Describing you as “too bossy”, making you out to be “a bitch” so that you’ll second-guess your own confidence and competence and work harder to suck up to him is classic stuff. The powers that be aren’t treating him how he feels he deserves, so instead of working it out with them, he looks around for someone to blame. How conveeeeeeenient that there is someone he perceives as being lower status to pick on! How conveeeeeeenient that this all somehow ends up with you doing most of the work, because you are afraid to approach him, but that is somehow all your fault!

So, eff this effing guy. Eff trying to apologize to him or make him feel like the big man or make him feel less threatened by you. If he wanted to fix this situation, he could have talked to his boss about reconfiguring his workload and made sure he was included on projects. Instead he’s gone with blaming everything on you.

Here’s what you do:

1.DO your work. Be excellent at it. Kick work’s ass with your extreme excellence. Shine with the fierceness of 10,000 Beyoncés.

2. DO keep redirecting him toward solutions. And DO keep pressure on him to be specific and immediate in his complaints. Right now he is probably trapped in vague overarching complaint mode (“You always….you never….why can’t you just….”). You can’t stop that, but you can refuse to go there with him. If he comes at you wanting to talk about the unfairness of the situation again, ask him outright: “Okay, so what do you suggest we do to divide this up more fairly?“  ”I hear you, and that was not my intention. What can we do now to make this right?“

This will be an interesting test. If there is actually a problem with how work is being divided up, and if he is actually interested in working this out, you are giving him an opportunity to suggest something constructive that will fix it. You don’t have to take his suggestions, by the way – it’s possible that his suggestions are that he does all the cool stuff and you do all the grunt work – but it gives you a starting point for negotiating and tells you whether he is serious about changing anything.

If all his suggestions amount to personal attacks on you – “Stop being so bossy/bitchy/hogging all the work/sucking up” i.e., they are based around who you are as a person and not anything about the work – that will give you important information as well. He’s not interested in fixing it, he is just interested in blaming and bullying you. Take a deep breath, and then use it as an opportunity to clarify and redirect things back to solutions and also challenge him to be specific. “Ok, I don’t really understand what ‘be less of a bitch’ means. Ignoring how insulting and sexist that is for a moment, could you translate that into a specific action around our work?“

This is a great strategy for dealing with any kind of passive-aggressive behavior from a friend, coworker, or family member. Invite the person to get aggressive-aggressive and state exactly what they want. Decide if you can or want to give them that thing and let them know your decision. If they won’t come out and say what it is, even when you give them a direct invitation, feel free to disengage from guessing games or trying to preemptively manage their emotions and reactions. With your coworker, if you say “Cool, what do you suggest?” when he complains and the conversation goes to the ad hominem place, you have permission to disengage completely from caring about him and his opinion at all ever again.  I mean, you have that anyway, but now you will have some proof in a way that gives you power.

3. DO NOT apologize to this man ever again for any reason and do not get into lengthy discussions about how your workload is divided up.  You’ve done that, it hasn’t worked. Moving on.  (Ok, if you accidentally stepped on his foot or spilled coffee on him or deleted a file he needed, say “Sorry.” Once.) Feel free to shut down personal, blamey attacks with  ”That sounds like a discussion you should have with Boss” and walking away for a bit. DO NOT have any heart-to-heart talks with this man or seek this man’s guidance or approval again.  Employee morale, work quality, etc. are your boss’s problem to fix, not yours. Become a broken record. “So how would you like to handle it?“ ”That sounds like a talk to have with our boss. I hope you can work it out.” Physically get up and go for a drink of water or to the bathroom or on an office errand, if necessary, to get away from the conversation where he tries to make you responsible for his work problems.

4. DO include him on tasks and in meetings. Even if it’s unpleasant and takes extra effort and he’s surfing the internet. When something is clearly his job – something he should know about or handle – DO redirect people there. Do it by email, if at all possible, so you can minimize conversation with him and also have a documentation trail.  Inundate him with the exact work things he’s been complaining he is missing out on. Copy him on Every. Single. Thing. that could possibly have relevance to him, and on some things that are not. Do it even if he is difficult and not nice to you.

It looks like deference and giving in, but let us count the ways that #4 will help you:

• It robs his complaint of power. “What are you talking about? You were invited to the meeting.” And on the chance that he does have a legitimate complaint, it actually solves the problem, or demonstrates that you are trying to the best of your ability.
• If you do it by email, you have a trail of documentation that you did ask him for help, that you did refer people to him, that you did try to include him in the work and consult him. So if he tries to sabotage you again with your boss, you have written evidence that what he says is not so.
• If you refer a person to him, and he can’t or doesn’t answer their questions, and they come back to you for assistance, that is one more person who understands that he is unhelpful and you are helpful.

5. DO cultivate distance and brevity in how you interact with him. You’re not going silent treatment here – that will escalate hostility and will not go unnoticed. What you are going for is pleasant, polite,  bland, and detached. “I give zero fucks about what you think of me, but I am being polite and professional and treating you like a human being. I suggest you do the same.” Say good morning and good night. Say please and thank you. Go ahead, ask him how his weekend was in a routine, cursory way. Comment on the weather. Find a safe topic – maybe a show you both watch – that you can discuss unemotionally. You’re not being fake or expressing deep interest his life! You are making socially acceptable small talk with a coworker to grease the wheels of the day.

Share zero information about your personal life. Do not complain to him or indulge his complaining (Again, “Ok, how would you like to handle it?” + “That sounds like an issue for our boss.” + maybe “Why don’t you see if we can all sit down and talk about it?” are your friend here). Do not gossip with him about others at the company, and if he tries that with you, change the subject. Pretend you are a character in one of those dialogue exchanges you have to play-act when you learn a foreign language, where nobody can talk about anything real or has a sense of humor. Your weekend was “Fine, and yours?” Your upcoming weekend plans are “Quiet, I hope. And yours?“

You say things like:

• “Have a nice lunch.”
• “Can I get you anything while I am out?”
• “Do you need anything from the supply closet while I’m in there?”
• “Enjoy the weekend.”
• “Yes, I had a nice holiday. And you?”
• “Feel better,” if he’s sick.
• “Dovolte mi, abych se představil” or ”Mám dva bratry, jmenoval Roland a Jason.” No, wait, that’s a flashback to introductory Czech class.

The rest of the time you talk about work or sit in sweet, beautiful silence. If there are people who support you and like collaborating with you, put your energy into building cordial relationships with them and stop spinning your wheels trying to win this guy’s approval. It isn’t coming.

So to sum up:

• Do your work and be awesome.
• You’re not going to change him or get him to like you, so the goal here is to get him to be less of an energy & time suck.
• Try to get him to make his complaints more specific and actionable.
• Try to address the substance of his complaints, if any, by drowning him in the exact thing he is asking for.
• Try to become less emotionally involved in what he thinks about you and how he treats you.
• Make sure you treat him with visible, palpable politeness, especially in written communications. Not because he deserves it, but because it undercuts his sexist accusations about your personality in a documented way that you can show your boss or HR. Think of it as a positive form of gaslighting – the more you dislike him, the more polite and coldly correct you are in all your interactions.
• Rehearse these conversations with a trusted friend if you need to psych yourself up (& get them into your own words) There is no shame at all in this.
• Give yourself a lot of time and be very gentle and good to yourself as you try to change this up.

We think sometimes that people will respect us if we are accommodating and nice, but sometimes it takes a good hard “Nope” to get certain folks to back off. You may find that over time he treats you more respectfully once you’ve put some boundaries and distance in the relationship.  Good. Don’t trust it or get drawn back into a closer relationship. It won’t be rewarding for you.  Just take it as confirmation that your strategy worked and you have successfully gotten him to stop actively treating you like crap. And you have done it in a flawlessly kind, direct, and professional way.

Jezebel has an advice column about friendship, which I wish was not called “Friendzone.” The first and third responses in last week’s post were pretty spot on, but the second letter, here, about the expat leaving town and the friend getting suddenly clingy, is unsettling and the response is also unsettling.

Real talk: Refusing to leave someone’s apartment, threatening tantrums, and making a person who is leaving town (and who, by the way, was always going to leave town) emotionally responsible for your happiness, including all the other times anyone has left/died, is NOT COOL. This behavior has escalated from “whoa, awkward” to “eek, unsafe!” and would have me second-guessing whether I want to see this person ever again at all. I get that the person has a lot of sadness and grief and is expressing it in a way that is self-sabotaging, but here’s the thing about self-sabotaging behaviors (like stalking/clinging/passive-aggressive comments/tantrums): They are actually effective at sabotaging relationships and are very hard to come back from. With a lot of self-awareness, some direct communication, and an ability to rein in the behaviors going forward on the part of the saboteur (which is within your control) IN ADDITION to a lot of grace and generosity from the other person (which you can’t control and should not try), friendships may survive. But there’s no a guarantee, and trying to manipulate a person who is leaving into staying is a guarantee in the other direction.

I would say, in that moment, the goal for the Letter Writer has to be to get the person out of the apartment rather than to dig into the feelings or behaviors. “I have no idea how to respond to that” or “You seem really not okay right now. I think it’s time for you to go home and we can talk about this in the morning” are probably the best I would be able to do in that situation.

It’s unlikely that this friendship will feel entirely comfortable again, but since the Letter Writer is leaving town anyway it may be possible to find a way to allow the friend to save some face and end the friendship less awkwardly. Once the person is out of the apartment, IF you feel safe and actually do care about the person, you might want to send an email asking how she’s doing.

“Friend, you really scared and worried me the other night. I know you are sad about me leaving, and believe me, I will miss you too, but when you say stuff like (awkward stuff) and (refuse to leave the apartment/verge on a tantrum) it puts me in a terrible position. I felt very uncomfortable, and also like I had no idea what to say or do to make you feel better. This is not really characteristic behavior for you, are you okay?“

Don’t apologize. You did nothing wrong. You are doing nothing wrong by leaving. You are doing nothing wrong by wanting to visit with your family and not include people who invite themselves along.

Don’t try to manage the feelings or whatever she does about them. Don’t give her advice. Just state your truth, that she freaked you out and you did not like it, and ask how she is. Give her an opportunity to share, straight up, what she is feeling and apologize. Any face-saving will come from her being honest and direct with you, not from you pretending it’s not a big deal.

Don’t initiate social plans for the nonce. Yep, she self-sabotaged in this situation. Her worst fear is that you won’t want to hang out anymore, and she made pretty certain that you’ll be wary of hanging out. That is a completely sucktastic cycle to be in when you feel sad and abandoned and like you can’t help yourself, and I feel her embarrassment & shame & grief keenly, but it’s an entirely predictable consequence of her behavior.

If you sent a “Whoa, not cool – what’s up with you?” email, and you got back some version of “Friend, I am so sorry, I know I was really out of bounds. I am okay (or I am not okay, but I am going to call my therapist/a good friend/take some other self-care steps). I would love to see you before you go, please reach out if you’d like to set something up” it would be a sign that this person can keep their shit together enough for you to hang out at least once more. If you send it and you get a 15-page FEELINGSMAIL/itinerary for every second of your family’s visit in response, you will know that you are on “this isn’t really fixable” territory and can act accordingly.

The most I’d agree to, planswise, is some kind of farewell dinner or coffee at a favorite place, very close to the time you are leaving. All the better if you have mutual friends and can make it a group farewell event. No going to her house, and definitely NO inviting her into yours. (Refusing to leave my apartment is a great way to get yourself never, ever invited back to my apartment. See also: Complaining that you were not invited to a thing at my apartment.)

I would not necessarily mention your family’s visit to her again. There is no reason for her to know any plans, for instance, and be watchful of what you share on social media. Definitely do not indulge the assumption that she is coming along. That was an assumption on her part, not a set plan. If she brings it up, you may have to be pretty blunt: “I know you wanted to come along, but I just want to hang out with my family during that time. Let’s schedule some (farewell event) just for us.” Watch out for favor-sharking here – “But I took that entire week off work so I could come with you!” ‘But I’ve arranged us an audience with The Queen!”  – “Wow, I am sorry to hear that, but no one asked you to do that. I know this isn’t good news, but I would prefer that you not come along with us.“

If she really is incapable of respecting boundaries, it will manifest pretty quickly & obviously, and you will be able to lock things down accordingly. If this was a case of her being really sad and putting her foot in her mouth, direct communication is probably your best chance of salvaging a farewell where you both save some face.

Hello! First, a reminder from Kate in Bristol:

Hi all – just a quick reminder that Bristol UK is meeting up at The Canteen on Stokes Croft this Saturday, from 11am to 3pm.  I will be wearing a rainbow tie.  For further info please see the original announcement:http://captainawkward.com/2013/09/30/bristol-uk-is-meeting-up/

Hope to see you there!

Griffy Kate

Second, there is a Washington, DC-area Meetup in the works:

Hi! I’d like to announce the next DC-area meetup:

Date: Tuesday, 5 November 2013
Time: 7:00 p.m.
Place: Busboys & Poets @ 14th & V (2021 14th St. NW) http://www.busboysandpoets.com/

The venue is accessible by metrorail, metrobus, Circulator bus, and Bikeshare; seehttp://www.busboysandpoets.com/about/14th-v for details. Street parking may be scarce; there are a couple of garages within a block of the restaurant where you can expect to pay $6-10 for the evening.

Busboys & Poets has a variety of well-labeled vegan, vegetarian, and gluten-free items, and it’s wheelchair-accessible.

Find our group by looking for the red balloon I’ll bring with me. So I can ask for the right size table, please e-mail me atbokunenjin@gmail.comif you’re planning on coming or have any questions or suggestions.

-Bokunenjin

Eat, drink, and be awkward.

Next, a question.

Hi CA,

Hello!

You are slowly changing the way this relationship works by setting boundaries and speaking up for your own needs and preferences. This is about roles. You have pretty set ones, where she self-identifies as The Picky One and you self-identify as The Easygoing One. Your role within the relationship is changing and your friend is needing to adapt, which causes some predictable but fixable friction.

Let’s talk about “picky” vs. “easygoing” as interaction styles, with 10,000 caveats about everything being relative and also about these not being fixed, binary states.

“Picky,” when you’re not picky, is often not used as a compliment. We use expressions like discerning, knowledgeable, “has high standards,” exacting, assertive, direct, detailed, “knows what she wants,” “no nonsense”, strict, etc. when we mean the good kind of picky, and “picky” when we mean “WHY AREN’T YOU MARRIED YET HERE LET ME FIX YOU UP WITH MY LOSER COUSIN WHO SMELLS LIKE OLD SOCKS.” Ms. Picky is The Princess and the Frog. Ms. Picky is The Princess and the Pea. What, are you some kind of special unique snowflake? Why are you so sensitive? Picky, when you are picky, is armor. “I may have these quirks and needs that make me vulnerable and easy to laugh at, but you wouldn’t want to disappoint me.”

“Easygoing,” on the other hand, has pleasant overtones. Easy to please, pleasant, nice, polite, relaxed, team player, sunny, sanguine; Mr. Easygoing is the youngest son in all the fairy tales who wins the kingdom and the heart of that picky, picky princess by being basically the most chill dude ever. The easygoing coin has its flip side, with words like naive, spineless, “a follower,” wishy-washy, passive, doormat, etc., but the trope “Uptight serious person is transformed for the better by meeting laid-back fun-loving person”  shows how deep these archetypes run.

Before about the age of 30, I thought I was an easygoing person, because which would you rather be – someone whose sleep can be ruined by a single legume, or the person who makes friends with talking animals? In my personal relationships, I set out merrily down the Path of Least Resistance and strove to be easygoing in all things. I would prove my worth to people by being super-accommodating. They would be happy, and I would be happy because they were happy, and if at any point anyone was unhappy, I would use the power vested in me as a middle child to entertain and smile and cheerlead and mollify until everything was chill again.

A couple of problems with that:

1. I am not actually relaxed. Like, at all.

2. When you need stuff from others (and you will need stuff from others eventually), being super relaxed all the time doesn’t exactly work as the quid-pro-quo the aggressively-relaxed person thinks it does. “When you need x, I just go with it, so obviously the reverse is true!” Nope. Weirdly, other people are not mind readers, so they can neither suss out your wants nor give you the credit for the robust emotional work you were doing in prioritizing their wants over your own. You haven’t built up a favor reserve that you can draw on at need, you’ve just taught them that it’s normal for you to always go along with whatever they want, so when you do speak up it comes across as you being uncharacteristically difficult.

3. When you’re not in the habit of asking for anything, the thought of bringing up the topic is wicked scary. You don’t want to risk negative reaction from the other person, so you avoid it. And the longer you avoid it, the bigger the problem grows. And the bigger the problem grows, the more likely your expression will come in the form of passive-aggressive behavior or a FEELINGSBOMB vs. a reasonable conversation.

At both extremes, the dysfunctional kind of easygoing and the overbearing things-can-ONLY-be-my-way sort of picky work as a defense mechanisms against not being listened to or respected. “I don’t trust you to actually believe me and meet my needs, so (choose your own adventure)…

• …I will avoid asserting them unless I absolutely have to, and when I do, it will be with maximum weirdness.”
• …I WILL ASSERT THEM WITH GREAT FORCE AND PREEMPTIVELY DEFEND THEM EVEN IF IT MEANS BULLYING PEOPLE TO GET MY WAY.”

My gut feeling is that both kinds of folks come by it honestly. At one time or other in their lives, I’m betting that someone taught them that they would not be respected or believed when they said they needed something. Some coped by avoiding the issue and shutting down, some coped by fighting harder, and those extreme coping methods helped them survive whatever that situation was but have become maladaptive over time or when applied to other contexts. So one way we can help is to believe our friends and take them seriously when they express a need or try to have constructive conflict with us, even when they do it awkwardly.

In defense of being picky, life is short! Be picky! Use this one precious beautiful life you have the way you want to. Don’t date or hang out with people who you feel “meh” about. It’s okay to ask the restaurant to leave okra out of your stir fry. It’s DEFINITELY ok to speak up for your physical safety and comfort and happiness. Sometimes people are tired of explaining their food allergy to the waiter for the 10,000th time and need to go with “I just really hate tomatoes, thanks.” A lot of what comes across as “picky” is people being good at asserting themselves against cultural or gender or class expectations. And a lot of it is people doing their best to manage difficult, heartbreaking shit that they didn’t choose.

In defense of being easygoing, Letter Writer, you are easygoing in the best possible way. When you don’t have a strong preference, you go with the flow and look for things to enjoy about the experience. When you do, you state it. You’re not mistaking “I don’t have a preference, so whatever works for you is great!” for “I don’t care” or being a doormat. I think you are handling this whole thing very well, and I think it is good that you are scaling up how much you state your own preferences. In a way you are learning from your friend’s example. But a rebalancing is necessary.

When roles & boundaries change inside a relationship, friction is a pretty routine part of the deal.  Person A has been puttering along, assuming everything is working just fine and that everyone understands and agrees on what “fine” means. When Person B wants to change things, it can trigger a crisis for Person A.  You say “Howabout when I choose the tickets, we’ll sit close, and when you obtain them, I’ll sit wherever you want.” The other person’s brain takes in the information but along the way the Jerkbrain hijacks it and adds a special discomfort and doubt meta-message that says ”EVERYTHING YOU KNOW MIGHT BE WRONG AND POSSIBLY THAT MAKES YOU A BAD PERSON.”

The bigger/more active the Jerkbrain, the more disproportionate the response. So people with self-esteem issues, anxiety, fears around abandonment, etc. will have a much larger and more serious response to mild criticism than people who feel more secure. Fun, right?

If the message hits Person A right in the Ol’ Shame Place, what comes back can be a pretty stinky FEELINGSBOMB. Depending on the person’s level of self-awareness, empathy, or coping skills, it can take the form of:

• Blame and deflection. “You made me feel uncomfortable, now I’m going to put that all back on you. Enjoy dodging my FEELINGSCHRAPNEL!”
• Outright refusing to acknowledge there even is a problem. Remember when this Letter Writer said “Spouse, could you cook sometimes?” and got an outright “No!”? 
• A really awkward shame-spiral; over-apologizing, over-explaining, over-justifying, panic, emotional outbursts.

The good news and the bad news are the same news: We’re probably all going to be Person A  (We’re doing fine!) in some situations and Person B (Let’s change this up!) in others, because a) we don’t all want or like or need the same things and b) you can try to talk yourself out of needing stuff that you need and wanting what you want, but eventually, the level of “easygoing” that allows a person to avoid any and all conflict or change in relationships is called “being dead.”

Conflict is not 100% avoidable, so you might as well speak up for what you want and and try to deal with others directly and constructively. I believe that this is a skill that can be learned and practiced. It may never feel awesome, but it can feel less scary. The more you do it, the less scary it gets. It’s not a magic talisman against assholes and corrupt and unjust systems, but in cases like this, with two friends who like each other and want only good things to happen, you can work on making it safe for each other to express needs constructively, and over time, learn that the passing discomfort of speaking up about mismatched expectations and desires is survivable.

You’re doing great with this so far, Letter Writer, but hopefully we can generate some ideas that will help you take this to the next level or at least act with more confidence.

As the Identified Picky One, S. has staked out a little more territory than is exactly fair, and you are allowed to try to put balance and fairness back into the relationship. Your need > my preference, probably, but my preference = your preference, so how do we negotiate matters of preference? Taking turns? Whoever initiates the plan decides the plan? In the case of the concert, she likes to sit far away. You like to sit close. If both of you are similarly-abled*, “far away” and “so close” are not competing moral positions. You both get to like what you like. My friend Dave and I have this exact issue when we go to the movies, and we’ve sort of worked it out where we alternate based on who picked the movie & bought the tickets or stay within a range where “close” starts at 5 rows back, not 2nd row, where he’d like to sit, and “far” = “middle.”

So say you decide to have a discussion about this.

You say: “Hey, let’s make a deal. When I make the plans, I will pick the seats. When you make the plans, you can pick the seats. Once we’re sitting at the actual thing, no complaining. It’s a huge bummer for me when I’d rather just concentrate on hanging out with you and enjoying the show.“

Best case scenario:

She says: “That’s fair.”

Congratulations. You have officially worked this shit out.

Other possible scenarios:

She says: “But I literally can’t enjoy the concert unless I am sitting where I want to sit.”

You have some choices:

• Suck it up. Sitting far away is the Price of Admission for concerts with this friend, and you can do it as a favor to her.
• Find a different partner for concert-going. Sitting far away is the Price of Admission with this friend, and it’s too high. Call her when you can do stuff that you’ll both enjoy equally.
• Continue the discussion and see if you can come up with a fair solution. Make it clear that your dislike of sitting far is just as valid as her dislike of being close, so, what would she suggest?

She says: “That’s fair” but when it comes time for the show she still complains about it. “Ugh, I haaaaaate sitting this close.” 

Some choices:

• Call her on it. “Hey, you’re being kind of crappy right now.“
• Appeal to fairness & her sense of absurdity. “I’m confused. When you say ‘I want x,’ you’re just stating a need. But I when I do the same thing, it’s somehow a huge problem? How is that fair?”
• Restate your own preference, neutrally. “Oh? I really like these seats, it means I can see everything.” Advanced move: Once you do this, do your best to give exactly zero of your attention to the question of The Seats, They Are Too Close. Respond normally to other topics, but be a broken record about the seats. “I really like them. I can see.”

This “Huh. Well, I like it,” broken record tactic for dealing with Highly Difficult People can also apply to Mildly Difficult People. It’s the most even-keeled, least hostile way I can think of to communicate “I can live with the prospect of your slight displeasure” without deliberately escalating a conflict.

FEELINGSBARF scenario:

She says: ”Welcome to my shame spiral about how I am the most picky person ever and I worry that makes you secretly hate me but I can’t help being the way I am and I am sorry I suck so much and you are a saint for putting up with me! Please mix your own discomfort at not getting your wishes met with a healthy portion of my own self-loathing!”  (Implied: “So pretty please can we sit where I want to sit? Because you don’t want to have awkward emotional conversations like this over theater seating, do you? Surely you are not so petty as that? You’re easygoing! I’m picky! These roles work for us. Don’t ruin it.”)

Unproductive, manipulative, emotionally exhausting arguing makes everything all about a) who you are as a person and/or b) the past. If you say “Can we sit closer sometimes?” and suddenly the argument shifts into the territory of “BUT I AM JUST AN INHERENTLY PICKY PERSON,” or “YOU THINK I AM A TERRIBLE PERSON,” it’s a minefield. You’re not arguing a course of action, you’re arguing with someone’s entire personality. At some point you’re either going to abdicate, or you’re going to get frustrated and agree with their Jerkbrain’s view of themselves, and they will never forget it.

I’m not saying that the past never matters in an interpersonal conflict, but there are at least two ways of invoking it that are big red flags of dysfunction for me. The first is where you say “That thing you did hurt my feelings, could you stop and maybe we can work out a different way of handling that?” and the other person counters with a tale of something bad that happened to them, perhaps as a child, that is the reason they are this way and couldn’t help doing what they did. Suddenly, the conversation about how they upset you turns into one where you are apologizing to and comforting them. It can feel very cathartic and like you are connecting emotionally at the time, but the next day you’re still mad, and when you go back through the discussion it doesn’t add up. “Wait, you borrowed my car without telling me because your dad was never around? I don’t think that’s how it works.”

The other red flag is when the person constantly dredges up old fights and old slights. You don’t have to forgive, and you definitely don’t have to forget, but in an ongoing, mutual relationship, where everyone has apologized, done their best to make amends, and made sure not to repeat the offending behaviors, responding to “I wish you would stop doing x” with “We could try to fix it, but instead, let’s review, in detail, every single time you have ever been wrong” is equivocating. Badly.

Sometimes when people feel threatened and cornered they can’t even help taking it there. They just start throwing stuff out and doing whatever they can to deflect, deflect, deflect. Everyone manipulates sometimes, it’s just a really human thing to do when we’re hurting or scared or ashamed.

I think becoming a better communicator is about getting better at advocating for oneself (more regularly, sooner, when problems are small, more confidently) AND about getting better at detaching during difficult conversations when someone is bringing a conflict to you so that you can heed what the person is actually saying over the shame-y, terrible call of your own Jerkbrain. It’s not about being unemotional and Vulcan; feel your icky uncomfortable feelings! It’s not about reacting perfectly or pretending that you are okay when you’re not okay. Sometimes you gotta cry, or put your foot in your mouth, or walk away and think about it before responding and trust that the bond that you have with this person will survive if you make a mistake.  But the skill or habit that you want to develop is the ability to say, “Hey, Jerkbrain, shut up, we’ll deal with you later. Right now, I need to pay attention to what my friend is actually saying” and deal with that. 

That’s why when you practice “active listening,” the first thing you do is restate what the other person said back to them. “What I am hearing is that you are upset about x, is that true?” When you restate their points, you demonstrate that you heard them, and you also make a tacit agreement that x is the topic of your discussion.

So, if you feel like you are in an unproductive argument that’s ad hominem or ab antiquo, one thing you can do is try to refocus things on the present/future and on action:

“I don’t hate you, and I’m not actually even angry at you, but I do want us to come up with a fairer way of dealing with stuff like this when our preferences clash. I love hanging out with you, and I want to do it without this being a huge issue between us. Can we work on that?“

“If you are still upset about (past topic), we can try to talk through it again. But right now, I need to talk about (present topic). Could we try (course of action)?”

Reassure the feelings, refocus the discussion on what you can do. Also, make the other person your partner in figuring out a good solution:

“In a perfect world, how would you like this to work from now on?”

You may not agree, or be able to satisfy this vision, but when someone is really stuck on the negative it can help to ask them to articulate a positive. It gives you more information about where they are coming from and what you might possibly be able to agree on. It resets the power balance, especially if you’re the one in the position of auditioning solutions that they keep shooting down.

If you feel like the person is unfairly assigning you responsibility for their feelings, you can be blunt about that:

“I can see that you are genuinely upset about this, but I do not think that I want to do what you are asking me to do. Is there something else I could do right now to make you feel better? Is there a way we could both think about it and talk later?”

It’s okay to disengage from the conversation if you feel like it’s cycling through the same stuff without anything being resolved.

“You’ve given me a lot to think about. Can we take a break from this conversation while I sort through it?”

or

“I think I have a good handle on what you are saying, but I am feeling overwhelmed/sad/hurt/scared/up in my own Jerkbrain and need a little more time to process. Can we take a break and come back to this later?”

I think people are justified in asking you to schedule a follow-up discussion before tabling the current one, and giving a time-frame is one way of showing that you are serious about resolving things, but someone insisting “NO, WE MUST SOLVE IT NOW” (always especially charming when they’ve been stuck in the past for the entire argument) when you’ve specifically said you need a break is another sign that oof, here lies dysfunction.

Letter Writer, you and this friend are probably going to be just fine overall. Half the battle is treating your own preferences as the equal of hers and recognizing that you’re not responsible for all of her feelings. You’ve clearly nailed that. Now there is just the work of making that the new normal. If you like, think a little bit about the kinds of spaces and activities where your friendship functions well and skew your time together in that direction. She might not be the world’s best concert or exhibition buddy right now, but she might be the world’s best brunch partner. During this time when you’re recalibrating everything, set her and yourself up to succeed by choosing brunch.

*Come on, accommodating a friend’s disability with minimal friction is just the right thing to do.

Edited to Add: Relevant to our interests, here is the great Mikki Kendall, who recently co-launched a blog at Hood Feminism, writing at The Toast about the problem of abusers & enablers in progressive spaces.  /Edit

There is a lot of violence and rape culture stuff discussed at these links, so if that’s not stuff you can read about, be warned and do not click the links!

Did anyone else read this piece by Jay Roberts, I Met A Convicted Serial Killer, and He Made Me Feel More Loved Than Anyone Else In My Life?  

As a young Marine, Roberts met Randy Kraft, who is now believed to have murdered as many as 100 people between 1971 and 1983. Roberts survived the encounter, and actually had no idea at the time that he was in any danger, realizing only much later when Kraft was caught that he was the extremely charismatic stranger he’d spent a day with long ago.

Serial murder is darker stuff than we usually deal with at CaptainAwkwardDotCom enterprises, and don’t worry, it’s not a place I want to dwell. However, the piece is really well-written, and it also fascinated me because here was a violent predator using all of the tactics that predators use: alcohol, isolation (both in selecting a target and in getting the target on his own), testing boundaries and then systematically escalating behaviors, choosing someone who will be unlikely to tell, or, if they do, unlikely to be believed. It was like a textbook case of what predators do. Kraft also did what many predators do, which is to groom their victims with attention and flattery.  He got Roberts, a straight, strapping male Marine to pose for sexy photos and even consider a sexual encounter, and he did it by making the guy feel, in his own words, *loved.* Such was Kraft’s charisma that years later, despite evidence that AN EXTREMELY BIG NUMBER OF OTHER TIMES this guy murdered people exactly like the writer in situations exactly like that one, even recognizing that the guy was manipulating him, had likely stalked & selected him as a good victim, he *still* questions whether that “really” would have happened to him and still has complicated feelings about the guy.

Predators & abusers fuck with our heads. They do it on purpose and according to a predictable pattern. The pattern is designed to disorient you and confuse you. It’s often designed to mimic what “love” or “caring” or “passion” or “intense connection” feels like, at least in the beginning. It leaves you confused and doubting your own feelings or right to protest. When it goes bad, by the predator’s design, it leaves you ashamed, like you “let” something happen to you. It doesn’t matter who you are. It is not your fault. They do it on purpose.

Another great piece I read last week touches on some of the same themes. Thomas at Yes Means Yes wrote “Cockblocking Rapists is a Moral Obligation, or, How To Stop Rape*** Right Now.“

***Thomas qualifies it in the post, but it’s worth doing here: He is talking about a certain kind of acquaintance-rape, the type where perpetrator and victim are known to each other and part of the same social scene. He is also talking specifically about what friends/bystanders can do, NOT about how victims can stop their own attacks (by the way, fuck you forever, Emily Yoffe) and NOT putting responsibility on survivors (in fact, the last section of the piece is called “It Can’t All Be On The Survivors”) to make the social circle safer.***

Our post here on creepy dudes in friend circles is by far the most-viewed thing on the site, with over 322,000 views. Next top post? Also about creepy dudes, with 44,000 views. Followed by The Art of No When You’ve Already Said Yes, with roughly the same number. You could say that banishing predatory behavior has been on our minds a little bit. Which is why I love Thomas’s post so much, because he goes step-by-step through what you can do when you know about/see/witness creepy behavior and translates a lot of the discussions we’ve had here into action. First order of business:

“Spot The Boundary Testing

…What the rapists do is target selection. They are looking for someone whose boundaries they can violate, and who won’t or can’t stand up for themselves.  The best targets, the ones who offer the rapists the best chance of getting away with it, are those who won’t report — or who will never even admit to themselves that what happened was rape.  The way the rapist finds those people is to cross their boundaries again and again, progressively testing and looking for resistance.

That’s the pattern to look for.  If somebody seems to be testing to see if one of your friends can be pushed off of “no,” has a limited ability to stand up for themselves, that’s the red flag.

The most important thing you can do if you see this pattern is tell the target you see it.  Forewarned is forearmed.  In fact, somebody who is being targeted and pushed and tested may think they see the pattern, but may not trust their own instincts.  If they know you see it, too, then they may trust a bad feeling that they are already feeling.”

Boundaries are your friends. Defend them and help your friends defend theirs. It can be as simple as “It looked like you were not enjoying that backrub/seventh beer/tickling/hug. Do you want to come sit by me for a while?” or signal-boosting your friend’s no. “She doesn’t want any, thanks.” It doesn’t have to be a big scene or an accusation.

There’s more at the link, including offering options (a ride home, a place to stay, cab fare, “Here, you can use my phone!”) and watching over drunk and high friends. If you’d take away a friend’s keys to drive home, isn’t it okay to say “You seem too fucked up to really consent well to sex right now, and your new makeout partner DEFINITELY does. How about you get their number for later, and we call a cab now?” That probably seems weird and like overstepping, except, 30 years or so ago people revived the concept of the designated driver and made a media campaign and conscious effort to make that into a thing that we know about and do.

Could we make a similar push around sex? Not a stupid judgy “don’t drink, ladies” one (Emily Yoffe, if you’re reading, this, fuck you), but a Too Drunk to Drive is Probably Too Drunk To Fuck one. Prince is really making a push for the beauty of morning sex lately, maybe he can be our spokesman for “Let’s sober up and do it properly, and then go to brunch” campaign for horny party people.

Some of the boldest advice in the piece is to make sure people know who the rapists & suspected rapists are and openly take sides against them. It’s the advice that is probably going to get the most pushback from MRA- types obsessed with “false accusations.” Watch for lots of appeals to fairness and privacy and “innocent until proven guilty.” Hell, I fell more than halfway into this trap myself when answering this question. Not cool, me.

In a court of law, if you are the judge or the jury, a defendant must be presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. That’s it. No one else is held to that standard. To even investigate the crime & make charges, the cops and DA have made some presumptions that so and so is guilty. As Thomas says:

Some people will say that it’s unfair to do that, to simply take the survivor’s word, to say things about people without due process.  Well, due process is for the government, to limit their power to lock people up or take their property.  You don’t owe people due process when you decide whether to be friends with them.  You don’t have to have a hearing and invite them to bring a lawyer to decide whether to invite them to a party.  And let’s be honest, most of us repeat things that one person we know did to another person we know based on nothing more than that one participant told us and we believe them.  We do it all the time, it’s part of social interaction.

So if you want to do something, take the label, plant it on the missing stair in your social circle, and make it stick.

You don’t need a jury trial to kick Handsy Bob out of board games night. You really don’t. Handsy Bob makes people uncomfortable. He doesn’t have to actually rape someone to prove that you were right to kick him out of the group for making y’all uncomfortable.

The last section, called It Can’t All Be On The Survivors, builds on this responsibility.  Thomas calls out the total pointlessness and complete shittiness of the idea of neutrality and trying to remain friends with both abusers and their victims, another topic that has come up here  more than once.

It Can’t All Be On The Survivors

I’ve seen the following two things happen:

(1) someone gets sexually assaulted, whether raped or violated in another way, and people say to the survivor, “you have to do something!  If you don’t do something, who will protect the next victim?”

(2) someone gets sexually assaulted, whether raped or violated in another way, and the survivor yells and shouts for people to deal with it, and the people who are friendly with both the survivor and the violator shrug their shoulders and try to stay “neutral.”

What these two things have in common is that in each case, the people around the situation place all the responsibility on the person who most needs help and can least be expected to go it alone.

…Confronting people is emotionally taxing, and it often irreparably ends the friendship.  In fact, about something as serious as rape, it invariably irreparably alters the friendship.  If you believe that your friend raped your other friend, and you say, “hey, you raped my friend,” then the old friendship is gone forever as soon as the words leave your mouth.  What remains is either enmity, or a relationship of holding someone accountable, just as tough and taxing as staying friends with a substance abuser who is trying to get clean and sober.  That’s not easy.  That’s a lot of work, and most people are not up for it.

The option most people choose, because it gets them out of that, is to choose to not make up their minds about what happened…

…Just think about that.  ”Hey, you’re still friends with Boris.  But X said Boris raped her.”  ”Well yeah, but I don’t know what to believe.”  ”Well, but you know what Y said, and Y’s account was a lot like X’s.”  ”Yeah, but I don’t know what to believe.”  ”But Z said Boris violated consent, too, and that’s three people …” “Well, I’ve been friends with Boris a long time, so I kind of don’t know what to think …”  (Trust me when I tell you, folks, I’m not making that up.)

What can you do tomorrow?  Don’t let your communities do that shit.  Hold your friends to a higher standard.

If the current status quo is that survivors end up ceding social space and fleeing bad situations because they feel shame for “creating drama,” I would accept “rapists & creepy, boundary-violating people are shamed and shunned on the word of survivors” as an alternative.

In the comments,  in the aftermath of all the creepy dude posts here and “safe space at cons” discussions I’ve seen around the Internet, I’d be interested to know:

• Have your social groups taken steps to isolate Missing Stair-people? How did that go?
• Do you have stories of people intervening successfully in potentially creepy situations?
• Do you have a creeper who needs a good banishment and need moral support or advice on how to accomplish such?
• Those of you who go to cons or other events in geek-identified spaces, have you noticed changes in attitudes of organizers or changes in behavior?
• Do you have suggestions for other things we can do to make our social scenes safer from predators?

Ooh, one final link that I got from Twitter (Thanks, Twitter!), about cutting toxic people out of your life and the relief that can come from not having to deal them by errlix might be good to read today. S/he lays it out very clearly and beautifully.

Dear Captain,

There is a a guy at work I’ll call Barry. He and I have been friendly in the past, and then it got weird. He once gave me a MacBook, which was a gift way above and beyond the level of our friendship. We never saw each other socially after work – we were strictly work friends. He has a girlfriend. I have been in a relationship with a man for over 3 years whom I love dearly, and have made no secret of this. When he gave me the computer, I tried to refuse politely, but the way he framed it was “oh I have a ton of these because of my job, it’s just been collecting dust in storage, and your laptop died, so here, please take it.” I reluctantly accepted. I realize now this was a huge mistake.

Over the course of some months, it became clear he was romantically fixated on me. Not interested, I tried to lessen contact – no more conversations beyond, Hi, good morning, <work thing>, etc. If he started talking about his relationship, I excused myself. In the past, he’d cornered me and gone on at length about his relationship problems. The level of detail eventually made me uncomfortable. Well, backing away only made him come on stronger. He started interrupting me at work to compliment me – my dress, my weight, my typing speed. Constant complimenting that was, honestly, bizarre. We’d been Facebook friends. After one last incident in which he complimented me on being a “natural” poet VS an academic poet (I hold an MFA in poetry), I unfriended him. It was because of that remark, plus the cumulative effect of all the weird complimenting and aggressive Nice-Guying at me.

He has been avoiding me since then, which I am 100% fine with. As awkward as it is, I am happy with the outcome. Only, today, a month after the unfriending, I overheard him talking to someone about the poetry compliment on his phone. He has an extremely loud voice and leaves his office door open – across the room from me, fifty feet away, with 12 coworkers in between us, and he knows we can hear him. He was going on in detail about how amazing my poetry is (he’s read ONE poem of mine on Facebook), how he “doesn’t understaaaaand why I am not talking to him! And why can’t she take a compliment! She is crazy!” etc.

My questions: do I confront him? Keep waiting for it to blow over? Do I return the computer? Returning it now will be awkward. But everything about this situation is awkward, so I am not sure if that matters.

-Angry Academic Poet

Dear Angry Academic Poet:

I am cringing on your behalf. And my skin is crawling. And the little hairs on the back of my neck are standing up. You’ve got a favor-sharker (I gave you a laptop you didn’t want and complimented your poetry DAMMIT I was being NICE DAMMIT you OWE ME) here and those are hard to shake loose even when they aren’t in your workplace where you have to see them every day. I’ve been on the receiving end of stuff like this, and in my experience the ones with girlfriends are worse because they use it as a shield, like, they creep on you when they think no one is looking but when you speak up they get all self-righteous, like “I have a girlfriend, I couldn’t possibly also be creeping on you, lol ur fat” and you have to dig down and say “So you won’t be walking me to my car or trying to give me backrubs or listening in on my phone calls or making comments about my body anymore? Phew, that’s good news!“

It hurts when you want to be friends with someone more than they want to be friends with you, but when someone is giving you clear “go away” or “stop doing that thing” signals, throwing a tantrum in a public way is not the way to handle it. If he really wanted to fix the situation, he’d talk to you directly. “I feel like I’ve offended you in some way. I don’t want to make it weirder, but I would like to apologize and find a way to work together without it being awkward.”  Which would open you up to say “I enjoyed seeing you at work, but it was a mistake to mix work friends and real life friends/I am cutting back on social media/I would rather just keep work at work. I’m sorry that hurt your feelings, I hope we can still be good colleagues” or whatever. Even if you don’t talk it out, if he can be polite and work-friendly, you can do the same, and it can blow over that way.

If he does not go gently into that good Work Colleague category, here are some recommendations for stuff you can do to protect yourself and minimize this dude’s inappropriateness, or at least how much it is allowed to affect you at work.

Step 1: Print out and save every weird communication from him in a folder in case this becomes an HR issue, and document all past stuff. If he chills out and leaves you alone, it won’t ever affect him and he won’t ever know about it, but if he doesn’t, it will come in handy.

Step 2: Say nothing to him about the comment you overheard. Assume he is either oblivious or that he wanted you to hear it. Same difference – engaging only confirms that you’re listening and paying attention to him, and right now you want to starve him of that attention so that his fixation will die. Just document the conversation the way you did when you wrote me and add it to your “weird stuff” folder. Let him save face, hope that it will blow over. It probably will, with time.

Step 3: The laptop…

I have so many questions about it, like, did he give you a work laptop for your home use? As in, you have a work computer that you use and this laptop? And he took this laptop from work? It sounds pretty possible that it wasn’t his to give you in the first place, and the laptop belongs to your employer. Even if it was his to dispose of, I would give it back to him. Wait until he’s out of the office to physically put it in there, and send a note like this from your work email address:

“Hey Barry, I’m all sorted out laptop-wise, so here is the one you lent me. Thanks so much.”

The non-creepy response to that, by the way, is “Ok, thanks! Glad you were able to put it to use” and then stowing it away where it goes. If this is all a big misunderstanding, if he just genuinely wants to be friendly and kind and doesn’t understand, this is where he could show that he respects the boundary you’re setting by respecting the boundary. Returning the item and saying that you are returning the item is pretty unambiguous. If he sends weird emails back to you or insists on a conversation or makes the laptop into some emotional issue, document the shit out of everything like you’ve been doing. If he insists that you keep the laptop or makes any inappropriate or personal remark, I would say, ONCE, in writing, from your work email: “Your reaction is disproportionate and is making me very uncomfortable. Let’s close this topic of discussion and stick to work topics.”

Then do not reply to any communication that is not explicitly about work, while continuing to document anything untoward that he says or does. If it becomes an HR issue you want a paper trail of you being reasonable and professional and also evidence that you’ve asked directly for the behavior to stop. I don’t know what your workplace or supervisor is like, or when exactly is the right time to bring it to someone’s attention, but if things escalate and you have a conversation with your boss, try this: “Barry and I were friendly, but then he got very intense and made a lot of personal comments that made me a bit uncomfortable, so I’ve been trying to keep our conversation to work topics only. Have you ever had to deal with anything like this before? Do you have any suggestions for how I should handle things going forward?” You can reassure your boss that things will be cool as long as Barry keeps things professional, but it’s good to get his or her take on stuff like this in case things do escalate.

You can use a broken record approach verbally any time Barry breaks his Avoiding You protocol and lapses back into too-personal comments. “Thanks, but please don’t make comments about my body, I don’t like it.” + “Work question?” “Thanks, but I don’t actually want the laptop. How is Work Thing going?” Then document the comment and your response.

You are actually potentially covering his ass by treating the laptop like a loan, and if he’s too self-involved to see it, that’s his problem. You don’t have to help him save face with mutual coworkers, by the way. If someone asks “What’s with Barry? He seems weirdly fixated on you” you are allowed to say “DUDE SRSLY” or “I wanted to keep work at work, and he wanted to be friends outside of work”  you’re not the one making it weird. Witnesses to his weirdness and your professionalism are helpful to have.

Dear Captain & Co.,

I’m in a wonderful relationship, but we’ve got a Darth Vader ex-girlfriend lurking on the sidelines. When we first started dating she behaved horribly: showing up on his lawn screaming suicide threats when she found out I was over, harassing him for months, hacking his email to get my phone number to send me threatening messages, etc. She backed off after he threatened to get a restraining order.

BF left a lot of his things at their apartment. He couldn’t face making a second trip to get everything when he initially left, and then was too afraid to ask her to send it to him. He was also just trying to get his life back together, as you do after escaping an abusive relationship. Then the whole mess above happened.

He’s joked that losing that stuff was a fair price to pay to get away from her. But lately it’s clear he wants it back. (He also has a narcissistic mother who’s gotten rid of a lot of his belongings without his permission, so I think a lot of it is about gaining control over his property and life.) The stuff in Darth’s possession is mostly memorabilia and collector’s items. We’re pretty sure she still has them because she latched on to his interests during their long-term relationship. But we are both at a loss about how to approach her about it.

Their relationship was extremely toxic. Darth has Borderline Personality Disorder. I hope she’s gotten help, but the Darth my BF knew was volatile, argumentative, irrational, manipulative, and occasionally violent. He is extremely wary about contacting her. We don’t want to trigger her or become a renewed target, especially since we’ll be at the same smallish convention in a few months. Because of her BPD, she probably still views herself as the abandoned victim. Six months ago we saw her at a concert and the way she reacted made it clear she wasn’t over him. According to the grapevine, her current boyfriend is an emotional prop she openly resents, so it’s possible she’s not over him even now. Contacting her might end up being fine… or it might make her act out in any number of ways.

What should we do? Any scripts or advice on enforcing boundaries, minimizing contact, and controlling possible fallout when attempting something like this would be really appreciated. BF doesn’t want trouble … he just wants his things back.

Is the value of the stuff such that it would be worth hiring a lawyer to deal with the entire thing from beginning to end, from sending the request to potentially taking her to court if she doesn’t comply to actually picking up the stuff? Like, it’s $50,000 worth of stuff and you think it would take $10,000 of lawyering to get it back, and you have the $10,000 lying around and you also have a free year of your life to spend on this problem?

Because my recommendation is: Buy new stuff.

You already know all the reasonable scripts. They go like this: “Hello, Ex, I hope you are doing well. Can I Paypal you some $ and have you ship me my stuff that’s still at your house? Send it to work, here’s the address. Great, thanks.“

But you have ample, AMPLE proof that reasonable requests do not get reasonable responses.  You have successfully gotten this person out of your lives after a long and harrowing nightmare. To quote Gavin De Becker:

 ”Any time you reward harassing or stalking with attention — even negative attention – you buy yourself six more weeks of stalking.” – The Gift of Fear

The stuff your boyfriend’s mother got rid of is gone (and is not really his ex’s fault or problem – recovering one won’t make up for the loss of the other). My honest recommendation, for the sake of everyone’s safety, treat the stuff that’s still at the ex’s house as if it is gone forever too.

It is completely unfair. Your boyfriend should be able to ask for his stuff back and have the expectation of receiving it. He also should have been able to end the relationship without months of stalking behavior. I don’t think we talk about the financial burdens of ending abusive relationships or evading stalker behavior enough, especially in the “But you could just leave!” rhetoric around abusive situations. “Leave that person! In exchange, become homeless and lose everything you own, forever. Come on, what are you waiting for?” I wish renter’s insurance policies covered the eventuality, or there were some apparatus for recovering funds & property lost to abusers.

And yet, you guys have enough information to know that “fair” and “reality” are incongruent here. You’re the one writing the letter, and you were also a victim of the stalking, so you get a say here, even if that say is “I am so sorry that you lost your stuff, but I am not willing to risk further contact with Darth to get it back.“

Boyfriend, if you’re reading this, I don’t want to trivialize the trauma of losing stuff…twice…to abusive people. I totally get the temptation to get your things back from her and to win. Unfortunately, in her mind, she wins anytime you pay any attention to her. Coming after her now shows her she’s still on your mind, and that she still has power over you. It is 100% unfair and wrong, and I am so, so sorry. I hope you have a safe place you can work out some of these feelings. The Gift of Fear might be a good read for you right now.

This post is behind a cut due to intense discussion of sexual violence and stalking behavior.

Oh Captain, My Captain!

I was in an abusive relationship with a man who raped me multiple times. This was about three years ago, and for awhile I was on track with the healing process.

In the meantime, I was in a relationship with a different, sort-of nicer man for a year and a half, ending in late August/early September. Early on in our relationship, he found out that I had been raped. He had a freakout, etc etc, and we never really resolved the resulting issues.

After I managed to leave him, I went underground in the hopes of getting some space. He harassed me via social media and text for awhile, but lately he’s been in therapy and started leaving me alone.

Until yesterday, when he texted me. Long story short, he told me his therapist advised him to get closure by reporting to the authorities what he knows about me, because he has ptsd from dating me, because he has such strong convictions against abuse.

I don’t want him to do that. I really, really do not want that. I spent last night with my best friend having nonstop panic attacks while I explained to her what was going on. But he won’t listen to me; he says it’s HIS story he’s reporting, not mine.

I don’t know what to do. How can I stop him? I’ve told him he can’t, I’ve pleaded with him not to, I’ve asked him to tell his therapist I’m against it and talk it over again, I’ve given ground and said Talk about the harassment all you want, just don’t report the abuse.

How can I stop him? I’m breaking down.

-Panicked

Dear Panicked:

I do not know how to foil Ex #2′s plans to contact the cops about Ex #1, but I do have some general advice and I bet the readers here will also be able to offer information and support.

Here are some suggestions. I’ve numbered them for my own clarity, not because they should happen in this exact order. 

Step 1: Please stop responding to Ex #2 at all and block/filter & document all his communications to you. This is just another iteration of his stalking, harassing behavior from before. You successfully got away from him and stopped giving him your attention, so he found a surefire way to get your attention in the most horrible, violating, making-your-trauma-all-about-him fashion that has you responding multiple times and begging him to do something. You had a physically abusive ex, you HAVE a stalker. Let this be your mantra as you navigate what comes your way.

For the record, I seriously doubt his therapist (if there is even a therapist at this point) is advising him in this course of action. How will it create “closure” to throw a giant wrecking ball at your life? He doesn’t want closure. Closure would be anonymously donating a shitload of money to a domestic violence organization and leaving you in peace like you asked him to while he works out his own issues by himself.

Step 2: Call your local rape crisis center or hotline and talk this all through with someone, especially the legalities involved. What grounds do you have to insist that after successfully getting Ex #1 out of your life, the last thing you want to do is be involved in any kind of legal investigation that might bring him back into your orbit? Is his reporting of a three-year-old crime that didn’t happen to him against your wishes going to even have any effect or sway at all?

If you’re going to be panicked, you might as well be *informed* and panicked.

Step 3: IF you involve law enforcement or law enforcement comes calling, the problem to put on their plate is “I cut off contact with an ex, who has now emerged out of the blue and is threatening to reveal some very sensitive, private information about me over my fierce objections. Do you have any suggestions for how to avoid this? Can we document this harassment in case it escalates in some way?”

Only do this with advice of trained folks, but at the end of the day, you may just have to call his bluff. “I really don’t want you to do this, but what I really want is for you to leave me alone. Since this is about “closure” for you, there should be no reason for you to contact me again for any reason.” Say it once, then don’t respond to anything from him.

Step 4: Gather Team You and take evasive, protective action. Since you’ve successfully escaped two abusive relationships I imagine you are troublingly familiar with some of these tips, but I list them again here for a reason.

Ex #1 used actual physical violence to manipulate and control you. But Ex #2 is also trying to manipulate you and control you, and I think it is worth treating him as an equal threat to your safety and peace of mind. When you boil it down, Ex #2 would rather ignore your stated wishes than trust you to control your own destiny, including how you handle an abusive past AND whether you’d like to have him in your life at all at this point. He reframed what someone else did to you as something that was all about him – HIS story, HIS PTSD, HIS need for “closure.” When you told him about it, he “freaked out” and made it the most significant thing about you or the relationship. This is the opposite of caring or empowering. This is the opposite of safe.

He would probably be horrified if you told him this, because this White Knighting display is so he can differentiate himself from That Guy in your eyes. He thinks the comparison between him and Ex #1 is favorable, which is why he’s working so hard to keep the story of Ex #1 alive for you. When you’re getting your sense of self-worth from “Well, at least I didn’t rape you” and “Look, I got you to pay attention to me again! Terrified attention is better than no attention, right?” you are one seriously fucked up dude.

Actually, “fucked up” is too generous. It is downright uncanny how he found the single most terrifying thing in your life to use as his hook to bait you with. To get your attention and be in your life, he is willing to dredge up the worst thing that ever happened to you and use it as a signal flare. I would not ascribe ANY goodheartedness or good will to him. Resist the temptation to pity him or tell yourself he’s not that bad.  Pity is for later, when he’s gone.

So:

• Tell your close friends what is going on and ask them to be vigilant and act as a buffer where possible.
• If you live alone, maybe stay with someone or have someone stay with you if it will make you feel safer.
• What’s security like where you live? Is it time to have the “Please don’t buzz people in if you’re not expecting anyone” talk with your neighbors? This is stressful and unfair, and maybe something a friend can help you with.
• When you talk to the crisis center or police, see what they suggest telling your workplace or school, if anything. You want to make sure no one is giving out information about your whereabouts or schedule. Again, this is stressful and unfair. If you have a coworker you are close to, maybe ask them to go to HR with you. Sometimes just having someone by your side who believes you and can speak up if you get emotional can help.
• Get a new cell phone number and give it out only to a small number of trusted people and ask them not to share it with anyone without checking with you first. But keep the old one active for now, including a texting plan – see if you can make it active as a Google Voice number or on a burner phone. Give the old phone/phone with the old # to a friend or family member for safekeeping. The logic here is that Ex #2 can text you or leave messages to his heart’s content. You have a record of them while also having a buffer against having to deal with them.
• Readers: What else would you suggest?

Finally, repeat after me:

“I do not deserve to be treated like this. I didn’t deserve the abuse when it happened, and I don’t deserve having some loser that I dumped putting all of his issues on me in some pathetic bid for my attention. Right now I am scared (rightly so) at the prospect of reliving the things I survived and weary (rightly so) at the unfairness of the financial, emotional, and social costs of insulating my life against his incursions. But I have defeated monsters before, I will defeat them again, and however this all shakes out, I will shine with the fierceness of 10,000 Beyoncés.“

You will have a lot of people pulling for you, dear Panicked, and this is one of those times that we’d definitely like an update as time goes on if you’re up for it.

Much love from me & the Awkwardeers.

Dear Captain Awkward,

Recently, an old friend began messaging me on social media to tell me that he had cancer. Initially, I was shocked to hear that he’d been diagnosed with (an unspecified) form of cancer. He’s the same age as I am (24) and, from what I’d seen when we were closer, led an active healthy life. I kept my replies polite and concerned. As the conversation progressed, he added more details about hospital visits, damage to his spine, how he was unable to walk and about how his parents were helping him with very basic functions. This was a lot more detail than I was comfortable with and the tone was beginning to shift to wanting me to pity him or to come back into his life.

To add some context, this is a friend who I spent time with during my first year of university, when I was 18. We dated briefly (maybe two months), but I chose to end the relationship and our friendship fizzled afterwards. Since the break-up, he has only initiated contact with me when he knows that I am single.

In our conversations, this friend has given me a lot of detail about how the cancer has impacted his life, but very few details on what type of cancer it is or what the prognosis is. He has told me that he doesn’t want to know how long he has to live and I respect his position. He has hinted that he wants us to meet and perhaps to restart some romantic activity. I’d be willing to meet, as a friend, to help support him, but I’m really uncomfortable with being asked on a date. With respect to the large amount of detail given to an old acquaintance, I understand that he’s facing a terrifying and traumatic life event and he’s looking for all of the support he can get.

What I’m asking is: is there a way to (very gently) sway him from passing along so much information and from trying to curry pity? I don’t really understand why he’s chosen to re-initiate contact after so many years, and with a very intimate level of detail. Also, am I completely insensitive for feeling awkward and uncomfortable with his messages? I mean, he has cancer. That certainly trumps my awkwardness, right?

Any scripts or tips?

Thank you very much,

Feeling Cancer Shamed

Dear Shamed:

24 is indeed very young to have such an illness, but cancer does not discriminate, and an “active/healthy” life is not a magic shield.

This question is about how to be kind while maintaining one’s personal boundaries. If you do not want a close relationship with this person, and you definitely do not want to rekindle any kind of romance with this person, hold fast to this fact. It is a truth you can steer by in awkward waters.

Nobody wants to wear the t-shirt that says “I Pre-emptively Dumped a Terminally Ill Man. Ask Me How!” But nobody wants to wear the “I Said Yes To A Pity Date That I Now Dread With All My Soul And Now I Feel Like A Patronizing Jackass!” shirt, either.

The next time he makes romantic hints, here is your reply: “Friend, forgive me, but it sounds like you are hinting at asking me on a date or wanting something romantic to happen between us if we meet up. Am I understanding that correctly?“

He must now either admit his intentions or deny them.

If he denies? “No, no, I just meant in a friendly fashion.“

You say:”Well, that’s a relief, because I am not interested in you that way. I’m glad we cleared the air!”

If he admits it? You say, “Thank you for telling me outright where you stand. Sadly, I do not feel the same way, and I didn’t want to make any plans while that was unclear.”

Keep it short and subjective. “I don’t want….” “I don’t feel….”, etc., and don’t try to justify it beyond that.

So that’s one part of it. It will not feel good, but neither would the alternative Pity Date scenario. You can’t control his hopes, or his disappointment, but you can be honest about how you feel.

After you have this exchange, however it works out, take a few days off from communicating. If his primary motivation in reaching out to you is romantic/sexual, his communications might taper off. Or you might see a short burst of increased attempts to lock in your attention as he struggles with rejection. Give it a few days to settle down either way.

And in those few days do some hard thinking about what you want from this friendship and what you are willing to give…if anything. Once you have an idea of that in mind, you can start a very honest conversation with him. Either “When you reached out to me after all this time, what were you hoping would happen? (If romance, okay, that’s resolved. If Not Romance, then what?) I want to be supportive, but I am also unsure about the best way to do that. Is there something specific you’d like help with?” or “I am so sorry for what you are going through, but I do not think I can be the friend you need right now.” 

Let’s talk about the elephant in the room.

I think, on some level, you question whether your former friend is being truthful. There is a mix of too much detail + not enough information (every detail is shared but the kind of cancer is a secret?)+ trying to get into your pants that feels….off somehow. I wish we could just laugh at the idea that anyone would do something like this, but, it happens, and one really creepy possibility I took from your letter is that his is the kind of cancer that will magically go into remission as soon as you come back into his bed.

As a teacher of college students, I am sometimes amazed at how the Angel of Death & Disaster knows to strike just when a major assignment is due. 99.99% of the time, the described terrible life event really happened, and the student is being truthful and honestly seeking help in readjusting deadlines. But I am also pretty sure I have been lied to at least once about stuff like this. Things that set off my Spidey senses:

• Too many details, which is a common flaw in lies and manipulation tactics. You’re invested in “selling” a version of the truth, so you oversell it.
• Communication goes all wonky – they either shame-hide, stop coming to class, stop responding to me and their group members, or they barrage me constantly with drafts and updates and unrealistic expectations around response times. There’s lots of shifting of blame, like, initially the assignment is late because grandmother died, but now it’s late because I did not IMMEDIATELY respond to a 2 a.m. question about how to do it.
• It’s part of a pattern, where there is a disaster *every time* an assignment is due. Which doesn’t mean the disaster or disasters aren’t real, but speaks to a “Ok, let’s figure out how to get you some support so you can have more of a cushion when disaster does strike so it doesn’t derail your education completely” plan.

None of these things by themselves are telling, and really the only thing to do in those situations is what you’re doing:

1) Take people at their word and treat everything like it’s real. (You, listening to your former friend, and having your first instinct to be supportive).

There is no downside to being kind and compassionate and believing someone who is hurting, and a lot of downside to throwing suspicion on them when they are most vulnerable.

To which I would add:

2) Loop in others in the community.

Confidentiality issues limit what I can do here, but saying “Hey, students, x hasn’t been in class this week or last week. If you’re friendly with them, can you make sure they get the notes?” means some friendly human who is not an authority figure will check on them. Also putting out feelers to student counseling, student advising, LGBTQ affairs, etc.

3) Create structure and boundaries around what happens next.

For example, if someone is missing assignments due to illness, death in family, or other crisis, what is a reasonable plan for getting it completed so that they learn what they need to learn and actually finish the course? Cool, let’s spell that out in writing, and let’s copy my boss on it, so that the expectations are clear, and so that if things are serious enough that a medical withdrawal or incomplete grade are needed then we have the structure in place to make it happen.

This way, the people who genuinely need help have as much support as possible, and the once-in-a-blue-moon person who thinks they have to lie to get an extension or support can maybe rethink that as a strategy while still saving face and being welcomed in the community.

So, I don’t think there is any value whatsoever in questioning your friend’s story… to him. Facing death is a pretty good & forgivable reason to ring up someone from the personal Booty: Greatest Hits Collection and see if another go is possible. Wanting someone to talk to in a time of crisis is not a crime and does not make you creepy.

But he if is really ill, depending on a reluctant person from his past as his sole confidant & emotional support doesn’t seem to be the likeliest way to get what he needs. So you are justified in:

Calling in mutual friends. You don’t have to know the kind of cancer to reach out to people you know in common and say “Have you talked to x lately? He is ill and in a pretty bad way from what I can tell, and I think it would cheer him up to hear from you.” Try to find people who live close and could visit him easily. And this way if you DO decide to visit, it doesn’t have to be one-on-one time, i.e., a date. Meet his family. Have a mini-school reunion.

This is one way you can satisfy those tingling spidey-senses. If he balks strongly at you having any contact with his folks, or balks at seeing old friends, etc. and insists on it being just the two of you (after you’ve had it out about romantic intentions), or wants you to keep the illness secret from mutual friends, it’s a sign (I’m sorry!) that not all is as it seems and you should maybe reconsider any kind of visit.

Calling in the (professional) cavalry. Suggestion that he talk to a counselor. Researching cancer support groups in his area. You can do this proactively (“This is a huge deal, and I want you to have every resource at your disposal!” “You mentioned feeling lonely & cut off, could something like this help?“) and reactively. When the level of detail & contact & sharing gets uncomfortable for you, it is okay to say “Friend, I really, really want you to be able to talk to someone who understands more about this. Please, please call (x services). I think I need to be Occasional Fun Distraction Friend for a while.“

Put a structure in place about how often you’ll talk/IM/message back and forth and stick to it. It’s okay to filter his messages a bit and deal with them when you can get to them. It’s okay to set up a Skype call every two weeks and ask him to save things up for then or tell him you’ll address whatever he sent you then. It is okay to set expectations about frequency & kind of communications that are okay with you.

He might be dying, which is awful to contemplate. Cancer, that fucking evil shitbeast, means that he might be “dying” for a very long time. If you decide to stay in this guy’s life, set yourself up for a marathon and not a sprint from crisis to crisis that all require your immediate response and attention.

And again, if he balks at these limits and insists on Now Now Now and guilts and shames you for not giving him exactly what he wants when he wants it, here there be Trouble, and it is a sign to distance yourself.

Above all, be honest about what you are prepared to do. When a friend describes their illness and you say “That’s too heavy for me, man” and bail, it’s impossible not to feel guilty. Sick people didn’t choose to be sick, and it’s not fair to add “You’re bumming me out man” to their already heavy load. I mean, this is basic human decency stuff, right?

But we have limits. And this guy isn’t actually your friend. If he weren’t sick, would you want him in your life? At all? Whatever else is going on, this guy severely miscalculated the depth of your friendship. You have the extremely unenviable choice of giving reluctant support or setting him straight about that miscalculation. If “I am sorry for your trouble, but I cannot be the friend you need” is the bald truth, you may have to tell him that. You have choices, so make sure that you offer what you offer freely. Whatever you decide, it is okay to carve out boundaries about what you can and cannot offer. Romance = no. Sex = no. Instant, constant emotional support via social media whenever he downloads on you = no. A friendly chat every few weeks? Rallying other friends to his side? Encouraging him to seek a variety of resources to help him through this? Definitely maybe.

Hey there Captain Awkward, I don’t normally post these things, but I’m taking a big step and reaching out to you in the hopes that I can get some useful (if not probably obvious) advice from you.  

I have been in a relationship with a man 8 years younger than me for the past three years and I have recently moved cities to be closer to him.  When we had talked about me moving closer, we had also talked about moving in together.  He seemed excited at first, but when it became real he quickly backed out and said he wasn’t ready for that kind of commitment.  So I moved into my own apartment and even though I was sad we weren’t making a move together, I knew that this was going to be an exciting new adventure for me.  The summer was great, until he found out that he didn’t pass one of his qualifying exams.   I should mention that he is doing a very stressful PhD program and has recently started on anti-anxiety medication to help cope with the stress he is under.  

A few weeks ago, he out of the blue tells me that he doesn’t want to be with me anymore because I will be too old to give him children when he ready to do so.  I was stunned…literally I had just made this man dinner and we had been watching tv for an hour when he drops this bombshell on me.  I freaked out…rightly so I think!  Anyways, a few days later I sent him a message saying that I needed to talk to him face to face and that I had questions for him about the real reasons he didn’t want to be with me.  So he came over, and within 2 seconds he was crying like the Nile saying that he was so sorry, and that he has been under a lot of pressure and that he felt he just didn’t have time for a gf and he didn’t know what else to do.  Me being the understanding person that I am, forgave him and decided that mistakes are best left in the past and perhaps a fresh start was in order where we give each other more space when feeling pressured by extraneous forces.  

Fast forward three weeks to today…We spent our first night together since our split and everything was great.  It felt relaxed and “real”.  Until he left his facebook open…I should have closed it, but for some reason I got a “feeling”.  Sure enough, he was writing an old flame about “how he was just getting out of something serious” and was making plans to visit a girl in Europe to meet up with her friends in a month.  I’m distraught and feeling so taken advantage of.   I sent him a message asking if he was being honest with me about how he really feels and what he really wants.  He said that everything was great and he’s super stoked.  WHAT AM I DOING WITH THIS PERSON????  Am I wasting my time here or do I give him the benefit of the doubt (especially since I was snooping) and be patient?

-Patient

Dear Patient:

I have been where you’ve been, namely:

• The guy I’m involved with gives me A LOT of information, up to and including saying words like “I don’t see a future together,” about his commitment to a relationship. See also:
• Being really enthusiastic about being with me, talking a lot about stuff like moving in together, and then getting cold feet when it comes down to actually doing it. Like, the time I moved back from New York City to be with someone who broke up with me the very next morning (*after* sleeping with me one last time, of course. Just to be sure!). 
• Leading me to think it’s a monogamous, exclusive relationship while simultaneously talking/chatting/emailing with future flirtation/make-out partners as if the relationship doesn’t actually exist. 
• Me having lots of those “feelings,” like the one you had that led you to snoop into this dude’s messages. 

Snooping is wrong, we should respect each other’s privacy, etc., etc.

HOWEVER:

• Cheaters are terrible at logging out of their shit.
• Your instincts told you something was up and when you dug deeper, there was something to find that justified that feeling.
• Once you snoop, you pretty much lose the moral high ground, because any revealing of what you know and how you found it makes the other person instantly outraged at the privacy violation – legitimately so! If you confront him, he’s going to have an explanation that sounds reasonable + a lot of righteous anger at the privacy violation.
• However, you KNOW that he was flirting with other ladies and talking about your relationship in the past tense, which is not something that people who are madly in love tend to do.
• Even if you’d found nothing out of sorts, you are feeling “off” about the relationship enough to commit a major privacy violation. Something is not right here! Your gut is telling you some stuff, so listen to it!

I’m not going to say that people never have second thoughts, that they never flirt with or think about other people, and that relationships are never repaired successfully after trust has been breached, or that people never change their mind about breaking up.

But, I think this guy is giving you a lot of information, and some of those pieces of information tell you that:

• He is capable of hiding his unhappiness and second thoughts and then springing stuff on you out of the blue when you think everything is going fine.
• He doesn’t seem to talk over his doubts or problems in a way where you get to have any input or time to process anything, it’s all “YOU’RE THE GREATEST, PLEASE MOVE HERE” “NOPE, SORRY, LET’S BREAK UP.” “OH SORRY THAT WAS AN ERROR, NOW WE’RE BACK TOGETHER!”
• A setback for him (failing exams) is taken out on you. YOU didn’t fail his exams. The RELATIONSHIP didn’t fail his exams.

So. I’ve been where you’ve been. And my tactic for dealing with it was to become the most chill, patient, forgiving, understanding, laid back, relaxed, cool girlfriend EVER. I will KNIT this thing back together with the POWER OF MY MIND and the STRENGTH OF MY CHARACTER.

I will show you that BEING THE BIGGER PERSON and LETTING YOU BE YOU and NOT GETTING HUNG UP ON PETTY STUFF (monogamy, planning where I will live in the future) is the way to happiness!

And when my needs come into conflict with what is actually happening, I will teach myself not to need those things anymore. I will sacrifice them on the altar of TRUE LOVE. Our relationship will be like a constant audition where I strive only to show the best, prettiest, least messy parts of myself to prove that we should be together! I will also use LOGIC and REASON. Pro & Con lists are romantic, right? Long late night talks with crying are romantic, right?

This kind of shitshow is how, after moving back from New York and getting dumped, I ended up going to his kid’s birthday party – “I want you to meet my son,” he said. “I want to introduce you to my mom and my best friend,” he said. “I want you to meet my actual girlfriend who I’ve been with the entire time we were also dating” and “I will introduce you as the (unpaid) videographer,” was strangely silent.

And I stayed there, and I taped it, because I if I couldn’t have that dude then the award for Most Patient and Accommodating Lady would be mine. I would PROVE MY WORTH.

I hope your dude is not like that dude in my past, Patient, and I hope this was just a momentary glitch on your long road to happiness.

But I do have some advice for you. First, if he makes any noises about breaking up again, BELIEVE HIM. Get out. End it. Get off the roller coaster.

Next, questions of a mundane and practical nature.

Your career/job. Do you like it? Is it what you want to be doing? What’s your plan for the next few years with work (or education, etc.)? Is that plan served by you being where you are, doing what you’re doing? Spend some time thinking about that.

That little apartment you pay for yourself…is it tricked out just right, the way you want it to be, or are you treating it as a placeholder for the place you’ll eventually share with this guy?

This new city you moved to, do you like it there? Do you feel like you know it well? Have you been meeting people and making new friends and building a community and a life there? Do you have friends who aren’t connected to your boyfriend in any way?

Your old friends, your family, the people closest to you – how often do you see them and talk to them? Reach out with a phone call. Make plans for a visit. Remind yourself who you were before you ever met this guy.

Because my advice to you is to bite hard into your life and fucking feast on it. Surround yourself with people who say “hell yes!” to the prospect of your company and who reward your patience and forgiving spirit with steadfastness. Climb every mountain and ford every stream. Put some love into your home and your city and make it a place you can thrive and be at home with or without him.

This guy may care about you quite sincerely. You may have amazing chemistry. You may have many good days ahead.  But he has told you in many ways that he is not a solid foundation for you to build your dreams on, at least not right now. He can be a part of your life, but he has some work to do to show he is serious and can be trusted. You did him the kindness of believing him when he came back, but do yourself the honor of believing in the part where he went away. Love him (it’s not like you can dissuade the Golden Retriever at will), but love yourself more.

And when you want stuff – reassurance, a solid plan for the future, to know what’s on his mind – ask for it without apology. YOU are not the one with something to prove, dear Patient. You are not the one who made this fragile and uncertain.

Hey Cap’n & Crew,

Fairly straightforward question here. Sometimes my face can be a traitor…it turns bright red and gets really hot at any extreme emotion, particularly embarrassment. I am sure many people can relate!

So here’s the question: What would you suggest for scripts for when someone (99.9% of the time it’s an older man, at least old enough to be my father if not grandfather) gives a weird, flirty, unwanted compliment (for example, how beautiful I am or some such nonsense), triggering a red-face explosion, and then they comment on how they made me blush. Now I am not only red-faced with embarrassment but also with anger and helplessness. You just KNOW that they’re pleased as punch with themselves and see nothing wrong with flirting at an unwilling participant because hey, they’re old and married and male! No harm done, right?

If these were random men on the street, I’d have no problem ignoring them or coming back with a scathing retort. However, this most often happens when it’s a client, a family friend, a friend’s family member, or fellow hobbyists. Particularly with the clients, I can’t give them a death-glare like I really want to.

Any suggestions?

Thanks in advance!
Red (Wishing I Was) Dead Revolver

Dear Red:

For any gregarious older dudes reading this, when you comment on the involuntary physical reaction of a young female acquaintance or colleague, we don’t find you adorably avuncular. We find you creepy and domineering. You shown yourself to be someone who uses a another person’s distress reaction as a perceived weakness that you can use to pick on them. Or as someone who deliberately tests and pushes boundaries to groom people for further manipulation. Some people wear their handles on the outside — it doesn’t mean you have to pull them.

So, Jolly Old Fellows, let’s go back in time to puberty, when a screen door shutting in a distant room could give you an instaboner.

Would it have been cool for people to point at it and comment on it and see if they could get it to happen more? Like, teachers, cafeteria staff, fellow students, people on the bus? Would you have enjoyed that particular attention?

Even if this is a highly specific  fantasy of yours, would you appreciate it if it happened all the time? Everywhere you went? From everyone you met? “Oh, hilarious, Jolly’s penis is acting up again. Everyone look! What’s the matter, don’t be so sensitive! We’re just joking, Jolly!“

Howabout as you aged? Like, in work meetings? Where maybe it affected people’s perception of your qualifications? “We are considering you for the promotion, but….awwwwww, buddy, I’m glad you’re excited, too!” “Well, we could have Jolly do the presentation, but not if he’s going to release the Kraken again like he did last time.” 

Or religious ceremonies? “Dearly beloved, we are gathered here to join this man and this woman in…Oh Jolly, not again.” 

It would be pretty violating and patronizing to have someone assume a lot of stuff about you due to an involuntary physical reaction, right? So knock it off. When a person is blushing, give them space and don’t comment on it. It’s just their face being a face, it doesn’t need your “Well aren’t you a precious young LADY” commentary.

Back to you, Red. Snappy comebacks don’t defeat ingrained sexism and ageism on their own, and you have to walk a fine line with clients. I wonder if being super-boring and factual isn’t the answer.

• “Yes, my face does that sometimes. Now, about the pricing information…”
• “Yes, the capillaries in my face sometimes fill rapidly as an involuntary reaction to stimulus. So, about rehearsal….”
• “I DO know that tends to happen, and I definitely do not like it when people call attention to it. So, what were we talking about it?”
• “Yes, and it’s hiLARious.” (Think how Professor Snape would say this.)

Save “It’s a fight or flight reaction. Still deciding which,” for special occasions.

And look for patterns. Someone who realizes that their “joke” is not funny and backs off immediately when you don’t reply favorably probably made an honest mistake. Someone who looooooooves to make you blush and comments on it at every turn and makes it about how sensitive you are when you ask them to stop is someone you don’t want to be around, ever, because they are making creepy sexist power plays designed to maximize your discomfort. Ew.

“Okay, Montezuma, we can have embassies in each other’s capitals, and I will trade incense for whales, but an Open Borders treaty? That’s just gullible.”

Dear Captain,

How obligated are we to try and forgive our friend’s significant others for the harm they have caused in the past?

To make a long story short, my friend A started dating person B.  I wasn’t wild about B, but I wasn’t the one dating him, and our casual interactions initially seemed fine, so I didn’t worry about it.

However, it soon became clear that B had some unaddressed emotional issues, and they were taking them out on my friend, and eventually on the rest of our circle (we were accused of alienating A from B, of monopolizing A’s time, and eventually, even of cheating on B with A).  It was like B read your article on Darth Vader boyfriends but thought it was a how-to.  Needless to say, we were angry for our friend and angry on our own behalves.  Most of us wanted A to dump B, but A was not willing to end the relationship without trying to save it, and instead worked very hard to get B into therapy.  We did our best to support A in this time, but it was very hard to see how much pain B was causing her.

Now, B seems to have gotten some help, and B and A are working on rebuilding their relationship.  A very much wants to bring B back into the social circle, but this is causing problems.  I know I am not the only one of A’s friends who resents B after all of this.  I am also mad at B for the way that B treated me and our other friends.  A says she has forgiven him, and wants us to forgive him too, but I don’t know that I’m ready to do it now, and honestly I’m not sure I will ever be.

Do you and the army have any suggestions for how I can handle the issue of reintegrating B?  I don’t really want to hang around with B, and though I am trying to plan occasions to hang out with A alone, I know that it isn’t possible to totally avoid B so long as they are a couple.

Thanks,

Trying To Make The Best Of It

“Alexander, good to see you, bro! Yes, let’s by all means make a Joint Declaration of Friendship I Mean I’m Coming To Surround Your City With Hoplites in 5 Turns!”

Dear Trying:

We talked the other day about how forgiveness can be a trap, but there was a great discussion in the comments about how to move on with someone after a breach of trust. Thanks for this question, because it gives us a way to talk about how to normalize relations at the social group level.

You are not obligated to ever forgive B or welcome him into your social circle. You can always privately think he is a shithead. But for A.’s sake, you maybe have some obligations to treat him with “arms-length acquaintance politeness” at social events and not dig up old dirt.

In my opinion, if B. treated you badly, and he wants to be allowed in your house/movie excursion/karaoke night, he needs to acknowledge that there is a reason you don’t like him and might not want him around. Right now this is all being handled transitively by A., who understandably wants to minimize past bad stuff and not bring it into the present, but a little direct communication between you and B. might not be the worst thing in the world.

What that exchange could look like, in the movie version of this, is B saying:

“Trying, I did not treat you or your friend well, and I know that there is a reason you don’t like or trust me. I am very, very sorry about how I behaved, and I am working hard to make it right.”

And then you saying to B.:

“I appreciate the apology. I don’t think you and I are ever going to be best friends, but I can hang at games night/bowling league/pub quiz for A’s sake if you can.” 

“Let’s be peaceful cooperative neighbors for 6,000 years and then I’ll nuke you out of the blue. Cool?”

That’s not gonna happen spontaneously, so maybe you can work it out with A. Like so:

• Ask A. how she’d like you to handle it to get a sense of what her expectations are.
• If B. needs to apologize (and you will be watching to see if he makes it a real apology or an “all about me & my issues” Darthpology), keep the discussion about stuff between him and you vs. stuff within their relationship.
• Let her know you’re willing to deal with B. being around some:as long as he’s not underfoot all the time and you get to see her alone, too. The less time you actually have to spend with him, especially initially, the better you will be at greeting him neutrally when you do see him.
• He doesn’t need to charm you or sell you. “Don’t treat my friend like crap” + “Make occasional polite small talk” + “Time” will get this done way better than a charm offensive. Montezuma & Alexander always make a big show of this in the early parts of Civ…right before they surround your cities with troops. It’s sketchy behavior. Don’t fall for it or tolerate it.
• You promise not to pick arguments or bring up old news or dissect all of his behavior for reasons to hate him.
• However, she is not to pressure you to like him or be close to him in any way, and if he reverts to old behaviors you have the right to kick him out of your space or cut the night short.

With a little time, if everyone behaves themselves, perhaps relations will thaw. That’s the best you can offer right now – you’re open to seeing if he really has changed, and you want to support her, but you need some acknowledgement from him of wrongdoing and a little negotiation about how things will work, because “Following my friend’s example, I welcome the new, reformed you back with open arms!” is not a realistic scenario.

I suspect A. is working very hard to be the buffer and vouch for him. This is a common characteristic of Darths, making the partner have to be the ambassador/apologist (“There’s good in him, I’ve felt it!”) with other people. Darths are good at setting it up so that you can’t really freeze them out without punishing your friend, too. They are good at choosing kind people who want to smooth things over and then taking advantage of that kindness to facilitate their Darthy Ways. So being this direct about what you need and having some conversation where you and B. very bluntly work out how things are gonna be without A. translating is gonna probably terrify her, depending on how much she trusts that B. is reformed.

It’s actually pretty relaxing to deal with someone without the pretense that you like each other.

But believe me, if he has changed, having a little structure around how to acknowledge and deal with that is not the worst thing in the world. Darths are all about hints. This takes the responsibility off of A.’s shoulders to manage every little interaction, gives B. some clear guidelines about what he can do to show that he is serious (and let him know that he cannot manipulate his way back into being welcome, so he best come correct), and protects your boundaries in the meantime. Maybe think of it as lancing a boil of awkwardness; if you get it all out you can deal with it and actually move on, where if you skip to the “Oh sure, welcome back! Where have you been these last months when you were persona non grata, let’s pretend it was a cool sabbatical?!?” part while your loathing is still festering under there it’s just gonna erupt again. There are a few people on the earth who I actually like *more* for the fact that we know that we don’t like each other and give each other a wide, respectful berth.

If a personal apology from B. is not possible or is a bad idea for whatever reason, then tell A. – “I promise to reset B. to arms-length acquaintance level social relations, as in, if he comes to something as your guest I will treat him like a guest and give him an opportunity to show that he can hang. I won’t bring up uncomfortable topics or give him tons of side-eye. That’s the best I can do for now.”

You will *treat* him like a guest. You feel inside however you want. You don’t have to forgive, and even if you manage to forgive, you don’t have to forget or relax around this dude. We are complex and can contain two disparate thoughts, like “I hope you’ve really straightened up and will be a good partner for my friend and try to deserve her belief in you” and “I hope my friend dumps your ass and I never have to see your wretched face again,” at the same time. The Jedi Mind Trick is to let yourself feel the second fully in private so that you can behave as if the first were true in public.

Edited To Add: It’s time for the twice-a-year Captain Awkward Dot Com Pledge Drive, where I ask for donations to keep the blog going. If like what you read here and you can kick a few dollars our way, I’d be forever grateful! 

My feet are cold, but my heart is warm thanks to the generosity of the Winter Pledge Drive contributors. Thank you so much! Support the site if you can!

Today’s letter is about money and family and when those things come together in a manipulative and possibly sinister way.

Dear Captain Awkward,

My parents passed away three years ago, leaving my little brother and I in the care of my Uncle and his wife. Their method of raising children is very different from what we were used to. Mom was the type who would say no to something and then explain why and often prompted discussion. Aunt is the type who yells no and glares if you question her.

I was 17 when I moved in with them so they haven’t been able to control me as much as they have my little brother. That said, they do still restrict me a lot. We live in the middle of nowhere so I can’t move around on my own, my phone and internet are regulated, and several times Aunt has snooped on my laptop. ‘My room’ is a free-for-all where her siblings come and go as they will and she often gives my things away because ‘they were getting old.’ I should stand up to them, I know that. But then I think they didn’t have to take us in and I really don’t want to cause any more trouble, so I quiet down again.

This year they’re intending to move to a new, much more expensive house in a very upscale area. Uncle took me aside and said that once I turn 21 this year and get my inheritance, he’s going to need some help, and alarms started going off in my head.

He says the new place will enable me to move around freely, and even get that summer job I’d been begging them to allow me to apply to, but it just feels like he’s trying to butter me up. He’s often promised me things that his wife then goes around and disagrees with, or outright denies they ever said. My friend is telling me I should run away, live on my own (practically impossible in my country) or, failing that, once I get my money I should sit them down and talk about the terms of my ‘helping.’ On one hand, that does seem reasonable. On the other hand, it also feels ungrateful.

I wouldn’t mind paying rent and my own expenses. I already pay for my college and for most big things, it’s only reasonable, and I often suggested that once I turned 21 I could live off my inheritance. But they always refuse and say that ‘It’s their duty’ and they didn’t want me to touch my money.

So why is Uncle now talking about ‘sharing’? He also explicitly told me not to mention this to any of our relatives and to claim that he got the new house with his money. The alarms are blaring louder.

Am I overreacting? Am I not? Should I just suck it up and accept that, sometimes, I gotta be the bad guy?

Sincerely,
Grateful But Worried College Girl

Dear Grateful But Worried:

I am glad alarm bells are going off for you, because they are certainly going off for me.

It sounds like your inheritance has come as some kind of trust (allowing you to pay for education expenses, etc.) but that you will actually control the principal on your 21st birthday. Is this correct?

It sounds like, where you live, people live at home with their families maybe until marriage, and moving out and getting a place of your own is not the norm. So “just get your own place” and “take your brother with you, if he wants to come,” has some friction around it.

Here’s the stuff that is making the little hairs on the back of my neck stand up:

The timing of the move to an expensive new house (that it sounds like he cannot afford without your help) to coincide with the principal of your inheritance becoming available.

Vagueness around what “help” means. A few hundred dollars to trick out your room? Paying a percentage of the mortgage over time, in lieu of rent? Paying for the entire house? You living there indefinitely and him pretty much having access to and control over your money?

Secrecy. If you are an adult member of the household and you are contributing in some way, why is this a shameful secret?

When your uncle pulled you aside to talk with you, did you feel like saying “Actually, Uncle, I don’t plan to live at home after my 21st birthday, so please do not plan around me financially” was a perfectly fine, safe option that was on the table? If so, problem solved, right? Just be bluntly honest and this will all be cleared up! 

If you’re just two adults talking, and one of those adults makes a request, there should be an assumption that the other adult can refuse that request or negotiate that request. It doesn’t sound like your uncle is open to the possibility of refusal and is treating this like a done deal, which means it wasn’t actually a request: It was an assumption dressed in a guilt sweater and wearing secrecy pants and an overcoat of “I have power over you!” This is why your friend is saying “Run away!“

It’s admirable that you would want to assist your family, but you and your brother are not insurance policies or lottery tickets that have been hanging out waiting to be cashed. I think it’s reasonable to ask adult children who are living at home to pay rent and otherwise contribute to the household, but children are not obligated to pay back food & shelter & care. It’s also not your obligation to make your uncle’s assumptions come true. If this were all cool and above-board, your uncle wouldn’t have to work so hard to convince you, and there wouldn’t be such a need for secrecy.

When someone is trying to manipulate you, your best bet is to remain noncommittal (agree to nothing!), hang back, and look at the truth of what you want. Absent your family’s request, guilt, influence, need, etc. what do you want? A manipulator will try to obscure and separate you from that truth. You also did a smart thing by telling your friend and telling us – manipulators thrive on secrecy, so one power you have against them is to not keep their secrets.

Manipulators will either a) pressure you hard to agree, so they can come back later with “But you promised!” or b) roll right over you and not even give you a chance to respond, so they can later take your silence in the face of their assumptions as assent. It’s possible that in your uncle’s mind, now that he’s had that conversation, everything is a done deal. Whatever you say going foward, you want to a) delay an actual decision b) ask him to be more specific c) make the delivery of a decision conditional in some way.

Your best bet is probably to not bring it up again (while you quietly marshal some resources, more on that below) and put the onus on him to approach you again and make an actual, actionable request. He’s completely tipped his hand here, but you haven’t, so it’s okay if he thinks you are quietly mulling or agreeing if it buys you time. If he does approach you again, a script is could be as simple as “Can you tell me exactly what kind of help you have in mind?”

And hey, if he says, “Whoa, actually, I just meant we’d like you to pay rent of $x/month starting after your birthday, is that cool?” then hey, you’ll know, and it will actually be cool. I would love for us to be overreacting here! I would love for him to just be laying the groundwork for “We’ve always turned you down when you suggested paying rent, but now that you’re going to be an adult it’s time to revisit that question” conversation. If that’s what he’s doing, he’s being a good parent figure and dealing with you respectfully. And you asking for specifics is just you participating fully in a discussion that affects you.

If that’s not what he’s doing, be prepared to get a blast of “What’s there to discuss? Don’t you want to help your faaaaaaaaamily?” pushback. Or a dose of “I am an older male figure, and you are a mere young lady, don’t you think I know what’s best for you? Don’t worry your pretty head about such things” patronizing crap. See also: “I am insulted that you would even suggest such a shady thing by asking questions of me! My feelings are hurt! I am so wounded!” (where the only way to “apologize” for your “insult” is to just vaguely do what he vague-wants).  If you’re old enough to be asked for money, you’re old enough to a) know exactly how much money and b) have a say in its disposal.

Just keep repeating “I want to pull my own weight, of course, but I can’t agree to anything without knowing exactly what it is” or “As a businessman, I’m sure you’d agree it’s not a good idea to make an agreement without knowing the particulars- come on, you raised me to be smarter than that!” or just “I promise I’ll think about it!” and get out of there. And make sure all conversations with your uncle have witnesses for the time being – don’t get into any more secret one-on-one talks.

So, after you turn 21, do you want to live in that new house with your aunt and uncle? Do you want to be responsible for supporting them financially? Is that how and where you see your future happening over the medium term? Living in the room where you’ll be closer to friends and can have a part-time job and maybe some more freedom of movement, but where people go through your things and give them away?

If you told your uncle what you truly want out of the next few years, would he support you or impede you? How far would he go (manipulation, guilt trip, further restrictions of your movements, violence) to get his way?

Whatever it is you decide that you truly want for yourself, hold fast to it. And then start making a plan that will get you what you want and keep you safe until you can get it.

This means some emergency planning. It can feel like a vast overreaction to start compiling this stuff and thinking in this paranoid way. But it really hurts no one to quietly put this stuff together. Hopefully you’ll never have to use it, but it can give you peace of mind to know that you could if you had to. For example:

• Where are your identity & travel documents? Can you make copies and keep them with a friend? Do not let your aunt & uncle store these or have control of them. Make up an excuse about needing to make copies of them for school, etc. if you have to to get them.
• Could you put aside/save/stash a bunch of money that your aunt and uncle don’t know about and only you can access, in case you needed to leave in a hurry? Could a friend keep a travel bag with clothing, cash, documents, etc. for you?
• As a veteran of being spied upon, I’m sure you already know this, but use private or incognito windows in your internet browsers. Password-protect your phone. Become educated about computer security and take charge of yours.

Now, take inventory of the people in your life. Who is on Team You, and could act as a network of support if things got bad?

• Friends
• People at your university – professors, administrators
• Family members other than your uncle that you have a good relationship with
• Your attorney or whoever handles issues with your inheritance

Who might be able to take you in, or set you up with alternative housing? And could you test out these alternatives in small, non-permanent ways? “I’ve decided to stay in the dorms for the next semester to be closer to my friends.” “I’m going on a volunteer trip over the school break to catalog species of frogs in the rainforest.” “Uncle Frodo and Aunt Galadriel invited me to stay with them for a few months, I’d love to take them up on it and spend time with them.” 

Apply for every volunteer opportunity, internship, study-abroad session, etc. and visit every family member you have. Your aunt & uncle keep you on a very tight leash, it sounds like. How far will that leash stretch? Find out now, not “in the hypothetical new house in the hypothetical future where you have agreed to my requets.” It’s hard to argue with “It’s for my education!” and “But I want to be close to all my family!” or “Not having parents, I’m sure you would agree it’s important for me to be close to all my family!”

Reaching out to that attorney or executor is incredibly important. Does they know you, personally? Do you already have a relationship there? If they aren’t an attorney, can they recommend one? As your birthday approaches, there could be tons of reasons that you need to talk to financial advisors and seek legal advice. Make sure that person can be trusted and is 100% on your side (aka, not in your uncle’s pocket). If you trust them, run your uncle’s request by them and see what they say. Ask if the uncle has approached them about it. Get a sense of what they think you should do. This is a creepy, depressing question, but also find out/spell out: What happens to your money if something happens to you?

If you are close to other people in the family and feel like you can trust them, tell them about the request. You’re not responsible for keeping your uncle’s secret. “Uncle wants me to help out financially when I get my inheritance. The way he asked made me a bit uncomfortable. Have you ever had to handle anything like this before? I feel guilty saying no after all he’s done for me, but the request was so vague I don’t know that I can agree to it. What should I say?” Relatives who admonish you that you MUST do what your uncle says are not on Team You.

This is logistical groundwork but also about reminding yourself that you are part of a community. Manipulators want to isolate you so that the only voice you listen to is theirs. You have more savvy and more resources than you probably give yourself credit for, and it can be incredibly empowering to realize that you could make it without your aunt & uncle if you had to.

When you are ready to address your uncle’s request directly, you can treat it like he made a reasonable request of a fellow adult to start contributing around the house, and as such, you’d like to discuss it like adults in well in advance of making any decisions. This has the advantage of being the right thing to do whether or not there is anything shady or manipulative going on. I suggest that you set up a meeting between your uncle, your attorney, and you to discuss particulars. In fact, agree to NOTHING until this meeting takes place. You want an advocate and a witness present for this talk, someone who can make it clear that you haven’t actually agreed to anything and have no obligation to do so. Someone who can put everything in writing. Someone who can force your uncle to articulate his expectations. A lawyer is a buffer between you and your uncle, someone who can say “She wants to help and loves you! But secret conversations without actual numbers do not constitute agreement.” Possible agenda for that meeting:

• What does “helping out” look like to your uncle? Ask the question, or have your attorney ask it, and then be silent. You want to find out if he wants a one-time thing, ongoing thing, carte blanche, etc., and you want him to be the one to articulate what it is vs. you suggesting anything.
• If (big if) you made some kind of financial agreement, would your name also be on the title to the house, as partial owner? What rights & responsibilities does that entail? (You don’t necessarily want this at all, but it’s a question that should be raised. If we’re “sharing,” how is that spelled out, exactly?
• In the initial discussion, he brought up the possibility of increased privacy, freedom, etc. Can that be part of any agreement?
• What are the conditions/procedures for terminating the agreement?
• Could any initial agreement be for a short term, with option to renew?
• What are your liabilities if things go wrong? (If your uncle becomes unable to pay for the house, or it’s hit by a tornado or he’s sued in some way – lawyers are paid to think about the worst case scenarios and plan for those).
• Why all the secrecy? No, really, why?  Again, I’m not a lawyer, but this is a question I would ask if I were one in this scenario – “You asked your niece to keep her assistance confidential. Why is that?” It could be that it’s a face-saving thing, or it could be that there are troubled business dealings afoot and your uncle has something to hide. That would certainly be relevant if you were entering into any kind of financial arrangement with him.
• What about your younger brother? (It might be useful to know if your uncle expects similar “help” from him down the road, or if he sees his care as contingent upon financial reward).

If it’s your uncle’s intention to deal fairly and open with you, then all of this should be no problem. Nobody should be giving anyone a potentially house-buying chunk of money or even paying monthly rent without some negotiation and some kind of contract in place, and anyone who encourages you do so is not about protecting you. Being absolutely clear about expectations and putting things in writing protects everyone.

Okay, listen. Remember when I asked you what you want?

You’re under no obligation to give your uncle anything. You could meet with the lawyer, hear him out, etc. and decide “Nope!” “If you can’t afford the house on your own, you shouldn’t buy it. My long-term plans don’t involve living there with you, so it doesn’t make sense to become financially entangled with you/house at this time.“

You don’t have to know or communicate your long term plans. You just get to say “No, I don’t think it’s a good idea.” Your aunt & uncle’s feelings of disappointment, anger, etc. are theirs to deal with. That’s because your dead sibling’s children are not your investment policy, jerks!

If your uncle buys a house he can’t really afford because he was counting on unspecified “help” from you, and then tries to guilt you into paying for it after the fact, that is his mistake, not your obligation to fix. Watch for forced teaming.

The *only* reason I suggest delaying, hedging, or working in a roundabout way is for your own safety and peace of mind while you still have to live there. If you don’t feel like it’s a request you can say no to, and you feel like your safety & freedom would be threatened if you said a direct “no,” it is okay to stall for time while you marshall your resources. Promises made under duress to someone in a position of authority and power over you are not real promises that must be delivered upon.

If you feel a sense of obligation, and you are coming into money-to-burn kind of money and can be generous without having any adverse impacts on you or your future, you could decide to give your aunt & uncle a one-time small gift. “Now that I’m ‘of age’, I wanted to recognize all you’ve done for Brother and me. Here. No strings attached.” That is not an obligation, or something they are entitled to expect, but if it will help you mentally “settle accounts” on your way of being free from them, it might be worth it. There are times in my life where being able to make a  ”Thanks for the guilt trip and the memories, here you go! Now shut up forever” payment would come in handy for my peace of mind, whether the other party deserved anything or not.

Above all, going forward, trust your instincts. Trust what you want for yourself. Trust the part of yourself that told you that something was fishy about the way your uncle made his request. You seem to have a pretty strong sense of your own boundaries and what’s right and wrong, which is comforting. Be well, and keep us updated if you feel comfortable.

We haven’t had a gif party or a “Yo, maybe you are way cooler than that person you are dating” thread in a while, so, here you go.

Dear Captain Awkward:

My partner of 5 years moved 200 miles away last week for a job. I’m sad he’s gone and I’m missing him, but I really support what he’s doing —  he was having a hard and stressful time finding work in his field in our city and has been unhappy for some time. We agreed that, for now, we want to keep our relationship exclusive and revisit that decision in a few months. 

On Saturday, I went to the corner store and one of the workers — I’ve seen him many times, but we’ve never really talked — initiated a conversation with me. I felt a little forced into it (“Hi there, lady who never talks to me when she comes in to buy cigarettes”) but he’s a part of my neighborhood and I wanted to be polite. He turned out to be a big talker and amusing storyteller, and we had a 15-minute conversation about his family, his country, and so on. Very innocuous and kind of sweet; I tend to be reserved and don’t necessarily get to know people I see daily. He asked about my partner, and I told him that he’d moved.

A sad, disheveled man saying cruel things…totally hot, amirite?

As I left, I tried to dial my partner’s number to tell him that the corner store guy had asked about him and that I had actually had a conversation with someone in my neighborhood. I was feeling pretty good, and also relieved that the conversation hadn’t gone in an awkward direction. I realized that I had butt- (or face-) dialled my partner at some point, and thought that I had just left a long, boring message on his voice mail. I hung up and called him back, and his voice was shaking with rage when he answered. He had been listening in on the conversation the entire time. He accused me of being with another man, a mutual friend of ours who was in town and had gotten in touch with me about getting together (this friend has made his attraction for me clear in the past, so I had opted to not get together with him without my partner). When I told him that I had been talking to the corner store guy, he didn’t believe me and said that he heard the whole conversation and clearly heard our friend’s voice. I explained that it was, indeed, the guy from the store, and he then demanded to know why I spent 15 minutes talking to him, as if there’s something wrong with that. I was too amazed to be mad, so I responded pretty patiently and tried to reassure him that everything was OK.

He then hung up and refused to talk to me about the incident. He said that I told him “my truth” but that he didn’t believe me, in the end, and that he didn’t have the emotional energy to deal with this and didn’t want to talk about it. I couldn’t believe it – I was gobsmacked.   

I’m at a loss.  

My partner is a big talker who could easily chat with a stranger for 15 minutes. I had told him our friend called and didn’t plan to see him. I don’t see anything wrong with anything I said, and there was nothing remotely flirtatious that could have stung to overhear — and he refuses to tell me what about the conversation bothered him so much.

How can I open this topic with him and deal with this in a mature way? It really bothers me to think that he thinks I’m lying blatantly to him, only a week after I left him with a promise to see him in a couple of weeks. It bothers me that, had I decided to see our friend, he would consider it a betrayal because this friend has the hots for me. It bothers me that he’s putting some type of arbitrary limits on how long a conversation should be before it becomes evidence of something else. We’ve had some issues with trust in the past – he’s thought that I’ve been lying to him when I haven’t been – but we’ve been stable for a long time now.

Hello, and thanks for your question.

My reaction to the part of the story where “15 minutes is too long to talk to someone” and your romantic partner thinks he gets to judge or proscribe anything about your routine social interactions was:

And the thing where he called your explanation “your” truth as a way to dismiss it?

Okay, in the most empathetic light I am capable of here: Say your partner has a history of jealousy and insecurity. Say things are not going too well in New City. Say that the agreements you made re: exclusivity feel extra-fragile and not realistic right now, and he suspects your heart was not in such an agreement. Say he’s generally feeling crappy and nervous and jealous, and the thought of that mutual friend who likes you was gnawing at the corner of his mind. Say he overreacts and takes it out on you.

That might be somewhat ….I won’t say forgivable, let’s call it “imaginable” or “navigable”… if he were to apologize to you for calling you a liar, and if he were to back way off on future attempts to control you. “I am so sorry about the other day, I was being a jerk.”

Might. Maybe.

Absent that, what the hell are you supposed to do here? How are you supposed to fix something when you didn’t do anything wrong, and the “problem” is completely manufactured by your partner’s projections? There really isn’t anything you can do to make this right, because it’s not on you to make this right. You asked for a way to discuss this maturely, but that’s pretty hard when the other person has taken all their marbles home. Accusations like this from jealous and controlling dudes basically translate as “I am having negative feelings that I don’t like, so I will make them all your fault and make sure you have negative feelings, too.”  And it’s working, because you are the one who is worried about how you can work this out, when really, you’re not the one with ground to make up here.

In your shoes, I do not know that I would be reaching out to him at all. He’s the one who shut down conversation, so isn’t it kind of on him to open it back up? What if you didn’t contact him and waited for him to seek you out? My prediction is that he will sulk for a few days and then, if he reaches out, he will magnanimously pretend to have forgiven you or try to breeze by it like nothing happened. It’s part of the cycle, him hoping that you won’t want to rock the boat by revisiting the uncomfortable topic and that you’ll be in a mood to “make it up” to him.

 

To which you might say:

“I’m still very bothered by our conversation the other day. Accusing me of lying was really out of line, and you actually don’t have a say over how long I converse with someone. I’d like an apology.”

If for some reason he does want to accuse you of lying some more, how’s this for a script?

“Where the hell is this all coming from? Please. Explain.”

Another script:

“If you need reassurance about my feelings & commitment, you can ask for that and I can do what I can to give it. If you need us to revisit the arrangement we made about exclusivity, I’m happy to talk it through. But I can’t hang with you ‘shaking with rage’ because I talked to a man-shaped person for a few minutes. I need to know that you see how very over the line that is, and that I’m not the one who needs to apologize or work to make this right.“

Internet, please help me find what video this is from so I can watch it over and over again.

If the next words out of his mouth aren’t some variation of “You’re right, I’m sorry…” it’s a sign that maybe it’s time to board the Nope Rocket. I mean, why would he even want to be with a lying liar who will cheat on him with a visiting friend, or, literally the first person she runs into at the corner store? You seem like a cool person who deserves way better than that. Maybe your butt was trying to save you when it dialed that number.

……

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