Hey, it’s me!

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Hi Captain,

I need your help. I don’t know if I’m in a shitty relationship or if bad things just keep happening to us. I’ve been dating a guy for eight months. We fell in love very quickly and very intensely. The first period was very happy but I quickly felt very insecure and anxious about our relationship. I have generalised anxiety disorder and am often irrationally anxious. It has led to numerous situations where I was deeply worried about an aspect of our relationship, felt like we had tried as much as possible to fix it, and ended up trying to break up; however he would always convince me that we hadn’t really tried and that he wanted another chance to do better.

He is a rationalist who is deeply against living by social norms and just sees them as defaults, and is “non-default” about pretty much everything including work path, values etc., as well as lifestyle including cooking (lives off takeaway so as not to spend time grocery shopping and cooking), cleaning (does not have much of a regular cleaning habit – I broke glass in his kitchen a month ago and he said I shouldn’t have to clean it up and it’s still there), sleeping (he has no regular sleep schedule and sleeps when he wants to. The kind of work that he does is largely from home with long deadlines. He ships a prescription anti-narcolepsy from overseas which allows him to stay awake for long stretches on little sleep – although he plans on giving this up soon). He also takes party drugs and for a while, was taking quite high amounts of MDMA on a weekly basis, which pretty much wiped him out the day or two after. I have always been uncomfortable around drugs, although he did not really know the extent of my discomfort, and I can’t take them myself due to mental health. He dropped back to once a month after I expressed concerns about escalation and he acknowledges that he has some susceptibility to addiction, although he is not currently dependent.“

One serious issue we had was that he gave me an STI. He had rationalised that he had a very limited risk of having an STI so despite my repeated requests and despite being informed that a previous partner had been infected, did not get tested. I was furious at his intellectual arrogance and the danger he had put us both in. I lost a week of unpaid time off work and my mum had to nurse me through my allergic reaction to the treatment. I told him I wanted to break up, but we ended up supporting each other through the treatment and ultimately decided to get back together and work things out.

We have had some more rough patches lately. After agreeing that he would party on New Years, he ended up sleeping and feeling rotten through most of my birthday on New Years’ Day, which felt pretty lonely for me. He has been very stressed at work and had some issues with a very serious eye infection, which means that any positive changes around cooking/cleaning etc. have understandably stopped. I supported him through the eye infection by taking more time off work to wait at the eye hospital with him for many afternoons. We then went away camping with some of his friends, some friends-of-friends and a couple of my friends. Most of them did drugs, including one less experienced girl who wound up with drug-induced psychosis. It was a five-day process to get her help and it was extremely upsetting and worrying for everyone involved, and I once again could not work for the period. The experience reinforced my dislike of drugs and desire to not be around drugs, and as someone with mental health issues, I was angry and upset that the girl’s mental health was being blamed more than the illegal drugs she had taken. I told him that the drugs were too high a price of admission for me and packed my bags.

We have since traded emails in which he first said he did not understand why I left him and thought that I was being dishonest about drugs being the true reason. Through his logical arguments he has forced me to see that I was being irrational about my attitude to drugs and that it is merely a personal preference I have not to be around them, rather than any objective issue with the drugs themselves. I felt like the whole arguing process was unpleasant and cold and hated it. When he explained the break-up over drugs to his best friend, the friend replied by saying he should not to try and argue people out of their emotions and boundaries. My boyfriend doesn’t see the problem – he thinks if someone is objectively right, they’re right, and emotions that correspond with that are the issue of the emotional person. He is also extremely strong-willed and intellectually well-backed-up and is not used to being challenged emotionally, so I don’t think he realises how unpleasant it can be. I’ve explained this explicitly now and he found the concept very hard to relate to.

It’s really hard for me to check in with friends and family about this too. They all hear only have to hear me mention drugs to tell me I’ve made the right choice by leaving him. My family has had bad history with drugs and my sister, who used to take party drugs and was badly affected, told me “You’ve already been through a lifetime’s worth when it comes to drugs – you don’t need to go through any more”.

We’re now in a position where he thinks I’ve made a mistake with the breakup, and that I did not adequately justify my reasons for ending it. I ended up seeing it from his perspective and apologising for being irrational and hurtful. I love him and that we do have a lot of good things including a great amount of love, affection, good humour, and generally understanding. He says he loves me more than he loves anyone, that he needs me, that we are good for each other, that he wants to be the one for me, that he wants to make it all work. Our plans had included travelling and ultimately living together. I ended up feeling like maybe breaking up with him over the drugs had been an anxiety response rather than something I really wanted to do. But I’m worried about this narrative; as I type it I can see that it sounds really unhealthy (he would say that “sounds really unhealthy” is weak reasoning). I feel like I’ve paid a lot of costs over the STI, drugs etc., including lost work time, stress, and in particular with the STI pain and possibly ongoing health concerns. I can’t turn off the part of my brain that says that someone who loves me as much of as they say wouldn’t hurt me in these big and small ways. We’ve discussed this; he says he feels he treats me well; and I guess that I am now consigning a lot of my worries to pure anxiety, which makes me feel like I can’t trust my emotional reactions and that I should work on my anxiety and ultimately stay. I don’t know if that’s the right thing for me to do. I don’t know if we truly do have a problematic dynamic (despite having amazing things shared between us) or if it’s just anxiety at play. Have we just had bad luck at points? I can’t tell if this all feels so weird because his lifestyle and approach is so ‘non-default’ or because I am being manipulated. I don’t know if my anxiety is protecting me, or causing the problems. I so hope you and the Awkward Army can help with insight and advice.

Sincerely,
Worried about my worry but also my maybe(?!)-dodgy relationship

Dear Worried:

I’m worried, too. I’m worried about you and I think you need to be away from this guy for your own peace of mind and safety.

This guy completely lost me as a cool enough partner for you at “stopped you from cleaning and subsequently did not clean broken glass off his kitchen floor” because he has to prove he’s more rational than stupid societal expectations by literally walking around literal broken glass on his actual floor. For how long must this experiment go on before it’s his own (completely rational, separate from the oppression of society’s cruel and boring expectations) decision to clean up the glass? 

And then I kept reading.

“Sure, bro, let’s hear your arguments! I’m sure they are all extremely cromulent.”

Let’s talk about the part where he “reasoned” himself around basic biology. If you’ve had partnered sex, and that partner has turned up with an STI, there is a non-zero chance that you also have an STI. Getting your ass to the clinic before you have sex with a new partner (or as soon as you find out) is your basic, human duty to others, and you frankly shouldn’t need “repeated requests” or any requests. STIs happen plenty without it being anyone’s fault or a reason to judge someone, but I judge him plenty for being so cavalier about a partner’s health when basically his arguments come down to “But I’m too lazy to actually find out.” And if he pressured you into having unprotected sex during this time? I will reach through through the internet with my mind and set him on actual fire. Being too lazy and self-involved to to to the clinic (or clean up pointy glass shards on the floor where you walk) and giving it a fancy title like “I’m just an extreme rationalist!” is a sign that this guy very, very far below you in basic adulting skills.

This part of your letter:

“We have since traded emails in which he first said he did not understand why I left him and thought that I was being dishonest about drugs being the true reason. Through his logical arguments he has forced me to see that I was being irrational about my attitude to drugs and that it is merely a personal preference I have not to be around them, rather than any objective issue with the drugs themselves. I felt like the whole arguing process was unpleasant and cold and hated it. When he explained the break-up over drugs to his best friend, the friend replied by saying he should not to try and argue people out of their emotions and boundaries. “

…makes me glad that the best friend spoke as they did, because they are 100% correct. So what if your decision was “irrational?” That doesn’t make it wrong. Breaking up is not a joint decision where one must prove one’s case beyond all doubt to the dumped party. You are allowed to give face-saving reasons. You are allowed to give no reasons beyond “I am breaking up with you.” When pushed on the issue of the drugs, you are allowed to say “You know what, you’re right, I was using that as a fig leaf. The issue isn’t so much drugs as it is you, and how I don’t want to be with you anymore. Farewell.” He could be the world’s most caring, drug free, glass-cleaning-up boyfriend and you would still get to leave him because your “irrational” heart says so. Wanting to leave is enough.

See also: “Think whatever you want to about why I’m leaving, goodbye.”

This movie is a) beautifully shot and b) a lifesaving case study of a predator at work on a vulnerable person.

You’ve tried to break it off numerous times, but you remain together because he bullies you and gaslights you into staying.

“We’ve discussed this; he says he feels he treats me well; and I guess that I am now consigning a lot of my worries to pure anxiety, which makes me feel like I can’t trust my emotional reactions and that I should work on my anxiety and ultimately stay. “

The problem in your relationship is that he’s a raging asshole, but he’s convinced you that it’s all in your head. His feelings that he treats you well don’t actually trump your desire to leave, or to protect your health from an untrustworthy sex partner, or your completely reasonable desire to not have to walk around broken glass (!) or stay away from people who use drugs if you know for sure that it makes you uncomfortable. He’s casting his feelings as logical “reasons”, and your very justified anger, dislike, and fear for your health and mistrust of him as illogical “anxiety” as a way to bully you and make you second guess yourself, because that’s the only way someone as awesome and compassionate as you will stay with his sorry ass. It’s a trap, where your sense of fairness and your own desire to be logical is used against you, because if he can talk long enough he can “win” the argument when you get exhausted. Trust: You can have an anxiety disorder AND still have real, genuine anxiety about the continued unsafety and hassle of making a life with this dude. The job of sorting out “real” anxiety vs. brainweasels falls to you and a trained therapist, not your shitty boyfriend.

Your family might be making drugs THE issue in an unfortunate way that plays into his hands – “They are just being judgmental and narrow-minded, etc.” – but they have many, many reasons to root for you to leave this guy so far in your dust that even your dust wants to shake the dust of this relationship from its little dust-bunny feet. Please forgive them for just wanting you clear of this entire thing, and for seizing upon the most obvious reason.

I’m sure this guy has good qualities and that you connected well in some ways; some kind of chemistry or desire would have to be present for you to put up with even a second of the rest. I don’t judge you for wanting really good sex or cool, unique conversations or that feeling of being deeply and intensely loved. I’m sure he sincerely wants to “do better” and believes that with another chance he will be able to do better, but you don’t have to give him infinite chances. If he’s such an amazing, deep, original person, he’ll find someone else after he’s had a chance to work on himself some. And you’ll find out that other dudes will be good in bed and smart and interesting and really dig your fine self. They will not carry this giant swamp of issues along with them. They will clean their apartments, and they will not bully you and make you feel crazy in order to keep you near them. Please believe me! Breakups, even of intense relationships are survivable by everyone. This is not your last, only chance at love or a serious relationship.

You say:

I can’t turn off the part of my brain that says that someone who loves me as much of as they say wouldn’t hurt me in these big and small ways. 

Don’t turn it off! That part of your brain isn’t your illness talking, it’s your sanity. It’s your logic. You asked for my opinion. My opinion is RUN AWAY, RUN AWAY from this tedious motherfucker. Before you step on broken glass or get 9 more STIs or have to spend one more precious minute of your precious life arguing for the validity of your own opinions.

Party Spock, you’re drunk. Go home.

Unfortunately, there is no nice, easy, gentle way to get away from someone like this. You’ve tried normal breaking up like a normal person, and you always end up “logicked” back right where he wants you. So here are the steps for extracting yourself from someone who doesn’t want to let you go:

1. Make a list of people you actually trust to love you and be nice to you. Friends who have no connection with boyfriend. Family. Team You. Get their emails & phone numbers handy. Maybe call one of them to come over and hang out with you while you do the next step or two.
2. Find every item of his that could conceivably be in your house. Put it in a box and mail that shit to him. (Steps 2 and 3 can happen in any order, but should follow each other swiftly).
3. Compose a message in your email program and save it as a draft. “(Boyfriend), I am ending our relationship. I need this to be a clean break, so I must ask you not to contact me again through any medium.” You can add something like “I wish you well” if you’re feeling it, but keep whatever you say short and make sure the request for no contact is explicit.
4. Before you hit “send,” block him on every social media outlet and means of communication you share. After you hit “send,” block him on that email address, too. Congratulations, you are officially broken up now!
5. No matter what he says or does, do not answer. You can’t have a tedious argument where he proves you are wrong to break up if you don’t talk to him or spend any time listening to him. You have plenty of evidence that he will not go quietly and may escalate attempts to contact you. If he comes to your house, don’t let him in, and if he won’t go away, call law enforcement. If he sends you letters or gifts, refuse delivery or put the stuff immediately in the dumpster. It isn’t your job to reassure him, help him “understand” or otherwise process your breakup, or deal with any of his feelings. You are broken up. He is responsible for his own emotional care. If Party Spock needs to cavort around with his broken glass collection feeling sad, let him do it on his own sweet time.
6. Tell your friends & close people what’s going on. Tell them that you’ve tried to break off the relationship before, and that you might need some help now. Ask them for reassurances, compliments, hugs, breakfasts, lots of time together – whatever you need to feel loved and comforted, ask. They’ll give what they can.
7. If you share mutual friends, and you start hearing troubling stuff from them, tell them, bluntly, “I ended my relationship with (Boyfriend) and need to cut off communications for a while so that we can have a truly clean break. Please don’t give him any contact info or news of me or pass on any messages from him.“
8. If you’re not already doing this, seek treatment for your anxiety from a trained counseling pro and not your shithead ex boyfriend who was trying to use it as a chain to tether you to himself.

If you ignore him long enough, he will go away. And if you give it enough time, you will heal from this and move on.

The more anxious you are, the more likely you are to stay and “work through things.” This is not how good people get you to stay.

Worried Letter Writer, your instincts about what you deserve from a partner, about preserving your own safety, about whether being around drugs makes you happy, about whether you hate long bullying conversations where you are forced to justify every emotion, at being grossed out by someone’s living space are all perfectly on point. I’m not saying there is nothing wrong with how your brain works, but you can work on the anxiety disorder issue after you’ve dealt with the A Selfish Asshole Crawled Into My Life And Won’t Crawl Out Again problem. Do whatever you can to honor and thank that little voice that told you that something is not right here.

You’ve got some healing and recovery to do, and you may find books like The Wizard of Oz and Other Narcissists to be useful reading right now. “Narcissism” as a diagnosable disorder that your boyfriend has? Can’t tell you, wouldn’t wanna. This book as a primer on recognizing and abusive behaviors from people who are able to warp the reality around them and leave you constantly second-guessing yourself? Let’s say that someone who claims to honor rationality above all things but also thinks that the laws of science don’t apply to him, like, personally, is ticking off some ticky boxes for me and you may find some helpful stuff in here.

tl:dr Flee from this shitty dude as if your life depended on it. Your brain may be naturally anxious, but at least some of that is the good kind of anxiety that saved our ancestors from being eaten by bears.

Hello, nice people of the internet!

I took your generous Pledge Drive donations and finally bought myself a reliable, working computer. I CAN WRITE AGAIN!

February is over and my 2-week sinus-infection-shitbeast-respiratory-thing-from-hell seems to be lifting. I CAN WRITE AGAIN!

HI IT IS NICE TO SEE YOU ALL I MISSED YOU AND HOPE YOU ARE OK

Today’s question comes up in a lot of forms, so let’s kill many birds with one stone, or hey, can someone find a new, less horrifying metaphor that means that same thing?

Dear Captain and Crew,

 2006-2008 I was dating a grand master Darth, “Ben.” The details of his darthiness aren’t particularly relevant, except in that they were generally either “micro-aggressions” or happened without witnesses. For example, in public he’d make a lot of subtle comments to undercut my self-image and competence in order to get me to do what he wanted me to. Which on their own were fairly *eye roll* move on-y, but added up were extremely detrimental to my emotional health.  In private he was downright manipulative and abusive.  

In 2008 I took a semester off as an escape strategy, which gave me the confidence to break up with Darth.  Unfortunately at the time I nurtured a misguided belief that when you break up with someone the “mature” “adult” thing to do is to maintain a friendship with them.  And so we did, and in this “friendship” he maintained the same darth-y behavior of our relationship.  Additionally twice he pressured me into living with him so it wasn’t even that much safer than in the relationship. 

Finally, I moved 3000 miles away.  For a while he would still send me manipulative electronic and phone communications, but eventually I developed a “Team You” in my new city, who convinced me to cease all communication with him and not look at any contacts he makes.  This was probably the most stress relieving decision of my life.

The problem: we still have many mutual friends from my former city.  While some of the people in our friend group also felt abused by Ben, many have stayed friends with him. So I’m trying to figure out how I navigate situations such as weddings or reunions, in which I know Ben will be present.  I wouldn’t want to miss these occasions, and I don’t feel like I would be in any danger, but I want ways to address two issues:  (1) How do I communicate to my friends that my relationship and subsequent friendship with Ben were abusive and detrimental and as such I have cut ties, but they are free to do with him as they please, so long as they don’t require us to sit next to each other on a seating chart or something and (2) If I do end up “cornered” by Ben at one of these events, how do I communicate: I have cut ties with you, I am willing to be cordial and polite but I am not willing to engage any further than that.  

For (1) I’m worried about having to “prove” his abusiveness, which could quickly get to an awkward place if I discuss the awful things he did in private, but would be hard to do only describing the micro-aggressions because these were really only problematic because they built up so much.  For (2) I know he would say that logically I OWE him an explanation and try to manipulate me into such so I’d rather get away from the topic/him before he starts using his finally honed tactics.

Wanna Be Hans not Luke 

P.S. I am a lady for pronoun purposes

Dear Han/Hans:

We are here to awkwardly pump you up.

Who *wouldn’t* want to be me?

Learn this phrase. Love this phrase. Repeat this phrase:

“Actually, ‘Ben’ and I aren’t friends anymore.” 

For most reasonable people, that answers the question. If anyone asks you why? or whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy?

“You know, we tried to keep in touch for a while after we broke up. But the more we interacted, the more I realized that I just don’t like him.” 

I know that it is tempting to seek 1) justice, 2) validation of your memory and perspective from people who are in a position to bear witness to what happened, and 3) deserved shunning of the dude by all things associated with fun and goodness in the world, but being brief and direct should get you around any “proving” that what he did was wrong, “sufficiently” abusive, whatever. You don’t have to prove squat; you just don’t like him, and the boss of such decisions and feelings is you and you alone. If people ask “what happened” or “why?” (or whyyyyyyyyyyyyy?) you can decide how much detail to go into.“He was constantly shitty to me in a million small ways that are hard to really describe but that add up to a portrait of ‘yeesh’ and ‘never again,’” vs. “Eh, I don’t necessarily feel like recapping it,” + “I can be civil in small doses, though, so, let’s talk about exciting stuff like YOUR AWESOME WEDDING!”

Don’t justify it more than that if you don’t want to. You just don’t like him. This is the insidious aftermath of abuse in geek social circles: You think you need to show some kind of cause for not liking someone, even when the person has mistreated you. Even if Ben (or a proxy) could somehow win the argument that you are being unfair in not wanting to hang out with him, would it make you like him and want to be around him again? Howabout we change the terms to “I, Han/Hans do sincerely despise ‘Ben’ with all my soul. I will be civil for the sake of others because that’s what party guests do, but honestly, he can eff right off.”  People can draw whatever conclusions from that they want to. If they need his flaws “proven” to them before they’ll accept your opinion, you can lump them in with old Benji in the Yeesh-bin of history.

“Heyhowsitgoing” + Being Elsewhere is your current plan for encountering actual Ben at these events, correct? Hopefully that will work. Probably that will work. If it does work, then rejoice: he has gotten the message that you don’t want him in your life and is keeping a respectful distance. This is how adults who don’t like each other handle social situations.

If it doesn’t work, and he insists on having some kind of conversation, try the Broken Record approach and then physically move away. Repeat as necessary:

• “I don’t want to talk, Ben.”
• “You’ll have to excuse me.” 
• “I’m here for [Bride/Groom] and [Bride/Groom], not you. Let’s drop it.” 
• “Yes, I am avoiding you, and I want to keep right on doing that.”
• “You are making me very uncomfortable. I’m walking away now.”
• “I’m not actually interested in repairing this friendship or working anything out. Not sure I can be any clearer than that. Howabout we drop it and just celebrate with our friends?”

If he is a certain flavor of Darth, he will use “clearing the air,” “apologizing,” “making things right,” etc. as a way to come across as a bemused, hapless good guy who can’t understaaaaaaaaaand why you just won’t give him your time and attention so he can talk at you. He will enlist others in this cause. “I just want to make things right, but she won’t talk to me. Can you help us clear the air?” This sounds like what you are (reasonably) worried about.

Keep these scripts at hand should you meet Ben’s Middle Child Wingman and Carrier of Geek Social Fallacy #4:

• “I appreciate the apology.” + “You’ll have to excuse me.”  You can “appreciate” it the way one does a work of art or a fine wine or well-performed production of Hamlet. You can also do that appreciating from a safe distance.
• “It’s nice that he wants to discuss things, but I’m just not interested.” + “You’ll have to excuse me.” 
• “There’s nothing to actually work out, since he’s not a part of my life anymore. We’re just two random guests at the same party.” + “You’ll have to excuse me.” 

In case of a scenario that came up once upon an inbox question that I never got time to answer, where it’s the host of the event pressuring you to “make peace” or “forgive” “because it’s my wedding!” or “do it for meeeeeeeeee” consider the following responses:

• “Wouldn’t you rather have some cheese knives?”
• “Loathing another human being with all my soul is not, actually, like, negotiable.”
• “I am really glad you want me here to celebrate your wedding. I am so happy for you! Can’t we leave ex-boyfriends out of this and just celebrate the day?”
• “The less ‘Ben’ and I interact, the better I’ll like him.”
• “It’s not fixable because there is nothing to fix. He’s not a part of my life anymore, beyond us being guests at the same party. You are a part of my life, though, and since I’m back here so rarely I don’t want to waste our precious time talking about stupid ex-boyfriend stuff.” 

“You need to feel x way about y person as a favor to me” is not actually a favor that people get to request!

One of the ways manipulative people get their way is through the tacit threat of “making a scene,” as in, Ben might approach/corner you and say something that would sound innocuous to people who don’t know your history, in the hopes that you’ll flip out and appear unreasonable by comparison. This is how unreasonable people use “keeping the peace” and the social contract against reasonable people.

If by some chance you “made a scene” to get away from your abusive ex-boyfriend who would not leave you alone at a party, it would not be the worst thing in the world. It would not be your fault, and, while stressful to contemplate, honestly I think we could all benefit from more “scenes” of this type. After all, you survived years of your constant emotional abuse, is an awkward moment at a party is supposed to scare you? Seriously? While you don’t want to give this guy too much room in your head at a function you’re supposed to be enjoying, practicing what you’ll say, thinking of escape routes ahead of time, etc. can help you feel more grounded if something should come up. But go ahead. Go ahead and imagine the scene, where you say “SRSLY, what part of me not calling or writing you back for seriously YEARS at a time did not sink in? You’re gonna follow me around our friend’s wedding like a kicked puppy and try to ‘make’ me talk to you? Is that what today is about for you? I’d feel sorry for you if you weren’t so creepy.” + executing a perfect pivot worthy of Beyoncé + leaving a room of stunned people behind you without a care in the world because they can’t touch your courage and your awesomeness.

In the past readers have suggested the most excellent strategy of having someone serve as your official party comrade for occasions like this: someone who is in the know about the dark, shitty history and can be a buffer in situations when you need an easy out (“So sorry to interrupt! Han(s), can you come help me with (conveniently invented task)?”) and a not-so-easy out (“Dude, she said she didn’t want to talk to you. GET THE HINT ALREADY!”). Since there are others in that same friend group who are wise to Ben’s antics, you should have no shortage of people who are also trying to avoid that dude and can summon you to solve urgent dance floor emergencies.

Dear Captain Awkward:

About two weeks ago, I was broken up with by my then-boyfriend of nearly two years, P. I did not see it coming, at all. A week before, he had invited me to his family’s reunion in the summer, and he had spent the previous weekend with me.

P and I met on a dating website, after I had been single for a couple of years. We seemed to click right away, he was very attractive and intelligent, and was fun to converse with. The only major problem in our relationship, that I could tell, was that he was bad at emotional intimacy. Like, way bad.

When he broke up with me, he sent a bunch of mixed signals. The few times we saw each other or talked during the first week after, he was way physically (& not platonically) affectionate, and was telling me all about how his day was going. Needless to say, it was confusing.

I spoke with a friend who is mutual friends with P, and she confirmed that nobody knew that P was going to break up with me, and that P was being a sad panda about it. He said (to my best friend) that I should get in touch with him when I was ready.

I ended up talking to my therapist about it, and she suggested that I figure out why he had broken up with me. Initially he said it was because he didn’t feel the way for me the way he thought he should, but all of his actions pointed away from that. So, I texted him to see if he was open to talking, and off we went to our favorite diner.

That talk, to say the least, ended badly. He hemmed and hawed and gave weird reasons (didn’t want to move in together, which was odd because I was nowhere near ready for that either), only to change his mind the next second. Then he said, “I just never saw myself with somebody like you.”

When I asked what that meant, he mumbled something about my “eclectic” fashion sense. Then, he blurted out, “I guess I always saw myself with somebody more conventionally attractive.”

This obviously hurt. In the beginning, I often wondered how somebody like me could land a guy so freaking hot. And now, cool! All my fears and insecurities came true! Awesome!

I got angry, and told him that there was no way, none what so ever, that we could be friends after this. He got sad, and was practically pleading with me. He apologized a bunch, promised he’d be a better person in the future, all that. When I left his car, I told him that he could consider himself free from me, and I went and ugly-cried all over the place. I deleted and blocked him from everything, disabled a lot of my social media accounts to avoid lashing out at him.

In the process of that, I came across a post he made on Reddit, asking how to forgive himself after he had hurt somebody, mentioning how he was never proud to be seen in public with me, and how he knew from the beginning that he was settling for way less than what he wanted in a partner, namely in the looks department.

It’s less than a full day later, so I know it’s too soon to make huge declarative statements but: This has utterly messed me up. Like, I’ve always been aware that I was less than cute by society’s standards but I’ve never had a hard time getting dates/hook ups/relationships, so I figured I was doing okay enough. Now, I have to deal with the knowledge that a man I was in love with for nearly two years, who introduced me to his family and friends, who seemed to have no problem having sex with me, secretly wished I looked like somebody else. From the get-go.

I guess my question is: How to I survive this? I can’t look in the mirror without bawling. I’m so nauseated that I can barely stomach food. I am hating my body and my face a lot right now. And I know I shouldn’t feel that way, that this anger should instead be directed at him for being such a jerkface, but it’s easier to point it at myself.

For right now, I am so turned off to the idea of finding somebody else, even in the distant future, because now I’ll always be wondering at the back of my head: What if this hypothetical person will also lie to myself about loving me and having sex with me while actually being embarrassed by me?

I want to shake your therapist. She fucked up when she counseled you to pursue more answers from someone who dumped you. Please show your therapist this comic, and tell them it’s from me. I don’t think you are any of the things the break-upper lists in the comic,  by the way, just, the act of asking for the reason someone doesn’t love you anymore means you’ll get the reasons that someone doesn’t love you anymore. 

You did right by blocking P and cutting him out of your life. Stick to that going forward! I just wish you’d done it before that awkward diner meal, because honestly, your refusal to believe or accept his stated, face-saving, feelings-saving reasons for the breakup is the only reason that you know the hurtful ones. “I am not feeling it anymore” = good enough reason to break up. “I am breaking up with you” = good enough reason to break up. Whatever reason the person tells you is a good-enough reason. More important than the reasons are the facts, in that, you are broken up now. You cornered the dude, and you made him explain, he tried everything he could not to tell you, but you kept pushing, so he eventually he did. Hopefully you will never do that again, and hopefully you will counsel friends who come to you after breakups to never do that, hopefully people reading this who were on the verge of doing that will stop themselves from doing that and your story can help someone else. We can’t put spilled milk back into the glass, so let’s move on to what you can do with this information you obtained.

If P was so un-attracted to you, he should have peaced out after your first date and not wasted two years of your fucking time. So what you have here is a) ONE DUDE’S OPINION, not the opinion of all future people who are not him, not the opinion of people who have loved and lusted for you in the past b) one crappy, cowardly, lazy dude’s opinion. Here’s the deal – if P was having sex with you, he WAS attracted to you. If he stopped being attracted to you, then breaking up was the right thing to do. My take is that this isn’t so much about attraction, this is about perceived status, about seeing you as a “thing” that is somehow the measure of his own worth. You weren’t good Trophy Wife material (in his opinion), oops! That’s way more about him than it is about you.

So any time that “What if this is what it will always be & feel like?” voice comes into your head, counteract it with “Just one dude’s opinion, man.” One crappy sexist dude who is no longer in your life. I know it stings. I know it hits you right in your own insecurities, which is why he didn’t want to tell you initially, and why he said it in the end - It’s a conversation-stopper! So what, you dress quirky and don’t look like an airbrushed magazine cover. You can tell the story where this Adonis of a perfect man broke up with you because of your looks, or you can go with the story you told me about how you dated a really handsome dude who was bad (like, way bad) at emotional intimacy and good at compartmentalizing, one who broke up with you out of the blue because of his OWN insecurities, not anything about you. You are too awesome to be someone’s How Do I Emotions? tutor!

Other people are not P, and P. is not worth hating yourself for. Put the anger where it belongs, on him, in your rearview mirror. Be nice to yourself and give yourself permission to grieve. Take care of yourself as you get over the breakup. Have no further contact with him, don’t go looking for his username, and let a lot of time go by. It will get better, and the day will come when he has no power over you at all.

There are some lingering questions that you might want to talk over with your therapist at length as the feelings come up, but ones that I want to give you some preliminary answers to now.

“Why didn’t I see the signs that this was coming?”

It’s easy to feel stupid when you’ve been blindsided. A bomb went off in your life, how could you have missed the ticking? The answer to this one is: Because he didn’t want you to see any signs. He deliberately acted like nothing was wrong while he made up his mind, because he wanted to keep the “option” of you open while he decided what to do. He wanted your love, affection, sex, attention, time, the happiness & security of having a ‘girlfriend’, etc. while he made up his mind. That’s on him, not you! Either he really was undecided, or he was faking it to keep you interested for as long as it suited him. He engineered it to be this way, and then creepily was touching you up a week after you broke up, because he still felt entitled to your affections. Gross.

“What if I can never trust someone’s interest in and desire for me again?”

That one is kind of up to you, and to time. One dude’s opinion, unfortunately reinforced by a body-hating, body-shaming culture, is not everyone’s opinion. And it doesn’t have to be your opinion, though it may take some hard work on your part to fight it. May I recommend a coloring book?

“How can I feel better again?”

Be around people who make you feel good, and do things you love to do and that make you feel good. These are things you can control, so reach out to your friends and ask for brunch, ask for days at the movies or the museum or biking or staying up watching TV. Go swimming, get a massage, get some great pajamas and some awesome-smelling lotion and other stuff that makes your body feel great. Seek out body-positive online communities. Throw away your conventional fashion magazines, don’t consume media that hates on you. Love yourself way better than that P-dude ever, ever could.

Thank you all so much for a very constructive discussion. At nearly 600 comments, the thread has grown beyond where I can reasonably keep up. So as of 5/14/2014 10:17 pm Chicago time, comments are closed. 

In this piece at Medium on “Cut-Off Culture,” “Emma” broke up with the author after four months of dating, asked for space, and then when they tried to rekindle a friendship after a year, decided it wasn’t really for her.

“After nearly a year of silence, I reached out to her and we began a series of conversations toward repairing our friendship. She said she had recently begun dating someone new and I think it was difficult for her to talk to me about our relationship. Her response was to withdraw again. There were misunderstandings and miscommunication.

She stopped responding to my email and when I called to inquire she blocked my number and emailed me to stop contacting her. Over a space of nine months, I wrote her two kind emails in the spirit of healing. Finally, she replied, “I do not want to see or hear from you ever again” and threatened to file an anti-harassment order against me. The open, thoughtful, communicative Emma I knew had vanished.”

She said,”Please stop contacting me.”

He sent two more emails. She got angry (and possibly afraid) and asked him never to contact her again.

Then he wrote an essay about it, blaming her for invoking his past with an abusive mother(!), making all kinds of assumptions about her “trauma,” and discussing his confusion with her choices:

When personal safety is involved, cutoff is warranted. But most times this isn’t the case. When it’s not, this kind of behavior dehumanizes the other and sends the message “your needs don’t matter, you don’t matter.” University of Chicago neuroscientist John Cacioppo told Psychology Today, “‘The pain of losing a meaningful relationship can be especially searing in the absence of direct social contact.’ With no definitive closure, we’re left wondering what the heck happened, which can lead to the kind of endless rumination that often leads to depression.”

Emma once told me, “You’re the first one to want me for me,” but her abrupt about-face might make you think I ran off with her best friend or boiled her rabbit … I did neither. In fact, to this day, I have only guesses to make sense of her hostility to me.

Because Emma’s withdrawal and eventual cutoff surprised me so much,I had a lot of intense emotions and questions about what she’d experienced and the choices she’d made. Rather than face my need for explanation and desire for resolution, she chose to withdraw.

Here is what the heck happened:

• You guys broke up.
• She didn’t communicate for a year, but eventually gave in when you contacted her. Unfortunately you wanted to hash out the end of the relationship; she didn’t. She was into a new dude and didn’t want to talk about old emotional business.
• So she decided it wasn’t really for her. She tried a slow fade. After all, you guys weren’t really close anymore.
• Then she TOLD you what was up. “I don’t want to talk to you anymore.“
• You kept contacting her against her explicitly stated wishes. Emails seeking “healing” are still unwanted emails.
• She got angry and enforced the boundary.
• You  happened to turn up at her work on a date and she didn’t like it.

What additional “closure” could she have given? What kind of explanation would satisfy? Breakups are painful, and we don’t always understand the reasons for them, but after a four-month romantic attachment ends I don’t think the person is responsible for all of your feelings literally YEARS later. And I don’t think there is any peace or solution possible here, short of “keep being my friend even when you don’t want to.”

Everything about this made my skin crawl:

Cutoff culture is violent in its own ways. The person cutting ties gets what they want, but the person getting cut off is left in a situation where what they need or want doesn’t matter.

Emma’s last note included the phrase, “Apparently, what I want seems irrelevant to you.” She didn’t realize the irony that what I wanted had long been irrelevant to her. Being on the receiving end of a cutoff, surrounded by friends and culture that just expect you to get over it, can leave you feeling utterly powerless.

You are not entitled someone else’s attention and affection! Avoiding someone is not “violent.” YOU GUYS WANT OPPOSITE THINGS. And yes, it is on you to take care of your own feelings here. It is on you to do what you can to heal and get over it. Talk to your friends. Talk to a therapist. Say the Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear. Don’t force your ex to take care of you!

“If you’ve cut someone off, the ideal response is to ask what the other person needs to feel at peace and to try to offer compromise. Yoga teacher Sarah Powers says, “A lot of wounds in this world could be healed if we would say to the other, ‘I’m sorry I hurt you, what do you need now?’” Sometimes we cut off because we lack capacity. One can also say: “I can’t do this right now, but maybe can touch base later. What do you need in the meantime?” This is a place where technology can be helpful. Email can be used to communicate at a distance that feels safe.”

What compromise is possible between “I don’t like you or want to be in your life” and “Please stay in my life?” Why do you want someone’s grudging attention that you force them to give you? In the second to last paragraph, the author tells a telling anecdote:

The friend who was told to break up via “JSC” told me another story. One of her friends chose to have sex with a lover after breaking up with him; she said even in the midst of ending the relationship, she wanted to “be generous in spirit.” While I don’t necessarily advocate taking things that far (in part because it can create confusion), I embrace the sentiment.

AH HAHAHAHAHA “Good closure” with a “generous spirit” might involve still having sex with your spurned lover after you dump them while they heal at their own pace. Ok got it. He also invokes technology, and the act of blocking, as a catalyst for stalking, but not in the way you think. His reasoning is that if you block someone it will maybe force them to stalk you. “More than 3 million people report being stalking victims each year, the ultimate measure of collective cluelessness about ending love affairs well.” OR POSSIBLY IT’S ‘CAUSE OF STALKERS. LIKE YOU MIGHT SORTA BE.

The subtitle/logline of the piece is:

“Cutting off exes not only hurts our former partners but limits our own growth as well.”

Actually, this person knows nothing about Emma’s growth. When I cut off a former partner who stalked me, I grew just fine. I grew away. I grew alone. I grew free. I hope “Emma” did, too. Today seems like a good time for a reminder: You don’t have to be friends with your ex. And when you say “stop” and the other person keeps going, that person is telling you that you were right to flee.

P.S. He publishes excerpts from her private emails to him. NOT CREEPY AT ALL YOU GUYS.

P.P.S. Edited to add: This paragraph right here? Blaming male domestic violence against women on women making men feel powerlessness?

“I believe that most domestic violence is the result of men with trauma histories reacting to powerlessness in response to experiences with their ex, friends, or family. Certainly men are responsible for finding nonviolent ways to respond to feeling powerless, but culturally we need to understand the dynamics driving these kinds of situations if we’re to reduce them.”

 

Domestic violence springs from a sense of contempt and entitlement towards women. Men who abuse women don’t think that women are entitled to their own needs, feelings, opinions, and personal space. They think women exist to be emotional caretakers and nannies for men, and that when they fail to put men first, it somehow constitutes “violence” that must be contained and retaliated against. Sound like anyone we know? This is a chilling, MRA-style argument that makes violence against women the fault of women. “Emma”, wherever you are: keep running. Your instincts are in solid working order.

Captain Awkward et al,

A few years ago now, my parents informed me that they have been swingers since I was 11 years old (over 15 years ago). I feel I should mention: while I am only able to sustain one romantic/sexual relationship at a time, I embrace any lifestyle that involves informed, consenting adults. What threw me for a loop was that the family narrative that I had been telling everyone (including myself) was altered irrevocably. I’ve been in therapy, working on my feelings of anger and anxiety that have been busted loose by this revelation. While my parents love me, I don’t think they really understand how troubling this has been for me.

Since the time of my parents’ coming out, they have been involved with a woman named Myrtle. Myrtle is an otherwise single woman, who has recently adopted a baby, and about a year after that, gave birth to my half-sister. My parents have been very involved with both children, and have built and moved into a house across the street from Myrtle.

Periodically, I have sat my parents down to ask them questions, like: “What relationship do you expect me to have with these children?” and “How formal is the relationship between you guys and Myrtle?” They insist that they are not and will not be entering into anything formal with her, that if she finds someone to be monogamous with, they’ll just go back to being neighbors. Yet, it seems whenever I call they are at her house, or at swimming lessons with the kids, or just coming back from a trip together. Sometimes, I feel like I’ve lost my parents.

Last week my father informed me that I must invite Myrtle to my upcoming wedding. To be fair, I did tell him that given their financial contributions, they are entitled to a limited number of “I insist” cards, to be used judiciously. He claims she is unlikely to come. I don’t understand why they want me to invite her. I don’t really want her to be there. The space is limited, the guest list is small and only includes family and the dearest of friends.

Captain, do I play the good daughter (something I excel at) and invite her? Should I just recruit some friends to play “keep Myrtle away from me” on the big day? Should I call my parents and find out why they want me to invite someone that they deny a having a formal relationship with? Should I just say no and cope with any resulting tension? I just don’t know what to do.

Sincerely,
Trying to Get Over It

Dear Trying To Get Over It:

Congratulations on your upcoming marriage! And congratulations? on becoming part of the long tradition that says that weddings are the time when families try to spackle over all their conflict and bullshit and put a whole bunch of pressure on each other to perform in a certain way. “Wedding shenanigans” form the backbone of the Advice Industrial Complex, and I am proud to take my place in the Agony Aunt Alliance on your behalf.

You and your parents need to talk about what inviting Myrtle means to them and means to you.

Script #1: “Dad, let me be honest, it never occurred to Intended and me to invite her. I think this is a very awkward request you are making. But before we decide, we want to know why it’s so important to you.”

Make him do the work of explaining his reasoning. Your dad says she is unlikely to come. Well, then why is it so important to invite her? Because if you invite her, you’re saying “please come!” There is no “come but don’t really” kind of invitation. Lots of people don’t get invited to any given wedding and don’t get offended about it. It’s actually fucked up to give Myrtle an invitation that is not a real invitation, or force you to extend a fake invitation. See what he says, and then Script #2 might be “Intended and I are inviting only people we know well and who are close to us. If Myrtle wouldn’t come anyway, why go through the charade of including her?“

Oh, and also, use the Royal Engaged “we” whenever possible. It’s not just your wedding, it’s your future spouse’s wedding, and it’s okay to invoke them when setting boundaries (as it would be okay for them to invoke you with their family!). Have your intended on the phone or in the room when you have these conversations, too, if you think it will help.

Does the rest of your family know about Myrtle and the kids, or did your parents come out only to you? Have you and future spouse actually met and interacted with Myrtle? It sounds like not so much. If that is the case, and “Myrtle” is a complex open secret kind of thing in the extended family, then here is Script #3:

“Mom, Dad, if you want to introduce Myrtle and the kids to the family, why not just have a BBQ or something. I would feel more comfortable if getting to know Myrtle and her kids was not bundled up with planning my wedding.“

Having a child with someone and uprooting your life to build a house next to that person sounds pretty serious to me, whether or not the relationship is “formal.” Does the extended family know your half sibling is your Dad’s child, or is it this weird secret-second-class-family thing going on? Are your parents lying or deluded when they say that they don’t really expect this relationship to last? Denying Myrtle’s importance while insisting that she be invited to a small close-family-and-friends-only wedding makes no sense.

Which leads us to Script #4: “Mom, Dad, what is this really about?”

They’ve always hedged at asking you to consider Myrtle as part of the family (Have you and your intended spouse even met her? It sounds like it’s been at least several years if the kids are going to swimming lessons?) but it sounds like they want this wedding invitation to demonstrate that she is included and accepted by you. It’s a rubber stamp on fancy paper acknowledging a relationship that doesn’t actually exist yet. If they love Myrtle and want you to know her and her children, they have some work to do in introducing you to each other and actually laying out their hopes for what will happen there rather than hedging as they have been doing.

Once they’ve laid it out, here is one way you could go:

Script #5: “Mom and Dad, if you love Myrtle and want her to be part of the family, then have a party (that is not my wedding) and tell everybody how it is. That way we can all get to know her a little bit, and she can be invited to the wedding without me having to tiptoe around the whole thing and wonder who knows what and what you and Myrtle want to tell people-’She’s our neighbor.’ ‘She’s a friend of the family’ ‘She’s Mummy and Daddy’s Special Friend’ ‘She’s the mom of my half sister!’ – this is for YOU to figure out and address, not for me to handle with a wedding invitation.”

I don’t think it’s cool (and fortunately you don’t think it’s cool) to exclude someone your parents love from your wedding just because it’s a non-traditional relationship. If your parents were divorced and wanted to bring step-parents or partners/boyfriends/girlfriends, you’d roll with it, right? But if your parents re-married or were seeing someone seriously, they would also presumably make an effort to make sure you got to know that person. So while there is ickiness around expecting people to be secretive about non-traditional love arrangements, it’s not “society’s” disapproval that’s making the “You must invite Myrtle” thing fall apart for me.  If your parents want to facilitate an actual real connection between you and Myrtle, it sounds like they’ve had years to get the ball rolling and be emotionally honest with you instead of just “Here’s stuff about our sex life starting from when you were 11” type of honest. (I don’t know why they had to tell you the entire history, why not “Your mom and I have been exploring nonmonogamy for a while and heeeeey we met someone” not “Please re-examine everything you think you know about your childhood.” Too much information!)

A wedding is just one party. What’s their long game here? The real issue is that Myrtle and the half-sibling(s) are not a real part of your life. Your parents are pretending this is all casual and temporary and that there’s absolutely no pressure. But there is pressure: your dad is insisting that she be invited to your wedding. This is about legitimizing something about their relationship with Myrtle in the eyes of you and your family (and/or Myrtle herself, WHOSE PERSPECTIVE ON THIS I WOULD DEARLY LOVE), but they are using you and your wedding as props to do this instead of having the hard, real conversations that needed to happen long ago. Is this about you being judgmental of their lifestyle or is it about the fact that you don’t know this lady at all and it’s never seemed to matter to them much before? If they had done the work to integrate Myrtle and your half-sibling into the family, the question of inviting Myrtle would be a fait accompli. Absent that work, it’s okay for you to want a day with your parents where their focus is on you and your new spouse. “Mom, Dad, it sounds like we do need to revisit the whole question of where Myrtle and her kids will fit into my life, but this is not the time, this is not the event, this is not the way.”

I don’t want this to go to the ultimatum place, but if your parents play the “If Myrtle is invited then we won’t pay for the wedding” card, you also have the “Well, if you want me to EVER have any kind of relationship with Myrtle and the kids, this was NOT the way to go about it, fuck all y’all we’re eloping thx bye” card. Both look like losing hands, but I don’t think that’s your fault.

So, say you decide that it’s not worth fighting this and Myrtle is invited and actually comes to the wedding. What do you do?

1) Greet her briefly and accept her congratulations graciously. Consider the stock phrase, “Thank you, we’re very happy. I hope you have nice time.” Once she’s there, she’s a guest, and the ancient host-guest relationship prevails. She will eat your bread and salt, and you will not harm her lest you wish to be pursued throughout eternity by The Kindly Ones.

2) Let your parents be the one to introduce her around. She’s “a close friend of your parents’” as far as you are concerned, the rest is their news to share or not.

3) Get your friends/wedding party to be a buffer.

4) If she tries to “connect” or “talk seriously” with you at your wedding, say “Myrtle, seriously? Not the place” and move away/invoke buffer team.

5) If your parents pull some “LOOK AT US AND OUR UNCONVENTIONALNESS” show-offy stuff (Like, this *is* the first time everyone is meeting/hearing about Myrtle and your dad’s toast is to you and to the Several Loves of his Life, or there is awkward three-partner ballroom dancing) think of the incredible, amazing story it will make later. Maybe a wiggly-arms dance? 

Good luck, get married, be happy, and tell us how it all goes down if you feel comfortable doing that.

P.S. Offbeat Bride has “you’re not invited” scripts galore.

P.P.S. I can’t be the only one imagining Myrtle’s counterpoint letter, right? “My partners are insisting that I attend their daughter’s wedding, even though I am pretty sure she is not into the idea and this seems like Not The Time Or Place to meet the extended family. What do I do?“

Dear Captain,

My brother-in-law is a joker. He’s a very nice man who gets along with everybody, an extrovert. He loves to joke with people, and he usually gives nicknames or uses a personality trait for humor. This is fine most of the time, but the “thing” he chose to use with me hits too close to home and it has become very hurtful. He calls me “lazy ass” (in a loose translation) and makes comments about how I’m disorganized and basically do nothing all day. Just today, he came over to “inspect” my apartment and comment on my mess, talked about how they’re going to use my spare room for the baby (“you don’t need it”) and how I’m going to babysit for them to “pay things over” or something like that. My sister just called to invite me over for coffee, and when I hesitated because I was actually studying, he asked “are you doing anything useful for a change?”.

I’m not really a lazy ass. I don’t work as hard as my sister, but I do work all afternoons and Saturday mornings, and I go to school every weeknight. I’m not an organized person, but I’m trying to do better. I’m not sure if this is because he thinks that I abuse my sister’s and my mother’s help. I don’t pay for cable and wi-fi (my sister lives next door and shares with me), and I don’t pay my apartment’s bills either. I can’t afford these things, but my parents’ house is an incredibly toxic environment and this is the arrangement we made (my mother, my sister and I). I don’t like it – I hate it. When I left their house after a terrible crisis I wanted to support myself, but my mother insisted that I should stay in the family’s apt (it was empty).

The thing is that we (mother and daughters) do have this “system” where we help each other. We call when we are going to the supermarket to check if anybody needs anything, they call me to offer rides when they’re out and they know I’m leaving work, we borrow and lend clothes. My bother-in-law, however, pretty much raised himself.

I realize I get help more than I give right now, but I don’t know what do to. Should I offer to clean their house once a week? Do their shopping? Ask them to change their wifi password and cut the cable from my side? I *am* planning to help when the baby comes, I’m not heartless. He’s only here a few days every few weeks, as he works in another city, but it’s become something that bothers probably more than it should.

Love,
Lazy Ass

Your brother-in-law’s jokes don’t really sound like jokes. You know it. I know it. He knows it. If they were actually jokes he’d pick on you about something you have a big ego about, or something ridiculous and innocuous, not all the places you are most vulnerable. They only become jokes when you call him out on it, like, if you said “Hey, that nickname really hurts my feelings, please stop using it” or “I am confused by your comments about how I am not doing anything useful; I’m studying.” Then they will become jokes, he was just joking, his hands will go up, and he’ll back away from you because you’re so “sensitive” and “serious” and “you can’t take a joke.”

His jokes are belittling someone he sees as having less power than he does. I mean, so, you’re living in an apartment owned by your parents while you go to school and work part time. That doesn’t make you lazy, it’s actually quite normal. It doesn’t mean he gets to drop by and make fun of how you live whenever he wants to (speaking of doing useless stuff). It’s an incredibly frustrating way to be bullied, because he puts you in the position of looking like the mean/rude one if you resist.

Okay, let’s say he is really nice and clueless and he really means these to be jokes and doesn’t realize it hurts your feelings. Cool. Fortunately, the way for you to deal with the behavior for a “clueless jokester” and “verbal bully” is exactly the same. The scripts will tell you which kind you’re dealing with pretty quickly and give you some ways to respond. It is important that you respond; staying silent does nothing but embolden these folks.

Nickname Version:

Him: “Hey Lazy Ass!”

You: “Wow. Actually, I really don’t like being called that, so can you please stop?”

[[[[Clueless Joker, who is an actually nice, kind person will say "You know what? I'm really sorry, of course I will stop" and the conversation will end here.]]]]]]]

A bully will keep going: “Hey, no need to make a big deal out of nothing! I was only kidding! What, can’t you take a joke?”

You: “Cool, glad to hear it’s not a big deal. Then you won’t mind calling me by my name. Thank you!”

Him: “Jeez, why do you have to be so serious about everything?”

You: “Yes. I am very serious. So, call me by my name. Thanks.”

Whatever he accuses you of, re: seriousness, agree. “You are correct, I literally do not understand humor or jokes. So, my name, then?” Then end the conversation as soon as you can.

When He Drops By Version:

He knocks on door. You answer it but don’t open it all the way.

You: “Brother-In-Law, it’s not a good time right now. If you need to come by for some reason, can you call ahead and set it up? Thanks.”

[[[[Clueless Jokester, who is a kind, considerate person will say "Sorry to bug you, is it ok if I stop back by around x o'clock today or tomorrow?"]]]]]

A bully will say: “What, you’re not doing anything important! It’s not like you do anything useful! Your sister and mom don’t have to call ahead!”

You: “Well, I am actually busy right now, so, why don’t you call or email and we can figure out a good time for you to come by. Bye!”

A bully is going to go complain to your sister, who is going to complain to your mom.They should back you up, but if his persona is “Super-Fun Guy” and your role in the family  is ‘The Difficult One’ you can’t count on it. So be ready.

Scripts for your sister, when she approaches you:

You: “I know he is only joking, but it hurts my feelings and I’m tired of it, so I asked him to stop. If it is just a joke, then he’ll stop, right?”

Her: “He doesn’t mean anything by it/that’s just how he is/can’t you try to be more understanding, etc.” The apologist’s dance of “I know I’m living with a bully and I’d rather let him bully you than actually deal with it!”

You: I haven’t wanted to make a big deal of it, believe me, but it’s just gone on too long without me saying something. I need it to stop. Back me up, please? 

See also: “I am grateful for how you guys help me out with internet and bills, etc. but I’d appreciate advance notice if he needs to come by for some reason, thank you.”

Scripts for your mom, when she approaches you:

You: “I love brother-in-law, but sometimes his jokes are too much. So, I asked him to stop making certain jokes to me. It’s actually weird to me that he complained to you about that.“

Her: “He doesn’t mean anything by it/that’s just how he is/can’t you try to be more understanding, etc. Dance, apologist, dance!

You: “I try to just roll with it, honestly, but it’s gone on too long and it’s really gotten under my skin. So I’d like it to stop, and I’ve asked him to stop. It doesn’t have to be a big deal, unless he keeps going knowing how much it bothers me and hurts my feelings. That would be kind of a big deal!“

Her: Well, you can’t expect him to behave better/boys will be boys/you are sort of freeloading off of all of us and need to make certain allowances, etc. (Dance!)

You: “I am so grateful for all of your help! It would help me maintain some dignity in a difficult situation if I can have quiet and privacy to do my schoolwork without being called names. And I’d appreciate at least a day’s notice if someone is going to come by the place so I can straighten up and make sure I’m not in the middle of a project. I know this isn’t a standard landlord-tenant situation, but that’s a pretty basic landlord-tenant convention, can’t we try it out? I would be very grateful.”

If you have a friend who can help you practice saying the various scripts out loud, it might help you a lot in staying cool and calm when you do have to talk to him and your mom and sister. The Super Fun Jokester Bully thrives when you cry, when you raise your voice, when you do stuff that seems “irrational” or “crazy.” It is incredibly unfair and stupid and sexist, as if your desire not to be called names is irrational and his desire to call you names is rational, but in the sexist world we live in tears (yours) and raised voices are still a tool in this kind of bully’s arsenal. If you can keep a measured tone and just become a broken record where you repeat back “Yes, I am very serious and no fun. So please stop calling me ‘Lazy Ass,’ thank you” you will deprive him of the scene he wants and force him to escalate his behavior outside the “we’re all cool here, right?” plausible deniability field these dudes like to fly under. You want to make it a lot of work for him to keep talking to you this way.

It’s hard to stand up for yourself when you’re feeling vulnerable, but I promise, it is habit-forming. The first time it’s incredibly scary, and I’m not going to lie and say that people never push back or double down on their asshole behavior, but actually nice people will back off once they realize they have been hurting your feelings. Once you get through it a few times you will feel like you can do anything.

Your home organization skills and the financial agreements you make with your mom and your sister aren’t actually his to comment on (or trade upon for future free nanny service). You don’t need to be working at something other people consider sufficiently “useful” to have a right to dignity, privacy, and respect in your living space. If your brother-in-law is really kind, he will hear you and stop. If he is Stanley Kowalski, Jr., he can shove it where the sun don’t shine.

Hey Captain & Company,

I haven’t seen my father since I was 8. We were in contact until I was 16; he was emotionally abusive throughout that time. I have a brother and sister by his previous marriage, and part of his abuse involved keeping us from having a relationship with each other. We have reconnected as adults and are tentatively trying to learn how to be siblings. It’s very difficult with my sister because she is very close to our father and is really insistent that I should be as well.

My husband, on the other hand, has a great relationship with his parents, his brother, his extended family. And that’s good! They’re all great people! (His mom and mine are like bffs now). Sometimes at his family events I feel like Jane Goodall observing emotionally healthy apes.

“Clay” doesn’t understand why my family isn’t the same as his. I was, admittedly, not very forthcoming about all the issues I have with my father and siblings earlier in our relationship, so he was a bit weirded out when, for example, he found out I’d never met my nieces & nephews. We finally had a discussion about it when he objected to not inviting anyone from my paternal side to our wedding, and I thought he understood.

But now I’m pregnant, and looming fatherhood has made him VERY WORRIED about my father’s feelings. Clay wouldn’t want to be cut off from his child for mistakes he made years ago, and although my father’s mistakes were terrible and I have every right to be angry, can’t I see it from his point of view? (spoiler: no). My sister mentioned that my father has been sending annual Facebook messages to me, reminding me that he loves me and if I “ever need to talk” he’s there for me, and Clay has taken that as evidence that he’s changed and deserves a chance to know his grandchild. The last time Clay and I argued about this he called me unreasonable, and I’m sorry to say that after that point I pretty well lived up to it.

I’d like a script to SHUT IT DOWN, but I guess it’s possible that Clay’s right and I am being unreasonable. I still have a hard time calling my father’s behavior abuse out loud; maybe I haven’t gotten across how really really terrible just the idea of him makes me feel. He does superficially seem like a better person than he was, but I still don’t want him near my child, and I don’t want him near me. I’m hoping someone on Team Awkward has suggestions how to fix this mess or myself.

Thank you so much!

Ugh, I’m so sorry that this is happening to you. Let’s start with founding principles:

1. It’s possible your Dad HAS changed and IS really sorry.

2. It’s also possible for you to not care and not want to talk to him, ever. A visual aid:

Let’s start with your sister, because she is the source of the information and the pressure about your dad.

“Sister, I am going to tell you something, and I need you to hear me.

I do not want a relationship with Dad.

I do not want to hear from Dad.

I do not want to hear about Dad, from you.

I am glad that you and Dad have figured out a happy way to be in each other’s lives, but it’s not the same for me, and I need you to respect that. Please stop passing messages to me. Please stop pressuring me to re-open contact. Please do not give him any information about me or my family. I believe you that he feels bad and has changed. I need you to believe me that my feelings about him have not changed. If my feelings change I ever want to talk to Dad, I will, of my own volition, track the dude down. You are not our go-between in this, and I need you to stop. Do you understand?“

She’ll have some stuff to say, then tell her what is going to happen. “Going forward, if you bring up Dad, I am going to ask you to change the subject. If you won’t, I am going to end the conversation for that day, and we can try again another time. I really don’t want this to come between us or be an issue in our relationship, but the best way to accomplish that is for you to stop making it an issue for me.”

Then give her some time to process, and going forward, implement the boundary setting you told her you would. It may take several tries, especially since he will do everything he can to keep pushing her on the subject (b/c he is a jerkface and hearing “no” just emboldens him to try harder). Be really nice and friendly to her overall, but if she brings up the subject, change it, and if she won’t stop, do the “Well, so nice to talk to you, let’s do this again soon” and GTFO.

Here’s a script for Clay.

“Clay, I’ve talked to my sister about this, and now I want to talk to you.

I need you to hear me, because I’m only going to say this one time.

I do not want a relationship with my dad. I do not want him around our child. 

I believe Sister when she says he has changed, he feels bad, he cares about me, he wants a relationship, etc.

That doesn’t obligate me to invite him back into my life, ever. He can go be a better man someplace that is else. I have asked her to stop pushing on his behalf, and now I am going to ask you. Please stop.

You’ve said that this brings up worries for you, for instance, what if someday our child won’t talk to you because you made “a mistake?” Well, if you or I were to terrorize and control our child the way my dad terrorized and tried to control me, that would be a real risk. We’re not talking about one mistake, or the kind of “fight” that would happen in your family, we’re talking about years of systemic maltreatment. (Be forthcoming if you have held anything back; this is your time).

I don’t have to “move past that” in order to make you feel better. If I ever want to talk to my dad, I know where to find him, and I can reach out of my own free will. But it’s not going to happen because you and Sister push me into it. If I’m making a terrible mistake, I can live with that. This isn’t about you as a father, this is about me having a better life because he is finally out of it. Hear me. Believe me. Please stop trying to make this happen.”

He’s gonna say some stuff. Keep some phrases in your back pocket.

• “I don’t need you to understand or agree with me, but I do need you to respect my wishes about this.”
• “You can feel however you want to about it, however, if you bring him up, I’m going to change the subject, and if you keep bringing him up, I’m going to leave the conversation.” 
• “This isn’t an argument that you can win, or a negotiation. If you keep pushing, you’re not going to change my mind, but you are going to hurt and annoy me.”

Or, the most positive way you could put it: “Clay, you can’t fix my childhood or my family history. But you are my family now, and I love you. So believe me; let this go and let me finally have a happy family.”

You already know what to do and say and have been doing it. This isn’t about your dad, this is about boundary-setting with the people you do care about. Defend those boundaries without guilt.

Dear Captain and friends,

I am terrified of talking to my mother. If I, or my partner, do something she doesn’t like, even if it has no impact on her life, she will worry and blame me for that worry. Sometimes this is because she finds a way in which it will affect her later (she thinks that if anything ever goes wrong for me financially she’ll have to bail me out despite my assurances to the contrary). She often implies or says outright that I’m childish and should always do what she says (I’m 27). When I was 18 my psychiatrist used a garden metaphor for my life so sometimes when I am trying to communicate with her I use that. At the moment I think she is trying to walk into my garden and rearrange everything, and keeping her out is stressful, but she says she has the garden next door and I am letting weeds from my garden get into hers. I have no idea how to deal with this massive conflict in how we see the situation.

At the moment I am hiding something big from her and I don’t know what to do. My partner left his job a few months ago because the commute was exhausting. We didn’t tell my mum he’d left, just that he was looking for something closer to home. He was offered a job with a reasonable commute and great pay, but he quit after two days because he couldn’t stand the corporate culture (which wasn’t apparent at interview stage). We made the decision together, because although I’d love the security, I didn’t want to risk my partner’s well-being and looking for a new job while working there would be basically impossible. We have enough money for him to be unemployed and job-seeking for a few months, although I don’t know what happens if he doesn’t get a job before the money runs out. Some of this money was a wedding present from my parents, and while legally they can’t impose conditions, I expect criticism if they realise that the money is supporting us while my partner is unemployed. We told my parents when he accepted the job, a week before he actually started (and quit). My partner wants us to tell my mum that the job fell through because they no longer needed him. I am anticipating a world of pain as my mum has sleepless nights about his unemployment and passes the blame to me for being with him when she thinks he’s lazy and makes my life harder. I want to be honest but I am terrified of her reaction. What should I do?

Thanks so much,

Terrified Gardener

Dear Terrified:

Nobody likes disappointing their parents, and almost nobody looks forward to telling their parents uncomfortable news. It can be hard, even with supportive, loving parents because they want so badly for us to do well and be happy, and we don’t want to disappoint their hopes for us. This is one reason why coming out to parents around sexuality and gender identity is so fraught. The image that they have of who we are and who they want us to be is so incredibly vivid that we start to believe that picture can be ruined by us revealing our authentic selves to them, and in many cases they actually grieve the loss of that idealized person and expect us to comfort them and comport ourselves in an “acceptable” way while they come to terms with the “loss.” I’ll wager that a lot of us feel forced to live in the gap between image and reality when we deal with our parents, so powerful is its manifestation and so avidly is it presented as the way we really are or should be. I’ve never had to come out, but as someone whose mom wanted this:

Robin Wright as Claire Underwood from House of Cards, rocking “D.C. Important People” style

and got this:

Me, rocking people’s faces off at karaoke, 2012

…please allow me say: It can be a long and difficult struggle to resolve the ideal picture and the actual human into “Hello, I am an adult who is separate from you. I love you a lot, but you have to be nice to the actual me that is here and not sigh all the time about the potential me who is not actually here or try to sculpt me into her. Because if you keep doing that, I will have to stay away from you so that Actual Me can survive.“

I’d like to recommend that you read Dr. Karyl McBride’s Will I Ever Be Good Enough? We can’t say, of course whether your mom fits the profile of a narcissistic mother (or if her anxiety is of the clinical sort), but I’ve personally found that book to very useful in teaching boundary setting within difficult family relationships no matter what’s going on. There is a long way from “this will be awkward and hard for me to talk about with my parents” and “I am terrified.” As adults, if we’re terrified of how our parents will react to something, something has gone very, very wrong in the relationship. At very least, we need to ride the borderlands of our personal garden (nice image, past therapist!) and check that all the fences are intact.

Worrying about your kids is normal, you say. Being reluctant to financially support adult children is normal, you say. Sure. And yet? I can tell that this situation is really not normal. I can tell because  something bad that *might* happen to you (financial insecurity if your partner doesn’t get a job in a few months) is translated, through your mom’s toxic worry and disappointment cloud, into blaming you for something that you are doing to her by being “childish” or “irresponsible,” and her solution is that she gets to control your decisions. If we had a department of Diagramming Abusive Grammar here at Captain Awkward Dot Com Enterprises, your descriptions of your mom’s behavior would fit almost perfectly. Making everything about her? Check. Ascribing it to some inherently bad quality in you? Check. Throwing a lot of insults and blame masked as “worry?” Check. Using all of the above as an argument for more control? We’ve got a full set here, roll it out!

Only-slightly-less-ripped-from-Emotional-Terrorists-Quarterly, your mom’s behavior sets up a dynamic where it’s very hard to tell her anything about potential mistakes, failure, risk, or any of your own worries, lest you feed the Worry Wyvern and awaken the Dragons of Disappointment from their slumber. Fear of her overwhelming worry means that it’s often easier to just not tell her stuff.

Because if I am right, over time your mom’s extreme worry has led you to try to edit a picture of your life to show her only a happy, financially successful, cheerful (whatever qualities she values) daughter at the expense of her real daughter – who may be all of those things, but who also has bad days and flaws, secrets and needs. For example, by worrying so much and so vocally about your finances, she pre-empts and absorbs your own worry about your finances. Anything you tell her will just make her worry/confirm that her worries were justified, so it’s easier in the moment to just keep your head down and hope that you never have to tell her any bad news.  Perhaps she thinks it’s motivating. “Aha! If my daughter is afraid that I will be very disappointed indeed if I end up supporting her, she will toil always to make sure she is financially secure!” I’m sure it is horrifically motivating, in its way, but it also makes it emotionally unsafe for you to tell her when things might not be so great or ask her for help if things do go wrong. Whether or not she meant to, she has set it up so you have to constantly perform and reassure her, and telling her that you are struggling in some way means you have to deal with the burden of horribly disappointing your mom and “causing” her to worry on top of whatever actual serious stuff you have going on in your life. And it’s a double-bind, because if you don’t tell her and she finds out anyway, she can now get on you for lying. But she’s creating the conditions that make lying feel like the sanest option sometimes! But somehow it’s still all your fault and her point, that she should call all the shots from now on is still made. Conveeeeeenient.

Whatever her reasons, however self-aware she is of the behavior, it stresses you the hell out, and it also cuts you off from having an authentic relationship with her.

If you’ve read this, you know: Maur’s dragonfire was very scary, but his real evil was undermining people and stirring up worry and doubt.

You can’t control her feelings, and shouldn’t try, but in a perfect world you should be able to ask for a break from the behavior where she tells you all of her worries. “Mom, I get that you worry about me a lot, but when you express it so constantly it really hurts my feelings. It makes me feel like I can’t talk honestly with you about stuff that actually worries me. It also makes me feel like you have no confidence in me to make good decisions and take care of myself – like you are second-guessing everything before you even know what is actually happening.  Would you be willing to write down all your worry in a journal somewhere, or talk to a professional about it, so that you and I could relate without me having to hear all the ways I might possibly screw up my life?”

You know your mom best. Do you live in a world where that feels like something you could possibly say? Could you rehearse something with your therapist and try it out? Could you try setting a two-subject-changes-then-end-the-conversation boundary with her when she starts the worry cycle going?

If not, I have something to tell you. It’s not comforting, exactly, but it is a way of reclaiming some power: If she refuses to listen to you and keeps behaving this way even after you ask her to stop, even after you try to set a boundary, she will do it no matter what you do. We’re deep in Worry Thermodynamics territory – “Mom-worry is neither created nor destroyed; it can only be transferred from child to child” – where it stops being about you at all. When someone shows you that they cannot be pleased, cannot be appeased, cannot be redirected, and cannot respect your reasonable boundaries, we enter a territory called “The Fuck Its”, as in, Fuck it, there’s no making you happy, so, I might as well please myself. It is lonely and barren sometimes here in the Fuck Its, but it can be a very liberating place. For one thing, you can invoke the “I’m sorry that you feel that way” apology freely and without shame. You can also become practiced at interrupting people, which is normally very rude to do, but (again, from my own experience) when the conversation turns to “I am very worried about how fat you are-” or “Is that really what you are wearing-” I don’t feel bad at all about saying “-let me stop you right there. Howabout, for the rest of the visit, you pretend that I am a fellow adult – say a coworker, or a friend of a friend – whom you like. And then, don’t say anything to me about my appearance that you wouldn’t say to that person.“

This is a thing I have actually said, btw.

Having the conversation, saying the script, enforcing the boundary rarely works automagically. It’s just meant to be a place to start, so we don’t all have to just take whatever people say to us and squirm in silence. It has taken, literally, years of enforcing this particular boundary, which I do because I love my mom and want to have a relationship with her, to get her to stop concern-trolling and body-shaming me, at least to my face. Most recently she tried to do it behind my back to my boyfriend, who was like “SHUT. IT. DOWN. FOREVER.” so hopefully that’s all done for a bit.

Before the Years of Therapy™, before reading that book, before coming to dwell here in the Fuck Its, a conversation like that with my mom would have had me in tears and shaking before, during, and after. What unknown terrors would I invoke? Would the yawp of the Worry Wyvern wake the Dragons of Disappointment? Would I have to go live under the Concern Bridge where the Concern Trolls dwell?

Literally any excuse to use this image from now on.

Now? It’s an unpleasant moment or three and then back to an uneasy peace. No one apologizes to anyone, it never gets “worked out,” she undoubtedly has a lot of worries and feelings and things she wants to say and articles she’d like to send. But she does STFU about my body for the rest of the visit and we do our best to be pleasant and kind to each other and enjoy what is there to be enjoyed. And that’s a victory. That’s what passes for a victory, here in the Fuck Its.

The Fuck Its are not a perfect escape. It always feels very risky to write about my own family stuff here. My parents can easily find the blog, but I don’t think they read it and I’ve never told them about the site. I could say it’s because they aren’t my audience, and that I don’t feel like I or the site would benefit from their scrutiny,  but it’s really because it feels scary. I don’t think they would like it, or be proud of me for creating it. I think they would be very hurt to find themselves described in anything but glowing terms. Even though they totally rock feminist housework division of labor, reading about themselves here might break open the uneasy peace we’ve established over the years. I don’t think the various “stuff” we have will be or even can be “worked out”, ever. Where would we even START? What greeting card says “I’m sorry I made you stand for hours and apologize to me for the time you got raped in college, Daughter” or “I’m sorry that every time you expressed a feeling, I ‘corrected’ it, but I thought it was for your own good!” “I’m sorry I put you on a starvation diet when you were an athletic teenager because you’ve always had the wrong body and I wanted someone to keep me company in hating mine.” Even scarier, what if there were those cards, but they refused to even remember or acknowledge any of it? (The most likely scenario, by far). There are doubtless pockets of infection below the scar tissue that should be drained for real healing to occur, but I don’t want to cut myself to shreds on these particular people any more. I don’t want to figure out what makes them tick or why it happened. I just want to sit down to dinner or a game of rummy a few times a year and have the feeling of having parents.

But when there are questions like this question, and days like this day, where I need to tell you, Letter Writer, and you, loyal and wonderful and supportive readers, that there are Reasons that I know some of the stuff that I know. I’m not on some superior plane of enlightenment and courage. I don’t actually know how to solve other people’s lives, or even my own life. But I can tell you how I survived. And I am a person who used to be afraid to speak up about anything, to anyone, and now I am not anymore.

One I way I survived used to be to edit information, like you do now, Letter Writer. Then I went the other direction, into full on The Filter Is Coming The Fuck Off, Take Me As I Am Or I Will Shun You. After some periods of shunning, we now hover between “I will tell you uncomfortable stuff the same way I would tell anyone close to me and hope that you will have a halfway normal reaction but be unsurprised if you don’t” and “I will not lie but I will not volunteer things, either,” depending on what it is and how vulnerable vs. safe I am feeling. When I am vulnerable and raw and still in the middle of the struggle, my parents aren’t the people that I call. And that hurts them, sometimes, when they find out about something after the fact. “When were you going to tell us? Why don’t you trust us? Why didn’t you tell us?” 

Because I can’t trust you to be actually supportive or helpful in any way, and when I’m in a fragile state, running the gauntlet of your disappointment and worry in addition to trying to deal with my problems actually makes everything worse, is the answer.

I can tell you the exact day that everything started to change for the better. When I moved out here in 2000, I had a hard time finding a permanent job so I ended up temping for a while. My parents hated this, thought it was beneath me, were deeply ashamed and worried about me. They came to see me the next summer, and as soon as I walked into their hotel room my mom started in with her list of disappointing things about me. Basically, hi, how was the drive, where are we eating, then right into full You Are A Fuck-Up theater, we are so worried, what’s wrong with you, we are so angry at you for “wasting” your education this way, etc.

So I said, “Hey, howabout asking me how I’m doing (in love with a good dude, surrounded by loving friends, working on a movie, excited about the possibility of something for the first time in a long time, finally treating and healing from the depression that had almost killed me back in D.C., happier than I’ve been in years) instead of telling me? Howabout not telling me that I should be ashamed of the honest work that is putting food on my table and a roof over my head and paying my bills? Howabout, if this is what you came here to tell me, you can turn around and drive back, because I’m not staying to listen to it.” I was crying, I wasn’t eloquent or cool or triumphant or even coherent. But I said it. And then I walked out.

My dad came after me, and found me in the lobby, and asked me to come back to the room and promised they would behave themselves. And I said, I’ll wait here, you come down. And for the rest of the visit, they mostly did behave (for them), though my neighborhood, restaurants, apartment, clothes, handling of various personal affairs, taste in movies were all found wanting and I made sure we were always in public or accompanied by my then-boyfriend.

After that day, I knew that if I said “eff off, I can’t do this anymore, you can’t talk to me like that” they would stop, and if I left, they would come after me and try at least to make things work. That knowledge was a power I hadn’t ever known before. A sad power – how bad do things have to be before that feels like power – but power, nonetheless. So after that day, I more or less instituted my policy of “the first time you say something mean, I will change the subject, and the second time, I will leave the room/hang up the phone and then not call you for a while.” Dan Savage writes about this with regard to gay kids and homophobic parents, where the bargaining chip is “be nice to me or you don’t get access to me.” It’s a sad bet at seriously the saddest poker table, but sometimes it’s the hand you have to play. And if your parents want to stay connected to you, they will take the bet. They will try to get around it all the time, make side bets, threaten, bluff, etc. – it will never be a comfortable thing, you can never fully relax – but they more often than not will stop doing and saying overtly mean/worrying/boundary-crossing stuff to the best of their ability. It can get better.

Letter Writer, I do want to discuss your specific situation with your partner, your finances, and your mom.

Because one of the things that gave me the strength to walk out of that hotel room was that I was financially independent from my folks. I know from many, many letters in my inbox that a lot of you in this economy live in toxic situations and don’t have the means to support yourselves, and that makes it a million times harder. For me, cheap apartments with questionable roommates and furniture scavenged from alleys and selling plasma and cleaning houses was better than ever, ever, EVER moving home to a comfortable cage.  I don’t judge anyone for making a different choice - you are the expert on your own situation, you do what you have to do to survive, you make the tradeoffs that you are prepared to make, you don’t ever deserve to be homeless or hungry or broke because of principle, or be mistreated because you can’t move out of a place –  but I will tell you from the bottom of my heart that if you are unhappily living with toxic family, the energy you spend on getting the fuck out is probably worth way more than the energy you expend arguing or trying to get them to respect you or to improve the situation. In my experience, nothing will reframe the balance of power like getting that small, quiet room with a door you can shut. When you finally have the freedom to disengage completely, it allows you to engage selectively and perhaps, with time, productively. I have been hungry, I have been cold, I have been sick, and I have been scared but I have never, ever been as unhappy as when I lived under my folks’ roof as a kid and had to just sit there and take whatever it was. Never.

Which is to say, I hope the job search goes well, but if it doesn’t it might be worth your partner working a less-than-ideal job for a while, as a starting point to hopefully lead to bigger and better things, if it means never having to ask your folks for money. And this is a conversation you need to have with him, using actual numbers, like dates and accounts and amounts of money and goals. How active is he about sending out resumes & cover letters? What’s his Plan B, re: freelancing or consulting? Is what he wants possible/abundant where you live? What would happen if he did get a new job and didn’t like that one? Is he prepared to stick it out for say, six months to a year,  while looking for a new position? Can he pick up part-time work that isn’t as highly skilled or paid for the sake of having money coming in, while he looks for something better? Is he with you on a “we never, ever, ever ask my mom for money” rule, or does he see the wedding gift as the first stage of an ongoing relationship where your parents support you? If he does get a job, will he replace the wedding gift in your joint savings? Are you working? Are you looking for jobs or additional freelance work that could help you improve your financial situation and pick up the slack in case it takes him a while to find something?

Right now, my boyfriend’s job is the source of my affordable health insurance, so while I wouldn’t want him to stay somewhere that made him miserable, I would be upset if he quit without talking to me first and without a plan, because it does affect me. Our household expenses are low, but not easily carried by just one person, so I also should not quit my job without telling him or having another plan lined up. That, in my opinion, is a reasonable worry or issue between interdependent adults. You and partner have some planning and talking to do, without your mom’s worry getting all over everything.

You don’t have to invite your mom to this discussion. I hate lies, even lies of omission, but I do believe in “you are not a safe person to share certain information with.”

Mother Gothel invites your mom to join her Overprotective Underminers Anonymous meeting.

Are we playing into your mom’s hands too much? What’s the worst thing that could happen if you told her the truth?

She’d worry. (She does that anyway).

She’d say a bunch of critical stuff about you and your ability to make choices. (She does that anyway).

She might tell you outright that she won’t support you financially if things go wrong, and try to threaten you with the prospect of poverty/ruin. (She isn’t obligated to support you, and surely the nature of her worries isn’t new information).

She’ll alternately tell you you are being a childish and will never grow up while yelling at you for not growing up exactly as she wants you to (She already does that, too).

She’ll refuse help you ask for but give you unsolicited, expensive, or overly-generous gifts and then try to use them to control you. Or she will insist on financially supporting you and that is the only way to go, so you actually have to fight her to take care of yourself. (Hey, this is an assumption on my part, because it’s not actually in your letter, but it fits the pattern of both deploring and cultivating dependency and I’m pretty sure she does it in some fashion).

Ooh, bonus round, does she do the thing where you are simultaneously the smartest and most naive, gullible, hapless person alive, as in “You’re so smart, you should be able to easily  ______” when you genuinely struggle to do something, and “You’re handling x thing all wrong, do I have to do everything, when will you grow up” when you are actually handling something quite well.  Too smart to ever be allowed to fail or make a mistake, too stupid to be allowed to risk a success! I could be projecting here, but let me know if it sounds familiar.

In the worst case scenarios, could you handle the conversation? And when she reverts to type, could you say “Wow, that’s a lot of concern, and I can’t promise I can clear up all of it for you, but partner and I have a pretty solid plan and agreement for how we’ll handle things“?

Could you say “I’m not telling you to ask for financial help, I’m telling you because I want your emotional support, as your daughter“?

Could you say, “Actually, I wasn’t asking for advice. I don’t actually want your input on my financial decisions”?

You don’t have power over your mom’s worry, or how she expresses it, but you can develop some power over how willing you are to listen to it and how you respond. Over time, little by little, boundary by boundary, you can show her that her worry doesn’t have power over you. That you love her and want her approval and support, but you won’t abase yourself for it. You can fence in your garden, and you can defend it.  Reader Cait laid this out so beautifully in her comment, here, that I am going to quote it at length:

Part of emotional abuse and manipulation is instilling fear, self-doubt, and uncertainty in the manipulated person. Moreso if they are a child. …Our brains do us a favor by minimizing what we’re going through to help us survive. But that survival trick is a double edged sword later when we don’t have the words to explain how bad it really was, just knots in our stomachs. And somehow the words that do come out aren’t able to convey the full force of the truth. Because we’re so habituated to minimizing for survival. It’s like the language isn’t there. That’s why naming things is so powerful. Like “mansplaining” or #YesAllWomen. Putting names to something provides an Ah-ha moment where so many of us are like *yes this.* You’re working towards your Naming the Thing place, and while you get there, you deserve not to have to put up with any misinformed misdirection from the people closest to your heart.

The only thing that works for me is to push through that self-doubt and fear and instinctive minimizing and say what I have to say. I have a hard ass time doing that. I was emotionally terrorized, and when I decide to take a stand on something, my heart starts pounding and I start shaking, and my reptile brain starts telling me I’m going to get screamed at, made fun of, or derided. I’m not. The barista at starbucks is not going to scream at me for asking to have my coffee remade. Nor is my boyfriend for saying I need alone time tonight rather than together time. But it pops up there in my minds eye like a bogeyman, and I have to stare it down each time, and act anyway, in clear non-minimizing, non-apologietic languague. Or the closest approximation. This is one of those times that any action is better than inaction. If I don’t, if I let the bogeyman of yesterday’s fears rule today’s life, *they’re still winning.*

Or to put it another way, I’m the adult in my own life now, not the child in theirs. Not anymore. Which is powerful, and amazing. I get to be the adult today that I didn’t see around me then. I get to kind of rewrite history by being the grownup it’s right for me to be. I didn’t have that agency as a child, but I do now.

Someone in your life as a child didn’t stand up to your dad and protect you from him. But you get a do-over. Because now you get to do for yourself what that person owed you and should have done for you then. In my case, I can take that statement, and feel self-pitying about it. Or I can take it and feel empowered by it. Which way of taking it is more empowering for me.

Take that amazing stand and feel awesome about it.”

Might you stammer or cry? Might you feel judged? Might it take a few times before you really get the words out? Might it be awkward? Well, it’s already super-awkward, and you’ve already survived it. You’re surviving it now. You’ll keep surviving it, no matter what she throws at you. And now you have the map to The Fuck Its. You may not want to live there, but it’s a good place to vacation from people who stomp all over your garden. Welcome! You can actually feel your feelings. You can eat what you want, wear what you want, live your life how you want, and leave any time you like.

Dear Captain,

Last Fall, I began dating an awesome guy. He’s nerdy, a real feminist, and is just as much in love with me as I am with him. Things have been great and we both know how to use our words to make things even better. As it stands, we’re both in this for the long haul and have discussed plans of moving in together when I graduate from college and eventually of getting married. I am so excited about life with this guy.

My problem is that I come from a super conservative Christian sub-culture and my boyfriend is an atheist. While I’m super cool with his personal views on religion (and he is of mine as well, yay!) most of my friends, family, and people I interact with at church have made it their business to go out of their way to tell me to end things with him. Everyone sees my relationship as something wrong and offensive to God. In their eyes, they’re just helping me “do what’s right” but it’s emotionally exhausting and always makes me upset with the people.

As it stands, there’s literally nothing these people could say to me that would actually make me break up with him. But I’m tired of having to act nice when people tell me off for dating someone who isn’t a Christian. Since you are the master of awesome shut-down scripts, I was wondering if you might have anything up your sleeve for people trying to get me “out of my sinful relationship” when this (super hurtful) behavior is considered acceptable (and encouraged) within the sub-culture I am in.

(On a side note, I’m planning on joining a much more awesome denomination/church when I graduate from college, but as I am going to a college funded by this denomination, I’m stuck in place for a year.)

Thanks for your help,

Happily Dating

Dear Happily Dating:

I think this is one of those cases where the best snappy comeback is frank sincerity.

• “I’m very happy with Boyfriend, thanks for asking.”
• “That really hurts my feelings. Please stop.”
• “It is not okay for you to tell me who I can date.” 
• “That’s not actually your business. Back off.” 
• “Your concern is misplaced. Please stop talking now.”
• “I refuse to discuss this with you.”
• “That wasn’t an invitation to negotiate, that was me telling you to stop talking about this.”

If it’s like, a really sweet old lady or someone you really don’t want to offend, try “Hmm that’s interesting” or “Wow I’ll think about it” but know that there is no perfect feel-good way to say “BOUNDARIES!” to people who are trammeling yours. If you can, whatever you say, use a flat tone and repeat yourself like a broken record. Make it very boring to bring up this topic with you.

With this group, it sounds like WHATEVER you say that is not “Oh yes you’re right thank you so much for your kind concern, I will do what you say immediately” will be taken as a) the HEIGHT of rudeness and b) proof positive that this boyfriend is a bad influence on you and that they are right to try to separate you.The game is sort of rigged so that if they win if you break up with him, they win if you go all out trying to convert him, and they win the longer they get you to pay attention to them and the more you try to convince them that he’s great, because it gives them the illusion that you care about their opinion about this and that they have power in this arena. Any of those outcomes validates the idea that they were right to speak up.

A victory here isn’t getting them to agree with you, it’s getting them to stop bringing it up, or, when they do, to cut those conversations very, very short. So say something short and conversation-ending and then do what you have to do to actually end the conversation if they keep going.

• “I’ve asked you twice to stop bringing this up. New topic, now.”
• “You’ve made your opinion very clear. I still disagree with it. Stop.”
• “This is exhausting to talk about. I don’t want to go through it again.”
• “This is not going to alienate me from my boyfriend, but your refusal to actually listen to me is alienating me from you. Right now. Stop.”

Be boring and sincere. Repeat as necessary. Move away. You’ll find a cooler church next year. If you haven’t seen it, allow me to recommend The Wise Kids, an indie film directed by Stephen Cone (and art-directed by my genius friend Caity Birmingham). It’s about coming-of-age in a small, conservative church community, and while there is indeed pressure to conform to certain beliefs and behaviors, the big stuff is handled with love, compassion, and respect.

Dear Captain,

I was wondering if you could spare some advice on how to go dutch (AKA ‘make-people-pay-their-share) with people who are ‘sensitive’ (where ‘sensitive’ is in the ”easily-offended’ way, not the ‘sensitive-they’ll-figure-it-out-with-only-a-little-prompting’ way.) And these ‘people’ are all members of my in-law family which I would described as a relationships which are ‘generally-pretty-friendly’ but coated with a thick layer of ‘don’t-rock-the-boat’.

I don’t mind being generous (and I come from a family of similar) but I’m finding it increasingly difficult to deal with my in’s who are all financially well-off but when a bill comes around for a shared service are always suddenly stuck by the need to ‘go to the bathroom’ or ‘get something from the car’, have forgotten wallets, don’t have cash on them right now, will ‘get the next round’ or ‘are really short this week’.

I’ve tried some techniques in the past -

• Pre-arranging payment methods beforehand (these get ‘forgotten’, wrong payment is brought, or guilt is brought out ‘I didn’t know it was so expensive here’)
• Only bring a set amount of cash or trying to remind them that I had the last round (the ‘bring only a set amount’ has been a disaster – its resulted in long moments standing awkwardly round the till in silence with everyone looking at me while I muttered pathetically “Sorry, I only brought enough for me” or worse, they have all walked out/vanished leaving the bill unpaid. A member went back and paid it once we realized it hadn’t been covered but the experience was very unpleasant. The ‘I had the last round’ is met with excuses similar to if payment is pre-arranged).
• Ask my husband to speak with HIS family about this. This had been met with either apathy and sympathy but no results. (“Yeah, they are like that and it is annoying. But that’s just how they are.”) (“Just don’t go out with them then.”)

I like spending time with my in-law family and we do a lot of other free fun things together but I’d also love to occasionally go out for a meal, see a movie or get my nails done in their company without having the pay for the pleasure.

Advice?

Not-Made-of-Money

Dear Not Made of Money,

This would drive me absolutely bananas.

Your desire to see your spouse’s family and to have them behave reasonably is a perfectly reasonable thing to want. Unfortunately, I think your husband is right. You’ve tried all the things that normal people would do to fix this, and they have shown you that they have a complete inability to feel shame and zero desire to change.

Let’s be clear: It’s possible to actually forget one’s wallet, or to misunderstand whether something was an invitation that included an unspoken “I will pay for you,” or to be caught unawares by prices. It’s possible…one time. If that happens to you, you thank the other person for covering you with a minimum of fanfare. “I’m so sorry, I’m really embarrassed. Are you able to cover me for now and I will get you back tomorrow?” The next day, if humanly possible, you contact them with an offer to pay them back or issue an invitation to something where you will cover the cost entirely. What you invite them to doesn’t have to match exactly, dollar for dollar, as long as the spirit of reciprocity is observed. “Thank you so much for getting my dinner last night. Can I treat you to a movie soon?” There are loving and good ways to deal with friends around income disparities. The Letter Writer’s in-laws are not using any of those, though.

You could change the dynamic, slightly, in a few ways. This first batch of tactics are relatively un-confrontational and might have some impact:

• With the entire group, do ONLY free things or things that happen at someone’s house. No “let’s ALL go to a restaurant” stuff. And if you’ve been the one making the plans for large group activities, scale that all the way back.
• Invite them to dinner or to get nails done in smaller groups, or one at a time, and make clear in advance that it is your treat. You’ll still be paying, but you’ll get what you want which is family time without setting yourself up for horrible awkwardness and anger.
• If you are the one suggesting the places or activities, and you are getting “I didn’t realize it was so expensive” feedback, take this at face value. However well-off you perceive these people to be, maybe this particular thing IS out of their price range or out of their comfort zone for what they want to spend on x activity. They have a responsibility to speak up when the plans are made, to suggest a different place, or decline if they can’t afford it, and they are almost definitely falling down on the job there. But if you’ve been eating at “moderately-priced” sit-down restaurants, try going to the $8 fancy sandwich joint where everyone pays for their own thing at the counter and see if it gets better.
• Separate checks separate checks separate checks. Restaurants will sometimes limit the amount of separations in one party, but you want separate checks from now on, and you want to get on that quickly and loudly to the server (don’t negotiate it with your dining companions). As soon as you order anything, speak up. “Spouse and I need to be on our own check, thank you.” When your bill comes, pay it, leave really good tip, as I imagine you already do, and be the one to put on your coats and leave first. And don’t take them to your favorite places.

More confrontational:

• If one of the main offenders from his family invites you to do something that costs money, get very explicit in a way that will feel rude and unclassy to you. “I feel very awkward about saying this, but the last few times you’ve suggested we get together I’ve ended up paying for everyone and I don’t want to do that again. Is this your treat or are we going Dutch? Because if this is going to be on me, I’d rather not go/go to this other place that I prefer.” Yes, they will be offended. Hold that thought.
• See also “Thanks for inviting us, but after the way everything went with paying the bill last time, let’s do something free/at your house. I want to see you, but I’m never going through that again.” Yes, they will get offended. More on that later.
• Talk to the person you are closest to out of the people who do this. “Hey, this has been really weighing on my mind. I love seeing you, but I hate making plans with anyone in Spouse-family lately because there is always some complication about the bill. What am I not understanding? Do we need to agree to pick less expensive outings? What are we supposed to do when everyone bails out at the last minute?” Ask the question directly in a  way that makes it their problem to explain and sort out.Yes, they will be offended by this, too.

If all of this sounds AWKWARD AS FUCK, it’s because IT IS. It sounds like that in their family, the culture is “when you invite me, I assume you will be paying, and when I invite you, I also assume you will be paying.” 

You say they are “sensitive,” aka, easily offended, which it sounds like they wield as a manipulation tool.  Let’s break this down, shall we? They repeatedly act like total clods, leaving you to pay their tab, and then they are the ones who are offended if you bring it up? Like “how dare you be so crass as to mention money“? And you are sort of …not allowed…to get offended yourself at their behavior? They are taking advantage of the social contract that says it’s rude to call attention to rude behavior, and deliberately trying to make it emotionally expensive for you to challenge them so they can keep enjoying the status quo where you take on the entire financial and emotional burden. So what’s the worst thing that could happen if they get really offended? Is it worth it to you to keep paying for them to avoid Mount Offended from erupting? Or is it time to pick the “You can’t actually be serious” fight you’ve been itching to have? Only you and your husband can decide what feels right, just know: It will never change on its own. They will never get it on their own. Hints do not work, they just create a sea of plausible deniability for clueless and malicious people to swim around in.

They shouldn’t behave this way. And your husband should probably be the one to handle this – “Mom, Dad, Brother, Sister, what’s up with bailing on the bill every time? Is there something you want to tell me?” But “should” is not working, either because the other people involved don’t know better or because they don’t care. Because it’s not your family of origin, and because the behavior is so ingrained, I think your power to change this dynamic is very limited, so my honest suggestion is to give yourself a long break from dealing with any of it. Hang out with your family and with friends who pay their share without it being a thing. Keep your expectations very, very low. Accept invitations from your spouse’s family sparingly, and issue them only when you are happy to pay the entire bill.

Hi Captain,

I have a friend. He’s a reasonably good friend and has been there for me during some tough times. Which is why I feel guilty about what I’m about to say.

For the last year or so, we’ve spent a lot of time together chatting and hanging out. We had some sexual tension and a very brief romantic fling before deciding it was not to be. I am way happier now that we’ve decided this, but he – was and probably is still – a bit upset about it. So I have a lot of guilt over that. We chat quite a bit on FB and via text and at the moment it’s pretty constant throughout the day. However, the more we talk the more I kinda think – while I want to be friends, I want to pull back a little. Well, a lot.

The thing that is getting me down the most is that he’s so negative. Every message is about how much his life sucks or how much something hurts or how much he hates his job or his parents or how everyone else is stupid… Like I genuinely can’t remember the last time I had a positive comment from him. I know his health isn’t great, so he is being genuine. But it’s just so wearing.

I’ve tried making helpful suggestions (these go down like a lead balloon). I’m currently just leaving a while before replying (although that’s tricky cos he can see on FB when I’ve seen a message) and then saying something like “you poor thing” and either changing the subject or not really engaging further, unless the subjects shifts to TV shows or something neutral. Some days I just ignore messages altogether. But it’s getting to the point where I just don’t want to hang out with him any more – via chat or in person, because I just end up so depressed. But I don’t want to make him feel worse. I feel really guilty about all of this, because I know I used to participate in the negativity. Nowadays, I’m trying to be more positive – and seeing positive results from this – but I don’t want to just abandon him either like “my life is better now, yours isn’t, so bye!”.

The second thing is that he’s super clingy – and quite aggressive in his clinginess. He ends up scolding me about our friendship if I try to pull back a little. It starts out with if I don’t reply within an hour or so, I get a text asking if I’m mad at him. Whether I say no, or I try to be honest, he gets really really upset and starts attacking me – saying I don’t reply to him enough and when I do I’m being superficial and I’m not hanging out with him enough or when we do he feels like I’ve scheduled him in like everyone else and I’m making him feel bad… or else he brings up other stuff, about our brief fling or my new boyfriend… This sort of thing also happens if I mention something that I didn’t tell him about instantly – I get “ why didn’t you tell me?!” and then the rest of the guilt trip. If I get upset about what he’s said, he backtracks and tells me that I’m overreacting and that I “always do this” and I’m being ridiculous and that he’s just venting so “why do I always think everything is my fault?” This happens by text and in person – and in person he shouts. I’m really bad at confrontation, so as soon as he goes on the attack I forget all my words and just get upset.

I just find it all exhausting. I don’t want to be friends like this. But I feel really bad that I used to engage in all of this and suddenly don’t want to any more. I feel like a terrible friend and I’m just abandoning him when his life is still difficult and mine is getting better. I don’t know what to do.

Please help,

A Terrible Friend

Dear Terrible,

I don’t even know this guy, but he is making my shoulders go up around my ears through the Internet.

Being a friend doesn’t mean being an on-demand counselor or attention dispenser. The thing where, if you don’t text him back right away, he asks if you are mad is BULLSHIT. And turning someone down as a romantic partner doesn’t mean that you owe them guilt dues for as long as they feel entitled to it. Also, just because you tolerated something before doesn’t mean you have to tolerate it forever.

There are two big conversations to have here, and both of them might blow up this friendship, but they are also the only conversations that have any chance of fixing this friendship. So I say “bombs away!”

Conversation #1: Negativity

“Friend, every time we talk you seem really down. I want to support you, the way you’ve supported me, but I think you need to talk to someone, like a therapist or counselor, because it’s gotten to feel like more than I can handle.”

There are more scripts here.

He will say some stuff. It won’t be happy or nice. He will basically accuse you of being a terrible friend who owes him, or he will turn it into how much he sucks and how no one likes him so you’ll be in the position of having to reassure him. Anticipate this so that you can hear it for what it is: Manipulation. It might be manipulation born of genuinely bad or fearful or sad feelings, genuine loneliness, etc., but it’s still you setting a boundary and him looking for a way around it.

Manipulation often has a characteristic of typecasting and deflection, where you point out a behavior that you don’t like, and the manipulator makes about what kind of person they are or you are. You: “Please stop doing x thing” Them: “You’re just saying that because you are a selfish person who doesn’t care about me.” You: “I’m not a selfish person! Do you really think that?” Them: (possibly unspoken, but the subtext is loud): “Then prove it by doing what I want you to do.” They want to deflect the conversation away from their behavior and onto qualities about you. Once you recognize the pattern, it’s still hard to circumvent, but that’s because the person is making you walk on quicksand. The reason I know for sure that this is happening (and working) is because you signed yourself “Terrible Friend” rather than “How do I get rid of my effing terrible friend who won’t leave me alone.“

The way to resist is to hear him out, and then reaffirm the boundary: “Whether you talk to a counselor or not is ultimately up to you, of course. But going forward, when I feel like a certain topic of conversation is too much for me, I’m going to change the subject to something lighter.“

And then going forward, you do that thing. Next time you talk, allow a few minutes for various venting, and then when you start feeling tense and overwhelmed, change the subject. If it won’t stay changed, tell him. “Friend, maybe you didn’t notice, but I’ve changed the subject twice. I am sorry you are dealing with x, but I need to be done talking about x for today.“

The thing is, he gets to decide that this is not what he needs from a friend, this does not make you his definition of a good friend, this is unfair, he doesn’t like it, etc. To make this work, you have to be like, “I’m sorry you feel that way, but this is still what I need to do. Maybe this is a sign we should wrap this up and try again another day” and then throw down a smoke bomb and get out of there until next time.

Conversation #2: Clinginess

The next time he does the thing where he berates you and wants to know if you are mad because you didn’t respond to him immediately, text him back. “I didn’t respond earlier because I am busy. But right now I am mad. This behavior is very clingy and annoying, and I don’t like it.“

Yes, that risks ending your friendship. You know what else risks ending your friendship? HIM CONSTANTLY FEELINGSTEXTING YOU. The pattern now is that you engage and reassure him. Stop reassuring him and stop engaging him.

Brace yourself for “Why didn’t you say anything?” “You always seemed okay with it before,” etc. This is more manipulation. It’s taking the conversation away from the fact that he is behaving badly and trying to put the responsibility back on you. “Once you tolerate something you have made an agreement to tolerate it forever without actually changing your feelings” is not actually a rule. 

I highly recommend that you don’t get into the whole argument via text right when he demands to hear from you. Say something back like “This is not a good time. I’ll get in touch with you in a few days when I have time and we can talk about it” and then turn your phone off for the next while so you’re not tempted to engage/not even more annoyed while he blows it up.

No lie, this is going to make him very anxious. He will want to fix it fix it fix it. You may have to get very explicit, as in, “Friend, you are not making it better right now, so STOP. We’ll talk in a few days. Let me be the one to get in touch.“

The next few days will be telling. If he sends you a gajillion messages  - texts, calls, FB, gchat, emails, etc. – after you’ve asked him to stop, he is telling you that he is not getting it, at all. No bueno. At this point, I have to ask, what are you even salvaging? Script: “Friend, I am sorry its come to this, but I don’t think we can be friends anymore. Please stop contacting me.” And then filter/block/avoid/do not respond.

If he says “Ok” and then leaves you alone, it may be possible to talk it through. “Friend, I definitely don’t want to hurt your feelings, but I do need us to reset some of the ways we communicate. I am feeling smothered by the constant contact and overwhelmed by the need to be your emotional support. Please talk to a pro about the stuff going on in your life, and please give me a chance to respond to communications before you inundate me.”

Again, brace yourself for:

• “You are a bad friend.” (Prove that you’re not!)
• “You never liked me anyway because I am such a loser.” (Comfort me!)
• “Why didn’t you tell me before.” (This is your fault).

To all that stuff, you could say “Fair enough, but what we have going on is making me exhausted. I want to find a way that we can be friends without so much pressure. We either need to renegotiate some stuff about how we interact, or bail on the entire thing. I am attempting to avoid the second thing, but I am annoyed and smothered enough that it actually is an option, and you need to know that. Right now, this conversation is about your clingy texting behavior that I don’t like, and how I want you to stop it. Let’s stick to that, ok?”

I do not honestly think that he would accept this proposal, but if you are getting to this point in your discussion it’s not going to make anything worse:

“Friend, this is my best case scenario for what I’d like to happen. Let’s take a month off from hanging out or talking. Frankly, I need some time for my shoulders to come down around my ears. After that, if you still want to stay friends, I would probably be up for getting together for something fun, like a movie, once a month or so. That’s what I have energy for. I can’t handle anything more intense.“

No one would enjoy hearing that from someone they care about, for real, so if he is hurt and sad or that’s not enough for him, he’ s not being a jerk if he doesn’t handle it perfectly in the moment. It’s what happens afterward that counts. You can say, “We don’t have to decide anything right now. Let’s take that break for the next month. I’m sorry it’s come to this, but I am feeling very smothered and it has been making me very angry at you. Continuing the way we have been is simply not an option. I’d like to let the bad feelings dissipate for a while and see what’s left, but I need a break to make that really happen” and then leave the conversation. His negative feelings are not yours to sort out. That’s been the dynamic that’s been going on for too long, where he just hands them to you like a college kid bringing home his dirty laundry. You’re allowed to say “the washing machine is in the basement, right where you left it” and not wash the funky socks of his loneliness for him.

It’s okay, recommended even, to practice saying this stuff. It’s okay to do this in an email, unilaterally, especially if you worry about being brow-beaten into agreeing to something if you talk face-to face. In fact, that’s more manipulation – when people get texted information they don’t want and they insist on taking it to email, or the phone, or “You owe it to me to talk to me face to face.” (Translation: I will change the venue of this conversation to one more likely to give me the result I want).  You don’t owe him a face-to-face conversation, actually. You owe him honesty and sticking up for yourself in whatever medium feels right to you.

If a month goes by and you dread talking to him, that’s okay. That’s information. You get to change your mind and say “I know this isn’t good news, but now that I’ve had some time to think I think it’s better if we don’t resume our friendship. I wish you well.” You don’t have to predict and perfectly anticipate everything that will happen. And maybe it will work out okay, and that having bright lines drawn is what you both needed – him to get over his crush on you (which is still RAGING, btw), you to practice setting and maintaining better boundaries.

But the status quo is not sustainable. You are not his emotional laundress.

Dear Captain Awkward,

I have a slightly complicated situation that I don’t know how to talk (or better yet, avoid talking) about with my parents.

Recently, I’ve met a guy and had a couple dates with him. We hit it off and would like to continue seeing each other. Fortunately, he has his own place; unfortunately, I still live with my parents (yay poorly paying retail jobs), and my mother in particular feels like she needs to know everything going on in my life. It’s impossible for me to just say that I’ll be home late from work, or going out in the evening on my day off without her wanting to know exactly why and where I’m going. I’d be willing to tell her that I’m going on a date, except:

I have a wonderful boyfriend of several years that the parents have met and like. Sadly we live in different countries and only manage to see each other about once or twice a year. This is not a cheating letter! We have an open d/s relationship in which we both are switches, and we’ve both encouraged each other to find other people to play with, although neither of us has taken advantage of it until now. My boyfriend has known about this play partner since I met him, is aware of the play dates, and finds it sweet and very hot.

So if I tell my mom that I’m going on a date, she’ll be wanting to know if I’ve broken up with boyfriend, or think I’m cheating on him, and I don’t really feel comfortable trying to explain an open relationship or that it’s strictly a kink thing to her. (Even more complicated to explain since it’s not sex, either.) >.< Using generic excuses or saying I have work only works for certain times of day, and will no doubt be discovered at some point by calling work when I’m not there. I can’t even say that I’m going out with friends because … well I don’t have any local ones. I don’t really want to get too tangled up in maintaining a lie – this isn’t something I’m ashamed of or feel a strong need to hide, but I really don’t feel comfortable trying to explain it to my MOM.

I guess basically I need some help putting together scripts to either try and explain this or politely tell her it’s none of her beeswax without provoking a tantrum. She has no real sense of privacy, and when I’ve asked her to not do things I find invasive before (like ignoring my closed bedroom door/refusing to knock, or going through my trash) she’s acted offended that it bothers me and then hurt because ‘I never tell her anything’, so I don’t really see a way to set up strong boundaries that isn’t going to result in disaster and endless fights, which I’d love to avoid.

Thanks!

I know people want to be open and honest in all of their relationships, but you get to hold certain things close to the vest if you want to, especially with nosy/judgy parents who go through your trash and can’t knock before entering your room.

Obviously honesty is usually both the best AND easiest course. Do you think that if she knew about the dates it would affect your ability to live at home? If the answer is “no,” then why not just level with her? I sense that your mom is a Highly Difficult Person (because: tantrums) and one way to defuse the HDP is by answering their questions with great forthrightness as if it’s no big deal, i.e. “I have a date. Before you ask, boyfriend and I are still together, but we’re also trying a thing out where we date other people.”

She’ll probably have a lot to say about that, to which you say “Thanks for your input, Mom, but this is something boyfriend and I are working out together. You asked me where I am going and I want to be truthful” and then let her screech if she wants to. Throwing tantrums has worked so far to keep you cowed and/or to keep you from presenting her with information that she won’t like. But what if she learned that you are now totally unfazed by tantrums? And that you don’t tie yourself in knots trying to figure out how to break news to her? Would she still throw them as much? “I’m okay if you are unhappy with my choices” is a pretty powerful message to convey if you want to be treated like an adult.”You said you wanted to know about my life, so, now you do!” If she gets upset, ask her, “Mom, where is this coming from? What are you really worried about?” Then listen to her and remember that “Thanks, I’ll think about what you said” is a good way to end conversations in a neutral way. You have nothing to apologize for, so try not apologizing for it.

Now, if you think that she might kick you out of the house or make things truly unlive-able, It is okay to refer to this date-person as a friend if that’s the easiest explanation that gets you out the door when you need to go and keeps a roof over your head while you need to stay.  And it is okay to put out a general “I’ve been feeling a little lonely so I’m trying to meet new local friends” story to seed the ground if you need to. It’s not false, it’s just not all the way true about what kind of friends you’ve been meeting.

Your mom thinks she wants to know everything about you, but she doesn’t. Some people really set themselves up to be lied to by having a history of very unreasonable reactions to other people’s boundaries and privacy. So this is a strategy for anyone who is feeling stifled/stalked/over-monitored at home and like you don’t want to negotiate every time you leave the house. My older brother was the master of this when we were growing up with parents-who-go-through-the-trash, but I wasn’t so bad myself. The main thing is to be out of the house a lot as your basic default.

1) If you are able, take up biking. “Where are you going?” “For a bike ride.” Bike to and from your friend/date’s house.

2) Learn to love the library. “Where are you going?” “The library.” Most times, actually go to the library. Check out lots of library books and bring them home and read them. Books!

3) Or the public pool, if there’s one nearby. Or the gym. Or extra shifts at work (extra money to move out with!). Or the local coffee shop.

4) Join a Meetup or take a class, somewhere you will meet lots of new people. Mind-expanding and plausible!

5) Make one friend your mom likes. I don’t know if my brother was actually “at Ted’s” every waking moment for his teenage and college years, but it was a good enough explanation for my parents.

6) Make your friend into friends, plural. “I’m meeting some friends.”

7) Don’t ask, inform on your way out the door or by text message when you’ve already gone. “Hey mom, I’m going for a bike ride and then I’m going to meet some friends. I’ll call you if I’m going to be later than 10:00″ then GO GO GO. Wait, you said you live with your parents, plural. Try telling your DAD when you are on your way out the door if he’s the one who asks fewer questions.

8) Schedule regular quality time with your folks so they don’t feel neglected. It’s a little easier to let go if Sunday dinner is a sacred routine with their child.

9)  Practice giving out less information. When you grow up with over-protective or controlling parents, especially ones that wield the “Weeeeeeee’ll see” to delay giving permission but avoid not giving permission so that you’ll be set up to try to “earn” going to the party all week, when you make requests it tends to sound like this:

“Can I sleep over at Susie’s house tomorrow after school and yes her parents will be home and I’ve already checked and they have fruit in the house for healthy snacks and her mom is going to pick us up after school and drive me home the next day after swim practice and you literally have to do zero work or thinking about this and she has already pre-selected three age-appropriate movies and I already finished all my chores and my homework and next week’s homework and yes I have clean pajamas and my swimsuit will have plenty of time to dry and I have ziploc bags just in case so please please please can I go?”

Then you grow up and and hopefully along the way some kind person in your life tells you “Wow, you don’t have to justify ANYTHING that much to me, what’s going on with that?” and you unlearn the habit.

My dear Letter Writer, it is your task to unlearn this habit even without the benefit of moving away. You’re not asking permission from your mom when you go out, you’re letting her know, considerately, so she won’t worry about you and can plan her own life accordingly. “Mom, I’m going to Susie’s house after work tomorrow, I should be home by 11, so don’t factor me in for dinner.“

10. Give it time. It won’t change overnight.

Once you’ve adjusted the routine and the expectations about how often you’ll be around, the other trick is to actually do what you said you’d be doing 90+% of the time. Be out of the house, living your life, doing cool stuff, not at home with your mom, and not being a lying liar. Keep your phone charged, but get in a habit of not picking up right away (vs. texting or calling back in a few minutes), i.e. “I turn the ringer off when I’m at work and sometimes forget to turn it back on.” Call if you’ll be late. Get back to her promptly.

The other 10% of the time, have your fun.

I realize I just gave people a template for lying more successfully, which is a shady thing to do if you come from a normal, happy, healthy family. Please use your powers for good! I guess you’ll have to trust me that some people are just paranoid in an unreasonable way and use it to tromp all over the people in their lives. In my opinion, those people are asking to be a) told really uncomfortable truths, bluntly or b) lied to if that’s what protects your safety and sanity.

You have an opportunity here to renegotiate your relationship with your parents a bit, where hopefully you won’t have to ask permission if you are going to be Not Home. You want to let them know when you won’t be around and how late you’ll be so that they can plan things, like meals, and you want to be out of the house more so you can be more social/make friends/give them some privacy because you want to be considerate and form an adult relationship with them. And that’s a script you can use with your mom. “I’m so grateful for your support and the opportunity to save up money for my own place, but in the day to day I’m happier when I can have a little space and be more social with people my own age. I don’t want to worry you, but I also could do without the interrogations whenever I want to go out. It makes me feel like a child, and that makes me react like a child, instead of having the close adult relationship I’d like to have with you. What is it that you’re worried about? What can I say to reassure you?“

I am rooting for the honest conversation, but know that I don’t judge you if it has to go a different way for now. You don’t need to make yourself homeless or submit yourself to a ton of slut-shaming and concern-trolling for the principle of honesty if you are dealing with someone really unreasonable.

“One of you lucky ladies is going to get tenure!”

Hi Captain (& friends),

I have been dating an awesome guy for a little over a year now. It’s not really my style to gush over a romantic partner, but this is possibly the happiest and most comfortable I’ve ever been with someone. However, we have one big difference: I’m a graduate student getting my PhD in a science field, and he never completed his bachelor’s and is currently working in the service industry. He’s taking online classes and collaborating on a startup, but doesn’t plan to finish his degree.

This doesn’t bother me, or adversely affect the relationship. He is extremely intelligent and genuinely interested in my research work, and I like hearing wild stories from the club he works at. He challenges my ideas and experiments in ways that are interesting and helpful, since they’re not coming from within the academic culture. And besides, we have a lot of shared interests, like programming, caving, and gaming, where we are at similar levels of accomplishment and feel like we can challenge each other.

But this doesn’t stop me from getting anxious about the education discrepancy. When I first met Boyfriend, my out-of-town friends told me I needed to be aiming higher. All my in-town friends are grad students / PhDs, and they’re all dating other grad students / PhDs. They spend date nights writing new theorems; I spend date nights playing Starcraft. It can make parties a little weird: “Oh, your partner developed an entirely new model of fish ecology? That’s awesome! Mine couldn’t come because he’s still washing tables.”

I already have a lot of anxiety about my career. Thanks to ever-present imposter syndrome, my brain loves telling me that I’m my department’s pity hire, I actually don’t know anything about science, and I will crash and burn horribly. So now I’m afraid that I’m somehow sabotaging myself and my career with this non-academic relationship. Is it going to turn me into a lesser scientist? Am I wasting time? Are my priorities all out of whack? I feel awful for making this all about me and my flawed, academia-instilled value system, but my brain won’t shut up about it. For what it’s worth, Boyfriend knows about this anxiety and tries to help (like, by scheduling Thesis / Startup Work “Dates”, to help with my fear that I’m spending too much time with him and not enough time in the lab).

“You are still in the running toward becoming America’s Next Top Adjunct”

I’m not asking you to be my anxiety therapist (I’ve got one of those), but I think you could help with some specific things:
1. Do you or your readers have experience dating with education discrepancies? Are my fears as unfounded as I hope?
2. What can I say if people get all judgy about his choice of career? I feel like saying “No really, it’s a challenging job and he’s very smart” is patronizing, but I’m at a loss for other options.

Thanks!

I really debated whether to publish your letter. I honestly think it’s something that you will cringe at having written someday. But moments of crisis are sometimes moments of transformation, so we’re going in.

In answer to your questions:

1. You asked for anecdata, so here is some. I have a terminal degree, my boyfriend has some college but not a degree. It affects my career not at all and us socially not at all. My mom has an advanced degree, my dad has a certificate from a technical college. It affected them not at all. I can think of zero relationships among my peers where having a degree vs. not having a degree is an issue, if the relationship is otherwise happy. I can think of many relationships where both partners being in academia is the problem, like, one person has a better opportunity so the other one has to put their their own education or career on hiatus for a while, or the couple has to live apart for long periods because they can’t get jobs that are reasonably close together. There can be a lot of expense, discontent, jealousy, immigration issues, loss of career momentum, and other giant, real hassles in dual-career relationships.

2. Your judgy out-of-town friends need to, pardon my French, fuck the hell off on this topic. And I am confident that I can find you a less patronizing script than “No, really, it’s a challenging job…” to tell them so. Howabout, “Wow, you have a lot of interesting ideas about what makes someone worthwhile to know” or “What a very…American…observation.” Or you could go with the classic, which is to stare at the judgy person as if they’ve sprouted a second head, and say “I beg your pardon?” and “I’m sorry, I don’t understand what you mean by that” and make them keep repeating themselves until they realize they are saying something very embarrassing and slink away in shame.

Barring that, “Did you really just say that? Out loud? What the hell is wrong with you?” could work.

Your peers, at these nightmare hellscape parties where apparently people can only trumpet their stellar accomplishments, would probably describe themselves as very informed, logical, and open-minded people. Why then are they so ignorant about and dismissive of any life path that is not the exact same as theirs? What you are describing isn’t a failure, on your boyfriend’s part, to be or do a certain thing, but some seriously ugly classism and a massive failure of imagination in yourself and in your peers. The more you reframe it that way the less you’ll be tempted to apologize or justify something that requires no justification or apology.

This is totally normal and healthy, right? Nothing weird or humiliating going on here at all.

As if “inside the academic culture” is such a great place to be right now. It’s not like academics have an easier or better road romantically, family-wise, or getting-hired-wise. The problems of “dual-career” couples are so well documented that you’d be better off asking for case studies where that PhD-PhD long-term relationship does work out. That doesn’t mean a career in research or academia can’t work out for you, and if it’s what you are great at and what you want, definitely go for it! But, while there are certainly supportive mentors and institutions, you have to realize that for the most part the world of elite scholarship does not care about your happiness. It does not care about your health. It cares about your usefulness and your results. It cares about your productivity.  It cares about finding the smallest amount of money and support that you will settle for. Sometimes it will give you asshole old man advice about how you should live your life and conform to its expectations. But it won’t tell you how to be happy, and it will often look suspiciously upon any decisions you make that are purely for your own happiness and try to convince you happiness is inefficient or unnecessary.

You say: “So now I’m afraid that I’m somehow sabotaging myself and my career with this non-academic relationship.” That’s going to be one of the sentences that makes you cringe someday, btw, because the opposite is actually true. You don’t need an accessory who looks good on paper to impress your friends or to stand next to you at parties and spout off about their research. You don’t need someone to constantly mirror and compete with you in terms of who is the more accomplished one. You need someone who loves you, for you, who roots for your success, who supports you emotionally when the going gets tough, who excites and challenges you, who would care about you even if you failed at science. Someone who, for instance, sets up “let’s work on our stuff side by side” dates when you need help staying motivated. And if you are thinking long-term, you need someone who could potentially move when you get that dream appointment someday.

Apologies if I’m mis-gendering you, but the email address had a female name in it, and I feel like it’s important to say this in response to the idea that you are hurting your career with this relationship:  For centuries, academic superstars were men. They could thrive in their careers partly because they had wives, who maybe worked outside the home at some job, but who poured a ton time and energy into supporting them while they did their intense manly intellectual work. It’s worth examining how many of your assumptions are coming from patriarchy and the idea that the man is supposed to be the superstar in the relationship. Maybe this will be a relationship where you are your own superstar, and I don’t think that’s bad. At all.

Moreover, I love my grad school friends, but I survived grad school because of my friend-friends and my partner(s, there was a series there :) ) who were not in grad school. The ones who bought me dinner and groceries when my financial aid took 14 weeks of a 15-week semester to come through. The ones who helped out on all my film sets, lent me their houses and cars as locations. The ones who had parties where I could talk about NOT grad school. The ones who would love me even if/when I failed. The ones who came to weird/bad student film screenings in smelly basements and said polite things. The ones who could offer outside perspective on my school/workplace dramas. Sometimes what you need from your day is not to discuss the finer points of research methods or the three-act-structure one more time, but to talk with people who have completely different stuff going on than you do. Or to get good and righteously gloriously thoroughly laid. Grad school is not there for you on this.

Keep your eyes on the prize! You can worry about stuff like being happy later.

Academia baits the hook of “doing what you love” with prestige:

Prestige is especially dangerous to the ambitious. If you want to make ambitious people waste their time on errands, the way to do it is to bait the hook with prestige. That’s the recipe for getting people to give talks, write forewords, serve on committees, be department heads, and so on. It might be a good rule simply to avoid any prestigious task. If it didn’t suck, they wouldn’t have had to make it prestigious. – Paul Graham.

In your defense, the orthodoxy that graduate school is the One True Way To Demonstrate Worth is being indoctrinated quite deliberately within the subculture you are in. Graduate school can operate a lot like a reality dating show, in that it thrives on Stockholm Syndrome, and you actually have to fight to keep your own sense of what is important amid the absurdity.

Reality dating shows isolate their contestants, moving them away from everyone they love and imprisoning them in a big house with only other contestants. Everyone has the same goal and the same focus, and there is no down-time or escape – you must always be thinking about the Bachelor or the Rock or the Flavor of the Love and how to win them over. No pets, no books, no distractions. You associate only with people who are on the show. It’s even the same for non-dating shows – you live in the house with the other Top Chefs or designers or Biggest Losers – and while you may get to make calls home, for the duration of the show you are expected to live and breathe only the show. You live in a fishbowl, where everyone is up in everyone’s business, and where approval radiates in this one specific way, from the Bachelor/ette/Rock/Flav, and where the stupid stuff you have to do as a contestant seems totally logical and normal because it’s what everyone around you is doing. And one of the biggest sources of drama on these shows is the contestants questioning each other’s loyalty, the old “Are you really HERE for Bret/Flav/Square-Jawed Bro? Because I think you are just sort of here for them, and not HERE here.” The producers don’t even have to enforce this stuff if they can get the contestants to police each other. The most threatening thing to the equilibrium of this little hothouse is for someone to go “You know what? I don’t know. I’m just trying this thing out.” It’s actually a very big deal when someone says “yah playing ice hockey wearing only a halter top is not for me, byeeeeeee!“whereas I’m always surprised that doesn’t happen, like, every week. I think it would happen way more if the contestants lived at home with their dogs or cats and saw their actual real-life friends once in a while.

Flav’s clock is a reminder that the average time to complete a PhD is 3-10 years.

Taping of those shows only lasts a few weeks, and still it’s enough to foster complete emotional breakdowns in a non-insignificant number of the contestants. Imagine living like that for 3-10 years (the average window to complete a PhD depending on your field and institution). Graduate school isn’t a break from your life, it’s your actual life, that’s happening actually right now! And while maybe your advisors and your peers can only imagine one way of living that life, they don’t actually get a say over anything that happens outside of school, like, for instance, who you date. In the article I linked up thread by Sarah Kendzior, she writes about the decision to have a baby during grad school:

The greatest threat to getting an academic job is not a baby. It is the disappearance of academic jobs. Telling women in any career what they should do with their body is always a sexist, demeaning trick. But in a Ph.D. program it is particularly pernicious, because what usually lies at the end of the years of obedience and hoop-jumping is a contingent position or unemployment.

I know a few women who hurt their academic careers by having a baby. This is not the fault of the women, but the fault of a system which penalizes women for being mothers. But I know far more people—men and women—whose lives were derailed because they sacrificed what was most important to them for an academic career that never materialized. They were told again and again that these sacrifices were “worth it”, only to find, in the end, that “it” was nothing.

So should you have a baby in graduate school? I do not know. I am not you. I know nothing about your life. I know nothing about your goals, desires, finances, health or family situation.

In other words, I am in the same position as your advisor, your colleagues, and everyone else who will judge your intensely personal decision. Some of these people may be authority figures, but authority figures do not have authority when it comes to your body and your family.

- See more at: https://chroniclevitae.com/news/549-should-you-have-a-baby-in-graduate-school#sthash.VtdVVR4m.dpuf

“But are you like, HERE-here, or are you just here?”

I know your question wasn’t about having a baby, but I think that Kendzior is so wise to remind you that you are a person who has worth and autonomy and a life, a life that is happening right now, and not “someday.” The culture of gradate school wants you to suck it up for the grueling, underpaid, difficult present and post-pone all life decisions that are about happiness until “someday” when you’re a “real” scientist. Wait until you’re done with your coursework. Wait until you’ve passed your comps. Wait until you submit your dissertation. Wait until you defend. Wait until you find out where you are going to work. Wait until you’ve got tenure, etc. The time when you get to be happy is always in the future, always on someone else’s schedule. But you are a real scientist now. I know this because you are doing science with your days. You have the right to happiness and love now, and fortunately you’ve met someone who makes you really happy, or probably would, if you’d let him. You can go to school and be a scientist and have love without living in the Rock of Science Brainwashing house.

Letter Writer, I want you to have all the science AND all the love. So the best advice I can give you is: question your assumptions.

• Question your peers’ assumptions.
• Questions your jerkbrain’s assumptions.
• Question your advisors’ assumptions if their advice to you goes against what you know to be right for you.

You would do this in your research, so start doing it in your life. When you get a message that sounds really off to you or leads you to a hurtful place, like “will this non-academic relationship make me a worse scientist?” or “Shouldn’t you be dating someone more, uh, ambitious?“, before you look at your partner as the reason for any of it, ask yourself some questions:

• Where is this even coming from?
• Is this comment about something related to my work?
• Is this topic this person’s business?
• What’s the agenda here?
• Is this person speaking from authority or experience, or just projecting? Where is the evidence for their point of view?
• Does this person really have my best interests at heart or are they just enforcing the status quo?
• Is this coming from a competitor or a supporter?
• If I didn’t follow their suggestion, what would the consequences be, if any? Does that consequence matter to me? (For example, “They will think I am making a big mistake“…who cares?)
• Edited to add: What would someone outside of academia think of this ‘problem’?</edit>
• Is this what I do think or just what I think I should think?
• If I followed this suggestion, would I be happier?

You have a therapist as a sounding board to work through questions like that, which, good. Keep doing that, and for the love of your partner, don’t share these anxieties with him as if he is somehow complicit in creating them. He isn’t, and the one way you can really cause hurt is to keep asking the “but are you good enough for me, really?” question over and over again out loud to him. Keep going to the parties at your school, but try making a “no talking about work” conversation boundary and pay attention to who can actually hang with that and talk about other topics (as they will become your real friends in the program). Please also do what you can to find friends from all ages and walks of life who also want to talk about Starcraft or stuff you are interested in at their non-competitive, actually fun parties. Make time every week to exercise, cook, read for pleasure, knit, watch your favorite TV show, have lots of hot sex with your hot boyfriend, go to therapy, go to the doctor when you get sick – do whatever it takes to feel like yourself and feel grounded in your body and your life. In an intense grad program sometimes every moment of happiness you can steal back for yourself while still doing your work is a victory.

In the meantime, being good at what you do and happy as you are is one hell of a snappy comeback for the haters.

Captain,

I have a question about dealing with a Geek Social Fallacy #5 carrier, with a work-related twist.

I have a live-in position and a good working relationship with the other live-in staff members. Naturally we often spend our free time together, sometimes as a large group get-together but more often in smaller groups of the people we’re closest to / actually friends with.

There is one individual who generally gets on everyone’s nerves — she dominates the conversation and makes it all about herself, says slightly inappropriate things on a regular basis, asks people direct personal questions in front of everyone, etc. The problem is that she thinks that we’re all one big friend group and that anytime she hears that someone’s making social plans with another employee, it’s fine to invite herself along. She does not take hints at all, and no one wants to come right out and say, “You’re not invited to this” since this is someone we all have to live and work with on a daily basis.

From past experience, I have a feeling that trying to have an honest conversation with her would lead her to drop by everyone’s rooms to try to have hours-long FEELINGS conversations, and trying to shut that down will make her unbearable to work with. She recently renewed for another year-long contract.

Right now everyone’s strategy seems to be to make plans behind her back as much as possible, and then if she finds out and invites herself over/along, we suck it up and deal. Do you have any suggestions for a better strategy?

Your coworker has to learn sometime, and you need to speak up sometime, or this will never get better. You can withstand her displeasure at finding out she is not invited to something.

First strategy: Keep making plans with people you want to see when you want to see them. If annoying coworker finds out and tries to tag along, say, once, “Actually, it’s just me + this other person tonight. Another time, maybe!” Don’t preface it or add a lot of dramatic flair, act casual and normal, as if this is a perfectly reasonable thing to be doing (because it is), and then walk away. She will have whatever feelings she wants about that, and she will process them however she does. She may in fact vent to others in the house, who are at that point perfectly free to say “I don’t have time to talk about this, good night!” as are you. Hold your ground.

Second strategy: Sometimes make plans that she clearly IS included in, like, everyone going out for drinks or ordering food or whatever. Go out of your way to invite her to those things, so she learns the difference. It will help manage her anxiety that she is being left out if there are some ways/times she is clearly included.

Third strategy: If she protests, say “I like being friendLY with my coworkers, but that doesn’t mean I want to do everything with all of them, all the time. Sometimes I just want to hang out one-on-one, or in smaller groups. I’ll see you tomorrow though!” If she confronts you further, level with her. “Hey, sometimes you have a habit of inviting yourself along to things, and I don’t like it. I do want to see you and be friendly with you, sometimes, but I want it to be because I invited you or you invited me, not because I feel guilty. Can you please back off? If you do, I promise we can hang out sometimes.”

In all of these, don’t try to invoke other people’s opinions, just speak up for yourself. “I want,” “I need,” etc. Be the bad guy. You can handle it, I promise.

Fourth strategy: Prepare the others. “I’m trying a thing with Coworker, where when she invites herself along, I calmly and politely say ‘no.’ It might get weird for a week or so, but if you can back me up I think we can adjust until she stops doing it.” If they ask you how to keep her from dumping all of her feelings on them, you can say “Hey, you know you don’t have to actually sit there and listen, right? Just tell her ‘I’m sure it wasn’t personal’ and then go to bed or whatever.“

Fifth strategy: Call out the inappropriate behavior when you see it. “That was inappropriate.” “Did you realize you interrupted so-and-so?” “We were talking about x, do you want to join us? Otherwise, we’ll catch you another time.” “Hey, it’s nice that you want to come along, but I just want to hang out with (actual friends) right now. Please don’t invite yourself.” “That’s a very personal question.” 

She should have learned this stuff by now, but she didn’t. You can be gentle and kind, but the boundaries need to be set or you will end up really and truly ostracizing her.

She may have a very outsized reaction, with lots of FEELINGSDUMPS at first. But if you stay consistent, she will calm down (or possibly quit in tears, but that is a survivable outcome). This seems like a good time to tell the story of my friend Amanda and the nail-clipping guy. Once upon a time, there was a company that had an employee who clipped his nails at his desk, where everyone could see and hear, and at meetings, where he left little piles of clippings on the conference table. The other employees strategized and worried about how to get him to stop, and because they didn’t want to hurt his feelings or cause issues, and they let it go on for probably years while all developing a deep loathing for him as a person. Amanda, as a new employee, didn’t have the same hangups. One day soon after she started working there, she said “Hey, can you do that in private from now on? It’s gross and annoying.” He turned very red and I’m sure was very embarrassed, but he did stop clipping his nails in public and there was no drama about it ever again.

Sometimes you just gotta say the thing and let the other person deal with the thing. Working around someone’s terrible behavior while you grow to dislike them more and more and more isn’t actually kinder.

Oh Captain My Captain;

I rent a room in a house with a pretty nice family, and for the most part it’s pretty cool. They’re very friendly and open, their eldest son and I share a lot of interests, and they aren’t really judgmental, though they are very vocal about their political views and beliefs, they know I don’t get involved in that sort of stuff and seem to respect my space as far as that’s concerned.

The problem is respecting space as far as everything else – I do my part around the house, cleaning bathrooms, mopping, vacuuming, doing dishes, laundry, helping care for their 19 year old cat and doing pretty much anything I can to make myself useful. My landlords, a married couple, also have two of their adult children living with them because finances suck for everyone except the elderly rich, which we are not among. Their kids, even though they are adults, are still very close to their parents and depend on them for a lot, and basically come off as young teens in a lot of ways. The main problem seems to stem from the fact that, although I am not one of their kids, because I’m younger than their kids they seem to feel the need to parent me.

Whenever I get anything in the mail, they want to know what it is, who it’s from, if it’s a package they want to hover over me and see what it is, who I ordered it from, how much did it cost, was it made in the USA? They have come in my room without permission several times, always ask me when I will be at work, how many hours I’m getting, what I’m paid, if I go out somewhere that isn’t work related where did I go, did I buy anything there? I can’t bring home so much as a single shopping bag without being interrogated or having it pawed through and my purchases commented on, along with how I dress, where I work, basically everything I do. They do it more to me than they do it to their own children!

I’m a very private person, and I hate discussing money with anyone, particularly when it’s really none of their business, and I really don’t want my every purchase judged and pawed through. I am one of those people that doesn’t want to talk about my day, I don’t want to talk about what happened at work or if I got a raise or if I bought lunch or something. I don’t like talking to people in general, but I try my best to at least be nice. It’s started creeping me out a lot that I can’t walk anywhere near the door with my keys without getting an interrogation on where I’m going, who I’m going with if anyone, what I’m buying, et cetera. If they had to drive me places, yeah, fine, I could understand them needing to know my work schedule or if I needed to go buy stuff or something, but I have my own car and drive myself everywhere so there is no reason they need to know any of this stuff. They also try to include me in their family events, even big holiday stuff like Christmas or Thanksgiving, even when they’re super loud and generally not the kind of thing I’d go within a hundred miles of if I didn’t live here, but when I live in the same house it’s kind of hard to avoid without it being painfully obvious that I’m avoiding it, particularly since I’m not social and generally don’t go anywhere other than work.

They seem to have semi-adopted me as one of their own kids, which is kind of problematic on it’s own, but that’s a whole different kettle of fish. Do you have a way for me to politely tell them to back off and stop questioning me about everything I do? I intend to move out soon, so I’ll have my privacy again eventually, but until then I’d like to get back at least a bit of privacy while I live here, without making things tense or possibly making them angry. They are a very close-knit, openly affectionate, rather loud kind of family, so I’m not sure they can even understand that no, I don’t really want to take part in all the loud, boisterous family stuff they do because I’m just not that kind of person. I like my quiet and privacy, and I would like to get some of that back.

Any ideas?

Thanks!

Not Their Kid

Dear Not Their Kid,

I am glad you are moving out soon, and that plan is by far your best plan for having the life you want. The culture of this house is not your culture, and that’s okay, so get out ASAP. In the meantime, you can set some boundaries and get a little privacy back, but you probably can’t do it “without making things tense” or without potentially “making” your housemates/landlords angry. This is because:

• Things are already tense, because they are tense for you. Your shoulders are up around your ears from the tension of feeling constantly monitored. Setting boundaries with them won’t “make things tense,” it will redistribute tension that is already happening.
• Who knows how they will react? We can anticipate possible reactions but we can’t control how other people will feel or what they will do. If they get angry, that doesn’t automatically mean that you have fewer rights.You can’t control what they will do, but you can try changing how you respond to them and see if it alters the dynamic.

Insisting on seeing the contents of someone else’s mail, prying into their shopping and every financial transaction, wanting to know all the details of their day, including what food they ate, following them uninvited into their room, etc. are pretty extreme behaviors (and would be even if you were their offspring), so I can see the challenge you have in unpicking what is a normal, routine question from people you live with (“Hey, how was your day?”) and what is not normal (“What’s in the bag?WHAT IS IT REALLY, THO”) and why you feel some trepidation about speaking up. Like, what else are these people capable of? You’ve also go the dynamic where they see themselves as very open, chill people when really they are not at all chill if they are doing this stuff.

When you’re about to deal with a roommate conflict, it’s always a good move to pull out whatever agreement people signed and review it. What’s in there that protects you? Is there something in there that you would like amended or spelled out better, or something that they need to be gently reminded about? Do you feel afraid for your safety? And what is your worst-case scenario plan if it all goes to shit? Arming yourself with a little bit of information can give you more confidence going forward, since I think the most likely scenario here is that you set some boundaries and the landlords act a little miffed for a while and then settle down.

I also think that it’s important to pick your battles, so let’s sort this into battles worth picking and the ones that are not really worth picking. There are some unequal power balances here (your roommates are your landlords, they are parents of children your age and feel and act entitled to certain deference in a way that a peer roommate might not) that make it tricker than some roommate situations, so some of the strategies for carving out what you need are going to be about paying lip service to a form while preserving your autonomy.

For instance, “Hi, nice to see you! How was your day?” is not a weird or inappropriate question coming from someone you live with. If you answered that with “I AM A VERY QUIET AND PRIVATE PERSON, CAN’T YOU SEE THAT?” you would be the weird one. The fastest way to run this particular dungeon is to complete the social circuit with “It was good/busy/slow/tiring/long, thanks. Howabout yours?” Listen for a few minutes and then excuse yourself to visit the bathroom/check your email/make a phone call/collapse with a book, i.e. “Well, I’m going to shut my eyes and put on some headphones for a little while, talk to you later” and then go to your room and shut the door. There’s a lot of good stuff in this recent thread, especially in the comments, about applying more structure in roommate social interactions.

Also, they will always invite you to celebrations, and that’s okay. An invitation is not a command (they may act like it is, but it isn’t), and inviting someone to a thing in itself is not really doing anything wrong. They think it’s the correct and polite thing to do to invite everyone who lives in the house, and the battle of “stop inviting me to your stupid stuff I know I will hate” is probably not worth picking. This is a thing you’d run into with any roommates who want to have a party when you don’t. But you still have choices about how you respond, and the battle of whether you go to the stuff is worth picking. You could say “No thank you!” or “Thanks I prefer not to” without explanation and let them deal with the resulting awkwardness. Your “reason” when asked could be “My reason is that I prefer not to, but thanks!“

If that seems too hard or scary, you could decline politely and then go to the movies (a holiday tradition for a reason) or somewhere that is else for a couple of hours. “Thank you but I have other plans!” (You don’t have to already have set plans, or explain what they are to have “other plans” for RSVP purposes, btw). You shouldn’t have to leave the house if you don’t want to, but you are an adult with a car and you can get quiet and solitude in a lot of places, so if you are looking for an option with fairly little friction it will save you from being annoyed that the house is full of loud people and them from worrying that you’re missing the fun (or, uh, “fun”).

If you don’t want to be elsewhere, and you don’t think you can pull off the “No thank you!” and then walk away, then I honestly suggest that you go, eat a plate of food, talk to them for one hour, and then excuse yourself to your room. “Thanks, it was nice to see everyone, I’m gonna go get some quiet and let y’all catch up with family.” If your housemates get up in your business about it, one script is: “Thank you so much for wanting to include me, but my holiday traditions are very quiet, private ones and I’d prefer to be alone now.” “Please excuse me, I have some phone calls to make to far-off friends and family.” “For me, holidays are a very quiet, reflective thing, and while your family is so kind, it’s just not my scene.” Repeat like a broken record until they go away. Lots of people fall into Automatic Holiday Coercion Mode, as if “But it’s Christmas!” is a trump card that justifies any acts of emotional manipulation, and you have to sometimes remind them that not everyone even celebrates Christmas, never mind celebrating it in some magical TV-family sort of way with someone else’s family. I’ve had some solitary, quiet Christmases that rank as among the best of my life because it was so great to have a day completely to myself.

Another battle that’s not really worth picking (thought I see why the interrogation rankles and is part of a pattern of other boundary stuff) is the one of telling them about your work schedule. You don’t owe them this information, but when you live with other people it can be considerate to give people a basic idea of when you’ll be around, and, even better, NOT around. Should they expect you back by mealtime, and plan on including you (if that is a thing that happens in this household)? Will they have the house to themselves for a certain period of time, good for having the TV to oneself or having less furtive sex than usual? Are you staying out all night somewhere and want them to know so they don’t worry? While you would never pry into a roommates’ business, can you see how this would be good stuff to know about people you share space with, right? If you get in the habit of saying “Heading to work, back after 10, have a good day!” without be asked on your way out the door, you can head off some of the interrogation stuff at the pass. Treat it as a kindness you are doing them rather than a toll that you pay. As for the full interrogation about where you will be, who with, etc., that IS a battle worth picking, though a general “I’m heading out for a bit, bye!” if you pass them on your way out the door is again, not a bad idea in basic human interaction terms.

In both of these cases, it’s possible that you can harness momentum in your favor. If you’re dreading an interrogation, do what you can to have shoes on, coat on, keys ready, bag packed, etc. so that when it’s time to leave you can GO. Once you start leaving, never stop moving. Be moving as you say goodbye. Don’t stop moving as they ask you questions. If they want to keep asking you questions, make them physically get up and follow you out of the house to ask them. You’re late, you’re late, for a very important date and you simply can’t stop to talk, sorry!

If they do follow you, you could keep repeating the vague answer with increasing degrees of “Duh, I just said that. Out with friends” in your tone (my older brother as a teenager was the master of this) or use the grownup version of “Heading out for a bit with friends. Do you need me to pick up anything while I’m out?” which may distract them for a second as they consider the toilet paper situation. Or you could try a script that messes with their sense of entitlement to certain information, which is: “Huh. Why do you ask?” 

Example #1:

“Where are you going?”

“Out for a bit with friends. I’ll be back late, so see you tomorrow morning!”

“Where? What friends? What exactly will you be doing?”

“Huh. Why do you ask?”

Example #2:

“Oooh, what’s in your package?”

“Stuff I ordered.”

“What stuff?”

“Huh. Why do you ask?”

Example #3:

“What’s in the bag?”

“Some stuff I got at the store.”

“What stuff? How much did it cost?”

“Huh. Why do you ask?”

Keep your tone as conversational as you can, mirror theirs as much as possible. And, especially at the start, it’s perfectly fine to listen to what they say in response to the question and then say, “Ok, well, that’s private” or “It’s just some stuff I got at the store” or “Thanks for telling me” and then go on with your day without answering their questions if you don’t feel like engaging deeply at the moment. Over time, here’s what this short phrase can potentially do in changing up your interactions:

• It interrupts the expected flow of this conversation, which, if they stop and think about it, may be enough to make them catch themselves and the absurdity of what they are doing. In a perfect world they catch themselves and then go “Hahaha, sorry, mistook you for one of my kids there for a second. Enjoy your evening!“
• If they don’t catch themselves, and they double down on their inquiries, it opens up the floor to have the bigger conversation that you need to have. If you say “Why do you ask?” and they say “Can’t I be curious?” “Jeez, I’m just asking!” “I’m just concerned about you” or “Are you hiding something, you are acting very defensive!” etc., it gives you an opening to say, “With all due respect, it’s very kind how you’ve welcomed me into your home, but we aren’t actually family and some things are private. I don’t want to be rude when you make what seems like a simple request, but what’s in my mail, or the contents of my shopping, or the exact details of my finances and social life are actually more information than I am comfortable sharing with roommates. I’m sure you don’t mean to be intrusive, but these requests actually make me very, very uncomfortable, and I need you to take the hint when I don’t answer a question the first time.“

Give yourself permission to have the argument, Letter Writer, and free yourself from the mindset that you owe them parental-style deference. You won’t be saying anything unreasonable, or mean, or unkind. They may have a very sharp, offended reaction at first, and you can’t really prevent that from happening, so just know that it’s coming and that it will also probably pass just as quickly. Get ready for “Why didn’t you say anything before?” (Answer: “It just sort of came to a head today but it has been somewhat ongoing. I like you all so much I didn’t want to make a thing about it, but it’s time to figure out some good boundaries since we are all adults.“) or “Do you really think we’re that intrusive?” (Answer: “Sometimes, yes. It’s like you treat me like one of your kids, which has nice aspects, but sometimes it’s good to remember that I’m not actually your child and was raised in a family with different expectations around privacy.” Give them a little space and time to react. The worst will most likely die down in a few days. You may have to occasionally correct them or reset a boundary, but you should see things change for the better after a few attempts.

Other battles worth picking and scripts for picking them:

• When they come to your room, “I’m going to shut the door, I’d like to be alone now.”
• When they won’t drop a subject, “That’s not up for discussion.” “I don’t really discuss money with other people.”
• When they ask intrusive questions, “I’m not comfortable sharing that. Good night!” “Ha, I wouldn’t even share that with my own parents!” 
• “I’m very uncomfortable right now, can we change the subject?” Then repeat, “I’m just not comfortable” as many times as you need to until they get it.
• “I’m not feeling very social right now, so I’m  gonna go to my room and get a little quiet time.” 
• “It’s also probably a big adjustment for you to have someone who isn’t family living with you, I get it! But we’re all adults, and adult relationships work better if there are some rules, and one rule I have is that I don’t discuss certain things that I like to keep private.”
• “I’ve asked you as nicely as I can to back off. I’m sorry you feel excluded or hurt, but I’m still not going to show you my mail or talk through every purchase with you.”
• “We talked about this – my room is actually off-limits without an express invitation. Please don’t follow me.” 

You say you’ve been trying to be nice, and you should keep being nice. Nice is keeping up with household chores, saying hello/good morning/goodbye/good night, please and thank you, being a quiet and considerate roommate who does their share of the chores. Nice is rewarding your landlords with kindness if you see them making an effort to respect your privacy after you’ve readjusted some things. Nice is NOT hiding how uncomfortable you feel and putting up with intrusive behavior without protest. These people presumably have to interact with other adult humans who are not their kids, and unless they are also asking their coworkers and the librarian and the dry cleaner incredibly personal questions, they can learn to mentally re-categorize you into someone deserving of the same autonomy. Go slow, give yourself a lot of time and attempts to get the words out, but know that standing up for yourself is a habit that can be learned. It’s self-reinforcing the more you practice it!

I hope you can get a little peace and quiet, and I’m excited for your future in your own space where the holidays can be silent, silent nights.

Dear Captain,

In essence, I absolutely adore this girl, but there’s someone else, and she has problems being away from home. As a disclaimer: this isn’t some crush, or the case of a naïve adolescent. This is my fifth relationship (though I wouldn’t call myself experienced in relationships). I’ve dated this girl, and known her for over a year, during which we’ve been comfortable friends for long stretches of time. I want her in my life, at least as a very close friend.

Lets call her Emma. We met last August in college, and very quickly, naturally, spilled all our feelings and pasts to each other. Emma was emotional and had a troubled history of depression. I’m an open and helpful person, so I was more than happy to be there for her. She didn’t need me, but felt much happier with me around. She was single, but had lingering feelings for her ex, who she’d gone out with for two years, but had broken up with because she didn’t want to do long distance in college. His presence was visibly ruining her emotionally. At this point I had no intention of going out with her – I was more than happy to have her as a close friend. Eventually, I had a sit-down with Emma, explaining to her she wouldn’t truly be happy if she didn’t let him go.

About a week later, Emma stopped contact with him. She was noticeably happier, and I was proud to have helped her. I started to develop feelings. She had had feelings for a while, before she broke things off with her ex. The natural progression of our friendship led to us going out. This lasted over 3 months, until break. She went home to her closely knit friend group, which included her ex. My family had just moved to a remote location with a harsh winter, and was alone for break. It was hell.

This took an emotional toll on me. When we returned to campus, things weren’t the same. She broke up with me after a week with no clear reason. Emma got back with her ex shortly thereafter. It was because her ex was more accessible over break than I was, by default. It wasn’t my fault.

Two-three months later, she texts me. We start talking again. She had stopped talking with her ex. Emma talked about how horribly he treats her. He refused to call her his girlfriend, but insists that she doesn’t see anyone else. Basically, he wants her for sex, and is too embarrassed to call her his girlfriend in public. He sounded like an absolute douche, based off her own first-hand account. To the extent where the bad things he’s done for her greatly outweigh whatever good he’s done for her. She tells me I treated him better those three months than he ever treated her during their two and a half years together. I’m flattered, but more importantly, I’m glad she’s happy with the way I treat her.

We are well on our way to going out again, but I don’t let it happen, because summer break is coming up.  I feel it wouldn’t be practical to attempt long distance for three months after going out, at most, for a few weeks. Emma tells me she plans to stay single over the summer, and is by no means going to resume contact with him. I’m thrilled for her and I’m glad she’s taking that initiative to figure herself out by finally being single for an extended period of time.

We continued contact, as friends, but I found out she resumed contact with her ex. He badgered her and she ignored him for the longest time. I guess she gave in. This took a toll on our conversations, and I’ve stopped talking with her completely. I just don’t trust, or respect her as much as I used to. Not as a girlfriend, not as a friend.

There’s a certain duality to her life – the one back home, and the one at college. She wants me at college, but she wants him back home. Her relationship with me, platonic or romantic, can’t coexist with her relationship with him – though that is what she’s going for. She resents long distance, so in truth, she can’t have a healthy relationship with anyone because she spends months every year in two different places.

First off, how do I properly react to this, in the way that is healthiest to me? I’m not speaking with her until we arrive back on campus, when I plan to express my disappointment about her actions. What do I do until then?

Secondly, as her friend, how do I help her? I’ve helped her so much up until this point. But If I can make her as happy at college as she is at home, it would mean the absolute world to me. First and foremost, we are close friends, and as such, I want to help her. In addition, the aforementioned duality hinders our friendship. Is there anything I can do to help her with it?

I care about her immensely. I want her to be happy.

Any help is much appreciated, thank you in advance!

Sincerely,

Confused but Hopeful

P.S. There was really no way to shorten this to 450. I tried. I hope you can omit what you find unimportant, and retain what is important. Any additional info can be attained by contacting me.

Dear Confused but Hopeful:

I left in all of the text in your letter. The anonymized name you chose for your friend/crush has to be a coincidence, but your letter would remind me of the linked article that spawned  this post even if you hadn’t accidentally stumbled on the same Nom de Plume. You are not displaying the same level of entitlement (or apologia for violence, thank goodness) as the author of the Medium piece, but you are doing something that he also does, something that I think is harmful and controlling: You are making an argument that what you want just happens to coincide with “what’s best for Emma”and in that light you are attempting to diagnose her decisions and discarding the ones that you don’t like as stemming from pathology/depression/deep-seated issues/distance as a way to invalidate them. The giveaway is in statements like “… in truth, she can’t have a healthy relationship with anyone…” 

Here’s what we actually know about Emma’s decisions, so far:

• She likes you and finds you easy to talk to about emotional stuff.
• She broke up with you (in the absence of a given reason, assume “She did not want to be with me” as the reason) and doesn’t seem to want an exclusive relationship, romantic or otherwise, with you.
• She is okay with being in at least some kind of contact with her ex, especially since he is big a part of her social circle back home.
• Emma is the A+ #1 authority on what Emma wants to do and what will make Emma happy.

The ex may very well be bad news, but she will interact with him until she decides to be done with him. You cannot logic her into making a different choice. You may well be an altogether better man than he is by every standard of measurement. But you cannot logic her into making a different choice. Her decisions may have some basis in homesickness, depression, the thrall of an unhealthy relationship, or what have you. But they are still hers, and you cannot logic her into making a different choice. She doesn’t owe you her love, she doesn’t owe you all of her thought processes and reasons, and she also doesn’t owe you making decisions in her life that make sense to you and that you 100% agree with. Why would you want to be with someone whose judgment you trust so little, and whose love for you can be shaken by a brief visit home?

One of the biggest red flags for me is this one: You have cast her as the illogical, irrational, “troubled” one and yourself as the “open, helpful” one, and you cast your role in her life as the unselfish Helper. Your question isn’t “How do I find some kind of normal way to hang out with my friend after a weird intense breakup limbo times”, it’s literally “…how do I help her? I’ve helped her so much up until this point. But If I can make her as happy at college as she is at home, it would mean the absolute world to me. First and foremost, we are close friends, and as such, I want to help her. In addition, the aforementioned duality hinders our friendship. Is there anything I can do to help her with it?” (Emphasis mine) while also saying ‘and “I just don’t trust, or respect her as much as I used to. Not as a girlfriend, not as a friend.”

Has she asked for help? What if she came back to college and she didn’t need any help from you? What if she didn’t tell you all about her bad boyfriend back at home and actually had a counselor and a wide network of people to rely on? What if your friendship with her weren’t based on “helping” at all? Because THAT is the answer to your first question, “how do I properly react to this, in the way that is healthiest to me?” Answer: QUIT HELPING. Remove yourself from the dramatic love/help triangle. Disengage from dealing with her around what you perceive to be her problems. Script: “Emma, given our weird quasi-romantic stuff, I don’t feel comfortable talking about your relationship with your ex with you. Can’t we just go to lunch, or study together? Maybe take the serious stuff to student counseling where they can really hear you out without being biased.” Change the subject. A lot. Tap out of conversations that make you feel disappointed or rejected. See if there is a friendship left here when you remove yourself as a helper and remove the idea that she is a romantic possibility or in need of rescue.

That might make you less close, and that might make you seem and feel less important, but it’s healthy to have boundaries with your friends. If you’re not down for endless discussions of this dude back home, why not draw a line there? That seems way better to me than “I’m not speaking with her until we arrive back on campus, when I plan to express my disappointment about her actions. What do I do until then?” I mean, who wouldn’t be looking forward to that? “I can’t wait to get back to school, where my ex is waiting to tell me how disappointed he is in me and punish me for hanging out with old friends over the summer.” You’re not her parent, or a teacher, or a mentor. Why is it up to you to be “disappointed” about who she talks to? Why would that make you a good or helpful friend? You describe her ex as badgering her until she gives in and talks to him again, and I would submit that the cycle of helping/disappointment can be another form of badgering.

I know I’m being a little hard on you, and that’s partly because I used to be exactly this brand of creepy. “You’re just so troubled and sexy, you don’t even know what you want, let me show you how happy I can make you.” I would invest a lot of time in troubled, sexy dudes, wanting to hear about their problems and nurse them back to emotional health and groom them into my perfect (grateful) boyfriend, and be utterly confused when they would rather spend time with the people they actually wanted to be fucking instead of (objectively so much better and cooler and nicer) me. The dudes in question DID like me a lot, and they liked the attention and home-cooked meals and occasional no-strings-attached* sex and comfort and sounding board, which I offered up because I am so very, very helpful. Who wouldn’t enjoy that kind of attention and adulation from a basically likeable person? I was so very good at rationalizing away any information that I did not want to deal with. I would give and give and give all this stuff that they never asked for, and then close the trap of entitlement and disappointment around them. Hadn’t I done so much for them? Hadn’t I been a good friend? Didn’t I “deserve” to be loved? It turns out that you cannot logic people into loving you back, even if you make a really good case complete with chapter headings written out on the good stationery. “He’s so fucked up and confused, he doesn’t even know what he wants” was my rationalization when I didn’t want to deal with the fact that whatever “he” wanted, it was Not Me.

You didn’t use the words “Friend Zone” once in your letter, which I appreciate, but it’s clear that that’s where you see yourself. You clearly want to be with Emma as more than a friend (boyfriend, or you’d settle for chief advisor and confidant and authority on what she should do), and you lay out the arguments: You’ve put in the time with this chick. She is objectively “happier” when she excludes the other dude from her life. She says that she’s happier, which is evidence! But when she says stuff like “I don’t want us to be together anymore” that is not really evidence of anything, because she didn’t even give “a reason.” She vacillates wildly in what she wants, for instance, when she gives into pressure from the ex to be back in contact. But you don’t see how pressure from you (like the current silent treatment) might affect how she describes their relationship and her intentions there. You are seriously describing a situation where you are “punishing” someone for their “disappointing” behavior, and planning future interactions months ahead of time, yet you say this person is a friend. This is not healthy! This is very controlling behavior, actually, where you are monitoring her excessively and Emma must conform to what you want her to do in order to have your attention. No bueno!

Let’s conclude with some positive steps you can take:

• I think it’s entirely reasonable to not want to date someone who is still hung up on their ex, and it’s reasonable to want a monogamous relationship with someone if that’s how you roll. You should date someone who actively and passionately chooses you. Since Emma is still entangled with her ex, and has a pattern of re-engaging with him, you have all the information you need to know about how this will go. So remove the possibility of dating her from the table, yourself, by not dating her and not trying to. Admit that’s what you’ve been trying to do, grieve the breakup and the loss of what you had, and put all of the energy you were putting into “helping” her into meeting new people who might be good dating partners and meeting new friends in general.
• The way you are worried that Emma’s time at college might be too tied up with ex-boyfriend/home worries? I worry about yours being too tied up with Emma and her Stuff. You wrote to me in June about something that’s not even really going to happen until August/September. Refrain from planning out how your next meeting with Emma in the fall will go or from expressing your “disappointment” to Emma. Keep your questions about her summer to “How was your summer?” Let her decide how her own summer was. Use the school break to focus on everything that is not Emma.
• Write this down somewhere: Emma is the #1 Authority on Emma and What Is Best For Emma (Even If She Makes Mistakes Sometimes). You don’t have to get it or agree with her to be her friend, but if you try to control her decisions and her perceptions of those decisions you are not being a friend.
• Consider a no-advice policy with Emma. When and if she wants to unload troubles on you, you can recommend that she see a counselor at school, or you can simply say “Emma, I’m sorry you’re going through a rough time, but I need to be the friend-who-distracts-you.” It’s ok to articulate your own needs. It’s not good for you to hear all the ups and downs of her relationship stuff, especially not right now, so disengage. Do it kindly, but do it. Find other stuff you have in common. Video games. Movies. A weekly show. If you don’t have That Thing that you can just hang out doing, and you cannot find a basis for your friendship that isn’t intense emotional conversations/advice/helping, maybe you’re not meant to be friends at all.
• Consider talking to a close friend or school counselor yourself about your helping impulses and getting an ongoing reality check to see when and if they cross over into controlling behavior.
• As you meet new people and maybe date them, watch yourself for patterns and the impulse to combine dating + helping/halping/helpiness. Are you always seeking out the “troubled” girl who has boyfriend problems? Are you always looking for ways to make yourself useful/indispensable to win someone’s love? When you look at your five past relationships, do you think of yourself as the logical, together one and the women as troubled/irrational/emotional, etc.? I say this from the heart and from experience: Focusing on other people’s problems can feel like a distraction from your own and make you feel healthier and competent in comparison…for a while. But you will eventually have to deal with your own stuff. You can make yourself seemingly indispensable to someone and still find yourself dispensed.

Everyone has issues, so it’s not about looking for some perfect person, but maybe right now it is about looking for people who have their stuff mostly together and who don’t seem to want or need any help from you. Bad simile time: When you adopt a cat from the shelter, the volunteers will always try to sell you on the ancient one-eyed cat who needs 4 injections a day and an expensive diet of special food. It is okay to keep saying “I’d like a healthy, young cat with no known medical issues.” That one-eyed cat is somebody’s special perfect cat, but you don’t really even know that cat yet, you don’t already love it, and it doesn’t have to be yours. All cats will eventually need expensive vet visits, and we all help our romantic partners at some point, with something, even if it’s just reaching for heavy things from high shelves or formatting a resume. But maybe it’s best for people like you and me to stay away from romantic relationships that are built from the start on a principle of  “I, the competent and wise one, can help/save poor problematic you!” Look for people who are really available, look for people who don’t need help right out of the gate, and look for reciprocity.

I truly wish you well in resolving this. It is possible to recover from a Helping Addiction (or at least channel it into blog form) and have relationships that are reciprocal and not based on control.

*SURPRISE THERE WERE SO MANY STRINGS

Dear Cap, 

The first date I had with him, we both ordered water–I feel awkward having a glass of wine with dinner if the other person isn’t having a drink too. It took three dates, when I suggested touring a brewery that I’d wanted to check out for ages, when he told me that he was an alcoholic in recovery. I asked him if he minded me drinking around him; he said that he’d thought I abstained entirely, and I told him that I did not, but that I’d be happy to stick to water or tea around him if me having a drink made anything harder for him. He said it was very courteous of me and he’d appreciate it. 

No problem so far. We hung out a few times a week and had fun. I never felt like I was missing anything by not drinking around him. 

We went out for three months before I mentioned, casually, that on a night we weren’t hanging out I was planning to go to an artisan cocktail bar with a few friends. He began to ask me for details–was there a DD, how much did I plan to drink. I told him I usually didn’t do more than three cocktails over a long evening and that we had a DD who just doesn’t like alcohol and planned to sample the gourmet sodas at the bar. 

Then he asked me to give up alcohol entirely, even when I wasn’t around him. He said that he didn’t feel comfortable in a relationship with someone who drank at all; he went into detail about his relationship with alcohol, comparing it to an abusive relationship, and explained that he felt that my drinking was in a sense cheating on him. 

I told him I’d have to think about it, but that I was still going out with my friends as I’d planned, and I wasn’t going to make a decision like that right then and there. His answer was that if I truly wanted to make the relationship work, I wouldn’t even have to think about it, and that even considering choosing alcohol over him was a clear sign that I had a problem and needed to go to AA. 

“I’ll do a fucking moral inventory in the morning, but I’m going to go out with my friends tonight,” I said, and hung up on him. He hasn’t called me back. 

I’m genuinely torn. On the one hand, I’m sure I’m not an alcoholic (and I did give it much thought). I enjoy good libations in moderation, and I get seriously drunk maybe once or twice a year in safe circumstances. There have been times when I haven’t had alcohol for weeks just because I didn’t feel like it; I give up beer for Lent every year and it’s not a hardship. 

But I chose the freedom to drink (responsibly) over a budding relationship with someone who was, frankly, otherwise wonderful and well-suited to me. 

Is that the sign of someone who has a drinking problem? Or was this the first sign that he was a controlling jerk? 

Signed, 

Lovely Lady Lush 

Dear Lovely Lady Lush,

I think your boyfriend (probably soon to be ex-boyfriend) has the right to decide that he doesn’t want to date anyone who drinks alcohol, and that any amount of it, even on the edges of his life, is too much. That might change with time, as he gets more secure in his own recovery, but right now he’s got some information about what he needs, and that’s what he should definitely do, going forward! And if solidarity around not drinking, ever, is something he really needs from a dating partner, then he should ask for it up front and not try to ease into it by degrees. Some friends/partners/family members of recovering addicts do abstain entirely as a gesture of solidarity. They do it by choice, though, and not in response to panicked ultimatums or accusations.

It doesn’t make you a bad person or mean that you are an alcoholic who chose an “abusive relationship with booze” over him (even if that’s the story he ends up telling after the relationship is over). You were living well within your agreed-upon rules, and I think you were right to say “I’m not making a decision like that right now, this second, on my way out the door” in response to an ultimatum that he sprung on you. I don’t think it’s okay for him to project his addiction onto you and to try to diagnose you as a fellow addict when you aren’t just because it would be easier for him if you were. If he is a controlling guy, setting himself up as your mentor/sponsor/leader/drinking monitor is a handy step in the process, and isolating you from your friends is another. Recovery is very isolating, as people figure out just how many social activities involve booze, and I can see why it’s tempting for him to want company in that isolation. A lot of controlling behaviors spring out of a sense of loneliness and panic. That doesn’t make them okay, or something that you have to live with.

I don’t think you have to be an alcoholic, or he has to necessarily be 100% a controlling jerk for you to be incompatible and for this to all be more work than you want to put into a relationship right now. He’s in recovery, and the stakes around this are very high for him in a way that they are not for you, and that’s okay. You both have some information now that you didn’t before. It’s okay to not be invested enough in him to want to quit socializing with your friends to make him feel better. It’s okay to decide that dude, you’re in a different place from me, and I can’t sign up for a lifetime of working on this alongside you at this point in my life. It’s okay for you to resist his casting you as a fellow addict when you aren’t. It’s also okay for him to decide that he wants to date teetotalers only. I think the best outcome for both of you is for you to disengage from each other right now. I would send him one more message, like, “I really don’t like the note we left things on the other night, because I care about you and wish you all the best. But I don’t think we should date each other anymore.” And then, do your best to let that be the end. Don’t get drawn into a long negotiation where you start talking about a breakup and end up talking about booze.

Sometimes you date someone who is great in many ways but it just doesn’t work out, and that is an okay ending to this story.

Let’s play the game where we answer the questions people typed into search engines to find this place. Punctuation added. Wording unchanged. 

1. “My bf won’t choose me over his brothers that are rude to me.“

I don’t know what the nature of this choice is, like, probably your boyfriend won’t ever cut off or stop talking to his brothers on your behalf, but your boyfriend should definitely stick up for you when and if people in his family are rude to you. 

2. “When he says he doesn’t have time or focus for a relationship.”

Time and focus may in fact be factors, but also, “he” doesn’t want to be in a relationship with you. I’m sorry, that sucks to hear. Move on from this prospect, is my advice. 

3. “How to turn down a friend down politely convincing her you love but can’t engage in a relationship right now.”

This is the wrong way to go about it. If you don’t want to be in a relationship, just tell her “I don’t want to be in a romantic relationship with you, I’m so sorry, but I value you very much as a friend.” Let her heal for a bit and then you can most likely be friends again. If you use the “not right now” excuse you leave her hanging and hoping, and it’s going to be so much worse.

4. “What it means when a girl say she does not think it will work out.” /”What did she mean by saying we can’t cope with each other?”

Most likely translations: “I don’t want to be in a romantic relationship with you, but I’m using neutral language like ‘it won’t’ work’ to try to spare your feelings.”

5. “How to respond to a compliment on your looks.”

From an acquaintance, not delivered with a leer, like, “You look really nice today?” a good answer is “Thank you.” It’s what people expect to hear and will complete the conversational circuit with maximum efficiency. 

Yelled at you from a moving car? It’s not a compliment at that point. 

6. “I was mean to my dad earlier and I feel bad about it.”

“Dad, I’m sorry for what I said earlier.”

7. “Coworker bothering you on job about non job related things fast food.”

“I am not comfortable discussing that with you, especially since we are at work.”

“Let’s only talk about work at work.” 

“Please stop bringing up that topic, I do not want to discuss it with you.”

Document (write down) each time you tell the person and then if you can bring the subject to your manager. “Manager, I have asked Coworker 3 times to stop bringing up personal topics at work, but they won’t stop. Can you have a chat with them about it?” 

If it IS your manager, I am so sorry. Keep changing that subject.

8. “How to show my teacher I love him.” “How to tell my professor that I love him.”

It must be back to school time, there were many variations on this one. 

My advice is: Do your work, never speak of it, wait for it to pass. If you are both adults, and you still feel this way when you’re done with the class or with school, I guess you could ask him out and see what he says. But right now, even if he did love you back, it would be horrendously creepy, abusive, and very bad for his career for him to show it in any way. And if you’re not both adults, it would be ILLEGAL. Crushes happen. They don’t all have to be acted on. This is a time to not use your words.

Someday, long after the class is over, maybe, tell them how much you appreciated their teaching or write a poem. 

9. “How to treat a guy who doesn’t accept apologies.”

Gingerly, like a rabid raccoon that you want to stay very far away from. 

10. “My boyfriend hasn’t cleaned his dishes in a week.”

If you live together, it’s okay to just say “Hey, can you do the dishes? They’re piling up.” It doesn’t have to be a big talk. In fact, a direct simple request sooner rather than later is 10,000 times more effective and less stressful for the person who is not doing their dishes than a big awkward talk about feelings. 

Since you say “his” dishes and not “the dishes,” it sounds like they are at his place, which, sure, tread gently. Is he cooking for you, like, are some of those also your dishes? You don’t want to become the regular caretaker/cleaner at your boyfriend’s place, but “want some help with the dishes?” is a nice thing to offer if you stay at someone’s place regularly, and the line between guest and roommate starts to blur. 

11. “Houseguest feelings hurt when I limit length of stay.”

I know this is a tricky thing culturally, especially where family is involved. But my gut says that this is one of those  “your houseguest needs to deal with those feelings on their own and not make them your problem” moments. Letting someone stay with you is a favor. You are allowed to set boundaries around that favor. In fact, it’s good for everyone to have clear boundaries about favors like that, and even in families where extended stays are the norm there are some rules (written or unwritten) about how people behave. 

12. “What can a person say to a lonely, sad 18yrs old boy to make him happy?”

“I made you this list of books and films by women?” has been my default lately. :)

You can’t make someone happy, but you can try to be his friend and spend time with him. “Want to come by and play video games for a while?” 

13. “Elderly-widow-punish-her-bottom-regularly.”

What a vivid word-picture.

14. “7 instructions and households chores to give to your brother.”

When I was a kid, with a little brother who followed me everywhere, this list of seven instructions would have looked like:

1. Go away.
2. Away from my room.
3. Leave me alone.
4. Go away and leave me alone.
5. Stop looking at me.
6. Stop breathing on me.
7. Leave me ALONE.

15. “Warning signs of a possessive boyfriend.”

Scarleteen has a GREAT article/excerpt from Heather Corinna’s book here that talks about different kinds of abuse and how to recognize controlling and abusive behaviors in romantic relationships. The most important thing is, how are you feeling about the relationship? Do you feel stressed out and anxious about the relationship? Do you feel tense all the time? If so, then whatever it is that’s making you feel that way is “bad enough” or “important enough” to discuss (or to break up over, if that’s what you decide to do). Additionally:

• Do you feel like your friends and family are taking a back seat to the relationship, like you are losing touch with them or feeling less close to them since you’ve been in the relationship?
• If you hang out with other people, especially other men in your life, do you feel anxious about what your partner will say? Do you find yourself over-explaining or over-justifying conversations with men and boys you know to your partner? Do you find yourself being defensive even when there is nothing to defend, or coming up with explanations for where you were/who that is before the question is even asked because you know it will be? (He’s just a friend. That was my dad. He’s a coworker. It’s not like that.)
• Does your boyfriend seem hyper-vigilant about your interactions with other men and boys? Does he often attribute sexual motives to them that you don’t? “He was staring at you.” “He just wants to sleep with you.” “Guys like that only want one thing,” etc. This is insidious because he is co-opting your own feelings and reactions to other men with his own creepy projections, and trying to get you to mistrust your own instincts about the people in your life while he sets himself up as the one true arbiter/protector. 
• Are your grades, work, schoolwork, other interests suffering because you’re spending all your time with or focused on your partner?
• If you put your cell phone down or left your computer on and your social media/email accounts up in a room where your partner was and left to go to the bathroom, do you feel like he would look through your stuff while you were gone? Does he always seem to be looking at/interested in/wanting to know what’s on your phone? What would happen if you said “Please don’t scroll through my phone, I don’t like it”? Would it result in a massive argument where you get accused of all kinds of things?
• Is he vigilant about your time? Stuff like: he knows your schedule as well as or better than you do, he’s always on you to call him as soon as you get home, you have to text and check in with him a certain number of times and if you’re running late for some reason he gets worried, not a little worried, but REALLY worried,* he sulks if you make plans that don’t include him, he picks fights or wants to have big emotional relationship discussions when you’re on your way out the door to somewhere else or keeps you up late talking the night before you have to do something important. 
• Is he overly vigilant about your clothing, especially as it relates to how it displays skin/how tight/loose it is/how men “might” see it?
• Do you always feel like he expects you to apologize/do you always find yourself apologizing even though, when you step back and look at it, you really haven’t done anything wrong?
• Does he mention being cheated on in the past by other partners a lot? As in, “I know you wouldn’t do anything like that, and I trust you, but I’ve been hurt before so it’s really hard for me to not think about it.” Or “I trust you, I just don’t trust other guys, and I’ve been hurt so much by cheating before.” Bonus question: When you describe his wack behavior to a friend, do you use his past experience being cheated on when you make excuses for him? “He doesn’t mean to be like that, but he’s been hurt so badly before.” 

I hope whatever made you search for this resolves itself soon. Maybe take a few days or a week off from hanging out with this dude and get your bearings?

16. “How to apologize for stalking a guy.”

The best possible apology you could offer is most likely “silence” and “staying away from him, forever.”

There’s stalking behavior and there’s Stalking. I know commenters have expressed dismay and displeasure here when the kind that is a deliberate attempt to terrify and control someone through explicit threats of violence is treated the same as the kind where a heartbroken and seemingly clueless person keeps reaching out and reaching out with unwanted contact and won’t seem get the hint to leave someone alone. I suspect the person who typed this into a search engine is more like the second kind, but (and I say this as someone who has tried to hold on WAY too hard after a breakup in my younger days and who has sent many unwise verbose teary emails to dudes who were too nice to say “Jennifer. Stop it. Stop it now.”): Stalking and stalking behaviors exist on a continuum, and when you’re on the receiving end you can’t always tell the difference or how it might escalate. If someone won’t hear your “no” when you say “no I don’t want to go out with you” or “please stop emailing me,” or “I didn’t invite you to this party, why are you here?”, or “Let’s NOT be friends,” what the fuck else are they capable of? The deliberately dangerous people play themselves off as the clueless, heartsick ones, and the clueless, heartsick ones are capable of creating as much anxiety and dread as the dangerous ones, and one of the safest (not safe, there isn’t any safe or feeling safe when you’re being stalked) routes for a victim is to cut off contact and not respond to any communications. The heartsick person will eventually slink away. The dangerous person might hopefully please please please go away.

If you’re wanting to apologize to someone for behavior you self-describe as “stalking,” if you’re cringing at the way you behaved and wanting to make it right, that’s a good step in terms of your own self-awareness and development. But one crucial step in developing that self-awareness is to a) realize that this person’s good opinion of you is likely gone forever, and to b) let go completely of needing their good opinion or attention. 99% of the time, the right answer is: Leave them the fuck alone. Forever. Completely. If you share a common leisure activity, like you are both in the same ballroom dance class, find a different class. Do it without comment or making it about them. Just go to a different class from now on. Give them the gift of not running into you around every fucking corner. Recognize what you did was wrong, get right with yourself, forgive yourself, and then stalk no more. Whatever resolution or closure is possible, it has to come from you, from within you, and be resolved by you, without them having to do a single iota of emotional work on your behalf. The less you make them think about you, the better.

1% of the time, we’re talking about the milder form of stalker-ish behavior, and we’re talking about someone who is in you still have to run into, and it’s a situation where they haven’t fully cut-off contact but they are mildly sort of tolerating you for the sake of mutual friends/a dearly loved hobby/work/the hope that it will go away. I think the answer in that case is ALSO for you to leave them alone and not bring it up, ever, and not ever address them unless they talk to you first. (And maybe for you to find a different class or job or whatever it is ASAP). But if they talk to you, for the sake of clearing the air, a brief “I am very sorry about how I behaved, that was wrong and it won’t happen again” might not go amiss, as long as you snap right back into leaving them alone. This is really a “show, don’t tell” scenario.

17. “I asked my crush to hang out but he’s too shy.”

Good job asking out your crush! I’m sorry it didn’t go your way, but that was brave and cool of you. I think your best bet now is to assume that it’s not shyness, it’s that he doesn’t like you That Way. If he makes a move to ask you out, you’ll know differently, but until then, back off for now and try to focus on other things in your life. 

18. “My ex girlfriend thinks i’m an asshole for not wanting to be friends.”

Let her. You’re not doing anything wrong.

——————————-

Thank you for your Pledge Drive Summer 2014 donations so far, and the kind words. 

*If you’ve read IT, by Stephen King, you’ll know that the phrase “I worry about you. I worry about you a lot” is not a loving phrase.

Hi Captain!

I’m 21 and recently graduated from university. My best friend Sam is 23. Sam struck up a very close friendship with a 43 year old married man named Chris. I’m concerned because:

1. They spend 3-4 days/week together in a larger social group setting and alone.

2. They often stay out for hours and hours till 4-5am while Chris’s wife Judy sleeps at home. Sam says Judy doesn’t want to go with them.

3. Sam says her name has come up in un-related fights between Chris and Judy.

4. Chris said his mother thought their friendship was odd in the context of an, “older people just don’t understand me” conversation.

5. Within the first HOUR of meeting Chris, he made two separate slights toward his wife (who was not present) in the form of, “Oh, Judy would never come out to something like this” (swing dancing) and, “Oh, Judy isn’t one to try new foods”.

6. Chris commented to a different mutual friend once that sometimes he “thinks he married the wrong woman”.

7. Chris goes to Sam for emotional support, especially when he has a fight with his wife.

Sam doesn’t see anything uncomfortable or inappropriate with this dynamic but I have foreboding feelings. It feels weird and I can’t seem to separate their age discrepancy as a factor that’s magnifying the weirdness. When I talked about this with Sam, she told me I’m acting ageist.

Flash forward several weeks to the person I was dating recently, Mike. Mike and I met online and hit it off right away. He was kind, funny, feminist, and WONDERFUL. We discussed problematic masculinity on our first date (THE ACTUAL DREAM!). Sleeping with him was a pretty big deal for me because it was my first time and I had been waiting to have sex with someone I felt “all in” about. Mike’s profile said he was 27, which was fine because I’ve dated a lot of guys my age who are so nervous that I feel like I’m babysitting. Things with Mike were going well until, unexpected plot twist, I found out he was actually THIRTY SEVEN. He claimed 27 was a typo online but that he looks and feels like he’s a twentysomething (he’s in university), and that he thinks I act very “maternal”, so it shouldn’t be a problem. When I talked to Sam about my misgivings, she said I’m acting ageist again.

Can you help sort out my feelings about all this? Am I really being old-fashioned and ageist in these situations? How much is too much of an age difference to date someone? Do the rules and dynamics of friendship change if there’s a big age difference between friends?

Thanks!

The Adults Are Not All Right

Dear Not All Right:

There’s a line in Tana French’s In The Woods where our protagonist detective who has made a giant hash of his life goes on a few dates with a colleague. She dumps him, as kindly as possible, telling him “There’s a fine line between interesting and fucked up. You should date younger women; sometimes they can’t tell.”

People of different ages can be friends and men and women can be friends. But I think your instincts are dead on, and that Chris is almost certainly laying the groundwork for an affair with Sam. (The disparaging comments about his wife when she’s not around are the telling detail here, where he’s typecasting her and typecasting other women he meets as attractive foils to her. I also bet he has wicked mentionitis at home.)  However, it takes two to have an affair, and you’ll insult Sam if you insult her motives when she is not pursuing this person romantically or thinking of him that way. If Sam’s not uncomfortable, Sam is the boss of Sam. It isn’t on you to do anything about it unless Sam asks for your input. Sam will make her own choices and mistakes. If you want to take a little bit of care of Sam without being intrusive to Sam, do what you can to make sure Sam always has an option for getting home from events that is not Chris. She can choose to take you up on it or not, but that way she’ll never be stranded with him if at some point she doesn’t want to be.

People of different ages can have successful romantic relationships. However, Mike’s “but I feel young!” and “you act very maternal, so it’s okay” line of complete bullshit made me throw up in my mouth. He likes you. He likes sleeping with you and probably wants to keep doing that. If you’re enjoying yourself, then keep enjoying yourself. But the most likely explanation is that his dating profile age was not a typo. This smells to me like the deliberate work of a dude who wants to sleep with women 15+ years younger than he is (and can get away with it most of the time without being found out), so guard your heart and your health around this one. Especially beware the “fairness” or “ageism” arguments when they’re used to convince you to do something you personally feel is skeevy or distract you from the fact that this person lied to you. Has he actually ever apologized to you for that, or taken into consideration why it might bother you, or did he skip right to “But it’s cool, because you are so mature and special, not like other girls” (aka The Older Douchebag’s Magic Spell of Obfuscation)? If it was an honest mistake, he should be able to understand why you’d be wary and give you an actual apology and some space to process.

You are smart and have a good heart and good instincts.

Much love,

Captain Awkward

P.S. Sam, while pure of intentions and heart, might not be the best advisor about matters of the Middle-Aged Heart/Peen right now.

Here there be dragons. And bees.

Dear Captain Awkward,

I’m trying my best to sort this out myself, and I am starting therapy in a week or two, but I feel like I’m flailing around, grasping at whatever I can tell myself to make me feel like things aren’t awful.
I recently discovered your website and I thought I’d run some of this by you. I suppose the root of my problem is this: I acted like a whore, but I am trying to convince myself that I’m not one. But then I decided that convincing myself of that would be selfish, and it makes me feel like a greedy whore, too.

Here is what happened. I am in a polyamorous relationship. My partner (let’s call him Nathan) and I did not communicate our boundaries well. My boundary for him was that he should tell me if anything sexual happens with a potential/new partner so that we can continue to have be safe sexually. His boundary for me was unspoken, so I assumed it was the same. That was a Huge Mistake.

I was hanging out with another person (let’s call him Peter). I really, really, really like Peter. We had hung out in his room twice, and this was the third time. I was coming over for the purpose of watching a movie. Of course, as evidently happens during “movie watching” (which I was not aware of but not opposed to), we cuddled and made out. Peter knew I was polyamorous and innocently and totally acceptably wanted to take things further. So I gave him a blowjob. Which at the time I did not expect was going to be a problem (I’ve since decided that if I wasn’t thinking selfishly, I’d have known it would be a problem).

While I was gone, Nathan, who I share a single dorm room with at school, was texting me asking me to come back soon so we could go to bed. I pretty much blatantly ignored his texts, and when I got back he was very upset. So, even though I had meant to tell him what happened between me and Peter, I didn’t. When Nathan gets upset at me, I tend to recoil. He’s intimidating, though he would never physically hurt me. So I wrote a note, saying I was sorry I left him by himself and that I should have answered his texts and left him my laptop so he could at least have Skyped his friends, since he was feeling lonely. I also stated that Peter and I had established feelings for each other, but not what exactly had happened.

That was another Huge Mistake.

Nathan was totally fine with Peter and I becoming partners as well, but he said that he thought it would be best if we didn’t do anything sexual yet. That created a lump in my throat and a questioning in my mind. After much stewing, the next night I told him what happened, and he Flipped the Fuck Out. He punched the wall, told me I cheated on him, and that I had totally broken his trust. I am no longer allowed to communicate with Peter or spend any time with any other hetero/bisexual men or homo/bisexual women (presumably because I’d totally suck their dicks, too). I came up with the idea of giving up caffeine so that I could prove myself able to devote to something. Also, I check in with him on my cellphone and tell him where I am and who I’m with whenever I change locations or company.

My heart is totally shattered. I feel like scum of the earth. Whenever I’m in public or don’t want to cry and I feel tears coming on, I have taken to scratching myself really hard. It keeps the tears away, but I know it’s not healthy and I can’t stop doing it. And I’m resentful and self-loathing and I wish I could turn back time and just not have given Peter a blowjob. But I did. I still see Peter around 3 times a week because he works in the residence hall that I live in, and we’re both members of the same Executive Board for an organization. Peter and Nathan used to get along too, but Nathan has been avoiding him and obviously has a lot of loathing for him. All I feel is that I have burned my bridges. My friends who are friends with Nathan would hate me if they found out. My friends who are not friends with Nathan all live far away. My family does not know I’m polyamorous and would also probably hate me. I am not allowed to talk to Peter.

I guess I’m just wondering: How can I fix these bridges? Can I fix them? Also, this isn’t a question but I miss both Nathan and Peter a lot. There’s a hole in my heart and I don’t know how to fix that, either.
Sorry this is crazy long. You can cut out some extra bits, but this is also the first time I’ve written any of this down…

Thank You for your help,
Unethical Slut.

Dear Unethical (your name for yourself, not mine):

I see the words “I know he would never hit me/physically harm me” in a lot of letters I get. Far more than I could ever, ever, ever answer or publish.

Those words break my heart, every time, because the people who write them are offering them up as an example of how the relationship can be saved and how I shouldn’t judge their partner too harshly. They mean “he’s not ABUSIVE-abusive (even though he does all these abusive and controlling things to me). I’m not like those abused women, I would leave if someone actually hit me.” They break my heart because the letter writers have had to do the calculus, the calculus called Would He Hit Me? and they offer the answer up as proof that he wouldn’t but all I can see is proof that he almost did, that he’s thinking about it, that he’s a week or a year or a hair’s breadth away from it. It’s proof that she’s thinking about it, too, that she’s had to do the math. Nathan wouldn’t hit you, but he’d punch a wall in front of you, so you can see the force of how his fists slam into things., so you can see how hurt his hand is afterward, so you know that the damage is your fault. When I read those words about how the partner doesn’t harm or hit, I can hear the echo of the guy saying them, too, like “Well, it’s not like I physically hurt you! Come on! Be reasonable (and do what I say)!“(Mentioning how “at least you don’t hit” someone kinda sorta exactly like reminding them that you could hit them, that you might hit them, that hitting them is on the list of possible things that could happen, you are a fucking goddamn hero of a man for making the difficult heroic choice not to. Someone saying this to you should always make the little hairs on the back of your neck stand up, and prompt you to look around for the exits).

And then the letters, like your letter, contain the most heartbreaking question of all, which is how, how can I be better/fix it/make it right/not make him scary and angry anymore. How can I be perfect (give up caffeine), how can I show him (check in with him by cell phone every time I change locations or company) that I’m worthy? Because the abuser-logic has worked. “When you make mistakes it’s your fault, when I make mistakes (like scaring you) it’s also your fault.” Someone doesn’t have to physically hurt you to harm you.

People in non-abusive relationships don’t have to do this constant calculus. Non-abusive dudes don’t get described as “intimidating” by their girlfriends, because non-abusive dudes, even the big strong burly ones who might look pretty intimidating to a stranger don’t intimidate their girlfriends. They don’t punch walls, or throw things, or put 10,000 tiny conditions around everything, or monitor their movements or their phones. When those dudes feel lonely, they fucking call a friend, or they muddle through those lonely feelings. Non-abusive dudes don’t pat themselves on the back for not hurting women, because it doesn’t occur to them to hurt women. Once you are at “At least he doesn’t physically hurt me” as a standard for measuring someone’s behavior, the bees are already in the house.

I am not as sure as you are that Nathan “would never physically hurt” you. “Intimidating,””punching the wall,” not “allowing” you to talk to men or other women, the fact that you are using words like “whore” to describe yourself, the constant monitoring & checking in you’re doing add up to a picture of Something Is Not Right Here. You tell Nathan your boundaries for sex with others within your poly relationship. He never tells you his. You act within your own ethics about this, and suddenly he’s punching walls and flipping out at you and telling you who you are allowed to talk to? Nathan is ok with you and Peter becoming partners, but only if you do it exactly as he wants you to? A misunderstanding in how you do poly stuff does not make him the boss of you! This is one seriously controlling dude, and I don’t think he wants you to become partners with anyone else, honestly. A normal decent kind dude would be like “Hey, if you want to stop drinking coffee, cool, but the idea that it’s something you’re doing for me is honestly kinda weird.” A normal decent kind dude would say “Hey, I was hurt when you hooked up with Peter, but I realize now that you had no way of knowing what my rules for poly-stuff should be because we never actually discussed it. But this thing where you call me every time you go into a different room? That’s really weird, please stop doing that.” A decent, ethical, poly dude who loves you would most likely be able to express hurt that you got together with Peter without discussing it first and still try to find a way for you to have everything you want.

But for a controlling dude, these self-sacrifices of yours are right on schedule, putting him in the center of every aspect of your life, where he thinks he belongs.

My advice is: Run, gurl. Drink caffeine if you want to. Sleep with nice people who are nice to you. Get out of this relationship and this living situation with a dude who punishes and berates you because he doesn’t know how to fill his own loneliness.

Some concrete advice:

• Everything I’m saying here should happen on the down low, without consulting or informing or alerting Nathan until you are ready to leave. He is not a safe person to talk through your options with, and I don’t think you can trust him to be on your team about anything. The first comment at this link is about how to hang in with an abusive situation if you can’t get free right away, and there is tons of concrete logistical advice in the rest of the comments.
• You’re starting therapy, GOOD. Keep going to that. Please tell the counselor about your relationship.
• There is a book called Why Does He Do That? by Lundy Bancroft. You should read it, but you should not do it where Nathan can see, or have a copy in your room.
• Call a domestic violence hotline/helpline and talk through this with a sympathetic, trained person. They won’t think you are silly, they will listen to you, and if you’re far away from your friends this perspective can be invaluable.
• Tell at least one of your faraway friends, tell someone in your life that you trust what’s going on. And call your friends and family and catch up with them. Even if you don’t talk about your relationship, you need to talk to some people who love you and care about you and make you laugh.
• Secure your money, identity documents, computer, your phone. Don’t leave your phone or your computer lying around where he can snoop in them.
• Talk to someone at the school about moving to your own room/out of the room you share with Nathan. You need your own space ASAP, in a different building. You might need to get that space, move your things into it, and then break up with Nathan at a neutral, public location that is not your old room, with an RA or a friend present. You don’t need to tell every person every single thing that happened – “We had a fight, and he punched the wall in a way that scared me, and I think I would feel safer if I had my own space for now” is enough. Not everyone needs the whys and wherefores. Mutual friends can hear “We broke up, don’t want to go into it right now.”

Get some trained professionals in your life. Reconnect with your friends and family. Stop calling yourself names. You are a woman who wanted something, and you went after it in a way you thought was within the bounds of your relationship. You found out later that your partner didn’t agree. You didn’t do anything to deserve the amount of humiliation and worry and fear you are feeling right now.

Someday (hopefully) Nathan will be a distant creepy memory.