It’s my blog, and I’ll lighten the mood of serious posts with photos of baby elephants if I want to.

Hi!

So here’s the setup; I’ve been in a long term relationship for a while now (going on a decade). We’ve lived together for most of this, we now own a house together, we aren’t married (and don’t plan on it) and don’t plan on kids. We also have a bit of an usual arrangement within our house, in that we don’t share a bedroom (or bathroom or office spaces) because I’m a very light sleeper and he snores.

So the problem: I find I’m desperately unattracted to him now. Sex was never fantastic with him, but I used to still enjoy it. I rarely got off with him, but I was ok with this (masturbation is there to save the day!). I’ve occasionally had stretches where I lost interest in sex for a while (say, 4-6 weeks at a time). I just shrugged my shoulders, asked him not to push me it on it because having him nag me about sex while I was in one of these phases just pissed me off, and I came out of the phase just fine. He’s not a neat person (and I’m uninterested in fixing this, part of the reasons separate bedrooms are great cause that mess is his problem to deal with), he’s very gassy (which, ok, I know, people fart, but it doesn’t really make me think sexy thoughts, and the separate bedrooms and offices are also great for keeping some distance for this stuff), and he has this attraction for old T-shirts he had in high school (which mostly just annoys me because SERIOUSLY you can still wear stuff from high school? But usually it’s not really a problem, he has to wear dress clothes to work so those are now only occasional lounging clothes). None of this stuff has changed at all during the course of our relationship; I pinpointed them before as possible problems, and have eliminated them as issues as much as I can.

But I’m not coming out of the phase this time. There’s nothing left for me to pinpoint as a problem. This time we are pushing 5 months of me being completely uninterested in sex (or anything involving us touching) with him. I can’t get myself to be attracted to him. I can’t. And I’m getting really tired of trying to force myself to be attracted to him. I’ve always had an …active imagination when it comes to imagining sex. This hasn’t ever impacted our sex life before; I’ve never had any issues placing him in fantasies before alongside all the other fun stuff. But I find lately that I’m almost repelled by picturing him in my fantasies or during masturbation. It completely kills it for me. Because there’s this lack of attraction, anytime he comes to touch me (whether its a hug, or a shoulder rub, or whatever) I completely stiffen up and just wait until he stops so I can relax.

He’s my best friend though. We still get along great for the most part besides. There’s just this giant elephant in the room of, “Hey, you know, we’re boyfriend/girlfriend, yet our relationship has been pretty much just roommates for months now.” What do I do? What can I do when I’m not attracted to him? I’m scared of moving on (I do still love him. I just don’t think sexy thoughts of him anymore), but I also know I’ll be dreadfully unhappy in the future if this is all there is in the future. I don’t even know how to begin talking to him about this. My biggest fear is that he’ll just sit there without saying anything once a conversation starts (this fear exists because it’s happened before in big conversations, where he’l just sit there without really adding any input and I’m left to say “well, so there it all is, it’d be cool if you had something to say about this” and it just never happens. Even during a therapy session we went to 4 or 5 years ago).

If there is a YouTube channel where one can watch Baby Elephants do stuff, never tell me, b/c I will watch it all day every day and never do anything else.

This sounds heartbreaking and hard, and I’m sorry. We already covered a lot of this territory here ( and some libido stuff specifically here and here) but I want to revisit this because I had another idea for how to frame it.

The elephant in the room is IN THE ROOM. You’re not talking about it, but you can both see it, smell it, and hear it. If it stepped on your feet or pooped on the floor or stole your dinner with its sassy little trunk, you’d notice. As in, your boyfriend has almost definitely noticed that you haven’t had sex or wanted to touch him in 5 months. Whatever hurt or rejection or questioning can happen is already happening both to him and to you on some scale. Yes?

The prospect of breaking up, having to re-figure out a living situation and finances, and of maybe losing the most stable and closest partership you’ve had is a HUGE disruption and decision.

Talking honestly about what’s really going on, maybe going to therapy, maybe trying some different sex stuff to try to improve the relationship also feels gigantic.

The big decisions have big consequences, but no decision also has consequences. (Yeah, I did that. I went there. What you find at that link won’t bring your libido back any time soon, sorry). You don’t want to have sex, or even a romantically-tinged relationship with this person, and you don’t feel like you can communicate effectively with him about it or get the necessary emotional feedback from him to feel hopeful about the outcome. That leaves him feeling constantly rejected in small ways and you feeling constantly guilty and looking for something to blame. Old t-shirts. Farts. Your inconstant self. It’s not like the status quo = happiness. It’s just a slow-motion apocalypse, global warming vs. an asteroid.

You could “open up” the relationship, which a lot of people do when they get to this place, but is that really a solution for keeping it going or just breaking up in stages? What happens to your partner when you meet a well-dressed, communicative hot dude with a clean house who is really, really sexually compatible with you, and he meets a heavy sleeper who loves his old Quidditch t-shirts and wants to jump his bones all day and all night? At least you’d probably have to drop the pretense that he’s your boyfriend vs. your best friend/roommate, but is that the correct order of operations?

I know this is scary to contemplate but I think some relationships just run their course. It sounds like you and your partner were incompatible in lots of ways when you first got together, but love and optimism and excellent boundaries made it work very well for a very long time. “Getting along great” is awesome, but it’s not everything. Maybe you’ve changed in the last ten years, and what you needed then is not what you need now. Is it a failure that it couldn’t hold together forever, or it a triumph that it did at all? One of the things that will help decide that is how you handle the hard things now. Staying friends with exes isn’t an obligation, but when it works out it is a delight to have the continued support and companionship of someone you love without all the angst.

Your script, if you choose to deploy it, is probably something like this.

“Partner, you’ve probably noticed that I haven’t been interested in sex for a while. And while we’ve had dry spells before, this one has lasted much longer than usual.”

I would totally let this into my room.

He will say some stuff, possibly a variation of “Okay...”

“I am so sorry, but I don’t see that getting better. I’d like it to get better, because I love you so much, but I don’t know how to make that happen. And talking about this is very scary for me, because I do care about you and our life together so much. I don’t want to lose our friendship and partnership if the romantic parts of the relationship goes away.”

Own the feelings as your own. If there is something concrete he could do that could change how you feel, then tell him. If not, don’t blame shirts or farts or snores. If he threw away all his old shirts, would your desire change? I don’t think so, so it’s not fair to set him a series of “change yourself” tasks like a Princess in a fairy tale. Also, go with “my feelings of attraction have changed over time” over “I never was totally into sex with you, but it didn’t used to be actively difficult to contemplate.” There’s honesty, and then there is bludgeoning someone with honesty.

Say your thing. And then see what he says. He might ask “Are you breaking up with me?” and your answer might be “I don’t know” and that’s okay. You might ask him “Do you have any ideas about what we could do to fix this?” or “Do you think we could keep living together as friends but not as a couple? Because that would be my choice, I think,” and he might or might not have answers to that and those answers might change with time.

But don’t push him. Say the piece you are responsible for, which is your feelings and needs, and ask him sincerely to contribute, and then wind down the conversation until another time if it’s not going anywhere. When you have to have a serious talk with someone who is emotionally reticent, it’s very tempting to try to fill in all the gaps or do a lot of caretaking around helping them figure out their response. And a situation like this, where you desperately don’t want to be the bad guy, makes that all the more tempting. I think you need to talk to him, but also to resist trying to pull a certain response out of him. Otherwise you’re having both halves of the conversation. His honest response, even if it’s uncertain/unclear/needs time to develop/is unsatisfying to you, is still the best response because it gives him agency and you information about what you need to do next. Someone who can really talk about this with you and generate possible solutions is maybe someone you can dig in and go to therapy and try out new sex things with. Someone who can’t maybe isn’t that person, and that’s okay.

I’m hiding you can’t see me la la la

If that still feels too hard and too scary, what are some baby steps you could take while you gear up to a big conversation?

• If you are feeling a bit isolated, like your partner/best friend is your only friend, could you nurture/develop some friendships outside of the relationship, and encourage him to do the same?
• Could you take a solo trip or a trip with a close friend who is not your partner and see if being away for a bit gives you perspective?
• Is it time for you to go to therapy yourself and talk this through at length with someone?
• Is it time for a medical checkup? How’s your libido when you are alone and thinking about Not Him?
• Is it time for you to pay lots of attention to saving money, in case you do have the talk and it turns out to be really disruptive? Knowing that you could rent your own place for a few months if you had to is a way to take care of yourself, and of him if it comes to that.

Put as much of a financial and emotional safety net in place as you can. But don’t delay too long. Five months is a long time to live with someone who shrinks from your touch. You’re not responsible for every single thing that he will feel or every single decision that gets made about the future. The elephant in the room, the can of worms is about to to pop open, the bandaid is hanging by a thread, the words are already on the tip of your tongue.

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.

Reminder, Chicago people, Story Club South Side is tonight at 7:30 pm. It will be awkward in the best possible ways.

Hi Captain and Crew,

My partner and I have been together about eight years, and living together for most of that time. I think we’ve learnt a lot about working with each other’s boundaries and habits, and it’s generally going well.

I’m easily socially stressed and like a lot of space away from everyone. Currently Partner is working full time and I’m studying part time with a lot of working from home, so I get a lot of time to myself through the day and that works out really well.

Recently Partner has needed to take some time off so he’s been at home more than usual. It’s a temporary situation and it’s basically okay, but does leave me more drained than usual. He’s aware of the issue and makes an effort to leave me in peace, but just having another person in the house has an impact on me. I’m a lot more comfortable than I would have been even a year or two ago but it’s an ongoing process.

The real issue comes when I try to express how I’m doing, intended as something like “Heads up I’m starting to feel a bit stressed out and flakey”. I know they aren’t really feelings he can do anything about and I don’t expect him to. I just think check-ins are important and not doing them causes other problems. But I can’t seem to say something like that without triggering a large guilt response for all the trouble he’s causing me, and that’s even more draining.

It’s difficult to talk about what’s going on with me if it’s always going to result in an emotional outpouring about what it brings up for him. His stuff is important too but I can’t always be dealing with that on top of (instead of?) my own feelings.

I’ve tried to express this to him before — including bringing it up at calmer moments — but so far it hasn’t gone anywhere constructive. I suppose it’s difficult to work through being both a source of stress and a source of comfort, and that the stress part isn’t really his fault. Any scripts or advice for finding better ways to check in and support each other in ways we can both work with?

“I liked it better when you spent all day at the mine.”

Hello There.

When you say the thing to your partner about how you are “starting to feel stressed out,” what is it that you want to happen right then?

You don’t like what is happening, which is that he apologizes to you and you have to have some FEELINGSCHAT. This sounds remarkably to me like you want to check in about your feelings, but are annoyed if he shares his in return. So “a mutual feelings check-in” seems to NOT be actually on the list of what you want to happen.

I get working from home, I get being introverted, I get liking a lot of alone times in the house, I even get having lived with a partner who was always home and who was very desiring of my attention during those times. It seems to me that when you say that you are feeling stressed out during these check-ins, what you want is for your partner to say “yah I hear you”  and then go in another room or better yet, to offer to go fuck off somewhere to the movies or a cafe or to run errands, but you don’t want to be the bad guy and actually ask for that thing. It’s good that you don’t want to trigger a big guilt response in him – “being at home, where he lives” is not actually things he should feel guilty about. Yes, of course it’s disruptive to your routine, so you both need to work out a new one that works for you for as long as this is the new normal. After eight years together it’s tempting to think you’ve got everything down, communication-wise, and that the other person should just understand already, but your question is actually a great example for how that’s not really true and we’re always re-negotiating things.

I think that if you want to avoid the FEELINGSCHAT you should add a specific request or action onto your check-in when you are stressed out.

Half the time, the request could be “Do you mind heading to a movie or taking a walk for a little while while I focus? I am on a deadline/need to get through the end of this chapter and I’ll concentrate better if I can have 2 hours of alone time.”

The other half, the action could be “Partner, I’m going to head out for a walk for a little while/to go to the library/to hit the cafe while I study” so that he can be in the house by himself for a spell. There are lots of ways to get some breathing room here.

You could also work this out ahead of time for the week, as in X and Y days you need to study and want the house to yourself. P and Q days you will be at the library for part of the day. Z day you will spend together doing something fun while has this time off. More structure will help everyone know where the boundaries are, which will actually make the times you are both in the house together more relaxed. Script: “I don’t want to feel stressed, and I don’t want you to feel like you’re impinging on me, so could we work out a schedule for study time/together time/alone time while you’re between assignments?”

I know I’ve said that when in a high-conflict situation it’s sometimes enough to put the feeling out there and make the other person do the work of figuring out what to do about it, but this is not a high-conflict situation with an adversary, this is a negotiation with a housemate and a romantic partner where you want everyone to win and feel good and you actually know what you want to happen. Try adding a specific request or action to your check-ins. If it leads to some kind of longer discussion it can be because you’re working out logistics. You have a lot of power, dear Letter Writer, to improve this dynamic, like, instantly. Less feelings, more action!

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.

From Wire Inspire, a worthy Tumblr.

Hi Awkwards!

My boyfriend and I have been together for around 2 years. We’re incredibly compatible and this relationship has done a lot for me. I was in a pretty shitty situation before we met, and he’s done so much to encourage me to accomplish the things I want, I feel very lucky.

Basically, there are several shows that I love dearly and want to share with him. He’s done the same for me – He’s a huge fan of Joss Whedon so we are working our way through the Whedonverse. We’ve completed Buffy and Angel and are now on the second season of Dollhouse. The original deal was that I would watch Buffy if he would watch The Wire. 7 seasons later… he’s watched the first episode and wouldn’t continue.

When we first started hanging out I tried to get him to watch Battlestar Galactica, but the explosions in space were too annoying for him to continue. I tried to get him to give Game of Thrones a try, but he was turned off by the fantasy setting. Several months later, he must have encountered something that made it finally sound interesting, because he’s now a huge fan of the show and we gush over new episodes together. The same thing happened with Deadwood, I wanted to watch it together but he wasn’t into it, and then he ended up watching all of it by himself sometime later and loved it.

I only really care about The Wire. The other shows I can enjoy on my own without wanting him to share them with me. I have pretty strong feelings about it, I think it’s an amazing example of storytelling and I think there are a lot of things he would really enjoy about it. It feels like he’s blowing it off without giving it a chance. We’ve talked about it and he knows that watching it would mean a lot to me. He says that the subject matter is too depressing and since he is already depressed it isn’t a good show to watch right now, but has promised that he is interested and will watch it in the future. I don’t really believe that, though.

Really I’m just writing in to find out if I’m being reasonable, and if it’s worth bringing up to him again. Forcing someone to watch something they aren’t interested in won’t make them suddenly like it. I don’t want to turn him off it forever, but I am feeling sad about this. I just don’t know if it’s justified. I do have a lot more tolerance for things in shows that I don’t like than he does. Do I just need to chalk this up to personal differences and get over it?

Thanks for reading,
Long Live Omar

Bubs is probably not watching the World Cup this week.

Omar Comin’!

A heartfelt media recommendation is like any gift, in that you can pick something out that you love and think the other person will also love, but once you actually give it to them everything that happens with it is totally, 100% up to them. They can put that gift in a drawer and never look at it again. They can return it to the store. They can sell it on Craigslist. They can regift it to someone they think would like it better. They shouldn’t rub it in your face if they do this stuff,  and you could certainly feel some kind of way about it (and decide privately that they don’t deserve nice things in the future), but it’s bad manners to harp on whether they are using or enjoying a gift as much as you would like them to.

Your boyfriend probably would really enjoy The Wire if he gave it a chance, given what else you’ve told me about his taste, but now that he’s told you he’s not into it, every time you bring it up again you probably buy yourself another three years of him not watching it. Let him come to it on his own. Or, if you want to re-watch it now, watch it yourself. “Love me, love my obsession” (and its corollary: “You love my obsession, clearly you will love me!”) are among the Geek Relationship Fallacies that Commander Logic so handily identified. Your boyfriend is the sole boss of whether he wants to ever watch The Wire.

But, you had a deal, you say! You’d watch Buffy if he’d watch The Wire. Thing is, if you’d started watching Buffy and decided instantly that you hated it, you could have broken your part of that deal any time. And he did watch The Wire. He watched some of it and wasn’t in the mood for it, so he sensibly put it off for another time when he felt more like diving in.

I think we underestimate how much a piece of art or a viewing (or listening) experience is context-dependent. The first time I tried to watch Fargo (the TV series) I turned it off after 10 minutes. It just didn’t connect for me. Then I picked it up again last week and devoured it, not sleeping all Friday night because I couldn’t not know what happened. Plenty of people said I would love it, and they were all completely correct, but the combination of being in the right mood/having access/having time took a little while to blossom. Same with Orphan Black. The pilot didn’t grab me at first, but a year later Sweet Machine said something and I went back in and then I stayed in. I fucking hate Alan Moore’s Watchmen with the fiery intensity of 1,000 suns. It has little to do with the comic itself, which I have read and I get why it’s smart and why people love it. It has to do with every dude I met in a 15 year period trying to wheedle me into reading it, and when I said I had read it, try to wheedle me into loving it or argue with me about how I probably just didn’t get it. I GET IT (It’s about superheroes as uneasy manifestations of American power and exceptionalism, if you didn’t know) I JUST DON’T LOVE IT LIKE YOU DO, BRO. Pressure is the enemy of enjoyment.

This is a problem with your boyfriend if he has a habit of always breaking promises, or if you always end up watching his stuff but he never watches your stuff. But the problem is how you negotiate what you watch, not someone’s obligation to engage with a certain piece of media past the point where it’s pleasurable for them. Maybe it’s a good time to find some new shows that neither of you have watched before to dig into?

My favorite TV detective of late.

Since we are talking, there are a few things that Geeky Fans (like myself! I am including myself in this!) have to stop doing to each other when we talk about media at parties, online, or other social situations.

1. “What do you mean you haven’t seen Star Wars?”

We will never be able to experience all the good art and entertainment that has ever been made. Our lives aren’t long enough. If someone hasn’t seen (big cultural touchstone creation) they’ve just had a different life from you, with different priorities, different stuff they love, and possibly different access to media. This is true especially as we age. The stuff that was a Big Deal to me as I came of age isn’t a big deal to people who came after me, and the stuff that was a Big Deal to them passed under my radar. When students come into my classes I love to hear about their favorite movies and give them permission to talk about their favorite movies, and we have a rule: No making fun of anyone else’s favorite movies, for any reason, and no making fun of someone for not having seen a specific movie. You’ll never get someone to feel good about the stuff you love by treating them like they are deficient for not loving it already. The miracle of living when we do is that so many works are so widely and easily available and it’s possible to catch up on old works in a way that it never has been before. Embrace it!

2. “That thing you like SUCKS!” 

I am personally very tired of the dominance display around “proving” to someone that a thing they’ve just said they enjoy “objectively” “sucks.” What is the point of this exactly? Not “there are some problematic elements there” or “it’s not my jam because” reasons” but “Are you serious? You really like that? But it SUCKS.” It’s one of the things that makes certain geek spaces and especially the comments sections of internet geek spaces really boring and uncomfortable for me, because so often the subtext is “YOU suck” or “I am angry at that work and going to take it out on YOU, at length.” We all have our bugaboos, and a good rant among close friends can be hilarious and cleansing (ask me about the movie adaptation of RENT sometime), but know your crowd and the occasion. Make sure the person even wants to be talking to you at all before you dive in with your hate-guns a-blazing.

A close second in “my favorite TV detective” sweepstakes, points for a flawless blouse game + allergy to slut-shaming.

3. “You don’t like x? But X is GREAT! You simply MUST read or watch it!” 

Here’s what MUST happen. We MUST let “I don’t watch it” or “It didn’t really grab me” be the last word on that topic and not try to browbeat people into changing their minds. If someone says “I get why it’s popular, but I couldn’t get past the RaceFail,” before you say anything else, acknowledge their right to feel how they feel. Maybe ask them, “Do you want to talk more about that, or should we find a new topic?” to gauge their energy level for a discussion. If the person says, “It’s not my thing, but what do you love about it?” they are giving you a gift at that point, so make your case in a few sentences and then STOP. There is a place for passionate discussions, but those need to be entered into with mutual consent.

In my classes, one of the things we try to do is to push past “I liked it”/”I didn’t like it” as reactions to work. What is it? What is it trying to be? Is it good at being that thing? Was that a good thing to try to be in the first place? Did the artist have a specific agenda? How did it play with audiences at the time? Does it play the same way now? What stereotypes does it reinforce/undermine? That can be a very rich place to have a discussion if everyone is on board, but you don’t get there with “How dare you not have seen or not like what I like?” And keep in mind, I’m not talking about writing criticism. Write & critique all you want! There is a lot of work to be done there! I’m not talking about activism. #HashtagAway! I am talking about conversations about media with our peers in our leisure time, where liking the same creative work CAN connect us but shouldn’t HAVE TO.

So, Letter Writer, thanks for the opportunity to discuss this, but leave your boyfriend alone about The Wire. He’ll come to it or not in his own sweet time.

It’s July, so time for the monthly “let’s answer the stuff people typed into search engines” post. It is, as always, a very mixed bag of topics.

1. “Is my partner’s family using my family for money? Help!”

I feel like there is a lot of backstory and context here that would be valuable to know, but one suggestion is to revisit and renegotiate current arrangements around money, and see what happens. It sounds like that you (or your family) are already uncomfortable with something about the financial arrangements that are taking place or requests that are being made, and that’s a good enough reason to pull on one of the threads and see where it goes. Do you feel like you are allowed to say “no, we can’t help with that, sorry?” Does it change how your partner’s family treats you?

2. “Should I be upset with a coworker who didn’t donate to a fundraiser in my name?”

Feel however you want, but I don’t think addressing it with the coworker, complaining to other people, or changing the way you interact with them at work is a good idea at all. Be grateful to the people who did donate, and assume the coworker who didn’t had completely understandable reasons that aren’t really your business. Let this one go.

I don’t feel shame about asking for donations here periodically, or for boosting charity stuff or crowd-funding campaigns for friends or causes I’m close to, and I don’t mind at all when people in my life ask me for help with their stuff, but that only works as long as everyone understands that a request is not an order and that gifts are voluntary. For real, the quickest way to make everyone you know go “fuck you and your cause” is to act like they are obligated to give. I also think, personally, that bosses should never ask their employees for charitable donations. Get some friends, boss. Get some friends.

3. “If someone with depression apologises for something they did, do u tell them its not their fault?”

Well, maybe it is their fault. Depression dulls and blunts a person’s ability to function within relationships sometimes, but it’s not an excuse for mean behavior, and we are still ultimately responsible for how we treat other people. If you want to say something comforting in response to the apology, howabout “Apology accepted, thank you.“

4. “How to hide your shyness on a first date.”

Don’t hide!

Sometimes from questions and comments I read here, I get the sense that people who are really leery of dating think that it’s an activity that is a) extremely performative and b) involves doing stuff that you wouldn’t normally enjoy in order to impress the other person, like it only “counts” if it’s somehow far outside your comfort zone and resembles what people in movies do on dates.

On a date, you should try to wear clean clothes that fit you. You should have cleaned yourself recently. You should not unload all the problems and stresses of your life on this new person as if you were in a therapy session, but neither should you be a robot. “I’m happy to be here, but I’m feeling a little shy” is good information for the other person to have. And remember, you can’t make other people like you, so focus on your own reactions. When the person finds out that you are feeling shy, do they react in a way that makes you more or less comfortable to be around them?

Here are some fun, low-cost first date (or friend-date!) activities that might help a shy person relax and give you something to talk about and/or do with your hands:

• Gamers, what happens if you each bring your favorite 2-player game to a cafe and play for a while? Or go to an arcade? It doesn’t matter if you or the other person is “good at” whatever game it is. This is about having fun, learning a new game, and seeing if your styles mesh.
• It’s summer in the northern hemisphere, so that means 10,000 free exhibits, concerts, festivals, and events. Sack lunch + free show = low pressure. You can talk about the performance or the exhibit, and if the thing sucks you wander away from it and do something else.
• We’re past this year’s Free Comic Book Day, but I once had a date on Free Comic Book Day and it was awesome. Meet at comics shop. Browse comics. Pick out comic for each other. Go to park with comics and read them. Commander Logic did this with bookshops that were also coffee shops (not free, but, fun). See also Record Store Day, World Book Night.
• Taco walk! My old neighborhood had a lot of taquerias, so a fun thing to do is to each get 1 taco at each place and compare. If you aren’t having fun on the date, get super “full” after Taco #2 and get out of there. If you are having fun, find local bar or cafe and stay up late talking and then eat more tacos or tamales or whatever. If you live in a city, a taco walk could easily be a dumpling walk or scone walk or a tour of food trucks. Or gelato! Mmmmm gelato.
• Is there a museum of science or a planetarium near you? Go look at science!

Do only stuff that sounds fun and interesting and appetizing to you. Do stuff that you would do with a friend, even if it wasn’t a DATE sort of date. Do stuff that gives you something to look or do. Fancy sit-down restaurants are great, when you are date-ING someone and already know that you won’t run out of stuff to talk about, but it’s all too much the first time you go out with someone. I realize I live in a major city with a lot of options, but people in smaller towns also do casual stuff for fun in their free time, and somewhere there is a park/book shop/ice cream stand/free concert/odd history exam/roadside attraction/place outside your house to spend a little time at. You are trying to find someone who has fun with you, who makes things fun for you, and who enjoys doing at least some of the stuff you like. The right person for you won’t mock your shyness and will help you feel relaxed.

5. “Shy guy now ignoring me.”

If this was someone you were attempting to get with, he’s giving you some “nope!” signs, so believe them and steer clear.

6. “How to convince your parents that you need to go to the hospital for suicidal thoughts.”

Say “Mom, Dad, I need you to drive me to the hospital, because I am having suicidal thoughts and I need immediate help and treatment.” Also, if you search for “suicide hotline” wherever you are, you might be able to talk with someone fairly immediately. Here’s what you can expect when you call a hotline. You could ask the volunteer for help in speaking with your parents.

When it comes down to it, if your parents won’t believe you or won’t take you and you feel like you are in danger, please call emergency services where you live and ask them to come collect you. You being alive is worth making your parents mad. In fact, it’s worth ANY amount of money or fuss or trouble.

7. “How to seduce a girl to do sex chat…”

This site will offer you much guidance, young Padawan learner, mostly of the cautionary tale variety.

8. “GF left me when I needed her the most mental illness.”

Oof. Okay. I’ve been sitting on a lot of letters from the opposite side of this story. The Letter Writer is unhappy for many reasons (like the ones in this recent post) and wants to leave but feels guilty because the partner has severe depression or other mental illness going on and they don’t want to make it worse by leaving (but they also don’t want to stay). So, Your Worst Fear, meet Their Worst Fear! It sets up a really perverse kind of waiting game, where “I want to leave her but I can’t until she gets better, so I hope she gets better (so I can finally leave her), so for now I guess I’ll just stay (and hate it, and grow to resent her even more than I do already).” Yaaaaaaaaay! None of these people are looking for reasons to leave or doing it lightly, but they have come to the end of their own desire to fight to stay.

My question for you is, if your girlfriend was unhappy in the relationship, if she didn’t see the relationship going anywhere that she wanted to be, would you want her to still stay under those conditions? Because you needed her? Out of guilt? To fill your need rather than her own desires? Was your relationship 100% happy and great aside from the mental illness stuff, or was that just the most readily identifiable reason or the straw that broke the camel’s back? It sucks beyond the telling of it to be dealing with a breakup on top of dealing with a mental health crisis, and you have my entire sympathy. Grieve for what you lost. Get angry if you need to, be as sad as you need to be, and when some time has gone by see if you can try to reframe it. “My girlfriend was unhappy with the relationship, so she left.” 

9. “Poem about reasons why am no longer interested in dating u?”

Howabout a bad haiku? No reasons necessary.

“We had a good run/

But I have come to the end/

Please have a good life”

10. “I have been fucking my best friends wife with his consent and his wife stopped it why?”

She didn’t want to fuck you anymore, is my guess. Her consent is the trump card of consents here, so go with that. Maybe hang out with different friends for a bit until you can go back to some kind of normal with these folks?

11. “How to make a guy jealous on Skype.”

Please, for the sake of everyone, when you start to feel like this is a thing you might do, log off of Skype and go do something else with your time. Go learn to paint or some shit.

12. “What to say to a guy to make him feel sorry for you.”

Why, why, why would you do this. why

13. “Will my crush come back to me if I refuse her friendzone option?”

If you were actually her friend, you wouldn’t be thinking of it as a “friendzone option,” so I think you should go ahead with that refusal and let the outcome be whatever it is. Probably she will not come back, but that’s cool, because you will get over her with a little time and space rather than torturing yourself and weirding her out with constant hopeful proximity.

14. “The guy I am dating always lectures me & turns every single conversation into a lecture.”

I hope you found one of the many “how to break up” posts on the site for Tedious Dude. But if you’re not quite there yet, what happens when you tell him that you don’t like this? “I don’t want to be lectured right now, let’s change the subject.” “Did you realize that you’re lecturing me? I don’t like it.” (Probably what happens is a lecture on why interrupting is rude and how he wasn’t lecturing you in the first place is what.) Someone who does this is immune to hints, so if you’re going to stick around, don’t be afraid to be very, very blunt and direct.

15. “She likes my Facebook pictures but doesn’t respond to my messages.”

Stop messaging her and see if she messages you, but don’t fixate on her and what she does online.

Dear Captain,

I couldn’t find a similar story, and I don’t know how strong a bro-relation is, so I’ve been quite confused for a while. The history about this story is bigger, but I only want to point out the main things. This is my story:

It all started a year ago, I met this guy Jimmy, which I fell in love with. We became friends. I gathered my courage and confessed to him. The response I got was not what I expected… His reply was just we’ll see what happens. After a month he didn’t took the effort to make it work. We didn’t saw each other at all. For me it was pretty clear that he didn’t wanted to start something with me.

A month later I went to a party at his house. For me this party was the opportunity to find out whether I still had feelings for him. At this party we all drank a little too much and a friend of him, Jason brought me home. I think you can already predict what happened. We kissed, nothing bad yet, except for the fact that this guy has a girlfriend…The next day, when we got sober I talked with Jason, and we decided it was a mistake and never mention it again. I felt horrible for making him cheat, and was so confused about my feelings. So it was easier for me to not seeing them both for a while.

A few weeks later, Jason contacted me. He wanted to see me and I agreed to it. I think I was being naïve, for not seeing what he wanted and we went a step further. His girlfriend still didn’t know anything about it.

A week later I met up with Jimmy at his house. Jason was there too. We talked about cheating and Jimmy hated people who were cheating, he couldn’t understand why someone would do that. At the end of the night he brought me home. We talked and I wanted to know what I meant to him. He confessed that he didn’t want a relationship right now. His ambitions are too big to settle down at this moment, but his feelings towards me can still go any direction. So my secret affair with Jason continued. After a month he ended it all. He confessed our affair to his girlfriend, and he wants to stay with her.

Months passed by without seeing them both, until yesterday. I went to Jimmy’s house, where they both were. The weird thing is that it didn’t felt awkward at all, sitting between them. For all I could say, I got the feeling that Jimmy was hitting on me. For what reason I don’t know, did Jason told him anything? Or is he finally ready to settle down? Just all those assumptions, makes me insecure.

Also I just don’t know what to do if I ever get serious with Jimmy. Am I obligated to tell him about Jason? I still have a weakness for Jimmy, but I don’t know if he can ever accept me for sleeping with Jason and if I would damage his friendship with him.

Dear Letter Writer,

Let me sum up the dudes you are dealing with now:

• Confused cheater guy (Jason).
• Angry guy who hates cheaters and who told you repeatedly that he doesn’t want to be with you (Jimmy).
• Two dudes who withdraw when you are direct about what you want, but then circle back around to hit on you in confusing ways when it’s convenient for them (Both of them).

Let me sum up the kind of partner you deserve:

• Dudes who enthusiastically want to be with you.
• Dudes who are as direct as you are about their desires.
• Dudes who don’t already have girlfriends.
• Dudes who will not show undue interest in your past sex life or shame you about it in any way.
• Dudes who don’t make you feel constantly anxious and insecure.

I think your instincts are telling you something important about how Jimmy is likely to react to finding out about your dalliance with Jason. Right now you are seeing it through a lens of “trying to deserve Jimmy,” so your reaction is all “Oh no, I ruined it” because you are anticipating the slut-shaming that could come your way if he blames you for what happened (even though his friend, the one with the girlfriend, participated fully in things and escalated them later). The way you describe Jimmy, and the subject line of your email “bros before hos,” make it very easy for me to imagine him bringing up the time you slept with Jason every single time it’s convenient for him, like, when he feels insecure or when you disagree about something and he wants to put you in your place. I think the dynamic between you and Jimmy is one where you audition for his affection and he is the decider – “not right now, doesn’t fit in with his ambitions, not really feeling it” – and I understand why information like this feels like an unfair weight on the scales. Let’s be clear: You don’t seem proud of what went down with Jason, and you may have some murky karma as far as Jason’s girlfriend is concerned, or with yourself and your own ethics around cheating, but you were single when all this was going on and you owe Jimmy jack shit in terms of explanations or apologies. If he were to bring it up in a negative light you would be justified in saying “That is ancient history and also what is your point?” 

I understand not wanting to stir the pot when things are fun and chill and hopeful again, but I don’t think this thing with Jimmy is going to work out. Not because of Jason, or because you ruined it, but because Jimmy has never really been all that into you and I think this past year has been an exercise in figuring out how little you can settle for. The part of you that asks “Is this person treating me right? Will this relationship meet my needs?” has gone quiet. With all the love in the world, I recommend that you detox from both of these dudes, Letter Writer, until that part of you wakes up and flexes its muscles again. There are better partners out there for you, and you’ll know them when you meet them because they will make sure you know how they feel about you and you won’t have to strategize or walk on eggshells in order to be with them. They’ll have more for you than on-again, off-again scraps. Believe it.

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

Robin Marantz Henig’s piece on loneliness and the science of how loneliness affects the brain is sad and interesting and relevant to our interests, I think:

What is different about lonely people is how they interpret their interactions with friends and acquaintances. In the Ohio State study, lonely people tended to feel put upon and misunderstood. They were, the researchers wrote, “more likely to attribute problems in social relationships to others,” and to see themselves “as victims who are already giving as much as they can to their relationships.”

In other words, people grow lonely because of the gloomy stories they tell themselves. And, in a cruel twist, the loneliness itself can further distort their thinking, making them misread other people’s good intentions, which in turn causes them to withdraw to protect themselves from further rejection — and causes other people to keep them at arm’s length.

According to Guy Winch, a New York psychologist and author of Emotional First Aid, lonely people can become “overly defensive and come across to others as detached, aloof, or even hostile — which only pushes them further away.” Loneliness can create its own self-defeating behavior.

I see this pattern in letters and discussions we have here. “Try meeting more people!” we say. “I’ve TRIED that and it’s not WORKING” the struggling, lonely letter writer or commenter says. “Just, um, try harder!” we say.

I have also seen the self-fulfilling “negging” behavior in action, and I do have a strategy when I meet someone at an event and I say “Hi, nice to meet you” or “Are you enjoying the event?” and they say (true story) “You’re probably just saying that” or (true story) “I’m sure it’s nice but I can never meet people at these things. Not people who want to be my friend.” To be honest, responses like that make klaxons go off in my head, and I DON’T want to be around that person very much, and I DON’T want to be guilted into being friends with a stranger. A mean stranger. But recognizing that sometimes people blurt stuff out when they are feeling really awkward, and knowing that my own semi-public role as an awkward soul makes it more likely that they will blurt that stuff to me, I’ve begun a strategy of redirecting the conversation. “Wow, well, I can’t answer that, having just met you, but…” 

• “…how did you find out about this event/know the hosts?”
• “…what would you rather be doing with your Tuesday night?”
• “…read/watch/eat anything good lately?”

Sometimes the answers are (true story) “I know the hosts because they are good people who take pity on people like me,” “Somewhere really quiet, like the morgue” and “No, but let me tell you about all the things that I’ve read that SUCK and all of the details of that suckiness” and then I do bail politely after three unsuccessful attempts, likely added to their list of “fake people who just can’t hang when things get too real,” or whatever. But sometimes I am able to draw the person out about something they are interested in that isn’t their own self-consciousness, and then they relax a bit, and then we have a pretty ok conversation. So if you hear the klaxons, but sense the person is really trying to connect, I humbly offer that as a way to get through the interaction.

I don’t know how to bypass the self-defeating patterns of a “lonely brain,” and it’s not exactly comforting to know that this is what could be happening. At least you’re not imagining it? Sadly, I also don’t know any possible solutions beyond “recognize the role that your own assumptions and fears might be playing in how you respond to interactions with other people, and see if you can’t find happier tapes to play for yourself and for others over time” (maybe with some professional help) and “just, um, keep trying to meet people, Buddy!” I can see why hearing that would be frustrating, especially when you are already making the effort and it feels like it’s going nowhere.

Do others have experience getting themselves out of this mindset? What changed/how did you change it? What other advice could we be offering lonely people who are frustrated with the usual channels for making friends?

Willow, talking about Evil Willow: “That’s me as a vampire? I’m so evil, and skanky…and I think I’m kinda gay.” 1) How has this image never come up at the blog before? 2) Don’t marry off just one of the sides of yourself and kill off the other. They’re both you.

Hi Captain:

I have been in a relationship with  my boyfriend now for 5 years. I met Leigh when I was 19, fell in love, grew up together, and last year bought a house together; we even had an engagement ceremony so our family would feel more at ease with us living together. Even though it was just a front, Leigh already sees me as his fiancé. I think you know where this is going. 

Last year shortly after we purchased our first home, I met a guy through an online game. Jack fell in love with me even though we have never met each other in person. We texted each other day and night for months and eventually things got progressively worse. We started “sexting” and it was then that I started living in guilt, every living moment. I sleep talk when I go to bed at night, and it didn’t take long until Leigh found out that I was cheating on him emotionally. I knew what a horrible person I have been and hated myself for enjoying having intimate conversations with Jack. Most of the time, I felt downright disgusted about myself. I stopped talking to Jack, and he continued reaching out to me telling me he needed me and can’t live without me. Jack texts me every 2 weeks to tell me that he trusts me and will always be there for me but I’ve ignored them all, as I believed he was a temptation I have to stay away from. In order for me to salvage my relationship with Leigh I need to fully devote myself him and one day we will get married and have kids and live our lives like all the loving couple in the world. Leigh being the perfect man that loves me more than anyone in the world, he forgave me and decided to trust me again. 

I travelled solo as a backpacker just last week and made out with a girl and a guy that I met at  a bar. I almost had sex with a guy I met at the hostel but I didn’t for I know I am in a relationship. I despise myself for even having the horrible thought and genuinely enjoyed being hit on by them, having them telling me how beautiful and sexy I am. I had the time of my life when I was there, for once feeling as though I am single.  I thought I could just forget all about it once I get home, and concentrate on being the perfect girl friend again and wait for the feeling of wanting to be single to go away. Sleep talking didn’t help, as Leigh found out in my sleep that I have been apologising “for being a whore” and that “I’m sorry, I’m wrong”. He also managed to find a conversation of me and a friend regarding this situation. The guilt is eating me alive but I didn’t know what else to do. Leigh left me this morning, to travel by himself and to give me time to figure out what is it that I really wanted. He is willing to put a hold on this relationship and let me leave and “find myself” and “do whatever I want” as long as I don’t tell him any of that when I come home. I am with a man that loves me so much, enough to forgive me from cheating on him and would sacrifice everything in his power to make me happy. What more do I want? Am I really willing to let a man like this go just to fuel my desire of being single?

Lost

Dear Lost:

I realize this is probably terrifying, but what if you were single for a while? Deliciously, purely, awesomely single? Free to make out with anyone on the entire planet without it being at the expense of someone else? Without the guilt?

Either you are not wired for monogamy, or this role of Perfect Girlfriend to a Perfect Man with a Perfect Happy Life thing isn’t so perfect, at least for you right now. What you have is what you think you should want, and maybe it’s what you ultimately want five years from now or ten or twenty, but right now isn’t suiting you deep down in your bones. There is a part of you, a big part, that wants to be a solo backpacker and make out with the world.

If Leigh wants a monogamous relationship, and you don’t, then it’s maybe time to fess up to that and see where it leads you. Maybe it leads you to having to do a lot of paperwork as you disentangle yourself from home ownership, but maybe it also leads you to the love(s) of your life, out there in the world. Just because something is perfect on paper, or you can’t think of a good reason to leave it behind, or it really wants to forgive you and execute the plan you had for your lives doesn’t mean it’s right for you. It’s time to be really, really honest with yourself about what you want, and one of those things you might want to be honest about is whether Leigh does it for you in the pants/sexy/romantic/hot connection department.

I’m going to tell you a story. It’s about an attempt to have kind of “don’t ask, don’t tell” experiment with non-monogamy you and Leigh are flirting with. After a few years together, an ex-boyfriend and I had such an arrangement, his idea, and I went along with it because I wanted to be cool, I didn’t want to lose him, and why the hell not? We were so in love and so emotionally evolved and cool that we could handle a “monogamish” sort of thing!, was his/our reasoning. (Note: I realize now that this was an example of extreme wishful thinking, thanks!) He actively pursued other partners, I did not. One night, however, I invited my boyfriend over to hang out  – maybe watch movies, definitely do it – and he said he’d rather fly solo that night, so I decided to finally jump into finding another partner. (Acting out of spite is totally healthy, right? So evolved. So loving. So cool.) Anyway, I placed an ad online looking for a make-out friend and got the usual inundation of dick pics and misspellings, but also a smattering of replies from cool witty geeky dudes who wanted to hang out in my blanket fort. Including one from, you guessed it, my boyfriend.

I was…I need a fake or real German word for a cross between amused and furious…because that’s what I was. I wrote back, hahahaha, you’re busted (and sent a link to the above song) and then he was like “Ok, want to get together after all?” and I said “no, and also, eff you, you had your chance” and went and had a fun adventure with a visiting jazz musician and it was amazeballs. Just the perfect mix of sexy and hilarious and safe and kind.

That night should have been the end. The end of “the experiment.” The end of the relationship. I didn’t seek outside partners often, but every time I did I would get a little glimmer of, wait, THIS is what I’ve needed. THIS is what it’s like when someone is excited to be with me. I’m sure he had the same sort of glimmers. I loved my ex-boyfriend, he was hilarious and kind and a great friend and we got on well together, but That Thing was never, ever present for us, no matter how much we tried. We limped along for another year or so, but the only way things worked is if we got our sexy excitement needs met outside the relationship. I wish I’d had the courage after that night to say, you know what? I love you and it’s been a great run but let’s stop doing this to each other and just find someone who fascinates us and get on with being friends. It turns out in the end, I’m not poly-, or whatever. I’m not cut out for it. When my heart-needs and my pants-needs are congruent, I’m happy as a clam. I just hadn’t met the right person yet, and I didn’t trust the universe or myself enough to believe that I could. When I did, I felt it right down to the marrow of my bones. This is IT. I am HOME. This person is here with me. I don’t need an escape route, or a distraction, or a security blanket of casual attention to remind me of my worth. And I met that person in the middle of a period of being gloriously, happily single. My own place. My own bed. My own food in the fridge. My own time, my own priorities, my own music, my own dance parties. My own sadness, sometimes. My own living on crackers and things that spread on crackers. I was my own safety net, and my friends were there to remind me what love was. Single is great.

I tell you this because, you might just be someone who wants a lot of variety in sexual partners and who thrives on flirting and hooking up for a while. Or you might be someone who can love and be loved by more than one person. Or you might be a monogamous person who hasn’t found the right person to settle down with yet (and you still have miles hooking up to do before you sleep). Not wanting to be in an exclusive relationship with Leigh might be the start of you coming to terms with a different sexual identity than you thought you had, or it might just be a “Good Person, Wrong Time, Wrong For You” sort of thing. Do some reading and some thinking about that while Leigh is out of town, and think hard about the kind of life and the kind of love that you want, and then be honest with Leigh about what you want and see if it matches what he wants. It has to match what he wants, not what he is willing to put up with for the sake of a mortgage or a fairytale wedding or a terminal case of The Shoulds. That thing, where he can “forgive” you, as long as he doesn’t know about any of it? That self-sacrifice? That’s a trap, for both of you. You talk in your sleep. He will always find out about it. You will always be hiding a part of yourself, a vital, alive (& bisexual!!!!????) part of yourself. You will always be apologizing, on the verge of apologizing. He will always feel owed an apology. You will become “the bad one” and he will be “the good one” and every time you have an argument he’ll be there on some moral high ground looking down at you, and you’ll feel like you have to give him his way because after all he forgave you for sleeping with people. If this is how things are when you first move in together, before you get married, what will it be like 5, 10, 20 years in the future? I know it’s hard to imagine breaking up, but isn’t it easier to contemplate the idea that he’s just not the guy for you?

People survive divorces and breakups of serious relationships, the selling/reapportioning of the house, the dismantling of the books and the separation of the record collection. It’s expensive, but you figure it out. It’s logistics, and you can handle logistics. You break the lease or sell the house. You buy new kitchen towels. You find thrift store plates in every shade of blue. Someone gives you a replacement microwave. Your family, who could sorta kinda stomach the idea of you living together “in sin” if it meant you were going to get married someday? I have that sort of family, too. They just deal. Even my very conservative mom was like “Well, don’t marry the wrong person just to make me happy!” You will survive, Leigh will survive, if that’s what you decide to do. What’s harder to survive is feeling trapped, and guilty, and bored (you) or feeling unwanted, lied to, and unappreciated (Leigh). That kind of thing can eat years of your life away, so please don’t hide from it and hope that things will magically get better.

I wish you luck whatever you decide.

Jennifer

Dear Captain Awkward,

I am a straight male in the process of getting a divorce. I am the one who filed for it. I did so out of necessity because my spouse has been increasingly unstable and abusive throughout the marriage. I spent years telling myself that things would get better any day and that there was no real cause for alarm. Additionally, my soon-to-be-ex-wife struggles with a lot of legitimate and confidential mental health issues. As a result, as this problem grew and my marriage slowly marched toward its end, I told very few people just how bad it was. Because I spent the first several months AFTER I filed for divorce falsely hoping that the divorce wouldn’t really have to happen, I also didn’t tell people what was going on as the process began.

At this point, she has moved out, and our small child has been placed primarily with me by mutual agreement. And still, many people in my life have not been properly clued in to this major life change. I still have relatives, friends, and co-workers who casually ask me how my wife is, or talk to me about what a wonderful family I have (really, I hid this well). When this happens, I visibly wince at this point. I no longer want to respond to those kinds of comments dishonestly, but I really don’t want to tell the whole story. All I want people to know are the two facts that are key to my current situation (and not easy to hide): the fact that I am divorced, and the fact that I am effectively now a solo parent. What is the quickest, least awkward way to say this when I feel I need to? My goal here is to minimize follow up questions, and ideally also minimize hurt feelings. I am finding that some people definitely feel put off that I hid the truth from them.

Sincerely,

Divorcee Unmasked

Dear Unmasked:

It sounds like you are doing the right thing for yourself and your family, in very trying and sad circumstances. I hope that this is the beginning of a new and better normal.

Facebook (ugh, I know) and your most chatty & socially connected friends, coworkers, and relatives are going to be your best helpers right now. Facebookwise, I’m stealing this/adapting this from something I saw in my feeds recently:

“Friends, forgive the mass posting, but I have some news that it’s past time to tell people about. Sadly Spouse and I have decided to end our marriage. Paperwork has is in process, Kid is living with me for now while we sort out the logistics. I know this may come as a surprise to many of you, but out of respect for each other’s privacy we wanted to keep the bad news between us until we were absolutely sure of our decision. Spouse could probably use some friendly faces around them right now, as could Kid and I.  I don’t want to go into more detail right now on here, but I did want to let people know what’s generally going on with me and recruit some willing babysitters & playdates for Kid. Much love to you all.”

You’ll get a lot of “Sad news! I hope you’re okay” and maybe one or two people will derail by asking for details or expressing shock – just ignore them, the other people in the thread will handle shushing them and messaging them privately with the details, you don’t owe them an answer or a history or an explanation that makes sense and convinces them it was the right decision. You don’t owe it to stay in an unhappy marriage just because you were personifying someone’s idea of a perfect family. I mean, let the ridiculousness of that expectation sink in for a minute. Also remember, you do not have to respond to every comment, and in fact, there is a little “x” next to people’s comments that lets you hide them. Use it if you need to.

With coworkers, family, friends, etc. you can also spread the word this way:  Find the friendliest, most connected, most likely to gossip or know people’s news people. Call them up or get them one-on-one, tell them the news, and tell them “This is really painful and embarrassing for me to talk about, and I’m really trying to be respectful of Spouse’s privacy and keep things amicable and constructive between us during a really painful and awkward time, so I don’t know if I can handle 50 more lunches/phone calls like this. Would you do me a huge favor and spread the word for me to (the others at work/the gaming group/the family)?” I can feel you, cringing through the internet a the idea of this, but listen: The Gossip Network of People Who Talk About Each Other’s Business is real. It is a thing. Private, reticent people like yourself flee and hide from it, with good reason, but it can be harnessed on occasion to save you from 50+ awkward lunches and phone calls. You’ll find that, as a little time goes on, people will already know your news. You may have to do the odd “I‘m so sorry, I just heard!”/”I know, it sucks, but we’re hopeful that there will be a whole lot less tension once it’s all worked out” dance a time or twelve, but you’ll also find that people will be very kind to you – you’re not the first person to go through something like this, and a lot of your fellow divorce and abusive-marriage survivors are hiding in plain sight, ready to help.

If you get pressed for details or people express surprise on the phone or in person, just let it wash over you. It’s forgivable for people to have a moment of surprise, as long as they understand that their surprised feelings are theirs (you’ve got enough feelings of your own to deal with right now). If you can prepare some safe things you can repeat, you’ll get through it. Go with the truth: “Thank you so much for the kind words, it’s still fresh and very hard for me to talk about, so can we talk about you? How is (that thing you do)(your family)(that local sports team you root for)?“

The truth is your friend.  “Losing love is like a window in your heart. Everybody sees you’re blown apart.” It’s okay to say “I kept it to myself because it was an incredibly tough decision, and I knew that as soon as I told people it would become real. I wasn’t ready, for a long time, for it to be real.””I wish I could have told you sooner, but I really wasn’t ready before now. Thank you for understanding.” Anyone who gives you crap after that that trying to make the hardest decision in your life into something that’s about them and their status in the pecking order of your life. You weren’t lying, you were keeping something private while you dealt with the fallout, and it’s okay to say “I’m sorry you feel lied to, or excluded, that wasn’t my intention. But it was a decision that needed to stay just between Spouse and me until the ink was dry, especially since we were co-parenting all that time.” Then back away from that person for a bit while everyone’s boundaries reknit themselves.

Please also make sure you are talking to someone about the dirty, sad, painful, abusive, horrid details. Find someone who doesn’t need you to put on a brave face, or protect your wife’s public image or your kid’s vision of his mom. A therapist. Your best friend. Your family. She has some extreme diagnosable things going on, it sounds like, but your pain and grief and stress are just as real and just as deserving of love and care. Please don’t neglect your own needs, and our own sorrows during this time. I hope that informing people of what’s happening is one way to reach out to Team You, and that pretty soon some casseroles, friendly ears, and willing babysitters show up in your life and carry you into the next chapter.

Divorced Awkwardeers, how did you break the news?

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.

Ahoy, Captain!

My partner and I have been together for about three years now. We don’t live together, but lately my partner has been saying that he would like to start cohabiting –  not necessarily immediately, just at some point. Mostly I’m the one saying “let’s not.” There’s a few reasons for that, but a major one is financial.

I work full time at a higher wage than my partner, who works part time. He’s frequently out of money by the time his next paycheque comes, while I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve been straight-up broke, even when our incomes were more comparable. When we go out, I usually pay, which is not a problem for me; I’ve also occasionally lent him money for things he really needed, like a bus pass at the beginning of the month, and when something is clearly expressed as a loan, he’s fairly good about paying me back. However, I’m not totally on board with the way he prioritizes his spending. For example, his bed frame has been falling apart for the last year and a half. He said he couldn’t afford to replace it – but in that time, he’s definitely spent more than the price of a cheap Ikea bed (let alone a Craigslist find) on books and games.

I’m not criticizing him for spending his money on things he likes. It is, after all, his money! He’s a grown-ass man and he earned it. I’m also not his mom, and neither he nor I wants me to nag him about financial responsibility. Basically, I just slap a big ol’ Not My Problem sticker on about 90% of his cash flow crap and move on with my life.

My concern is that if we do move in together, I will start shouldering not just most of our financial responsibilities, in accordance with my larger earnings, but ALL of them. I worry that if we did get together, he’d know that the rent would get paid and food would get bought no matter what, so why not go ahead and spend whatever he feels like – not inconsistent with what I know about his spending habits. He’s also got a big pile of student loan debt, and if we’re cohabiting and eventually end up being common-law, I don’t want to take on responsibility for that.

It feels cold, but basically, I’m afraid that moving in with my partner will mean taking a financial hit. It’s not necessarily one that I can’t afford, but it is one that I don’t want.

I’m not immediately on fire to move in with my partner right now – it probably wouldn’t happen anyway, for a number of reasons – but should I mention this to him as part of my reasoning? If so, how do I do that? And if we do decide to make that commitment together, how do we address this problem as a couple?

Many thanks,

Not Subsidizing Anyone

Dear Not Subsidizing:

You are a smart cookie and you should keep listening to that voice that says “living together is not a good idea for us right now.” How to manage money and household chores is the kind of stuff people romantically and optimistically hope will work itself out because: happylovefeelings! and this is the kind of stuff that has people calling (very expensive !) movers and breaking leases  vs. (arguably more expensive!) grudgingly cooking every goddamn meal for 14 years. You don’t have to have 100% the same spending priorities or views about money, but living together successfully means creating some shared priorities around money and making sure that you can talk honestly about money. Some couples split everything down the middle, some couples do a more proportional divide based on income, some have one partner supporting the other outright and all of those arrangements are dandy if they work for everyone involved and if there are opportunities to renegotiate built in.

My first question is: Do you see yourself ever wanting to live with him? You say you’re not on fire to do it right now for a lot of reasons. Do you see this as a long-term, possibly permanent relationship, like a marriage? Is your sole objection to the idea of this about his finances, or is his question disrupting the comfortable status quo in a way that makes you realize that you don’t truly see this as a long-term thing and maybe now you have to decide whether to move forward together or split up altogether? Before you have big talks, I think it’s worth sitting with the question “5 years from now, where do I want to be living” as a daydream. What does that dream space look like? Where is it? Who is there with you? Is it in your current town or is it in Tierra del Fuego? If his question is shining a light on things in the relationship you’ve been spackling over as “good enough for now,” you owe it to yourself to figure that out. After three years you probably have enough information to decide either way. You might say “I don’t really see us doing that” or “that’s not in the plans for me right now” and find that he is happy to not live together if that’s how to have you in his life, so it doesn’t automatically mean a breakup. Just remember, dumping someone is NOT the time to fix them, so if you break things off just leave the money talk untalked and go with “When you brought up moving in together, I realize I really don’t want to, and if that’s the case, maybe we’ve run our course as a couple.”

If you’re down with the plan of eventually living together, but you worry that his expectation for living together is that you’ll pay the bills and replace the broken beds and he’ll buy video games, that’s something you need to find out for sure. So ask. Do it when you’re both relaxed and when you actually have time to talk.

“Boyfriend, you’ve been talking about wanting to live together, and I’ve been thinking about it, too. I confess I’m still getting used to the idea and I’m not all in, yet, but I’d like to know, how do you see that coming together? What neighborhood or kind of place would you want to live in? What’s your timetable for possibly doing this?”

Let him tell you the exciting stuff he’s excited about. What is he imagining, even? Does it jibe with your imaginings? Then ask him, “How do you see us managing shared moving costs and living expenses if we did that? How do you want that all to work?”

Then let him tell you. Just listen to him, this isn’t the conversation where you try to reshape things. Be very gentle, with him and with yourself. This conversation might bring up a lot, and I mean, A LOT, of Stuff, and it can’t be a trap you are laying for him (if that’s what it is, just break up now!) He may not have thought it all the way through until you asked him, and he may say some things that he doesn’t realize are unrealistic until he says them out loud. He may have some plans for getting his life in better financial shape and using the idea of the move as a savings goal, and those plans may be realistic or unrealistic in the mostly forgivable way that everyone expects certain milestones to change who they are.  If he carries a lot of shame about money and the financial disparity between you, it might be like pulling teeth to get him to say anything like “Well, since you earn more I was hoping you’d be the primary rent payer” out loud, but if that’s the truth then you’ll both hear it between the lines. Give him the chance to pleasantly surprise you.

Again, if you want to live with him eventually, I cannot over-stress the importance of making this first conversation NOT be the one where critique his financial priorities. It has to be less about fixing him than about you figuring out together how to regularly talk honestly about money and other logistical stuff. If you’ve got your prepared laundry list of Things that Need To Change, but it’s the first time he’s really thinking about it all and together you have no baseline, then the conversation probably isn’t going to go so well. He’s not oblivious, presumably, and the implication is already there when you bring it up, but I think you can say “Well, we handle money stuff very differently, and while we live apart it’s not really a thing we need to talk about ever, but if you’re talking about living together, then we have to figure out how to talk about it. I just wanted to get a sense of your plans and expectations around how this would work before we’re trying to make big decisions, and I want us to maybe schedule regular talks where we talk about money stuff and future plans. So I want us both to think about that more, and then you tell me when you want to talk about it next time, say, in a month or so?”

Then put on a movie or do something fun (something fun that doesn’t cost money – after you have this conversation, the next time you do things that cost money, expect that it will get a little bit weird and for you to both be a little self-conscious about Who Pays).

You’ve set the stage for both of you to think hard about money stuff. You’ve put it out there that it’s part of your decision matrix for moving in. Do some more thinking about what he said and about what your own priorities and boundaries are. The conversation wasn’t a test (honestly!) but if he said something really boneheaded like “I assumed you’d just handle all that stuff” then you have some information that you didn’t have before (or, maybe you had it, but it wasn’t out there like a fart in a car). Since you made a clear request for him to be the one to initiate money/logistics talks, it may be a long time before you have more money talks. Or, when a month comes up, you may say “I’m still thinking about some of the stuff we talked about last month, about moving in and money. Can we talk about it?” And that’s when you say stuff like “I want us both to be on better financial footing before we set up a household together, for example…”

For example…What kind of things would set your mind at ease and what would get you both on the right track? Has he enrolled in an Income-Based Repayment program for the student loans, which is a way of actually dealing with them, or is he just endlessly deferring/forbearing them into the File of Denial? Is he able or willing to get a full-time job, or a second part-time job or freelance thing, to pay down any debt and accrue some savings? Would you want each of you to have $X in savings before you moved in together, to cover moving costs and as an emergency fund? Do you set up some kind of proportional thing, like, you make a budget for household expenses and you pay x% and he pays smaller y% and you set up a few savings accounts (emergency fund, long-term stuff, fun) and both put x/y% of money in there, and once you’ve both done that all other money is yours/his to spend without judgment or having to consult the other partner? If you decided to change jobs, or go back to school, what would the plan for that be?Is it time for you to both save up together for a fun goal, like a trip away, and see how you do with a joint plan? What does he suggest, as this can’t be about you parenting him into good money choices or doing all the emotional work of figuring out a shared life? Keep in mind, it is all negotiable, and it all should be negotiated and not left up to gender roles or “I just assumed you’d be cooler about this” or optimism.

Related Resources:

• Somewhere in the Offbeat Empire (hi, Offbeat Empire!) lurks a really neat notepad thingy that couples can use to have weekly talks about stuff, including money, so that you make a habit of talking about certain stuff routinely without it being a Big Make-Or-Break Talk. I can’t find the link right now (this is close, but I’m talking about an actual notepad thing with different squares for different topics). Readers in the know, find me This Thing?  We found the thing!
• Things To Talk About Before Shacking Up, from The Billfold (Hello, Hairpin Empire!) – this is a good agenda for a conversation that definitely covers money stuff but doesn’t single it out.

If that all feels like “yay, the person I love most in the world and I will be Adulting together in our shared awesome future” then you’ve got a pretty good shot, maybe. If your gut reaction is “graaaaah so much WORK”, I hear you. I hear you. Do the thinking you need to do, and start the process and the conversation.

Cameron Esposito, y’all. <3 <3 <3

Dear Captain Awkward:

I have a really great job; creatively fulfilling, changing and full of new challenges and people. I’ve been in this job for a lot of my 20’s, and devoted a lot of time and emotional energy to it.

A lot of the greatness of the job is down to my boss. So far, I’d say our relationship has been warm, informal and rather protective, but professional. However the other week (after an work event we were attending together) it became so warm and informal we drunkenly made-out.

He kissed me, not that I’m looking to assign blame, but I was definitely into it. And it was a mess, and kind of innocent, and he’s my boss, and married.

Backstory; while I don’t really identify as asexual all signs so far point to me being somewhere down that end of the ballroom. I’ve had crushes on one or two men (maybe even been in love) but have had very little romantic or sexual experience. I’m basically okay with this, as I experience attraction so rarely (and it’s my body and I’ll do what I like with it, even if that’s nothing) .

However since that night I’ve been left feeling lonely, and touch deprived. I wouldn’t truly say I have a crush, but I want his attention and affection. I feel very safe with him and if he was any of my other friends I’d be asking if he wanted to do it again and working out whether it could be a thing. As it is, we very quickly went back to normal, which is right but has left me so at odds with myself.

How the hell do I behave, now I’ve finally noticed I’ve been having this weirdly intimate working relationship? I feel like such a loser for being so affected by a drunk kiss but really my problem is that I feel like I don’t know myself at all. How can I try to be happy romantically in the future, when my sexuality is such a small, hidden thing?

Thank you, I’d really love to have the chance to think about this anonymously. As it’s pretty professionally compromising I feel I can’t talk about it to my usual Team Me!

Dear #610 (for lack of a better sobriequet):

I wish your boss would apologize to you and THEN go back to normal, like, hey, that was out of line and gross of me, I’m sorry, let’s please go back to normal. Married older dude, young employee, him initiating the kiss = he is the one who is out of line and the one with responsibility for resetting or redirecting things. He is the one who should feel weird right now and be worried about what you’ll do and say.

In the meantime, normal and professional is good. I don’t think you got profound information about this dude and how he is special. There’s something I see sometimes from folks who experience attraction rarely, where if they do, they think that it must be somehow extra meaningful. “I felt The Thing, so this must be A Thing! It is a sign!” That does not necessarily follow, so be smart and let Time and Normal do its work to disengage you from this crush.

I think you got some information about what makes you feel attracted, that does not have to be acted upon and you got some information from yourself: “Hey, #601, it’s me, your Body! We’ve got pleasure centers we’re not using. So, I dunno, maybe think about how to go about meeting someone to make out with who isn’t your boss? Someone from the Legion, Dude Division, perhaps? Or maybe we can visit the non-skeevy neighborhood sex shop and spend a little quality time together, alone? Boss is nice and he smells good, but you might want to talk to Brain about whether we get drunk around him from now on. I mean, I’m down for whatever, but I’m not the only driver of this bus. Okay, we’ll talk soon!” Listen to Body! Look into lots of ways to touch and be touched and love your body. Hug friends who are down for it. Get a massage.

You’ve got this! It’s going to be fine. Unless he keeps kissing you, in which case 1) ask him to stop and if he doesn’t 2) report his skeevy ass to HR.

Dear Captain Awkward:

So, extremely awkward situation here: my boss came on to me. AWESOME.

He’s a married guy in his forties (I’m female and 28), and I work very part-time for/with him, mostly independently; we meet once a week in a tiny office, just the two of us. Which usually ends up being half just hanging out–I’ve considered him a friend as well as a boss, and I know that he has considered himself my friend *more* than my boss. It had vaguely occurred to me that he was probably a little attracted to me, but I didn’t think of him like that AT ALL (older men=no, boss=NO) and assumed that if so, he would keep it under wraps.

Well, today, he confessed to spending a certain amount of constant energy refraining from kissing me. I was all, “…well, thank you for trying?” at which point I now see that I should have LEFT, but I didn’t, and then a few minutes later he actually went for it(!!). I turned away, said no, and he backed off, and I was all, “Let’s keep this platonic,” and he agreed, and then I left.

So…now what do I do? I don’t want to quit, although I could without major financial crisis. I still like him as a person. But I’m not 100% convinced he won’t ever try again (though I am sure he’ll take no for an answer again), and I DON’T WANT THAT. I can’t control his feelings or actions, so as best I can see, my options are, 1) quit, 2) never bring it up again and keep the office door open when we have meetings (maybe wear shapeless clothing? today I was in a short skirt) and…hope it doesn’t happen again, 3) bring it up again to reiterate that my feelings on this matter are NO. Except I don’t know what I would say exactly, when I would say it, and how often it should be repeated.

Relatedly: this is not the first OR the second time an older, male, MARRIED friend has expressed a long-term attraction to me. I hate this–I don’t think I’m doing anything to express that feelings like that are welcome! I’m not at all flirty with them, I don’t think(??). I don’t date much (quoth older, married, attracted friend: “I just don’t understand why not!”) but being perpetually single is not a “male friends welcome to try it out!” sign, ESPECIALLY WHEN THEY ARE MARRIED. If you’re attracted to me, that is YOUR and YOUR MARRIAGE’S problem, not mine! There’s probably nothing I can really do to keep this from happening again, but if you have any suggestions, I welcome them.

–Not Interested

Dear Not Interested (#611):

What some people in your shoes do is to pull way back on the casual/hanging out/friendly vibe and stick only to work topics. Boss: “You look very fetching today, I almost can’t keep from kissing you“/”Wow, that makes me very uncomfortable. So about the project…” Yes to keeping the office door open. Yes to avoiding personal topics of conversation.

You might also want to address it head-on. “Boss, I like working here, and I want to keep doing so, but I am feeling very uncomfortable after the last time we talked. I do not want to discuss or deal with any romantic advances at work. Can you promise me there won’t be a repeat of the other day? If so, I promise to put it behind us and focus on work. If not, I need to start looking for a new position and wrapping up my duties here.” Of course, he should be the one doing the work to set you at ease, but if you have to do that work, be clear and specific.

You should only have to say this once, ever. If he keeps pressing and gives you puppy dog eyes, RUN. If he acts like you are making a big deal out of nothing, RUN. Also, if you do start looking for jobs, have a trusted friend call to “check your references” and verify what he’ll say before you give his info out to future employers. Not everyone can afford to just GTFO, so if you can, enjoy that freedom.

Dear Captain

I need your help; I’m trying hard to keep to the word limit, so I hope I don’t lose too many salient points.

I’m massively attracted to my boss, possibly in love with him. I think he feels the same way. We work brilliantly together, but our relationship is distinctly non-bossly. We flirt constantly in the office, when we go to bars people assume we’re a married couple. Half the office thinks we’re engaged in a secret romance (we’re both single, and age appropriate) and the other half thinks we’re just hilarious jokers.

There was an escalation last weekend. After work drinks led to dinner which led to a massive fight about nothing (well, my jerkbrain probably arguing because WHY DON’T YOU JUST KISS ME NOW) which led to apologies and hugs, more drinking, more physical flirting, me propositioning him, him asking me to dance, and eventually him basically running into the night sans me saying he had to be “appropriate”.

The next two days in work were awkward in the extreme, but the subsequent three featured massive flirting escalations as if last week didn’t happen.

I HAD been wondering how to tell him soberly that I fancy him and want to know if his strange behaviour is because he doesn’t feel the same way or because he DOES feel the same way but he’s my boss . . . but now unfortunately I think I need to tell him I’m resigning.

I have a job offer pending. I could have a relationship with this guy while working for him (not strictly prohibited, and there was a similar situation years ago with others that had a happy ending), but I don’t think I can continue to work for him if we have The Talk and he says he’s not interested in me.

But I also REALLY don’t want to frame this as “if you don’t date me, I’m resigning”.

So, when my offer is firm so I can make an escape if I have to, how do I tell him I’m attracted to him, I would like us to give a relationship a go, I would be willing to change jobs to facilitate it . . . but if he says no I want to leave anyway? How does it even make sense – I love you so much I’m willing to damage your business and go work for one of your rivals? Is there any way for this scenario NOT to be ugly?

I don’t want to pressure him into a feeling of – date me or you lose your right-hand-woman. Feels rapey and disrespectful. Equally though . . . I don’t think I can stay as his right-hand-woman and not act on my pants feelings.

So – help?

Yours hopefully

Not Dating My Boss Yet  

Dear Not Dating (#612):

All the bosses from the other letters just read this and did a fist-pump. THERE IS HOPE, they said. NO, I say.

Would the new job pay you more? Give you a better title, an increase in visibility and autonomy? If you didn’t have feelings for your boss, would you want to take the job or is this something you are considering only out of FEELINGS?

Your boss knows you’re attracted to him. You propositioned him. He ran into the night. There was, I believe, Dirty Dancing. It’s not a secret.

If the other job is something you want, one good possible move is to take it without fanfare, give your notice WITHOUT having any talks about feelings, wind up your work in a competent and classy manner, and keep in touch professionally and personally afterward. This is the position that gives you the most financial and personal power and autonomy. If the feelings are there, and you leave on a good note, you’ll both figure it out eventually and your coworkers will be relieved when the Boss-And-#612-Sitting-In-A-Tree Comedy Hour and Variety Show goes on hiatus. Or, clear the air with a frank personal talk, pull back on flirtatious behavior at work and give him a lot of space, and keep the other job offer quiet/stall while you figure out the interpersonal shit. If you want to have a discussion, ask him to hang out away from the office and lay it out there:

“I want to apologize for my inappropriate behavior the other night. It’s not a secret that I’m into you, and I’d like us to possibly date. But I don’t want to just accident into it, and I definitely don’t want to drunkenly flail into it or make you feel uncomfortable. What do you think about that?”

He’s going to say whatever he’s going to say. If he says “No, I’m not interested” you say “Well, thank you for hearing me out, I had to ask and try to clear the air” and then get out of there as soon as you can. Go home, think about things, maybe take the new job, maybe stay at the old job, pat yourself on the back for being up front and brave, but do NOT initiate flirting with that dude again in this lifetime. If he says “I really am into you too, and I’d love that, but Work Stuff” then you have an opening to say “Well, if I left the company, would that make you feel better about going on a date with me?” or “Do you think there is any way we could work out a professional arrangement that makes us both happy, like, maybe moving me to another team?” If he says yes, or maybe, or seems otherwise positive, then I think you should go home and think about the other job offer and what it is you really want to do, because his saying “sure, if you left I’d consider it” does not constitute any kind of bargain. If you show up the following Monday and blindside him with “I QUIT, WOO, WE CAN DATE NOW” you might get a whole lot of “Yeah, so, about that….”

This is why boss-employee dating can get really gross, really fast. To be in the best negotiating position for yourself professionally, you should raise the other offer with him at work, in a work context, and discuss it like work people. “Boss, I’ve had another offer from company x. It means $y more, and a better title. If you could match that and also agree to (other thing you want) (like, working from home a certain amount or increased travel or a better computer)(NOT “YOUR SWEET LIPS ON MINE”), I’d consider staying. I have to let them know by x day.” To be in the best negotiating position for yourself personally, you need to be able to find out “do you like me that way and want to do something about it y/n” without the threat of “Or else your team will be left in tatters! MUAHAHAHAHA” pressuring the decision. What you don’t want to do is stay in a situation you are ready to leave because of vague promises, or have a romantic partner sacrificing your interests for those of the company.

Dear Captain Awkward and the Awkward Army,

Long story short: my kind, hilarious, handsome (ex) boyfriend and I just broke up because after two years of things being “great!” we realized that nagging “…but maybe not the ‘forever’ kind of great?” wasn’t ever going to go away. It is very, very sad and very, very hard and everyone is crying a lot and gazing listlessly out windows listening to Bon Iver and wishing this wasn’t our lives.

That being said – we would like to still be friends in a real and meaningful way, and I’m not sure how to navigate this for a few reasons:
- I have some exes who I’m friendly with, but they were all “we dated for 6 months” or less exes, and the kind of “friends” we are is, “we can be in gatherings together and it’s mostly fine and not awkward!” and, “we comment on each other’s funny facebook statuses!” not, “you are the thing that makes me laugh when my day is terrible” or, “you are my partner in crime and adventures” or, “I call you when I just want to talk” friends.

- He has no exes who are his friends, and only one with whom he is on still-in-contact friendly terms.

- We are VERY NEWLY broken up, and I don’t want to mess this up by rushing to friendship before every time I see him and then remember we’re not together it feels like a sharp tug on my Golden Retriever of Love’s leash (you know – that feeling of stabbing knives and despair). But also don’t want to “give it space” until seeing each other turns into this unnatural production.

- I suspect that, in my heart of hearts, I will be unbelievably ungracious about his new girlfriend(s), when their time comes. He is, truly, the Perfect Guy (Funny! Kind! Unbelievably hot! In possession of the world’s best beard! Not into the DC-style of one-upmanship that is the worst!) – and I KNOW that he is going to be snatched up by some really perfect waif-y-type-woman in basically seconds. I “KNOW” this in part because he is amazing and in part because This Is My Greatest Insecurity (jerkbrain says: “What if he dates some blond, no-makeup-wearing, athletic woman next? Will that ‘prove’ that our relationship wasn’t meant to be because I WAS UNWORTHY?’“) and I react to it by having a lot of possessive crazyperson thoughts that I keep mostly to myself, but that eat me up inside.

Can you help me figure out how to navigate, “I love you, but need to be falling out of love with you” and “I want you to be important in my life – but also need to let go of feeling possessive of you?” We’re both going to make an effort to communicate a lot about making sure we’re respecting one another’s boundaries but this re-definition is hard and unfamiliar to me and I just want to cut right to the part where seeing him doesn’t feel like stabbing and I don’t want to push his new girlfriends into volcanoes.

Thanks,
Let’s Be Friends

Dear Let’s Be Friends:

Complete the ceremonial transfer of the stuff and then stop communicating for a while. Go low- or, better, no-contact for six months. Unfriend or at very least hide each other’s social media feeds. Delete his number from your phone or change the contact so it says “EX- DO NOT ANSWER.” Do not keep track of what he’s up to. Do not email or gchat or FB message or text. Ask mutual friends to let you know if he’s invited to stuff so you can decide whether you feel like going. Invite mutual friends to stuff so that you can spend time with them without worrying about whether he is invited, too (you control the guest list if you do the inviting). Tell your friends, straight up, “I want us to be friends eventually, and bear him no ill-will, but I need to be at least 6 months clean before I even think about it.” Ask them not to update you on his doings or whereabouts. If you need to tell him something, tell him “I want to be friends, but it’s too hard and weird right now, and I need to emotionally disengage A LOT before I can deal with it. Let’s take a break from talking for six months or so and then see where we are with it.” Find some new activities to do, try new places to eat, meet some new people who don’t know him at all. But also, reclaim the places that you went together that are your favorite places. They are still yours. 

If you’re meant to be friends down the road, it will happen. Your common interests and social ties will bring you back into each other’s lives pretty organically. You’ll run into each other at events, or make plans to hang out again, casually, for lunch, or a drink, and it will bring up a few feelings and perhaps you will take special care with your grooming that day, but you most likely won’t have FEELINGS. If you do? Give it another three months or six months. But right now, you have enough work to do in helping yourself heal and grieve and get over him without having to manage or negotiate the relationship with him. If you need to frame it as “I’m giving myself time to learn how to not give a shit what he thinks about anything” or run through 10,000 scenarios of how great your hair will look when at last you do meet again, nobody but you and I will know that. You have enough to deal with right now without taking on the pressure of how to act cool about something you’re not cool with yet. 

It is possible to greet the new partner of a significant ex with “Cool shoes!” and “Nice to meet you!” and to really, really mean both of those things. It is possible to look at someone you used to love and realize that you don’t regret loving them, but you don’t remember quite how you did it and know, suddenly, that you wouldn’t go back to being with them for all the tea in China. It just takes time to get to that place. Buy yourself that time now. It’s the quickest way to get to the world where you feel whole and okay again.

P.S. Since you mention that this breakup is bringing up some body insecurity, be extra nice to yourself when you look at media right about now. Already Pretty, Gabifresh, and other body positive sites are going to do you 1,000 more times more good than Ol’ Photoshop McGee and the high priestesses of hating-yourself-pretty. 

Hello everyone! How are you? ICYMI, I wrote a non-spoilery (since I haven’t even watched the episode yet) piece about Doctor Who and friendship that’s up at Indiewire. Special thanks to TV editor Liz Shannon Miller, who should probably edit every single thing I write, and who constantly turns me onto cool things to watch and like. In other good news, the short film Meet In A Public Place has just been accepted into the Oakland Underground Film Festival. Oakland! I won’t make it out there for the fest, but let us hope that it is merely the first stage in world domination and travel.

And now, a question.

Hello Captain

I have an awesome boyfriend. We’ve been together for five years now. Next year both of us will have finished our educations and will be taking the Big Step into the World of the Working.

He still lives with his (equally awesome) mother, while I live full time on a boarding room. I will lose my room and therefore home once I graduate. We’ve agreed that we’d like to start living together officially once that happens. We’ve been living together half and half for the past three years: either he stays at my place or I stay at his, we alternate.

I’d love to rent an apartment together during our first years, while saving up for a proper home. He however thinks rent is a waste of money and wants me to move in with him and his mother until we can afford to buy our own place. His mother agrees with him.

I want to move in with him in our own place, not with him and his mother in their parental home. I get along well with his mother, that’s not the problem. I’m used to living independent and don’t want to go back to being mothered in a place I have no say about whatsoever. Living at his place feels like staying at a hotel instead of being home. Moving in with them would also mean that I would be dependent on either them having time to drive me to places or on the terrible local bus connection, since I’m not legally allowed to drive due to medical issues.

I don’t think I’m being unreasonable when I say I want to be able to go to job interviews on my own, that I want some say in what happens to the space I live in or even that I want a say in minor things like what I eat or where my stuff is.

My boyfriend, who has never lived on his own before, does not understand this. How can I make him understand?

Greetings

A frustrated student

Dear Frustrated Student:

For you, your boyfriend, and people interested in probing the logical case for renting vs. buying and your boyfriend’s blanket assertion that “renting is a waste of money,” let me direct you to this video series at Khan Academy that explores the question in an entertaining way. The point I want to make is: Home ownership can be very rewarding and a good financial decision, but it’s far from a given that buying a house is a great investment for everyone, a lot of the logic surrounding question is outdated and downright negated by the events of the last decade, it’s highly subjective and situation-dependent, and even people who have the means to make this a real choice should go through a complex analysis before making a decision to do so.

Your boyfriend doubtless has his reasons for thinking as he does, and perhaps he has a sweet financial analysis spreadsheet somewhere, but he hasn’t thrown down some kind of trump card here. There are things that are more valuable to you than money, like, say, living in a place where you have maximum mobility and independence. And there are other values at play on his part, I daresay, like, not wanting to move out of his mom’s place yet. I don’t want to speculate too far, but reading the subtext it sounds like his mom might not want him to move out now (possibly ever), and he knows this. Saving up to buy a place could give him a reason to stay, for now, and the Big Adult Step of Buying A House could give him a less negotiable/more culturally approved reason to leave when the time comes. Feeling nervous about the future, wanting the security of home, wanting to stay close to his mom are understandable, human reasons–There don’t have to be any bad guys here!!!!–but this is not strictly a money conversation. It never was, it never will be.  

What you have right now is a test of how you discuss and make decisions in the face of competing values, and the stakes are high financially and emotionally. You have to be able figure this stuff out and be on the same team when you make decisions like this if you’re going to have a good life together. Love alone does not solve this stuff. You have to actively solve it and drill down to what’s important.

Some possible scenarios:

• You and your boyfriend rent an apartment together, somewhere that is convenient and easy for you to get around but also reasonably close to his mom so that he can see her often. Attendant questions: What does this do to your planned schedule for buying a place of your own? Is it financially feasible in the short-term? Does this choice involve a lot of blowback from your boyfriend’s mom?
• You move to your boyfriend’s city but not in with him and his mother. You get your own place or live with roommates in a neighborhood that is convenient to public transit or conducive to you walking to work, and you continue on as you have been. Attendant questions: What is the time frame for you getting a place, either bought or rented together? Is this financially feasible and possible for you?
• You move in with him and his mom and save up a) until you both have jobs and can afford an apartment of your own (months?) or b) until you’ve saved enough for a house (years?). Attendant questions: Does your boyfriend agree to drive you around whenever and wherever you need to go, every single time you need to go there, without complaint? Can the money you save on housing be put toward using a car service (taxis, Uber/Lyft, if that stuff is even available there) so that you can be mobile without depending on them for rides? Under what circumstances can you pull the ripcord if you are not happy? What’s the planned end-date for this arrangement? How will you, he, and his mom negotiate living in a shared space when you are no longer a guest but a tenant? For instance, is there a space in the house that you can have for your own, to decorate as you like? Can you redecorate his/your shared room as a way to claim it? How will meals and household chores be apportioned and shared? 

You’ve got to be able to talk through all of this with your boyfriend. You’ve got to be able to make really boring spreadsheets together and work out the actual money involved. If you know that you straight-up do not ever want to live with his mom (and I think you do know this), you need to be able to say that to him, like “Hey, I look at living with your mom as a generous safety net, like, if we don’t get jobs right away and really need to save money to even get a rented place of our own. I rank our options like this: Best option, we rent our own (conveniently located) place and save up to buy one eventually. An ok option: We live with your mom for 3-6 months, max, and save up for our own (rented) place and then save up to buy one eventually. But within a year after we leave school, I want my/our own place, and I want to live where I can easily get where I need to go without being dependent on you, even if it means that we rent for a while. I don’t agree that renting is wasted money, if it gives me what I need to be happy in the day-to-day.” And then ask him what he envisions. If this is about more than money for your boyfriend, he needs to tell you. If it’s 100% about money for him, and he thinks that’s the most logical position, then he needs to know that money saved at the expense of your happiness and independence isn’t actually all that saved. I think you should be very wary of “thrift” that comes at great inconvenience and unhappiness to you. It’s okay if your hierarchy for making a decision is A Place Where I Can Get Around > Together, With You! > Eventual Home Ownership, and someone you want to build a life with needs to empathize with that even if he doesn’t 100% relate or understand.

Also important, when contemplating a future with this guy: His awesome mom can offer, but she is a non-voting member of this team. If she wants to support you and her son in your relationship, I think it’s great for her to say “I’d love for you to stay with me, we’ll work it out, including rides, including whatever you need to feel at home” but really NOT great to pressure you or him about that decision. Do you feel like you can talk to her about it? Like, “Thanks for the generous offer, and I will take you up on it if it becomes necessary, but my honest hope is to not have to if he and I can both get good jobs?” or “The two things that really worry me is that I will be come isolated or massively inconvenience you, transport-wise, and that I am feeling really hungry right now to put my own stamp on a place rather than be a guest in someone else’s house. What do you think?” And whatever you decide, your boyfriend has to be a team with you. A dude who prioritizes his mom’s happiness, convenience, and well-being over yours is not the dude to buy real estate with. 

You’ve got some time before you have to figure it ALL out, this is a process. Maybe schedule regular – monthly? – talks about money, where you will live, etc. so you can check in with each other and keep the conversation going. And make sure you both are putting as much energy as you can into visiting your school’s career office, applying for jobs, and otherwise making it so that you will have the most possible choices open to you. 

———————

Finally, hello nice readers! It’s still technically summer, so while I was late out of the blocks this year, this is the week where I gently shake the tip jar in your general direction for the summer pledge drive. There is never any obligation, but if you like what we do here, support from readers who have a few $ to spare is much appreciated and makes my ability to prioritize writing and moderating the site much easier. 

Dear Captain Awkward,

So I’m a guy, 20 years old and totally devoid of any form of romantic relationship. Ever. I’ve never so much as held hands with a member of the opposite sex, never mind anything else. I’m getting incredibly lonely and yes before you say it, I did behave like a nice guy tm once and just once. I was an ass, I made an incredible fool of myself, I traumatized my friends and worst of all, I hurt that poor girls feelings. She wasn’t the nicest person and took advantage of me, but I hurt her feelings and I made sure when I came to my senses that I apologized, regardless of what she’d done, I messed up. Before all that happened, I was an incredible jerk, an arrogant piece of shit with an intellect to match and zero attachments to anyone. I hated the idea of feelings and I shut them out and didn’t do friends (ironically this is when I received most attention from the females). For most of my teenage years, I didn’t need people and I didn’t need love.

I’m literally petrified of making the same mistake again and of ever hurting another living soul again, I’ve been bad, I’ve made mistakes and I’ve taken advantage of people, now I’m trying, very hard not to be that person again and that includes treating women as people, with thoughts and feelings, hopes and fears and dreams. It’s difficult in the uni dorm I’m in, considering most people I meet socially are either drunk (I’m stone cold sober) or do the whole ‘one night stand’ routine which to me is appalling. The few people I’ve really sparked with are all in relationships.

I’m lonely and very different, I’m eccentric, have eccentric tastes and I’m a lot more mature then most people I meet in most social settings (I’ve been regularly mistaken for 40+ when I was 18) I’m also a romantic whose entire cultural upbringing utterly rejects the idea of genders freely mixing and all that cabal. Pretty much means my social skills are shit. I can out-argue almost anyone and I can debate exceptionally well but I’ve zero social skills that aren’t an argument, sports or one of my passions (which many people do not like) I’m regularly putting my foot in it in casual conversations and I have been told in the past that I am far far too intense. 

On the plus side, most of my closest friends are all female (I do not and have not had romantic feelings for any of them) and they’re great people but they all offer conflicting advice on what my problem is. I’m fast becoming isolated, I’ve zero self confidence and my self esteem has taken a nose dive, a combination of truly looking into the mirror for once and a mystery illness. I don’t think I look handsome, but a lot of people have said that I do. I get really confused and I pick up a lot of body language, but I have no understanding of social cues. It’s like I’m trying to read Swahili.

What on earth is wrong with me? Am I incapable of being loved?

Awkward & Lonely

Dear Awkward & Lonely:

My own time as a NiceGirl(tm) is well-documented on this blog, so, take hope? It’s a pattern of behavior, not a permanent designation or identity. We grow up, we figure it out, we stop doing that stuff. It is unlikely, being as self-aware as you are now, that you will repeat those same mistakes. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with being a late-bloomer, or in delaying romance and sex until you meet the right person or feel ready. I know it’s a bummer to get crushes on people who are already coupled up, but you are sparking with people! This means that you are recognizing what you like in a person, and learning more about who you are really attracted to. This will serve you well when you meet someone who is single and who has the qualities you like. It will feel like “Oh, there you are!” The fact that you have lots of female friends is also an encouraging sign. I get zero douchebag vibes off you. So let’s talk about some stuff you can do differently to improve your life and your chances of meeting someone you’d like to be with.

While I think you have some particular cultural stuff you’re also trying to sort out, my advice to young straight men who want to meet women is always going to be about subverting the dominant dating paradigm and the sexist culture we grow up with, and it’s always gonna run along the same lines:

1) Read books & blogs, watch films, look at art, and listen to music made by women.

2) Seek out new activities and build on the interests and passions that you already have in a way that brings you into contact with more people. Some of those people will be women. Some of those will be in your age group/dating pool or know someone who is.

3) When you have the time and energy for it, try out online dating sites to practice dating. That’s how I met everyone I’ve dated since 1998.

4) Be really nice to yourself and take good care of yourself.

“I just met you, and this is crazy, but do you want to have sex and then die horribly so that I will be motivated to avenge you in the third act maybe?”

To elaborate:

Step I. Consume More Art By Women. Works by men, with male protagonists, dominate popular culture. We all grow up on stories and messages where men go out and do great deeds and they rescue and/or win the love of women. They pursue women. They acquire women as decorative objects. If you aren’t good at acquiring these objects you are a loser or a failure. These are the messages you are swimming in, and they are affecting your life. Not every work created by a woman goes against this grain, obviously, since we’re all swimming in the same cultural soup. And hopefully you already seek out and enjoy works by women — I don’t want to insult you by saying that you don’t or that you are unaware! But I think it’s a good idea to make a deliberate year-long project of it at this time in your life, when you are trying to figure out how to relate to women better.

Reason #1: It’s a concrete step you can take. It’s something you can do. Make a giant reading and watching list. Check things off, or join a social site like Goodreads.

Reason #2: It will be fun and you’ll encounter some really good stuff you might not have sought out otherwise. You’re going to read/watch/listen to something, why not make an effort to seek out women’s voices and perspectives?

Reason #3: It will give you many different perspectives on women as diverse human beings and allow you to hang out with women and get to know them in your imagination.

A few years ago a I saw a very beautifully made and very personal student film about a lonely and shy young man who has insomnia so he walks around downtown late at night, visiting a diner where he has a crush on the waitress, and otherwise encountering women who all don’t notice him or outright reject him. It was beautifully shot and scored and acted, but I’m not sure that what’s stayed with me is what the filmmaker wanted to stay with me, which is that every single woman that the protagonist ran into in this world was young, pretty, white, able-bodied, straight, and assumed to be potentially dateable. Even though the story took place downtown in a major city, there were no other women in the frame, though the character did frequently interact with men of all ages & walks of life. This is true of the Hollywood world, too, where there aren’t even enough women in crowd scenes. Use woman-created media to to remind yourself that the world isn’t only about you + men + women who have/have not rejected you as a romantic partner. You need Miss Marple. You need Cordelia Naismith. You need shy people who are trying to connect with each other and the sexiest/awkwardest dance to The Commodores’ Night Shift in recorded history.

Reason #4: If you ask the women you know for recommendations of books and movies they love, they will flock to this project. If you meet a woman, and you kind of like her, and you are looking for something to talk about, try asking her “What are you reading or watching lately? Can you recommend me something?” If you listen to her, and then go and read or watch that thing, she may or may not date you in the end, but you will get infinity coolness points because this behavior by men is sadly all too rare. We notice this stuff, and we remember. This is as close as I ever get to the #1 SEEKRIT TRICK TO IMPRESS GIRLS kind of advice-giving.

Step II. Take Your Passion And Make It Social. Or, try something new. Something that is social.

You say that not many people are interested in your passions. Have you looked all around your university community, or your dorm, or your study program? Have you looked into clubs, classes, volunteering, MeetUps?

Some cool places to meet lots of nice people are:

• Join a choir or take a music class.
• Volunteer with a theater company – there are tons of behind-the-scenes jobs, like running the box office or painting sets, where they can use help and you will meet lots of people.
• Be a mentor or a tutor.
• Are you a native speaker of a language other than English? Someone is trying to learn that language. Be their practice/study buddy.
• Work on a political campaign or cause that speaks to you.
• Volunteer at an animal shelter or for another organization that does work that you feel is important.
• Take a class in something like cooking, metalsmithing, jewelry making, pottery, or other applied or studio art.
• Find a role-playing or board-gaming group.
• Find a fannish group who gets together to watch that thing you all like.
• Play a sport, or take up kickball or Quidditch or another little-kid sport that’s played for fun more than for competition.

From how you describe yourself: Intense, intelligent, good at arguing, passionate about certain things that no one else likes, I am going to make an inference that you are very smart, quick-witted, and you like to be good at stuff and impress people. You don’t like to struggle or fail or be wrong in public. You have a pretty good sense of what you will and won’t be good at, and you tend to avoid things that you aren’t sure that you’ll like. You definitely don’t want to be wrong or look stupid or be bad at something in front of others.

This makes you….A human being! We all want to look good, be good, succeed, do things where we’ll be praised and be good at. I want to challenge you, as part of this Meeting More People Project, to go against your grain a little bit. I want you to choose:

• Something you are not already good at.
• Something you’ve always wanted to try but been nervous or not had time to do before.
• Something where you can be a beginner and where there is no pressure for you to demonstrate expertise.
• Something where you might have to ask other people to help you or show you or teach you something.
• Something that happens with other people and meets regularly, like, a weekly class or volunteer gig.
• Something that has some kind of physical aspect to it – working with your hands, making something, building something, being physically out and about, playing an instrument, singing.
• Something where you may know a couple of people, but is outside where your current social group already hangs out.
• Something that you will attend at least 3 and preferably 6-8 times before opting out/giving up.

I want you to do something every week that gets you out of your room, out of your head, out of the need to impress people, out of the need to “be intense.” I want you to focus on: showing up, trying hard, having fun, and being nice and friendly. When you meet a cool woman, don’t automatically treat her differently than you would treat a neat dude you met at a thing who you might like to be friends with.

“When are the Feats of Strength? I have already won the Feats of Hair!” Source.

Reason #1: Our dominant cultural narratives, buoyed by a bunch of crap evo-psych “science,”  contain many stories about how men must impress/”get”/”win” a mate by demonstrating competence, smarts, feats of strength, wealth, athleticism, etc. Win the Battle of the Bands/Diplomacy Game/Dance Dance Revolution Tournament/Trivia Contest, and you win The Girl. So a lot of dating advice for straight men says, find the thing you are awesome at, and then be awesome at that thing where women can see you, and then you’ll have a better chance with them.

I can see why this makes intuitive sense. Male peacocks are much brighter than female ones, amirite? When you are competent at something, you are more likely to be confident in yourself, and that is attractive and takes away some of the needy, auditioning quality of dating. And watching someone you find sexy be good at something is sexy, no doubt about it. But we are not peacocks, and that thing where competence is sexy goes both/all ways. I think it’s hot when my boyfriend cooks a great meal or kills onstage. He thinks it’s awesome when I have a great reading or write a piece he really likes. We both get to demonstrate competence and we both get to be the audience. We are both The Funny One. If you live inside the boys-impress-girls-to-get-girls-world, “the girl” never has a chance to impress you. Impressing people and performing well is great, like, nail that guitar solo and drop the mic if that’s your thing, but it doesn’t necessarily connect people. You need vulnerability for that, the vulnerability of not knowing where the power tools are or where the food bank keeps the extra rice. It’s tiring sometimes to be performed at. It’s sweet to learn and create something alongside someone.

Reason #2: This is something concrete you can control and keep trying to do, in different ways. You aren’t meeting potential dating partners doing what you’re already doing, right? Give yourself a few months of trying new stuff and saying yes to social invitations and see if that shakes anything loose. It’s not wasted time, as you’ll make tons of social connections/resume fodder/learn new skills. You never know when that random guy from Intro to Blacksmithing is also hiring people for jobs at his business, or setting nice friendly non-creepy dudes up with his sweet, smart cousin who just moved to town.

Source: Kim Lajoie’s Blog

Step III: Experiment With Online Dating

College is set up to help you meet other people your age, and probably never in your life will you exist in such a cauldron of people who already have built-in things in common and structured activities designed to help you meet each other. But online dating can be useful for finding people outside of your current social scene and for interacting with people in a place where the idea of dating and romance is automatically, explicitly on the table. Use it to practice approaching people and flirting with them. Since you start out using text, you don’t have to already be good at reading subtext and body language to tell when someone is flirting. You’ll know if they’re flirting. They’ll type it in.

So, make a profile. Post 4-5 recent pictures of yourself. “Flattering” is great, “recognizably looks like you” is paramount. Fill out the questions, keeping in mind that these are short-answer questions and it’s not an essay test. If the site asks you to list movies & books & music you like, consider including some work by women (we notice this). Do not mention sex explicitly, as many a promising profile has been ruined with “I love giving back rubs…and other rubs.” (This doesn’t seem like an error you’ll make, Sweet Letter Writer, but if you see it in other dude’s profiles I don’t want you to fall into the gross trap). Put your actual uncommon unique middle-aged interests in there. Don’t try to be “cool” or “normal.” You’re not just anyone, and you’re not looking for just anyone. For example, if you don’t like drinking, say so. “I’m not much for drinking or the party scene.” Consider having a trusted friend read your profile to scrub for traces of self-deprecation and for too many “don’ts” in the “what I’m looking for” part.

Then do what nerds do best, and research. What you have here is a database of women who would like to meet someone to date. Who do you like? What draws you to someone’s profile? Who DON’T you like? What alienates you from someone’s profile?

When you see some people you like, send them a brief note. Comment on or ask a question about something they mentioned in their profile. “Hey, neat profile. I’m _______, and I love the Coen brothers, too. How do you think the Fargo TV adaptation holds up?“

If the person likes your profile, they will pick up the conversation from there. “I haven’t seen it yet. What did you think?” If it’s someone who might be a good match for you, the conversation will flow. You will write back, she will write back, you both may feel awkward but you will both keep the conversation going. A person who likes you will act like they like you, and do their best to not leave you hanging. Keep your communications brief, especially at first, and pay attention to matching the other person’s effort and tone. If she’s sending you a one-line answer every 6 or 7 days, and you’re sending her long, elaborate answers the second she writes to you, you’ve already got a mismatch in terms of relative effort and interest. If all seems to be going well,  one of you can suggest meeting up.

It really, really helps if you think of it as practice. You are practicing approaching someone for a date. You are practicing conversing. You are practicing figuring out reciprocity. You are practicing figuring out what makes you like someone. It is okay to make a mistake, to not know exactly what to do. It is okay if she isn’t picking up what you’re putting down. It is okay if, after a few exchanges, you decide that she is not for you. It’s okay to go on an actual date with someone who turns out not to be for you (or you for her). That is normal. Connection is rare, and it’s largely based on dumb luck. Online dating (and getting out and meeting more people socially in general) is something you can do to help create conditions where dumb luck might happen.

I really want this to change in my lifetime, but for now, there are more men than women on most sites, and men are more likely to write to women than women are likely to write to men. So temper your expectations – expect to do more writing to other people than they do to you, realize that women are getting constantly inundated with messages and don’t necessarily have time to respond. That is normal. If someone doesn’t write back, move on. It wasn’t personal.

There are worse first-date places.

People get very nervous about the idea of planning dates, like it has to be some big production. We have inherited these ideas from the movies where it’s not a date unless there are flowers and white tablecloths and a fucking sunset or something, with everyone in their fanciest clothes, like teenagers playing “grownup.” When I was planning a lot of first dates, I tried to keep them inexpensive, low key, easy to get to and from, and not try to be explicitly “romantic” – like, I wouldn’t go anywhere or do anything on a first date that I wouldn’t do in the course of my life anyway with a friend. From another thread:

Here are some fun, low-cost first date (or friend-date!) activities that might help a shy person relax and give you something to talk about and/or do with your hands:

• Gamers, what happens if you each bring your favorite 2-player game to a cafe and play for a while? Or go to an arcade? It doesn’t matter if you or the other person is “good at” whatever game it is. This is about having fun, learning a new game, and seeing if your styles mesh.
• It’s summer in the northern hemisphere, so that means 10,000 free exhibits, concerts, festivals, and events. Sack lunch + free show = low pressure. You can talk about the performance or the exhibit, and if the thing sucks you wander away from it and do something else.
• We’re past this year’s Free Comic Book Day, but I once had a date on Free Comic Book Day and it was awesome. Meet at comics shop. Browse comics. Pick out comic for each other. Go to park with comics and read them. Commander Logic did this with bookshops that were also coffee shops (not free, but, fun). See also Record Store Day, World Book Night.
• Taco walk! My old neighborhood had a lot of taquerias, so a fun thing to do is to each get 1 taco at each place and compare. If you aren’t having fun on the date, get super “full” after Taco #2 and get out of there. If you are having fun, find local bar or cafe and stay up late talking and then eat more tacos or tamales or whatever. If you live in a city, a taco walk could easily be a dumpling walk or scone walk or a tour of food trucks. Or gelato! Mmmmm gelato.
• Is there a museum of science or a planetarium near you? Go look at science!

Do only stuff that sounds fun and interesting and appetizing to you. Do stuff that you would do with a friend, even if it wasn’t a DATE sort of date. Do stuff that gives you something to look or do. Fancy sit-down restaurants are great, when you are date-ING someone and already know that you won’t run out of stuff to talk about, but it’s all too much the first time you go out with someone. I realize I live in a major city with a lot of options, but people in smaller towns also do casual stuff for fun in their free time, and somewhere there is a park/book shop/ice cream stand/free concert/odd history exam/roadside attraction/place outside your house to spend a little time at. You are trying to find someone who has fun with you, who makes things fun for you, and who enjoys doing at least some of the stuff you like. The right person for you won’t mock your shyness and will help you feel relaxed.

Art shows. Movies in the park. Poetry slams and other free shows. Improv/comedy night. A cooking class. Bike rides. On campus it’s even easier, and more low-key. “Meet me at this thing on campus that is happening?” “I have to study, want to bring some work and keep me company in the library for a few hours and then we can get dinner?” “My friend is in this play, want to go with me?”

“But Captain Awkward, what if I suggest something and my date doesn’t like that thing, or we go, and the performers are not good?” Well, a person you actually want to date will say “Standup comedy is not my jam, actually, but I do really want to meet up with you, so howabout coffee, or that concert thing you mentioned?” Or they will go, and do their best to enjoy whatever it is, and if the thing is terrible, you will bond all the more for having a shared terrible experience. Or you won’t like each other anyway. Which is okay, this is all just practice in pursuit of dumb luck. The only way to fail is to actively be a jerk to someone. You don’t have to be perfect, or orchestrate a perfect date. Someone who doesn’t like you because the waiter forgot to refill the water glasses promptly or because the promised string quartet performance is now a string open-mike session was never going to like you all that much anyway, and is probably not who you want by your side on life’s miraculous journey. Bad dates and “meh” dates are learning experiences. Congratulate yourself for showing up and trying. Practice holding a conversation with someone new for 45 minutes.

If you hate dating, stop. If it starts to feel like work, stop. I would always have bursts where I was into it and periods where I deleted my profile for 6 months or a year to focus on other things. But it’s right there, it’s free, and I don’t think there is any harm in trying it out and practicing for a bit.

Step IV: Be Nice To Yourself

College is a great time for you to learn about what makes you happy intellectually, in terms of your friendships, in terms of your potential career, and in terms of creating routines that make you feel good in your day-to-day life.

• Are you getting enough sleep?
• Are you eating food that you like and that makes you feel good?
• Do you have at least one form of exercise you routinely enjoy doing?
• Are you attending and keeping up with the work for all of your classes?
• Are you doing what you came to school to do? Are you learning? Are you taking risks, creatively, intellectually?
• When you have questions in class, do you go to office hours and reach out to professors and teaching assistants for help?
• Do you meet with your advisor sometimes?
• Are you keeping abreast of potential programs, internships, job opportunities, speakers, etc. in your area of interest?
• When you make a mistake, can you forgive yourself and move on?
• When you’re sick, do you go to the doctor?
• When you’re lonely, do you call or text a friend and try to make sure you’re around people?
• When you’re over-peopled, do you take time for yourself?
• Do you know how to reward yourself for a job well done, and build happy, pleasurable stuff into your week?
• Do you know how to ask your friends to be nice to you? Do you reach out and do nice and say things to them?
• If you feel blue and lonely for more than a few weeks, can you go talk to student counseling services?
• Do you have regular phone calls or Skype with your family (if they are good people for you to talk to and positive force in your life) & friends from home?
• Do you have a regular practice of keeping a journal? Maybe try writing three pages in the morning, either longhand or somewhere like 750words.com, to give yourself a small ritual of reflecting and thinking every day.

If you are doing even some of that stuff, then you are doing GREAT. You are where you are supposed to be, you are learning what you are supposed to learn.

I can’t tell you that you’re guaranteed to find love, or that any given person is going to love you, or that a romantic relationship like the one you want is going to happen while you’re in college. I can tell you that you are worthy of love. I can tell you, uncomforting-ly, that it’s a matter of luck and other people’s subjective feelings and that there are a lot of factors that are completely out of your control, like, you could do everything “right” and it could still take a long while for you to click with someone. This post is about what you can control.

Finally: While this book is very targeted toward single straight women of a certain age/class/race/type and specifically trying to debunk the dating advice offered to women in that target group,  I thought it was very insightful and lovely and supportive of people who are single who don’t want to be single. In one chapter, Eckel suggests a practice that has also been suggested by commenters here, which is to practice looking at others with love and compassion. When you’re alone on the subway or in a cafe or out and about on campus, look at someone (don’t stare, obviously, just steal some glances) and try to see them the way someone who loves them might. Look at everyone. Dudes. People outside your dating age range. This isn’t about hotness or attraction. Find something to love in their face, in what they are wearing, in how they hold their head, the neat penmanship on the cover of their notebook. Send them a silent good wish. If you get busted looking at them, say something! “Didn’t mean to stare! I was just admiring your hat, it’s a great color on you.” It’s a practice that can lead you away from harsh self-criticism and self-judgment and make you see the world through a kinder lens, and it’s especially good to do when you need to distract yourself out of a “what’s wrong with me?” headspace.

Readers, do you have any insight on things that have worked for you to help you get more confident with meeting people?

————

Thanks to everyone who has donated to the summer pledge drive so far! The support (and the sweet, sweet kind words!) mean the world to me.

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.