So you know, I have no control over what ads get displayed when and where. It’s all done in real time on a back end that I can’t see, and they change up frequently. I’ll admit that I’m feeling some trepidation about the possibility of diet ads popping up on body acceptance posts (for example), but economic realities being what they are I’m choosing to think of it as making body acceptance posts show up all over their diet ads. I spend at least 100 hours/month working on the site between reading emails, writing posts, and moderating comments and need to think about ways to make that work pay off for me, even if only nominally.

I’ll still be running a pledge drive as planned in June. I’ll be offering a streaming link and a download to my movie, The Wardrobe as a reward for donations in any dollar amount.

Thanks as always for your thoughtful comments, and to letter writers for sharing their stories with us.

I need some help putting myself back together again.

Maybe they’ll be charming in 100 years? Right now they’re jerky and awful.

Basically, my partner and I moved into his parents’ house for about a year and a half after the birth of our second child owing to some financial complications we hadn’t anticipated. This was very kind and generous of them, and I want to acknowledge that. However, living with them was painful and destructive in ways I had thought I could handle, and it turns out I was wrong. They’re pretty right-wing, Fox News-watching types, and are unconsciously racist and homophobic to boot. That year and a half of living with them was filled with micro- and macro-aggressions enough to have thoroughly sunk my spirit – I spent so much time holding my tongue and gnashing my teeth around them that I’m finding it really, really difficult to recover the me that I was before I lived with them. It’s like I sat so hard on all the parts of myself around which I was the most vulnerable that I may have actually permanently squished them, and now I’m a person that I don’t really recognize.

Before we lived with them, I was a person who Used My Words; now I struggle to actually have feelings without second-guessing them and talking myself out of talking about them with the relevant parties because really, those feelings aren’t very rational and anyway talking about them will just make things worse. Before we lived with them, I was a person who could hear something like “If one of my children told me they were gay it would be like finding out they were a rapist or a murderer” and be instantly filled with righteous fury; now my reaction is a kind of subdued, repressed anger and thoughts along the lines of “well I guess they’re entitled to their feelings.” And along with those changes have come changes to my relationship with my partner, and I don’t like them apples neither – I don’t want us to turn into them, or for our relationship to in any way, shape, or form resemble theirs!

I can’t do therapy right now because it’s not financially feasible (our health insurance won’t cover it because they consider it “therapy for self-improvement,” as opposed to therapy for “legitimate” reasons like having a medical condition manageable by medication), so I’m really looking for concrete steps I can take to get myself out of being this sorry sop of a doormat. I know I can’t go back to the person I was, completely, because that’s not the way time works, but it would be nice to be able to move forward into being someone who knows hirself and is comfortable in hir own skin and good about having hir own feelings and opinions.

Things I am currently doing, in case it helps:

• Making friends again, and putting people on Team Me.
• Actively seeking a spiritual practice that will help me deal with my feelings.
• Practicing actually talking to my partner again about things that matter to us.

Anyway, I’d really appreciate your perspective and advice.

Thanks,

Toasted and Kinda Crispy

Hi there, Crispy.

First, all the past tense stuff tells me that you have already moved out of that toxic hellhole, so CONGRATULATIONS. You didn’t die AND you didn’t kill anyone in a fit of repressed indignant rage. Gold stars all around!

More gold stars:

• You’ve identified the problems.
• You’re already doing the things you need to do to get unsquashed.
• You’re already looking into therapy (just a sec!).

All of those are hallmarks of someone who doesn’t really need any help from we uncredentialled internet advice spinners. What you need are atagirls (Hey Awkward Army! Got words of encouragement?) and advanced strategies, since you’re already mastering the basic strategies (another gold star! quit it or I’ll run out. (that’s a lie. I have, like, a quajillion gold stars here.)).

All I’m going to do here is take the stuff you’re already working on or planning on and kick it up a notch.

Muriel Hesslop tells us that being fabulous is about loving what you love, and not apologizing for it. Also, ABBA needs no context.

1 – Making Friends Again
SWEET MERCIFUL CRAP did you not have any friends to help you through this time?  I cannot even tell you how much my heart hurts for hearing that. Yes, go on friend-dates and get yourself a confidante, or rekindle an old relationship gone radio-silent, even if that person is far away now. The internet is a glorious thing.  If you need tips (it does not sound as if you need tips, but for reference (also, GOLD STAR!)) check out these primers on new-friend-making.

2 – Spiritual Practice
This might actually help with the friends thing, if you decide to find a congregation. Go on Spirit-Dates (er, sit in on a service or two) with different religious communities and see if any of them speak to you. If none of them do, that is OK, and if the first one does, that is OK, and if a different congregation of the same denomination as your in-laws does, that is OK. You don’t even have to believe 100% in everything to find a community that feels right to you. You may decide that in the end, you’re a committed Brunchian and that, too, will be OK.

3 – Reconnecting with Your Husband
You, of course, know your husband way better than I do; I don’t even know his name! So you’re going to be the best judge of what will work here. But I’m going to recommend a wee bit of couples therapy.  You guys sound super good in general, so you could frame it as a marriage physical exam, or a check engine light.  “We’re great, but the transition away from your parents’s house has made me feel off-kilter. Are you feeling that way? Can we go talk about it with [therapist] for two sessions max?”  You don’t want there to be a heart attack or your engine falling out on the highway before you seek help, right? Right.  “It’s just four hours total, and it would make me feel better.” If dude can’t get on board with four hours to make you happier, there are deeper issues afoot than a couple sessions of therapy can deal with.

Bonus 4 – Therapy
You need to talk to somebody, and your insurance says it won’t cover it. Fine.

• Will they accept that you’re afraid you’re showing symptoms of depression and maybe they can pay for some diagnostic therapy?  Be frank with your prospective therapist about your insurance issues, and they may be able to work something out.
• Are you working for a large company? If so you may have access to a mental health hotline.
• Back up to #2 – if you find a religion/congregation that you like, the pastor/rabbi/priest/imam/whoever probably does pre-marriage counseling all the time, which translates pretty well to post-marriage counseling. Not to mention helping congregants one-on-one.
• Call a crisis hotline and see if they have a non-emergency line.

Bonus 5 – Self-Therapy
If you’re making friends and doing things that you want to and not having to be around your in-laws all the time, you’re going to be fine in time.  I swear. You won’t be the same person you were before, that’s true.  But you’re not a worse, horrible, squashed person now, and you will not be a horrible muted version of yourself in the future.

It sounds kind of hokey? But do some mindful appreciation of awesome things in your life. My hand to God(ess(es)) I do this all the time when things get to be too much or too stressful.  I look for something to appreciate.

Optimism is different from wonder, and you’re looking at the patron saint of wonder right here.

“Today is 100% perfect weather. Wow.”
“Husband looks super sexxay today! I will tell him so!”
“It’s almond croissant day at favorite bakery. I am so happy some goddamn genius invented almond croissants.”
“I made two entire human beings. That is WACKY COOL.” (I mean, I didn’t, but you did, and seriously that is some amazingness, right? YOU MADE HUMANS.)
“Mmmm hot shower. Dude, less than 100 years ago, this was unspeakable luxury.”
“I can talk to people thousands of miles away and never meet them, but still be supported by them. What a fascinating modern age we live in.”

And perhaps most importantly: “I am self-aware enough to make the choices that will prevent me from turning into my in-laws. When they choose hate and fear, I will choose love and curiosity.”

And then act in such a way that you are choosing the loving and curious path. I’m sure you are already (gold star!), and I give you all the Jedi Hugs.

Best,
CommanderLogic

If only his mom hadn’t dressed him in pink pants sometimes.

Dear Captain,

About 3 months ago I had the most perfect baby in the world. He is the first grandchild on both sides and is revelling in the attention he’s getting from his grandparents.

So far so good, right? Well. My partner is away for work for about 3 weeks and his mom is here to help with the baby. My partner and I have agreed that we will do our best to not indoctrinate our son in the ways of masculinity – that we’ll let him explore what gender means to him. My partner’s mother…is not quite on the same page.

Perfect Baby’s wardrobe is overwhelmingly masculine (mostly because both grandmas are always showing up with armloads of little onesies with cars and dinosaurs on them, and I am in no financial position to refuse them), but I am still getting snide little remarks that I’m “dressing him like a girl” because of ONE PAIR of little pink pants. HULK MAMA SMASH. Doesn’t matter if everything else he owns is blue or green, the pink pants contaminate the lot.

What if that red sock hadn’t gotten mixed into a load of whites?

(I should add that Grandma In Law is a genuinely nice person and is being a great help while I’m on my own with the baby. My mom is a lot bitchier, but we have stronger boundaries, so it’s less of a problem.)

Right now it’s just clothes, of course, but this is going to get serious pretty soon. When he’s two and he falls down I don’t want him to feel ashamed for crying. When he’s seven and his hair has grown into beautiful chestnut ringlets, I don’t want him to cut it off because it makes him look like a girl. And when IN A MILLION YEARS AFTER I’M DEAD he starts having pantsfeelings, if those pantsfeelings happen to be for another boy, I don’t want him to be afraid or ashamed or guilty.

So basically I’ve committed to raising a little mangina, as the MRAs would say. Any tips on how I can get the inlaws to STFU with the gender policing?

Yours sincerely,

Trying to raise a reasonably feminist son here

Congratulations on becoming a mom!

There are no magic words to make this stuff completely conflict-free, but I do have a few suggestions both for how to handle Grandmas and to increase your peace of mind.

Kids are sponges and take in information from all over the place. You. Grandmas. Baby’s First iPad. Other kids. School. While they do look for consistency among all the messages they receive and ask questions like “Why do you say that we should do x when Grandma says we should do y?“, they are perfectly capable of hearing “Well, Grandma and I don’t agree on everything, just like you and I won’t always agree on anything. I’m your mom, so right now I get to make the rules, but you get to have your own opinion and as you get older you’ll get to make up your own mind about a lot more things.” Asking those questions is part of how kids develop critical thinking skills and their own worldview, which is what you want, right? You didn’t grow up to agree with everything your mom (or grandparents) said was true. For example, my Grampa said a lot of racist stuff in front of me over the years. Hearing that stuff did not magically make me racist. I could see the racist stuff for what it was and know that we loved each other.

The kindergarten teacher swears he turned his back only for a minute, but it was long enough for Matt to find and open that jar of glitter.

I think keeping this in mind (the kids will be all right) will help you navigate this stuff now. You don’t have to get it perfect. And you don’t have to totally convince the grandparents of the rightness of what you’re doing. Your passionate arguments for your reasons why pink pants are sometimes important are going to be largely lost on them and just exhaust you.

In response to the snide remarks, I would invoke the “Yeah, but I’m his mom” privilege.

For example: “Thanks for your advice. I’m sure you got a lot of conflicting advice and tried a lot of things out when you were raising your kids, and they turned out great! So I know that you’ll understand and respect when I want to do things my own way.”

If you want to be really sneaky about it, ask Grandma(s) to tell you what kind of wack-but-well-intended parenting advice they received from others first.

Maybe also try: “I realize you disagree with certain things I do, and it must be hard to bite your tongue sometimes, but I really need you to stop with the snide remarks. We both have our reasons for how we feel. I’m his mom, and I get to win this argument.”

“Mom, did you dress me in blue outfits sometimes when I was a baby? Did it turn me gay or into a boy? No? Right. Because THAT’S NOT ACTUALLY HOW THAT WORKS.“

Better yet, “Mom, what are you worried will happen? Can we talk about that for real, instead of you sniping at me?“

If she doesn’t take you up on that sincere offer, don’t dig too deeply into the reasons for what you’re doing. Stick with “You had the chance to do whatever you wanted when you raised your kids, this is my chance and this is important to me. As long as we all love each other he’ll be fine, right?” Because he will.

P.S. While we’re talking about gender roles and clothing, let me just say that EVERYONE DRIVES CARS and EVERYONE LIKES DINOSAURS, so rock those free cute onesies from Grandma without the “OMG, I AM DRESSING HIM IN PATRIARCHY” guilt, ok? Dinosaurs are for everyone. (Thanks, Twitter!)

I’m a 25 year old woman, in a great relationship and planning to get married this summer. I have what I think is a fairly classic piece of awkward that I nevertheless can’t figure out what to do about: I am about to acquire an awful mother in law – I’ll call her Alice.

Alice pushes my and Fiance boundaries in a lot of unpleasant, guilt-trippy ways, but the worst is that when she’s upset she throws tantrums. I know it sounds kind of silly to be so bothered by an adult behaving so ridiculously, but they really are scary – she will stare me down, crying furiously with her eyes still wide open (I didn’t even know that was physically possible) while telling me that she has only ever wanted me to love her. I don’t think she’s going to hit me, but they leave me seriously shaken, and all the stuff about how she wanted my love came WAY too early in my relationship with her son. The worst part is that pretty much anything can set her off. This summer I saw her flip out when Fiance suggested alternative rules for a card game, and then looked it up online to see what the official version was. She actually claimed that her rules should be good enough for him and it was disrespectful of him to look for a different authority on card game rules. This was evidence that he didn’t appreciate all the things she’d taught him as a child. SERIOUSLY.

For a long time, I would get angry when she did this kind of thing, and then Fiance would get angry at me for being angry because he wanted to appease her and then stuff the incident down the memory hole to get some peace. It’s really the only issue we’ve repeatedly fought about. But recently, after some extra-egregious wedding-related tantrums, he has started working on taking control of his own relationship with Alice. He’s stopped doing whatever will appease her. He’s going to therapy, and even had some sessions with his whole family mediated by their therapist. He’s agreed to some boundaries we as a couple can have with Alice, like presenting our big decisions as joint endeavors (i.e, “Letter Writer and I haven’t decided where we’re going to live next year,” as opposed to “LW wants to live in X neighborhood but I like Y better”). Because I’ve already spent years trying to convince him that her behavior was unacceptable, I’m trying to stay out of how he reconstructs their relationship. I feel like I’ve already been kind of meddlesome and I don’t want to replace Alice in the role of emotionally controlling person in his life. But at the same time I love him and hate to see him mistreated. And I’m not really looking forward to decades of awful Christmases.

So my question for you and your readers: Now that Fiance is fixing his relationship with Alice, how do I, as a somewhat peripheral character in what I think is an abusive situation, mitigate the unpleasantness of it all for myself, without screwing up his attempts to help himself? I do want to support Fiance. He loves Alice and is working hard to make some semblance of a good relationship with her, and he says that I will nuke his efforts if I didn’t at least show up to the allotted number of holidays and act pleasant. On the other hand, I’m wary of the idea that I’m just going to have to put up with her to make everyone’s life easier, because it’s one of her and the rest of the family’s favorite guilt trips to lay on me: Total lack of boundaries is “just how this family is” and now that I’m marrying into them I have to learn to roll with it. Am I insulting their family by saying I find Alice intrusive?! etc. etc.

I want to set my own boundaries but I can’t seem to make them stick. I try to call Alice out on her boundary pushing in the moment, but every expression of unhappiness with Alice’s behavior becomes the seed of a new guilt trip about our inability to love and appreciate her. At this point I can’t think of anything I could say or do that would break through what seems to be an incredibly strong wall of delusion and make her understand what would make our relationship workable, even just to the minimum standard of my not minding being around her. Recently, Fiance has been trying too, and it’s been ambivalently maybe better – I think it’s too soon to tell.

Other background: Fiance dad and sister are usually really nice to me, until Alice gets upset. When Alice pitches a fit, they fall in with her victimhood language and blame me or Fiance for hurting her. His sister once suggested that perhaps the reason I didn’t want to tell Alice all my innermost feelings and follow all of her advice is that I am a cold, damaged person who is incapable of relating to female role models (WTF). So I don’t particularly trust them, and I don’t know how to handle the niceness in a nice way without making myself vulnerable to the inevitable toxicity.

If it matters, I think Alice is like this in other parts of her life as well – She’s made some pretty implausible claims about people at work conspiring against her, and I know she’s stormed out of some meetings and burned some professional bridges. She also likes to talk about how the whole rest of their extended family has wronged her, from petty arguments to being abused as a child. Which, honestly, I don’t even care if it’s true or not, I’m sick of hearing about it like there’s a limited supply of victimhood in the world and she’s cornered the market because she’s the Bond villain of emotions, and no one can be upset at her because there’s no victimhood left for us.

And thank you so much for your amazing column!

signed,

Warning: Capacity for Dealing with this Bullshit Greatly Diminished

Dear Diminished Capacity:

First, I think you and your fiance would benefit from reading Dr. Karyl McBride’s Will I Ever Be Good Enough? and/or The Wizard of Oz and Other Narcissists.

Moderation Note: We are still not in the business of diagnosing strangers’ personality defects through the internet, so if you comment with any kind of “Yeah, sounds like x disorder” I am going to delete it and put you on “all your comments must be moderated from now on” probation. I am suggesting these books because they might help LW see the dynamic where one person’s emotions (and the threat of her displeasure) rule the entire family, and they offer guidelines for dealing with highly difficult people (whether or not there is any kind of diagnosable thing at play). Knowing (or surmising) a person’s diagnosis does not get you a gold star, because really, only behaviors matter.  Clear? Clear./Moderation Note

Here are some underlying principles that might help you in dealing with Alice.

You cannot control Alice’s behavior. You cannot predict Alice’s behavior. You cannot prevent Alice’s behavior. Alice is gonna do what Alice is gonna do, which is cry and shower displeasure and guilt on her family, who will cheerfully pass it onto you, because that’s how they roll.

Alice is going to throw tantrums and be shitty NO MATTER WHAT YOU DO. I think that is helpful to know. Keep reminding yourself. Alice will find ways to be shitty and intrusive, because she is a shitty intrusive control freak who needs to make everything about her and who will projectile vomit blame all over everyone.

Also, Alice is not going to get better. She is not going to have a sudden revelation of self-awareness and stop this stuff. She may mellow with age and time, but she is always going to be somewhat like this.

Here’s what’s powerful about realizing this:  Once a person shows that they don’t give a shit about the social contract and have no shame about throwing adult temper tantrums in public, it kind of frees you from giving a shit about what they think of you. They hold the threat of their tantrum (displeasure, guilt trip, sulk, whatever) over the family if they don’t get what they want, but you have the power to say “Huh” and not really even acknowledge that it affects you. Or you have the power to say “It really freaks me out when you cry and yell at me over what seem like minor things and makes me not want to be around you” to Alice or “It really freaks me out when Alice crys and yells at me over something minor and you all treat me like it’s my fault and not something very strange that she is doing” to his family. You have more power, because you have more self-control and are not shitty tantrum titty-baby. Permanently offended people lose power because it eventually becomes absurd and hilarious for them to be that offended all the time, and someone who insists “You don’t love me enough!” at every turn is living in a self-fulfilling prophecy.

When Alice throws a tantrum, she wants you to inventory your behavior and wonder what you’ve done to upset her, and she wants you to walk on eggshells and be worried about upsetting her and to actively try not to upset her (Secret: This will always be a mysterious, moving target and you will never figure out how to prevent upsetting her).  Her family wants this too – it’s like they are afraid she’ll turn green and  bust out into nothing but purple shorts and wreck the secret flying Avengers lair dining room. Once you figure out “Oh wait, what did I do to cause this…NOTHING, because Alice reacts like this to EVERYTHING” you are free of running that little guilt-game on yourself. Alice, like Hulk, is always angry.

One way to reset the relationship with someone like Alice is to stare unblinkingly at them while they do their thing, and stay very calm. Once they pause for breath, say something like “What I’m hearing is that you’re very upset about x. How would you like me to handle x in the future?” in a very even tone of voice, as if the tantrum has never happened. Keep pushing for them to suggest what your next step should be. As long as they stay in the realm of vague “But I just wanted you to have read my mind and for it to have been magically better, in the past tense, which you can’t undo or control right now” stuff, you can’t really do anything about it.

I mean, dude, I hate the “non-apology apology” of “I’m sorry you feel that way” as much as anyone, but it was made for people like Alice. You can keep repeating “I’m very sorry to have upset you. Can you give me your best case scenario for what you want in the future?” until she gives up (probably in a huff, but who cares?) or actually spells something out, which people like Alice are TERRIBLE at doing which is why they have to rule everyone with tantrums. If she does manage to articulate a positive outcome,  you evaluate it and either say “Thanks for telling me, I’m pretty sure I can agree to x from now on” or you say “Thanks for telling me, I’m sorry, that’s not negotiable for me.“

You and your fiance are already doing the right stuff – therapy, mediated counseling, boundary-setting and enforcing – and it will take a while for things to be actually reset.

Now, it sucks that the rest of the family are making this all your fault, when really Alice is the one out of line. So it takes some extra strength on your part (and your fiance’s part) to remind yourself “She would find something to be unhappy about because her baseline is unhappy” and “She is a grownup who can choose how she reacts – she is choosing the kind of relationship she wants to have with me, and if it’s going to be riddled with fighting and conflict, that’s not all my fault” when a grown-ass woman is giving you the water-eye.

The other thing you can do is limit your exposure to Alice. Negotiate certain things with your fiance, like:

• Which holidays will you spend with his family vs. your family vs. just the two of you? He is responsible for communicating that plan to her. I’m sure her expectations about all of that are…unrealistic.
• He is the one who picks out gifts and negotiates family stuff, makes and takes phone calls, remembers birthdays. It’s not your job just because you’re a lady.
• Maybe agree on a time limit for visits, something like 3 hours maximum.
• Maybe agree that he goes on solo visits sometimes. You will go to 30-50% of family events, and he will do the rest solo while you go to your family/play water polo/read books in blessed silence. He will give them vague excuses like “She wanted to come, but she had a thing. Next time!” Alice will say, “It’s because she doesn’t like me. I KNEW IT!” and your fiance can say “I’m sure that’s not true, but we can totally ruin this visit by talking about it if you want” and change the subject.
• Maybe agree on a way to handle tantrums. If she gets very upset about something and takes it out on you, both of you try using your words “Sorry, Alice. What would you like us to do next time?/How do you want to handle x?” for a bit. If it gets worse, or she does it again, he is the one to say “Mom, I can’t talk to you when you’re this upset. We’re going to go now, I’ll call you soon,” and GTFO of there.
• If his family insults you in front of him, he needs to be the one to say “Hey, that’s out of line. Apologize, or we’re leaving.” If he can’t do that? I’m sorry: DON’T MARRY HIM.
• Your mantra for Alice is “Sorry, you should talk to Fiance directly about that.” Your mantra for Dad and sister is “Sorry, you should talk to Alice/Fiance directly about that.“
• Set up a joint email address for family to use to reach both of you, but really, only he checks it. Change your cell # and get a Google Voice number that forwards to a box that only he checks. In other words, don’t be their first point of contact. He’s the one with a sucky family, he’s the one who has to be the buffer.

The other things you can do are:

CHOOSE YOUR BATTLES.

and

GIVE IT TIME.

If Alice is nice to you, respond in kind (but do not trust. Do not trust, ever). Here are some mantras that are your friend:

• “Thanks, I’ll think about what you said.”
• “Thanks for telling me that. I’ll think about your suggestion.”
• “Thanks, I hadn’t thought of it that way.”
• “I’ll look into that and see if it will work for me.”

You WILL think about her suggestion before you reject it, right? So don’t give her the satisfaction of picking a fight with you by rejecting her “helpful” suggestions in the moment. Reject them later, at your convenience.

If Alice is nasty to you, say “I’m sorry to have upset you“, ask for her best case scenario, punt it to fiance (who will soon be husband), and use “You’ll have to excuse me” or “We should change the subject now” or “I’m sorry, that just won’t work for me,” liberally. You can do the best by your fiance and by yourself by not holding grudges and treating each new interaction like you expect it to go just fine until it doesn’t. This is a lot of effort, but works really well with the Alices of the world, because it freaks them out. They expect there to be a lot of tension and rehashing of old fights, and when you’re all “Hey, Alice, nice to see you, that’s a great color on you, by the way, I tried your advice about the thing and it really worked, thanks!” it’s like psychological warfare. Think of it as nice gaslighting that you do for everyone’s good.

She’s always going to be exhausting, though she may mellow with time. You will never be able to let down your guard around her. Can you live with that? What’s the plan for when she’s really old and wants to come live with you? Or when you have kids and she wants to advise you on how to parent them? Encourage your fiance to stick with therapy and back him up/thank him when he bears the brunt of her displeasure.

I am at a loss of what to do in the situation that I find myself stuck in. I am currently planning a wedding, and we’re at the guest list stage of things. Most of the guests get an obvious “yes” or “no”.

Then there’s my Aunt P and Uncle G. G is my mother’s brother, and is a bit worrisome. At the last major family event (that he attended), he hipchecked his other sister in anger and stormed off. Before that, he regularly left family events in a huff after being insulted some way or another. He hasn’t been at any major event since, and I for one am happy. Him? I definitely don’t want at the wedding.

Then there’s P. She’s from another country, and moved here after getting married to G in her birth country. She’s sweet, nice, and would be great to have at my wedding.

So here’s the question. Do I invite P and not G? Do I invite P and G and hope that G decides not to come? Or do I just not invite either and try to make it up to P some other way?

G(r)oom-y Guest List Planner

Dear Groom,

After I answer this question, I’m going to add weddings to the list of things (polyamory, asexuality) that I don’t really know or care much about.  I mean, I’m fascinated by the way that weddings are so expensive and “must” conform to so many traditions and expectations while simultaneously being just unique and magical and special enough and how that links up to this massive industry. I get that they are emotional minefields of dealing with family and expectations, and I understand why people want advice about them. Should I ever get married I’ll be writing posts that say “Dear Commenters: Help me out with this wedding shite, ok?” and going to Hot Doug’s with Commander Logic every week. But really what I know about weddings is that a year later they all sort of run together in my mind and as a guest I don’t really remember what you wore or what the flowers looked like or anything, and if someone’s weird uncle throws a fit I probably won’t notice or will find it hilarious.

PFC Marie and the commenters hit it out of the park in this thread with a lot of advice for how to deal with situations that require a Trigger Warning, so if anyone reading this is in a really bad situation you may find it helpful.  We’ve dealt with the threat of awful inlaws here and the question of calling off weddings here.

To your specific question, I think that it’s bad form to invite only half of a married couple to a wedding. That’s the kind of thing that the married couple would definitely notice. So either invite both (and potentially live with some weird hijinks from Uncle G. in the name of including his wife, Aunt P.) or invite neither but make some time to spend with Aunt P. just on an ongoing basis because you like her. Otherwise you are inviting Aunt P. AT Uncle G. as a message that you don’t like him.

If you can afford to invite both of them, chances are that day you’ll be totally swept up in events and not really noticing what one guest is doing, and you’ll have plenty of family buffers between you and Uncle G. Since he’s your mom’s brother, is this one case where you can ask her opinion and be ruled by that?

In the meantime, weddings can’t really be ruined unless at the end of the day the couple fails to be married, right? And the less you include “must” and “should” in your lexicon, probably the happier you’ll be. Also, keep in mind that certain relatives will find reasons to be upset about things because they are a baseline of difficult and sucky – it’s impossible to please everyone so you might as well please yourself first. Personally, I think it’s a mistake to treat wedding invites as a referendum on how much you like people, not least because I like WAY more people than I could ever feed at one party, and I can’t always afford to travel to weddings of people I really and truly adore.

So invite both or neither as your budget and tolerance for Weird Uncles allow. Congratulations to you.

Buffy is always such a jerk when she comes back from the dead.

Captain Awkward,

I was at a party the other night and a very, very attractive girl was hitting on me. She was stroking my leg, she was holding my hand, she was muttering to me that I ‘don’t realise how sexy I am’, she was winking at me from across the room, and we kissed a bit. My response was laughably wooden: I obviously kissed her back but besides that I just laughed and had conversation with her. I know enough about this person’s character to know that she is fairly uninhibited about hooking up with people in that kind of situation and I think that if I’d returned the ball a bit things could have got more interesting, since she clearly wanted them to, but instead nothing at all happened. I think that on one level when she was saying and doing these things I suspected that she was somehow mocking me, but looking back I realise how ridiculous that sounds, or, if she was mocking me, then she was being incredibly subtle about it. Why am I so bad at picking up on and responding to these things? Am I a robot? To frame it in a way that is closer to how you tend to present most of your advice, what words can I use in the future to respond to this kind of situation??

-Concerned

Dear Concerned:

You originally titled this question “What’s wrong with me?” in your email, which concerned me.

Nothing is wrong with you. I think that maybe you didn’t really want to mess around with that lady, so you responded to her (yes, very obvious) signals of attraction and seduction with deflection. I don’t think she was mocking you, but I think the fact that you thought “Wait, is she making fun of me?” is telling that you didn’t feel the trust and connection with her that would make you want to have even a casual hookup. When you have sex with people, you let your guard down, ergo, you should only do it with people who make you feel okay to let your guard down.

There are a few assumptions or downright fallacies in your letter that made me want to post it instead of just answering you privately, because I think you are not alone in sharing these and they get right at how gender expectations around (hetero)sexuality are messed up.

Fallacy #1: ”Young heterosexual dudes are up for sex all the time, and if a hot girl even smiles at them they are ready, willing, and able. If you’re not, something must be wrong with you. Are you sure you’re not gay, dude?”

Yeah, nothing is wrong with you if you don’t want to have sex with someone even if they maybe want to have sex with you. When you are young and not-so-experienced, it’s easy for every encounter or possible encounter to feel like a referendum on Masculinity or Prowess or Who You Are And Will Be Forever. When you are older and more experienced, you might still get that feeling sometimes and it’s usually a sign that something is off – when there is pressure to “perform” in a certain way everything is less fun for everyone. Relax. You’ll get a lot of chances at this.

“Why do they get to decide everything?”

Fallacy #2: “I know enough about this person’s character to know…”

In this case, what you knew about this woman (she likes to hook up at parties) and her behavior (she maybe wants to hook up with me) matched, but I would encourage you to pay WAY more attention to behavior/words than to “reputation.” The people I have had sex with know me as someone who is likely to have sex with them. The people I haven’t had sex with know jack shit about that, and would do well to assume nothing. In fact, “assume very little” isn’t a bad assumption to take forward with you into future dating/flirting/hooking up.

Right now it might feel like she had all the power and you awkwardly choked, but really, you had power and you used it. You weren’t sure about what you wanted, so you held back. If you find yourself in a situation again where a girl is flirting with you and you want to act on it, a good script might be “I’m really enjoying this. Would you like to go somewhere more quiet/private and hang out some more?”  Imagine the shoe is on the other foot where you are making the first move with a girl you like at a party. What things do you most want to know? I’m thinking you want to know “Is she interested too?” So put yourself in her shoes and give her the reassurance you would want.

Now, you’re still thinking about this particular woman days later, right? Do you want to make something happen with her? You may feel like all is lost (and it may in fact be), but what about seeing her around school or work or Facebook and saying “Hey, Saturday was really fun. Can I buy you a drink sometime soon?” If she brings up your lack of going-home-with-her from that night in a way that’s designed to make you feel crappy for not “performing,” that’s a really good sign that you made the right choice the first time. But if she says “I figured you didn’t like me” you can say “I do and I did! It just wasn’t the right moment for me.“

I think you’ll do well to take this whole incident as an affirmation of your desirability (she was into you!) and your good judgment (you only act when the situation/person/moment feel really right to you). Those are good things. Really good things.

Now, everybody who has gotten to the good parts of sex and love has had to be brave and make themselves vulnerable to rejection at some time.Trust that when the situation is right, you’ll be so into the person (and she’ll be so into you) that you’ll both make it very easy to figure out what to do next, even if everyone is shy or reserved and awkward.

I have been meaning to write you for a long time. I had a really long dilemma that turned into a really short dilemma over the last weekend. Basically, husband and I were friends with a couple (I’ll call them Marjorie and Lance) who were completely stressing us out. The abridged list of the issues includes: demanding/using, boundary-crossing, super clingy and needy, always mired in self-created chaos, on the brink of financial ruin, manipulative, jealous, competitive, kind-sharking and trying to make others responsible for their emotions. I’ve been trying to do a slow fade over the last six months, but my efforts at distancing myself were having the opposite effect on Marjorie, whose behavior started escalating into stalker-type stuff. 

It’s so perfect! The kids can play while we gossip and drink! BLISS!

Things came to a head recently, when she “caught” me out at a public place with a mutual friend and threw a tantrum because she hadn’t been invited. There was screaming, sobbing and foot-stamping. For me, after swallowing two years of increasingly unacceptable behavior, it was the last straw. I spent the entirety of last weekend crafting an African Violet letter and asked for a break in what I hoped was a direct and humane way. She responded once, was pretty gracious about it and says she is really sad about our friendship ending. For that matter, I am sad too, but also very relieved. In the past, when she’s had altercations with my husband, Marjorie’s reaction falls into a pattern where the first phase is sadness, the second phase is guilt-tripping and the third phase is overt hostility and making scenes. 

 

This brings me to my dilemma: my children are best friends with her children. Like, best-best friends. The girls are all young (4 and 8), and their friendships are healthy, with a good dynamic. I thought really long and hard about giving the African Violet because of this, and because of the fact that it’s impossible to avoid this family over the course of my daily life. I see these people everywhere – the kids are in the same classes at school, signed up for the same activities, and we live in a small, rural community where everyone knows everyone else. At a minimum, my husband or I are forced to interact with them three times a week, in environments like dance classes, birthday parties or waiting on the playground, where I am stuck watching/waiting for a predetermined period of time and can’t just walk away if things get uncomfortable. I would like to try to continue to sustain the friendships between the kids, they are very attached to each other.

 

Up until now, I’d been suggesting get-togethers that didn’t take place at my house (among other things, Marjorie and Lance had a tendency to drop their kids off and leave them with me all day, often). But meeting at the park requires spending extended amounts of time with Marjorie, and I desperately need some space. My husband loathes Lance, so I can’t ask him to shoulder this either. I also want to be compassionate toward the kids, none of this is their fault. 

 

Any strategies on how to handle this would be very much appreciated!

 

Yours truly,

Playdate of Thrones

I love the name you chose. Playdate of Thrones! So apt!

First, congratulations on using your words to stop the Marjorie Debacle.  Also, you sound like a great mom! I hope the kids and your husband give you awesome Mother’s Day attentions.  You love your kids, and you don’t want your personal likes and dislikes to mess with their groove. I get that.  But you also want to minimize your exposure to Marjorie.  I don’t think you can cut down exposure any further, but I think you can control the tenor of those required meetings.  Before we get there, let’s take a rhetorical-question stroll:

1 – Must you always be friends with the parents of your daughters’ friends?

In my humble opinion and experience, HELLS NO.  You must be kind and in contact with them, but that doesn’t mean that you are automatically friends.  You are a full human with wants and desires and preferences that are separate from those of your daughters. Friends are a choice, not an imposition. Imagine this the other way: what if you made friends with a woman whose children your children detested?  I’m sure you would hope the children would get along and be polite when they were required to be together, but you wouldn’t expect them to like each other if they didn’t, right?

2 – What are your professional relationships like?

If you’re working with people now, or have worked with them in the past, perhaps you noticed that you don’t have to be friends with your co-workers. You have to be polite, kind, and maybe friendly, but no one should expect you to be automatic besties just because you’re working on the same project and grab a working lunch once in a while.

And a rhetorical point: Being friendly and warm to someone does not make us friends.

You do not have to be friends just because you work together. Thank God.

SO! my strategies for dealing with Marjorie on a cordial but distant basis is two-fold.  Pretend that you two work for the company OurKidsAreAwesome Inc.  Your two projects for the company are currently overlapping, so you will be interacting from time to time to make sure that nothing goes seriously awry.  You don’t have to know about her home life, she doesn’t need to hear the family gossip, all you two need to do is relay the information needed to make the interactions of your projects go smoothly.  The second fold is to invest in some engrossing books, so that when you are required to be in close contact with Marjorie, you can say “This is my downtime for today, and I’d like to get some reading in. Thanks!”

Limit playdates to a level that works for YOU (holy unexpected babysitting, Batman!) rather than the one that works for your kids (who will see their friends at school and events anyway), and when you have to see M&L around town, treat them like parents you don’t know well: cordial, polite, but distant.  If they are imposing on you in your home or at the park, create distance as you would with someone you don’t know well. Have a thing on hand to be busy with. It’s not rude on your part to be involved in something else that it is rude to interrupt. If they corner you at a birthday party or something where you CANNOT get away, disengage with them and go talk to another parent.  Do you have other people in that parent group that you can talk to? Use them as your go-to.

I’ll get into some useful phrases to say in a sec, but I also want to briefly address the “my husband hates Lance so he can’t help me shoulder this” thing: Malarky. Big steaming heaps of MALARKY. He is your partner on Team Family, and has to encounter Marjorie and Lance too, by your own admission. He doesn’t have to pretend to be friends with them, just like you don’t, but he will have to be professionally polite, just like you, and possibly be uncomfortable for the sake of Project Kids. That’s just sense.

NOW!  Useful phrases for you and husband!
Out and About:

• “We’ve got plans, but thank you!”
• “You know, plans. With the family.” (silent: “to do exactly nothing” (Or hey! “hot boning my husband plans” no one will know your silent plans!))
• “I’d rather not, thank you.”
•  ”That’s pretty personal, why don’t we talk about something else?”
•  ”I hope everything’s going well.”
•  ”[Child] asked if [other child] could come over [date]. Would she like to?”
• “I have to go [something], so I’ll see you around.”
• “I’m on a tight schedule today, so I’ve got to go!”
• “I need to go ask [other parent] about a thing, please excuse me!”
• “I haven’t seen [other parent] for a long time! Please excuse me.”

Trapped in the Park or at Home:

•  ”This is my downtime today, so I’d like to read quietly.”
•   “I have to run an errand, can you hold down the fort?” (the errand can be walking all the way around the block three times)
•  ”I’ve got everything under control, why don’t you take some time for yourself?”

When things get Weird (i.e. the hopefully non-inevitable “YOU HATE ME!” meltdown):

•   “I’m not sure why you/he/she would say/think that, but okay.”
•   “I’d like us to be in touch for the kids, but I already have a lot of social obligations/friends/family/etc.”
•  ”I’m sorry I’ve given you that impression, but what I really feel is [what you feel].”

Keep your tone level,  engage the expectant silence when necessary, and enforce the everloving shit out of your boundaries with this couple.

And know that I know that feel, broette. And so does the rest of that town.

After a three year-long battle with a rare form of cancer, my Mom passed away a few weeks ago.  Don’t worry, Team Me has been assembled and regular doses of Chinese food, dark chocolate, Monty Python, and silent horror films have been, and continue to be, implemented.  Now, however, begins the hard part of getting back into daily life without her and informing/dealing with everyone else.  They are all lovely and well-meaning people, but fielding their well wishes is exhausting, and the origin of my problem.

Mom, who is my mother in all of the really really important ways, is not my biological mom.  The story behind it is very long, but the cliffnote version is: abusive step-father, police get involved, Biological Mother takes his side and uses my personal diaries against me at the trial, Dad and wonderful step-mother (Mom) sweep in to take in my sister and I and pick up the pieces.  Mom is Mom, and nothing will change that.

There is a healthy mixture of friends and acquaintances who do and do not know about this (not that it’s a BIG SECRET, I just…don’t talk about it much).  Other siblings still have a relationship with Biological Mother, and I see/talk to her maybe once or twice a year, so I cannot simply pretend that she does not exist.  So, question one: what are some scripts I can use when people ask me why Mom is not my biological mom and want to know about my strained relationship with Biological Mother? I don’t mind telling them, but I want to do so in a way that answers their question about Mom without going into the whole story, and simultaneously tell them Biological Mother is not up for discussion.  I only discuss that with Team Me, and no one else.

Also, in light of Mom’s death, some members of my family have been pressuring my sister and I to forgive, forget, and reconcile with Biological Mother.  That is NOT HAPPENING.  She has a lot to explaining and apologizing to do before any of it can be considered, and until then, she gets to live with rare, strained, and superficial visits.  Of course these family members bring this up in front of my mourning Dad, so out of consideration for him I can’t respond to them in various forms of “fuck no, and also, not your fucking business.”  So, question two: what are some scripts that I can use that will politely tell them Not Happening, None of Your Business, and Don’t Ask Ever Again?

PS: Quick follow-up question, in light Mother’s Day, what can I tell unknowing people who innocently ask me what I’m doing for my Mom on Mother’s Day?

Thanks,

I Miss Mom

This isn’t the good news, but maybe it’s comforting a little: You’re not the only person for whom Mother’s Day is “Holy shit is that a fraught and complicated subject of conversation” day. So while I am so sorry for your loss and the occasion of it, I appreciate the very timely question.

Let’s work in reverse. When people who don’t know the story ask what you’re doing for Mother’s Day, tell them the truth:

“I’m still grieving for her, so I’ll be spending the day with some close friends.”

The vast majority of people will say a variation of “Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry!” which, if you’ve just buried a Loved One, you know how to deal with like a pro by now – Recently Bereaved Autopilot*: Activate! People who are also grieving for their moms won’t have asked you the question in the first place, but in the off chance one does, you can commiserate. That leaves the very, very small number of people who know that you have a Bio-Mom and know that she’s alive and who also prioritize satisfying their curiosity. You can just stare blankly at those people and repeat “My mom passed recently, so I’ll be remembering her with a few close friends” and don’t worry too much about whether they get it or what they think. You don’t have to draw your family tree for everyone who asks.

Now, let’s help you create the short version of why you called this particular lady “Mom.” Once again, go with the plain truth.

“My stepmother and my dad raised me after my biological mom remarried. She and I became very close, and I consider her to be my ‘mom.‘”

Perceptive people will sense the iceberg of dark history beneath those brief sentences, but most will not ask you anything more about it. If people press you for more details and you don’t feel like giving them, you can always go with “Obviously it’s a long and complicated story, I don’t really feel like telling it now. Maybe some other time.”  (Hint: Some other time = probably never!) Anyone who keeps pushing you after that (even if they mean well) is officially a Being A Jerk and you don’t have to be polite or answer any questions. Excuse yourself from the conversation.

On to your relatives! I am frankly aghast at someone who would say “Now that the person you loved most in the world has been dead for a couple of weeks, howabout you make up with the woman who publicly and brutally chose her abusive husband over you so that we all feel like you have somewhere to send a Mother’s Day card and don’t have to feel bad about what happened anymore?“

So let’s go with “aghast” and keep sticking with that plain, blunt truth we’ve been working with. And let go of the idea that if you respond honestly that you’re being impolite or the one making it weird. Use as few words as possible, do not apologize, do not explain yourself, do not repeat yourself. Let it get AWK-WARD. Let them be the ones to back away from you slowly or rush to change the subject.

“Wow.” (+ awkward, freezing silence).

“Do you really expect me to have a conversation about this RIGHT NOW?” (+ awkward, freezing silence)

“That is so not a question I feel like talking about today.” (+ awkward, freezing silence).

“I’m sorry, what did you just ask me? I didn’t quite catch it. Could you repeat that, please?” (+ awkward, freezing silence) (Bonus points if you make them repeat it 3 or 4 times until they get embarrassed and shut up).

“I’m sorry, that’s something I only discuss with people who are very close to me. Let’s change the subject.” (+ awkward, freezing silence)

And, as a bonus, to give you something to fantasize about: “I will never forget what happened and what she did. If I do forgive, it won’t be because people pressured me in order to make themselves feel a little better, and it certainly won’t happen while I’m grieving the woman who became my real mom, so please take five steps back and change the subject, or I’ll have to ask you to leave.“

I know that last one feels awful and rude, but it has the benefit of delivering the message you want to give as directly and completely as possible. I hope you spend Sunday surrounded with people and things you love and I’m glad you have a good plan. It sounds like you were lucky to have the Mom you did, and your dad was lucky to have her, and you.

*Recently Bereaved Autopilot:

People who love you want to let you know, but often they don’t know what to say and it gets overwhelming and weird. Some variation of “Thanks for your kind words. I loved her very much.” – will usually get the job done. If your mom knew and liked the person giving the wishes? Try “Thank you so much for your kind words. She always loved  you (or x detail about you).”

And you get to say “Thank you so much. I’m feeling a little overwhelmed right now, can we talk later?” – if that’s the truth, that’s the truth, and people will MORE than understand. You don’t have to be Good At Grieving. Absolve yourself completely from taking care of other people around this.

“But this isn’t about me. I want to say something about the “get help” advice. People seem to think it’s that simple. Tell someone to get help, they get help, end of problems. It is nowhere close to simple. There are many obstacles to getting “help” in the first place. Many people who need help are very anxious when dealing with new people, especially authority figures such as doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists, receptionists, etc. And then if you think the receptionist once gave you a dirty look? Or they really are rude to you? Can NEVER go back there again. In addition, depending on your life phase and such, “help” can be prohibitively expensive. Then, even if you do find help, and can approach it, and can , it is often the wrong help, or inappropriate help, and the persistence to keep looking until getting the right help doesn’t tend to be associated with the types of issues one might need help for.

I have been told in my life, by people from boyfriends to casual fucks to professors, to “get help.” It’s condescending. I’m trying to, and it’s not succeeding. Do they really think they’re the first to ever suggest it? I’ve been seeing mostly-ineffective shrinks off-and-on (with the very occasional more effective one that disappeared thrown in, plus one so ill-suited for me I walked out of his practice significantly more suicidal than when I walked in) since I was 14. If it were as simple as “get help” I’d be fixed by now.“

I recommend therapy here a lot. And I will keep doing it. Even though it is often prohibitively expensive. And/or difficult to locate. And/or difficult to acquire once you do locate it and can maybe afford it. I have a very strong bias in favor of therapy/counseling/mental health services because I have found them to be personally extremely helpful to me and to people I love – some of whom are alive and breathing because they sought out mental health services in time to save their own lives. My bias: I openly admit it. Therapy: I’m pro.

I definitely do not want to condescend to people who have a hard time getting therapy, don’t believe in it, have tried it and found it unhelpful. You have critical thinking skills and are the expert on your own life. If you’re dealing with some fucked up shit in life and the prospect of getting therapy seems unhelpful, exhausting, unaffordable, and like you’d rather keep dealing with the shit on your own than even attempt getting help, go with that! And own that choice, and make it something powerful for yourself. “You know, the people who keep recommending that I ‘get help’ are basically saying ‘I don’t know what to do for you, but I sure wish you’d talk to someone else about that problem’, so I guess I’ll handle things myself from now on/find new friends/try out other stuff until maybe I feel better. Humans survived on the earth long before the mental health profession existed!” might be the right solution for you. I have answered letters (privately) in pretty much that way. Emailer: “Here are my problems, they are large and complicated and feel overwhelming, but please don’t recommend therapy!“ Me: “Look, I have no idea what to say to you. If that were happening to me, I’d seek out some therapy. Ask someone else. I hope you will be ok.”

Also, I say this here a lot: If you read a response to a LW and think “She is maybe talking about me but she doesn’t know my specific situation so she’s getting it all wrong and is excluding me and people like me!” you are correct. I don’t know your specific situation! I am possibly getting it all wrong! I am responding to a person who had a problem and wrote to a stranger (who, may I remind you all again, has an unpaid for MFA in film & video as her sole credential in life) because maybe my best guess at how to go about handling a problem might maybe perhaps shed a little light on their situation. Because sometimes the act of telling your story to a sympathetic third party who can listen and offer an outside perspective is helpful. (Hint: That’s what you do in therapy, but there are lots of ways to do that). And sometimes me being wrong *is* the helpful thing – the LW says “No, you’re wrong about all of it…but an alternate perspective/helpful commenters gave me some insight.”I count that as a victory.

All advice from anyone anywhere is caveat emptor. You decide how much or how little of it you want to apply to yourself and use.

Here’s what I know. Anything on this blog that is any good happens when I am like Meg Murray taking her faults into Camazotz. When I say “Oh god, don’t send FEELINGSMAIL” it’s because I have sent feelingsmail and reaped the resulting awkwardness and shame. When I say “these are some tricks that helped me pull myself out of depression, maybe they will help you” I am writing honestly about my own experiences and what worked for me. After fucking up professionally, after fucking up romantically, after fucking up my family relationships, after being a person who harbored slights and bore grudges and raged silently at people who failed to read my mind, I somehow managed to stitch together a somewhat functional adult persona who can have a feeling and speak up about that feeling within the same month…sometimes even the same week or day!

I did that partly be treating my mental illness like an actual illness, but it wasn’t like someone told me “get help” and I went out the next day and magically got help and got better or that I think any part of it is easy. It took years. It took trial and error. It took being so broke that my level of income meant that I got services for $5/session. It took experimenting with meds, sometimes with very bad results. Just like with getting asthma treated, it took many bad fits and much procrastination before I found someone who could actually help me. It took friends and a concerned boss saying “Have you thought about therapy? It really worked for me” when they saw me acting in ways that were dysfunctional and detrimental to my own happiness. And frankly, it took getting to a place of despair where anything – even the torturous project of picking up the phone and making appointments and figuring out money and telling my darkest secrets to a stranger – seemed better than going on as I was. And then it took the slow, hard work of teaching myself to live in a different way without knowing for sure whether it would ever get better, full of days where “Got out of bed. Fed cat. Put on pants and shoes. Walked outside the house. Didn’t ride my bike into traffic.” counted as victories.  I would have had to do that work with or without therapy, since my other choice was death by my own hand. It went a little easier with therapy. That’s an important thing to tell people, I think, especially when there is such bullshit and stigma surrounding mental illness even when it’s so fucking common. “You get to try to make really hard stuff a little easier on yourself.”

We teach what we most need to learn, and writing this helps me heal myself a little at a time. Sometimes I write with strong biases and make emphatic arguments, but that doesn’t mean I’m trying to set myself up as an authority on other people’s lives. It means I think it’s fucking exhausting to qualify every statement with “Unless of course that’s not true for you and your situation, 200,000 people who stop by here every month, I’m sure you are all different so only do what applies to you! Love, Captain Obvious of Planet Tautology”  on my website that I write in my free time for free. 

In closing, I have a strong bias toward mental health services being a force for good in the world. I realize that comes from a place of relative privilege with regards to social class, education, location (large city with a variety of available resources and sliding scale options), access to a phone and computer to research things, free time to go, a form of mental illness that responded well to that kind of treatment, knowing what my options are, etc. I almost always try to recommend it in conjunction with other concrete behaviors or steps. I definitely don’t do it to condescend to people – in most cases I am trying to validate the letter writers by saying “Yup, that sounds pretty serious, and you might benefit from having a trained professional on Team You.“ I accept that therapy doesn’t work for all people. I don’t accept that because it doesn’t work for you that I’m not allowed to recommend it to people as one possible solution.

And if therapy doesn’t work or hasn’t worked for you, I don’t know what to tell you. I’m sorry. I wish it worked for you. I wish it were easier for you. I hope someone smarter than me can give you a better road map.  I’m sorry that people tell you to “get help” when they really mean “please go bother someone else about this problem.”  That is never not painful to hear, even if friends and family are within their rights to set boundaries around how much of your pain they can carry. I hope you find out what does work, and that if you do, you come back tell us. I support you in whatever helps you live to tell the tale.

“Casual lean, engaged! Precision eyebrow raise, activate! Look over here, over here, OVER HE-” Oh, hi I didn’t see you there.

Dear Capt. Awkward,

So, I’m a 25 year old lady. Like a lot of your readers (I think?) I’ve never really had a lot of dating success, and definitely have never had a boyfriend. This sometimes makes me feel a little sad, but I’ve never really gone out there in pursuit of a boyfriend, and in general don’t have a lot of guy friends/acquaintances as a dating pool, so most of the time I don’t worry about it too much. I relate it only because it’s sort of relevant, I guess? My problem, though, is actually from a different quarter. It’s happened repeatedly, and it’s stressful. What happens is that some guy I know a little bit will start acting weird around me. I’m pretty bad at unspoken social thingies, and I know my threshold for putting up with dudely awkwardness is a lot lower than that of most ladies my age, but I think I’m not wrong that these dudes are Interested in me. However, usually, I am Not Interested in them … actually, a lot of the time, I am like, “why are you interested? we have few things in common and you are hard for me to talk to! please leave me alone!” A lot of the time they are guys I don’t even particularly want to be friends with. I’m terrible at flirting and all that, so I don’t think I’m unintentionally giving them signals that I don’t mean to, or anything. But, the thing is, they never come out and say that they are interested, so I’m not sure. I feel like this never gives me a chance to flat out say “no thank you” and then I have to live with all this, like, unspoken intention looming at me uncomfortably and it makes me feel very trapped and grossed out and want to shrivel up inside and do everything I can to avoid the dude in question under any circumstances. If they ever ask me out, it’s always in the most noncommittal, low-risk way, like with lots of other friends, or “just for a beer to talk sometime,” so even then it’s not clear — is it a date? is it not a date? are you just being friendly? or are you hoping for something more?  So I feel like I can’t reject them without seeming egotistical and like I think everyone wants to have sex with me. Uncool!

The Rock would like you to know that The Rock does not approve of these passive-aggressive shenanigans.

The most recent dude to do this is a coworker whose desk is next to mine. He has a girlfriend, but was in the past definitely, um, got around with the ladies, and he and the girlfriend are having a tough time right now. He’s a nice enough dude, but very weird and passive-aggressive, and in talking to him about his girlfriend (who is an acquaintance/semi-friend of mine) it’s pretty clear that he’s been trying to make her jealous with other ladies recently, going on coffee dates and so forth. He just sent me a FB message that was like “blah blah, know you’ve been having a hard time lately, just want you to know that I think you’re great and awesome and also beautiful, sorry if that’s awkward,” and my alarm bells are pretty much at red alert. I mean, most of my “regular” friends don’t send me that kind of message when I’m having a rough week, let alone some dude. He also asked me to have a beer with him last week … which, not interested. I can’t imagine anything I could talk to this guy about for longer than five minutes at a time, and I REALLY do not appreciate potentially being used as a jealousy-creator for someone I’m friends with.

So, am I being oversensitive here? How can I avoid this (I know on some level I can’t, right? only responsible for my own actions and all that jazz), or at least deal with it more gracefully? I feel like if I ask outright if they “like” me, they will backpedal immediately whether or not they were hoping something might happen, to save face. Most of the time I don’t care about staying friends with these guys, often they are people I still have to work with (or in the past, go to school with) so I’d rather things stayed smooth and low key, although if they don’t, that’s okay. I definitely don’t like confrontation, so some of that is contributing, but I also honestly just don’t feel like I ever get an appropriate opening to say to these dudes that I don’t like them in more than a merely polite and friendly way. Is there something about me that is catnip for socially awkward passive-aggressive dudes? Why can’t they just ask me out like regular people? What am I doing wrong here? Please help me.

Sincerely,
I’m Just Not That Into You

Howdy I’m Just Not That Into You! CommanderLogic, here.

You’re not doing anything wrong, and you’re not being over-sensitive. Okay?  You’re just being terrifyingly amazing, and some people cannot even begin to deal with that.

From your letter, I think you’ve got a collage of problems that you can solve with two actions:
1 – Only acknowledge and act on what is actually said out loud.
2 – Let go. You are not responsible for other people’s emotions.

What is this supposed to mean? You’re sitting on something uncomfortable? There’s a popcorn kernel in your tooth?

So let’s talk first about all the guys who are “conveying” at you.  If they cannot put words together to express their feelings, that is not your problem.  One reason they are probably not putting feelings into words is so that you can’t reject them, and they have plausible deniability if you do, because if you call attention to it YOU’RE vain and full of it and the bad wrong one. Gross. But! that sword cuts two ways, and you will never go on a date with them unless they ask you on an actual date.  So, until such time as they can say words, try to act like nothing is wrong except maybe they have a piece of spinach in their teeth.  Their inability to act like humans is not your fault or your problem, just like that bit of spinach.  If they are making you uncomfortable with something they are actually doing or saying, then it IS your problem and you can say “I feel like you’re leering at me, and it makes me feel gross. Please stop.”  “You’re standing too close. Move.”  “I know you think it’s cute to talk about my hot ass, but it’s really demeaning.”

I know you’re thinking now that “OMG CONFRONTATION! I AM BAD AT IT!” Nope. This is not confrontation. This is being assertive.  This is speaking the thing that occurs to you WHEN it occurs to you, which can be super scary and definitely takes practice.  Fortunately, you can practice being assertive by being positively assertive. “I love that t-shirt!” “You are super funny!” “I need to pee, can I get you something while I’m up?” “I know you don’t like this song, but I love it.”  All of that? Assertive. It’s good to have a brain filter, but a lot of the time, we have way WAY too many filters, and second guess ourselves in a pinch. Practice removing the filters from positive assertions, and then when something comes up that requires negative assertion (You’re weirding me out. You’re in my way. You don’t get to say that to me.) maybe it will get through.

Now! Let’s say one of your conveying friends actually does ask you to a “thing” “sometime.”  First off, unless there’s a specific event at a specific time, this is not even a friend-date.  You can reply: “I’m busy ‘sometime’, but thanks for the invitation.”  “*Shrug* I don’t know. We aren’t that close.”  I like this second one because it pretty much forces the conveying friend to be more specific about his/her desires.

If a conveying friend actually manages to work out an event and a time, don’t worry about if it’s a date or not.  That really, REALLY doesn’t matter.  Focus on “Do I want to do that thing in the presence of this person.”  If the answer is yes, go do the thing. If the answer is no, say “Thanks for the invitation but I’d rather not.” “I’d rather not, no thank you.” Repeat until he goes away. If dude starts getting shirty about it, he’s just handing you reasons to continue to say no.

Above all, just be as direct as you wish that the conveying dudes would be.

And about that co-worker dude. Yep, he’s being a creep and shitty to his girlfriend, your friend.

Jim and Pam demonstrate the horrors of crossing the professional and personal relationship streams.

Were I in your position, I would email or tell him something like:
Yes, it’s pretty awkward to tell your girlfriend’s friend that she’s beautiful. It’s also pretty awkward to tell your co-worker that. I strongly prefer to keep my personal and working lives separate, so I don’t go have drinks or outings with anyone at the company, including you.  Thanks for the message and the invitation, and I hope you and [Friend] have a wonderful weekend planned!

It’s not your fault or your problem that this guy is a creep and shitty to his girlfriend.

Finally, a special bonus round suggestion:

I would like to recommend an online dating project for you. Not a find a boyfriend and couple up forever project (We at Captain Awkward Enterprises are fully cognizant that the rest of the goddamn universe is pressuring you to couple up and make with the babies. That pressure is not on you here. You are already a full and complete human being. Do whatcha want!).  This is more of an assertiveness and flirting practice project (for science! YouScience!).  What I’d like you to do is spend a month on a dating site, and go on three or four first dates with guys or gals outside your friend group.  Find out what it’s like for you when you are on an Official Date.  Find out what sorts of rules you have that you didn’t expect you had.  Heck, maybe even scratch a Dating Horror Story notch in your cocktail chatter belt. At the end of your project (either the month or 3-4 dates, whichever you choose), delete your profile and go back to being single if you like!  It’s for science!

Whether you do the project or not, good luck out there.