Tag Archives: The Darth Vader Boyfriend

#454: Darth Vader is a tricksy hobbit.

Gandalf & Darth Vader

Who would win in a fight? A common question posed by The Internet.

Hello, Citizens of Friday.

First order of business, this great nod of solidarity for the socially awkward from Dorothy Parker.

‎”Those who have mastered etiquette, who are entirely, impeccably right, would seem to arrive at a point of exquisite dullness.” -Dorothy Parker

Second order of business: This great post from The Pervocracy, “How To Have Sex on Purpose.” It’s an essay form of the talk about consent and what people can learn about sex from kinksters that Cliff gave at U of Chicago’s Sex Week last week.

Third order of business: Great Darth Vader Boyfriend song or GREATEST Darth Vader Boyfriend song?

That should segue us nicely into this question:

Dear Captain Awkward:

My best friend at work is romantically obsessed with her douche of a boyfriend. He has been both mentally and sexually manipulative and verbally abusive. All of her friends at work realized this. We were asked on many occasions for advice by her or listened to her vent, but she only tightens her grip on him, and increasingly pushes her own friends away. Any advice? Is she a lost cause?

Thanks:

Don Draper

Dear Don:

Your selected username is pretty unintentionally funny, because Don Draper is TOTALLY a Darth Vader Boyfriend. He physically assaults Betty, and tried to convince her that she cannot leave him. He totally broods his way into getting sympathy sex with ladies who he does not treat very well.

Silhouette of Darth Vader replaces Draper in Mad Men opening credit sequence.

Awesome design by Dann Matthews.. P.S. There are T-shirts.

Don’t know how long you’ve been reading, but we covered Darths at length in one of the first-ever posts on this blog. And we also covered how to tell a friend that you have had enough venting for the time being.

The points I’d reiterate here is:

  • Your friend does not have to break up with her boyfriend to please you. Even if he sucks. That’s just not how people and their hearts work.
  • But also, you do not have to endlessly listen to her talk about him. Her sun may rise and set by the cycle of her bad boyfriend’s moods and behaviors, but yours does not have to.

Continue reading →

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#392: Overdue apologies.

Darth Vader beckoning to Luke in Empire Strikes Back.

“Everything’s more dramatic and exciting on the Dark Side of the Force!”

Before we dig into today’s letter, I really like this “Ask Polly” piece at The Awl, I Miss My Maniac Ex. The Maniac Ex is what we around these parts would call a Darth Vader boyfriend.

So you focus on that one magical night, in the middle of a sea of terrible nights, where he held your hand and treated you like a person and you drank too much and that awesome song was playing and you imagined, in that moment, that you two were destined to be together forever, and your whole life might be this good. Lucky for you, your whole life turned out even better than that, it just doesn’t feel like it because you’ve become acclimated to love the way you used to be acclimated to suffering. Those highs you miss are the sorts of highs that occur in a life mostly made up of lows.

There are plenty of different kinds of bad partners. A Darth Vader, to me, is one who strings you along with tiny bits of your heart’s desire at carefully controlled intervals. Not enough to actually sustain you, but enough to keep you hooked. Enough to make you abdicate everything you know about what’s good for you.

Her advice about how to refocus these pangs and get past it is quite good.

Today’s letter, the first to come into the new inbox, is also about exes and regretting the past.

Continue reading →

#312: Aftermath

Hello! I took a few days off to work at my real job and go to the movies and read books and hang out with my boyfriend. It was awesome and I will be doing more of that + shooting a short film in August.

Old business: If you donated to the pledge drive via the Dwolla link, I don’t have your email address. So email me and I’ll send you the link to the movie. Also, a few of the PayPal donors had email addresses that bounced back (or I may have missed you), so if you are missing the movie let me know and I will fix that ASAP.

New business:

Attention: The Foster Kitten Cam has new kitties.

Also, this is a very sad letter. I am putting it behind a cut. And I want to say something very clearly first:

This blogger is officially, unilaterally, and forever pro-choice. I believe the decision to terminate a pregnancy is morally neutral and should be private, legal & safe. I trust that anyone undertaking that decision has their own reasons that are better than anything I or any outside party could come up with. I will be moderating comments here accordingly. You can disagree with me…privately in your heart. Or on other websites. All anti-choice lobbying & debate will be deleted without warning. Repeat offenders will be banned without warning. This was your warning. If this is a hot-button issue for you and you don’t think you’ll be able to resist internet-fighting what you see as the Good Fight for Tiny Innocent Babies, maybe don’t click further. You will not change my mind, and this is not the place to try out your Ethics 101 arguments. The Letter Writer and I are not interested in your jibber-jabber.

Continue reading →

Reader Question #12: How do I deal with my boyfriend’s ex-from-hell?

Sometimes Darth Vader is a girl.

Dear Captain Awkward:

So, it’s like this. I met a great guy, and get this, it’s one of THOSE love stories where the girl winds up with the guy she went to school with, it was him all along! Hurrah for fairy stories!!!

So, all well and good and life is great with us, but the snag is he has an ex-girlfriend with whom he shared 20 odd  (druggy) years. After they split they stayed friends (without the benefits) and were very close. She’s got some fucked up Bonnie and Clyde fantasy going on, romanticizing the good old days when they robbed book stores to feed their habits (yuck!) and, while she says she wants him to be happy with someone else blah blah, in reality is making all kinds of noises (via Facebook comments and sending cards in the post) to let me know that she and he were the golden couple and will be forever.

I can’t help but get jealous about their obvious ‘history’ but as we are in a (new) relationship I feel weird that she sends him cards saying how much she loves him, and sends them addressed from the love nest they once shared.  She posts that she loves him all over his FB page, KNOWING that I’m going to read it. (Hello, we are over 40 btw not school kids!)

Is she trying to send a message to me? and how do I deal with it? We aren’t in the same country for a start, which helps, but I feel as if there are three of us in the relationship as he messages her and texts her EVERY day.. I am getting pissed off but don’t want to act like a needy jealous whinge-bag..

Thank you Captain.

Signed,
Not Needy or Jealous (well ok, a bit)

Dear Not Needy, Definitely Jealous:

I feel comfortable saying that this woman is trying to send a message.

People don’t go to the Post Office on purpose and stand in line to get the special stamps that will send letters to other countries without taking a little extra effort to work that into their day.  If you and your boyfriend lived in the same area as this woman, she would send you both a lot of messages, like sneaking into your house and peeing in all the corners and dressing up in your favorite clothes and rubbing her crazy all over your pillow so that you will go nuts trying to figure out why everything in your life suddenly smells like crotch.

Continue reading →

Reader Question #4: My friend is dating someone terrible, or, Secrets of The Darth Vader Boyfriend.

 

Darth Vader

Do not date this man.

Dear Captain Awkward:

A close friend is dating a total loser.  Please give me the magic-spell-words to make him see this and dump him.  Or else the fortitude to watch him marry this creep.  We have already talked about my reservations concerning his partner’s character and their relationship.  I don’t want to push him away.

I think my answer to this question depends a lot on why you hate this guy so much. There’s a big difference between “Can’t hang” and “Treats my friend badly.”

Dear Captain Awkward:

Both. I mean – He can’t hang, and he doesn’t treat my friend well. For example, he has been moving the relationship along extremely quickly. He brought up marriage on the first date, and immediately started showering my friend with expensive presents. They’ve only been together for three months, but they just moved in together and are already planning a wedding.  He has a lot of expectations for how my friend should be that makes me think he doesn’t really “see” my friend clearly and accept who he is. For example, the two of them went on a long bike trip together, and it took longer than this guy expected because my friend is not as in-shape and had to work harder to keep up, so the partner got upset that things were taking so long.

He is very socially awkward and will often blurt out hurtful and insulting things at social gatherings that are later explained away as “jokes.” He’s also extremely conservative and quotes Glenn Beck all the time, and his idea of how their marriage should work definitely casts himself as a traditional husband and my friend as a “wife” even though they are both men.

I’ve told my friend what I think, and he always has an explanation for everything this guy does. My friend has brought up that the guy probably has Asperger’s syndrome, which, okay, that explains some of the social awkwardness, but I hate how my lovely, kind, and outgoing friend is always explaining and apologizing for this bozo’s outbursts.

I think the biggest red flag is that this guy doesn’t seem to have any other friends. My friend is his entire world. My friend claims that he does have some friends back home in another state, but he’s never met any of them. Since I’ve said what I had to say to him and they’re still getting married, I realize that I probably have to just resign myself and change the subject a lot when we’re together and the relationship comes up, but I’d welcome any other advice.

Thanks for the clearer picture! That is helpful. And awkward.

Your friend is dating Darth Vader. Let me explain:  Continue reading →