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It’s been a while since we last had a Boston meetup!
When: Sunday, October 27th, 2024 at 1pm
Where: Cambridge Common, in Cambridge, MA, near the Civil War Monument
Closest T stop is Harvard Square on the Red Line. Cambridge Common is a 5-10 minute walk.
The Civil War Monument is the big statue in the center of Cambridge Common, with lots of benches around (but no tables).
Accessibility notes: The park has good pathways to the area where we’re meeting, but no bathrooms in the park. Best nearby public restrooms are in the MBTA station.
I’ll have with me a Catbus plushie (from My Neighbor Totoro), and I’ll probably be working on a crochet blanket.
If the weather forecast wildly changes and we have to move indoors, weather location is the Harvard Art Museum Cafe, in the central atrium of 32 Quincy Street.
Feel free to bring any crafts, games, puzzles, etc to work on or share. I’ll also have some art supplies and paper to share.
If you have questions, comments, or are trying to find us, you can reach me at bostonCAmeetup AT gmail DOT com. If you can’t come but would like me to organize another meetup in the future, please let me know!
Hi!
I’m in my 40s and have a tight-knit friend group of about 20 years (all she/her). Some of us in the group are closer than others, but we have all gone on vacations together, been in each others’ weddings, lived together in various configurations, etc. In short, a very sibling/family type of friend group.
There is one friend in the group, B, that I haven’t been enjoying my time with lately and I noticed I was gritting my teeth through our group hangouts, wishing for them to end. For my own happiness, I’ve been pulling away from the all-group socializing and making an effort to do more one-on-one with the friends in that group that I do enjoy. It’s been working well–for me.
B has never commented directly and possibly hasn’t even noticed that I’ve been fairly absent in the past year or so. Other friends, though, have–particularly one I’ll call C. C has launched a bit of a campaign to get me to relax my boundaries around time with B, and it’s making me want to avoid her as well! Other people in the group (D-H) respect my boundaries and like the effort to see each other less frequently but more intimately.
I would really like to have, say, Friend E and Friend G over or go out with them, but C gets extremely upset when I “exclude” B. I’ve tried to explain that I’m not asking anyone else to do anything, these are my boundaries for myself, etc., but it hasn’t been effective.
Maybe I am actually being a jerk though? There’s somehow a “line” in my head where one-on-one time with friends D-H is fine, but as soon as two or more are involved, automatically it should be open to the whole group. Do you have any insight for me on why I have this “line” in my head–is it because it does actually cross into exclusion/cruelty?
Thanks!
The Whole Group or Bust
Dear The Whole Group Or Bust:
Assuming that you are not hostile to B. when you do opt into group events, and you do not lobby to have people who genuinely enjoy her company exclude her from all-group events or from smaller events they host, and you keep invitations that don’t include everyone out of the #everyone group chat, you are not being cruel. You’re not even being rude. You simply realized you were enjoying big group events relatively less, so you created smaller spin-offs that you enjoy more.
Odds are that you feel slightly guilty because you have a mild Geek Social Fallacies hangover and because C. is an active GSF#1 and #4 carrier who is trying to make you feel guilty and unwittingly confirming exactly why the decision to prioritize time with the friends you most enjoy was a good one. If C. would prefer to only attend things that also include B., she’s free to arrange her own outings. If she keeps pressuring you, she’s gonna find herself on the list of people you only see occasionally, and it won’t be a mystery how she ended up there.
Since it seems like C. is trying to address this directly with you (vs. spinning B. up or doing passive-aggressive group shenanigans), if you want to try one more time to have a reasonable conversation with her, maybe try something like this:
- Pull her aside for a private chat.
- Tell her you’ve noticed the pattern of her becoming upset when you miss group events and any other specific pressure tactics.
- Ask her if you’re reading the situation correctly and what she hopes to get out of it.
- Listen to what she says. This is hopefully the last time you’re ever gonna discuss this with her, and you are gonna have the final say eventually, so don’t be afraid to let her talk and get it out of her system.
- When she stops talking, do not try to argue her points logically. You do not want to get sucked into justifying your decisions or re-litigating your conflict with B. with the person you’re about to ask to stay the heck out of it.
- Instead, thank her for honesty, and then be honest about what you intend to do and what you want C. to do from now on. Sample talking points you can adapt for your own purposes:
“Thanks for being honest and for confirming that what I sensed might be happening is what’s actually happening. Let me be honest with you in turn: I neither need nor want your assistance with conflict resolution or changing how I socialize. Please stop pressuring me to hang out more often, and please stop commenting on my relationships with other friends within the group.”
Pause for her to respond. Maybe she’ll pleasantly surprise you and be cool! If she is not cool, listen, don’t argue, then continue with what you need her to know.
“The problems you are trying to solve aren’t problems for me. I know that you mean well and just want everyone to get along, but after 20 years, I don’t need all my friends to share the same tastes or priorities all the time, make only decisions that I agree with, or be the exact same amount of friends with each other that they are with me. Plus, I *like* being able to switch between seeing everyone now and then and arranging lots of small, casual hangouts with whomever I’m most in the mood to see that day. Since I’ve been doing things this way, I am much happier and my schedule feels much more manageable.”
Let her sit with that for a second. When you’re ready, continue, and bring it back to what you’d actually like her to do from now on.
“Going forward, if you find it too upsetting to attend events that aren’t open to everyone, just say the word! I won’t be upset if you’d prefer to stay home, just like I won’t be mad if the events you host reflect your priorities about who you invite. But I’m going to keep doing what works for me, whether or not you or anyone else agrees. And if you keep pushing me or inserting yourself into a conflict that isn’t about you, then you and I are going to have a conflict of our very own. I’d to avoid that if possible, which is why I would like this to be the last discussion we have about how I run my social calendar or my relationships with people who are not you. Can I count on you to respect that from now on?”
Then she’ll say some stuff. It might not be great stuff, especially if her concern about excluding B. is really borne out of fear of being rejected herself. Internal monologue: “If LW can just stop being friends with B., doesn’t that means she could just stop being friends with me one day? Oh shit, I better fix things with B. before that happens!” People who decide that your boundaries with other people are invalid because you might need to set the same boundaries with them if they treat you the same way the other people did (or create entirely new problems) are not my people, so I can’t explain why they build these impossible logic traps for themselves. I just observe them doing it and hope that somebody intervenes before they bring about the exact thing they feared most.
If it goes that way, don’t argue if you can help it. Try to cut the conversation short and give C. some space. What she does after the conversation will show you if she heard you and respects you enough to take you at your words. I hope she will be cool! If she isn’t, you know what to do.
Overall, I’d rate my script wording here at “medium spicy.” You may wish to soften things, or not, according to your style and how accurately that describes your annoyance levels. You’re on the verge of slow-fading C., so my sense was that reassuring her that you aren’t mad would be a lie that serves no one. C. is currently betting that pressuring you is somehow easier than dealing with B.’s whole deal or learning to accept the situation. In my experience with chronic boundary-pushers and self-appointed peacemakers, sometimes they need a little glimpse of the tiger before you show them the door with the lady.
Dear Captain Awkward,
I have a friend that I know I need to talk to, and I would like your advice on a script for what to say.
My friend “Jane” is nice and fun to hang out with, and we’ve known each other since childhood. I wouldn’t consider us “best friends” but we are close, and since COVID we’ve gotten closer as I moved from my college town back to our home city.
Over the last few years, I have noticed a “frog in boiling water” situation in which Jane has been making more and more conversations revolve around her ruminating about a situation over the course of months, for hours at a time when we hang out. This started during the pandemic but has quietly escalated to the point that almost every time I see her in person, she’s got new thoughts on whatever Topic of the Year it is. Sometimes it’s depression; sometimes it’s grad school stress; she has a tendency to blunder into situationships, so sometimes, it’s “but what does he meaaaaan when he says he liked hanging out with me?” And reinterpreting these “signs” over and over, without me even asking, or sending me dozens of unsolicited messages overnight with a new “revelation” about what he “really must mean”. Lately, she’s even stopped asking me how I am until a solid 15 or 30 minutes into a ruminative monologue! I’ve gotten to the point that I’ve been avoiding responding to her, which I find only makes her even more persistent about sharing her anxious thoughts.
I realize I should have put a stop to this long ago, but probably like a lot of readers, I have a whole childhood history around being made to listen to adults’ complaints and caretake their emotions, so I struggle with snapping out of that people-pleasing mindframe. I realize that’s not an excuse, but it does make me feel like I’m being a bad friend and denying her emotional support if I ask her to stop talking about something that’s clearly bothering her. I’ve tried every non-confrontational approach I can think of: I’ve actively listened, validated her emotions, asked her if she wanted advice or just wanted to vent so as not to burden her with unhelpful advice, pointing out patterns in her ruminations, asking her “what if” she tried X or Y, even told her that I don’t know if listening is helping and maybe she needs to talk to a therapist. But she insists that she doesn’t need a therapist, and she insists that she “just wants to vent”, even when I point out that she’s been venting about the same topic for weeks.
I know it’s time for direct confrontation, but I admit that I struggle with not wanting to make her feel like her problems aren’t valid (I was invalidated a lot as a child and feel very sensitive about potentially doing the same thing to other people). What’s a nice way to tell Jane that I don’t really care about her problems and I need her to stop talking about them?
Sincerely,
Frog in Boiling Water
Dear Frog,
I have been all the people in your letter, both a Jane sunk in my own tedious misery who needed someone to stop me and the Frog saying, “I know that [job][partner][family] is horrible and I will do whatever I can to support you, but since I’m not actually [getting paid to work there][dating #thatfuckingguy][descended from those people] there are limits about how much detail I can absorb and how much I am willing to let them occupy every conversation, social occasion, and waking moment.”
You keep using the word “nice” and I can’t really help you there. Nice isn’t kind, and nice isn’t working. To change this situation, you are going to have to be incredibly direct. “Jane, I cannot be your venting friend[right now][today][anymore].” From experience, I can tell you that whether the friendship ultimately survives is going to depend more on what Jane does after she hears it than the specific words you used to say it. And whether the boundary sticks is gonna depend more on your actions than either her reactions or your words.
Your question came in a shape that anyone who has spent more than an hour on this website will recognize. Let’s break it down to its most basic form:
“Dear Captain Awkward, a person is repeatedly crossing my boundaries in a way that makes me feel [angry][annoyed][overwhelmed][triggered by reminders of past events][bored][avoidant][checked out][exasperated][other feelings that add up to ‘bad’]. How do I convince them to stop doing the stuff that makes me feel bad without making them feel bad?”
This framing sets the problem up as a persuasion problem. Your boundaries only get to matter after you successfully convince the other people in the conflict that they do, and in the meantime they get to keep doing all the stuff that makes you feel bad until you a) persuade them to stop b) without making them feel even a little bit bad.
Two immediate, glaring problems with this approach:
1) You can’t control how other people will react or how they will feel.
2) It puts all the power and agency in the hands of the person you’re trying to persuade. What happens if they remain unpersuaded, as Jane clearly has?
You: Maybe this problem would be better for therapy.
Jane: That’s okay, I don’t need therapy, I just need venting.
You: I’m not sure all this venting is working to solve the problem.
Jane: Vents more and harder.
When you were small, you were coerced into being an emotional dumping ground for adults who did not care about your consent. It wasn’t happening because you weren’t saying “uh, that seems like a grown-up problem, I’m gonna go ride bikes now” loudly or clearly or politely enough, it was about knowing that even if you did, at best they wouldn’t notice and at worst they might physically prevent you from leaving, punish you for trying, keep right on doing the thing, and scapegoat you for making them feel bad about any of it. “Fawn” and “freeze” start as trauma responses. When you’re dependent on someone who demands to be tiptoed around and fawned over, they become survival skills. Scratch a recovering people-pleaser who has a hard time saying no as an adult and chances are you’ll uncover a history of exposure to people who were so terrible at taking no for an answer *that it rewired their entire brain.*
Once you’re away from a coercive environment, the habits and skills that helped you survive it stop working. People who have no interest in coercing you don’t want you to tiptoe around them, put your feelings last, preemptively manage their moods, or do anything you don’t freely and enthusiastically want to do. They don’t want you to try to read their minds or treat them like they are the worst person you’ve ever met. They don’t want to be the unwitting antagonists in dramas that take place only inside your head. The only people who would ever demand that from you or punish you for not prioritizing them above yourself are people you need to avoid like the plague.
Undoing the damage and unlearning habits that no longer serve you can be the project of a lifetime. Therapy can help, working on assertiveness skills and distress tolerance can help, making a habit of surrounding yourself with safe people and limiting your exposure to unsafe people can help. Where I can maybe help today is by replacing the project of persuading Jane with the project of reclaiming your own consent. Practically, that means we’re gonna stop trying to build your boundaries out of stuff you don’t control, like how Jane feels or what Jane finds persuasive. Instead, we’re gonna build them out of your feelings, your needs, the choices you make and actions you take to limit your exposure to stuff you don’t like and replace it with stuff you do. Some of those actions may involve conversations with Jane, but not all.
Consent is why every single post here about imbalanced relationships starts with the exact same question: What do you actually want? Forget what other people want, or what they assume, or what things used to be like, or what everybody promised each other it would be like. From this moment forward, in a perfect world where you get everything you want, what would a balanced, comfortable, enjoyable friendship free of avoidance, anxiety, and dread look like for you? What can you do to build toward that?
What makes Jane fun to hang out with? What would your ideal “Day with Jane” look like? What would you do? Where would you go? What would you talk about? How long would it last?
How often would you hang out or communicate, and what are your preferred environments or communication methods? If nightly texting is a problem, and it sounds like it is, could you replace texting with a weekly phone call or a monthly hangout to catch up in person? We’re looking for consistent and sustainable way more than we’re looking for perfect, so when in doubt, round down.
How much time would you spend listening to her vent? “Zero venting” is an acceptable answer, and it sounds like the honest answer, so let’s set the default at zero for now.
Instead of listening to her vent, what are five ways you’d rather spend your time together? In your shoes I’d be thinking about hobby or activity-based hangouts, like going for a bike ride, seeing a movie in the theater, or taking a class in something you’ve both always wanted to try. These all have a defined start and end time, something concrete or hands-on to focus on that isn’t “sharing deep confidences,” and take place at a location you can leave vs. potentially having to yeet a sobbing person off your sofa at 2 am.
What are five topics you’d rather talk about than grad school drama or disappointing dudes? Think: Hobby or media interests you have in common. Stuff that’s going on in your life. Stuff that makes Jane light up when she talks. The office politics and interpersonal dramas of grad school are boring to you, but what’s she studying in grad school? What is she nerdy about? What are you nerdy about?
While we’re at it, who are five people in your life who don’t treat you this way? Who are people who make it safe to set boundaries with them?
Once you’ve made your lists, take action to invite her into the kind of friendship you want and remove yourself from the parts you don’t want.
You can invite her to accompany you to do cool stuff you think she’d enjoy.
You can ask her about stuff you are genuinely interested in hearing about.
You can tell her outright when you do not have venting capacity. You can be explicit about how you are changing the subject now. “Okay, my turn to talk!”
If she starts venting anyway, you can quietly set a limit for how long you will engage and whether you remain in the conversation. If she runs over time, what will you do about it? (Get off the phone, change the subject, leave the room?)
You can say, “If I don’t text you back, it’s ’cause I’m not available. Please stop with the serial overnight texts.” You can say, “I don’t have a lot of capacity for back-and-forth texting right now. Want to set up a monthly in-person hang where we can catch up?” You can also mute notifications whenever you want to.
You can simply be less available overall, and only get in touch with her when you know you have capacity for dealing with a certain amount of venting.
None of these things require persuading Jane about anything before they happen. They do require setting limits with yourself about your own capacity and interest, and sticking to those limits, which is where you need practice. If at any point it becomes too much work, you get to stop.
Speaking of work, before you do a bunch of it about someone who does not seem to be doing even close to equivalent work about you, I think that by far the kindest and most effective starting point is also the simplest. “Jane, I’m not up for venting right now. Can we talk about something else or should we try again another time?”
Longer, more heart-to-heart version:
“Jane, you know how sometimes when you vent, I suggest therapy? And you tell me you don’t want to go to therapy? Right, so, I need to be more clear. You don’t ever have to go to therapy if you don’t want to, but also, that doesn’t make me your therapist. I need a break from being your Venting Friend.
I know you’re really going through it right now, and I do sympathize, but lately, it has become an automatic habit that takes up most if not all of the time we spend together. And when you talk for half an hour straight without a line-break or a question, or send me walls, plural of texts all night when I’m asleep, that’s a monologue, not a conversation.
Howabout this for a reset: If I want to know about grad school stuff or dating stuff, I will ask. If I don’t ask, or if I change the subject after a few minutes, then we either need to talk about different stuff or we need to wind down the conversation and come back another day.”
As always, suggested “scripts” are sample talking points that are not meant to be delivered verbatim or all at once without pauses for the other person to talk like you’re Hamlet brandishing a verbal sledgehammer at the Fourth Wall. I definitely did not design these specific scripts in terms of what I think Jane will find persuasive or nice, but they are what I think she needs to know in order to stop being a shitty friend to you.
If you felt like you could say any of that, you would have done it by now. If she were capable of stopping on her own, she would have stopped by now. Hence a whole process for reshaping how you think about the friendship and the problem to help you psych yourself up for what needs to happen.
The fact remains that how Jane reacts to having boundaries set with her will tell you everything you need to know, and you can’t really know until you stop hinting and start telling. She is either not understanding or deliberately ignoring your many hints, which means you are going to have to switch to a combination of more explict communication (“That’s all the grad school I can absorb today””Is it my turn to talk? Great!”) and making yourself less available when you know you don’t have it in you.
If she doubles down on manipulation because you set a boundary with her, it’s not a sign that you did boundaries wrong, but it is a sign that Jane might not a safe person for you. If Jane is a safe person, even if she is taken aback and has a not-great reaction at first, you gotta trust that she will come back, apologize, and –most importantly!– she will adapt her behavior to new information. Setting limits with her is not mean, uncaring, selfish, etc. or any of the things you fear. It is an act of kindness and an act of trust to give a friend the chance to course-correct and show up for you. If you didn’t want to be friends, you wouldn’t even try. If she does not want to be friends with you on those terms, that’s her choice.
You are currently on the verge of blowing up the friendship without ever giving either of you a real choice about whether it could be different, so I think it’s probably worth at least one attempt.
Tips on how to deal with being ghosted and how to improve communication if you have been the 'ghoster.'
The post Ghosting: The Silent Breakup appeared first on The Gottman Institute.
