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Dear Captain Awkward,

I (24, he/they) have been with my partner (24, he/she/they) for almost about a year now. We’ve had a great relationship and we get along together really well, my partner has an amazing sense of humor, cares about me a lot, is creative, very passionate and just all around an amazing person. I love him very much but it’s also hard to be with him. 

It’s especially hard when they’re upset, because I feel like there’s nothing I can do. They tend to spiral and feel hopeless about everything. Words of encouragement don’t work. Trying to say stuff like “oh you must be feeling xyz” just feels like I’m stating the obvious to them. And I get it. We are physically distant (not super far, just different houses), so we text most of the times and are only able to meet each other once or twice a week. 

I’m not good at comforting people. I don’t know what I can do to help. I’ve asked if they needed anything from me during those moments, but they don’t know what helps them either, so I end up saying things that don’t help or make things worse, or I don’t say anything at all and that also makes things worse. They end up feeling like they’re not compensated for their suffering, I end up feeling incompetent. They start calling everyone useless. They start feeling worthless because they feel like I’m not doing enough. I hear words like “nobody loves me”, or “nobody cares enough to understand me”, or “I’m always alone and I have to rely on myself.”

The problem? He’s right about me! I haven’t been able to do anything. All I’ve done is make stupid little mistakes like being late and forgetting my lunch and inconveniencing him. I know he has a low tolerance to stuff like this, especially when it comes to inconveniencing him, but I keep messing up no matter how hard I try. I want to be reliable for my partner but he doesn’t trust me anymore. Sorry doesn’t cut it because I’ll keep messing up again. He doesn’t like it when I apologize. And proving that I’m really sorry doesn’t feel like something I can do because I don’t trust myself to not make the same mistakes again.

I’m forgetful, I’m clumsy and I keep planning things badly. I’m passive and I don’t take charge enough. They’ve told me this both directly and indirectly. I’ve been called inadequate at times, and they’ve said hurtful things like they “don’t think its within my ability to do xyz”. I hate that I’m like this because it hurts him. I hate that he’s right. He’s incredibly independent. He does things very quickly and efficiently. He plans well. He does everything right. I’m just a doormat and I feel useless. 

It also hurts because I’m trying my best, but I can’t. I try and try and try but we always end up arguing about how I’m not doing enough and my efforts don’t reach her. She says that she doesn’t feel like I care about her, but I do. I try to be as attentive as I can be, I try to be there for her as much as I can. I keep doing research and trying to talk to her and understand her side of things, but we always end up in circles. I’m constantly thinking of what I can do for her but we both don’t know what makes my partner feel comforted, so we both end up hurt. 

They don’t have anyone else to turn to either, so it’s just me. But I have so much to deal with outside my relationship at the same time that my head hurts. 

It’s a lot easier when we’re physically together because I can do something. I can buy things or talk and be there in their presence and they eventually feel alright. But through text I just don’t know what to say, and it hurts to see her in pain. I know I can’t control how they feel. I know I can’t cheer them up sometimes. But if I can’t do anything about it then I’m not doing enough.

I’ve been hating myself more and more and I don’t know what to do. I get distracted at work and I’m snappy at my family because them being upset causes me so much stress and anxiety. We’ve almost broken up a few times now, but every time we’re almost there, I either back down or don’t bring it up at all, because in the end I still love them. He cares about me a lot until he’s upset and lashing out. Then it’s mean and hurtful words. Or maybe I’m just sensitive. Then I feel terrible because I didn’t do anything about it because I was frozen thinking about what I can do.

I ended up in a panic attack once because I forgot to talk about something serious. And yes, that was my fault, 100%. I own up to that. But they were so callous and cold about it that I started shaking. At that point, they were also very upset. They said that “all you can do is panic and cry.” They’ve since then apologized and said they were lashing out at the time but it still hurts. 

Breaking up feels like running away. It feels like giving up, but talking only makes us go in circles. I’ve already done it once and that was definitely me running away from my problems before we patched things up. But it’s exhausting because I’m constantly worried about my partner being upset over me or someone else. And she already expects me to fuck it up anyways.

The good is amazing, but the bad makes me want to die. I keep swinging back and forth between feeling angry and feeling happy, and lately I don’t know what I feel anymore. I don’t know if shes just being mean and lashing out, or if I really just am a terrible partner who can’t do anything right. Am I just that selfish? Am I inconsiderate? Is what she’s saying true? Am I really just trying to run from everything?

I don’t know anymore. I keep thinking about this and mulling it over and I don’t know what’s going on.

I’m sorry this letter is all over the place. My head is a mess too and I don’t really know what I want from this either. I’m confused and hurt and I don’t know if I should even be mad at my partner for lashing out at my mistakes.

I just want to stop feeling like I’m going crazy.

Thanks,

Very Sad Boyfriend

Dear Very Sad Boyfriend:

Thank you for your letter. Please allow me to describe the physical sensation of reading it for the first time.

I had a sinking feeling when I read that your “amazing” partner expects you to serve as their on-call unpaid personal therapist and improvisational court jester responsible for fixing their bad moods. I’m pretty sure the phrase “compensated for their suffering” turned at least some of my hair permanently white, and things sunk further when you revealed that everything you do to try to help them when they suffer gets used as an excuse to blame and punish you. Which is it, you’re the only person on earth who can possibly help them or you’re the worst at helping? They don’t seem to know what might make them feel better or be able to give you any direction about what they need, nor do they have any other plans  to mitigate these low mood spells, and yet they are extremely certain that everything you do is wrong. Could it be that manufacturing opportunities to blame you whenever they feel bad isn’t the bug, it’s the feature?

Then I read about when you had a panic attack, your partner had nothing to offer you except contempt, and you feel like that’s your fault, too. When I got to the words “all you can do is panic and cry,” all the blood that is currently inside of my body rapidly switched places with other blood. Did all the color want to drain dramatically from my face until I was white as a sheet or did it want to puff my cheeks out like a choleric beets? Yes, extremely both, NOW. I was telling Mr. Awkward about your letter over lunch and it happened the same way again. “All you can do is panic and cry.”  He got completely still and said “Beg your pardon?” in that too-quiet voice people use in old timey westerns right before someone flies out a saloon window boots first (if they’re lucky). And there it went again, all the blood from my brain just fell down through my jaw and pooled in my clenched fists, and all the blood from the lower body rose like an elevator through my trunk and bloomed out of my cheeks like fireworks. We were both so angry on your behalf that I couldn’t close my hands all the way and he couldn’t move his face for a few seconds. We were angry because that is not how people talk to people they claim to love.

I beg your pardon, but NOTHING ABOUT THIS IS YOUR FAULT AND YOUR PARTNER IS NOT “RIGHT ABOUT YOU.” What if I told you that somebody could be clearly going through it and also making choices to devalue and mistreat you, and one does not cancel out the impact of the other? Mean is a choice. You don’t always know precisely what to say when they are upset, but I guarantee that you don’t insult and berate them, blame them for everything that’s wrong in your life, or use their most vulnerable moments to find the cruelest thing a person could possibly say under the circumstances. This person consistently kicks you when they’re down, they kick you when you’re down, and now you’re in my inbox wondering if maybe you just need to work a little harder on the relationship. The automatic self-blame more than anything is the marker for abuse for me, because it means you’ve internalized the idea that on some level you deserve to be treated like everything you do is bad and that being emotionally drained and crushingly unhappy is just the price you pay for love. It certainly is convenient for them if all your mistakes are your fault and all their mean bullshit is also your fault. You clearly value accountability, but you’ll never make up for what your partner lacks by supplying more of your own.

“The good is amazing, the bad makes me wanna die.” To borrow from a past column, if I make a giant pot of delicious chili and hide a tiny cat turd in it, that’s eight quarts of Shit Stew now. There’s no safe serving size for abuse and no amount of amazing that someone can be that cancels out how mean they are  If you can’t trust that just yet, then trust how bad you felt when you wrote in. Any relationship that made you feel so exhausted and confused that you wanna die would have me looking around for exits, not fixes. I’m so sorry if you thought you were gonna get scripts for working on your bedside manner and instead I teleported to your house like the Terminator. “Come with me if you want to live.” But it is that bad. I’m sorry.

You say that breaking up “would feel like running away from your problems” as if running away from people who hurt you and make you miserable is a bad thing. I get it, our terrible culture means that any time you talk about quitting literally anything, someone’s gonna show up with a persistence narrative. “Quitters never win and winners never quit.” “Relationships take work!” “No pain, no gain.” Like leaving our book club for a hobby we might enjoy more is the only thing between us and putting another Nobel Prize on the shelf where we keep our EGOTs.

Whenever someone suggests that the best and only way to deal with a situation where you are unhappy is to invest even more time and energy, I want you to ask: 1) What do they win if you keep doing something that hurts you? Since the person applying pressure here is you, what do you win besides more feeling helpless, unsupported, unappreciated, and blaming yourself for all of it?

2) If you were to stick with it, when do you get to the good part? Be specific. “In the first couple of episodes of Schitt’s Creek, they need to make the mayor grotesquely unbearable so that the family will seem sympathetic by comparison, you can skip or fast forward through his parts without missing much.” I can (and did) work with that. When do you get to enjoy your relationship instead of feeling like it’s a job where you’re perpetually on a performance improvement plan? It’s been a year. More effort from you has not made anything better, it has only gotten worse. That’s because you cannot love another person into being okay, and you definitely cannot love someone who treats you like shit out of treating you like shit. It is very convenient for abusers to frame “running away” as something you’re not allowed to do, which is why I suggest running away from them as often as you can just because you can. “You can’t simply  run away from your problems!” Let’s find out!

If you need a how-to review for breaking up with someone who might not let you go quietly, here are some suggestions:

1. Make a safety plan. Leaving an abuser is the most dangerous time. Better to have the plan and not need it than need it and not have it. Everybody’s safety plan is gonna look different. One thing I might add to yours: If your ex threatens self-harm, what steps could you take to stay safe and stick to your boundaries? I know you worry about them, but there is no problem on earth for which your compliance and continued exposure to someone who hurts you is the cure.
2. Box up any stuff of theirs that was in your living space and get it ready to ship. With your safety plan in mind, if you can stealthily snag anything of yours that’s at their place without alerting them to the imminent breakup, do it, especially any important documents. Anything that can be replaced is probably their stuff now, write it off as the Cost of Freedom.
3. Make a list of ways they have to get in contact with you: Phone numbers, social media handles and platforms, email addresses, etc. Make a note of any mutuals who might be tempted to play peacemaker or help them get around your blocks.
4. Compose a breakup message. Sample: “I’m so sorry, but this is not working for me anymore and I am ending our relationship. I’ll drop your stuff in the mail by [date] and send you tracking info. After that, I need a clean break, so I won’t be replying to messages, and I’d ask that you not contact me. I’m sorry things didn’t work out and I wish you well.”
5. I know people think that texting a breakup is cruel and that people we love are always owed at least one face-to-face conversation. If this were a relationship where you weren’t being abused into being this person’s on-call crisis support and punching bag, that might make more sense. But you’ve tried to break up before and been sucked back in, and they know that they can use their own suffering to summon you whenever they like. If they don’t wanna break up, how you did it will just become part of the story of how you left them because you are mean and selfish, etc.Sometimes you gotta choose what’s safest and least painful for you and let other people tell the stories that they need to tell about why you did it.
6. Communicating the decision is more important than arguing your reasons. If you want to supply reasons for the breakup, make them all about you. “I’m so sorry, I love you, but I know that I am not happy with how things are and this is the right decision for me.” “This isn’t working for me and I think I will be better off if we stop trying.”
7. Please know that you’re never in a million years gonna convince this person they were being abusive. I’m not sure I convinced you that they are abusive, but if I convince you of one thing today let it be that it’s okay to break up with someone who doesn’t make you happy even if they are not abusive, and if I convince you of two things let it be that if you even breathe the a-word in this person’s direction they’re gonna DARVO-reverse-Uno you until you apologize for being abusive to them.
8. When you’re ready, send the message. Then you can either block them or use filters to make sure that their messages do not show up for you.
9. Tell mutuals what’s going on. Sample: “Ex and I broke up as of today, and I’ve asked for a clean break with no further contact. I’m letting the people who care about both of us know in case you want to check on them and so that you know not to pass on messages or news about me to them or vice versa. Sorry to make it awkward, thanks for your understanding and support!” Tell your support system what’s going on without the part where they might wanna check on your ex.
10. Mute notifications on your phone for the rest of that day, take yourself out for a treat, and drop their stuff in the mail on the way.
11. Expect an extinction burst where they try everything they can to make you respond and pay attention to them one last time. You are accustomed to being their caretaker, and it’s going to be the hardest thing to just tune them out. It will feel terrible, like you are turning your back on them. If guilt doesn’t work, they will demand closure. But you can’t give other people closure. Closure for them starts with believing you that it’s over and you want to be left alone. They will get that (or not) in their own sweet time. The more you try to fix it instead of staying gone, the longer it will suck.You must disengage and let whatever they do run its course. Reminding them of your decision counts as engaging. If they send you 27 messages with no answer and you respond to the 28th one to tell them to leave you alone, now they know it only takes 28 messages to get your attention.
12. Over the next several months, be very gentle with yourself. Let people who care about you pet you and tell you how smart and pretty you are. If you can access therapy, this is a very good time to do that.
13. Grieve. For the good parts of being with this person, of which I do not doubt there were some. For yourself, a person who was working so hard to take care of everybody he forgot to take care of himself.
14. Heal. Let anger do its work. Let time do its work. Both are cleansing if you let them be.
15. Down the road, when you’re ready to date again, try to steer clear of people who expect a lot of emotional and crisis support from you out of the gate and people who have no other friends or social connections. They might be perfectly lovely people, but until you remove the invisible “How can I help?” sign on your own forehead they are maybe not your safest bets. There’s more to loving and being loved than being useful.
16. Always steer clear of anyone who is mean to you or mean to other people in front of you, especially anyone who tries to explain why they were mean or why what they did wasn’t mean instead of saying “I’m sorry.” Those were never your people.

You can’t run away from every problem, but you can break up with people who don’t make you happy.

Hi Captain!

I (she/her, 20) am the youngest of three sisters from a very close family. My oldest sister, Shouter (26, she/her), is a lovely, kind, caring person. She’s really generous, and thoughtful and loves our family and her partner deeply. But she has always had a short fuse, especially when she gets anxious or stressed out, and can be wound up or teased easily.

Shouter has been going out with the lovely Partner (27, he/him) for about 4-5 years now. They love each other very much, and in general I think they are very good for each other. However, they have always been a couple that bickers, and occasionally (probably about once every trip I take to visit them) this will turn into a fight, which normally means Partner teasing/joking a little too hard, and Shouter ending up, well, shouting at him, seemingly out of nowhere. I have never seen Partner shout back, he normally just leaves the room and lets her cool off, seeming to find the whole thing kind of funny because of the absurdity of the outburst.

Obviously, these interactions make me (and my other sister who is usually also there when we see each other) feel very uncomfortable. Shouter can change the mood of the room very quickly, and we find it hard to know how to react without feeling like we are getting involved in someone else’s relationship. This is especially tricky because we are often part of the “joke” which sets off Shouter, but Partner ends up the only one getting yelled at. For an example, on the most recent occasion we were joking about Other Sister bringing a bed frame from our family home when she drove up to help them move, even though Shouter has already said she didn’t want her to bring the bed frame. Annoying, but harmless. As with most of these occasions, I understand the emotion behind the outburst – in this case Parter genuinely hasn’t been helping prepare for the move properly and is leaving a lot of tasks up to her. 

I tried to talk to her about this with Other Sister the morning after the shouting. We tried to keep the conversation focused on how it makes us feel uncomfortable, without speculating on how Partner feels or their relationship. She got very defensive and was upset that we didn’t understand why she had been stressed/upset/wound up/out of control. She said she felt she had been disrespected and undermined. She also said she never reacts like this to Partner except when we/our parents are around. I tried to explain that we understand she is under a lot of pressure at the moment but I don’t think it’s ever really justified to talk to Partner like that. She didn’t take this very well and the discussion was ended.

I love my sister very much, but she is a grown adult acting like a child. In future, I am going to try and be more aware of how jokes between her sisters and Partner at her expense might make her feel (ganged up on?), but this reaction is definitely unjustified. She has previously been to therapy for a short period over her anxiety, and Other Sister and I think an outside person to talk to about how to communicate/react in these situations would be useful, but I don’t know how to have productive conversations with Shouter about this. We are usually a very close family, but it is hard to approach her about this without making her feel ambushed or like we’re all against her. Do you have any suggestions or scripts? 

Thank you!!

Silent Sister

Dear Silent Sister:

I get very uncomfortable around yelling even when it’s not directed at me, and I think you handled things pretty well when you told your sister how uncomfortable it makes you. I do have some advice, but first, a (hopefully funny) story about siblings and when one person is notoriously easily provoked and when emotional reactions you observe don’t seem to add up.

When we were kids, my older brother Roland used to spend the entire 8:00 a.m. Sunday Mass at St. Joseph’s In The Pines in Charlton, Massachusetts dropping the rankest silent-but-deadly farts in human history. If I reacted to the stench by flinching, covering my mouth and nose, or trying to wave to dispel the noxious cloud, I got in trouble for acting up. If stealth mode failed and he accidentally let out an audible squeaker or rumbler, he would dramatically turn my way, mime gagging and doubling over, and pretend I was the terrorist. If I tried to mime-defend my honor by waving the cloud back at him, I got in trouble for acting up. If I tried to defend myself in the car after church, I got in trouble for tattling.

We didn’t always have hot dogs and baked beans on Saturday nights, but whenever Roland’s methane reserves were low he had other tricks: Droning hymns in an Elmer Fudd voice (“Bwess us oh Woahd we awe poow in spiwit, bwess us oh Woahd ouw God…”) or subbing in our last name (rhymes with “Jesus”), doing a weird secret handshake where he tickled my palm with his pinky during the “peace be with yous,” slowly edging closer and closer to me whenever we knelt down for the long Eucharistic prayers until his whole weight was leaning on me like our Great Dane did at home, daring me to flinch. I tried to dissociate as much as possible, keeping my eyes trained on the distressingly ripped Jesus (kinda like this but even more Rizzen) on the life-sized photorealistic crucifix that hung above the altar and praying that either a stranger-danger kidnapper would steal both my brothers away or that David Bowie from Labyrinth would come and propose a deal. It never worked.

We always sat in the front left pew closest to the altar, with Roland on the far left by the aisle, then me, then our mom, then my younger brother all the way to the right closest to the center aisle. Usually there were a few empty pews behind us (can’t imagine why) before the rest of the early worship regulars arranged themselves sparsely through the nave, mostly old people and the families of the altar boys. Meaning, everybody in the building could see the show except my mom. The Old Gold Filters she smoked back then had destroyed her sense of smell (a mercy in this case), and when her focus was divided between reverently participating in the service and keeping one eye on our hyperactive younger brother while he bounced off the pew walls, picked the scabs off any recent bug bites, tried to stop the bleeding with tissues from her purse, and then compulsively shredded the tissues plus any unsecured church bulletins or collection envelopes he could get his hands on into a nest of sticky, bloody paper, her peripheral vision could only catch me, not Señor Skunkass to my left while he expertly wound me up and set me off, week after week after week.

My adult relationship with my brother is very different, and I don’t think that either you or your shouty sister are playing the exact same roles we did back then. I thought of this story because your sister said that fights with her partner like this happen only when your family is around, only when her partner has been making jokes at her expense, and only when you all join him in ragging on her. In other words, these fights only happen when there is an audience. A very specific audience. If you’ve ever seen the movie Gaslight (George Cukor, 1944) that spawned the term we all know and can’t get away from (because once you see it you realize it’s everywhere), then you’ll know that the abusive husband terrorizes his wife where nobody can see and then expertly engineers it so that her moments of maximum emotional distress unfold in front of others. Their servants, the neighbors, her doctors, her friends and the guests at a fancy party don’t see what he did to provoke her, they just see her breaking down “seemingly out of nowhere” and how calm and concerned and charming he is by comparison.

My brother didn’t treat me like that when we were alone. It was only fun for him with an audience. My mom did get often get mad at me if I failed to “just ignore” either of my brothers when they antagonized me at home, but she was a specific kind of extra mad when my failure to pretend that nothing bad was happening reflected on her in a place that was important to her like church. She would always say, “Your brothers only do it to get a rise out of you, giving them attention is just giving them what they want.” And she wasn’t wrong, or at least, not completely. There are many instances where making a conscious decision to be boring and withhold attention from difficult and annoying people starves them of the stimulation they seek and (hopefully) motivates them to either find a different way of interacting or fuck off and go find someone else to bother.

But our mom was missing a crucial piece of the puzzle: My brother’s real prize was her attention, harnessed and expertly wielded at me. He won when he could make me furious enough to annoy and embarrass her without getting caught, he won again whenever she whipped her head around like a cobra to give me the special glare that meant ‘you will NOT be getting a donut after church, Young Lady’ while he gazed angelically ahead at Buff Jesus, and he won yet again in the church basement if he could drag out eating his Boston Kreme from Dunkin’ in tiny, tiny nibbles like he was fucking Stuart Little or something while staring directly into my hungry eyes. (Catholics aren’t supposed to eat before Holy Communion, so we ate breakfast after church and cruised through Mass on the fumes of last night’s dinner. Sometimes the only thing louder than the farts was the sound of my own stomach growling). Sometimes if I could look pitiful enough, like some desolate urchin (a skill I cultivated and nurtured like only someone raised on the Compleat Werks of L.M. Montgomery and Frances Hodgson Burnett could), one of the old people might take pity on me and sneak me whatever donut holes or waxy crullers were left after the good donuts were gone to hide in my pocket for later. If I failed the stealth check, Roland would never stoop so low as to tattle on me. He’d get our younger brother to do it, knowing that if I got caught with forbidden purse-Munchkins or embarrassed our family by lunging at his stupid face and pummeling it into the peeling linoleum floor in front of the whole congregation, I would be in trouble all day and he would get off Scot-free.

I am not saying that your sister’s partner is secretly a movie villain who is pulling all of your strings like puppets. And you know these people, I don’t, so if you are concerned about her yelling then you’re probably right to be. Hopefully your sister heard you and will seek some help to lower her overall anxiety levels.

But I want to probe the perception that your sister acted the way she did “seemingly out of nowhere.” The fact that your sister’s partner slacked off in prepping for the move and then found it funny when she melted down from the stress in front of everyone does not exactly read to me as “what a super chill dude that is, how unfairly he is treated.” And I want to gently suggest that if everybody in a room is joking about one person, and that person not only isn’t laughing but gets visibly more and more upset the longer it goes on, then those jokes are not funny and I’m not even sure we should still call them jokes. You undoubtedly meant them as jokes, but they sure didn’t land that way. The “you” in here is more a question for her partner than for anybody else, but if you know someone you love is stressed to the max, easily provoked, and sensitive about a certain topic, then why would you push that particular button and invite others to take turns jabbing at it? As much you wish your sister reacted differently that night, where was anybody’s reaction to say, “I am so sorry, we were trying to be funny but I can see that we really upset you. Are you okay? How can we help?”

You can’t control what your sister does in the wake of your heart-to-heart, and you can’t control how she and your partner handle their relationship going forward. If it’s all as good as you say and this is out of character, then they will be fine. But here’s what you can control: You now have information that your sister does not enjoy being roasted when you all get together. She feels ganged up on and disrespected. What do you want to do with that information? The roles you played as kids and have been playing up to now don’t have to be permanent. What if, for the duration of one dinner, you yes-anded her jokes and only her jokes for a change, just to see what happens? Let’s assume that her partner isn’t weaponizing your presence to kick her when she’s down, but what if it’s as simple as, next time you’re all together and he starts in on her, you decline to join him? If this really is all in good fun, then he will follow you to a shiny new topic. If he doubles down, like, the only thing he wants to do when you’re all hanging out is gang up on your sister, then that’s interesting information. Since they’re known to bicker, and you know you don’t love that, remember that you also have the option to make yourself scarce. “Oh, are you guys doing foreplay again? Ew. I’m going to bed.”

The story about my brother and St. Joseph’s of the Sacred Fart is a funny story now (at least to me) because I’m the one telling it and because I’m telling it now. Looking back, I can have compassion for how deeply feral and strange my siblings and I were. Our poor mom, jonesing hard for an Old Gold and just wanting one peaceful hour a week to commune with her muscular and forgiving Lord (28 minutes if Father Holland was presiding). The poor congregants who wanted the same, especially any unwitting newcomers who sat behind us and then moved back a pew every week until they found a zone of safety. The littlest altar boy whose job was to ring the bell during the Eucharistic prayers when the priest raised his hands in a certain gesture, but he was so terrified of missing his cue he’d ring the bell as loud as he could any time the priest even looked like he was gonna raise his hands above his waist. I can laugh now because as adults my brother and don’t treat each other that way, not ever. We rag on each other plenty, but never to the pain, and never as a performance to entice other people to join in. But back then, when it was still happening? It was excruciating to not be seen or believed.

My brother isn’t the only  bully (reformed) I’ve ever met, and part that has never quite healed is the déjà vu hangover from all the times I have been minding my own business, somebody went out of their way to mess with me, and bystanders who didn’t have shit to say about the jerk’s behavior are suddenly certain that anything I do that isn’t “stare silently at the proud nipples of the Savior and hope it passes” is proof that I’m “too sensitive” and that is somehow worse than anything anyone could possibly do or say to me. I’m a big lady anyhow, but if my atoms had physically expanded every time some useless adult told me to “stop overreacting” and “be the bigger person” when I was a child begging someone, anyone to even acknowledge what I was reacting to, I would block out the fucking sun.

Letter Writer, that’s my baggage, not yours, but this is me disclosing that I am extremely sensitive to this dynamic. In my experience, people rarely snap “out of nowhere,” and the key word in “seemingly out of nowhere” is “seemingly.” So if I see someone get very upset in a way that seems out of character for them or have a big reaction that seems out of proportion to the circumstances I observed, this is what I wanna know, pretty much in this order.

1. Are they okay?
2. Is there anything I can do right now that would help? (A glass of water, a snack, personal space, quiet, a break, separation from the person they are fighting with, somewhere to sit down, a hug, getting someone else who can help)
3. Once they are calmer and able to talk, “Can you tell me more about what just happened?” No assumptions or implied criticism, because I can’t possibly know how reasonable their reaction was until I know what they were reacting to. There is a reason for what they did even if I don’t know what it is, and I’m only seeing a small part of the picture. If what I observed does not explain what happened, then what does the rest of that iceberg look like?

There can still be accountability once you know more. Maybe their reasons don’t add up, or maybe you decide that your own boundaries mean opting out when anybody behaves like that no matter the reason. But we’re never gonna make things worse by approaching each other with more curiosity than judgment.

In closing, I don’t think you’re wrong to be concerned about your sister’s behavior, and if someone were screaming at me the way she screamed at her partner, I’d want the other people present to notice and not pretend that everything is fine. But I think your sister actually gave you a ton of information about what she needs from you, and now you have the option to show solidarity in more directions than one.

Hi Cap, 

Do you have any advice for removing oneself from a WhatsApp group, while wishing to remain in touch irl? 

I’ve read your advice on how to leave a friend group, and plan on actioning it if needed, but on reflection I realise that my main source of discomfort is one particular WhatsApp group chat, which I find to be negative and depressing, as most members only use it to vent or rant – there’s never any positive commentary or much support or interest shown in one another. 

I realise (thanks to you!) that it’s on me to decide what and who I want to give space and energy to in my life, and to communicate that appropriately. But I’d love to try continuing with the 2-3 irl meet ups we have a year, without the weekly exposure to a depressing WhatsApp group. 

Some background: I (she/her) joined a new parents group five years ago. The people, it turns out, aren’t ‘my’ people for a variety of reasons, some of which (like political views) complicate things more than others (like a differing sense of humour). I was going to list them, but I realise (thanks to you!) that saying ‘I’m not sure these people are right for me’ is enough of a reason. 

I also now see that new parent groups are a terrible idea!! (for me personally). Parenting IS hard, and I do need support and advice occasionally, but a bunch of other people who are in the exact same boat isn’t all that helpful to me – it’s just my issues, times five. I get far better support from friends with more parenting experience that know me well, know my flaws and love me anyway. Added to this is that fact that during the years when new parent groups traditionally become close (by hanging out at the park or coffee shop during those long childcare days), we were in a pandemic. So we didn’t really get to bond – I had hoped that as our children grew and the pressure eased slightly, we might be able to grow closer. We only really know each other as struggling new mothers in a pandemic, so haven’t really got the chance to get to know each other in a real or more holistic sense. 

For what it’s worth, I don’t vent or rant (it’s just not ‘me’, and it makes me feel worse). I do have other friend groups that are supportive and helpful when I’m having a tough time. For my part, I try to stay positive and supportive. But after five years of messaging “I’m so sorry to hear that, that sounds so tough. Would it be helpful if I did [supportive thing like picking up groceries]?” only to hear about the same issues cropping up again and again, year after year, without any action taken, I’m approaching being done.

The group organises about 5-6 irl meet-ups a year, of which I normally attend 2-3. A few years ago I got some pushback over not making it to all of the meet-ups, but I made it clear that I would make it to what I could manage and held that boundary. This experience gave me general anxiety with this group as I felt they were asking too much of me for how close we are(n’t). What little time and energy I have is precious.

I neither love nor loathe our irl meet ups, they are always just ‘fine’. I return home a little flat from all the venting, but happy to have got out of the house. I’m curious to know if I would have more energy for meeting IRL if I wasn’t already depleted from reading about all their woes all the time. I also feel that it’s relevant to mention that the group tends to be driven by one person, who pushes to organise most meet ups, while one other individual is the source of most of (but not all) the negativity, and that I may not be the only one feeling this way. I considered being more proactive in developing individual relationships with other members of this group, in the hope of developing more nuanced relationships with them, but I don’t have the time or energy for that at the moment. Again, they may feel the same about me – potentially interested in developing a friendship at another time, but not right now while life is so busy. After all, they haven’t reached out to me individually either. 

For what it’s worth, I work in a public-facing role in my city centre, and see everyone I know including these people, at work on a regular basis. So I would prefer not to lift out of the group entirely, though I appreciate (again, thanks to you!) that that is an option, and that I could leave the group and still have pleasant interactions with them when inevitably I run into them at work. 

How do I even communicate my wishes? Do I say that I’m taking a break from WhatsApp groups and to message me directly (ie just one of them) if there is a meet up happening? Is that rude, like “I don’t want to know about your day-to-day but I do want the (supposedly) ‘fun’ bits of our friendship”? I’d be adding an extra complication to organising meetups too, which I don’t love as I prefer to be respectful of peoples time and I never organise anything myself, so it seems rude to make it harder for those that do. 

I suppose the tldr is that I have a group of friends that could be nice to see a few times a year, but the wonders of WhatsApp make me feel like I’m seeing them every week – and that’s too much. What to do about this very 2024 dilemma? 

Gratefully, 

Hopeful But Realistic 

Hello Hopeful But Realistic:

I mean this as a compliment: Your letter is like if Hamlet delivered his famous “To Be Or Not To Be” soliloquy but it was about experiencing FOMO related to an infrequent, completely optional social activity he does not enjoy with people he does not really like. Like Hamlet, your self-awareness is only matched by your awareness of the inherent ironies of your situation. For instance, the way you (correctly) recognize that if you leave the place where the group gathers and makes plans, then it will be on you to make the effort to organize alternatives and then (correctly) admit that you won’t be doing that? Brava, sincerely.

Now that the little Hamlet who lives inside me recognizes the Hamlet in you, let’s get you out of this sea of opposing troubles without anybody having to take up arms.

Part 1: Taking Leave

First, pick two people in the existing WhatsApp group, ideally a) the person that that you like the best and would be most likely to want to hang out with someday when things are less hectic (but not really) and b) the person who does the most work to plan events and keep everyone connected. If there are more than two, that’s okay, just start with two for now. If you spend more than five minutes thinking about this, pick the first two people who come to mind.

Once you’ve got your picks, you’re going to send them versions of the same private, direct message.

Sample, for the organizer: “Hey, I wanted to let you know that I’m taking a break from our group chat, so if you want to reach me or if anyone asks, the best contact is ____________. I so appreciate the work you do to keep us all connected and I look forward to seeing your face the next time we’re all in the same place at the same time.”

Sample for the potential friend: “Hey, I’m taking a break from our WhatsApp chat for the time being, but I don’t want to lose touch with all the great people here between now and the next big gathering. Can we trade info? The best way to reach me is _________. Have a great week and hopefully see you around!”

Adapt those in whatever way makes sense to you given what you know about the people you’re writing to. The key talking points are:

1. You’re not leaving, you’re “taking a break.” Maybe you’ll be back at some point, maybe you won’t, the beauty is that you don’t have to decide right now. Pro tip: Sometimes people say they are taking a break from social media to avoid giving offense, just keep in mind that only really works for if you–and the people you’re taking a break from–are not heavy social media users in the first place and if you are not connected on other platforms.

2. Why are you taking a break? Irrelevant. Not only are you not required to show your work, I strongly recommend against offering reasons and I recommend against it even harder in the unlikely event that someone actually asks. I doubt any of these people are thinking about you all that much unless you are directly in front of them, and if any of them are, they should get used to disappointment. Your critiques of a group you’re leaving anyway are neither helpful nor necessary, and your complicated feelings about the intersections of public-facing work, parenthood, and social life are your own business. You’re getting what you want (namely, peace and freedom) out of this, so don’t fuck it up on the landing! “Fixing” relationships and group dynamics is for stuff you want to participate in.

3. You’ve really enjoyed getting to know so many great people, and you’d love to trade contact info so that you don’t lose touch completely. You look forward to running into them via work or at a future meetup or whatever occasion and venue seems most likely, and in the meantime people can reach you at _______________.

That’s it.Once you send those messages privately, you’re free to delete WhatsApp from your phone knowing that you’ve done your part to make sure that nobody has to wonder where you went or feel obligated to check on you, you’ve expressed genuine appreciation without expectation of anything in return, and you’ve left a door open so that anybody who wants to find you knows how. Pretty much all you have to do is be pleasant when you do run into everyone else in the course of your work, and you’re free at any point to invite people you actually like to attend stuff you host for your real friends on a case by case basis and see what develops.

Part 2: Only Connect

Speaking of real friends: Even Hamlet had his Horatio. When was the last time you texted yours? For the love of all that is sacred to you, before the week is out, I beg you to contact a person from your life who likes you and whom you like back in an uncomplicated way, someone for whom making an effort does not summon forth your inner Hamlet. Parenting is hard, making friends as an adult is hard, sustaining connections over time and distance is hard, but we’re all we’ve got and right now your loneliness is as palpable as your anxiety about this specific group of Not Quite Your People. Remind yourself what it’s like to just be silly and relaxed around somebody who doesn’t live in your house. Please.

Dear Captain Awkward,

I’m in a relationship for the last year. We started out as best friends for two years and it slowly evolved into a relationship. We have similar interests and he started hanging out with my son early on and doing fun things together. We never labeled anything and just sort of let it happen. My son just turned 12 and his father passed away when he was young and he has no memory of him. My boyfriend is the first man I have ever trusted around my son and if it didn’t work out there would be no new men in our lives and my boyfriend (CJ) would always play a role in his life.

My son just asked me if he can call CJ dad and said he’s tired of being the only kid without a father. I told him we can discuss it but that CJ is in our lives and loves us both regardless of what they call each other. I also explained that some moms have lots of boyfriends over the year and being a boyfriend doesn’t automatically make men a dad. He said that CJ does dad things with him and loves us both very much so that makes us a family. CJ said he would do whatever my son wants to feel happy but I want to make sure we do the right thing. CJ’s family adores us and his parents treat him the same as their grandchildren from their other son, and they treat me equally (better actually lol) than his brothers partner.

Should we let him call CJ dad??

Thank you.

Hello!

Here’s your periodic reminder that I’m not a parent, so any advice about what’s best for your son is gonna be sheer guesswork coming from me.

Maybe here’s where I can help: What’s the right move here for you? 

In your heart of hearts, when you wrote to me did you want to be talked into letting this happen or talked out of it?

Feelings Check: If you were to say yes, does that make you feel warm, excited and hopeful or does it make you feel something else? Grief for what might have been, perhaps? Guilty that you “owe” your child a dad and you’d be letting him down if you prioritized your misgivings? Pressure to escalate or define a relationship you’re not quite ready to define? And are your misgivings more about protecting your son from being let down or disappointed or are they more about protecting your heart? Feelings are weird. They are also information. Try to pull yours out and look at them without judging them or yourself.

You say of your relationship with CJ, “We never labeled anything and just sort of let it happen.” I love a good friends-to-lovers tale! I’ve also read many, many letters where one person wants some kind of formal recognition of their relationship (everything from claiming a boyfriend/girlfriend/partner label, hearing/saying the words “I love you” out loud, being “social media official” or otherwise public about the relationship, being exclusive or committing to being non-exclusive together, to stuff that carries legal and financial implications like marriage, adoption, shared housing, business partnerships, or artistic collaboration) and the other person has a more relaxed approach along the lines of “It’s just a piece of paper” or “But labels shouldn’t define us!”

The person who wants more clarity is often afraid to push for it out of fear of ruining a good thing, which begs the question, if telling the truth about what you want from a relationship can “ruin” that relationship then you might have bigger issues. The person who claims it’s not a big deal rarely has a good answer for “Well, if it’s not a big deal either way, then why not just do what the other person wants?” aka a sure sign that something is in fact A Very Big Deal and worth approaching with care and caution until everyone is sure about what they want.

In that story, are any of those people you? Are any of them CJ? Right now you seem to be justifying the decision as “I guess nothing will fundamentally change if we add this label” but is that actually true? Maybe it’s time to do more accurate labeling all around. For example, CJ said he would do whatever your son wanted, but he didn’t say what he wanted. Do you know what he wants? Does he? Is it your hope/plan/wish to co-parent together in an official sense down the road? Could either/both of you make a list of things that would change and would not change if the word “Dad” entered the chat, and do your lists overlap?

If I could wave a magic wand right now I’d send you and CJ away for a long, lazy weekend alone together somewhere to pamper the shit out of yourselves and have the “So, I know we’re doing this, but are we DOING THIS-doing this?” conversation about your relationship timeline and goals that I can feel fermenting underneath your question.Once you and CJ are on the same page with each other about how you want things to work, then you can figure out the right stuff to tell your son. The kid is absolutely trying to Step-Parent Trap you and the least you can do is make sure the adults aren’t divided before they’re conquered.

For the record, I think how you explained things to your son demonstrates that you listen to him and respect his feelings enough to be honest with him, and that’s lovely to read. Whatever decision you ultimately make about the word “Dad,” your son is clearly surrounded by people who love him and who are able to collaborate in his best interest, and that can only be a good thing. Of course you want your son to be happy, but there are lots of possible happy endings out there for this story, and none of them work unless you are happy. Are you happy? What would make you happiest? The more honest and aware you are about that, the better decisions you’ll make.

This question came in a while ago and I was holding onto it for possible book inclusion after sending a private draft reply to the person who asked, but the manuscript has changed shape since then and it’s time to release it into the world.

Dear Captain Awkward,

I’m about to become a dad and I’m terrified. I’m not just scared of stuff like school shootings and global collapse, but also that I will somehow screw up my kid so bad that they’ll have a terrible life, or they’ll hate me and want nothing to do with me when they’re grown up.

Part of my problem is that I have no role model or template for what I’m even supposed to do here. I lost both of my parents to an accident before I was 10, and my younger siblings and I ended up being split up and raised by other relatives who lived in different states. Those relatives fed us and got us through school and out into the world, and I know they did their best to love us and make sure we could still see each other a couple times a year. But we were never a family again, and now that we’re all grown up, we barely talk.

Addiction runs rampant in our family. Substance abuse is part of why I don’t have parents anymore, and both of my siblings and the adults who had custody of them have struggled with alcohol and drug problems and had brushes with the law. I can’t help feeling like it’s partly my fault. I’m the oldest by a few years, and I feel like if I’d tried harder and looked out for them more instead of being so wrapped up in myself, they’d be in better shape.

I’d probably be just like them if not for my step-grandma, a former nurse who was adamant that I never get involved with substances and who made sure I got an education. Thanks to her, I’ve managed to graduate college, find a stable career that I mostly like, and approximate life as a functional adult. We used to be in touch even after she divorced my grandfather and he died, but she was living in a nursing home when COVID hit and died in the first wave. There was no funeral to go to and I don’t even know where she’s buried. If I did I’d have them put “Here lies my last stable relative” on the grave. Or maybe just, “Thank you.”

My amazing wife has a good (if not always great) relationship with her parents, so I guess our children will have at least some functional role models in their lives. She keeps reassuring me that when the time comes, I’ll do just fine, and we’re both trying to read as much as we can about babies and how to keep them alive throughout her pregnancy. But whenever her side of the family gets together for big celebrations, I feel like an alien visiting from another planet. And I can feel them all eyeing me with trepidation every time they hear another story about someone in my family getting out of rehab or almost losing custody of their kids. They thought it was weird and sad when my side of the church was almost empty at our wedding, but now I think they’re relieved.

We’re the first people among our friends to take this step, and all of them are excited for us, but one of my oldest friends has made a few jokes about how our kid will be the “first pancake” (like the shitty test pancake that ends up raw or too burnt to eat so you know how long to cook the other ones) and that he’s still not sure how I fooled my wife into thinking I was “dad material.” Thankfully he didn’t make the first joke in front of my very pregnant, very nervous wife, or I would have had to kill him. I asked him what he meant by the second one and he said something about how “closed off” I am and that he’s always thought of me as kind of a loner, not a family man. We’ve always been pretty harsh and dark with our jokes, and called each other feral pieces of shit our whole lives, so it wasn’t totally out of bounds, but I keep wondering if he’s trying to tell me something.

Am I doomed to mess up yet another generation? What if I’m too selfish and closed off to be anybody’s dad? And how do I avoid being one of the dads that people write to you about, the ones whose adult kids dread visiting them and need years of therapy to process their horrible childhoods? In about three months the people at the hospital are going to hand me a tiny human and I could use some operating instructions here.

Thanks for any wisdom you can provide,

Finals Are Tomorrow, And I Did Some Of The Reading But Not All Of It

Dear Finals Are Tomorrow,

Congratulations! I hope that everything about extruding the baby into the world goes as smoothly as possible for everyone involved.

People ask me for parenting advice all the time and usually the answer is, I have not the foggiest idea what to tell you. I’ve never played for those stakes. I’ve never had to walk around with my entire heart outside my body and send it to a place they have something called “active shooter drills.” My cats had to go to the vet for a routine checkup and shots this week, it made them upset and one of them (Daniel) hid away for most of the night and wouldn’t eat, and I was a wreck of anxiety. How are all of you DOING this?

I’m not a parent, but I am a chronic and inveterate observer of human behavior, and you asked me, so I will tell you what I have observed in case it helps at all.

First, every parent I know, no matter how prepared, describes leaving the hospital with a brand new baby for the first time the exact same way: “Wait, they just…? …hand you…? …a tiny helpless baby…? …and say ‘good luck’…and you can just ….leave? Shouldn’t A Grown-up step in at some point? Oh shit, have they mistaken *me* for a Grown-Up? Oh no, no, no, that can’t be right.”  One of my friends from grad school made a short experimental film during her first pregnancy where she inter-cut stock footage of old-timey carnival rides with fetal development milestones from medical training films to mimic the fear and exhilaration of falling forward into the unknown. I can only speculate, but I imagine that this near-universal experience of pre- and post-natal terror is a sensation similar to stage fright: Your body understands that you care a lot about doing a good job, and it knows that all the preparation in the world is not the same as Doing The Thing For Real, so it gives you the gift of a massive adrenaline spike, spins you around three times, and shoves you toward the light.

Again, I only have observation to go on here, but once the baby is born you’ve got a pretty large window where being a good parent is like, 10% about supporting the head, getting vaccines, avoiding diaper rash, and following other “how is babby stay alive” instructions from the panoply of wifely research, parenting books, knowledgeable in-laws, and pediatricians you have access to and 90% about being a team with your wife. Judging from the failure cases proliferating anywhere relationship advice is sought, sold, or given online, the two biggest stressors on brand new moms I routinely see are this: 1) They feel like they have to parent their partner at the same time they are figuring out how to heal their own body and parent a baby. For instance, the partner is theoretically willing to do their share of feeding, diaper changes, bathing, etc. and/or prepare food and do household chores, but they don’t take initiative and need so much coaxing and coaching every single time that it becomes “not worth it” to bother. 2) Their partner does not back them up when intrusive people (esp. in-laws) overstep boundaries in the name of “helping.” Based on what you’ve told me, neither of these particularly sound like you, but if there’s any stuff that your wife routinely handles to keep your household running, now’s the time to make sure you know how to handle it solo while also staying employed and keeping all of your own balls in the air.

From there you’ve got several years of being the world’s greatest dad by virtue of being your child’s best and only dad. They will know you as the smiling man with the big warm arms and the gentle hands that make them feel safe. As long as they are safe, warm, fed, and loved, babies don’t give a single fuck about your deep-seated issues. It’s one of their best qualities. Their second best quality (taken from someone who knows about as much about raising one as you do) is that the moment they feel unsafe, cold, hungry, or unloved, they are pretty excellent at giving immediate, actionable feedback. Like, they can’t use words or do anything with their adorable wee useless hands, and you will definitely need to anticipate and keep track of certain stuff like ambient temperatures and how long it’s been since the last naptime, etc. but “Crying = figure out why and see if you can fix it” is a classic feedback loop that will get you pretty far.

From there, what I’ve got sums up as “Children are people, and people are not objects.” As we  fast-forward to identifying the main sources of lasting trauma, conflict, ongoing power struggles, guilt, anxiety, and avoidance in adult parent-child relationships that I see in my inbox and try to work our way backwards to something you can use, that’s basically what you need to know. Children are people. People are not things. If you treat them like things, you will inevitably do damage. I’m going to steer clear of the worst case scenarios of physical abuse, sexual abuse, or outright neglect and abandonment. It’s not that these things are exactly rare, but a) I assume you are not going to do any of them and b) in the unlikely event you did it would be *very* obvious why your kids stopped speaking to you and you wouldn’t be writing to me about it anyhow. When I meet small-to-intermediate-sized antagonists in my inbox, they usually take some combination of these shapes:

1. Parents who treat their kids like their property, the legal definition of which includes the right to abuse, transform, and destroy. They think that their kids are something they created. A lot of these fights come down to questions of identity and a perception that a harsh world is justification for being as cruel as possible to their children in preparation (but not a good reason to make the world less harsh). They often show up in letters here as “I know my dad was just doing the best he could when he (re-enacted Full Metal Jacket in my Cub Scout troop)(threw away all my toys because I got a bad grade once)(policed my gender until it made me want to die)(Insert any ‘I’m just awful to you because I love you so much’ example of your choice here), but I have a kid now and it’s really not okay for him to do that stuff anymore.”
2. Parents who treat their kids like mirrors. They are by and large ambitious, successful people, so they expect perfect, successful kids who prove to the world that the parents get an ‘A’ in parenting. These kids can’t possibly struggle, fail at anything, have disabilities or exist in non-thin non-standard bodies, wear “unflattering” clothes, or experience upsetting feelings like “anger” or “loneliness” because any vulnerability in the child exposes flaws in the parent. One telltale sign of these is when the kid is afraid to tell the parents about medical conditions, job loss, or other heartbreaks because not only will the parents not help with whatever it is, dealing with their waves of denial and disappointment on top of having to deal with the actual problem will make everything 100 times worse. When these parents look at their kids, they’re looking for stuff to fix or improve, not stuff to enjoy, like they’re so caught up in what their kid should be like that they can’t like the one they have.
3. Parents who treat their kids like shaky investments. Think: “I fed you, housed you, clothed you, sent you to school, and all the other bare minimum stuff in the ‘parent’ job description, so now you owe me forever! You owe me obedience, you owe me compliance, you owe me all your money, you owe me a consistent level of achievement, you owe me following the career path I choose for you, you owe me on-demand access to your living space and time and attention, you owe me every holiday forever, you owe me a say in every choice you make from education to career to romantic relationships to how you dress and what you call yourself, you owe me the chance to control how you raise any future kids you might have, and you owe me these things totally independently of how I treat you. Come on, it’s not like I ever hit you or anything.”
4. Parents who treat their kids like emotional support animals. Often manifesting as adults who have no friends, no close family ties, no hobbies or interests, no church or other community, absolutely no mental health support or counseling, not one single fellow adult or social space to hang out in, but they do have this one child who is the absolute center of their universe which gives them the right to be the center of that child’s universe in return. “We’re more like best friends actually!” “Oh, don’t be silly! I don’t need anybody but you!” In these scenarios, the parents are often survivors who were parented in turn by survivors who were also incapable of dealing with their emotions or fully healing from the fallout of extreme neglect, abuse, trauma, poverty, divorce, etc. and they tend to either repeat the same pattern or wildly overcompensate in the other direction. In friendships and romantic relationships between peers, it is incredibly hard to be someone’s only person and feel responsible for them even when it conflicts with your own happiness. Children can’t just leave imbalanced relationships whenever they want to, and the fucked-up power dynamic of having your authority figure also desperately need you is a ticking time bomb of emotional distress.

If I had to break that list down into just two big categories, it would be Authoritarian Parents Who Are Obsessed With Image And Control vs. Needy Parents Who Think Having Children Means Never Having To Make Friends As An Adult Or Go To Therapy.

At the toxic extremes, both types find any evidence that their child is growing up to be a separate person with their own inalienable human rights, identities, tastes, needs, ethics, opinions, and preferences to be unbearably threatening. Both fall into the trap of thinking that knowing more than a tiny baby or a fifteen-year-old about some aspects of life means that they know more about everything, always, and forever, including that child’s subjective experiences of their own life. Both types treat boundaries like personal attacks and think that consent does not apply to them, and both seem to think that “unconditional love” means that they are the only ones who ever get to set conditions, like “My house, my rules, your house, also my rules!” They are shocked and appalled that their adult children might expect the same basic consideration as others or decide to match their energy. Both use their children to work out their own issues and expect their children to prioritize their feelings at all times in all things.

The specific behaviors associated with authority vs. need can manifest differently (one skewing more toward compliance, the other toward access & attention) but the results can look shockingly similar: Adult children who love their families very much and who desperately want to find ways to interact that don’t actively hurt. Adult children who are are used to hiding in plain sight, forever stuck between telling the truth about who they are and being punished or adding another lie to the pile. Adult children who are afraid of showing vulnerability or asking for help because they exist under a perpetual cloud of pressure and disappointment. Adult children who feel horribly guilty if they don’t want to be a parent’s only source of social interaction and emotional support forever. Adult children who don’t feel like they are allowed to have any needs of their own because they don’t want to let a beloved parent down. Adult children who find themselves in toxic relationship after relationship because they grew up learning that you don’t get to say “no” to people who say they love you. Adult children who realized that their survival depends on getting as far away as they could but still wonder if there was some other way because they want a family so very bad, which is not a stupid thing to want.

Alongside “children are people, and people are not objects,” the other bedrock principle that helps me navigate this painful, tangled web is that love cannot override consent. Parents get to make a lot of rules when their children are small and vulnerable, but nobody can possibly love you so much that they get to decide who you are. There’s a whole big culture war going on right now that is fueled by religious fanatics who believe that their perpetual, absolute ownership of their own children entitles them to control not just everyone else’s kids but also everything about other people’s bodies and our language and what we read and see and love. They find the concept of consent to be alien and threatening, and I don’t really know how to talk to them. I am never surprised when their adult children stop talking to them, I just wish so many of them didn’t have to crawl through hell to get free. I categorically do not respect any religious beliefs that make room for  hitting babies (seriously, all the content warnings) or persecuting queer and trans people and I’m out of empathy for people who think this is still up for debate. Nobody gets to own another human being, and if you think you do then I think you are a bad person, not just a bad parent or a bad fellow citizen. At this point in life, my priority is not gently persuading people who are actively harming me and mine to believe in different stuff, it’s to organize with everyone who doesn’t agree with them to strip them of their power to harm all of us. My other priority is to help any of their victims who wash up on my shores make it closer to safety.

Good news, I don’t think you are in danger of becoming one of those scary parents, but I think it’s worth mentioning them because you will end up having to protect your kid from them in one form or another and because I think it’s worth questioning your own relationship to authority and obedience as your child grows up. As a parent, lots of decisions are by necessity yours alone, and often “Hey! Do it my way, right now, because I said so!” is the only way because safety or some other urgent necessity demands it. The mere act of getting a toddler out the door somewhat close to on time is going to require multiple instances where you zip an irate being who is screaming, suddenly unbendable, and somehow increasing exponentially in mass into a little snowsuit and strap them into a car seat against their will because you gotta be somewhere, and as much as you can be like “I know, little buddy, everything is awful and you are having a lot of feelings right now,” you cannot afford (in a literal sense) to let those feelings dictate the pace of your day.

But not everything is gonna be like that, so if you hear an angry “Because I said so!” voice coming out of your own mouth more than once in a blue moon it’s worth slowing down to make sure you’re not trying to control stuff that is better governed by informed consent. Ask yourself, “Why am I so mad right now? And why is obedience necessary? What am I afraid will happen if I don’t get my way?” If you had to explain your reasoning for why the child needs to do stuff a certain way, could you do it? Would it be persuasive to you if, say, your boss gave you the same reasoning? Anecdata: The parents of kids I know who are both happy and polite do stuff like apologize for occasional yelling and stop and explain why certain rules exist.

As for insurance against becoming an entitled-needy-overcompensating parental figure, the first step is fairly straightforward: You must deal with your own trauma about how you were raised. You must find ways to process your complicated feelings about your family relationships as they stand now, addiction, and your fears of history repeating itself. You must find ways to express uncomfortable emotions (including anger) in a way that makes them less volatile and scary for you instead of holding it all inside, and you must find a way to forgive yourself for not singlehandedly holding your family together in the wake of disaster while you were also a child. And eventually, once the sleep deprivation starts to wear off, you must seek social support and community outside your nuclear family and your one mean friend from back in the day. Neglecting your own needs will not make you better parent.

That was a lot of words to say, “Dude, get a therapist.” But yeah, please get a therapist. You are self-aware about this stuff, which is not the same as being okay, and that is something therapy can help with over time. You are inevitably going to screw up sometimes and you will need someone to tell you that each and every mistake you make is not the apocalypse barreling out of your burned out family tree. Your wife can’t be the only sounding board. And if your kid needs a therapist someday, please get rid of the idea that it makes you a bad parent. We’re messy, fragile beings and sometimes we just need somebody to walk us through our feelings.

While we are making lists, you must find ways to grieve your beloved guardian so that you can absorb and hand down all the wonderful things she gave you. She would be so proud of you and happy for you. She would hold you and your baby so tight and I’m so sorry she is not here to do it. May I suggest writing her periodic letters where you tell her all about how your baby is doing as if she’s still living across the country? You clearly have a knack with words and some sleepless nights ahead, and I think it might be healing for you. I don’t believe the dead watch over us because otherwise I would never be able to poop again, but I do believe that the things of this universe are neither created nor destroyed. Her mass is still out there, somewhere, among all the other stardust, and some of her energy is still here in you.

One final thing. Think of it as good practice for when someone says asshole stuff to you in front of your kid someday and you can’t realistically fight them due to stuff like “setting a good example” and “laws” and “violence being wrong.” Your friend needs to shut it the hell down. If it helps at all, sometimes people get real mean about the stuff that they are most insecure about, so I would take this guy’s input with about as much salt as when the Morton Salt Factory partially collapsed under a salt avalanche in 2014. However, recognizing that someone’s bad behavior is probably not about you doesn’t mean it doesn’t affect you and isn’t the same as giving it a pass. Possible talking points: “You need to knock it off forever with the ‘pancake’ jokes and digs about what a terrible dad I will be. I know you’re trying to be funny and that saying the worst thing that pops into our heads is just how we show love, but it is really pissing me off and hurting my feelings.”  If he apologizes and acts right, give yourself a gold star for setting one boundary. If he doubles down, and you spend less time with him as a result, give yourself ten gold stars for enforcing the boundary.

To review:

1. Your brand new baby is unlikely to ask you where the rest of your relatives went and how everything is probably your fault. Be a good husband, keep the kid alive, and you’re good for a while.
2. The middle stages of parenting are uncharted territory for me and I have no advice about them. Most of the recurring adult child vs. parent problems I see come down to unhealthy expectations about control and unhealthy expectations about emotional fulfillment. Children are a bad place to look for either of these things because they are people, not objects.
3. As possible prevention measures or just because it’s a good idea in general, get a therapist and interrogate your own relationship to authority.
4. Tell your friend to either be supportive or be elsewhere. Your inner critic needs no assistance.
5. Your wife is absolutely correct, you’re going to be great at this.
6. As much love as a total stranger can send you before it gets super-weird, that’s how much I’ve got for you right now.
7. You are going to be so, so, so great at this.