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Hi Captain Awkward,

I’m a longtime reader of your blog and I’ve learned a lot from the advice you give.  My family life is complex and generally, I’m able to use the tools I learned in therapy (I do not have a current therapist) to handle day-to-day issues that crop up, but I’ve run into something confusing enough that I would love to hear your thoughts.

Context: My mother has stage 4 lung cancer diagnosed during the pandemic.  She is a stay-at-home Catholic mother with strong opinions who home-schooled me and my siblings. My dad loves my mom very much and will never ever push back on her ever.  I went to college, grew as a person through both good and bad experiences, and built a wonderful & stable life for myself. My mother and I have a rocky relationship with periods of good relationship interrupted by long stretches of bad relationship. I call most week days to talk with her and sometimes the calls are fun and great and sometimes the calls are awful fights. Her cancer diagnosis has only made things more fraught.  I admittedly do keep her at arm’s length because of boundary overstepping in the last four years, but we’ve kept daily-ish phone calls in an attempt to repair the relationship. I want the relationship to work and be positive.

She’s always put a huge emphasis on holidays and special days.  Heaven help us if we forget Mother’s Day.  She had a reallllllllly hard time when I started dating folks and wanted to spend time with them with their families.  For the past decade, I’ve been putting up with celebrating my birthday twice: one at my parents’ house and one doing what I actually want to do sometimes with friends and sometimes alone.  Mom makes a birthday banner (it’s tradition) and makes a meal she only makes for birthdays.  It’s very kind of her. It’s also non-negotiable. She drove up to see me last year on my birthday because I couldn’t drive down for a variety of reasons.

This year, I don’t have bandwidth or time to drive down to my parents’ house for a birthday celebration.  My brother kindly arranged tickets for me to see a show I’ve wanted to see and so I’m celebrating a little early with him and our respective significant others. I figured, my birthday is only a week before Thanksgiving and I’m going down to see the folks then anyway, we can just bundle birthday in with Thanksgiving.  I can be extra grateful for family this year lol. 

Captain, when my mom asked what day I was celebrate my birthday with her, and I proposed Thanksgiving, she went apoplectic.  So I kicked the can down the road (first mistake probably) and said I’d figure something else out. Well it turns out a calendar is kinda tough to rearrange sometimes and this week I officially told her that I’d love to celebrate as part of Thanksgiving. Her response was a long upset rant about how I’ve entirely missed the point of my birthday, she needs me home to celebrate my birthday because it’s a celebration of her mothering, with a little bit of “Christmas is about Mary not Jesus” sprinkled in for good measure. I attempted to smooth things over without giving in (yay! I held strong!) and she ended up accusing me of “using my words to get my way,” telling me she loves me and then hanging up. She never hangs up first.

I guess since I’ve never missed a birthday with her, I had missed out on hearing her viewpoint, but even given her other wild opinions, this felt like it’s out there. A day later she texted me telling me she needs space and time to think and that we shouldn’t have our daily evening phone call until maybe the day before Thanksgiving. And that she loves me very much and is looking forward to Thanksgiving. Lots of kissy emojis. I don’t love the vibes and I get an icky feeling reading the text.

I…don’t know what to do.  Do I cancel plans I already have and offer her one of my weekends? Do I just wait and show up to Thanksgiving and hope she’s reasonable? Historically my family won’t intercede, so asking my father or brother to run interference won’t work.  One of my friends suggested I send her flowers on my birthday and I’m actually considering it.

I’m 28, my pronouns are she/her. 

Thanks,

GGB

Dear GGB,

I had a major deadline right around the time this came in, and I’m sorry I didn’t get to it in time to help with the immediate problem of birthday and holiday plans. I hope you enjoyed celebrating your birthday with your brother as planned and had an okay visit with your family. Sending flowers would have been a lovely gesture, but you’re not a terrible person if you didn’t.

I want to answer it now because it highlights something important about the process of learning to set boundaries with difficult family members, namely that it rarely feels good in the moment even if it goes about as well as can be expected. ‘Tis the season for family togetherness and the re-opening of every fault line, so maybe your story can help others in the same situation.

It’s okay that you wanted to do something different for your birthday this year. Even if you enjoyed these obligatory parties, it’s okay to not want to make the same journey twice in the same week. “Ordinarily I’d love to, but it’s going to have to wait until I see you at Thanksgiving this year. Miss you, love you, bye!”

It’s also okay that your mom was disappointed. It’s clearly important to her to be celebrated celebrate with you on the actual day. She’s also trying to manage her time, effort, and social battery during a busy season, and she’s not a terrible person for thinking about how many more of these she gets to do. I don’t say that to throw more guilt-logs on your already flaming pyre, it’s just part of the whole picture, the same way you getting freaked out at your mom being suddenly affectionate and effusive instead of punishing indicates that either a) you don’t have a lot of experience receiving affectionate words from her or b) you have enough experience to associate “Mom being nice to me” with “definitely a trap.”

Let’s step back and look at what happened: You told your mom about your birthday plans, she blew up at you, then asked for space so that she could regroup, and then she sent you the Texts of Many Emojis to reassure you that the fight was over and that she was looking forward to seeing you. This is theoretically how functional adults are supposed to handle conflict? Your mom could tell she was getting heated and possibly on the verge of saying something she might regret, so she took a break and then came back to reassure you when she was in a better place to do that. You’ve taken breaks from interacting with her in the past when you needed, and you still came back. Could that be what’s happening here? So long as you and your brother got to hang out as planned, and you did celebrate your life-giver with the banner and the special meal last weekend, and everyone is still mostly speaking to everyone else, you won.

It didn’t feel like winning, for reasons we’ll get into. But like…you did it. You won. You told your mom news that you knew was likely to disappoint her and the world is still turning. You broke a ten year streak of doing something you don’t enjoy. The sun rose and set on schedule. You did it.

What I need to tell you is that sometimes this is as good as it gets.

There are reasons that that your mom’s quick change from “apoplectic” to saccharine made you feel icky and that any plans you made after the initial refusal to meet up on your birthday felt like a trap. Anybody who didn’t grow up in your family is missing that context, and anybody who grew up in a similar family flinched and wondered just how soon into Thanksgiving the needle on this guilt trip would drop. You don’t trust your mom to just express affection and excitement without a secret punishment lurking somewhere in the mix. You may be wrong and you may be right about this particular instance, but that mistrust didn’t form in a vacuum.

When a fraught childhood relationship with a caregiver becomes something else as an adult, there can be an enormous feeling of anticlimax and disorientation even if the result is not total estrangement. This person who once had all this power over you just…doesn’t…anymore. They can’t compel you to spend time with them anymore, so they have to use other tactics. Some learn that you will eventually stop showing up to places where you get yelled at and make an effort to be pleasant. Some go with obligation and guilt because that’s what’s always worked before. Some go with massively pretending that everything is okay as long as nobody is honest about what the relationship is actually like. Some rapid-cycle between all of these and induce emotional whiplash. Will the real parent please stand up? How long will the pleasantness last? Are you ever going to talk about anything real ever again?

From what you describe, you and your mom pretty much have three modes: 1) Fight, which you do all the time in the course of your daily phone calls and texts, and which I’m going to guess happens most often when some detail of your true personality, tastes, beliefs, and lifestyle choices that conflict with the strict way you were raised slips out. 2) Flight, which you did to make a happy life away from her. 3) Interludes of Studiously Not Talking About Certain Stuff and Working Very Hard At Being Pleasant so that you can get along during the time she has left. There is no fourth mode where it’s comfortable, relaxed, and safe to let your guard down. With all the love in the world if you don’t have the sense of safety, trust, or even shared reality to fall back on then it’s impossible to build an authentic relationship.

Your birthday pinged all three modes at once. For once you stopped faking it around your birthday and prioritized doing a fun thing and managing your own schedule and stress levels instead of doing what she wants. So you fought. Then she fled before you had a chance to. That’s new, at least! I suspect that the skid into Mode 3 when the kissyface texts arrived felt icky because in a functional relationship, before the “everything’s fine!” stage there would be apologies. “Mom, I’m so sorry I hurt your feelings, I know how important birthdays are to you. But I am looking forward to celebrating when we can do it right..” “Daughter, I’m sorry that I blew up at you. I hope you have a great time with your brother and I’ll see you very soon.”

Y’all skipped right over that part because neither of you are sorry. I doubt it’s occurred to her that she might want to apologize for anything, even as a gesture toward repairing your relationship. You feel guilty about upsetting her and angry that once again she made it all about herself, but you’re not sorry to miss yet another forced celebration. Of course any reconciliation feels fake and fragile.

I’ve known people where any and all pleasant overtures are definitely a trap, so if you tell me that’s the case here I believe you. But I’m not sure this is. Either your mom figured out that her initial reaction was over the top and genuinely wanted to reassure you, or she figured out that if she wanted to see you she should bother to fake it enough to reassure you. If everybody managed to have a medium time when you got together and there were no dramatic fights, I’d call it a victory.

And that’s the holiday message I want to send to everyone reading:

1) If your family dynamics suck, but you plan to see them anyway, it is okay to keep expectations low and aim for a medium time where nobody engages all that deeply.

2) Setting and enforcing boundaries to take care of yourself isn’t mean, but that doesn’t mean it’s fun. Sometimes people are going to react badly, or you’re going to feel raw and weird even when it goes mostly fine, and that is just part of life. It doesn’t mean you did it wrong. You’re just used to comparing the discomfort of setting  and maintaining the boundary to a fantasy world where you didn’t need to work so hard. What we’re really measuring is the difference between not giving in and feeling weird about it to the discomfort of giving in resentfully and feeling equally-but-differently weird about it. In a situation where there is no pleasing everyone, somebody’s bound to be disappointed. Deciding that you’ll always give in to whatever will avert the other person’s disappointment means accepting that the disappointed party will always be you.

3) The first time you break a pattern is usually the hardest time. Until you ride out the discomfort and hurt feelings and pressure, it feels like a zero-sum game that the relationship may never recover from. If everyone had a consistent sense of comfort, safety and trust within the relationship, it wouldn’t feel like that, but you don’t, so it does. Once you get through the initial conflict with your boundaries intact and everybody can see that just because you did not show up this one time in this one specific way it doesn’t mean that everything is broken forever, hopefully you can establish a new normal where when and how you show up becomes a choice among many possible choices. There’s no way to know until after you’ve broken the pattern.

4) Sometimes this is as good as it gets. Not fixed, not resolved, not healed, not comfortable, but a little better than it was. Not so much “fake it til you make it” but the slow process of showing up as best you can, meeting the other person where they are, giving them lots of chances to pleasantly surprise you, and creating one good/neutral interaction at a time to push the bad ones down and see what else is possible. That’s not something you ever owe anyone who mistreats you, but it can be a gift you choose to give when someone is worth keeping in your life even when they make you play on hard mode.

My lovely Letter Writer, the thing where you check in with daily calls even though you fight sometimes? And you still visit, even though your adult life is a story about how you are happier the further you get from home? You are doing the work, and you’re probably more able to stay connected and loving because you created enough distance for yourself to thrive. I’m so sorry that you and your mom won’t get a lifetime to see what else could be possible together, but maybe the time you had a fight about your birthday, she decided to stop having the fight, and things were a little awkward between you is a step in the right direction.

May all of your winter holidays be at least Medium-Okay.

What keeps us attracted to our spouse as we age? A quick internet search on this left our heads spinning. So here’s our summary based on working with hundreds of couples… 

1. INTERDEPENDENCE:  Finding opportunities to lean on each other for different needs in life. Celebrating each others differences and then leaning on them
The opposite:  Codependents that suck the life out of you and Independents that are more like roommates.

2. TRUST:  Love is NOT the most important thing, but rather having someone you can rely on when you need them most. Are they engaged in doing life with you? Trust guides us in who we can love.
The opposite:  The emotionally lazy spouse that avoids conflict, blames others, and is not accountable to their actions.

3. PHYSICAL APPEARANCE:  Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and when we see our partners taking care of their health, prioritizing hygiene and taking care of themselves because they want to look good for us, that’s very attractive. It shows they care how they look for us. 
The opposite:  The spouse that doesn’t care about their looks and becomes a slob.

4. CONFIDENCE:  Confidence is about trusting yourself. In order to do that, you must become self aware of your strengths and your weaknesses. These partners know who they are, their inherent worth, and find happiness within themselves and share that with others around them.
The opposite:  The insecure spouse that is constantly belittling themselves, doubting their abilities, and is constantly comparing themselves to others.  

What area do you need to spend time focusing on in your marriage to make yourself more attractive to your spouse?

Become a Marriage365 member and get solutions for everyday couples. Anytime, Anywhere. 

Written by Meygan Caston

Meygan Caston is the co-founder of Marriage365 and lives in Orange County, California with her husband Casey and their two children. She loves the beach, dance parties, writing, spa days, and helping couples connect in their marriage. Her life-long dream is to walk the Camino, have lunch with Brené Brown, and get on The Price is Right.

The post 4 Ways to Maintain Attraction in Marriage As We Age appeared first on Marriage365®.

Source: https://marriage365.com/blog/4-ways-to-maintain-attraction-in-marriage-as-we-age/

Hello Captain Awkward,

My situation is complicated. So I have been dating my boyfriend for over a year now. Currently we are doing long-distance because of college. He is my best friend and I love him so much, there have been no problems in our relationship except one thing- his mother. His mother has continuously been problematic since day one in our relationship. We are 22 years old and she treats him like he is 8. They have a very close relationship, she calls him probably 7 times a day, she is divorced and has three sons but my boyfriend is the only son that actually listens to her rambling phone calls. One more important detail, they moved to America from Ukraine 10 years ago and she doesn’t speak any English.

So recently, she just found out that we were having sex and that I had secretly visited him (secretly cuz she doesn’t allow me to go, worrying I’ll make him fail) because she was looking through his emails and credit card charges (she also pays for everything because he is a full time student). In response, she texted me to come over to discuss options with my boyfriend and his older brother (he is overly involved too). The two options being- get married or promise to never have sex again (she believes premarital sex is immoral). I refused to come over to talk about my sex life with my boyfriend’s mom because it is a personal matter and she sent me a very mean text about how I was being a slut/selfish.

This has been the worst it has ever got, like I said it has always been bad just getting worse. The last time she got mad was when she told me to quit college because I needed to focus on being a stay at home mother one day, but I stood up for myself and she didn’t like that. She told me that she wouldn’t welcome me into her home until I apologized. I shouldn’t have, but I was so tired of the drama so I apologized. Everyone who knows me, knows that I am amazing with moms and very well liked. I am a polite person and respectful.

My boyfriend has always agreed with me that she is difficult but he always blames it on the cultural differences and how they are more family oriented. “Family must know everything and everyone’s business.” She tells him that she will cut him off financially if he does anything to disagree with her so he feels threatened too. He does tell me that he stands up for me when I am not around and that he tries very hard to protect me. I can tell he fears he will lose me because of her. But I am so in love with him, so in love. But I cannot stand his mom anymore, I don’t know if I should break up with him. I’m so drawn.

Let me know if I can explain anything more thoroughly/clearly, I really need advice on this one. xoxo

Hello,

I like the part where you refused to drop out of college or show up to a family meeting to discuss your sex life. Let’s harness that energy and hold on tightly.

Your boyfriend’s mom will be all up in his business until he decides to set–and enforce– boundaries with her. He’s the one picking up seven rambling phone calls a day. He’s the one who let her have his email password (or who needs to figure out better security for his private communications). He’s the one making a calculated decision to stay on her good side in exchange for financial support while he finishes his education, and he’s the only one who can call her bluff if she threatens to pull the plug. And ultimately, he’s the one who needs to learn how to say, “Це не твоя справа, мамо.” (“It’s none  of your business, Mom.”) The balance of power between them won’t change until she is more afraid of potentially alienating him by behaving this way than he is of upsetting her. The process could take years if it happens at all. It does not appear to be underway.

Here is where you can set a few boundaries right off the bat:

1) Remove her access to you. How/why is this lady texting you? Have you ever actually met her? Why does she even have your number? Are you just getting walls of Ukrainian text that you have to type into Google Translate or did she do the work of typing in “ти егоїстична повія” to get to “you are a selfish slut” before she sent it? She’s not…making him…translate….? …right? Anyway, next time she texts you something insulting or bizarre, respond once with  “I’m not comfortable discussing this with you. If you have concerns, please talk directly to [your son].” You can’t control what she thinks of you or what she says, but you can control whether you reply (don’t) and whether you block her from being able to reach you (do ASAP).

Red flag check:  If he freaks out at the thought of you blocking his mom, or pressures you to maintain open communication with her, ask him and yourself: For what? Why? What does anybody get from her insulting you and trying to control your life as well as his?

2) Kick her out of your time together. How much time and energy do you and your boyfriend currently spend discussing his mom and strategizing around her? What would happen if you set boundaries with him about how often you discuss her? He’s used to confiding in you about her and you’re used to “supporting” him about this, which leaves her right where she wants to be in the middle of your relationship. What if you did an experiment by deflecting anything about her back to him? “That sounds like a conversation for you and your mom.” “I hope you and your mom can work it out so that you can stay in school.” “Hmmmm, I know she drives you up a wall, but right now it almost feels like she’s here…with us…on this date…” “I trust you to handle this however you need.” “Oh no, I’m not going to ‘sit down and have a talk’ with your mom. It sounds like you maybe need to do that at some point? But after reading her text messages, I’m all set!” Experiment and see if either of you are capable of detaching.

This would be my advice to him, by the way. I don’t judge people for having controlling parents and not figuring out healthy boundaries overnight. But if he can, he should put her on a complete information diet, stop discussing you, including “defending” you, and be very boring about the whole question of you. “Mom, I’m 22, it’s normal to have a girlfriend, stop being weird about this.” Repeat. See also: “Okay.” “If you say so.” She’s figured out that you are important to him and is using the drama of this situation to command his (and your) attention. He was canny enough to rebel and meet up with you (but not to use strong passwords), I’m sure he can summon up some teenage shrugs.

Red flag check: There’s a thread here of “women need to work out women’s business” that I don’t like. He defends you to her, but did he defend you from her by putting himself in the way? You (correctly) refused to go have a sit-down chat with his mom and his brother, but why did it even get that far? “Mom, there is no way we are summoning my girlfriend of less than a year for a family meeting. Come on.” “Mom, if I weren’t involved with [Letter Writer], I’d be dating someone else. You’re mad at me, fine, leave her out of it.” (Again, why does she even have your phone number?) A good partner would be trying to take pressure off of you instead of throwing you in the deep end.

3) No more bullshit apologies. You did nothing wrong and had nothing to apologize to for, but you gave one anyway to help keep the peace. Did it create more peace? It did not. Learn from this. There is a time and place for the “I’m sorry you feel that way” non-apology and this lady is at the epicenter.

Has she apologized for snooping through his shit and saying rude, insulting things to you? We all know the answer to that. Does your boyfriend feel like he has something to apologize to his mother for? File that under his business.

Red flag check: The next time she does something mean or intrusive, if he pressures you to apologize and “make peace” like you’re the one who fucked up somehow, that’s a problem.

4) Keep your distance from her. This isn’t a question of her (benevolent loving avatar of motherhood) “welcoming” you (the wayward ruin-er of god-fearing young men) into her home someday once you prove sufficiently apologetic. Why on earth would you ever go to her house after how she treated you? Why would your boyfriend ever subject you to that without making it very clear to her that either she will be kind and welcoming to you or he will soon be elsewhere? The entire prospect of you being in the same room with her seems like a “someday” question. Once everyone’s done with school and talking about getting engaged, perhaps. (Or never. Never is an option.) Good news, it sounds like she doesn’t want to interact with any girlfriend of her son’s unless he’s planning to get married, so perhaps that can be a useful way to put it off indefinitely. “Oh, your mom has made it very clear that she’s not interested in our relationship unless we’re planning to get married, why don’t we cross that bridge when we come to it.”)

Red flag check: It’s just red flags, all the way down. Something about his mother “not being able to welcome you into her home” until you apologized makes me think there is a misconception here that you can somehow win this lady over if you engage with her just right. You can’t. There is no winning her over, there is (possibly, eventually, with great effort and no guarantees) negotiating a détente that is not completely miserable. At present, while her son is dependent on her financially, she still has the illusion of control and she is clearly holding onto it with everything she has. You are a threat to her authority and control over her son. You also make a convenient scapegoat to blame for any problems she has with any of his choices. A “B” in the grade-book that should have been an “A”? Must be his girlfriend distracting him. Haircut or outfit she doesn’t like? Must be his girlfriend’s slutty taste. He answered six calls but let the seventh go to voicemail? Your influence. At best –AT BEST –for her you are a potential incubator for grandchildren she’ll try to snatch out of your arms as soon as they are born. Consider that someone who will go through her adult son’s emails to “catch” him having sex will definitely go through the nightstand drawers and the financial records in any future home you might share. This is how she speaks to you because you and your partner of nearly a year spent one weekend together (that she knows of)? Yikes. That’s not someone you can “win over.”

5) Be realistic. At best for you, should this relationship continue, is that your boyfriend eventually finds his spine and that you cultivate a combination of amused surface politeness and ironclad boundaries where his mom is concerned. (“Oh, that’s a question for your son, let me find him for you!” Can I get you a glass of water while I’m up?” “Your mom is not living with us ever. She can visit for three days, max,  and she stays in a hotel. That’s going in the prenup by the way.”) At worst, this cycle you’ve described where she intrudes and he appeases her at your expense is every holiday and family occasion and life event between now and forever. People –including people from close-knit families and “traditional” cultures–can and do negotiate this stuff all the time but the process is not pretty or short. She will not change. Will he? In time to be the partner you need?

Red flag check(s): I have a question you’ll need to ask and answer more than once and an overall dynamic to watch out for.

The question: “Say we end up living together at some point. How do you see all this working out?” Any future you plan with him needs you both to answer this honestly without wishful thinking goggles on. It sounds like he wants out from under her reign, but if Mr. Seven Phone Calls A Day sees himself buying a house next door to his mom and giving her a key, that would be good information to have. What’s his plan for finishing school and becoming financially independent? Is that his plan? Your stated truth here, that you cannot stand her and find her to be a possible deal-breaker is also good information for him to have.

The dynamic: When his mom is out of pocket, does he negotiate with you on her behalf (i.e. pressuring you to just go along with things that are not good for you for the sake of keeping the peace) or does he negotiate with her on your behalf (and his own) to carve out space and freedom for your relationship to thrive? So far it looks like he’s mostly doing the first thing. “It’s just the culture.” Okay, but it’s not your culture, and there’s a difference between respect and submitting to values that you –and two-thirds of Ukrainians according to this 2019 survey–simply do not share. “Families know everything about each other.” Even when they blatantly violate his privacy and then use what they find to harass his girlfriend? I said before that the dynamic between your boyfriend and his mom probably will not change until she is afraid of potentially alienating him by harassing you. The dynamic between you and your boyfriend (and his mom by proxy) may not change until he understands that there are hard limits to what you will put up with. Walking away from someone you love is hard, and if it comes down to that it will feel like letting her win. But your boyfriend has choices here, the same way you do. That impulse you had to not go to that meeting? To not apologize when you hadn’t done anything wrong? To say “I’m not doing that” when she tried to dictate your future life? That part of you recognizes a trap when it sees one, and so far it’s kept you safe. Keep listening to it.

Hello Captain Awkward,

My situation is complicated. So I have been dating my boyfriend for over a year now. Currently we are doing long-distance because of college. He is my best friend and I love him so much, there have been no problems in our relationship except one thing- his mother. His mother has continuously been problematic since day one in our relationship. We are 22 years old and she treats him like he is 8. They have a very close relationship, she calls him probably 7 times a day, she is divorced and has three sons but my boyfriend is the only son that actually listens to her rambling phone calls. One more important detail, they moved to America from Ukraine 10 years ago and she doesn’t speak any English.

So recently, she just found out that we were having sex and that I had secretly visited him (secretly cuz she doesn’t allow me to go, worrying I’ll make him fail) because she was looking through his emails and credit card charges (she also pays for everything because he is a full time student). In response, she texted me to come over to discuss options with my boyfriend and his older brother (he is overly involved too). The two options being- get married or promise to never have sex again (she believes premarital sex is immoral). I refused to come over to talk about my sex life with my boyfriend’s mom because it is a personal matter and she sent me a very mean text about how I was being a slut/selfish.

This has been the worst it has ever got, like I said it has always been bad just getting worse. The last time she got mad was when she told me to quit college because I needed to focus on being a stay at home mother one day, but I stood up for myself and she didn’t like that. She told me that she wouldn’t welcome me into her home until I apologized. I shouldn’t have, but I was so tired of the drama so I apologized. Everyone who knows me, knows that I am amazing with moms and very well liked. I am a polite person and respectful.

My boyfriend has always agreed with me that she is difficult but he always blames it on the cultural differences and how they are more family oriented. “Family must know everything and everyone’s business.” She tells him that she will cut him off financially if he does anything to disagree with her so he feels threatened too. He does tell me that he stands up for me when I am not around and that he tries very hard to protect me. I can tell he fears he will lose me because of her. But I am so in love with him, so in love. But I cannot stand his mom anymore, I don’t know if I should break up with him. I’m so drawn.

Let me know if I can explain anything more thoroughly/clearly, I really need advice on this one. xoxo

Hello,

I like the part where you refused to drop out of college or show up to a family meeting to discuss your sex life. Let’s harness that energy and hold on tightly.

Your boyfriend’s mom will be all up in his business until he decides to set–and enforce– boundaries with her. He’s the one picking up seven rambling phone calls a day. He’s the one who let her have his email password (or who needs to figure out better security for his private communications). He’s the one making a calculated decision to stay on her good side in exchange for financial support while he finishes his education, and he’s the only one who can call her bluff if she threatens to remove financial support. And ultimately, he’s the one who needs to learn how to say, “Це не твоя справа, мамо.” (“It’s none  of your business, Mom.”) The balance of power between them won’t change until she is more afraid of potentially alienating him by behaving this way than he is of upsetting her. The process could take years if it happens at all. It does not appear to be underway.

Here is where you can set a few boundaries right off the bat:

1) Remove her access to you. How/why is this lady texting you? Have you ever actually met her? Why does she even have your number? Are you just getting walls of Ukrainian text that you have to type into Google Translate or did she do the work of typing in “ти егоїстична повія” to get to “you are a selfish slut” before she sent it? She’s not…making him…translate….? …right? Anyway, next time she texts you something insulting or bizarre, respond once with  “I’m not comfortable discussing this with you. If you have concerns, please talk directly to [your son].” You can’t control what she thinks of you or what she says, but you can control whether you reply (don’t) and whether you block her from being able to reach you (do ASAP).

Red flag check:  If he freaks out at the thought of you blocking his mom, or pressures you to maintain open communication with her, ask him and yourself: For what? Why? What does anybody get from her insulting you and trying to control your life as well as his?

2) Kick her out of your time together. How much time and energy do you and your boyfriend currently spend discussing his mom and strategizing around her? What would happen if you set boundaries with him about how often you discuss her? He’s used to confiding in you about her and you’re used to “supporting” him about this, which leaves her right where she wants to be in the middle of your relationship. What if you did an experiment by deflecting anything about her back to him? “That sounds like a conversation for you and your mom.” “I hope you and your mom can work it out so that you can stay in school.” “Hmmmm, I know she drives you up a wall, but right now it almost feels like she’s here…with us…on this date…” “I trust you to handle this however you need.” “Oh no, I’m not going to ‘sit down and have a talk’ with your mom. It sounds like you maybe need to do that at some point? But after reading her text messages, I’m all set!” Experiment and see if either of you are capable of detaching.

This would be my advice to him, by the way. I don’t judge people for having controlling parents and not figuring out healthy boundaries overnight. But if he can, he should put her on a complete information diet, stop discussing you, including “defending” you, and be very boring about the whole question of you. “Mom, I’m 22, it’s normal to have a girlfriend, stop being weird about this.” Repeat. See also: “Okay.” “If you say so.” She’s figured out that you are important to him and is using the drama of this situation to command his (and your) attention. He was canny enough to rebel and meet up with you (but not to use strong passwords), I’m sure he can summon up some teenage shrugs.

Red flag check: There’s a thread here of “women need to work out women’s business” that I don’t like. He defends you to her, but did he defend you from her by putting himself in the way? You (correctly) refused to go have a sit-down chat with his mom and his brother, but why did it even get that far? “Mom, there is no way we are summoning my girlfriend of less than a year for a family meeting. Come on.” “Mom, if I weren’t involved with [Letter Writer], I’d be dating someone else. You’re mad at me, fine, leave her out of it.” (Again, why does she even have your phone number?) A good partner would be trying to take pressure off of you instead of throwing you in the deep end.

3) No more bullshit apologies. You did nothing wrong and had nothing to apologize to for, but you gave one anyway to help keep the peace. Did it create more peace? It did not. Learn from this. There is a time and place for the “I’m sorry you feel that way” non-apology and this lady is at the epicenter.

Has she apologized for snooping through his shit and saying rude, insulting things to you? We all know the answer to that. Does your boyfriend feel like he has something to apologize to his mother for? File that under his business.

Red flag check: The next time she does something mean or intrusive, if he pressures you to apologize and “make peace” like you’re the one who fucked up somehow, that’s a problem.

4) Keep your distance from her. This isn’t a question of her (benevolent loving avatar of motherhood) “welcoming” you (the wayward ruin-er of god-fearing young men) into her home someday once you prove sufficiently apologetic. Why on earth would you ever go to her house after how she treated you? Why would your boyfriend ever subject you to that without making it very clear to her that either she will be kind and welcoming to you or he will soon be elsewhere? The entire prospect of you being in the same room with her seems like a “someday” question. Once everyone’s done with school and talking about getting engaged, perhaps. (Or never. Never is an option.) Good news, it sounds like she doesn’t want to interact with any girlfriend of her son’s unless he’s planning to get married, so perhaps that can be a useful way to put it off indefinitely. “Oh, your mom has made it very clear that she’s not interested in our relationship unless we’re planning to get married, why don’t we cross that bridge when we come to it.”)

Red flag check: It’s just red flags, all the way down. Something about his mother “not being able to welcome you into her home” until you apologized makes me think there is a misconception here that you can somehow win this lady over if you engage with her just right. You can’t. There is no winning her over, there is (possibly, eventually, with great effort and no guarantees) negotiating a détente that is not completely miserable. At present, while her son is dependent on her financially, she still has the illusion of control and she is clearly holding onto it with everything she has. You are a threat to her authority and control over her son. You also make a convenient scapegoat to blame for any problems she has with any of his choices. A “B” in the grade-book that should have been an “A”? Must be his girlfriend distracting him. Haircut or outfit she doesn’t like? Must be his girlfriend’s slutty taste. He answered six calls but let the seventh go to voicemail? Your influence. At best –AT BEST –for her you are a potential incubator for grandchildren she’ll try to snatch out of your arms as soon as they are born. Consider that someone who will go through her adult son’s emails to “catch” him having sex will definitely go through the nightstand drawers and the financial records in any future home you might share. This is how she speaks to you because you and your partner of nearly a year spent one weekend together (that she knows of)? Yikes. That’s not someone you can “win over.”

5) Be realistic. At best for you, should this relationship continue, is that your boyfriend eventually finds his spine and that you cultivate a combination of amused surface politeness and ironclad boundaries where his mom is concerned. (“Oh, that’s a question for your son, let me find him for you!” Can I get you a glass of water while I’m up?” “Your mom is not living with us ever. She can visit for three days, max,  and she stays in a hotel. That’s going in the prenup by the way.”) At worst, this cycle you’ve described where she intrudes and he appeases her at your expense is every holiday and family occasion and life event between now and forever. People –including people from close-knit families and “traditional” cultures–can and do negotiate this stuff all the time but the process is not pretty or short. She will not change. Will he? In time to be the partner you need?

Red flag check(s): I have a question you’ll need to ask and answer more than once and an overall dynamic to watch out for.

The question: “Say we end up living together at some point. How do you see all this working out?” Any future you plan with him needs you both to answer this honestly without wishful thinking goggles on. It sounds like he wants out from under her reign, but if Mr. Seven Phone Calls A Day sees himself buying a house next door to his mom and giving her a key, that would be good information to have. What’s his plan for finishing school and becoming financially independent? Is that his plan? Your stated truth here, that you cannot stand her and find her to be a possible deal-breaker is also good information for him to have.

The dynamic: When his mom is out of pocket, does he negotiate with you on her behalf (i.e. pressuring you to just go along with things that are not good for you for the sake of keeping the peace) or does he negotiate with her on your behalf (and his own) to carve out space and freedom for your relationship to thrive? So far it looks like he’s mostly doing the first thing. “It’s just the culture.” Okay, but it’s not your culture, and there’s a difference between respect and submitting to values that you –and two-thirds of Ukrainians according to this 2019 survey,–simply do not share. “Families know everything about each other.” Even when they blatantly violate his privacy and then use what they find to harass his girlfriend? I said before that the dynamic between your boyfriend and his mom probably will not change until she is afraid of potentially alienating him by harassing you. The dynamic between you and your boyfriend (and his mom by proxy) may not change until he understands that there are hard limits to what you will put up with. Walking away from someone you love is hard, and if it comes down to that it will feel like letting her win. But your boyfriend has choices here, the same way you do. That impulse you had to not go to that meeting? To not apologize when you hadn’t done anything wrong? To say “I’m not doing that” when she tried to dictate your future life? That part of you recognizes a trap when it sees one, and so far it’s kept you safe. Keep listening to it.

.”

Ahoy Captain! I

(31 she/her) am currently dating “J” (32 he/him). We’ve been dating for a little over a year now. Things are going well, except for one thing…he isn’t divorced, and I’m not sure that he wants to be. Any scripts for a conversation around that topic are greatly needed.When we began dating last year in 2022, he told me he was in the process of a divorce, and that he and his former spouse had parted ways in 2020. He told me that the former spouse ended things, and moved out in 2020. They never had any children,or owned any pets together. Their home was an apartment that they rented, so when they stopped living together, they did not have a home to sell, and the landlord rented that apartment to someone else.

I was of the understanding that the divorce would be finalized by the end of 2022…until J let me know that they still needed to file for divorce. Which threw me for a loop. I bring up that they never had kids/pets/property together, because from what I can tell, in the absence of this, shouldn’t the divorce be pretty simple? But maybe I was wrong. I’m no lawyer. So I accepted that maybe some hiccups had happened–it’s not like the legal system is that great anyhow.And then he let me know back in July they still hadn’t filed for divorce yet–but was supposedly working on it–and alarm bells went off in my head. I don’t know how to have a conversation about divorce.

I was single for a long time before meeting J, and he’s my first Serious Relationship. I’m so sad I’ve been with someone who, aside from this issue, is a great person. He makes me smile, I feel safe with him, he takes the time to call me and check on me, etc. I can say with total sincerity he is one of the most caring people I know.He was with former spouse for nine years. His home life was pretty chaotic, and he got married young partly to escape that. I don’t know what it’s like to have been with someone for nearly a decade, to grow from your teens to your late twenties with them, and then to have to figure out who you are apart from that relationship. I was sorry to hear that two of them grew apart as people, but not surprised. People often have more growing to do in their mid to late twenties, and I’ve been several marriages collapse between people who both were married before age 25.

We spend every weekend together, call each other at least weekly, have met each other’s families, traveled together, etc. My parents have asked about marriage, and I’m of the understanding his family has wondered the same. We’ve talked about trying to have kids together, and are on the same page. I could see this relationship lasting years, and I don’t feel comfortable having kids with someone outside of marriage, not because of moral ones, but because of legal logistics, such as being on the same health insurance, paid parental leave, who gets what last name, etc. How do I even approach this conversation with him? I want to be sensitive of their long history together, while also still respecting my needs. I was single for so long, I feel out of my depth. To be quite honest, I’m very insecure about that, and I’m jealous he had a partner throughout his twenties, and had the opportunity to have a wedding, and be married.

I can’t help but feel like Option B. Any advice is appreciated.

Sincerely,

Second-Best

Dear I’m Not Calling You ‘Second Best’ Even If You Named Yourself That,

Your letter is but one chapter in a very old story, where straight women are simultaneously pressured to seek marriage and children and shamed if they admit to wanting those things where anyone might hear them. Straight men in these stories tend to show up as intensive renovation projects who will be ready to “settle down” someday, it’s just that right now they are skittish wild stallions who might bolt at the first sign of anything like “human needs” or “priorities.”

The more we buy into that story, the more we end up with relationship patterns where women do a ton of work to “prove” their worth to men who may or may not have the bright idea, completely of their own volition without any prompting, to reciprocate someday. I think this is a fairly mild case*, but the reason I’m classifying your problem this way is that you are scared that talking frankly about future plans with a partner who seems to be making a lot of the same future plans will somehow “ruin” the relationship. If the relationship does not in fact survive a “Dude, when are you getting divorced?” conversation, it won’t be because your needs were silly or you asked for them wrong. For any advice I give you to actually work, we have to start here: You want to get married and have kids. You’d like to do that with J. You would prefer to start sooner rather than later. If he also wants those things to happen, then literally the least he can do is file paperwork that he’s had the last three years to do. If he doesn’t want that, waiting another year to find out is hardly in your best interest.

(*For comparison purposes, just as the sun rises and sets, we can trust that each new day will bring a new Reddit post about a recently-or-not-quite-divorced cishet man who expects endless financial and emotional support, housework, and even on-demand childcare for kids from previous relationships in the streets and offers nothing but eternal life in Casa Mojo Dojo with his Long-Term Long-Distance Low-Commitment Casual Girlfriend in the sheets.)

Since The Holidays are looming and we’re about to enter Year Four of him being broken-up-but-not-on-paper, I think it’s the perfect time to clarify some stuff. Start with sorting through your own fears and needs. Figure out what a good outcome looks like and what kind of boundaries and limitations you’d be comfortable enforcing. For example:

Is some of your insecurity and malaise being driven by family pressure? Is the prospect of 10,000 “So when are you crazy kids getting married?” “Hahaha I’ll let you know as soon as the divorce is final…or even filed…” conversations making you not look forward to running the imminent Celebration Gauntlet together? Is his limbo status causing you to feel like you have to lie to family members? What if you didn’t lie? Would it be better for you to fly solo this year and give him time to catch up on his paperwork and hang with his own family of origin instead of doing the Cute Couple Thing with this big missing piece still between you? (I know that feels like punishing yourself on some level, but I want you to at least think about it. When you brought him around in the past, it’s likely that you didn’t know that he was still going to be married for at least another year. Now you know. Does it change your calculus if you think about it as a respite for you from worrying about this vs. denying either of you something?)

It doesn’t sound like you live together, which is a good thing in my opinion, but are you talking about combining households, finances, DNA, etc. in the near future? Consider that if there’s been no legal separation, then it’s quite possible that your boyfriend and his ex are jointly responsible for any debts the other one incurs, listed as beneficiaries on all kinds of paperwork, and legally able to make complex medical decisions for each other in case of emergency. So maybe a bright red “Hmmm, that sounds like a great topic for after you’re divorced!” boundary needs to come into play before making any big plans. Speaking of which, if you can get pregnant, this is a great time to revisit and lock down your birth control situation so there are no accidents. Gestating Mr. Technically Still Married’s fetus is not going to make you feel more secure or in control right now.

Do you have an internal Sheelzebub Countdown running? Meaning, if you knew that this thing that makes you unhappy was unlikely to change, how much longer would you stay invested? Another six months? Another year? Longer? If you do have that internal counter running, maybe combine it with the boundary about discussing future plans, like, “Once I check in again about divorce, I’m not planning any joint vacations, purchases, family visits, merging of practical stuff with him for six months or he handles his shit, whatever comes sooner.”

Once you’ve reminded yourself of your own priorities, then I suggest being as frank as possible: “Hey, as we’re making all these plans, I’d like an update on how your divorce is coming along. As of July you still hadn’t filed, but how do things stand now?”

Where you go from there is going to depend on what he says and what you want to do about it. Once you bring it up, don’t be afraid to ask all the questions that are on your mind. (It’s not like it’s going to get less awkward, and more honesty and clarity might lead to good things).  If he hasn’t filed, why not? What is the barrier? What is his timeline and plan for resolving that? Is it financial, does it have something to do with the legal system, is it something that he needs to work out in therapy?  If they’re ‘working on it,’ what does that mean in practical terms? Is it his plan to move forward with you on stuff like marriage and kids? Does he understand that none of the stuff he talks about doing with you someday, like having kids, is remotely on the table until he handles this?

For best results, resist the urge to explain yourself. Your explanation is, “I love you, and I want to be with you and do all the great stuff we’ve talked about, but it’s hard to move forward with future plans while you’re still married to someone else.” You took a risk on him when you could have been like, “uh, I like you too, but howabout you call me after you’re all the way single” and you have nothing to prove to this guy about your open-mindedness or loyalty here. It’s been a year since you got together, and it is okay to want him to formally end his marriage before making any more promises or plans with you.You’re not being unreasonable, “nagging,” too needy, controlling, or whatever negative messages are bouncing around in your head. Don’t be afraid to swat down excuses and bad faith arguments like paper airplanes. “If it’s ‘just a piece of paper,’ and it ‘doesn’t change how you feel about me’ then it makes sense to ‘just’ file it already.” “I”m not ‘making a big deal,’ I’m telling you outright that it matters to me.” “Look, I’ve tried to be really hands off about this, but it’s definitely on my mind and I’m not a jerk for wanting an update.”

There is a risk that he will continue to stall, and if that happens you’ll have to decide what you can live with. By probing further, you may find out truths that you don’t want to. He may in truth not want to be divorced. Even if he does, he may not be on the same timeline as you are about getting married and having kids. He may be so disorganized that he’s a bad fit for you simply in practical terms. Is running the risks of big honesty and big love better than sitting with this dread and uncertainty for another year of your precious life? From here, saying “Are we really doing this? Then I need you to sort out your shit if you’re serious about being together” and potentially learning an answer you don’t want seems better than letting someone string you along, but only you can decide if that’s true for you.