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Dear Captain Awkward,

Your opinion, please: My husband and I have been married for 12 years and we have done a lot of traveling and other fun things. He is a kind and good person but there is one thing that is a recurring problem for me. He often says he loves me BUT frequently “forgets” to take photos of me. I take numerous photos of him which he seems to enjoy but he will not take a photo of me unless prompted to do so. We have photos of our travels and exploits but there is very little evidence that I was also there! We have talked about this and he says he no longer likes to take photos because it is too prevalent on social media. I agree that many people share way too much and I personally don’t care for the whole selfie obsession. But the fact that he will not reciprocate in taking photos really bothers me. Am I being unreasonable or insecure?

Sincerely,

Jeanne

Dear Jeanne,

The short answer is: If you want to be in more vacation photos, your best bet is probably to find a balance between handing your husband the camera now and then and prompting him to take a photo and shamelessly embracing the selfie.

The long answer is below the cut.

Sincerely, thank you for sending this most perfect variation on one of my all-time favorite genres of advice column questions, a love that probably dates back to the first time I read Ann Landers in the Worcester Telegram & Gazette at the breakfast table with my grandparents as a tiny child:

“Dear Impartial Voice of Reason: Who is more right here (and why is it me)? 

There is a conflict over something with seemingly small stakes, like “thank you” notes or who is supposed to host baby showers. The protagonist, usually the advice-seeker, wants one thing and an antagonist wants a different thing. One or both parties attempt to justify their expectations, behavior, and the outcome they desire on moral grounds, and suddenly mismatches in subjective opinions, desires, and needs turn into negotiations between competing value systems. The advice-giver becomes a referee, responsible for consulting the existing lore about manners and cultural norms and issuing a precedent that will preserve the social contract and keep rising chaos at bay while also generating enough sweet, sweet outrage clicks from across the generational divide to meet ad revenue projections. “I now pronounce this Extremely Rude/Totally Cool and find you to be the more Unreasonable/Reasonable Party!” :bangs gavel:

What that does for any of the individual people actually experiencing the given problem has always been a mystery to me. The vindicated person gets to feel vindicated, but probably still not get what they wanted? The antagonist gets to remain unpersuaded, because the conflict was never about meeting supposedly objective standards? While I love the timeless structure of these questions and the occasional opportunity to soapbox about stuff I value for fun, I’m way more interested in whether or not you get what you want.

Because Jeanne, if you want to star in more of your vacation photos, then you should do that. Not by having more “reasonable” debates about “selfie obsessions” but by letting go of the fantasy that your husband can ever be logicked into to picking up a camera unprompted or showing remotely the same interest in documenting your travels that you do. You want him to want to. That’s unlikely to happen. So what else can you do?

It’s not that we couldn’t handily win that debate on the merits. Have you ever seen a baby during the developmental stage when the  amorphous blob in the mirror transforms into “Wait…is that…ME”? Almost immediately, they transition from tentative observer to seasoned performer, making faces and gestures and touching the mirror periodically to test where the borders of reality are. We’re not the only species that experiences that cycle of self-recognition to playful self-presentation, by the way. Dolphins and elephants do the exact same thing:

Our instinctive curiosity about our own faces, not to mention evolving narratives about who exists to be looked at and who gets to do the looking have always inspired a fair amount moral panic. There’s the ancient cautionary tale about Narcissus, who died when he fell in love with his own reflection in the surface of a pool of water. Historically, some religious groups have expanded prohibitions on constructing sacred images of gods (idolatry) to include representational art of any human face or form, whereas other faiths go all in on iconography. Attitudes change whenever technology changes, and whenever something becomes more widely available to ordinary people, the traditional gatekeepers of power and authority tend to lose their entire shit. For example, during the Renaissance, mirrors became cheaper and better, and suddenly regular people had access to their own faces in a way they never had before. If your husband were here with us, I might ask him if he thought Rembrandt was some kind of narcissistic asshole when he painted 100 portraits of his own face. If so, he wouldn’t be alone, at the time there were deep moral and philosophical debates¹ about the artist’s duties around truthful representation vs. idealized beauty.

Howabout Vincent Van Gogh or Frida Kahlo, who racked up 36 and 55 self-portraits respectively? Or photographers like Nan Goldin and Cindy Sherman? “Oh, but those are artists,” someone might say. “It’s not the same.” But it is the same. The tools are just more widely accessible. For every moral parable about self-absorption, vanity, and the tyranny of unrealistic beautify standards, you can find ample evidence that people who fall outside the margins of what the capitalist, colonialist patriarchy finds fuckable or marketable at any given moment use self-portraiture to reclaim agency and power over their own self-image and outward representation.²

We could make a “fairness “argument that it would be pretty weird and sad if someday your “family” photos are just page after page of beautiful locations inhabited by a dude, like one of those depressing obituaries where dead matriarchs are described solely in terms of their self-sacrificing qualities and all hint of their personality and interests get completely erased. We could also talk about the role that women play as family historians and archivists, often erasing themselves in the process.³

I realize I’m throwing a lot at you with the footnotes and all. The thing is, it’s honestly okay if your husband never becomes someone who will pick up a camera of his own accord. I am both a photographer and the photographer in my household and if there are photos of me in Mr. Awkward’s phone it’s very likely because I said, “Okay, now take one of me.” That said, you’re not a jerk for wanting to be visible in your own memories of your own life! Your letter reads as if you are asking for permission to even want to be in your own vacation photos or if there is some outside standard of reasonableness that precludes it. When your husband dresses up his personal preferences as principled objections to “social media” or “selfie obsession,” this becomes a story about a man who on some level thinks that he gets to decide how many photos of a given woman are Too Many. He’s probably not doing that consciously or on purpose, but the fact remains that if you follow his logic, photos of you during your travels only get to exist when he feels like it (never) and when you actively remind him to take them (rarely/sometimes).

And you’re not even being like, “Fuck the patriarchy and the male gaze, let’s burn it all down!” You’re being like, “Respectfully, sir, you could gaze at me a little now and then, as a treat.”

The way to acquire more of the photos you want is to stop trying to meet your husband’s preference-disguised-as-principle with more and better logic, and start un-apologetically meeting it with your own subjective needs. You want him to take photos of you because you want it. After 12 years of marriage, you both probably do lots of things that aren’t your favorite activity because it makes the other person happy, and it’s time to add taking occasional turns with the camera to that list. If prompting is required, then prompt away! He does not have to change his overall preferences, but he doesn’t get to shame you about yours. You’re not some avatar of social media gone wild, you’re his wife, and he can both take photos of you sometimes because he knows that it’s important to you and shut up and let you take your own whenever that suits you.

To get there, you need to let go of the idea that his approval is necessary or that it is self-indulgent or shameful somehow to want to see your own face from time to time. Whether you ever see yourself as an artist, on some level this really is about that bridge that every artist has to cross at some point: “Fuck it. Here I am. Like it or not, your opinion and participation have nothing to do with whether I exist.”

I took these photos of myself. Here I am on the day a little kid at the bus stop asked me if I was “Sadness” from Inside Out  (I said “yes,” obviously), right after I hung up the phone after the first time I told my favorite person that I loved him and he said it back and we both knew it was true, and on the last day of my honeymoon in Paris when I found the perfect sunglasses and sipped café au lait on a terrace in perfect weather while a street musician played accordion music and people walked around munching on baguettes like a goddamn movie montage. You know what? I think my lipstick looks pretty great in the third one, but what I documented here wasn’t vanity, it was delight. My delight. My joy. My memory of myself at a particular moment in time. When I look at them, I can feel the remembered happiness all through my body. My face is making the smile again right now of its own accord. There’s nothing “reasonable” about it. It just is, and whether anybody else sees what I see is immaterial. For most of the last several hundred years, my face would have disappeared from history unless a man with the right skills and tools happened along and decided it was worth immortalizing. I think there are worse historical and cultural developments out there than whatever lets each of us decide that for ourselves.

Notes because WordPress is being annoying about embedding links again:

1 “The Mirror in Renaissance Paintings,” by Maria Kalbech, Atelier Balbec, Issue 6, https://atbalbec.tumblr.com/post/24476662806/the-mirror-in-renaissance-paintings, link accessed Sept. 9, 2023

2 “In Praise of Selfies,” Casey N. Cep, Pacific Standard, July 15, 2013, updated June 14, 2017, https://psmag.com/social-justice/in-praise-of-selfies-from-self-conscious-to-self-constructive-62486, link accessed Sept. 9, 2023.

3 “The Hidden Mothers of Family Photos,” Lauren Collins, The New Yorker, February 12, 2022, https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-hidden-mothers-of-family-photos, link accessed Sept. 9, 2023

Content note for (unintentional) ableism and mention of suicidal thoughts.This was originally going to be a 2-parter but now it’s not, I just added some stuff at the end.

Hi Captain,

I (she/her) have been with generally wonderful partner, F (he/him) for close to two years now. We’re both in our thirties, have had serious relationships before, and are compatible in our goals, politics, religion, etc. We recently also bought a house together. Getting married on paper isn’t important to either of us, but we do both want a life partner and a family—and given that I’ll need fertility treatments and his insurance covers it, we plan to get married in the next few weeks. We’re having a city hall wedding and are throwing a big party for our friends and family. That’s all to say—big things are happening (!), and they’re time-sensitive.

Some context: F was diagnosed with ADHD and started medication a few years ago, which was a minor revelation for him. I’ve done my earnest best to understand his experience and work towards finding a way of communicating, accommodating, and divvying up household/relationship tasks in a way that is judgment-free. I’m sure I’ve failed at times. We sought out couples’ therapy proactively when we moved in together, and it’s been mildly helpful but (understandably) not a panacea.

Over the past nine months, I’ve felt myself slowly unraveling. Wedding planning has been 90% on me. Household duties and pet care have been 75% me. I do believe that if I weren’t there, most (but not all) of this stuff would get done… eventually. I acknowledge that we’re on two extremes: I suffer from an excess of executive function, get depressed and anxious in an untidy space, and am not comfortable leaving things like choosing catering for our wedding to a month before the big day (true story).

An exacerbating issue is that we fight much more often than I’m used to in relationships, and I frequently perceive his tone in these fights as angry or condescending. My response is usually to freeze, go into crisis management mode (Midwestern Female right here), and cry when pressed. An example: recently it was late when he yelled, “What is this ass-early meeting we have tomorrow morning? We have to reschedule it.” We had agreed on this meeting weeks earlier, and it was in our shared calendar. I started saying I would try to reschedule it if I could. He then got upset at me for being too accommodating, and I should have just told him he was being a baby. That because I can’t say no, it makes him feel like he can’t express himself to me.

I have so much empathy for this! The way we are is neither of our faults. If we were already married, I would want to do everything we could to work things out. Given that we’re not, though, I wanted your advice (especially as you’ve shared you have ADHD)—are we just incompatible? Would the kindest thing to do be to go our separate ways? I’ve been feeling depressed and having suicidal thoughts lately, in large part because of this dynamic we get in, and I know this hasn’t been a picnic for him either. On some level, I don’t believe in asking him to change—but I also am really struggling with the status quo. I’m willing to do work to meet him in the middle but also want to be realistic about how much movement is possible/healthy.

I genuinely believe we love each other and are trying to express care. That’s worth so much. But if things were to be like this in perpetuity without improvement (especially if we add children to the mix), I don’t know if I’d make it.

Thank you.

Hello! Your deadline is noted and I will do my best. My spotty internet and WordPress conspired to eat the first version of this post so this is an attempt at reconstruction. Edited to Add: I initially planned to break it into two parts. Part 2 is now a post-script at the end. Sorry for any confusion.

I want to start by saying that you are very brave and very smart to admit how much you are struggling and ask for help. You mention a long habit of accommodating other people’s needs at the expense of your own, and your entire body has declared “Nope, not this time!” Its methods for getting your attention may be a decidedly mixed bag, but your self-preservation instincts are in working order. You are asking exactly the right question, Sheelzebub’s Question: If your relationship is a source of stress in your life, and you knew that the status quo was likely to continue indefinitely, how much longer would you stay? Another year? Five years? Forever?

You answered the question in your last paragraph: “But if things were to be like this in perpetuity without improvement (especially if we add children to the mix), I don’t know if I’d make it.”

You know that either something has to change or everything has to change because the relationship needs to end. You also know that you can’t expect F. to change no matter how much you want to. We marry our partners as they are now as the people we are now, and while changes are inevitable over the course of a lifetime together, there’s never a guarantee about what those changes will look like and when any given changes might happen. Betting on a specific set of changes to take place in time for them to be meaningful is risky, especially since the only person you can control is yourself. Since you are unhappy right now, what changes could you make right now that would take pressure off?

1) Seek immediate help for how bad you are feeling. F.’s ADHD diagnosis is of central concern in your letter (it was even in the email subject line) but if you are having suicidal thoughts after months of feeling depressed that is a serious problem in its own right. Some kinds of depression are chronic medical issues, some turn out to be more situational and temporary in nature, all can feel completely overwhelming when they’re happening, and all deserve care.

If at any point you feel like thoughts about hurting yourself are morphing into plans, seek emergency medical care. But sometimes thoughts are just thoughts, a way of turning on the emotional “check engine” light to indicate something is wrong. There is help for that. If you already see a therapist or have in the past, please get in touch and get yourself seen at the earliest opportunity. If you don’t have a therapist, ask the person you saw for couple’s counseling for a referral. All you need to say is “I am overwhelmed and depressed and I need help” and any halfway competent mental health pro will take it from there.

If you can’t access therapy immediately, please tell *somebody* what you told me. F., a close friend, anyone who can be trusted to follow directions when you say “I am not okay right now and I need you to listen and not give me advice.” This is not the time to put on a brave face and go it alone.

2) Postpone the wedding (decision phase). You are experiencing acute distress. You are having serious second thoughts about the future of your relationship.The wedding is adding more pressure and stress instead of anticipation and joy (including anticipating the joy of getting to be done with accursèd wedding planning)(#isriceagrainoraseed). Good news: Weddings can be moved. In my opinion, more people should postpone or cancel when they feel this way instead of submitting to the Wedding Juggernaut for fear of disappointing people or “wasting” so much money. (It’s not like you get the deposits back if you get married and then have to invite the government to your breakup later).

Imagine yourself telling F., “I’m so sorry but I’m feeling overwhelmed and depressed and I need to postpone the wedding. I am getting help, and I promise that we will talk about everything and figure it out together, but right now can you help me make the calls so we’re not leaving everybody hanging?”

What do you think he would say? What would you say if the situation were reversed?

People are (understandably) not at their best right when they are blindsided by bad news. F. might (also understandably) want to jump ahead to discussing and fixing the underlying relationship problems so that nobody has to make awkward phone calls. But once the initial shock wears off, the right person for you would not try to make it all about himself. He would trust that you would never do anything unless you had a good reason. He would value your honesty and courage and see them as signs of respect and trust in him. He would not want you to feel pressured and rushed into marriage. He would also see that you are struggling and want to do whatever he could to make hard things easier on you. “I love you. Whatever you need, that’s what we’ll do. Give me the list and I’ll start making calls.”

However the conversation goes, it will be revealing. Long-term incompatibilities may mean that you never un-cancel this wedding. You haven’t exactly felt like a team during the planning phase. Can he be on your team about this? I hope so. Even if you don’t stay together, you deserve as much kindness and love and help at the end of things as you did at the beginning. And cancelling will go much faster with two.

3) Postpone the wedding (breaking news phase). I suggest you tell people in roughly this order: F. first, then the venue and any vendors, then guests starting with your wedding party (if any) and your closest and most trusted people. You handle your “side” of the guest list, F. can handle his.

The pros will appreciate knowing ASAP and not having to argue about what “nonrefundable” means. Once you tell them, the thing is already cancelled, so when you talk to guests it’s not up for debate. Hopefully then you and F. can deputize your inner circle to spread the news to the rest of the guest list – “Everyone’s okay, they just realized they need more time, they’ll be in touch about future scheduling. In the meantime, I volunteered to let people know so that they don’t get flooded with ‘ARE YOU OKAY’ texts.”

As for what to tell people, keep it simple and pragmatic. While weddings are definitely about feelings, and while you are definitely having a lot of those, you know by now that there is a point where wedding planning goes into total logistics mode where you’re just like, counting stuff and checking off lists. Try to stay in that mode for just a little while longer. What is the minimum information that vendors and guests need to know so they can make good decisions for themselves? What will help you count stuff and check off lists in reverse?

a) The wedding is not happening on the scheduled date. With that information, people can cancel travel arrangements and hold off on any gifts, vendors can hopefully prevent purchasing unnecessary supplies and redirect their efforts to other clients, and everybody can reclaim a precious weekend of summer. You’ll let people know whenever there is firm a Plan B.

b) Remember, you’re informing people about a decision, not proving that you had a good enough reason to make it. Obviously guests will be curious about what’s happening and why. Is there juicy gossip? Did someone cheat? Is it permanently over? Is everybody okay? Is there anything they can do for you?

Even with the best intentions, people can get weirdly invested in other people’s relationships, as if you not getting married exactly like you planned will punch a hole in the universe that they need to plug with empty reassurances or else all the compulsory heteronormativity will drain out and be lost forever. “Oh my god, you guys are like the perfect couple!” “Noooo, but you were so happy, this is just cold feet, it happens to everyone!!” “All relationships take work!”

Ugh.You’re a person, not an avatar of other people’s fantasies about what true love is supposed to look like, and people who aren’t inside your relationship don’t get a vote. Strategically, you may want to share something along the lines of “So sorry for the short notice, but I’m not feeling well and I need to postpone” or “We decided to take more time” or even “I decided that I need more time” to allay concern and reduce friction on you and F. But neither of you are required to detail the ups and downs of your relationship or your current mental health for every person who sent back an RSVP card. I hereby declare that anyone who hears about a wedding being called off should assume that the couple has excellent reasons and has made informed choices about timing, audience, and level of detail. To answer your question, no, everything is probably not okay right now, but also, if there’s something specific they want you to know, they will tell you.

Please, take excellent care of yourself. Call off the looming stressful thing. Look at it this way: Years from now, any story about postponing a wedding has the potential to end with “…and that was the best decision I ever made!” If marrying F. is ultimately the right choice, it will still be right when you are in a better frame of mind and have had more time to consider. If postponing is the painful-but-necessary beginning of the end, the story of the time you almost married the wrong person will be more about how you trusted yourself and did the right thing even when it was hard. A bittersweet ending that averts a greater unhappiness still counts in the happily-ever-after column, and “I love you enough to be completely honest with you: I ‘m drowning and I don’t know what happens next” is still a love story.

Edited To Add:  Like I said, I was originally going to break this into two parts, but I’m not sure a lot more words will help anyone right now. But I’ll give you the short version:

When people write to me about a conflict where a mental health condition or neurological differences looms large, my standard practice is to set aside the diagnoses to the extent I can and try to look at the rest of the picture. Lots of reasons for that: To avoid perpetuating ableist assumptions, to stop prioritizing intent over impact, and to stop excusing bad faith. ( It’s not as if stories about cishet men who decide that love means outsourcing all the boring details to a competent woman are rare on the ground.)

Speaking strictly in practical terms, if a situation doesn’t make you happy, making your happiness dependent on solving how another person’s brain works is going to vastly limit how you think about solutions. (ADHD runs in families, by the way, so before you permanently assign it the role of grit-in-your-otherwise-perfect-oyster you need to factor in the strong chance that any future children will also have it).

Again, in practical terms, lots of people move in together before marriage to see how they like living together. So far, you don’t like it. Being aligned with F. about big things but not “small,” daily routine things means there is potentially stuff to fight about every single day. So what do you want to do with that information?

You could ignore it and hope for the best (do not recommend).

You could break up and look for someone who is more compatible.

You could stay together and live apart. Not what you planned, and not ideal for co-parenting tiny people, but people do it.

You and F. could try outsourcing housecleaning and other routine tasks that are recurring sources of stress. You need things to be a certain level of tidy. You hate fighting about household chores. If you framed this less in terms of what F. should be able to accomplish and more in terms accommodating everybody’s needs, what else becomes possible?

Hiring a cleaning service is not affordable or feasible for everyone (including me, at present), but the one time in 49 years that I lived in a consistently spotless house where nobody ever fought about chores, that’s what we did. For a  nominal fee when split three ways, the order-craving housemates could relax knowing that the place would get a factory reset every three weeks. As long as I did my dishes and cleaned up after myself in the kitchen every day (not a problem) and helped with the night-before sweep of common areas to clear surfaces and put things away, I could relax knowing that other people’s comfort didn’t depend on me noticing the same stuff they did. It was the exact right amount of structure and external accountability, minus the constant festering shame and terror of letting people down.

That was the main stuff I wanted to say. I want you to be happy, and I want you to feel like you have more choices than you did when you came in.  I promise I will stop writing about your relationship now.

Content note for (unintentional) ableism and mention of suicidal thoughts.

Hi Captain,

I (she/her) have been with generally wonderful partner, F (he/him) for close to two years now. We’re both in our thirties, have had serious relationships before, and are compatible in our goals, politics, religion, etc. We recently also bought a house together. Getting married on paper isn’t important to either of us, but we do both want a life partner and a family—and given that I’ll need fertility treatments and his insurance covers it, we plan to get married in the next few weeks. We’re having a city hall wedding and are throwing a big party for our friends and family. That’s all to say—big things are happening (!), and they’re time-sensitive.

Some context: F was diagnosed with ADHD and started medication a few years ago, which was a minor revelation for him. I’ve done my earnest best to understand his experience and work towards finding a way of communicating, accommodating, and divvying up household/relationship tasks in a way that is judgment-free. I’m sure I’ve failed at times. We sought out couples’ therapy proactively when we moved in together, and it’s been mildly helpful but (understandably) not a panacea.

Over the past nine months, I’ve felt myself slowly unraveling. Wedding planning has been 90% on me. Household duties and pet care have been 75% me. I do believe that if I weren’t there, most (but not all) of this stuff would get done… eventually. I acknowledge that we’re on two extremes: I suffer from an excess of executive function, get depressed and anxious in an untidy space, and am not comfortable leaving things like choosing catering for our wedding to a month before the big day (true story).

An exacerbating issue is that we fight much more often than I’m used to in relationships, and I frequently perceive his tone in these fights as angry or condescending. My response is usually to freeze, go into crisis management mode (Midwestern Female right here), and cry when pressed. An example: recently it was late when he yelled, “What is this ass-early meeting we have tomorrow morning? We have to reschedule it.” We had agreed on this meeting weeks earlier, and it was in our shared calendar. I started saying I would try to reschedule it if I could. He then got upset at me for being too accommodating, and I should have just told him he was being a baby. That because I can’t say no, it makes him feel like he can’t express himself to me.

I have so much empathy for this! The way we are is neither of our faults. If we were already married, I would want to do everything we could to work things out. Given that we’re not, though, I wanted your advice (especially as you’ve shared you have ADHD)—are we just incompatible? Would the kindest thing to do be to go our separate ways? I’ve been feeling depressed and having suicidal thoughts lately, in large part because of this dynamic we get in, and I know this hasn’t been a picnic for him either. On some level, I don’t believe in asking him to change—but I also am really struggling with the status quo. I’m willing to do work to meet him in the middle but also want to be realistic about how much movement is possible/healthy.

I genuinely believe we love each other and are trying to express care. That’s worth so much. But if things were to be like this in perpetuity without improvement (especially if we add children to the mix), I don’t know if I’d make it.

Thank you.

Hello! Your deadline is noted and I will do my best. My spotty internet and WordPress conspired to eat the first version of this post so this is an attempt at reconstruction. I’m breaking it into two parts. This part is about the wedding and what you can do right now to feel better and set yourself up to make good long-term plans. The ADHD elephant-in-the-room and long-term relationship decisions will come in Part 2.

I want to start by saying that you are very brave and very smart to admit how much you are struggling and ask for help. You mention a long habit of accommodating other people’s needs at the expense of your own, and your entire body has declared “Nope, not this time!” Its methods for getting your attention may be a decidedly mixed bag, but your self-preservation instincts are in working order. You are asking exactly the right question, Sheelzebub’s Question: If your relationship is a source of stress in your life, and you knew that the status quo was likely to continue indefinitely, how much longer would you stay? Another year? Five years? Forever?

You answered the question in your last paragraph: “But if things were to be like this in perpetuity without improvement (especially if we add children to the mix), I don’t know if I’d make it.”

You know that either something has to change or everything has to change because the relationship needs to end. You also know that you can’t expect F. to change no matter how much you want to. We marry our partners as they are now as the people we are now, and while changes are inevitable over the course of a lifetime together, there’s never a guarantee about what those changes will look like and when any given changes might happen. Betting on a specific set of changes to take place in time for them to be meaningful is risky, especially since the only person you can control is yourself. Since you are unhappy right now, what changes could you make right now that would take pressure off?

1) Seek immediate help for how bad you are feeling. F.’s ADHD diagnosis is of central concern in your letter (it was even in the email subject line) but if you are having suicidal thoughts after months of feeling depressed that is a serious problem in its own right. Some kinds of depression are chronic medical issues, some turn out to be more situational and temporary in nature, all can feel completely overwhelming when they’re happening, and all deserve care.

If at any point you feel like thoughts about hurting yourself are morphing into plans, seek emergency medical care. But sometimes thoughts are just thoughts, a way of turning on the emotional “check engine” light to indicate something is wrong. There is help for that. If you already see a therapist or have in the past, please get in touch and get yourself seen at the earliest opportunity. If you don’t have a therapist, ask the person you saw for couple’s counseling for a referral. All you need to say is “I am overwhelmed and depressed and I need help” and any halfway competent mental health pro will take it from there.

If you can’t access therapy immediately, please tell *somebody* what you told me. F., a close friend, anyone who can be trusted to follow directions when you say “I am not okay right now and I need you to listen and not give me advice.” This is not the time to put on a brave face and go it alone.

2) Postpone the wedding (decision phase). You are experiencing acute distress. You are having serious second thoughts about the future of your relationship.The wedding is adding more pressure and stress instead of anticipation and joy (including anticipating the joy of getting to be done with accursèd wedding planning)(#isriceagrainoraseed). Good news: Weddings can be moved. In my opinion, more people should postpone or cancel when they feel this way instead of submitting to the Wedding Juggernaut for fear of disappointing people or “wasting” so much money. (It’s not like you get the deposits back if you get married and then have to invite the government to your breakup later).

Imagine yourself telling F., “I’m so sorry but I’m feeling overwhelmed and depressed and I need to postpone the wedding. I am getting help, and I promise that we will talk about everything and figure it out together, but right now can you help me make the calls so we’re not leaving everybody hanging?”

What do you think he would say? What would you say if the situation were reversed?

People are (understandably) not at their best right when they are blindsided by bad news. F. might (also understandably) want to jump ahead to discussing and fixing the underlying relationship problems so that nobody has to make awkward phone calls. But once the initial shock wears off, the right person for you would not try to make it all about himself. He would trust that you would never do anything unless you had a good reason. He would value your honesty and courage and see them as signs of respect and trust in him. He would not want you to feel pressured and rushed into marriage. He would also see that you are struggling and want to do whatever he could to make hard things easier on you. “I love you. Whatever you need, that’s what we’ll do. Give me the list and I’ll start making calls.”

However the conversation goes, it will be revealing. Long-term incompatibilities may mean that you never un-cancel this wedding. You haven’t exactly felt like a team during the planning phase. Can he be on your team about this? I hope so. Even if you don’t stay together, you deserve as much kindness and love and help at the end of things as you did at the beginning. And cancelling will go much faster with two.

3) Postpone the wedding (breaking news phase). I suggest you tell people in roughly this order: F. first, then the venue and any vendors, then guests starting with your wedding party (if any) and your closest and most trusted people. You handle your “side” of the guest list, F. can handle his.

The pros will appreciate knowing ASAP and not having to argue about what “nonrefundable” means. Once you tell them, the thing is already cancelled, so when you talk to guests it’s not up for debate. Hopefully then you and F. can deputize your inner circle to spread the news to the rest of the guest list – “Everyone’s okay, they just realized they need more time, they’ll be in touch about future scheduling. In the meantime, I volunteered to let people know so that they don’t get flooded with ‘ARE YOU OKAY’ texts.”

As for what to tell people, keep it simple and pragmatic. While weddings are definitely about feelings, and while you are definitely having a lot of those, you know by now that there is a point where wedding planning goes into total logistics mode where you’re just like, counting stuff and checking off lists. Try to stay in that mode for just a little while longer. What is the minimum information that vendors and guests need to know so they can make good decisions for themselves? What will help you count stuff and check off lists in reverse?

a) The wedding is not happening on the scheduled date. With that information, people can cancel travel arrangements and hold off on any gifts, vendors can hopefully prevent purchasing unnecessary supplies and redirect their efforts to other clients, and everybody can reclaim a precious weekend of summer. You’ll let people know whenever there is firm a Plan B.

b) Remember, you’re informing people about a decision, not proving that you had a good enough reason to make it. Obviously guests will be curious about what’s happening and why. Is there juicy gossip? Did someone cheat? Is it permanently over? Is everybody okay? Is there anything they can do for you?

Even with the best intentions, people can get weirdly invested in other people’s relationships, as if you not getting married exactly like you planned will punch a hole in the universe that they need to plug with empty reassurances or else all the compulsory heteronormativity will drain out and be lost forever. “Oh my god, you guys are like the perfect couple!” “Noooo, but you were so happy, this is just cold feet, it happens to everyone!!” “All relationships take work!”

Ugh.You’re a person, not an avatar of other people’s fantasies about what true love is supposed to look like, and people who aren’t inside your relationship don’t get a vote. Strategically, you may want to share something along the lines of “So sorry for the short notice, but I’m not feeling well and I need to postpone” or “We decided to take more time” or even “I decided that I need more time” to allay concern and reduce friction on you and F. But neither of you are required to detail the ups and downs of your relationship or your current mental health for every person who sent back an RSVP card. I hereby declare that anyone who hears about a wedding being called off should assume that the couple has excellent reasons and has made informed choices about timing, audience, and level of detail. To answer your question, no, everything is probably not okay right now, but also, if there’s something specific they want you to know, they will tell you.

Please, take excellent care of yourself. Call off the looming stressful thing. Look at it this way: Years from now, any story about postponing a wedding has the potential to end with “…and that was the best decision I ever made!” If marrying F. is ultimately the right choice, it will still be right when you are in a better frame of mind and have had more time to consider. If postponing is the painful-but-necessary beginning of the end, the story of the time you almost married the wrong person will be more about how you trusted yourself and did the right thing even when it was hard. A bittersweet ending that averts a greater unhappiness still counts in the happily-ever-after column, and “I love you enough to be completely honest with you: I ‘m drowning and I don’t know what happens next” is still a love story.

End of Part 1.

Hi, Captain!

I need a script, please.

My son has been out since he was little; he’s a teenager now. Because he was unsure of how the rest of the family would react to him if they knew he was gay, he never told any of them that he was gay, and my wife and I have kept his queerness secret from everyone in the family, including his aunt, my sister, who he is particularly close to. None of them have any idea.

Keeping the secret worked well when he was a kid and early teen, even when he had a boyfriend–none of the family are nearby–but soon enough he’ll be doing things (like going to LGBTQ+ summer camps) that we won’t be able to keep secret from his aunt or anyone else in the family.

What’s my script for my sister? She’ll be hurt that he didn’t tell her he was gay, and hurt and angry that neither my wife nor I told her.

Thanks!

Hello!

Your son gets to come out however he wants, whenever he wants, to whomever he wants. He’s not sharing a shameful, harmful secret by coming out, he’s inviting people to be a part of his authentic life, and he can do that–or not do that– at his own pace. Managing the feelings and reactions of straight people about when and how they heard (or didn’t hear) the news should be the least of his problems, now and forever. All straight people ever have to do when someone comes out is say some version of, “I’m so happy for you, and so glad you felt comfortable telling me. I love you and am proud of you, always, and if there’s ever anything I can do to support you, please don’t hesitate to ask.” If your sister can’t manage that, then perhaps he was right to hold off. Pretending to be supportive while punishing someone for not disclosing sooner is completely unacceptable.

If we accept that as a given, then whenever and however your sister learns the news is by definition the right time because it was the right time for your son to share his news. If she gets angry about not hearing the news right away or receiving a personal engraved invitation to his so far unscheduled coming out party, that’s certainly a feeling she is entitled to, but also it’s a feeling that’s her responsibility to manage so that she doesn’t behave like a jerk to a vulnerable kid. Your son is growing up in a world that is increasingly hostile to queer people, there are a million reasons he might want to play things close to the vest with people he doesn’t know for certain are going to be safe. If he had reasons for not telling his aunt before now, her reacting to blame or punish him–or you–for protecting his privacy is not exactly going to dispel those reasons! She has choices about how she reacts here and I hope she makes good ones for everyone’s sake. Since they are close, what do you lose by assuming–and expecting–her to be cool about this and accepting nothing less? If your sister blames you for not telling her before now, your script for her could be, “We told him that it was his decision whenever he was ready, and we’d support him no matter what. He loves and looks up to you a great deal, so I certainly hope you won’t make him regret telling you at all!”

I think your best potential role here is to remain in a supporting one. If your son is ready to come out to the extended family, you could ask him how he would prefer to inform people and how you can best support him. (For example, does he want you to spread the word for him to certain folks, perhaps, so they can have their initial reactions in private and it’s less fraught for him?) As adults, you probably have some pretty good ideas about who is more likely to be an ally than not, and who needs to hear the words “fix your hearts or die” before they’re invited to anything.

If he’s still not ready, then maybe it’s time to talk about social media and digital privacy, and prepare for the possibility that people might find out another way as he gets older. What information, if any,  is he willing to share? If the news were to spread through the family in a way that is ultimately beyond your son’s control, would he like you to run interference on his behalf in some way?Is it necessary to “come out” at all, or can your family just agree to a blanket policy of, “What? You didn’t know? Huh. Well, now you do! That camp is delightful and he so looks forward to it every year. Lovely weather we’re having by the way” if anyone even notices what kind of camp he’s attending? Does it need to be this dramatic reveal, or can people just draw their own conclusions, in other words? They had one assumption and now they should expand their assumptions, it happens! Any and all strategizing is about protecting his experience and buffering him from potential bullshit, not about coddling the feelings of his straight relatives.