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Fusevy PlusDear Captain Awkward,
CW: Abuse, loneliness on holidays. Some starter context: Me (they/them) and my friend (we’ll call them Oz) (they/them) have been friends for about a decade, and moved in together during the pandemic. We were already very close emotionally, and spending loads of time together and noticing all the ways that our approaches to communication made each other feel good eventually led to us identifying as Queer Platonic Life Partners (QPLPs)—that is to say, we had 0 desire for romance or sex in our relationship, but we loved each other dearly and wanted to entwine our lives in many other ways, including but not limited to:
- -being each others’ emergency contacts
- -meal planning together every week
- -going on platonic dates and surprising each other with heartfelt gestures
- -future planning, talking about living in a community with our romantic partners where we still lived in the same house or duplex or similar
- -advising and materially supporting each other during crises
- -caretaking when either of us was in an episode of incapacity due to physical injury or mental illness
- -making holiday traditions together, consulting with each other about where we would spend the holidays and how to have meaningful time with our other partners while still having time together
It wasn’t perfect, and to be transparent I was going through a fuckload of personal and career struggles through a chunk of those years, during which they helped me work through a traumatic tendency to avoid leaning on other people. At a certain point though, they were still encouraging me to do this, while it became increasingly clear to me that they were burning themselves out between the care they were offering me and the EXTREMELY full social plate they had outside me.
They also started a new romantic relationship about a year and a half back that they have recently disclosed was emotionally abusive and isolating. While they were in that relationship, they steeply increased their tendency to overcommit, and it became a source of conflict that they would promise to handle a chore or make time for me on a certain day, and then they would flake or genuinely forget (burnout tends to include memory gaps for them). While I spoke up about it several times, I struggled to lean into that conflict because I felt guilty about how much care they had offered me during the pandemic, and because I also thought they were having New Relationship Energy and I kind of…wanted them to get to focus on that relationship being exciting for a bit, with the belief that once the relationship was less new they would either find more balance or we could talk about what we wanted out of our dynamic now that there was a new person. I’ve since learned that the distancing I felt from them was at least in part due to the abusive partner not letting them invite their other friends and loved ones to things, and acting controlling about how they would act with other people at events they attended together.
Oz remained in a crisis space for unrelated reasons while a lot of this was happening, and it culminated this past summer when we had to find separate places to live while waiting for a new lease at a cheaper place to come into effect (we had a 3 month gap, and Oz was unemployed, and I was deep in career burnout requiring medical help and rest—they moved in with out of town friends who let them crash on the couch, I found a summer sublet that let me stay near my job).
The move out was a struggle. I was consistently overextended and putting out fires at work, they were doing the same in their relationship (I can confirm now but at the time it would sound like me: “I’m anxious, we need a plan for this logistical problem asap” them: “It’s going to be ok buddy! We have lots of time.” Me: “It feels that way, but functionally I only have _____ time because (conflicting non-droppable situations). Can we work on it together next weekend?” Them: “I gotta go to (fun hobby), but I can handle it during the week!”
I now understand in context why it was so important to them to have like, little spaces where they could just enjoy something uncomplicated. But at the time I was just trying to boundary set based on what I knew, and so when they called me one day after my stated “last possible day I could help with the move”, I felt frustrated and tried to do a “I hear that it’s overwhelming, but I’ve BEEN saying this was gonna be hard if we left it and I can’t help at this point” and they felt really hurt and abandoned because they wanted emotional reassurance and instead heard that it was their fault.
In a recent convo, they named that this interaction deeply damaged trust for them. They also broke up with abusive partner a month ago. They also named that they’re not sure if they see us as life partners anymore (I asked), and named that they are in a dangerous mental health space and don’t really have capacity to figure that out. They want to have some normalizing, low pressure time together.
I want to give them that. I also feel like….there was kind of a secondary trauma for me that came from the choices they made in our dynamic as a product of the abusive one? And my efforts to center their hurt about the move out means that we still haven’t meaningfully talked about this like, 6 month period where I felt like a battery giving everything I could to keep us logistically afloat as a couple while it felt like they then used all of their overextending energy to try and appease abusive partner, generally at the expense of things like our move, our dates, my birthday party.
I proposed seeking a family or couple’s therapist in 4-6 months so we could process stuff while like….keeping them safe? Because while I want to resolve this stuff I haven’t had space to voice, they just need to kind of heal and take care of themselves right now, and that conversation feels hard and nuanced in a way where I want someone present to help hold space and step in where it’s needed. Oz seemed really surprised by this, said that couple’s therapy feels like a thing for people whose relationship is on the rocks, but they don’t feel like our relationship is bad right now.
Which is baffling, because it FEELS AWFUL TO ME RIGHT NOW. They are healing from abuse. I am still juggling life crises that impact how I am able to show up at home and with loved ones. They don’t know if they see us as life partners, we don’t go to things with each others’ friends “as a couple,” and every time I’ve tried to talk about the holidays this year they’ve panicked and dodged, saying once or twice that they might just need to be alone.
Today is Thanksgiving, and I learned just now that they and our two other roommates (mutual friends) all planned to go to the roommates’ family Thanksgiving together without mentioning it to me. I am spending the holiday alone (family is complicated, I set a boundary this year, my other romantic partners have their own things going on and we haven’t generally spent Thanksgiving together in the past). Oz noticed something was wrong this morning and came into my room to comfort me about how family is hard, and it didn’t seem to occur to them at all that I was sad because I didn’t get to spend time with **them specifically.**
I feel like I’ve been shifted to a different category of friendship, in a way that, if it were a romantic relationship, I would’ve called a break up and requested at least 3 months of space for a “clean break.” I live with them, so that’s obviously not extremely feasible. I don’t know what they want out of our dynamic, and in our last convo they didn’t seem to either, and they don’t have capacity to talk about it while their recent romantic breakup is so raw, and they still wanna do loving friendship tho while not talking super explicitly about what our relationship should be **right now** while we figure it out?
Like maybe they don’t want therapy b/c they want to shift our relationship to a different category of effort that doesn’t involve spending money on a therapist.
But that….**IS** a break up to me. And while I know that if they still don’t have an answer after a certain amount of time (maybe end of year?) I’ll need to walk, I don’t know what to do…right now, that is accessible to them, but still allows me a sense of clarity and healthy boundaries. I’m feeling really overwhelmed with this, and would love a perspective on how I can either frame conversation with them, or how I can find clarity without them, while living with them and seeing them every day, and set those boundaries kindly knowing that they’ve been isolating themselves in a toxic sitch for a while and deserve to be treated better regardless of how close our dynamic stays after this. Like…I want them to have the space they haven’t been getting to get back in touch with their needs, and I want them to feel safe to express to the degree they can, and I don’t know what to offer or not while grieving a relationship that they seem to have redefined without me.
Sincerely,
Alone on Thanksgiving
Dear Alone on Thanksgiving,
Your question reminds me of two past “greatest hits” questions:
1) Counter-Intuitive Friendship-Fixing Advice (The Be Nice To Yourself Project)
2) He Broke Up With Me But Hasn’t Moved Out Yet. How Do I Not Ruin Our Last Chance To Make This Work?
Common themes: Sharing living quarters, wanting desperately to talk things over and come to a resolution with someone who would rather do anything but that, and situations where the best advice I can give is to stop working on the relationship harder and better and channel all of that effort into taking the very best care of yourself.
I don’t know what the long-term future looks like for you and Oz, but here’s what I can observe in the short-term: This person is not acting like someone who sees you as Their Person. If they are, then they suck at being Your Person. However you thought this was going to go when you made all those beautiful plans during Peak Lockdown, it’s not working, and it’s time to adapt accordingly.
Every single thing you say about Oz is about how they want and need space specifically from you. They don’t want to go to couple’s therapy. They don’t want to make shared holiday plans. On Thanksgiving, they didn’t come see if you were okay, they came to “confront” you about being upset that you weren’t invited to a thing that literally everyone else in your house planned in advance to go to and leave you behind. Even if the guest lists were set and the plans were made, did anyone even bring you a plate? They didn’t want to show up and help with a joint move out of a shared living space, which reads to me like even when something that would take stress off of you is in their own interest they cannot muster bandwidth for it. They get mad at you and make you feel guilty every time you express a need in their direction.
Abuse sucks and leaves a crater of destruction behind even when the abuser departs. Oz has clearly been through a lot this year and maybe they’re doing the best they can to take care of themselves in a bad situation. Unfortunately, it’s left them in a place where they have little or nothing to offer you, a person who has also been through the wars. If I had to guess, they’ve reconsidered the QPLP status of your relationship but feel guilty and don’t know quite how to break the news, so they’re hoping that if they are sufficiently avoidant you’ll handle it for them the way you handle everything else (like moving house). It may not all that conscious or articulated, something doesn’t have to be On Purpose in order to be not enough for you.I’m familiar with all sides of the common “I feel so guilty about letting someone down that I’ve started to resent them on top of avoiding them” cycle, including the inside. It’s not pretty, but it is human.
But also, they are communicating: They are mentally and emotionally overwhelmed, no longer sure about any of the prior long-term plans you made, and only up for low-pressure, low-key interactions. They don’t want to go to couple’s therapy for something they don’t see as a couple (if they ever did). They want to like, watch TV together. Sometimes. With someone who is safe and restful and who places no demands on them. You could spend years trying to nail down the exact proportion of “can’t” vs. “don’t want to” vs. “who is to blame” here, or you could take them at their word and re-direct your efforts into taking care of you in the absence of anyone else volunteering to do so.
Let me quote you back to yourself:
- “…it FEELS AWFUL TO ME RIGHT NOW.”
- “They don’t know if they see us as life partners, we don’t go to things with each others’ friends “as a couple,” and every time I’ve tried to talk about the holidays this year they’ve panicked and dodged, saying once or twice that they might just need to be alone.”
- Free space for every time you wonder if you’re allowed to be upset or need anything given what they’ve been through (Don’t use this as a drinking game, kids, you will end up in the emergency room).
- “I feel like I’ve been shifted to a different category of friendship, in a way that, if it were a romantic relationship, I would’ve called a break up and requested at least 3 months of space for a “clean break.”
- “But that….**IS** a break up to me.”
Yes.
It’s a slow-motion breakup complicated by recent trauma and forced proximity, but a relationship that makes you feel awful is not a relationship that is working for you in its current form. At minimum, it’s time to stop prioritizing and planning around people who are not making similar plans around you. You need a new plan.
First plan: Make other holiday plans.
Big font, so you know I’m serious. What other winter holidays do you celebrate? Based on how Thanksgiving went down, assume that you are not celebrating with anyone who currently lives in your house. You’ve got one day ’til Hanukkah starts, 15 days until Solstice, 19 until Christmas, and 26 until New Year’s Eve.
To be completely clear, that does not mean “check in one last time with Oz and other housemates about their plans and then wait and see what they say.” Today, right now, make your own plans that do not revolve around or require any input or participation from them. If they subsequently initiate plans with you, then you can decide to change your mind, do both, etc. Ideally you can do something with other people in your support network, preferably people who find you delightful and who would be overjoyed to have a little more of you to go around this holiday season. But do not wait to put something in place for yourself, even if that means going somewhere warm for a few days alone. If you haven’t already bought gifts them, don’t, and don’t assume they’ve gotten anything for you. If it turns out they have, you can be pleasantly surprised for a change instead of predictably disappointed.
Second plan: Make other therapy plans. Couple’s counseling is off the table, but do you have a you-therapist? If not, find one. If yes, put some appointments on your calendar. You need at least one safe space where “taking care of Oz” and “tiptoeing around what Oz wants” is not a requirement before you get to need things.
Third plan: Make other housing plans. Living with Oz is not working out as you hoped and is clearly making some aspects of your life actively worse. If you had three months to find a different living situation that worked better for you, where would you go? Start making lists.
How would you quietly handle the logistics of putting together enough money, moving your stuff, and getting settled–importantly–without input, help, or further discussion with Oz about your plans until they constitute a decision (“I’m moving out as of _______, so if you want to find someone to take over my room you should start looking”) vs. an ultimatum (“If things don’t change I’ll have to maybe consider possible (but not really) moving out mumble mumble.”)
Do you spot the difference? One you’re doing at them, the other you’re doing for you. Ultimatums aren’t inherently bad, sometimes they are necessary, but they are still a last ditch attempt to influence the other person to give you what you want or maybe learn some kind of lesson. Then there’s the part where you have to be willing to follow through, or else they become meaningless. Whereas, “I’ve decided that this is what’s best for me” is a way of de-centering the other person and focusing on yourself. In a perfect world, you’d want to operate completely in the open and give everyone as much notice as possible. But Oz doesn’t want to have deep discussions about the future of your relationship. By avoiding ultimatums, you can respect their wishes and take care of yourself at the same time.
Three months is an arbitrary number. Maybe it will take you one, or six, to put the necessary pieces together. But I think it’s important to remind yourself that you have choices about where you live and at least put a date on a calendar for yourself to say, “One way or another, this will all be different soon.” That can only be good for you. It might take a long time for it to feel good, but this is where the change starts. The part of your life that has been waiting for Oz to be different so that you can be happy will stop waiting, and other choices will come into focus.
I said I couldn’t predict the future, but here’s what tends to happen in stories like yours and the ones I linked above. In the short term, while you’re still sharing living space and no permanent decisions have been announced, once you stop chasing the other person trying to fix everything and focus on taking care of yourself, thing often get noticeably better once everyone has a little breathing room. Nobody’s chasing, nobody’s running, the person who wanted space has it now, so it instantly feels more relaxed than it did.
Incidentally, this is what’s behind the huge rise in stories (on TikTok, Reddit, etc.) about cishet men who feel completely blindsided by divorce. Their wives stopped “nagging” them so they thought the problems were over when in fact, their wives just gave up trying, went about their business quietly (by far the safest way to leave a bad relationship), and felt so fucking relieved as a result that they acquired a noticeable glow. The dudes were only blindsided because that the other 17,000 times the wives asked for equal consideration, respect, effort, and household labor didn’t register. “Oh hey, remember when your wife made Thanksgiving dinner for you and your whole family with no help from you, but then had to work a shift in the ER, and when she came home all the food was gone and nobody made her a plate even though the guests took home leftovers? Yeah, can’t imagine why she’s gone, buddy. Tough break.” I feel like I read that story about 100 times every year.
That feeling of temporary relief is great, when it comes! But it doesn’t mean that the quiet-quitting person started getting their needs met within the relationship all of a sudden. They made steps to get their needs met elsewhere, and to the more avoidant person’s perception, they just stopped having so many inconvenient ones.
Long-term, in the best case scenario, that relief lasts after you are out of that house and becomes everyone’s best shot at rebuilding a functional friendship someday. You were incompatible at this one specific kind of relationship but other shapes are possible, and the story becomes “We tried this thing, we both went through a terrible time, it ended up not working, but here we are. We should never be roommates again, but all the fun, loving, kind, caring stuff that connected us through a terrible time is still here.”
Long-term, one very realistic scenario is that the further you get from Oz, the more you get in touch with your own needs, and the more you surround yourself with people who do have the bandwidth and desire to reciprocate the amount of care and consideration you show in relationships, the angrier you’ll get at how little you were willing to settle for.
Red flag alert: When the time comes, I want you to pay close attention to whether removing pressure and giving Oz space after they clearly asked for space makes everything worse…for you. Do they sabotage your escape efforts? Do they refuse joint counseling but expect that you’ll serve as an on-call individual free therapist for dealing with their emotions while keeping yours under wraps? Does leaving a co-housing situation where nobody could bother to invite you to Thanksgiving constitute “abandonment”…of them… that you’re supposed to apologize for? Anything that rings the toxic “How dare you leave me before I leave you” bell is not a sign that you’re leaving wrong or wrong to leave. It’s a sign that this was always going to end up here. I sincerely hope that’s nowhere near the case, but you are so used to putting their needs before your own that I want to at least point out the emergency exits and remind you that the closest one may be behind you.
Fusevy PlusHi 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?
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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/
Fusevy PlusHello 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.
Fusevy PlusHello 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.
.”
