User blogs

Ahoy Cap!

You have taught me a lot. I love how you parse situations. I thought of you while this was happening but am not sure I played it right…what do you think? Edit if you need, I know it’s long.

I am a chronically single geeky cishet woman in my 30s coming out of a several years’ bout of depression and anxiety. A few months ago, I got up the guts to turn on my dating profile. I am always stressed when dating, as I constantly worry I’m doing it wrong and in my awkwardness and low self-esteem will get myself into a situation I’m actually not happy in. It’s hard to envision myself in a relationship; I don’t know what I’d be like in one. But I figured I could not conquer this unknown without trying. 

Happily, I quickly began chatting with a clever, funny, geeky guy a few years older than me. We met for a first date, and I actually had butterflies! We chatted for three hours easily. I was nervous, but excited. 

Second date a week later, he wanted to meet me at his place and then go out for dinner. This made me a little uncomfortable, as for safety reasons I don’t want to be alone with someone in their home until I know them well, but I felt it would be impolite to wait outside his door and instead hurried us to dinner. The conversation was different this time. I felt like every third minute he was giving me ridiculously exaggerated but heartfelt compliments, to the point I became uncomfortable. I finally said something like, “If I’m the most interesting person you’ve met in years, you need to meet more people!” But he laughed it off and kept going. After dinner, he wanted to go back to his place and watch a movie. Now, important note: I want to save sex for marriage, this was clear on my profile, and he claimed he did too. What he wanted to do at his apartment was kiss me (that was welcome,) cuddle (I squirmed away and said I wasn’t comfortable with that,) and then give me a foot massage (I definitely wasn’t comfortable with that, especially since he asked by just grabbing my foot.) I was disoriented and discovered around that time that I needed to leave. 

By the time I got home, I had my head on straight again, so I texted him that while I appreciated the gesture, cuddling and foot massages were too intimate for me to feel comfortable with at this point. I paid close attention to his response: without a trace of pouting or guilting me, he apologized and asked what I was and wasn’t comfortable with. Since he had responded well, I decided to give him another date.

Third date a week later lasted a full day, again full of compliments and vague, maybe-not-literal (?) hints that he would like to buy me expensive presents or take me on trips. But nothing at his place and no attempted nonconsensual massages. I was trying to walk the line of being kind and appreciative of the very real effort he was putting forth without enticing anything further, as I felt he was moving very fast. He told a story about how he was making so much effort because he thought that’s what a woman deserved and to tell him if it was too much. I agreed that it was on me to tell him if it was too much. We did both agree that we had no desire to see other people going forward.

A week later, I requested we just get breakfast instead of spending the full day together, as I was becoming very exhausted and drained from all this and needed a weekend off. He was disappointed but agreed. At breakfast, he again started with the compliments, requested again that I tell him if this was all too much, and then said he really wanted to treat me right and not scare me off because he knew what he wanted, I was it, he loved me.

As soon as he said “love,” the first thought that went through my mind was: “shit, there goes that.” After breakfast, I stalked angrily through the grocery store having imaginary arguments with him about how he didn’t know me near well enough to know if he loved me. I called him later that day to break up with him. I told him that I was concerned not that he had strong emotions, but that he was not questioning these emotions and instead was rushing to judgement and action instead of reflecting critically. 

He was miserable. He did not try to guilt me but expressed that he wished he hadn’t told me he loved me. He expressed doubt that it was such a big deal to say “love”, as “love” to him just means “like a lot”. He asked if I could keep seeing him knowing that he just meant to communicate that he “liked me a lot”.

I said no. This man was older than me, claimed to be experienced with relationships, and had lived in the U.S. (where I am) for 30 years. I don’t know how he could get the idea saying “I love you” just means “I like you a lot” to your average American; it seemed either a last-ditch deception or a strong indication that his social skills were even worse than mine. I said I couldn’t imagine how we could move forward while both keeping our heads now that I knew he had such strong feelings. I would feel pressured to move faster than I wanted, and he would feel resentful of my delay. He promised he would go at any pace I wanted and would not in fact resent it, but I said I couldn’t risk it. He ended by saying that I didn’t have much relationship experience, and one day perhaps I will change my mind. If so, he would be ready. 

In the months since then, he has occasionally sent little notes and texts – not any discussion of what happened, but funny, flirty things like he sent before. I haven’t responded.

I felt gutted but decided about my choice to end this until one friend I told did a very bad job disguising her disagreement. While she was trying to be supportive, her questions clearly signaled she thought I was self-sabotaging by breaking up with a man for…liking me. She questioned whether the early L-word use might be cultural (his family immigrated here) or else a honest mistake by a socially awkward, fallible human. She seems to think I have massively overreacted out of my anxiety around relationships. It was enough to kick off my self-doubt vicious cycle. It now grates on me for hours every time he texts. Each time I remind myself I shouldn’t text back, I feel like I’m sucker-punching the sweet small town guy in the Hallmark movie that only wants to be good to the bitchy, cold-hearted big city lady.

What do you think? Did I gut punch Brayden? Or, alternatively, do you have any ideas of how I could have played this better so I can learn from the experience?

-Not a Lawyer, but that would be cool

Dear Not A Lawyer:

Your “readiness” for *a* relationship is not the issue with why this particular relationship didn’t blossom, and it’s not something you need to “work” on. Realizing that you are not on the same page with someone during the early stages of dating is not a failure. It’s what the early stages of dating are for!

Let’s review: You had a pretty good first date which did its job, which was to give you enough information to know whether you’d like a second date. The second date was incredibly Not Good. You felt cornered and coerced. After you squirmed away from him all night and told him you how uncomfortable he’d made you, he decided that for your third date, nothing remained for him but to assure you in the most animated language of the violence of his affection. When “I love you” did not have the desired results, he tried to both walk it back and blame your “lack of experience” for your rejection of his “love,” while also promising to wait for you.  Yikes on trikes on pikes near dykes! And your friend not only fell for this blatant ‘negging’ but tried to double down? No likes!

If you go on three dates with someone and each date is successively less enjoyable, that’s a great reason to not go on any more dates. If someone declares that they’re in love with you, and your gut instincts say “ohhhhhhh noooooooo,” that’s not a sign that you need to work on yourself until your feelings rhyme with theirs. It’s a sign that you need to stop trying to talk yourself into developing feelings for someone whose texts make you flinch and feel annoyed for days at a time. You gave guy multiple chances, and everything you described about his attempts to escalate intimacy well beyond your stated desires and boundaries made me flinch for you. ( I actually yelled “NO!” when he pounced on your unsuspecting foot.) “I flinch from your touch….and also your words…and also whenever I’m reminded that you exist” is an incredibly good reason to not date someone or be friends with them. The only script or explanation you need is, “Sorry, I’m just not feeling it.”

Good job tuning out your friend’s shitty advice and her excuses for this guy’s cloying behavior! If he’s so great, she can date him (I don’t advise it, but she certainly can.) Good job spotting red flags, sticking to your boundaries, and recognizing that this guy is “in love with you” the way Pepé le Peu is “in love” with the poor cat he’s mistaken for a skunk. He wants to be in love so bad that the closest being that sort of fits his template will do, and he’s trotting out his strategems* for “how to treat women” instead of listening to you about how to treat you. 

*Exhaust them, mostly.

This skunk has chased you long enough, I think, and you owe him nothing. I recommend that you block his number, block him on all the apps, and see if you can preemptively block him from being able to follow or see any social media accounts you have. Do not attempt to notify, explain, or apologize, and do not reply to *anything* he says or does to get around the blocks. Blocking someone after they declare their love, get dumped, and keep right on texting despite receiving no response is not an unclear or mysterious move. It means: “I don’t want this. Stop.”

If you are indeed worried that a lack of dating experience is holding you back in some ways, it has never been easier to go on more low-stakes first dates with more nice people and see if something clicks. Meeting more people will give you more information about what you like. It sounds like what you like is someone who treats you like a friend with the possibility of romance, and you don’t like surprise feet stuff or people who come on strong with boilerplate romantic declarations. (Hard same, honestly!) We are all flawed beings, but please get out of the mindset that your flaws mean you have to put up with stuff that gives you the ick. Feelings aren’t fair, and everything about your story is a reason to be more discerning (“picky”) about who you spend time with, not less. So continue to move at your own pace, and pay attention to reciprocity, safety, and your own enjoyment, and trust that the right people for you will not make you feel like you’re being chased. And remember, someone can be very nice, very into you, and do everything technically right, and still not be your person.

Thank you for your letter. Please allow me to build a general 2025 precept, akin to “Do Less Work” upon it:

Feelings are information. Stop talking yourself into or out of your feelings. Especially stop beating yourself up for not feeling what you think you should feel, and start listening to what your actual feelings are trying to tell you. Not every feeling is helpful or needs to be acted upon, but good news, you can decide what you want to do about your feelings later, as its own separate step! Just, it’s very hard to both make good decisions about a feeling and talk yourself out of having that feeling at the same time.

It is time for the periodic ritual where we treat the search strings people typed in like actual questions. All snap judgments, no context, let’s do it!

1) “Friend always forgets credit card.”

Forgetting a payment method once in a great while is a regrettable error. Forgetting it “always” (and not following up immediately to pay some other way or following through on treating next time) indicates a game of Awkward Chicken is afoot, where they are basically daring you to speak up and calculating that you’ll find it less awkward to pay.

Take the dare!

Stop making plans that cost money with this person until you’ve addressed the problem, and ask for separate checks up front whenever possible to minimize room for shenanigans. When you do address it, instead of hinting around or accusing them of forgetting on purpose (and getting blasted with shame and defensiveness), be blunt and direct about what you want to happen now/next. “Your half is $X, can you Venmo me right now?” “You still owe me $Y from last time, so I’d rather not do anything that costs money until we’re square. Can you pay me back today or should we plan something free?”

2) “Brand new boyfriend asked to borrow money.”

Nope!

I’m in no position to judge people for the fact of struggling financially, but in my experience, asking a brand new partner to lend money beyond “Can you snag us advance movie tickets and I’ll grab the dinner?” is among the most crimson of flags. It ranks only slightly behind a) “suddenly” losing their housing situation and needing to move in right after the first “I love yous” are exchanged (#hobosexuality), b) having a ton of bullshit reasons about why they “can’t” or “don’t have to” wear condoms, and c) any sentences that include the words “If you really loved me, you would_____.,” “It’s okay, my wife is cool with it,”  or “You’re not like other girls.”

Consider the possibilities, none of them great:

• They are disingenuous or unrealistic about their financial situation. And if the loan is for an investment “opportunity” or to bail out a flailing “business”? RUN AWAY.
• Even if everything is mostly on the up-and-up, lending money adds stress and tension to a brand new relationship. What is the plan and timeline for paying you back? Are you going to have to chase them down for the money or play Awkward Chicken? They are, at minimum, willing to put the relationship at risk over money, which does not point to them having great boundaries.
• Consider that they have no one else to ask because everyone they already know is tapped out or reasonably skeptical of their ability to pay it back. Just because someone doesn’t have a [therapist][single friend or family member in the world][rescuer/meal ticket] doesn’t make you the default substitute!
• It’s a test of whether you have porous boundaries and are prone to manipulation.

Fortunately there is a magic word that will both protect you and reveal bad intentions instantly: Say no and see what happens. Does the person try to manipulate you further? Or blame you for their issues? “I can’t believe you’d make such a big deal over something like money.” Saying that you’re not comfortable lending money to someone you basically just met is not mean or unfair. What would this person do if they didn’t have you to lean on? Sounds like they should make that Plan A!

I don’t know how far apart these next searches took place but I’m sensing a theme here.

3) “How can I get an old friend to stop calling me after 24 years?” 

You can’t get people to stop doing anything. You can either ask them outright to stop calling and see what they do, or you can adjust how–and whether–you answer. After 24 years, hearing some version of  “I appreciate all the effort you make to stay in touch, and I wish you well, but I think this friendship has run its course for me and I’d rather not stay in touch by phone anymore” will doubtless hurt. Will it hurt less than being ghosted, or whatever has you dodging this person’s calls?

4) “Old friend appeared out of nowhere and is overeager,”

4) Mismatches in friendly enthusiasm and reciprocity are inherently awkward, even if everyone is basically nice and has the best of intentions. Whenever someone clearly wants more from you than you want to give, my go-to advice is to figure out what level of interaction –if any!–would make you most happy and comfortable, and default to that.instead of trying to strategize around the feelings and expectations of a person you’re  already not terribly invested in.

If you’d rather not resume the friendship at all, then it’s probably better to just end it swiftly (see above).  If you’re open to seeing if a sometimes-friendship is possible, honor your own preferences about frequency and intensity of communication and see what happens. For example, they want to hang out in person every week, and you’d be happy to catch up once every three months? Then invite* them to hang out roughly every three months and politely decline everything in the interim. They want to text or talk on the phone all the time? “Sorry, I’m not much of a texter, please don’t be offended if I don’t reply right away. But maybe we can get together for lunch next month and catch up. How’s [date] or [date] for you?” If the periodic interactions are fun and planning them is easy, you might end up building a new friendship on the ashes of the old. Or, they might not want a “sometimes” friend, in which case, they are free to back away at any time.

*Note: If you take the initiative to invite them, then you potentially forestall a situation where they feel like they need to chase you. If you can’t see yourself inviting them to do stuff ever, remember: You’re not required to be friends with everyone who wants to be friends with you.

5) “Should I ask an old friend who doesn’t contact me out for a drink on her birthday?”

“Should” is a strong word, depending on the history, but you certainly can! If you’ve fallen out of touch, I’d assume your friend probably has other plans on her birthday, but it’s as good an excuse as any to reach out. “Hey, saw your birthday was coming up and realized I hadn’t seen your face in forever. Can I take you out for a drink sometime next week? Maybe on [date] or [date]*? Let me know, I’d love to catch up. Happy birthday in any case!”

She’ll either say yes or no, and then you’ll have your answer about whether “doesn’t” means “prefers not to.”

*Note: I’m putting language about nailing down a specific day for plans in these sample scripts on purpose. “Would you like to have a drink sometime?” is not making a plan, it’s assigning the other person homework to come up with a plan. It also allows people to say “yes” in theory and never actually make the plan, leaving you wondering if you’d be bothering them if you follow up with a plan. If you’re anxious about the situation at all, ambiguity just creates more anxiety. If you want to hang out with a given person, invite them to something concrete that they can say yes or no to.

6) “Boyfriend’s family won’t respect me until he proposes.”

Bad news: People who create arbitrary milestones after which they *might* theoretically respect you are pretending that you can audition for or earn their respect, like, “Clean the house, Cinderella, and then maybe you can go to the ball!” They want you to think that their disrespect is your fault and that you just need to wait longer or work harder to earn their respect. But there will always be another milestone or more work you’re supposed to do.

People either treat you with respect or they don’t. If these people don’t, and most likely never will, how bad do you still want to marry this guy?

7) “Mom has helped me financially now wants bank password.”

There’s a fine line between “help” and “control.”

Financial gifts and temporary loans with generous and unambiguous repayment terms are helpful.

Setting some boundaries and conditions around financial help for an adult child isn’t unreasonable. “You can live at home for free as long as you’re in school or studying toward a trade.” “This is the third time you’ve needed ’emergency’ money in as many months. I’m not sending more until we can sit down together and work out a budget so that this won’t keep happening.” (Providing financially for a minor child isn’t “help,” it’s non-optional support, so I’m assuming everyone in this question is an adult.)

But unless there are *incredibly* mitigating circumstances (like, you are incapacitated in some way), allowing a parent 24-7 access to both your money and your transaction history risks crossing the line into control. If your mom wants to be repaid for her help, work out a schedule and stick to it, but hold onto your passwords. And if control is the price of your mom’s help, think carefully about whether the cost is worth it. Sometimes the cheapest way to pay is with money.

8) “Parents freak out over not knowing my friends. I’m 24!”

I wonder, are your friends local or do they live inside the internet? Some of my best friends live there, it’s not weird like it was back in the 1990s when I just told my folks that everybody I knew from the internet was “a friend from college” or “former coworker” so they wouldn’t obsess about me ending up on Dateline.

If at least some of your friends are local and up for a challenge, I propose the following solution: Throw a little dinner party where you invite one or two of your of most outgoing friends and your parents. Cook something simple. Keep the music low enough to talk over without yelling and skip the recreational intoxicants. If your parents attempt to grill your friends about their education, hobbies, love lives, and career prospects, see if you and your friends can band together and take turns asking them the same questions. “What do you do? How’d you get into that field? Do you like it?” “When you were our age, what did you do for fun?” “What was dating like in the Olden Times?” “Have YOU read any good books lately?” Maybe play a wholesome party game like Time’s Up or Apples to Apples. Neutral-boring is better than bad-interesting, so when in doubt, be boring.

This won’t magically undo the worry about loss of control, passage of time, sense of competition for your time and attention, or whatever underlying fear that’s causing your parents to “freak out.” But this has the advantage of addressing the thing they say they are worried about head-on: “You didn’t know my friends, but now you do! We just spent two pleasant hours being adults together!” Removing the mystery might inspire your parents to seek something new to complain about.

If your friends live mostly online, or you can’t yeet your friendly neighborhood Commander Logic at them the way every single person in our friend group does (she is truly THE BEST at Parents), you might get mileage out of asking your parents to be more specific about their worry and see if explaining it aloud either makes it progressively less worrying over time or gives you a more specific way to address it. “So you’re worried about me driving at night? Would it make you feel better if I texted you when I got there?” If they keep adding worry on top of worry the more you try to meet them halfway, at least you can be sure it’s not something you’re doing and stop giving them more ammunition. Ultimately, it’s pretty normal to have a social life that’s separate from your parents, so don’t let their worry stop you from enjoying your life.

9) “Every time I try to rest or sleep my mum calls me why is this.”

THEY SEE YOU WHEN YOU’RE SLEEPING

THEY KNOW WHEN YOU’RE AWAKE

No, wait, that’s Santa. I don’t know why your mom does this, but I do know that most phones nowadays have many “do not disturb” settings that will silence notifications or filter them from specific numbers. USE THEM. And if she still somehow gets through, don’t answer until you’re ready to be up and interactive.

If these are calls coming from inside the house, I don’t have much helpful advice. Having encountered several people who assume that “my rest time” = “their time that could be put to more productive use,” I tend to get as far away as I can and stay there for as long as I can. Hard when it’s your mum and you live in the same house, but hopefully not impossible forever.

10) “babby MUST calm DOWN”

Most of what I know about how is babby comes from memes, but I will try:

First, why babby is excite? Hold babby? Feed babby? Change babby diaper?

If not hungry-lonely-wet, maybe put babby in car seat. Then drive. Babby sleep?

That’s all she wrote, for now. Wishing you all the best of the rest of this winter holiday season, and thanks for reading!

Dear Captain,

My partner (40s, he/him) and I (30s she/her) are both artists. I come from a rich family and he comes from a poor family. Unfortunately where we come from, the starving artist cliché is completely true. Even though my partner is very talented and has done well for himself, his financial life strategy consists of sometimes amassing money (from sales of work or from grants) and then living frugally and slowly whittling it down until it completely runs out.

This can be very, very stressful. I feel guilty about even putting this into words because I live off my inheritance, and gave up having a different, non-creative, but more lucrative, career, because I knew I could afford it. We live in an apartment I own outright. He pays bills and I pay the admin fees (I pay about twice what he pays). I sometimes find myself becoming overwhelmed with resentment at him because I feel like he can’t support any long-term financial plans I have for myself or for our life together, and I know that in any emergency I’m going to have to foot the bill.

During our six years together he’s had to live with multiple roommates to afford rent, he’s been unable to afford health insurance or therapy at times, and everything is mediated by the looming threat of his money running out. He also has several aging relatives with declining health that don’t have a pension. He insists that he’s always worked it out, he’s never gone into debt and ultimately none of this should affect me. It is true that he’s never asked me for money, and he’s contributed to our household in many other ways. He’s wonderful and loving, and he’s my best friend in the world.

I could probably afford to support him financially for the rest of both of our lives, but I’m not sure I want to. We’ve already broken up over this once, and are in a shaky place at the moment. I’m not sure how to handle the situation, and he feels very insecure and defensive whenever I try to bring up the stress I feel about the money situation. I feel like we’re at a stage of the relationship where I wish I could see myself getting married and building a whole life with this person, but this keeps holding me back. What should I do?

Hey there,

I have ADHD and use picking at my skin/scalp as a stim (despite being medicated) and work in an office, which means lots of time sitting and staring at computer screens…ideal picking conditions. I keep my nails short, I wear makeup and hats to reduce the temptation, but I’ve realized that I need a fidget tool to distract myself from the need to pick. A while back I figured out that bringing my knitting project is a perfect way to keep my hands busy!

The downside: it attracts comments, and I’m SUPER sensitive to drive-by comments from folks curious about my appearance or what I’m doing. It does attract way fewer comments than when they catch me scratching at my scalp or when I use my fidget toys (fellow pickers: NeeDoh cubes or gumdrops are perfect). I work with a fair number of Boomers and they feel the need to make judgemental comments about how old I am when they see me with a fidget toy, which actually does impact how they treat me in the workplace.

Comments like “oh, what are you making?” while I’m knitting are totally fine and can be really fun, since I do have other crafty coworkers and we can talk about our projects. It’s the requests that get to me – the “ooh, could you make me a hat / scarf / huge expensive sweater with complicated pattern I saw online” or just straight up “when are you make me something?” that bug me, and they happen SO frequently since I work for a large company and have been knitting at work for at least 2 years.

People who ask questions like this are almost always unaware that knitting is time-consuming, expensive and I only buy yarn from a local shop that hand-dyes their own Merino – and they do the “but what if-” continuation after I’ve said no, while I’m already annoyed, and the longer it goes on the more annoyed I get. I’ve worked in lots of professions over the years, and I quite like my job and I’m good at it, so I’d rather not change careers yet again after alienating all of my coworkers. I’m usually super patient and have worked with little teeny tiny kids so I’m used to a ton of annoying questions, and I’ve even offered to teach people to knit – they only just want me to make them something, struggle to hear “no”, then get annoyed with me.

Example:

“You crochet?” (Nope, knitting)
“What are you making?” (The same hat I’ve been working on for a month, I’m a slow knitter)
“Could you make me one?” (Uhhh nope, I just make things for my family / I’m super behind on holiday presents this year)
“What if I commissioned you?” (No, sorry, I don’t sell my work, if I paid myself a living wage it’d be $300.)
“What?! I buy hats at the store that are $30” (Those are made on a knitting machine & not by a person usually, or if it is handmade they’re super underpaid, and are probably not made of the expensive handmade yarn I buy)
“What if you just got some super cheap yarn from (big name craft store)?” (Nah, I just use ethical yarn)
“But what if you made just a scarf or socks or something instead?” (nope, sorry)
“My grandma used to crochet and she could whip something up super quickly” (very cool for your grandma! Knitting is a lot slower than crochet and I’m a slow knitter.)

Cue person being really annoyed and huffy and treating me stand-offishly for the rest of the day. I’ve had one coworker do this repeatedly, suggesting I sell things as a side hustle & asking me when I’m making him something, to which I finally said “sure, if you get the yarn for it and find a pattern you like, I’ll make you something” – which cued him to say word-for-word, “I didn’t want to do the work, I just wanted you to make me something”.

Am I overreacting? Maybe! Have I tried a firm “nope, sorry” to which the response is almost always that person not speaking to me for the rest of the day? Yep! Am I destined to have this same conversation over and over until eventually I snap and strangle someone with my circular knitting needles? Who’s to say.

Would you happen to have any scripts / advice / commiseration?

Thank you,
Yarnover it (they/them)

Dear Yarnover,

Your letter indicates that you frequently get monitored and singled out by coworkers due to your disability, and you do a lot of work auditing their intentions so you know how to avoid upsetting them or attracting similar attention in the future.

The examples you list show a pattern of sticking to your boundaries while engaging with their questions in good faith, but your patient explanations are not having the intended results. So you’re doing the timeless dance of the neurodivergent, visibly nonconforming, and/or serially awkward: You’re assuming that any routine social interaction that feels “off” is most likely because of some signal you failed to grasp, and categorizing your reactions to others’ behavior (such as annoyance about chronic intrusions and some people’s inability to take “no” for an answer the first seven times you say it) as probable overreactions.

Some consequences of following this logic:

• It leaves little room for and no defense against the possibility that some people act like assholes and go on little bad faith power trips simply because they enjoy it.
• If all your reactions are classified as overreactions, then anything you’d do to administer consequences or even express how you feel are probably off the table. (When people ask me for the “polite” way to tell a boundary-crosser to back off, what they’re usually asking for is the least perceptible way.)
• Ergo, “how do I fix myself so that assholes stop happening to me?” becomes the default approach to encountering bad faith in the wild.
• Wildcard slot for power dynamics around who gets to demand politeness and civility without giving it vs. who is expected to perform these things without expecting them in return.

Assuming good faith until you know otherwise is generally a good way of trying to be in this world, the same way assuming everyone is out to get you is an exhausting way to be. That said, the cultural tendency to overcompensate by ignoring historic power imbalances and assuming individual good intentions in the face of patterns of repeated bad faith behavior leaves us perpetually open to manipulation by bad actors.

Fortunately there is a fairly reliable test for whether your antagonist in a given conflict is operating in good faith: You decline to comply with whatever they want from you and see what they do. When people who genuinely did not intend to annoy or offend you or cross a boundary find out they did, they tend to apologize and back off. When people who did intend harm get called on it, they tend to explode and double down on DARVO (deny, attack, reverse victim-and-offender) protocols and other manipulation tactics until it’s all your fault, again. Once that happens, no amount of clarification, information, or work on your part will fix the situation.

What this means in practice: Some of your coworkers are genuinely curious about knitting or genuinely curious about you and knitting is a relatively safe topic to engage with since you are enthusiastic about it. However, some of these people are doing it specifically to fuck with you because you are different and they cannot abide that. They will never admit this, and your charm offensives and patient explanations will never work on them, because their goal was never to understand why. It was to exert dominance. You can tell which are which by how some of them get when you dare treat them like a peer instead of an authority.

The repeat offenders don’t think you should be allowed to knit at work unless it serves them directly (…or allowed to use fidget toys…or ignore them…or give them “too short” answers….or have a disability….or have work tasks more urgent than catering to them…or live your life without constant judgment and commentary from them). These folks will “just” ask questions in order to command your attention and suck up your time, they’ll keep going until they get a rise* out of you or satisfy whatever impulse makes them be like this. (*Any indication that you are less than overjoyed to be interacting with them for as long as they feel like interacting with you). If they succeed in pissing you off, they will have a reason to feel aggrieved and punish you all day. If called on their behavior, they will act surprised. Why on earth are you so mad? They were just asking questions!

It matters that this particular conflict is taking place at work among older, abled, cisgender people who are pretty sure that the likely consequences of pissing you off are weighted strongly in their favor. This added  difficulty level makes straightforward solutions like “just tell them to go away because you’re working” much less feasible. It’s not that the “simple” solution is unreasonable or unfair, or that it never works, it’s just that the risks are higher if your ability to eat and be housed depends on being “a good cultural fit” with people who think you’re supposed to fit them and never the reverse.

I think there is stuff you can do about this, but it requires a hard reset on your part. This isn’t a problem about figuring out what each of these people individually want and finding better ways to explain yourself next time about a thing that helps you and harms no one. Boundaries start with defining what you will do, not controlling what other people do, making this a question about wresting back control of your days, accommodating yourself to the max, and clarifying what messages you wish to send about what you need to do your job effectively. If you’re going to have to mask to get through the workday, might as well build a mask out of deliberate messaging that has a hope of serving you!

Homework time:

First, how interruptible does your job expect you to be vs. how not-interruptible do you ideally need to be in order to get your work done?

What do you need to get done this week/today, and can you map tasks for which you require the most focus with blocks of time where you’re likely to have the most focus? How do these blocks correspond with how annoying vs. enjoyable it is to talk about knitting? For example:

• Blocks of time when you need knitting as a focus tool. (No interruptions please!)
• Blocks of when you’re in the break room and happy to chat about knitting with other like-minded people. (Knitting chat = yes!)
• Blocks of time when occasional work-related interruptions and/or casual chitchat are expected and unavoidable. Shove “meetings” into this one, but remove “knitting chat” for the time being.

Second, what are some visible, perceptible ways you could distinguish focus blocks from the others and enforce greater seclusion? Can you close a door or temporarily move to an unoccupied conference room or designated quiet workspace?

See also:

• Noise-cancelling headphones, the bigger the better.
• Blocking out time on shared office spyware collaboration tools.
• Rechargeable LED lamps where you can change the color at will.
• Jo March had her garret and her “Eff off, I’m writing (This means you, Amy!)(Beth, dear, please leave the tea mugs OUTSIDE!!!!!)” cap. You already have one hat. Do you need a second hat in a different color?

The props & lighting might signal the boundary. What body language or other cues indicate “I don’t wanna talk to you right now” and could help reinforce the boundary?

• Don’t turn your body toward them or look up from your screen to talk to them.
• Continue typing or reading the entire time.
• Keep your answers very short and focused on work.
• All the other “grey rock” and “be boring” tactics they hate.

A lot of social skills advice for neurodivergent people is about how we can get better at reading  body language and social cues to avoid annoying neurotypical people by taking them at their word, (or worse, asking them to clarify their meaning), but I’ve yet to see instructions about how we get to transmit our own cues. The stuff I listed is all the stuff I was taught were “universal” signals that mean “stay away” or “keep it moving” when someone does them to me. Just how universal are they? Let’s find out!

Now, you already know that certain of your coworkers find you fascinating (non-complimentary, at least from their perspective, whereas all of my indicators point toward “a goddamn delight.”). And you know certain people (serially annoying) are gonna comment on anything and everything you change no matter what you do because that’s their brand of weirdness. You can’t prevent it, but you can expect it, plan for it, and build it into how you respond to it.

When making changes to your environment or activities inspires someone to try to get around the boundary or comment in a way that feels intrusive, try this from now on: Instead of explaining yourself at length (and thereby rewarding the unwelcome behavior), find your best “pleasant coworker who is mildly confused” mask, and pick whichever of these script patterns seems most true for you and achievable at the time.

Them: “Wait, why is your light blue all of a sudden?”

You: “New lamp. It helps me focus.” (Alternate: “I like blue.”)

Pause while everybody takes that in.

You: “Anyway, did you need something urgently, or can I dive back in?”

Option 2:

Them: :hovering around waiting for you to notice:

You: (slooooooooooooooooooowly saving your work and bringing your attention their way) “Hi there. Can I help you with something?”

Them: “Just wondering, why is your light blue?”

You: “I’m trying a little thing where I make it blue when I need to focus and pink when I am open to answer questions or chitchat. Anyway, right now is focus time. Did you need something urgently or…?”

Them: “So I should only talk to you when the light is pink?”

Pro-tip: If the questioner is someone you know to be serially annoying, unless you work with fellow ADHD, Autistic, or AuDHD-ers and know for sure that you’re talking to one of them right now, there is like a 5% chance this is a sincere question and a 95% chance that it’s a derisive challenge or excuse to lecture you.Trust your pattern recognition skills and history with the other person about which is most likely, not other people’s ideas of how this should work under laboratory conditions, ’cause there is also a more than decent chance that neurotypical bystanders who are supposedly the best at parsing subtext will be like, “But it was just an innocent question, why are you being so mean?” if you react accurately to the hostile intent where they can see you. This is why I say that the best way to get around a “neg” is to agree with it effusively, and that’s why you’re gonna slap on your most cheerful “everybody’s just joking around here!” mask  before you say your next line.

You: “Hahahaha yes! That would be great, actually, but mostly I do it for myself when I know there’s something I need to get done and I can’t afford to spend time chatting. Anyway, did you have work question that needs answering right now…or….?”

Continue looking at them with your most placid Customer Service Face and *don’t say more words* unless it’s answering their work question or thanking them for stopping by.

Then turn your head/your chair/visibly re-angle yourself to detach from the interaction like you’re using your “action” to disengage from a DnD fight, and go back to work. If they keep hovering and looking for more excuses to bother you one you’ve done that, see what happens if you physically exit the space. As in, get up from your desk and walk somewhere else on the floor (bathroom, water cooler, coffee, check mailboxes, etc.) If they wanna walk and talk so they can continue the interaction, there are multiple ways to ditch them without making a scene, like backtracking for an urgent toilet visit or phone call that you forgot you need to make, and if that fails, stop by their desk on your way back to yours to drop them off.

You’re already noticed that resisting certain labels or extended interactions makes some people you work with get weird and huffy. If someone is being rude or unprofessional here, don’t assume it’s you! People have choices about how they treat you. Cool, normal people don’t explode when a coworker says that it’s been nice chatting but they need to get back to work and won’t satisfy every drop of idle curiosity. Those who do aren’t reacting to you doing it wrong somehow, they are reacting to being thwarted about whatever they get out of picking on you. The key to dealing with people who throw tantrums when they don’t get their way about the tiniest thing is realizing that they’ll do it no matter how you treat them, because that’s their only coping skill with people they think have less power than them. If they stomp off in a huff and make a big show of avoiding you in the future, that’s a victory! Your prize is less of their company and less plausible deniability that they don’t know that they are being annoying when they interrupt you.

The nice thing about this strategy is that you can substitute “knitting” or “white noise machine” or anything for “blue light” and follow the same pattern. “It helps me focus.” “I like it.” When you’re on break time, or out of hyperfocus, you can be your gregarious and pleasant self who loves knitting*! (*With one caveat, coming below.)  If you feel you were “accidentally” short with someone with benign intent, remember that it’s okay to be too busy to talk to nice people, too, and you can always follow up later. “Sorry, I was in the middle of something before. How is your day going?”

Finding a way to be consistent about switching modes and giving yourself ways to reset after an awkward interaction is way more useful than trying to find One Script To Finally Rule Them All. You can’t ever get people to stop trying to hijack your day, but I think you can probably exert more control about how long the interruptions last and how you snap your attention back to where you want it to be afterwards.

Bonus: Specifically About Knitting

Here is experiment you could try with how you talk about knitting. I want you to think in terms of switching between three distinct modes. The modes are called:

“Knitting is fun and interesting!” (Mode 1, hereafter)

“Knitting is boring routine background noise I use to get myself through tasks that require sustained attention.” (Mode 2)

“Sorry, I don’t take commissions.” (Mode 3)

Mode 1 is for break time or during office chit-chat lulls involving fellow knitting enthusiasts and people you trust to not be annoying about knitting. In Mode 1, “What are you working on?” is a straightforward question with a straightforward answer. “I’m making a _____ for _______.” And as long as you are enjoying yourself and everyone else is participating in the conversation, be effusive about the kind of yarn you like and the patterns and the other details that make it fun for you. You don’t have to be a robot about it all the time just ’cause other people are weird and demanding sometimes.

Mode 2 is for when you are actively using knitting as a focus tool and someone interrupts you to ask questions about what you’re knitting & why. Tell them it’s a focus tool you use to occupy your hands when you need your brain to stay on task. Then, stop saying any words about knitting. Everybody already knows you like it. Did they need something work related? No? Thank them for stopping by and go back to work. If they are truly interested, they can join in on general Yarn Chat next time everybody’s in the break room.

Mode 3 is for people who badger you about knitting stuff for them. “Sorry, I don’t take commissions.” Then, once again, stop saying any words about knitting. Reasons are for reasonable people. The more you explain your process, or justify what kind of fancy yarn you use, or break down your labor and material costs for unreasonable people, the more they interpret it as the starting point in a negotiation where they will eventually wear you down instead of the “no” that it is. This is the exact dynamic you are describing, is it not?

Change the subject back to work, or ask them if they have any neat holiday plans coming up or if they’ve read any good books lately. You’re not being mean, rude, or unprofessional here. Badgering someone who has given you five reasons already for why they can’t or won’t do what you want is actually rude and unprofessional.

If this works like I hope it will, the act of knitting at work can remain a hobby you enjoy and an important accommodation, while providing zero further beeswax for people who harass you about it To pull it off, I recommend you save discussions about knitting at work for down time and people who make that enjoyable for you.

Hi CA,

In the last year two people have gone no contact with me (she/her).

One is a former colleague (she/her) who has burned many bridges in our professional community. She’s been basically blackballed in our specialty area and had to take a position doing similar but much less exciting work after she was fired from her last job. Around the same time she stopped talking to me because she felt I wasn’t supportive enough about her recent move. This is, at least, my guess based on talking to mutual friends. She never told me she was going no contact, she just dropped out of a group chat and de-friended me.

The other is my husband’s sister (she/her). This is 10,000 times more complicated. She seems to be reacting to a lifetime’s worth of frustration with her parents. This escalated three years ago when her first child was born and the relationship between her and the rest of us deteriorated rapidly. From my perspective there’s a communication mismatch, a generational divide, and 40 years of unresolved issues that I can’t begin to understand. It’s been about a year since she’s talked to her parents. She’s texted twice with my husband over that time with the most recent one very politely but firmly saying she doesn’t want contact with us either.

I know of two instances where SIL has felt hurt by something I directly or indirectly did, so I want to talk it through and fix it. But obviously her relationship with her parents and brother (my husband) is bigger and more important, and I can’t repair my relationship with her until that happens first. In retrospect, I should have responded a lot more intentionally when I became aware of her feelings.

I also feel the need to say that my MIL went no contact with her parents in her 40s, so in many ways my SIL is repeating learned behavior. But maybe I’m being blamey/judgemental/defensive when I bring that up.

Two questions:

(1) I think about my SIL and the hurt I’ve caused her every day. How can I live with her feelings towards me until the day she decides she’s ready to reach out? We have a very small family and her absence is felt.

(2) Does everyone my age (early 40s) have two people who don’t want to talk to them anymore? It feels like a high number.

Thanks,

SIL of the SIL

Dear SIL of the SIL:

In answer to your second question, I mass-blocked literally thousands of rancid TERFs, Nazis, trolls, and other badly behaved strangers flowing into Bluesky from Twitter before breakfast this morning, so I might be the wrong person to ask about whether “two” is a high number. It’s a high number for you, so it counts. Does it represent a troubling pattern where you are the common denominator, or is it just a coincidence of timing? Unclear. More on this later.

In answer to your first question, I don’t know precisely what you did to your SIL and how much of it was intentional, but I can tell you that widely accepted practice for addressing harm done to other people looks something like this:

1. Name the harm in clear, specific terms and be honest with yourself for your role in causing it to the best of your ability.
2. Make a sincere apology where you take accountability.
3. Hear the other person’s side of things out without interrupting to equivocate or explain.
4. Offer restitution to repair or offset any damage you may have caused, and follow through on your promises if the offer is accepted.
5. Leave the ball in their court for how to move forward, without placing further demands on the wronged person to forgive, soothe your feelings, or grant you access to them. [=>YOU ARE APPROXIMATELY HERE<=]
6. Adjust your behavior so you don’t repeat the same problem in the future.

Steps two, three, and four are things you do in concert with other person, but the rest are things you can do for and by yourself. In cases where apologizing or making amends would do more harm by say, overriding the consent of the person you wronged, then ethically you *must* leave your SIL and former friend alone unless they contact you. So my best advice for you is to detach from ever getting a satisfying reason or answer from the people who cut you off and focus on the parts you can do alone.

Sometimes people who have been cut off after a breakup find comfort and peace in rituals, such as:

• Writing a letter with everything you wish you could say to the absent person and what you wish they would say back, and then destroying it.
• Quietly donating money or effort to a cause the person cares about in their honor (but emphatically not in their name if it would subvert a no-contact request).
• Making a conscious choice to redirect whatever grief, unrequited love, or other unresolved feelings and the energy you would spend chasing after the absent person into nurturing your community and people who want to show up in your life.

If this issue with your sister-in-law is preoccupying to a painful degree that distracts you from enjoying life, consider taking the problem to a counselor who can help you work on ways to disengage, forgive yourself, and find closure. If you want to read more about apologies (including ones where the amends must be made in absentia), I recommend Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg’s excellent On Repentance And Repair: Making Amends In An Unapologetic World.

Now let’s talk about what these two situations have in common, what they don’t, and where that leaves you. Are these people leaving you, specifically, because of something you did wrong, or are they exiting a whole system that you just happen to be part of? And are you missing them, specifically, or are you reacting to the pain of rejection? My read on both situations is that it’s mostly the second thing, but you tell me.

Your former colleague was in the process of leaving one job/career field for another, not entirely of her own volition, and you say that she has a habit of burning bridges. In a time of professional upheaval and crisis, she left the group chat and blocked you at the same time. You have through-the-grapevine information that she found you insufficiently supportive of her choices, though you don’t indicate that she asked you for specific support that you then refused.

Were you close friends who happened to meet through work, or were you part of a loose association of friendly current and former colleagues who mix networking and social chatting? Looking at the last year or two, how big a part of each other’s daily lives were you? When was the last time you spent one on one time together that wasn’t based on shared professional interests or the whole group getting together? What makes you think that this is a deeply personal and specific “fuck off” and not just burning one last bridge between anyone and anything that reminds her of an arena of failure and strife?

If I gave you four buckets and 10 tokens, and told you that nobody else on earth would ever see or judge what you did with them, how many tokens would you put in each bucket?

• Bucket 1: I Miss Her So Much & Find Myself Texting Her Almost Every Day
• Bucket 2: I Feel Both Sad And Relieved At Possibly No Longer Having To Deal With Her Constant Ups & Downs
• Bucket 3: I Feel Guilt About The Aforementioned Relief
• Bucket 4: I Feel Hurt & Angry About Being Rejected Without Explanation

Your sister-in-law broke up with her entire family over “a lifetime’s worth of frustration with her parents” and “a communication mismatch, a generational divide, and 40 years of unresolved issues that I can’t begin to understand.” You say that your MIL had to take a similar road with her own parents, and you also say “We have a very small family and her absence is felt.” Interesting.

Were you and your sister-in-law friends? Did you spend one-on-one time together hanging out and have interests & hobbies in common that were not centered on the rest of the family, or did you encounter her mostly on holidays and events where the others were present? Would you be friends if you met under different circumstances? Have you ever shared something she told you in confidence with her folks, even if your intentions were good? (If so, I have exactly one guess about why she stopped talking to you). Before the current rift, were she and your husband friends as adults? Did they hang out together just for fun sometimes without their parents? Is your husband someone she trusted to confide in and ask for help? Did they have keys to each other’s places? Does he think of her as a reliable narrator*? (*I have no indication that she isn’t one, but if either of you don’t think she is, it also neatly solves the mystery of why she lumped you in with the parents).

Six new buckets, fifteen new tokens, and same deal as before where you are completely honest with yourself and nobody will ever tell:

• Bucket 5: I Miss Her All The Time & Feel Like Husband/I Lost His/My/Our Best Friend/Only Ally In The Family
• Bucket 6: Lumping Me In With The Rest Of These Dysfunctional Assholes Just Because I Made A Few Mistakes Really Hurts My Feelings
• Bucket 7: I Resent How Much Her Absence Has Increased Pressure On Me To Play Dutiful Daughter (& Pick Up Holiday Slack)
• Bucket 8: Surely There Is Some Solution If Only Everyone Would Just Talk To Each Other Like Adults (The Middle Child’s Lament)
• Bucket 9: Come On, SIL, You’ve Made Your Point, But Doesn’t Your Kid Deserve Grandparents? They Won’t Be Around Forever!
• Bucket 10: What If There Is Something Deeply Awful Buried Under Euphemisms About “Generational Divides” and “A Lifetime Of Frustration”? Something So Bad That I Might Have To Run Away, Too?

I’m guessing wildly here, so it would make total sense if not all the buckets get tokens. But an inbox full of concerned wives who are trying to single-handedly fix the dysfunction in their husband’s families in time for Festivus makes me a relatively *educated* guesser, so I’ll wager that it will be highly revealing for you to contemplate which buckets got the most tokens and why.

As for what you do with the information, may I humbly suggest: Nothing?

Do literally nothing about it, except take the steps outlined earlier in the post to create your own closure without looking for ways around their consent. You can’t fix your husband’s family of origin, not that anyone asked you to. You couldn’t have fixed your former friend’s cascade of career corrections, even if she asked you to. There is no work you can do about these relationships that will make them different than they are. All you can do is take care of yourself, and that most likely means detaching. Wish your former friend well in your mind and then do something nice for yourself or somebody who welcomes your company. Let your husband and his family be upset about his sister this holiday season without climbing into her shoes or undermining her choices. If you get opportunities for a do-over about the mistakes you so regret, you can make a different choice next time. In the meantime, stop doing work about people who are not working at you.

If we value consent, then we have to accept the possibility that people will decide to leave and not come back. We must be allowed to leave relationships and situations that harm us or no longer serve us, and therefore we must allow others the same freedom to weigh whatever they’ll gain in peace against what they might lose in connection and then do what they think is best for themselves. If they are being unfair or making an error in leaving, that’s still their mistake to make, and it’s up to them to come back and correct it. We get to decide if we’re willing to leave a door open and hear them out someday, because everybody gets to set conditions around who is allowed in their lives. But once someone goes, there is nothing we can do to hasten their return. So do nothing.

People left behind often interpret being cut off as a punishment, and I’ve read enough letters from the people who leave that I can’t say 100% that it isn’t intended that way, at least at first. A good sign that leaving was meant to teach a lesson is if they keep popping back up to see if you’ve learned yours yet. But if somebody goes away and stays gone? The simplest and best explanation is that they wanted freedom more than they wanted anything else. Freedom from you, from the institutions you might represent, from the situation that brought them to that point, from painful reminders, from a flurry of minor annoyances, from a lack of enjoyment or pleasure, from pressure or obligation to make the situation be any different. Freedom goes both ways, so when somebody hits that block button or tells you outright not to contact them anymore, they are telling you that there is nothing whatsoever you can do to fix whatever this is, and now you get to be free of it. Breaking up means that you don’t have to work on the relationship anymore. It’s done. Your work here is done.

Grieve for what you lost. Then? Be free.