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It’s been a while since we last had a Boston meetup!
When: Sunday, October 27th, 2024 at 1pm
Where: Cambridge Common, in Cambridge, MA, near the Civil War Monument
Closest T stop is Harvard Square on the Red Line. Cambridge Common is a 5-10 minute walk.
The Civil War Monument is the big statue in the center of Cambridge Common, with lots of benches around (but no tables).
Accessibility notes: The park has good pathways to the area where we’re meeting, but no bathrooms in the park. Best nearby public restrooms are in the MBTA station.
I’ll have with me a Catbus plushie (from My Neighbor Totoro), and I’ll probably be working on a crochet blanket.
If the weather forecast wildly changes and we have to move indoors, weather location is the Harvard Art Museum Cafe, in the central atrium of 32 Quincy Street.
Feel free to bring any crafts, games, puzzles, etc to work on or share. I’ll also have some art supplies and paper to share.
If you have questions, comments, or are trying to find us, you can reach me at bostonCAmeetup AT gmail DOT com. If you can’t come but would like me to organize another meetup in the future, please let me know!
Hi!
I’m in my 40s and have a tight-knit friend group of about 20 years (all she/her). Some of us in the group are closer than others, but we have all gone on vacations together, been in each others’ weddings, lived together in various configurations, etc. In short, a very sibling/family type of friend group.
There is one friend in the group, B, that I haven’t been enjoying my time with lately and I noticed I was gritting my teeth through our group hangouts, wishing for them to end. For my own happiness, I’ve been pulling away from the all-group socializing and making an effort to do more one-on-one with the friends in that group that I do enjoy. It’s been working well–for me.
B has never commented directly and possibly hasn’t even noticed that I’ve been fairly absent in the past year or so. Other friends, though, have–particularly one I’ll call C. C has launched a bit of a campaign to get me to relax my boundaries around time with B, and it’s making me want to avoid her as well! Other people in the group (D-H) respect my boundaries and like the effort to see each other less frequently but more intimately.
I would really like to have, say, Friend E and Friend G over or go out with them, but C gets extremely upset when I “exclude” B. I’ve tried to explain that I’m not asking anyone else to do anything, these are my boundaries for myself, etc., but it hasn’t been effective.
Maybe I am actually being a jerk though? There’s somehow a “line” in my head where one-on-one time with friends D-H is fine, but as soon as two or more are involved, automatically it should be open to the whole group. Do you have any insight for me on why I have this “line” in my head–is it because it does actually cross into exclusion/cruelty?
Thanks!
The Whole Group or Bust
Dear The Whole Group Or Bust:
Assuming that you are not hostile to B. when you do opt into group events, and you do not lobby to have people who genuinely enjoy her company exclude her from all-group events or from smaller events they host, and you keep invitations that don’t include everyone out of the #everyone group chat, you are not being cruel. You’re not even being rude. You simply realized you were enjoying big group events relatively less, so you created smaller spin-offs that you enjoy more.
Odds are that you feel slightly guilty because you have a mild Geek Social Fallacies hangover and because C. is an active GSF#1 and #4 carrier who is trying to make you feel guilty and unwittingly confirming exactly why the decision to prioritize time with the friends you most enjoy was a good one. If C. would prefer to only attend things that also include B., she’s free to arrange her own outings. If she keeps pressuring you, she’s gonna find herself on the list of people you only see occasionally, and it won’t be a mystery how she ended up there.
Since it seems like C. is trying to address this directly with you (vs. spinning B. up or doing passive-aggressive group shenanigans), if you want to try one more time to have a reasonable conversation with her, maybe try something like this:
- Pull her aside for a private chat.
- Tell her you’ve noticed the pattern of her becoming upset when you miss group events and any other specific pressure tactics.
- Ask her if you’re reading the situation correctly and what she hopes to get out of it.
- Listen to what she says. This is hopefully the last time you’re ever gonna discuss this with her, and you are gonna have the final say eventually, so don’t be afraid to let her talk and get it out of her system.
- When she stops talking, do not try to argue her points logically. You do not want to get sucked into justifying your decisions or re-litigating your conflict with B. with the person you’re about to ask to stay the heck out of it.
- Instead, thank her for honesty, and then be honest about what you intend to do and what you want C. to do from now on. Sample talking points you can adapt for your own purposes:
“Thanks for being honest and for confirming that what I sensed might be happening is what’s actually happening. Let me be honest with you in turn: I neither need nor want your assistance with conflict resolution or changing how I socialize. Please stop pressuring me to hang out more often, and please stop commenting on my relationships with other friends within the group.”
Pause for her to respond. Maybe she’ll pleasantly surprise you and be cool! If she is not cool, listen, don’t argue, then continue with what you need her to know.
“The problems you are trying to solve aren’t problems for me. I know that you mean well and just want everyone to get along, but after 20 years, I don’t need all my friends to share the same tastes or priorities all the time, make only decisions that I agree with, or be the exact same amount of friends with each other that they are with me. Plus, I *like* being able to switch between seeing everyone now and then and arranging lots of small, casual hangouts with whomever I’m most in the mood to see that day. Since I’ve been doing things this way, I am much happier and my schedule feels much more manageable.”
Let her sit with that for a second. When you’re ready, continue, and bring it back to what you’d actually like her to do from now on.
“Going forward, if you find it too upsetting to attend events that aren’t open to everyone, just say the word! I won’t be upset if you’d prefer to stay home, just like I won’t be mad if the events you host reflect your priorities about who you invite. But I’m going to keep doing what works for me, whether or not you or anyone else agrees. And if you keep pushing me or inserting yourself into a conflict that isn’t about you, then you and I are going to have a conflict of our very own. I’d to avoid that if possible, which is why I would like this to be the last discussion we have about how I run my social calendar or my relationships with people who are not you. Can I count on you to respect that from now on?”
Then she’ll say some stuff. It might not be great stuff, especially if her concern about excluding B. is really borne out of fear of being rejected herself. Internal monologue: “If LW can just stop being friends with B., doesn’t that means she could just stop being friends with me one day? Oh shit, I better fix things with B. before that happens!” People who decide that your boundaries with other people are invalid because you might need to set the same boundaries with them if they treat you the same way the other people did (or create entirely new problems) are not my people, so I can’t explain why they build these impossible logic traps for themselves. I just observe them doing it and hope that somebody intervenes before they bring about the exact thing they feared most.
If it goes that way, don’t argue if you can help it. Try to cut the conversation short and give C. some space. What she does after the conversation will show you if she heard you and respects you enough to take you at your words. I hope she will be cool! If she isn’t, you know what to do.
Overall, I’d rate my script wording here at “medium spicy.” You may wish to soften things, or not, according to your style and how accurately that describes your annoyance levels. You’re on the verge of slow-fading C., so my sense was that reassuring her that you aren’t mad would be a lie that serves no one. C. is currently betting that pressuring you is somehow easier than dealing with B.’s whole deal or learning to accept the situation. In my experience with chronic boundary-pushers and self-appointed peacemakers, sometimes they need a little glimpse of the tiger before you show them the door with the lady.
Dear Captain Awkward,
I have a friend that I know I need to talk to, and I would like your advice on a script for what to say.
My friend “Jane” is nice and fun to hang out with, and we’ve known each other since childhood. I wouldn’t consider us “best friends” but we are close, and since COVID we’ve gotten closer as I moved from my college town back to our home city.
Over the last few years, I have noticed a “frog in boiling water” situation in which Jane has been making more and more conversations revolve around her ruminating about a situation over the course of months, for hours at a time when we hang out. This started during the pandemic but has quietly escalated to the point that almost every time I see her in person, she’s got new thoughts on whatever Topic of the Year it is. Sometimes it’s depression; sometimes it’s grad school stress; she has a tendency to blunder into situationships, so sometimes, it’s “but what does he meaaaaan when he says he liked hanging out with me?” And reinterpreting these “signs” over and over, without me even asking, or sending me dozens of unsolicited messages overnight with a new “revelation” about what he “really must mean”. Lately, she’s even stopped asking me how I am until a solid 15 or 30 minutes into a ruminative monologue! I’ve gotten to the point that I’ve been avoiding responding to her, which I find only makes her even more persistent about sharing her anxious thoughts.
I realize I should have put a stop to this long ago, but probably like a lot of readers, I have a whole childhood history around being made to listen to adults’ complaints and caretake their emotions, so I struggle with snapping out of that people-pleasing mindframe. I realize that’s not an excuse, but it does make me feel like I’m being a bad friend and denying her emotional support if I ask her to stop talking about something that’s clearly bothering her. I’ve tried every non-confrontational approach I can think of: I’ve actively listened, validated her emotions, asked her if she wanted advice or just wanted to vent so as not to burden her with unhelpful advice, pointing out patterns in her ruminations, asking her “what if” she tried X or Y, even told her that I don’t know if listening is helping and maybe she needs to talk to a therapist. But she insists that she doesn’t need a therapist, and she insists that she “just wants to vent”, even when I point out that she’s been venting about the same topic for weeks.
I know it’s time for direct confrontation, but I admit that I struggle with not wanting to make her feel like her problems aren’t valid (I was invalidated a lot as a child and feel very sensitive about potentially doing the same thing to other people). What’s a nice way to tell Jane that I don’t really care about her problems and I need her to stop talking about them?
Sincerely,
Frog in Boiling Water
Dear Frog,
I have been all the people in your letter, both a Jane sunk in my own tedious misery who needed someone to stop me and the Frog saying, “I know that [job][partner][family] is horrible and I will do whatever I can to support you, but since I’m not actually [getting paid to work there][dating #thatfuckingguy][descended from those people] there are limits about how much detail I can absorb and how much I am willing to let them occupy every conversation, social occasion, and waking moment.”
You keep using the word “nice” and I can’t really help you there. Nice isn’t kind, and nice isn’t working. To change this situation, you are going to have to be incredibly direct. “Jane, I cannot be your venting friend[right now][today][anymore].” From experience, I can tell you that whether the friendship ultimately survives is going to depend more on what Jane does after she hears it than the specific words you used to say it. And whether the boundary sticks is gonna depend more on your actions than either her reactions or your words.
Your question came in a shape that anyone who has spent more than an hour on this website will recognize. Let’s break it down to its most basic form:
“Dear Captain Awkward, a person is repeatedly crossing my boundaries in a way that makes me feel [angry][annoyed][overwhelmed][triggered by reminders of past events][bored][avoidant][checked out][exasperated][other feelings that add up to ‘bad’]. How do I convince them to stop doing the stuff that makes me feel bad without making them feel bad?”
This framing sets the problem up as a persuasion problem. Your boundaries only get to matter after you successfully convince the other people in the conflict that they do, and in the meantime they get to keep doing all the stuff that makes you feel bad until you a) persuade them to stop b) without making them feel even a little bit bad.
Two immediate, glaring problems with this approach:
1) You can’t control how other people will react or how they will feel.
2) It puts all the power and agency in the hands of the person you’re trying to persuade. What happens if they remain unpersuaded, as Jane clearly has?
You: Maybe this problem would be better for therapy.
Jane: That’s okay, I don’t need therapy, I just need venting.
You: I’m not sure all this venting is working to solve the problem.
Jane: Vents more and harder.
When you were small, you were coerced into being an emotional dumping ground for adults who did not care about your consent. It wasn’t happening because you weren’t saying “uh, that seems like a grown-up problem, I’m gonna go ride bikes now” loudly or clearly or politely enough, it was about knowing that even if you did, at best they wouldn’t notice and at worst they might physically prevent you from leaving, punish you for trying, keep right on doing the thing, and scapegoat you for making them feel bad about any of it. “Fawn” and “freeze” start as trauma responses. When you’re dependent on someone who demands to be tiptoed around and fawned over, they become survival skills. Scratch a recovering people-pleaser who has a hard time saying no as an adult and chances are you’ll uncover a history of exposure to people who were so terrible at taking no for an answer *that it rewired their entire brain.*
Once you’re away from a coercive environment, the habits and skills that helped you survive it stop working. People who have no interest in coercing you don’t want you to tiptoe around them, put your feelings last, preemptively manage their moods, or do anything you don’t freely and enthusiastically want to do. They don’t want you to try to read their minds or treat them like they are the worst person you’ve ever met. They don’t want to be the unwitting antagonists in dramas that take place only inside your head. The only people who would ever demand that from you or punish you for not prioritizing them above yourself are people you need to avoid like the plague.
Undoing the damage and unlearning habits that no longer serve you can be the project of a lifetime. Therapy can help, working on assertiveness skills and distress tolerance can help, making a habit of surrounding yourself with safe people and limiting your exposure to unsafe people can help. Where I can maybe help today is by replacing the project of persuading Jane with the project of reclaiming your own consent. Practically, that means we’re gonna stop trying to build your boundaries out of stuff you don’t control, like how Jane feels or what Jane finds persuasive. Instead, we’re gonna build them out of your feelings, your needs, the choices you make and actions you take to limit your exposure to stuff you don’t like and replace it with stuff you do. Some of those actions may involve conversations with Jane, but not all.
Consent is why every single post here about imbalanced relationships starts with the exact same question: What do you actually want? Forget what other people want, or what they assume, or what things used to be like, or what everybody promised each other it would be like. From this moment forward, in a perfect world where you get everything you want, what would a balanced, comfortable, enjoyable friendship free of avoidance, anxiety, and dread look like for you? What can you do to build toward that?
What makes Jane fun to hang out with? What would your ideal “Day with Jane” look like? What would you do? Where would you go? What would you talk about? How long would it last?
How often would you hang out or communicate, and what are your preferred environments or communication methods? If nightly texting is a problem, and it sounds like it is, could you replace texting with a weekly phone call or a monthly hangout to catch up in person? We’re looking for consistent and sustainable way more than we’re looking for perfect, so when in doubt, round down.
How much time would you spend listening to her vent? “Zero venting” is an acceptable answer, and it sounds like the honest answer, so let’s set the default at zero for now.
Instead of listening to her vent, what are five ways you’d rather spend your time together? In your shoes I’d be thinking about hobby or activity-based hangouts, like going for a bike ride, seeing a movie in the theater, or taking a class in something you’ve both always wanted to try. These all have a defined start and end time, something concrete or hands-on to focus on that isn’t “sharing deep confidences,” and take place at a location you can leave vs. potentially having to yeet a sobbing person off your sofa at 2 am.
What are five topics you’d rather talk about than grad school drama or disappointing dudes? Think: Hobby or media interests you have in common. Stuff that’s going on in your life. Stuff that makes Jane light up when she talks. The office politics and interpersonal dramas of grad school are boring to you, but what’s she studying in grad school? What is she nerdy about? What are you nerdy about?
While we’re at it, who are five people in your life who don’t treat you this way? Who are people who make it safe to set boundaries with them?
Once you’ve made your lists, take action to invite her into the kind of friendship you want and remove yourself from the parts you don’t want.
You can invite her to accompany you to do cool stuff you think she’d enjoy.
You can ask her about stuff you are genuinely interested in hearing about.
You can tell her outright when you do not have venting capacity. You can be explicit about how you are changing the subject now. “Okay, my turn to talk!”
If she starts venting anyway, you can quietly set a limit for how long you will engage and whether you remain in the conversation. If she runs over time, what will you do about it? (Get off the phone, change the subject, leave the room?)
You can say, “If I don’t text you back, it’s ’cause I’m not available. Please stop with the serial overnight texts.” You can say, “I don’t have a lot of capacity for back-and-forth texting right now. Want to set up a monthly in-person hang where we can catch up?” You can also mute notifications whenever you want to.
You can simply be less available overall, and only get in touch with her when you know you have capacity for dealing with a certain amount of venting.
None of these things require persuading Jane about anything before they happen. They do require setting limits with yourself about your own capacity and interest, and sticking to those limits, which is where you need practice. If at any point it becomes too much work, you get to stop.
Speaking of work, before you do a bunch of it about someone who does not seem to be doing even close to equivalent work about you, I think that by far the kindest and most effective starting point is also the simplest. “Jane, I’m not up for venting right now. Can we talk about something else or should we try again another time?”
Longer, more heart-to-heart version:
“Jane, you know how sometimes when you vent, I suggest therapy? And you tell me you don’t want to go to therapy? Right, so, I need to be more clear. You don’t ever have to go to therapy if you don’t want to, but also, that doesn’t make me your therapist. I need a break from being your Venting Friend.
I know you’re really going through it right now, and I do sympathize, but lately, it has become an automatic habit that takes up most if not all of the time we spend together. And when you talk for half an hour straight without a line-break or a question, or send me walls, plural of texts all night when I’m asleep, that’s a monologue, not a conversation.
Howabout this for a reset: If I want to know about grad school stuff or dating stuff, I will ask. If I don’t ask, or if I change the subject after a few minutes, then we either need to talk about different stuff or we need to wind down the conversation and come back another day.”
As always, suggested “scripts” are sample talking points that are not meant to be delivered verbatim or all at once without pauses for the other person to talk like you’re Hamlet brandishing a verbal sledgehammer at the Fourth Wall. I definitely did not design these specific scripts in terms of what I think Jane will find persuasive or nice, but they are what I think she needs to know in order to stop being a shitty friend to you.
If you felt like you could say any of that, you would have done it by now. If she were capable of stopping on her own, she would have stopped by now. Hence a whole process for reshaping how you think about the friendship and the problem to help you psych yourself up for what needs to happen.
The fact remains that how Jane reacts to having boundaries set with her will tell you everything you need to know, and you can’t really know until you stop hinting and start telling. She is either not understanding or deliberately ignoring your many hints, which means you are going to have to switch to a combination of more explict communication (“That’s all the grad school I can absorb today””Is it my turn to talk? Great!”) and making yourself less available when you know you don’t have it in you.
If she doubles down on manipulation because you set a boundary with her, it’s not a sign that you did boundaries wrong, but it is a sign that Jane might not a safe person for you. If Jane is a safe person, even if she is taken aback and has a not-great reaction at first, you gotta trust that she will come back, apologize, and –most importantly!– she will adapt her behavior to new information. Setting limits with her is not mean, uncaring, selfish, etc. or any of the things you fear. It is an act of kindness and an act of trust to give a friend the chance to course-correct and show up for you. If you didn’t want to be friends, you wouldn’t even try. If she does not want to be friends with you on those terms, that’s her choice.
You are currently on the verge of blowing up the friendship without ever giving either of you a real choice about whether it could be different, so I think it’s probably worth at least one attempt.
Dear Captain Awkward,
My group of friends and I are all in our 30s, mostly queer, and have found ourselves in widely different circumstances regarding: financial stability, disability, and cultural acceptance. Most of this friend group has known each other for 10+ years. We’re pretty close! We share a lot of solidarity and a history of caring for one another. But, recently, our group has been fracturing around issues of, well…privilege.
This seems to happen in two distinct ways. The first and most obvious is when friends with certain privileges (relative health, wealth, visa status, or social acceptance of their queerness in their community) constantly, cluelessly brag. In a truly tone-deaf, “please read the room” way.
Microaggression Example #1: Empathy? Interrupted.
The friend group is talking about housing insecurity. Specifically, we’re comforting and troubleshooting with a friend who is dealing with an unexpected eviction notice. Suddenly, a different friend starts talking about how she just bought a house! She’s “relieved” because finally got a house (after previous bids fell through). She’s “tentatively excited” and going to throw a lavish housewarming party! She’s “not sure” if she’s going to be able to invite all of us to her party, or when it will be, but she just wants us to be happy with her.
To be clear, she wasn’t bringing this up to offer to help the friend facing urgent eviction, or anyone else’s ongoing issues with housing insecurity. She just literally abruptly changed the subject to brag about her good luck. Like, she was officially done with empathizing with our other friend. And, that’s how she decided to show it. My impulse at that moment was to say, “Hey, if you’re not going to help or empathize, don’t say anything! Nobody asked you to talk. Not everything is about you. We’re trying to solve a problem. If you’re not, fine, but then just wait a bit.”
To be clear, I did not act on this impulse!
Obviously, I know challenging my friend like that would be rude and unhelpful. But, everyone was just awkward silence or vaguely kinda…agreeing that it was good?
And saying nothing made me feel pretty awful.
I regret not standing up for my friend in crisis, whose conversation got derailed. I know, were situations reversed, I would want someone to stand up for me, to emphasize that requesting empathy and help is not burdensome or shameful, and that the derailing friend’s reaction was an outlier.
But, like everyone else in the group, I said nothing.
If it was just this one time, it wouldn’t be a big deal. But the pattern is clear with more than one friend in the group: A friend is seeking empathy or practical help (or both) and a different friend decides to change the conversation to a more “positive” topic: bragging about their privileges.
This even happens in group chats. Where you can easily just step away from a conversation that doesn’t interest you!
The other, more subtle way this plays out is with a refusal to accommodate marginalized friends. In particular, this has increasingly happened whenever we try to make plans to hang out.
Microaggression Example #2: Exclusion, Uncompromised
-Friend A suggests going to a specific concert venue (say, “Staircase World,”) to catch Local Band.
-Friend B mentions Staircase World is not wheelchair accessible, and they weren’t able to enter the last time they tried to go. They recommended catching a different show in a different location, which is accessible.
– Friend C mentions liking the band Friend B recommended, and also brings up a few other events in more accessible locations
– Friend A is annoyed and says they only want to go to see Local Band at Staircase World, and they’re going regardless of whether anyone else joins
– Friend D says maybe we could split into two groups, go to different shows, and all meet up later [Note: I am Friend D in this scenario]
– Friend A says they don’t think they’ll be up for meeting anywhere afterward, they don’t like being up too late
– Friend C gets annoyed and says, “Why is seeing Local Band at the notoriously ableist Staircase World more important than spending time with the people you care about? You seriously won’t even consider a compromise like leaving a little early to hang out altogether before it’s too late?”
Aaaand obviously. Obviously! Friend C said the wrong thing. In isolation, it is an overreaction.
But it. Keeps. Happening.
It seems like every conversation now!
Friend A is mad at Friend C for losing her cool and for being “judgmental”. Friend C and B are both mad at / hurt by Friend A’s willingness to exclude them so casually due to their disabilities.
Everyone in the group seemed to pick a side, and I kinda ended up on B & C’s side. But, really I’m Team Compromise! The weekend came and went, and the friend group seems ok.
But I also feel like, on some level, I’m just holding my breath waiting for the next clueless privileged comment or exclusionary take to shatter the group entirely.
Sometimes, it’s disability access. Sometimes it’s a financial barrier, and refusal to consider an affordable alternative (nor pitch in to pay for a low/no income friend’s ticket).
Is there any way, at all, to persuade the more privileged friends to stop dropping micro-aggressive grenades in our conversations?
I love my friends! I love and care about and deeply admire all of them.
Maybe it’s the middle child in me, but I really want to negotiate a peace here. Maybe I could have a big-picture conversation with a few of my friends about this. I truly believe we can all make peace and take care of each other.
Heck, we can even celebrate the random good luck in people’s lives! Getting a house and getting to travel to Europe are all positive events worth celebrating. It’s just a timing issue of when these events are brought up in conversation, mostly.
Likewise, I don’t think the friends who keep suggesting exclusionary hangouts are doing it on purpose. Are there any scripts you think could work here? Either “big picture” conversations, or in-the-moment statements. I’m hoping for scripts that are polite, yet effectively prevent derailment away from empathy. Or, scripts to effectively re-center inclusion and equity in conversations about hanging out.
Or both?
Also, do you think there’s anything I should say to the friends who have been subject to exclusion or empathy rejection? Should I try to help them see the perspective of the more privileged friends in some way? Or, is that disrespectful and just going to make things worse?
Sincerely,
Stuck Diplomat, Seeking Scripts
Dear Stuck Diplomat,
People often call me diplomatic, and it’s true, but not in the way they mean. Diplomacy isn’t just about being good at de-escalation, peace-keeping, compromise, or finding palatable ways to deliver hard truths. Diplomacy is about understanding power and leveraging what power you have in negotiations, which sometimes includes strategically escalating conflicts or letting them play out. You most likely don’t have the power to fix your friends’ hearts or make your group chats all run smooth, and I don’t have any magic scripts up my sleeve that will guarantee that you can, but it doesn’t mean you have no power in the situation. It’s there, just, I suspect that it’s not where you’re looking for it.
Let’s dig into your examples and see if there is another way to handle stuff like this in the future. You write:
My impulse at that moment was to say, “Hey, if you’re not going to help or empathize, don’t say anything! Nobody asked you to talk. Not everything is about you. We’re trying to solve a problem. If you’re not, fine, but then just wait a bit.”
Obviously, I know challenging my friend like that would be rude and unhelpful.
…And saying nothing made me feel pretty awful.
…I regret not standing up for my friend in crisis.…But, like everyone else in the group, I said nothing.
Which is worse, risking a full-blown argument by speaking up about bad behavior in the moment, or how bad it feels to not have spoken up at all? Would it really have been the end of the world if you’d just said what was on the tip of your tongue?
There’s this persistent idea that the *only* right way to respond to shitty interpersonal behavior is to empathize deeply with the shitty person, figure out precisely why they are being like that, and use your own compassion to create a teachable moment that fosters greater self-awareness that results in eventual behavioral change from the inside out, and anything less constitutes a failure of *your* patience & empathy. That’s where the notion that saying any version of “Hey, can you knock it off right now with the housewarming party planning?” would be “rude” and “unhelpful” comes from. If somebody’s being Rude, you’re supposed to Polite at them so hard that they Learn An Important Lesson, Eventually.
A couple problems with that:
- What good does this do for the targets of shitty behavior?
- What happens if the shitty people never learn?
- What happens if they learn, but it’s exactly the wrong lesson? “I can be as shitty as I want, and people must be polite to me at all costs, and if they fail to tolerate my bad behavior with perfect grace, it makes them even worse than me and everything becomes actually their fault? Sweet!”
- What do you win if you successfully erase your anger and annoyance from all of your closest friendships and present only the most accommodating, peace-making parts of yourself?
The answer to #1 is “nothing much” and the answer to #2-#4 about what happens and what you “win” is More Shitty Behavior, All The Time, Basically Forever because you’ve robbed yourself of the tools for actually addressing it, tools like, “healthy expressions of authentic emotions” and “meaningful consequences.”
My pitch to you is basically, what if we changed the order of operations for dealing with someone whose behavior is out of pocket? What if we administered consequences first, and let the epiphanies sort themselves out later? If people get rapid negative feedback every time they do or say something shitty, maybe they’ll learn to think and feel differently over time, but that slow internal work is none of your business. If people wanna be assholes, they’ll need to do it somewhere else. If they want to hang out with you, there are limits on acceptable behavior.
One benefit of this approach is that you don’t have to figure out someone’s entire deal or manage the feelings of every bystander and mutual acquaintance before you get to do something about shit that bothers you. “Let’s have one deep emotionally difficult discussion where I recount your crimes for the entire time we’ve known each other and hopefully persuade you change your entire personality” gets replaced with “Whoa, that was not cool!” Another benefit is that the other targets of shitty behavior don’t have to decide if your invisible dismay is really invisible enabling of their bullies.
To pull that off, you have to stand in your own integrity –which includes your anger sometimes–and let that be enough to drive your words and actions. It’s not “oh my god, how might this tone-deaf behavior be affecting my friends who are in crisis” in the abstract or “oh my god, does house-buying friend even realize how she is coming across right now, I’m so embarrassed for her” while you quietly cringe and empathize and try to brainstorm a perfect way to make none of this have ever happened. You put in all this time empathizing and worrying, but it didn’t change anything. Time to simplify: How did your friend’s aggressive non-sequiturs affect you? Did you like it and want her to talk about her new house more or did you want her to stop? The leveling up happens when you decide, “as an equal participant in this conversation, I want to talk about eviction solutions, not housewarming plans right now, so that’s what’s I’m gonna do.”
Script-wise, that could look like a lot of things:
- Change the topic back. “Interesting, we’ll have to catch up later and you can tell me all about the new place. Anyway, back to what we were discussing. About-To-Be-Evicted Friend, sorry, please continue. What do you think you’ll do and how can we help?”
- If necessary, do it as as side-conversation with the person you’d rather be talking to. “Hey, sorry we got interrupted, that was really awkward. Are you good? Where were we?”
- If words escape you, make eye contact with the oblivious friend and do the universal “Shut It Down!” gesture.
- If you don’t want to call her out in public, pull her aside. “Yo, I’m happy for your new house and all, but this seems like not the right moment. Can you and I make time later and you can catch me up all about housewarming plans, etc. then?”
- Or follow up and have it out the next day. “Hey, last night, when it felt like nobody was celebrating with you about your new house and it got kinda awkward? Yeah, maybe you noticed we were in the middle of a conversation about looming eviction? I get wanting us to be happy for you, and I am happy, but interrupting a conversation about impending homelessness to demand that we celebrate climbing the property ladder with you right then was beyond tone-deaf.”
None of that is gonna be comfortable to execute, but exactly none of it is ruder than whatever she was doing. Maybe your friend would have gotten the message, apologized, and acted right. Maybe it would have turned into a giant argument. You may be right that speaking up would only have derailed everything further, but I want you to keep in mind that silent dismay and silent agreement look identical from the outside. You know for a fact that saying nothing feels awful and does nothing to curb the behavior you dislike, so what do you want to do about that next time?
The more you let go of managing other people’s reactions and speak up for yourself and only for yourself, the more power your words will have. Not “Everybody wishes you wouldn’t say stuff like that in the group chat” or “Crisis-Friend might be offended, I’m just trying to look out and be sensitive to that.” You were there, you were annoyed, that’s good enough! Stick with “I don’t appreciate the interruption, I want to keep talking about housing logistics until the issue is resolved, but why don’t I call you tomorrow and you can tell me all about New House then.”
Let’s apply this to your other example. Accessibility is a fraught issue, and COVID-19–WHICH IS TOTALLY STILL A THING BTW– hadn’t even entered this particular chat, but what you’re really describing is people making two completely different sets of plans and asserting multiple value systems, anxieties, and boundaries all at once.
- “It’s okay to want to do my own thing once in a while, and I’m not going to the concert AT you.”
- “I don’t go to inaccessible venues, so if we’re gonna do a group thing it needs to be somewhere else.”
- “You wanting to skip a group hangout to do your own thing makes me feel rejected and sad.”
- “I don’t care where we go, but conflict is scary and bad. Can’t we just get along?”
- “Public venues should be accessible to all, and we must demonstrate solidarity with disabled people by boycotting inaccessible spaces.” .
- “If by ‘we’ you mean ‘you,’ totally! But actually I want to go to the concert bad enough that I’m willing to risk going alone and making you mad.”
- “Compromise! (Drinks later?)”
- “No drinks for me, thanks!”
Is this a fight about disability justice and fairness, a fight about friendship, or a fight about varying preferences? Having all three at once doesn’t seem to be working out. The Geek Social Fallacies are running rampant here, most notably #2 , “Friends Accept Me As I Am” (and as a result never, ever criticize each other) and #5: “Friends Do Everything Together.” People’s circumstances and priorities often change a lot between their 20s and 30s, and some or all of you might be outgrowing the way things have always been done but not yet sure what happens next. “We’ve been through a lot together” isn’t the same as “We enjoy each other’s company, present tense” or “Let’s do everything together forever and always” or “I’m willing to pay so that we can all keep doing stuff together always” and what you’re witnessing might be natural growing pains as people drift apart or realize they are less compatible than they once were. Plus, some shit is just awkward no matter how you slice it. Housing insecurity, income inequality, and ableism are definitely in the pile of things that it’s hard to talk about in a way where everybody feels awesome all the time.
You write:
Friend A is mad at Friend C for losing her cool and for being “judgmental”. Friend C and B are both mad at / hurt by Friend A’s willingness to exclude them so casually due to their disabilities.
Everyone in the group seemed to pick a side, and I kinda ended up on B & C’s side. But, really I’m Team Compromise! The weekend came and went, and the friend group seems ok.
What I’m reading is that the friend group survived an awkward argument plus one person going off and doing their own thing for a single night. Your suggested compromise was fine, just, not everybody wanted to do the same stuff. What is there for you to manage or fix here? It seems like the necessary skill-building is not finding a perfect script, it’s more about learning to sit with discomfort and conflict without trying to smooth it over all the time. Here are a few strategies that might not cure anything but are unlikely to worsen anything that’s already bad: :
- Stop managing other people’s feelings about each other. Especially don’t minimize, manage, or police your friends’ anger at each other. Maybe A and B/C will stay peeved for a while. Maybe that was also a necessary argument they needed to get out of their systems!
- You get to mute the group chat or bow out of in-person conversations that annoy you, especially if you’re having a hard time disengaging from other people’s fights. “I’m gonna stretch my legs. My vote is that we do X, but I’m fine with whatever, just let me know when you decide.” It’s easier to manage your exposure and proximity relative to your own stress levels and bandwidth than it is to convince all of them to be different.
- When you’re in charge of planning events for this group, you get to plan stuff your way, with the cost and accessibility features you desire. If other people plan differently, maybe stop trying to compromise or manage group dynamics and guest lists and think in terms of “Do I personally want to opt in or out of whatever this person is inviting me to?” If you opt in, show up and have a good time with whoever is there without making it about who didn’t come. If you opt out, your responsibility for how it all goes is zero.
- Is it time for you to plan more frequent 1:1 hangouts or smaller group things and not try to cross all these streams all the time? What if you took a break for the rest of the year and saved getting the whole group together for a few special occasions? Would you all like each other more if you saw each other slightly less?
- It sounds like maybe some people in the group are sick of picking up the tab or only doing free-ish stuff but they don’t want to say that outright, others are sick of being poor and tired of having to hold their hand out, nobody is talking about it directly, and thus it’s an awkward guessing game every single time you try to make plans.Take the guessing out of it! Like, stop hinting, stop quietly judging, stop trying to get people to offer, and just ask the people with money to do what you want them to do when you want them to do it. That way they can say yes or no and everyone will have the information they need to make good decisions.
- If you’re someone with both more relative privilege and more relative awareness of inequities, then you can afford be very boring and consistent about money. “Admission cost for that is $X, if four of us split six tickets to cover E and F that comes to $Y/each. Is that cool with everyone? Once you confirm I’ll reserve the tickets.”
- If others are not willing to cover costs for fellow group members for more expensive plans, are you willing & able to throw down the cash yourself? Are you committed stick to only cheap or free alternatives forever, even if it means not everyone will want to go to everything? You get to decide that for yourself, but not for everyone else.
- You can be very boring and consistent about money in the other direction. “That sounds fun, but it’s not in my budget right now. Enjoy!” “Can we do something free or cheap this time?” “I can throw in exactly $10. Are you okay covering the rest, or should we just plan something else another time?”
- Right now you’re doing a lot of mental work about all of this without getting any of the results you want. What if you did…less? Consider a rule for yourself where if something annoys or upsets you, you’ve got 24 hours to either say something about it out loud to someone who can do something about it or let it go.
- Is it time to remind you one last time that all of these people have the same agency you do to run their friendships however they want and budget their time and money in whatever way works best for them? That includes the financially-strapped members of the group.
That’s what I’ve got, sorry that it’s not what you were hoping for. I strongly believe that your best chance of holding onto these important friendships is to remove pressure and let go of the idea of One Big Group, Together Always, with you as its savior, peacemaker, or asshole-whisperer-in-chief.
Dear Captain Awkward,
I find myself in a rather delicate predicament involving my neighbors—the couple who live a few houses down—and I need your guidance. As someone with an insatiable curiosity and a knack for picking up on the smallest details, I’ve noticed some rather intriguing developments in their lives that I feel compelled to address.
The wife, a dynamic and ever-energetic woman, is always the life of the neighborhood. She’s constantly orchestrating events, from extravagant dinner parties to spontaneous weekend getaways. Her enthusiasm is undeniably infectious, but it seems to be having an unexpected impact on her husband. I’ve observed him looking increasingly disheveled and somewhat out of place at these events, particularly in the designer outfits she insists he wear. The poor man seems so uncomfortable, often shifting awkwardly or fidgeting with his collar.
Here’s where it gets a bit more personal: I’ve seen him at the local coffee shop, visibly stressed, and on one occasion, he even mentioned to a mutual acquaintance how he feels overwhelmed by the pressure to conform to her lavish lifestyle. I couldn’t help but overhear this conversation while I was waiting in line, and it broke my heart to see him so distressed. It’s clear he longs for a simpler life, yet he’s caught in a whirlwind of her high expectations.
In addition, I’ve noticed subtle hints of tension at their home, like the way he hesitates before answering her calls or the strained smiles they exchange when they think no one is watching. I feel it’s my duty to step in and offer my perspective. My communication skills are top-notch, and I’ve got a real talent for resolving conflicts and suggesting improvements. It seems only right that I share my thoughts on how they might find a better balance between her vibrant, high-energy world and his more relaxed, introspective nature.
I’ve been considering a friendly visit to share my observations, perhaps over a cup of tea. I could gently suggest that she might consider his comfort more, and offer some advice on how they could adjust their lifestyle to better accommodate his needs. I genuinely believe this would help them strengthen their relationship and bring them closer together. Of course, I’d approach it in the most tactful and considerate way possible—after all, my intention is to be helpful, not intrusive.
Am I crossing a line by contemplating this? I genuinely want what’s best for them and think my unique perspective could offer valuable insight. Should I go ahead with my plan, or is it best to stay out of their personal matters? I’m torn between my desire to help and my awareness of potential boundaries.
Thank you for sending in the Rear Window remake starring Rachel Lynde I didn’t know I needed.
While I am also a passionate observer of the human condition, and frankly fascinated to know what your advice to these people would even be and how you envision the scene where you deliver it unfolding –does your version end with the couple forming a trauma bond about how weird & terrifying it is to realize that their neighbor has been watching them all this time that does ironically bring them closer together than ever?– this is where I tell you to stop. Please, do not ring these people’s doorbell and offer them unsolicited marital advice based on months of careful observation and coffee-shop eavesdropping. Do not do it over tea, do not do it by the sea, do not do it over Zoom, do not do it in a room. Even if you are right about what you observe (big if), even if your intentions are of the purest, most helpful grade, trust that people mostly do not want you to be smart at them or right about them from afar or show up on their doorstep like an avenging management consultant to troubleshoot stuff that’s none of your beeswax.
If this couple wants a marriage counselor, they can hire one, preferably someone who is bound by a set of professional ethics and who doesn’t live on the block. They are also free to reach out to their local clergy, family members, bartenders, hairdressers, individual therapists, a myriad of hotlines, advice subreddits, and online fora, and their actual close friends for support at any time. Consider that they might already be doing any or all of these things without informing you. Please also consider that what you are oh-so-carefully observing might be a minor mismatch in extrovert-introvert tendencies that they’ve just chosen to roll with because they like everything else about being married to each other.
By contrast, if the husband wanted your advice, you would know without a doubt because he would have asked you. You’d be among the buddies he vents to at coffee shops and not the virtual stranger craning their neck from the barista line and furiously jotting another entry in the Notes app. If you knew him well at all (I mean, to talk to, not just to peer at while he fumbles worryingly with his fancy necktie at parties across the way) then you would have gone up to him that day and said something. Anything. “Hello!” “How are you?” “Yes, it’s me, your neighbor!” “I couldn’t help overhearing just now, and feel free to tell me off if it’s none of my business, but is everything okay?” “Are you looking for advice or are you just venting?”
To be absolutely clear, I am not advising you to strike up a friendship as a means to the end of helping these people figure out their marriage. You are already way too invested in people who are not reciprocally invested in you for that to ever be a good idea. My advice is to stop watching them, stop eavesdropping on them, stop speculating about their marriage, and do literally nothing to insert yourself further into their lives. Say a pleasant hello when you run into them in the neighborhood, and then disengage. If you’re hungry for connection and the opportunity to be useful, maybe find someplace to volunteer in your community and channel your helpful impulses into help that people asked for. Then perhaps this story can remain a comedy and not the opening act of a thriller.
