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Time for the periodic feature where we treat search strings that brought people here as if they are questions. After this musical interlude, settle in for some snap judgments + no context = assumption theater!

“Flirty answer to what are you doing this weekend.”

I am Captain Awkward, not Major Rizz, but maybe try something like, “I don’t know yet. Why, got a suggestion?”

If the person was trying to feel you out about availability for a date, that gives them plenty of opening to ask you out, and if they weren’t then you haven’t said anything to make it more weird or anything that requires you to do more work about it.

“How to politely tell people I am unemployed.”

Telling the truth about your actual life is not rude, so this is more about what you’re comfortable sharing given the audience and the occasion. You do not owe anyone a version of your life story that meets their expectations, nor do you have to justify or explain your circumstances! If unemployment is a stressful topic for you, I suggest finding the shortest true thing you can say about it and then changing the subject to something you’d rather talk about.

Let’s frame this as ways you could answer a routine “small talk” question from someone you just met: “So, what do you do?”

• “I’m a [profession] by training, but I’m between jobs at the moment. Howabout yourself?”
• “I just graduated and am looking for work as a [job]. And you?”
• “I’m taking some time off at the moment to [take care of family][deal with some medical stuff][finally pursue my dream of sailing around the world on a tiny raft]. What keeps you busy when you’re not working?”
• “Disability keeps me out of the workforce just now, but when I can [I take classes in ______][work on my ______hobby]. What are you nerdy about lately?”
• “Oof, sadly I was just laid off and I’m still figuring out my next move. Did I hear correctly that you’re an art restorer? That’s so interesting, how did you get into that line of work?”

I firmly believe that most people you meet in passing do not have some deep hidden agenda when they ask this question. They do not want to pry deeply into your life, judge you, or make you feel uncomfortable, and they will take their cue from you about how to respond. If you are calm and matter-of-fact in your answers, they will be matter-of-fact in return. If you seem sensitive and raw, they will be sympathetic and apologize for unwittingly poking a sore spot. If you change the subject away from your employment situation and toward something about them, they will let it stay changed. And if they truly want to help, they will a) ask and b) offer concrete solutions that might actually help. “If I hear of any openings that might be a good fit for you, would you like me to pass them along?” “I have some friends in that line of work, would you like me to make an introduction?”

That doesn’t mean that you’ll never run into nosy people, ableist people, “helpful” people who assume that any admission of less-than-ideal circumstances is an invitation to shower you with vintage job hunting tips from the summer of ’68 (when apparently people could guarantee themselves a job by showing up to companies in person out of the blue and calling them nonstop to demonstrate something called “grit” and “persistence.”) Someone who behaves like that isn’t doing it because you did something rude when you answered them truthfully about your life, and you’re not doing anything rude if you develop a sudden need to be elsewhere. “So nice meeting you!”

“How to ask my friends to set me up.”

“Do you know any cool single people you’d be willing to set me up with?”

“Is your friend _______ single by chance? I really liked talking to them when we met. Would you be willing to pass them my info or make an introduction?”

“If I threw a matchmaking party and asked everyone to bring their coolest single friend, would you come and who would you bring?”

They’ll either say yes or no and you can take it from there. And here is my pro-est of pro tips: If your friends say no to setting you up or seem reluctant, and you ask them why, and they’re kind enough to be honest with you, and you argue with their answers, THAT is the why. They want you to be happy, but they don’t want to be blamed for your dating disasters or subject their other friends to whatever that was.

“Why do I feel like I am cheating on my best friend when I hang out with other friends?”

I cannot divine your feelings, I can only offer clarifying questions.

Is the pressure internal or external? In other words, does your best friend do or say stuff that indicates that they might be jealous of when you spend time with other friends, or is that feeling something you’re generating on your own? Are you jealous when your best friend does social stuff without you?

Does whatever this is feel more like a problem or more like an opportunity? If it’s a problem, what would solve the problem, and do you want to actually do whatever that is? Does the prospect of talking about what’s happening with your friend make you feel more excited-nervous or annoyed-nervous?

There’s a lot of open ground on the spectrum between “I might have a little crush on my best friend (or vice-versa)” vs. “Life can be hectic and my best friend and I could probably use more quality time together” vs. “My best friend makes me feel smothered and guilty when I try to spend time with others.” Do any of those possibilities sound more plausible than the others? In a perfect world where this friendship unfolds exactly how you wish it would, what does that look like for you?

“Neighbors pretending to like you when they don’t.” + “Neighbors don’t answer their door only nice when they want something.”

Both of these came in back to back with neighbors misspelled the same way (neibours) so I’m gonna treat them as one. What I’m sensing here is that these neighbors do not want to be friends. They are superficially pleasant, not consistently friendly, and they definitely don’t want you to drop by without warning. It’s understandable if a mismatch in perceived friendliness vs. consistent behavior hurt your feelings or led to confusion, but now you know that whatever is happening right now is as close as you’re ever likely to be. So what do you want to do about it? You always have the option to remain superficially pleasant, avoid dropping in on them or inviting them to hang out, and seek close friendships elsewhere. Don’t confide in them about your personal life or pry into theirs, and don’t center them in your plans. If they seek you out when they want something, feel free to say no to anything that’s annoying or inconvenient for you. But also, feel free to approach them whenever you need something specific and concrete. Transactional, superficially pleasant relationships with people you don’t want to be besties with can be fine, actually, as long as everyone keeps their expectations realistic.

“Is it reasonable for my husband to leave me if he hates my hairstyle?”

There are a few distinct possibilities here:

1. The hairstyle was an excuse for something he was planning to do anyway.
2. He’s a controlling ass who thinks he has authority over your grooming decisions.
3. You did something to your hair that’s so offensive or ridiculous that it’s making him question all of his life choices and everything he knows about you as a person. (This is highly unlikely, but I’ve seen enough white people with corn rows or racist symbols shaved into their hair that I can’t completely exclude the possibility.)

All of these possibilities lead to the same place, in that somebody who would leave you over a hairstyle is someone who would leave you over a hairstyle. Whether you accept or agree with his reasons, he’s gone. Someday both of you can tell the story called “I Can’t Believe I Got Divorced Because of Hair,” and time will tell whether it’s a funny story or the one where you dodged a bullet.

“How to message ‘I am not the right guy for you.'”

If this is a breakup or a “no thanks, I’m not interested in pursuing anything” situation, I would suggest avoiding that angle entirely and replacing it with something more like “I’m so sorry, but I don’t want that kind of relationship with you.” 

It’s not your job to convince other people about what is right for them, it’s your job to decide what’s right for you and act according to your own values and priorities. By pitching it as “I’m not the right guy for you,” you’re trying to let the other person down easy by selling them on the idea that what’s right for you is what’s right for everyone, but what you’re really doing is saying “Your feelings are incorrect.” That potentially puts them in the position of trying to convince you that you are the right person and defending their own wants during a painful moment of rejection. Whether or not they think you are right for them, they are not right for you.Try something like this instead:

• “I’m so sorry, but I know this is the right decision for me.”
• “I just don’t feel the same way.”
• “I wish I shared your feelings, but I don’t.”
• “I’ve decided to break up.”
• “My feelings have changed, and I’m ending the relationship.”

We’re so culturally allergic to direct communication about feelings, so I understand if those seem harsh in comparison to “I’m just not the right person for you” or “I’m no good for you” or “You deserve so much better,” etc. But you’re not doing anyone any favors with self-deprecation. Sometimes the kindest thing you can do is to take ownership of your choices without trying to sell the other person on being okay with them. You’re not the right guy because you decided that you don’t want to be, and that’s a good enough reason!

“What do with sadness that I might never get married.”

Feel it, acknowledge it, sit with it, grieve about it for a while, and then channel whatever is left over into making a wonderful life for yourself. Write down all of your wildest dreams and do them as hard as you can, without waiting for someone else to make them possible. Married love is not the only kind of love. If you long to have children, married parents are not the only parents. Your life will happen to you whether or not anyone ever comes along to share it in the permanent, legal sense, so do you want to spend it waiting and wishing for what you don’t have or grabbing on with both hands?

My grandma Louise was one of four sisters. Two of them (Louise & Betty) were wartime brides, the other two (Rose and Aurora, who went by Aura) lost their sweethearts in the war and never met anyone they liked more. I don’t know what it was like to be young and unmarried and work their way through the 1950s and 60s as executive assistants surrounded by everybody’s Leave It To Beaver fantasies about what women should be, but when I came along in the 1970s, Rose and Aurora were retired and living together in a beautiful house on a giant piece of land in the middle of nowhere that they turned into a lush garden full of secret wading pools and fountains and long tree-lined paths. They had a riding lawnmower and giant floppy hats with veils to keep the sun off when they gardened and did yardwork. From the outside, their house was your basic mid-century split ranch, but inside it was like the lair of an elegant witch from a fairy tale. Their dining room furniture was upholstered in Barbie pink, and their house was full of books, closets with of elegant vintage dress-up clothes hanging in the backs, vases of cut flowers, lush houseplants, and souvenirs from their world travels like safaris in Africa and river cruises down the Amazon. The room I stayed in had a pink velvet-covered fainting couch in it, obviously the greatest piece of furniture ever built. They ate dessert every single night, sometimes before dinner, because Auntie Rose believed that life was short and that being a grownup meant doing whatever you want.

As a kid, I used to go stay with them for a few weeks every summer to get out of my parents’ hair and get space from my brothers, and their house seemed like a paradise. I wove fairy crowns of violets and read piles of books and tried on all of Auntie Rose’s bright lipstick shades and draped myself in silk shawls she brought back from India and learned to embroider cursive initials onto Auntie Aura’s tiny handkerchiefs and untangle her yarn for crocheting and generally did not one single thing that I did not enjoy or want to do for days on end.

Unlike at home, I was allowed to read at the dinner table because we all read books at the dinner table. Sometimes they’d have me read out loud to them, other times they’d read to me from whatever they happened to be reading. Auntie Aura liked Barbara Cartland romances and Auntie Rose liked non-fiction, especially history and geography, and whenever she got a new National Geographic she let me cut pictures out of the old ones and make collages and dioramas with them. There was no such thing as “children’s books” vs. “adult books” in that house, books were just books and I could read whatever I was able to understand. They’d give me chores, like dusting, which I did not mind because it gave me the opportunity to explore the house and touch all of their interesting stuff. They’d show me how to wash and dry their delicate teacups and saucers covered in gold trim and intricate floral patterns, how to correctly plump sofa cushions, and how to construct dinners entirely from shrimp cocktail, rare hamburgers, and fruit salads.

One of the only rules was that if was going to play their piano, I couldn’t noodle around on it, I had to play complete songs or nothing so if I wanted to play during my visit I’d need to prepare something and practice at home before I came. (I maintain this rule whenever I babysit my friend’s musically-inclined children, can’t recommend it enough.) On Sundays, they’d bribe me to go to church with them by letting me pick out their outfits and wear as much of their costume jewelry as I could pile onto myself, and then we’d all three go out for ice cream on the way home, filled with holy light and enough bling to blind everyone we encountered.

My memories of them are a child’s memories, obviously, so I don’t know what regrets or secrets they held. People can seem happy without being happy. They were both total babes, so I *highly* doubt that they did not have multiple options where romance was concerned, and it’s not like they were gonna tell a 10-year-old about any extramarital hijinx. And yet? I know they thought my Grandpa Oscar was irritating (accurate) and razzed him mercilessly, they often told me that men were “too much work,” and I do not get the sense that envied my Grandma’s life one bit. One time I asked Auntie Rose why she never got married after the war, and this is what she said: “I was so young and so in love, and once I stopped being young I never met anyone who could offer me anything that was better than what I already had.”

There are lots of ways to write a happy ending, and worse ones than “I lived with my best friend, doing exactly as we liked for 40+ years.” Your story will unfold, one way or another, so try to write the best one you can.

Hello Captain!

I think my friend (30F) resents my work-life balance? For a while now she’s been making these weird comments that I don’t know what to do with. I’m a freelancer (also 30F) with a lot of flexibility as to when I decide to get my work done and business is doing well! I’m happy. She works in corporate and is always complaining about being overworked. I wouldn’t mind that – I’m happy to emphathize but it’s often in passive aggressive ways?

I really try to not provoke her but it feels like I can’t say anything. The last time we called (it was a group call) I mentioned rearranging furniture in my room and she said: ‘Ha, you must be so bored’. Me: ‘No I wouldn’t say I was bored.’ Her: ‘Ive been wanting to clear out the fridge for a year but I have just so much work.’ Me: Silence

Also on that same phone call I said I was gonna make a coffee before meeting with my next client. It was a state holiday. My friend asked if I work today and I said yes. Then she goes: ‘Well at least you can take a break. I could never take a break during my normal work day’. Me: Aha. Moving on.

So it’s not like I’m shoving vacation pictures in her face. But she resents me mentioning I was shopping for groceries in the morning and stupid shit like that. I’ve stopped arranging meetups with people during normal work hours in the group chat she is because it really seemed to trigger her ‘well someone has to work!’ but I can’t keep from saying shit like ‘I’ve done a non work related thing’ or ‘I’m working’. She went to the same uni I did and could easily do the freelance job I do now – I’d be happy to help her out and offered previously. I don’t know what to say when she react like this and it’s getting on my nerves.

Lately I’ve been saying nothing and just letting the silence sit. Should I confront her about it? How? Or am I being to sensitive about it? It makes me want to not talk to her at all. I’m not sure she’s realising what she’s doing.

Hello! If I’m reading this right, it feels like your friend is negging you with these little comments, but you’re not sure if she’s doing it on purpose or if it’s worth calling her on it. You’ve been handling things just fine, sounds like, but now you have ample evidence that responding with silence does nothing to interrupt this dynamic and it’s still annoying you, so it’s time to try something else. Here are a few more active strategies you could try. All of them are designed to give you a way to test whether she’s doing it intentionally and interrupt the cycle, while also giving your friend the maximum good-faith opportunity to course-correct. Sound good?

Strategy One: Pattern recognition + Information diet

Your friend calls you, asks you what you’re up to, you tell her, and then it kicks off, right? Maybe…almost…. like she’s asking the question to give her an excuse to be weird and critical about it? Stop telling her what you’re up to, or use much less detail.

Her: “Hey, glad I caught you! And what are you up to this fine day?”

You: “Nice to hear your voice! What’s going on with you?”

Answer her question with a question. Or, even better, lie and say you are working, and see if that changes it.

Her: “Hey, is this a good time to talk?”

You: Sure! I just finishing up some work, but I’ve got a few minutes. Why, what’s up with you?”

I do not like lying as a rule, and I do not like people who make me feel like I have to lie, so I”m not suggesting this as a long-term approach. Think of it as an experiment, where for the next 10 calls from this friend where she asks you this question, working on work is work, so is housework, so is working out, so is working through your latest binge watch, so is working on catching up with sleep if she happened to catch you napping. Working on figuring out what’s for dinner? Technically work. Working on your golf swing? Through great effort great achievements are possible.

A person with no ulterior motives is going to roll with whatever you say you’re doing, and you’ll have a chill, normal conversation. A person who was hoping for a little fix of building herself up at your expense is going to get frustrated by this, and look for something else to latch onto. This is exactly what happened on that holiday when you had a meeting, right? “Well, at least you get some breaks.” Why not have a little fun with it and see how far she’ll go? If she gets bored and stops doing the annoying thing, you win.

Strategy Two: Meet passive-aggression with aggressive positivity.

Her sub-textual bullying can’t land if you ignore the subtext and engage only with the text of what she said. Is it true that you get more downtime in your workday than she does? Sounds like it. Do you feel insecure about how your schedule compares to hers? It sounds like you don’t, at all, so what happens if you treat her implied insults as if they are something between neutral, accurate observations and sincere compliments?

Her:“Must be nice to have so much free time.”

You: “You’re right, I love having such a flexible schedule!”

Her: “Wow, I could never just take a coffee break in the middle of the workday like that.”

You: “I agree, it is pretty great to be able to pace myself and set my own hours.” 

Her: “Well, *someone* has to work while you’re off [rearranging the furniture][making yourself the occasional beverage][running errands].”

You: “Hahaha, you’re so right! The best part is, if I bang out my work early enough in the day, I get to hit the grocery store in the afternoon when it’s not crowded and I don’t have to go on the weekends when it’s a madhouse in there.” “As you know, freelancing can be pretty all-or-nothing, so after a couple of busy weeks to hit deadlines, it’s really a relief to have some down time to catch up on the routine stuff.”

Be inexorable about turning every dig into sincere appreciation.

Why this works: If she doesn’t intend to be mean (doubtful, but let’s go with it for a second), then you’re just “yes-and”-ing her in a pleasant conversation. If she does intend to put you down, she’s gonna have to work much harder at it, meaning, she’ll either get bored and back off or your Ted Lasso-level positivity will annoy her so much she’ll change tactics to something more aggressive-aggressive where it’s crystal clear that she’s being mean to you on purpose and then you can deal with her on those terms.

Strategy Three: “Are you okay?”

This works best in person where you can see each other’s faces, and like the compliment strategy above, it works best when you wait for there to be an immediate example of the bad behavior rather than trying to discuss the overall dynamic in the abstract. Once she does the thing, pause, look her in the eyes, and maybe put a concerned, gentle hand on hers  and say, “Are you okay?”

Her: “What do you mean?”

You: “I asked if you’re okay.”

Her: “Yes, I heard you, but why?” (or “Of course I’m okay, why would you say that?”)

You: “I dunno, one second you were complaining about how hard you have it at work, which is valid, but then it felt like you were trying to put me down for having a different schedule. Was that your intention when you said [repeat back what she said, including her tone]? Something just feels ‘off’ so I’m asking, are you all right?”

Why this works:  If she’s doing this unconsciously, like it’s just a rote reaction to compare herself to other people to make herself feel better, then you’re calling it out in a direct and gentle way that gives her a chance to catch herself, apologize, and clarify her intentions. And, while I try to be a shoulder angel most of the time, allow me to put the shoulder-mounted devil costume back on for a minute: If she’s being mean on purpose, gently asking if she’s okay is actually a reverse-Uno condescension masterpiece that will drive her up the wall, but you’re not doing anything overtly mean to escalate the situation.

Remember, people have choices about how they treat you. She could say, “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to insult you, I’m just stressed out at work and frankly a little jealous of your ability to have more control over your time.” At which point you could say, “I understand if you need to vent about work sometimes, but can you do it without making little digs about my supposedly cushy life? Whether or not you mean it as a put-down, it feels like one and I’d like you to stop comparing our schedules from now on.”

Or, she could turn this into a bad-faith referendum about how she was “just joking” and the real problem is how you are just “too sensitive,” etc. For that, go back to the strategy of agreeing with negs until you can get the hell out of there. “You’re right, my schedule is better and I do have more free time. That is a problem….how?” “You’re right, I am sensitive when a friend can’t seem to talk about her own problems without making digs at me and my life.” “You’re right, I didn’t get the joke or find it funny! I guess we should probably stop talking about topics where we have such a different view of things.”

Strategy Four: “You’re being really weird about this.” “This is boring, let’s talk about something else!” Also known, broadly speaking, as returning awkwardness to sender.

There’s a very specific kind of bullying attempt that happens when an insecure, toxic person who is heavily invested in a cultural narrative that Following Certain Rules Will Make You Both Happy And Better Than Other People encounters an inexplicably (to them) happy person who stubbornly refuses to follow (or give a shit about) the same rules. I think you might be in a situation where this fits. .

Story Time [with content notes for fatphobic bullying and body stuff]: Long ago in the late nineteen hundreds I worked at a place where there were a ton of white women in our 20s who did roughly the same job. We became friendly, often ate lunch together, and went to happy hour and did fun stuff outside of work together occasionally on weekends. One of them I’ll call “Shelly” was obsessed with two things:

1. Being thin.
2. Getting a boyfriend.

For Shelly, these things were inextricably linked. Boyfriends were achievements that could be unlocked by becoming sufficiently thin, and both of these goals gave her an excuse to practice constant vigilance and constant comparisons to other women. You might wonder what she did when presented with incontrovertible proof that some fat women had boyfriends.They were obviously sluts! She sounds fun, right?

Shelly was not even close to my first ride on the Mean Girl Express, but I’m not a naturally confrontational person and I was actually mostly fine with tuning her crap out in group settings for the sake of hanging out with the coworkers I liked. Unfortunately, Shelly decided that I was meant to be her Sidekick/Fat Best Friend/Punching Bag and started singling me out, and the way she did it was *very* specific:

[A comment on whatever I was eating/wearing] + [A backhanded compliment about how she wished she could be that confident/careless] + [A reminder of how virtuous she was being by comparison] = Me wondering “What the hell just happened?”

“Oh my god, your sandwich looks so yummy! I wish I could have avocado on mine, but they have soooooooo much fat.”

“What a cute outfit! I didn’t know that [Retailer] had pants in bigger sizes now, back when I got mine I had to diet so hard to fit into them. I love your confidence!”

She loved to shop on her lunch breaks, and her favorite way to shop was to go to stores where nothing would fit me besides earrings and have me be an audience while she tried stuff on and she lamented about how fat everything made her look. It only took one of those for me to decide that being alone with her or going to a second location was not for me, so then she started bring bags of her “fat” clothes to the office to see if I wanted any of them before she donated them to charity, knowing full well that they would not fit me. Sometimes my shoulder angel wins, and I say stuff like “Oh, no thank you, but I appreciate the thought!” and sometimes shoulder devil is like “Oh, thanks for thinking of me, but our… tastes… are very different” while I rub the feel of the plastic garbage bag full of pilled acrylic sweaters the color of old mustard off my hands as if I’ve touched something gross and sticky. Don’t remember which shoulder bud was ascendant when, but eventually she did stop trying to foist her cast-offs on me or cajole to “Come on, just try them on!”

The thing with this kind of bully is that they *are* conforming to entrenched cultural narratives, so there is a lot of ambient background support for the idea that they are just striving in a normal way and anyone who doesn’t do the same is the problem. Mine was going all in on fatphobia, and yours is going with rise-and-grind capitalism, but the bargain they think they are making is the same. “I follow the Rules and do things Right, ergo I Deserve to be Happy and Successful!”

If other people manage to be happy and successful on their own terms, without putting themselves through the same hoops, these people find it between mystifying and threatening, depending on how miserable they are at any given moment. What good are the rules they’ve chosen to dedicate themselves to if the people who don’t follow them aren’t punished? You don’t have to openly antagonize them, you just have to exist where they can see you and that’s enough to constitute a personal attack on their way of life. In other words, if it’s possible for you to have a fulfilling career AND free time, then you exist as evidence that maybe the long hours your friend is putting herself through at work are not entirely necessary, and that’s scary for her, so she’s reminding herself of what she’s been taught about how all of this is supposed to work. If she were truly happy and secure with her choices, then she wouldn’t need to sell herself (and you, by proxy) so hard on the notion that her way is the best and only way. 

Like you said, if your friend feels overworked and is genuinely interested in how you pull it off, she could ask you for ideas about transitioning to something with a better schedule. If she were just venting about her situation, you could be a sympathetic ear. But the way she keeps making digs at your life shows that this isn’t about leaning on you for support.

I felt bad for Shelly, because her unhappiness was visible from space, but I flat out did not like her enough to hash any of this shit out. I was never going to convince her in a million years that the things she valued (male attention and having the smallest possible physical mass) were not worth the misery she was inflicting on herself and others. Would she have benefited from being professionally screened for eating disorders, or some other kind of therapy? Probably? Even if I had known such a thing existed, would she have listened to such a recommendation from The Fat Girl Who Embodied All Her Greatest Fears? Nope! I was not a Captain of Awkwardness yet but I did know that I was not causing her to behave like this and that trying to fix mean people is wasted effort. Any attempts to engage her on that level would have ended with her doubling down. But I did successfully get her to start avoiding me and stop talking about diets, etc. all the time by reacting authentically to how incredibly odd her behaviors were and how they made me feel without ever engaging with the substance of the comparisons.

“Wait, did you just mentally count the calories in my sandwich?” :nervous giggle: “Should we….like…go around in a circle so you can compare your lunch with everyone’s, or are we good with just mine?”

“Do you keep a spreadsheet of my clothing sizes somewhere? Can I see it?” :awkward pause: “Or do you do all the math in your head, that’s amazing!” :longer, more awkward pause:

“Oh, we just talked about diets and men yesterday, can today be for finding out about what books everyone’s reading lately? Or, we could talk about boys and books. This dude I went out with the other night brought me a copy of Confederacy of Dunces and said it was his favorite book ever and now I have questions.”

I’m riffing off of remembered vibes here, not recreating actual conversations word for word, and I definitely mixed it up with the turning negs-into-sincere-compliments thing without realizing it was a strategy. She’d give me one of her backhanded compliments, and inside my head, I would be like, wait, she said I was “so confident” but I think she meant it as an insult, but actually, I *am* pretty confident, so, yay for me! “Thanks, Shelly! You look nice, too! What’s everyone reading lately?” She HATED it, which is how I know she was being a bully on purpose. She mistook the fact that I don’t default to Mean Girl mode as a sign that I was incapable of matching her energy, and well, everybody learned some new things that year.

Why this worked: We were surrounded by fellow nice white ladies who were also on perpetual 1990s fat-free diets who did not really “do” open conflict, so they were no help whatsoever, but as long as I kept my tone pretty light there was nothing for them to latch onto except the subject-change-shaped-conversational-life-preservers. Over time, a few people who genuinely liked Shelly and wanted to talk about the same stuff closed ranks, and all the non-miserable folks were set free be lunch buddies with only some diet talk, some of the time.

To implement this with your friend, wait until a conversation where the pattern forms, and then keep your tone very, very relaxed and flat. “Huh, so strange that you keep comparing our schedules even though we do different jobs, what’s that about” (not really a question) and then change the subject. “Are you venting about your work schedule or criticizing mine? I lost track for a minute.” “I love it when you ask me what I’m up to and I think it’s going to be a fun conversation and then you immediately imply that I should be doing work.” “Did my ancestors send you to check up on my degenerate lifestyle again.” You’re not being mean or escalating conflict by calling attention to the conflict.

Strategy Five:  This person is your friend, and ultimately, directness is kindness. “It’s really strange that every time we talk about our schedules, you compare yours to mine in a way that feels insulting. What’s that about?” (actual question) “You keep doing this thing, do you realize? Well, now you know, so are you going to keep doing it?” “I really value our friendship, so I want to address this with you and figure out another way.”

Her answers will tell you everything you need to know about whether this is a friendship worth preserving. Life is too short for frenemies who manufacture excuses to be mean to you.

P.S. If you’ve seen the word “weird” in the news a lot want to talk about Returning Awkwardness To Sender as a political strategy, there’s a post over at Patreon all about that.

Dear Captain,

I (she/her) am thinking about moving in with my boyfriend (he/him) of 4 years. The problem is that I am afraid of losing my sense of self, and I don’t now if I can be, or want to be, 100% committed to him.

My boyfriend is wonderful in many ways. I love him, and really like spending time with him. I also tend to have better habits concerning sleep and food when I live with someone versus when I live on my own. So, co-habitation with him seems like a good choice. From former relationships, I know that I tend to care too much about my partner’s happiness, and forget to think about what I want. For example, I want to have more adventures than my boyfriend, but I might tell myself I am content with staying at home when he doesn’t want to join me. Maybe this is because as a woman in our patriarchal society, having a successful relationship with a man is seen as the objective.

I should also mention my long distance friend/former hookup, let’s call him Mr. Distance. We met five years ago and spent a couple of days together. We live on opposites ends of the continent, so we couldn’t date. We have have kept in touch, and met two more times as friends. Our conversation can still be a little bit flirty. It’s easy to fantasize and image a perfect relationship, when we never had one. In reality I think any relationship would crash and burn in less than than a year if we tried. But talking to him still gives me a thrill, that I miss in my daily life. It gives me a resort from the worries of everyday life, a space where I don’t have to care what anyone else thinks.

A work-friend of mine was diagnosed with cancer recently, and the first thing she did besides starting treatment was marrying her long time partner. That made me realize that if I had a year to live, I wouldn’t spend that year with my boyfriend. I would travel the world, alone or with Mr Distance. But if I am thinking about the long term future, then I don’t know what to do.

Kind regards,

Twined

Dear Twined,

There’s no rule that couples have to live together after a certain amount of time, and there are other ways to improve your sleep hygiene and eating habits than mixing your books with someone else’s books. If you’d rather not move in with your boyfriend, don’t.

If you decide to give living together a try despite your misgivings, put safeguards in place. For example, instead of combining your current rent payments to afford a bigger place, cut your housing payments in half by looking for a place that either of you could afford on your own if the other person moved out. Sock whatever you can into an emergency fund. Talk openly about how you both want money, housework, and house rules to work to make sure you’re on the same page, like you would with any potential roommate. Talk about what happens when the lease ends and make a plan to check in a few months before and decide for sure whether you want to renew (together, separately, at all) for another year. Lots of people move in with romantic partners as a compatibility test for eventual marriage or long-term cohabitation. Lots of those same people skip these conversations even when they explicitly call it a trial run, and I hear from them when they “can’t” break up without massively destabilizing their finances or access to safe housing.

“What do we do if one or both of us realizes that living together isn’t working?” is a scary question. Love yourselves and each other enough to ask the scary questions. Would your boyfriend want to move in with you in the first place if he knew about these doubts? Does he have doubts of his own, and is there something either of you could do that would make moving in easier to say yes or no to? Does delaying that step spell the end of your relationship, and is that risk worse than the alternative? ‘Cause I can tell you from experience that moving in with someone when you are unsure about the relationship and then realizing that you’ve made a huge mistake once you’re already locked in is in no way easier, cheaper, or better than breaking up or deciding to hold off until you’re truly ready. (Signed, a lady who looked at multiple studio apartments the same month she packed to move in with her ex)

You say “I want to have more adventures than my boyfriend, but I might tell myself I am content with staying at home when he doesn’t want to join me.” Is your boyfriend stopping you from having those adventures, or are you stopping you? Meaning, is this a “break up with people who make your world feel small” problem or is this a “please get a therapist and learn to do stuff without him” problem? “Mr. Distance” sounds like one of those motivating crushes, where it’s not so much about being with the person as it is liking the parts of yourself that come awake when you’re around him. The realization that you wouldn’t spend your last year on earth with your boyfriend is another version of the same message: There’s a happier version of you out there, and there is still time to become her! In your letter you are literally describing what it’s like to experience a call to adventure, so what would happen if you answered? If your life were a rom-com, you’d be in the part where the heroine has to date herself. 

Movie-Twined would have a pretty good relationship with a solid guy who wants her to move in with him, let’s call him Mr. Dependable, and she’d also have tempting Mr. Distance circling around. But”which guy does she pick” wouldn’t be the story, it would just be the rom-com shaped vessel for the real story about figuring out who she wants to be.

Fade in on Twined and Mr. Dependable as guests at a terminally ill coworker’s wedding, where the topic of “what would you do if you only had a year left” is on everyone’s mind. During wedding planning, the bride and groom made a giant list of all the places they want to go and everything they want to see and do over a lifetime together. They’ve written each adventure-task on a slip of paper, and put the slips into a giant bucket, and their plan at the wedding is to draw twelve slips, one for each month of the next year, and then distribute the leftovers between the guests. The couple will accomplish as many things as they can in the time they have, and then it’s up to the people they love to do the rest in their honor.

Twined ends up with three slips of paper. We don’t see what’s written on them before we head into a montage of tearful toasts, first dances, and other wedding reception staples while the soundtrack lays it on thick with At Last and Time In A Bottle and (I’ve Had) The Time Of My Life. By the time Ben Folds sticks the knife allllllllll the way in, we find a runny-mascara’d Twined out on the balcony for a little much-needed air. She’s finally looking at her “bucket list” items when Mr. Dependable comes up behind her and wraps his arms around her from behind, and the last thing we see is her, engulfed in his bear hug almost like she’s being strangled, the slips of paper clutched tightly in her hand. Each subsequent act of the movie will correspond to one of the slips as living out her friend’s dreams leads Twined to discover her own.

What are the adventures on the slips? You tell me. If I were really writing this as a movie, I might build a trio of the bride’s best friends, and each of them gets one adventure like it’s Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants-meets-Little Women-meets-Sitting In Bars With Cake. Since this is your story, you get to fill in the blanks with everything you’d rather be doing when you pretend to be content with staying home with your boyfriend. What could you do with a year?

You could get a therapist and ask them, “How do I figure out where I end and other people begin?”

You could devote one night a week to do something interesting outside of your house, invite your boyfriend or not invite him, and if he doesn’t want to join you, you could do it anyway.

You could finally learn to fence or play an instrument or do the moonwalk or get really into darkroom photography or roller derby or improv or a foreign language or whatever that thing is that you keep resolving to try every January 1 and then not doing.

You could close your eyes, spin a globe, and plan a trip to wherever your finger lands when it stops.

You could volunteer for a cause that you care about and do your bit to change the world.

You could make this the year you focus on making new friends and deepening ties you already have.

You could make this the year that you put in the work to level up in your chosen career field.

You could go to your nearest animal shelter and walk out with just one of the many loves of your life.

I don’t know, but you do. These are your sculptures, your potions, your traveling show, and this is your song. If the duet you’re currently singing has stopped feeling good, improvise something new.

Announcement: the audience for these has changed, so I’m going to do them once every three or four months instead of monthly. So please come to this July one if you’re interested, there won’t be another until probably October.

27th July, 1pm, Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, SE1 8XX.

We will be on Level 2 (the upper levels are closed to non-ticket-holders), but I don’t know exactly where on the floor. It will depend on where we can find a table. I have shoulder length brown hair, and will have my plush Chthulu which looks like this:

https://images.fun.com.au/products/53367/1-1/cthulhu-12-plush.jpg

Please bring your masks/exemption lanyards, and obey any rules posted in the venue.

The venue has lifts to all floors and accessible toilets. The accessibility map is here:

https://bynder.southbankcentre.co.uk/m/7dc306803bc2d7cf/original/21539-24-Access-Updated-Access-Map_Proof-2.pdf

The food market outside (side away from the river) is pretty good for all sorts of requirements, and you can also bring food from home, or there are lots of cafes on the riverfront.

Other things to bear in mind:

1. Please make sure you respect people’s personal space and their choices about distancing.
2. We have all had a terrible time for the last four years. Sharing your struggles is okay and is part of what the group is for, but we need to be careful not to overwhelm each other or have the conversation be entirely negative. Where I usually draw the line here is that personal struggles are fine to talk about but political rants are discouraged, but I may have to move this line on the day when I see how things go. Don’t worry, I will tell you!
3. Probably lots of us have forgotten how to be around people (most likely me as well), so here is permission to walk away if you need space. Also a reminder that we will all react differently, so be careful to give others space if they need.

Please RSVP if you’re coming so I know whether or not we have enough people. If there’s no uptake I will cancel a couple of days before.

kate DOT towner AT gmail DOT com

Hi Captain!

I (she/her) am currently in a relationship with a person (he/him) that I would characterize as abusive. I also grew up within an abusive family, including an abusive stepfather (he/him). A few days ago, my partner  made a huge scene about how a trivial item I own (and remember buying)  was actually his (although he has never previously shown any interest in  it). I basically shrugged and said, “OK, if you say so” and he made off with the item and stashed it. (I know where it is, and can easily retrieve and/or replace it. The item itself doesn’t matter.) It reminded me of a similarly weird incident with my stepfather years ago, when he suddenly started screaming at me that a trivial item I owned (and which I remembered buying) was actually his. (He had never previously shown
any interest in this particular item, and it was easy to replace.) Do you have any insight into what this behaviour is about, and what response (other than “OK, whatever” and just replacing the item) could be useful?

Thanks for everything you do!

Weirded Out

Dear Weirded Out:

There’s a book called Why Does He Do That by Lundy Bancroft that may interest you, and a more recent book called See What You Made Me Do: Power, Control, And Domestic Abuse by Jess Hill, which really digs into the “hows” of coercive control and the depressing similarities between interpersonal abuse and systems of punishment and control. If you’ve never seen the movie Gaslight (George Cukor, 1944) you might find it educational and relatable, and there’s tons of info at LoveIsRespect.org.

Abusers are creatures of entitlement who assume that everything about their targets is theirs for the taking. They don’t think of your time, attention, compliance, or resources like money, space, or stuff as something you get to make decisions about because they don’t think of you as a separate, complete person who deserves human rights or autonomy. They believe you owe everything to them, all the time, and some of them use that belief to engineer relationships that resemble cults where they are the Supreme Leader and you are a mere acolyte who is lucky to serve them. Through that lens, everything you do and say becomes a reflection on them, and everything in your life that does not center them becomes a threat to their authority. Some abusers of this ilk are very good at engineering absurd little tests of loyalty and compliance where there’s no way for you to win. If you resist they use it as an excuse to punish you. If you comply, they get to colonize yet another corner of your life.

There is a classic flavor of Reddit advice-request post where the Original Poster (OP) says that a new relationship is going great except for how their wonderful new partner has taken a strong dislike to something that gives the OP pleasure. The partner wants them to get rid of their [beloved pet][too-interesting hobbies][quirky decor][lush houseplants][family heirloom][childhood comfort object]. The problem often emerges at relationship milestones, like several months in when the relationship gets more serious or right after they move in together or when someone gets pregnant, and it’s weird because the partner knew they had [cats][a collection of awesome swords][a shelf devoted to their favorite fandom][the teddy bear their departed beloved grandma sewed for them with her own hands] the whole time they were dating and never said anything, but all of a sudden it’s a huge problem. Teddy is suddenly “gross and embarrassing.” Their interesting hobbies are suddenly “childish.” Old photo albums in the closet full of happy memories become a problem because they contain evidence of exes, which is “disrespectful” to their current relationship. Beloved pets are suddenly inconvenient and messy, and allergies that were easily controlled with over-the-counter meds during the courtship stage are suddenly “it’s me or the dog” life-threatening.

The partner presents this criticism and the demand to get rid of the offending object as the kind of reasonable compromise everybody makes in relationships. Does the OP want to have real, grown up love and build a future together or not? If they do, why would they choose [a bunch of stupid plants that Perfect Partner is not interested in][to surround themselves with reminders of The Past, which did not include Perfect Partner and is therefore without value][time-consuming hobbies that take their attention away from Perfect Partner] when it would be so simple to just give in? “Do you really care about a silly object more than you care about me?” the abuser whines. The OP likes both the partner and the object and was not aware that they were in competition.

Like clockwork, the OP wonders if they are the problem. They bend over backwards to be “fair” to the partner, to locate a nexus of diagnoses or past traumas in the partner that would make these demands all make sense somehow. They accept the partner’s bad-faith framing that wanting to hold on to their own stuff they enjoy constitutes “making a big deal out of nothing” but coming into their space like an obsessed protagonist in an Edgar Allen Poe story demanding the removal of said items is the chill, normal path. They worry aloud that they are being too selfish, too immature, too unyielding, etc. to be loved and wonder whether their reluctance to sacrifice whatever this thing is is “holding them back” from adult relationships. Sometimes friends and family who are more invested in the idea of a perfect relationship than they are in the poster’s happiness within their actual relationship double down on this with, “Well, all relationships take work and require compromise” advice.

These stories tend to end a couple of ways. The happiest endings are the ones where the controlling partner issues an ultimatum and the OP sees the red flags and says “Oops, if you need me to let go of stuff that’s precious or enjoyable in my life so that we can be together, I guess things aren’t going work out between us after all, too bad, so sad, have a great life” and gets the hell out of there before things escalate. The controlling partner is free to go tell the story about how they got dumped for no good reason to anyone who will listen, and the OP is free to enjoy their “silly” and “childish” pursuits in peace and hold out for someone who isn’t threatened by how awesome they are.

Sometimes the OP says no to getting rid of whatever it is, and the partner seems to accept it, but really they are just biding their time until the OP goes out of town so they they can “accidentally” kill the houseplants or “accidentally” donate the heirlooms or “accidentally” let the nieces and nephews play with the pristine collectibles or “accidentally” spill water on the artwork in progress or “accidentally” run Teddy through bleach cycles until he’s in shreds. Please notice, it’s never their own shit that gets “accidentally” destroyed, which perfectly tracks with situations where abusers break household objects to punish and terrify their targets, claiming they “lost control” but maintained enough control to only break things that didn’t belong to them. Sometimes the evidence of naked destruction is enough to turn the alarm bells into klaxons and the OP realizes that someone who destroys everything you care about will eventually destroy you.

Other times, the OP complies and complies and complies. After all, it’s “just” a plant. It’s “just” a photo. It’s “just” a memory. It’s just “stuff.” They fall for the controlling partner’s promise that it was only this one tiny thing that was getting in the way of their perfect relationship, and then they learn, sometimes over the course of a lifetime, that it was never “just” one thing or even that thing, it was the systematic eradication of everything that brought them joy or reminded them of the possibility of existing as a separate person away from their partner. The irony is, the more abuse targets comply, the less satisfaction the abuser derives from each act of compliance, and the more the abuser escalates to get the same hit of dopamine or whatever the fuck it is that abusers derive from controlling other people. The appearance of temporary compliance can be a solid short-term strategy while an abuse target figures out how to get away from the abuser safely, but it doesn’t actually fix anything long-term.

Do you see the pattern? Your stepdad and your current partner probably stole your stuff for the exact same reasons: 1) They felt entitled to it 2) They liked upsetting you and feeling powerful at your expense 3) Taking a seemingly unimportant item away from you is a perfect way of testing your compliance, manufacturing a source of constant friction, and then gaslighting you for “making a big deal” out of something so small. The less significant the item, the more irrational their behavior, the “crazier” you seem when you get upset about it or try to describe the fight to other people, and the more they paint themselves as the only rational party.

If there’s one thing that abusers and other kinds of bullies excel at, it’s creating lose-lose situations that leave you second-guessing yourself about whether it’s worth it to confront their bad behavior or easier to just let them win. If you make a stink about it at the time of the theft, you confirm that they have power to upset you and they get to have an argument about how it’s “just” stuff, they were only joking, how you don’t need it anyway, how petty and selfish you are for starting an argument about such a small thing, how ungrateful you are for everything they’ve ever given you, how you just need to learn to take a joke, etc.. If you don’t make a stink about it, the walls of your cage close in a little more.  Now that your partner has a baseline of what kind of treatment you’ll tolerate, he’ll start to test you harder. What will you stay silent about to “keep the peace” that he gets to destroy at his sole discretion? Once an abuser gets a taste for this, they will never stop taking things from you and testing your compliance.

You asked me what a “useful” response was to this kind of behavior, and you’re the best judge of that. When your partner steals your stuff, if your instincts tell you that the safest thing to do in the moment is to ignore this (or seem to) and quietly replace the item later, then you are probably correct. Like I said, deliberate de-escalation or the appearance of compliance can be a useful strategy to keep yourself safe in the short-term. However, there is no “useful” script or advice that turns an abusive person into a not-abusive person or that can keep you safe from an abuser in the long term. If your partner wants the stimulation of a fight and an excuse to escalate, he will find one, and the quiet compliance that worked all the other times will become the pretext.“What, you’re just gonna sit there and let me take it? I thought you had more backbone than that! ” His bad behavior will always be both your problem and your fault if he has his way.

The most useful thing I can probably tell you is that abusive relationships are unfixable from the inside. There is no happy ending where you redeem an abuser with the power of your perfect love and understanding, there’s only the one that you claw into existence by getting away safely and staying gone.You’ve correctly spotted a harmful pattern that you recognize from childhood, and you could spend decades trying to plumb your partner’s psyche and figure out exactly why he does what he does or whether it meets the standard for ABUSE-abuse, or you could decide right now that you don’t stick around in relationships where people steal your stuff and gaslight you about it.

I wish you safety, peace, and all of your stuff being right where you left it whenever you want it.