User blogs

Hello everyone!

The London meetups outdoors in a park have been going well, but I’m not willing to bet on British weather in October.

The good news is that our old venue is open again for this type of activity.

Pandemic rules in England now allow us to meet up without restriction, although we still need to be sensible. So, here we go:

16th October, 1pm, Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, SE1 8XX.

The venue has step free access and accessible toilets. The accessibility map is here.

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 will have my plush Chthulu which looks like this:

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

The food market outside (side opposite 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.

Please email me at the below to say you’re coming.

No RSVPs via any other method accepted – e.g. no text messages, no comments here, no facebook likes, etc. Please make sure you email me.

Please make sure you also update me if you RSVP yes but later can’t come.

Other things to bear in mind:

1. Please make sure you follow social distancing rules. This particularly includes respecting people’s personal space and their choices about distancing.
2. We have all had a terrible time for the last year. 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.

I will cancel this meetup if government guidance changes, so keep an eye on this space.

kate DOT towner AT gmail DOT com

Hello, yes, I have seen your many Tweets and emails asking (and in some cases demanding) that I weigh in on the Bad Art Friend thing. I have opinions, but they are neither fully-formed nor fully informed opinions, especially as it seems like new information keeps coming out all the time that changes the narrative a lot. The initial article gave me so much trepidation I could barely get through it, and I do not have the patience or time to sift through court records like a Literary True Crime-Solver. Perhaps, instead, I can answer a question someone actually sent me about how to ethically handle intersections of art and life? I wrote the response to this one a little while ago and had it in the queue to edit and post but then a bunch of life stuff* came up before I could, but it seems timely!

Hi Captain!

I’m wondering if it’s okay if I (she/her) use my ex’s (he/him) pseudonym as the name of a character in my novel. And if it’s ambiguous, I’d still like your opinion!

My ex-husband has been calling himself by this name online for many years because he was born in a politically divisive country and culture and his birth name made that situation obvious. He never changed his name officially and he uses his legal name day to day in real life.

The name he uses online is actually more closely related to my background than his. To clarify, the pseudonym he chose includes a last name from my cultural background, but not in my family history. However he has no connection to my cultural background other than his marriage to me. I want to make it clear he chose it before we met, though.
I’m from a more privileged background and home country than him, as well. However he got a higher degree than me and he’s educated in a very elite field. He’s also struggled with mental health issues throughout our relationship, and despite my best efforts he’s the one who ended our marriage. He also admittedly cheated continuously throughout the marriage from the very beginning of the relationship.

I know it’s not that likely but I worry he is going to sue me if my book is successful. I wouldn’t put anything past him – he’s smart and vicious and capable of ruining the life of anyone, given the opportunity – BUT the name really fits the character. I have been using it during the writing process for months now, but as things start coming together I’m starting to worry (I’m sure he’ll be so happy about that if he ever comes across this!).

So my question is, is it worth fighting for my character or do I give the baby his bottle?

Sincerely,
Betrayed and Bad Ass

Hello, Betrayed And Bad Ass:

Writing fiction and publishing fiction are two distinct processes, usually linked in the middle by a series of revisions.

Legally speaking, I am not a lawyer in any jurisdiction and I cannot speak to the legalities of including a recognizable portrayal of a real, live, not-public-figure person in a published piece of fiction. If you reasonably think a vindictive dude might sue you and your publisher because you used this particular pseudonym, then that’s definitely a conversation to have with your editor and possibly an attorney at some point before publication to make sure you are maximally protected. Just, practically speaking, if you’ve managed to get a vindictive person out of your life, you may not want to send him an engraved invitation to a renewed sense of grievance. Somebody could have a weak or nonexistent case and still use the courts to suck years of your life away.

Creatively speaking, I think you can generally write whatever you want about whoever you want. You do not owe people flattering portrayals in your fiction and you don’t owe the world a fair hearing of both sides. Even if you’re writing memoir, the expectation is that you’ll write the truth about your own experiences and recollections of events. So, when it’s just you and a blank page that nobody else will see? Name names. Settle scores. Spill some beans. Layer in all the carefully hoarded observations and details you’ve been saving up. You don’t have to solve publishing problems right this second, so feed the fire in your belly with your ex’s pet name for himself if that’s what gets it done; spite is motivating. You can always pull up a name generator later when you need to.

Ethically speaking, being free to write whatever you want does not mean being free of consequences from what you wrote. If you include recognizable details about real people in your published writing, fictional or otherwise, if you disclose confidential information about them (like mental health diagnoses), assume that somebody will connect the dots, and assume that the people you wrote about will eventually feel some kind of way about it. They may not have grounds to sue you, but they might think you are a bad person or a lazy artist, and they might tell their own stories where you are not the hero.

Legal consequences aren’t the only consequences, and “is it technically legal” isn’t where I personally set my own ethical line. Nor is there only one way to approach this, no “One! Simple! Rule!” that everyone should follow all the time. I have asked people in my life for permission and agreed on ground rules before telling stories about them, even when I haven’t technically needed to, because the relationship was important to me, or because it was sensitive and I wanted to make sure I had informed consent. On the other hand, sometimes telling the truth about a relationship is incompatible with preserving that relationship, and setting some bridges on fire is necessary to survival, creative and otherwise. In general, there are very few people who enjoy having their lives harvested for “material,” and I think writers should be honest about that and honest with themselves about what their objectives really are. Meaning, if there’s some part of you that wants your ex to see & recognize himself in your pages someday, if you really are trying to settle scores by reclaiming the name, in public, where he can see it but can’t control it, that might be what you need to do, both to heal and to tell your story.Just, be honest about that impulse now, so you can weigh it against the consequences down the road, and make sure they’re all ones you can live with.

I think my vote is, draft your novel without worrying about any of this too much.Then use the revision process to test out alternate names and obscure identifying autobiographical details until you find the right balance of memory and imagination. Wherever you eventually land on the name, down the road, the small group of people who know both you and your ex’s online persona will undoubtedly recognize what you’re about, your ex will be exactly as weird about it as he is about everything else, and you’ll have a published novel, in addition to the joy of no longer being married to that guy, plus the ability to say, “Why would you assume that everything I do is about you?” with an almost straight face.

*Life Stuff, Good News: I am working on a Captain Awkward book that will eventually be published by St. Martin’s Essentials. Mr. Awkward and I celebrated being married for 5 years last Friday, and he recently started a job at the local food pantry. The rolling series of family health scares has *mostly* quieted down.

Life Stuff, Bad News: [CN: MEDICAL STUFF]

My fibroid tumor (nicknamed Guillaume) is back, he’s the size of a large mango or small grapefruit, he’s partially calcified, he feels like an actual bowling ball dropping on my bladder whenever I stand up or sit down or roll over, he steals my life force and makes me severely anemic, and he has a new friend in the form of a weird cyst I have nicknamed “Chanel” that gets a lot of “Huh, well, it could be a lot of things….” from doctors when they look at the scans.

Most of my time and energy this past month or two has been spent hemorrhaging (periods should not last for 44+ days or require crime scene cleaning skills because you “stood up from a chair” or “shifted position”), undergoing invasive medical tests to figure out why I’m hemorrhaging, and haggling over phone calls with the hospital scheduler and my insurance company while also…hemorrhaging. The next invasive, complicated, expensive thing on the list is a hysteroscopy where they’ll take tissue samples to rule out (or detect) cancer,  followed by (most likely) a hysterectomy. #ProjectYeeterus

.As if that’s not enough, between hormonal shifts and missing regular cleanings over the course of the pandemic before I could be vaccinated, my teeth and gums went from “Great job, keep doing what you’re doing!” at the dentist to needing something called “scaling and planing” and having a painful and unsalvageable molar extracted. Turns out the teeth-falling-out dreams were trying to tell me something.

As you can imagine, my mental health, focus, and stress tolerance have not been amazing of late, and I apologize for the infrequent blogging. I do have a lot of partial drafts in the hopper (like this one) that just needed some cleaning up and I’m going to try to release them from the queue a bit this week as I can. Thanks for reading!

There is a tiny bit of September left, so who wants some search terms?

If you’re new here, this is a recurring feature where I treat the search strings people typed in right before they found this place as questions and answer them. No context! All assumptions! 

1 “Dating profile example ‘looking for my soulmate’.”

“How to answer ‘what are you looking for in a relationship'” is a perennial search term here, which fascinates me both algorithmically (every time I answer it, I make it more prominent, right?) and culturally. We inhabit and ingest so many stories about what love is supposed to look like, but so seldom are invited to think through what we actually want it to look like. People imagine that there’s one right answer or set of answers that communicates “I am good and worthy of love, not too needy and not too closed off ,and I want just enough so that you’ll like me enough to go out again but not so much that it will freak you out, here is my Elevator Pitch for why you should be with me, no worries if not, though.” It’s just like with job interviews where you’re supposed to be able to reframe your weaknesses as all the ways you would actually die for the company’s bottom line. If there are such answers for relationships and dating, I don’t know them. (I used to know them for job stuff but then somebody asked me in an interview “Where do you see yourself in 5 years?” and we both saw the panicked “NOT HERE, I WANT TO LIVE!” flashing out of my eyes in the resulting silence, rendering me unemployable)

Back to dating, I think that if you’re looking to find a lifelong partnership, it’s okay to say that! If you’re looking for more casual stuff, say that. Pretending you want one when you really want something else because you think it’s what you’re supposed to say is going to disappoint everyone. 

“Soulmate” seems like a lot of pressure out of the gate for me, but that’s just me! Perhaps your Immortal Beloved is out there.  

2 “I’m 40 and my dad hates my boyfriend.”

You’re 40 and you can date who you want!

I think if a close, trusted friend or family member usually likes the people you bring around and then suddenly has strong misgivings about one specific person, it’s probably worth asking them why at least once. “He’s not nice to you.” “He’s not nice to me/the waiter/anybody except you.” “You seem down and less happy when he’s around.” “He tried to recruit me into a pyramid scheme.” 

Absent good reasons, remember, not everybody has to like everybody else in order to behave with a basic amount of politeness. Speaking of…

3. “What should I do when my parents are insulted by my husband?” 

The passive voice is doing a lot of work here. Is your husband routinely insulting your parents? That’s probably a “Be cool, husband! Apologize and quit insulting my parents!” conversation. Is your husband being polite and kind, but your parents are manufacturing grievances with him? That’s a “Parents, you don’t have to adore [Husband] but if you want us to do stuff together as a family then please figure out a way to get along!” conversation.

Either way, the question you typed in here is a question you can ask your parents and your husband when conflict comes up. “What, if anything, do you want me to do about this?”  You may or may not be willing to do whatever it is, but definitely ask people to spell it out before you volunteer for anything! 

4. “My bf’s family babys him and controls him.”

Generally, when someone you love is dealing with a controlling person, the most helpful thing is to be the opposite of that. Meaning, if your boyfriend complains about his family, before you jump in and give advice, ask him if he wants advice or just a listening ear. Instead of telling him what he should do about a situation with them, ask him what he wants to do. Controlling people convince their targets that they can’t do the simplest things on their own, and a good antidote is to honor the person’s strength and agency as much as possible. 

Your boyfriend might benefit from finding a therapist to work this out, “my relationship with my family of origin is messing with my day-to-day and I need to get a better handle on how to have a functional adult relationship with them” is classic material for therapy. Whether he gets a therapist or not, you’re not going to be able to fix his family relationships on his behalf, so figure out what your own boundaries are for spending time with his family and spending your time processing the behavior of his family so that those things aren’t ruling your life. If you ever feel like you and his family are having proxy battle based on “But I just want what’s best for him,” it’s probably a good time to ask yourself, wait, what’s best for me right now, do I want to fight about _____, and try to leave them to it. 

5.  “Confronting the women who won’t leave my husband alone.” 

Loretta Lynn* is the queen of “He may be trash but he’s MY trash” songs.

While that song is a karaoke favorite of mine,  I’m also like, dump him, Loretta, that lady did not make your dude up and move in with her! Come on! Want better for yourself! 

A grown man who actually wants to be left alone is capable of saying, “Leave me alone, I don’t want this!”  so why isn’t your husband dealing with whatever this is? Text messages do not have to be answered in the order received, or, at all. His social media accounts also come with a block button.“Ma’am, what a flattering offer, but I am both married and not interested, so let’s keep it friendly and professional from here on out, thank you.” 

There is no sassy zinger from you that’s gonna get this done the way him saying “I don’t want this, please leave me be” to whoever’s bothering him would. 

6. “Should I wait for proposal before I move to be with him?” 

Why wait when you could discuss it? 

Mr. Awkward and I  moved to a different apartment  *within the same city* a few months ago for mundane “lease ending” reasons, and I’m trying to imagine undertaking that logistical shitshow and having the other party on the lease being like “Huh, I’m not sure if I’m ready for such a big step, I haven’t really thought about it” and no, I cannot, not without laughing the hysterical hyena laugh that is also mostly crying.

Moving sucks! Uprooting your life for love is a big, expensive deal! My counsel is, make sure that you and your beloved have shared hopes, assumptions, and plans about the future before you do it. “I want to move and be with you, but I want it to be because we’ve decided to get married” is a reasonable condition to set from the start. 

7. “i start fuxking up text when triwd” 

Who doesn’t, friend. Who doesn’t. I type faster than I think sometimes and I skip words all the time.

8. “Will awkwardness subside between me and my crush when we get together?” 

Maybe? The question of “I like you, do you like me?” will hopefully be answered, but the “I want _____, do you also want ____?” conversations don’t magically melt away when you’re dating someone, you just fill in the blanks with different stuff, like, what’s for dinner.

Cautionary Tale: If you’ve ever read Carrie Fisher’s The Princess Diarist, you’ll know that Harrison Ford was a taciturn, remote, mostly stoned, extremely boring dude before they started having sex and that didn’t change after they started having sex. Is your crush someone who is easy to talk to, in general, about regular stuff? If so, that would help a lot! 

9. “How to make your boyfriend realize that you are irreplaceable.” 

There’s only one of you, so you are by definition unique and irreplaceable. But there are a lot of people on this planet who might be a good match for your boyfriend, the same way there are multiple possible happy matches for you. If he’s not choosing you of his own accord, that’s not something you can change by pouring yourself into what you imagine the perfect vessel to be or making an airtight case about it. My advice is worry less about being the perfect partner and worry more about making sure you are getting your own needs met, including the need to know that you are special and valued, including the need to be with somebody who doesn’t leave you guessing about that. 

10. “I invited my friend somewhere and now she’s inviting extra people its annoying.” 

One script could be “Oh, you probably didn’t realize, but when I invited you to _____, I intended it to be just me and you. If you want a big group thing next time when you’re initiating plans, go ahead and plan something, but please don’t assume it’s a ‘the more, the merrier’ deal when I’m making the arrangements.” 

This probably won’t solve the issue of the current plan, since if she’s already invited people she may be reluctant to get in touch with all of them again and disinvite them, so you may want to build in some grace for this instance in exchange for clearer boundaries in the future. 

Speaking personally, I greatly appreciate friends who ask before including additional people in plans. Like, maybe I *will* sit next to a good friend at brunch while [they and their latest datefriend eye-grope each other][their parents are visiting from out-of-town and decided to tag along][they invited all their coworkers to come, too], but I’ll be a lot happier about it if it’s not a surprise and if it is an actual informed choice on my part. 

11. “Captain Awkward housecleaning” 

I am not a champion housecleaner, but here are some resources I like: 

• René at Black Girl, Lost Keys, who writes about cleaning house with ADHD and has an ebook about it. 
• “Friend of Blog” Rachel Hoffman’s Unfuck Your Habitat’s website and books. 
• KC Davis’s Tiktok (@domesticblisters) and book. Her “There are only 5 things in any room” cleaning method was one of those anvil-to-head moments for me, a person who knows how to clean but who was repeatedly defeated by the cycle of where to start and what order to do them in. 
• This article about “Junebugging” which replaces “staying on task” with “keep returning to a task even if you wander away.” 

Obviously, the things I need help with aren’t what everyone needs help with, so only use what works for you! I am not a cleaning researcher; no comprehensive guide to every possible cleaning issue is forthcoming.

In terms of interpersonal relationships and cleaning, I generally think that you should try as much as possible to share housing with people who have similar needs and approaches to cleaning as you, since there’s no magic way to turn a messy person into a neat person or make a neat person ignore mess. I also think that assumptions are bad, assumptions based on gender are worse, and spelling out who will clean what when in as boring and straightforward a way as possible is the best antidote to those assumptions (and best chance at household harmony). 

12. “Polyamory that involve a sibling relationship dating the same person morally ok.” 

This was an actual question in the past, was this what you were looking for? 

My sexual “morals” are based in informed consent, not religious codes, and my views haven’t really changed in that people who think it’s a good idea to date siblings at the same time are not only knowingly signing up for a certain amount of jokes and side-eye but also playing with a higher degree of difficulty and Giving No Fucks than I personally possess. If this seems like a good idea to you, and everybody involved enthusiastically and knowingly signs up for it, then you probably don’t need my permission anyway. 

13. “While drunk insulted group of people how to apologize.” 

For best results, be sober, be specific, and be responsible.

“I’m so sorry I said __________ last night when I was drunk.” 

That’s the apology sorted. The lesson is, next time you see these people, drink less (or not at all), and don’t repeat the incident. 

14. “Gay male seek bi male roommate who must be ok with male penis exposed in kc mo” 

Missouri, I swear, I’ve been getting this one in the search terms EVERY MONTH for like A YEAR will no one look at this guy’s LONELY DONG have MERCY 

Friend, are you sure that your sexual fantasies and your daily routine need to be mixed in this way? What if the potential roommate is okay with nudity but never pays bills or washes any dishes? Exhibitionist fun-times can probably be arranged with willing gents without a 24-7 commitment to “Surprise!….Again!! It’s my genitalia!”

Speaking from experience,  I once had a roommate who aggressively walked around naked all the time, bathed and went to the toilet with the door open, and repeatedly tried to show me/my dinner guests naked pictures of herself and it was so, so tedious. “Bisexual” and “Wants to see your neverminds at all hours” are not the same. Honestly, I wish she had put that shit in her roommate ad from the start, it would have saved me a lot of “Can you move? You’re blocking the TV. Also, put on underpants or throw a towel down if you’re going to sit on my couch.” 

So, good job being specific about what you’re looking for, I guess, and good luck with all that! 

Before we go, this isn’t a search term, this is me marveling at this Ask A Manager question from yesterday. Sometimes in this job I think, “I have seen it all, the most dramatical drama, there can be nothing new under the sun,” and then there is a coworker who prayed for a dude to die, told him about this out loud, and is now miffed at being left off his wedding invitation list and is getting the rest of the team riled up. “Ted,” Alison advises “clearing the air” with “Sally,” and sure! This is a good time to be like, “Remember when you told me that you prayed for me to die? I thought that was really weird and a good sign that we should keep work at work!”  But in your shoes I would not meet with her alone under any circumstances. You want open doors and witnesses, lots of witnesses, for whatever bananas thing this person does and says next, and you probably want a new job as soon as you can find one. Congratulations on your wedding, though! 

*Sadly, Loretta Lynn passed away quietly in her sleep sometime before the 2016 U.S. presidential election, or so I choose to believe. RIP to a Great One. 

Hey Captain,

I (he/him) have had a rocky relationship with my family for a while now, due to being queer in a family of Trump supporters (among other things), but always made sure to come visit my parents for a week for Christmas. It’s the only time I spend in their house, and I do it with plenty of safeties in place and reasons to escape the house if I need time to myself. For better or worse it’s tradition, all the kids come home for Christmas, and Christmas at my parents’ is lovely enough that I was willing to wade through the bullshit for it.

This changed last year, when I was unwilling to make a mid-pandemic flight (to Florida! Yikes!). That turned out to be the right call, because flights and Florida aside, they just randomly invited people outside their pod over on Christmas Day, and generally flagrantly ignored masking mandates and other safety precautions. They were “understanding” about my reluctance, for their definition of understanding, but it involved a lot of back and fourth and asserting boundaries.

And now I have to rehash the that conversation, because parents and brother are staunch anti-vaxxers, and, concerns about just generally traveling during the delta-variant aside, they are completely unvaccinated for Covid. 

Captain, my mom has talked to me on multiple occasions about how the vaccine is becoming a “lifestyle” and I should think hard and “do my research” before getting it. She talked my 87 year old Nana out of getting vaccinated. I’ve managed to keep my boundaries pretty well up until this point, changing the subject or blatantly shutting down vaccine conversation whenever it comes up. But now I’m going to have to tell her that no, I’m not traveling down to Florida, yes, the virus is still a concern even though my brother got it and he’s fine, and yes, it is because you’re unvaccinated. I’m dreading it.

On the plus side, I have a lovely adoptive family, all vaccinated, who live much closer, who’re having me over for Christmas in a celebration I know is going to be an absolute blast. But, again, that means I have to tell my mom that I am seeing people for Christmas, just not my actual factual parents.

Can you give me some good scripts for this conversation?

Thanks!

Hi!

I have a question about a shy guy I like. I am a shy woman but confident in pursuing him.

I have slowly gotten to know him and asked him out a couple times vaguely for coffee or a friend hang out. At first he seemed scared and panicked and lied and said he is seeing someone. We have good conversations but whenever I mention a hang out he casually mentions his girlfriend would be jealous.

I know he doesn’t have one because of how nervous he has been around me, his friend tried to help me, and his social media he is never with a girl romantically.

What do you make of this? Is he just scared or not interested? He said he likes talking to me so that is a good sign at least.

Thank you!

Hello!

“Scared,” “panicked,” and “my jealous girlfriend, who is definitely a real human girlfriend, you wouldn’t know her, she lives in Canada” do not add up to “Heck yes, let’s date!”

Someone can be both “shy/nervous about dating in general” and “not interested in dating you” at the same time, and addressing one doesn’t “cure” the other.

The Legend Of The Man Who Would Love You Back If Only He Weren’t So Scared is like Bigfoot: elusive, mythical, and addictive. People spend their whole lives hunting, but they only ever catch what decides to be caught. By which I mean, if this guy changes his mind at some point, it won’t be because you persistently and confidently found a way round his “fears,” it will be because he decided on his own and sought you out.

If you both like chatting with each other, great! Enjoy that for its own sake. But definitely stop the invitations/casual mentions of further hangouts and other “pursuing.” Stop haunting his social media feeds, stop auditing his life for reasons to override his reluctance, and stop making ‘overcoming reluctance’ a romantic goal, both with him, and in general. The right person for you will match your enthusiasm levels and you won’t have to work this hard at any of it.