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#1408: “I’m worried my baby will be the nail in the coffin for my...

Dear Captain,

Thank you for telling me years ago (in an unpublished letter) to dump my boyfriend. This one may be tougher.

When my best friend, “Leah,” and I met, we were both in our charmingly messy mid-20s, full of joie de vivre and liquor. It was one of those friendships that felt like we had always known each other, and we bonded really closely despite ultimately having a long-distance friendship. We text almost every day and have flown to see each other at least twice a year ever since. She is so funny and interesting, and we’ve always based our friendship on not judging each other, but it’s getting harder for me to hold up my end of that.

It’s been almost a decade, and Leah and I have been growing in different directions. Or, from my perspective, I have been growing, and Leah hasn’t been. She’s still partying all night, getting fired from a series of jobs, and having what feels like middle-school drama with friend groups and the people she dates. She’s still running into the same life-disrupting stuff that happens in early adulthood, like when you don’t know how to book a doctor’s appointment so an infection festers, or you have to cancel a trip you planned because you didn’t renew your passport. Her main interests have become astrology, reality TV, and partying. Her primary ambition seems to be TikTok virality. It often feels like I’m listening to a teenage niece talk about her life instead of a peer. I’ve never told her to do anything differently — we’re not supposed to be judging each other! It’s HER life! — but I just keep thinking, dude, grow UP.

Her choices aren’t objectively or morally wrong, but I’m just in a different part of life! I’m interested in the “boring” “grown-up” stuff now! I have a marriage (which I rarely talk about with Leah, because her default response to any conflict with a partner is “well, just break up with them” or “lifelong monogamy isn’t realistic”), and a demanding but rewarding (unglamorously corporate) career, and now, I’m having a baby. I am so psyched about this baby! But I’ve been dreading having to tell Leah, because I am afraid that once the baby enters the chat, we won’t be able to pretend we’re compatible any more.

Leah has expressed MANY times that she never wants kids, that she hates how her friends who have kids can’t party, kids are gross, etc. I have never said to her “Hey, that makes me sad, because I want kids,” but I’ve talked about wanting them. One time she angrily vented to me about her friend who had just gotten pregnant before her wedding, because it meant they couldn’t do “anything fun” for the bachelorette “or ever again basically.” And since then, she’s kind of dropped that friend! I have no idea how she’ll take it when I tell her. I hope she’ll be happy for me? I hope she’ll stop saying stuff about how kids mean your life is over and how they wreck your body and make you lose your whole identity? I hope she won’t be mad I didn’t tell her I was trying to get pregnant. I hope we can find a way to talk about how we’re at really different places in our lives and we still love each other but there’s less and less that we have in common.

I’m not sure if I’m asking “how do I tell my anti-kid Peter Pan friend that I am permanently leaving Neverland” or if I’m asking “can this friendship survive this baby and/or is it already dead” or “am I an asshole who needs to have more patience for a really good friend who is just making different choices than I am” but hoo boy, I need some wisdom.

Anxiously,

Ticking Time Bomb Uterus

Dear Time Bomb:

Congratulations on your good news, I am so happy for you! And thanks for the addition to the “Dummmmmp Himmmmmm!” happy ending file.

It’s very possible that your friendship with Leah will not survive this news or the big changes ahead. You were outgrowing the friendship even without this, and she’s made her views very clear in the past. If she reacts unpleasantly, as if this is something you are doing AT her, or drops the friendship altogether, then that is certainly her choice. But before you blame yourself or the bundle of cells and possibility you’re incubating, remember that Leah has the same opportunity to show up for you in the ways that make sense for her that you’ve been doing all along as your paths have diverged. So when you tell her your good news, I want you to think about it as good news (because it is) and as a gift to her in the form of a chance to rise to the occasion.

Postal mail is your friend here. You can organize your thoughts in a card, send it off, and not really think about it until she answers. Leah can have her initial reaction in private, and then decide how she wants to respond to you. It probably beats watching three dots appear and disappear again in a text message window and sharply reduces the risk that anyone will blurt out anything they regret. And if you do put your news in a letter, you can also include your honest fears about her reactions and your hopes about what happens next.

Sample:

“Dear Leah, I have some big news: I’m pregnant, due around [date]. I’m a mix of overjoyed and nervous, like every prospective parent. One of the things I’ve been nervous about is telling you, which is why I have held off until now.

You’ve consistently been very vocal not just about remaining child-free yourself (which I completely support!) but also about distancing yourself from friends who made different choices. That’s also up to you, but it makes me sad to think about potentially losing one of my favorite people. I have zero expectations that you’ll suddenly become interested in babies or toddlers, the same way that I have not so far become a TikTok trendsetter or amateur astrologer, but we’ve managed to stay friends this long despite our lives being very different, so is it silly to think we could find a way? Things are going to change for me, very rapidly, but down the road, I like to imagine girls’ weekends away from the kids and perhaps even Cool Aunt Leah advising my surly teen about being a [Star Sign] and knowing the difference between fun bad decisions and the kind that are just bad.

If that’s something you can picture too, then what I need the most right now is for you to hold off on the kind of comments you’ve made in the past about kids being gross and ruining lives. You don’t need to come to any baby showers or fake enthusiasm, but I do need you to keep that kind of thing to yourself around me from now on. Even when it’s a happy choice, pregnancy is hard, and the last thing I need is to be treated like I’m wrecking your life somehow by living mine. I hope I’m wrong about your potential reaction and that you’ll find a way to be happy for me.

At least by putting all this in a letter, hopefully you’ll have a minute to whine to your fun friends about how I’m joining the Pod People and get it out of your system before we talk, at which time you can say normal stuff like ‘Is it true pregnancy makes you have to pee all the time?’* and ‘You aren’t going to give it some dickhead name like [Worst Ex Ever] or [Celebrity Crush] or [Erstwhile Nemesis] right?’**

Talk soon,

Ticking Bomb”

*Yes, it’s upsetting.

**Prospective names are top secret between me and [Spouse] until there is an actual baby, but if you’ve kept a good list of dickhead grudge names we should definitely not use, please send it along. I trust you especially to think through the potential nickname pitfalls that could arise on the playground.”

As always, adapt and discard anything that doesn’t work for you. You may not want to go into this much detail in whatever you send (“Hi Leah, I’m pregnant and I need you to not be an asshole about it. Cheers!”), but I figure that if you’re worried the friendship is going to end anyway, you lose nothing by being very honest about how you’re feeling and what you want to happen. Plus, it’s not like her past views are a secret! There’s nothing unkind or unfair here as long as your musings on her relative maturity levels and choices remain between you, me, and the rest of the Internet. The perfect letter is not going to fix anything that’s already broken or suddenly make her into a different person, but sometimes the kindest thing you can do is give people a chance to pleasantly surprise you and enough time to find out.

Again, I send you all the congratulations and hope for the safest and easiest possible ride. And I hope you are surrounded by people who are excited to show up for you even if they don’t have 100% of everything in common. Some of my favorite people made small people, and no identities were lost in the process.

Valerie L Sep 22 · Tags: connect, fusevy, love, relationships

#1407: “How to stop being friends with a perfectly nice person wh...

Hi Captain,

I’ve dug myself into a friendship hole and would like to get out of it without hurting anyone’s feelings (probably impossible, but who knows).

About two years ago, I moved cross country to a new city where I didn’t know anyone. It was a pretty rough adjustment period, and I had a really difficult time finding a community and making friends here. After almost a year of intense loneliness, I met another person who was also new to the city, and we started hanging out pretty regularly. For a while, spending time with her was my only social interaction outside of work and we would hang out almost weekly. She seemed to really like me, which was flattering, and we had similar interests. Fast forward a year and I’m doing much better. I’ve made some good friends, devoted more time to my hobbies, and gotten involved with creative projects that I find really fulfilling. The only problem is that hanging out with that first friend is now an unbreakable habit that I am finding myself really wanting to break?

To be clear, she is not a bad person or a bad friend, but she is someone that I now am not sure I’m entirely compatible with. She has a large friend group that she’s always talking about, but I haven’t met most of them and she almost never invites me to spend time with a group – she’s mentioned that she finds it “relaxing” that I never try to introduce her to people, which kind of hurt when I was torn up about being friendless in a new place. A lot of our conversations just turn into her telling stories or giving long lectures on topics she’s interested in while I just smile and nod.

While I know these things are fixable if I get my shit together and talk about them, I just don’t want to fix them/hang out with her other friends/have more reciprocal conversations. I also don’t want to pretend that these are huge friendship deal-breakers. Hanging out with her is fine! The grudge clock is not ticking! But I’ve reached a stable enough point in my life where I don’t really want to spend a day a week on something that’s just….fine. I also feel like when we first met I was so focused on being agreeable and likable and making A Friend, Any Friend that she never really meaningfully got to know me, and now it’s a habit I can’t break.

I’ve read everything in the Art of No section of this website, and can say theoretically that it’s not better for me to keep putting myself in situations I don’t actually enjoy for the sake of sparing someone else’s feelings, but when someone says “you’re one of my best friends, I like you so much, let’s hang out weekly forever” I can’t actually stop myself from agreeing because doing anything else in the moment would be so hurtful. (This is not hyperbole she has said this to me and in the moment I said “aw yeah I like you too” which isn’t technically a lie! I think she’s perfectly nice! But I know I don’t mean it the way she does.) My inability to say no to well-meaning people has caused me problems in the past—I don’t really date bc I can’t trust myself to be honest about my boundaries in a way that gets ugly fast in a romantic or sexual relationship. I’m in therapy, it’s a work in progress. But now I’ve become a boundariless extension of the first person I met in this city and I don’t know how to make it stop.

This is all completely my own fault, but now I feel like I can’t be honest. Is there a not-insanely-cruel way to say “I just don’t like you that way” after a year of close friendship? Can I ethically ghost when like last week I said yes great idea we should TOTALLY plan a road trip to her hometown (something I desperately don’t want to do)? I know I’m the villain here but all I want is to extricate myself from the crushing weight of hanging out with a perfectly nice person who likes me without making it worse for her than it needs to be. Help?

Yes, Anded Myself Into A Friendship (they/them)

Hello Yes Anded!

This seems to be a sequel to #1406 (How Do I Stop Giving Rides To Someone I Don’t Like?) and #1338 (*Surprised Pikachu Face* Another Friendship That Stresses Me Out!). Maybe with a little bit of #1335 and mistaking expressions of enthusiasm about hanging out for commands stirred in. You have replaced your own desires with a combination of adhering to other people’s expectations (real and projected) and force of habit, and that giant ball of guilt and resentment you’re rolling uphill is getting heavier and heavier. Let’s see if we can reverse this process and lighten your load. Or at least get you out of this re-enactment of the “I Love Lisa” episode of The Simpsons before you explode.

I think nerds as a group are *very* accustomed to living in the point of view of the serially rejected person who yearns for what they cannot have (Ralph) but not so comfortable with the role of person with options who gets to choo-choo-choose who to hang out with (Lisa). Many of the original Geek Social Fallacies result from people misapplying standards of fairness to stuff that is inherently subjective and unfair (like affection and desire) by wildly overcompensating in the present for the perceived “wrongs” of the past. In imbalanced relationships where rejection is The Worst Possible Fate, constructive conflict with people who interpret any criticism or dissent as rejection is impossible. The thing is, authentic friendships need to be able to weather instances where the people inside them want slightly different stuff. We have to assume that your friend doesn’t want you to fake your way through a friendship out of fear that she’ll crumble to dust if you don’t want to go on road trips and sometimes want to prioritize other friends. (If she does want that, that’s a different problem, and the friendship definitely needs to end.) So you need to find a way to proceed authentically, or not at all.

Sometimes you just outgrow relationships and it’s better to end them. It’s always an option! But from here on, I’m going to assume that’s not what what you want. Fortunately, there is a ton of middle ground between getting matching friendship tattoos and telling her to fuck off forever. As in any negotiation, you don’t get to the middle ground by aiming there, and that goes triply for negotiations with yourself, which this is. So get ready for a sharp resetting of priorities and perspectives.

Almost everybody who writes to me about a mismatch like this wants to know, “Aaaaahhhhhh how do I convince other people to not have these unrealistic expectations of me (that I keep acquiescing to)? Then I would never have to disappoint them! What is that one expectation-setting script I can say where no one is ever hurt or mad but they all get the message to back off?”

The longer I do this, the more my default strategy is to reclassify persuasion problems as boundary problems. Persuasion is nice, but there are a whole bunch of things we get to decide for ourselves without consulting anyone, so howabout we adjust our own behavior so that we’re no longer complying with expectations we find unreasonable or unpleasant? Once everyone has a more realistic and consistent picture of what is on offer and a little chance to adjust, the relationship will either adapt and improve over time, or else come to a necessary and natural end because there’s no way to bridge the incompatibilities. Either way, the pressure and the dread disappear.

Yes Anded, it’s time to perform a factory reset on this friendship and your role in it.

Step 1: Hit The Reset Button.

Imagine you could push a button and have a completely clean slate with this person. You get to keep all the good memories. You get to look at everything that has happened over the last two years and forgive yourself for needing her a little more than you liked her at times. You get to forgive your friend for not being a mind reader, for being a little more attached and (I suspect) a little more naturally effusive than you are. You get to forgive yourself for not knowing how to handle something nobody really teaches you how to do.

Forgiving and forgetting means removing prior assumptions about what your friend expects and wants from you. From now on, all of your important questions and decisions start with “From now on…” and all of the defaults are set to what you want and expect. From now on, if there is something she wants, she can say it, but until she does, you will assume nothing.

Step 2: Choose New Defaults.

From now on, in a perfect world, where everything goes exactly how you want it to, and this friendship unfolds in exactly the right shape, intensity, and serving size for you, what does that look like?

This only will work if you are completely honest with yourself. Nobody is going to see your answers and her needs will be right there where you left them when you’re done. The second you try to appease her in absentia inside your own mind, you’ll be back where you started.

Figuring out what you want will be a process, but we already know a lot about what you don’t want. In that perfect world, at minimum you will go on zero road trips with this friend and not plan weekly hangouts. That all seems very possible, so let’s start there.

Step 3: Apply the New Defaults (& Propose Alternatives That Work For You)

You agreed to plan a road trip in the moment, but you’re allowed to change your mind. You’re also allowed to not think about it again until or unless your friend initiates an actual plan, at which point you can say, “I’m so sorry, I know I initially said yes, but on further consideration, I’d rather not. I hope you ask someone else and have the best time.”

If you seemed enthusiastic before, it would be reasonable for her to ask why. This doesn’t have to be terrifying! Instead of cycling through your guilt and dread, this is where you answer it like a reasonable question and treat her like a reasonable person: “Again, I’m so sorry, I know I was on board last time we spoke about it, but I’ve changed my mind so you’ll need to ask someone else.”

She may feel dismay, confusion, all kinds of things. But reasons are for reasonable people, and once you tell her twice out loud that you do not want to go on this road trip, it’s kind of on her if she chooses to keep pushing. If you treat it like a boundary that you’ve decided upon rather than something you have to persuade her to accept before you’re allowed to do it, then as long as you don’t go on the road trip, you will always win. Same goes for her expressed desire for weekly hangouts: She can want to hang out every week all she wants. She can invite you to weekly hangouts for the rest of time. As long as you only actually hang out when you truly want to, you win, forever.

Since this is about managing your own behavior and not hers, you can build in lots of fail-safes for yourself to guard against your natural inclination to comply. And you can stop trying to explain or apologize for what you can’t do and start taking initiative about the things you want to do.

For starters, you can take control of your schedule and fill your free time with stuff you’d rather be doing and the people you’d most like to see. Sometimes you’re available, and sometimes you’re just not. With the available time, if you set your defaults to “not unless I really, really want to,” you can start answering invitations from your friend with “Thanks for thinking of me, but I need to check my calendar first. When do you need an answer?” Give yourself a night to sleep on it and then do a gut check before you RSVP. On a scale of 1-10, how enthused are you about whatever your friend proposed? Anything nine or higher is an automatic yes, less than a seven is an automatic decline, eights are judgment calls depending on your mood and what else you have going on.

Since this is a friendship, it’s not very friendly to set up a situation where she’s always chasing you and you’re always avoiding her. That was just a step to re-balance things. So when you want to see your friend, it’s time to invite her to things you would enjoy more than whatever it is you do now. Maybe invite her to do more activity-focused stuff like taking a class, learning a skill, or checking out art together. If you would rather be playing video games, invite her to play with you every now and then. Go ride bikes, if that’s a thing you like! If you usually hang at each other’s houses (where it’s easy to get dug into long conversations you’d rather not have), suggest meeting on neutral territory and plan shorter hangouts with a hard end time. If exploring the place you live together holds good memories, go back to favorite spots or make a project of finding new ones to try out together. If you’d like to include her when you host group things sometimes, then invite her and let it be her decision about whether to come.

Step 4: Remove Pressure, Add Time

Remember, your friend doesn’t know how you feel. She doesn’t know that you interpret her expressions of affection as unwanted pressure. She doesn’t know that you’d rather not do weekly hangouts. As long as you keep performing, how is she supposed to guess? It’s not a crime to like you a lot and it’s not her fault you have porous internal boundaries.

Once you stop performing, your friend may notice a change and reasonably have some anxiety or confusion about the state of the friendship and want reassurances that she hasn’t done something wrong. But before you start apologizing and explaining yourself, consider: What happens if she doesn’t get upset? What happens if it all goes fine and what she notices is that you are less available sometimes but much happier and more engaged whenever you are present? It’s going to take time for her to see that even if it feels like you’re pulling away sometimes, you always come back. It’s going to take time for you to become someone who can say, “Weekly? Awwww, that is very sweet, but howabout we aim for monthly instead” and let her feelings be whatever they are. Honesty and consistent behavior over time are some of the most reassuring things people can do for each other.

Remember, if at any point this feels like more work than you want to do, you have the option of ending the friendship. As does she! If she ONLY wants to be kindred spirits like Anne Shirley and ONLY on her terms, and you’re not providing that, then she has choices here. But if you’re going to persist in the friendship, it starts with you deciding what you want out of it. Strengthening your own internal boundaries is going to be a lifelong project and I’m glad you’ve got a therapist on your team. Time to be on be on your own team at least as much, okay?

Valerie L Sep 19 · Tags: connect, fusevy, love, relationships

#1406: Photography Reciprocity

Dear Captain Awkward,

Your opinion, please: My husband and I have been married for 12 years and we have done a lot of traveling and other fun things. He is a kind and good person but there is one thing that is a recurring problem for me. He often says he loves me BUT frequently “forgets” to take photos of me. I take numerous photos of him which he seems to enjoy but he will not take a photo of me unless prompted to do so. We have photos of our travels and exploits but there is very little evidence that I was also there! We have talked about this and he says he no longer likes to take photos because it is too prevalent on social media. I agree that many people share way too much and I personally don’t care for the whole selfie obsession. But the fact that he will not reciprocate in taking photos really bothers me. Am I being unreasonable or insecure?

Sincerely,

Jeanne

Dear Jeanne,

The short answer is: If you want to be in more vacation photos, your best bet is probably to find a balance between handing your husband the camera now and then and prompting him to take a photo and shamelessly embracing the selfie.

The long answer is below the cut.

Sincerely, thank you for sending this most perfect variation on one of my all-time favorite genres of advice column questions, a love that probably dates back to the first time I read Ann Landers in the Worcester Telegram & Gazette at the breakfast table with my grandparents as a tiny child:

“Dear Impartial Voice of Reason: Who is more right here (and why is it me)?

There is a conflict over something with seemingly small stakes, like “thank you” notes or who is supposed to host baby showers. The protagonist, usually the advice-seeker, wants one thing and an antagonist wants a different thing. One or both parties attempt to justify their expectations, behavior, and the outcome they desire on moral grounds, and suddenly mismatches in subjective opinions, desires, and needs turn into negotiations between competing value systems. The advice-giver becomes a referee, responsible for consulting the existing lore about manners and cultural norms and issuing a precedent that will preserve the social contract and keep rising chaos at bay while also generating enough sweet, sweet outrage clicks from across the generational divide to meet ad revenue projections. “I now pronounce this Extremely Rude/Totally Cool and find you to be the more Unreasonable/Reasonable Party!” :bangs gavel:

What that does for any of the individual people actually experiencing the given problem has always been a mystery to me. The vindicated person gets to feel vindicated, but probably still not get what they wanted? The antagonist gets to remain unpersuaded, because the conflict was never about meeting supposedly objective standards? While I love the timeless structure of these questions and the occasional opportunity to soapbox about stuff I value for fun, I’m way more interested in whether or not you get what you want.

Because Jeanne, if you want to star in more of your vacation photos, then you should do that. Not by having more “reasonable” debates about “selfie obsessions” but by letting go of the fantasy that your husband can ever be logicked into to picking up a camera unprompted or showing remotely the same interest in documenting your travels that you do. You want him to want to. That’s unlikely to happen. So what else can you do?

It’s not that we couldn’t handily win that debate on the merits. Have you ever seen a baby during the developmental stage when the amorphous blob in the mirror transforms into “Wait…is that…ME”? Almost immediately, they transition from tentative observer to seasoned performer, making faces and gestures and touching the mirror periodically to test where the borders of reality are. We’re not the only species that experiences that cycle of self-recognition to playful self-presentation, by the way. Dolphins and elephants do the exact same thing:

Our instinctive curiosity about our own faces, not to mention evolving narratives about who exists to be looked at and who gets to do the looking have always inspired a fair amount moral panic. There’s the ancient cautionary tale about Narcissus, who died when he fell in love with his own reflection in the surface of a pool of water. Historically, some religious groups have expanded prohibitions on constructing sacred images of gods (idolatry) to include representational art of any human face or form, whereas other faiths go all in on iconography. Attitudes change whenever technology changes, and whenever something becomes more widely available to ordinary people, the traditional gatekeepers of power and authority tend to lose their entire shit. For example, during the Renaissance, mirrors became cheaper and better, and suddenly regular people had access to their own faces in a way they never had before. If your husband were here with us, I might ask him if he thought Rembrandt was some kind of narcissistic asshole when he painted 100 portraits of his own face. If so, he wouldn’t be alone, at the time there were deep moral and philosophical debates¹ about the artist’s duties around truthful representation vs. idealized beauty.

Howabout Vincent Van Gogh or Frida Kahlo, who racked up 36 and 55 self-portraits respectively? Or photographers like Nan Goldin and Cindy Sherman? “Oh, but those are artists,” someone might say. “It’s not the same.” But it is the same. The tools are just more widely accessible. For every moral parable about self-absorption, vanity, and the tyranny of unrealistic beautify standards, you can find ample evidence that people who fall outside the margins of what the capitalist, colonialist patriarchy finds fuckable or marketable at any given moment use self-portraiture to reclaim agency and power over their own self-image and outward representation.²

We could make a “fairness “argument that it would be pretty weird and sad if someday your “family” photos are just page after page of beautiful locations inhabited by a dude, like one of those depressing obituaries where dead matriarchs are described solely in terms of their self-sacrificing qualities and all hint of their personality and interests get completely erased. We could also talk about the role that women play as family historians and archivists, often erasing themselves in the process.³

I realize I’m throwing a lot at you with the footnotes and all. The thing is, it’s honestly okay if your husband never becomes someone who will pick up a camera of his own accord. I am both a photographer and the photographer in my household and if there are photos of me in Mr. Awkward’s phone it’s very likely because I said, “Okay, now take one of me.” That said, you’re not a jerk for wanting to be visible in your own memories of your own life! Your letter reads as if you are asking for permission to even want to be in your own vacation photos or if there is some outside standard of reasonableness that precludes it. When your husband dresses up his personal preferences as principled objections to “social media” or “selfie obsession,” this becomes a story about a man who on some level thinks that he gets to decide how many photos of a given woman are Too Many. He’s probably not doing that consciously or on purpose, but the fact remains that if you follow his logic, photos of you during your travels only get to exist when he feels like it (never) and when you actively remind him to take them (rarely/sometimes).

And you’re not even being like, “Fuck the patriarchy and the male gaze, let’s burn it all down!” You’re being like, “Respectfully, sir, you could gaze at me a little now and then, as a treat.”

The way to acquire more of the photos you want is to stop trying to meet your husband’s preference-disguised-as-principle with more and better logic, and start un-apologetically meeting it with your own subjective needs. You want him to take photos of you because you want it. After 12 years of marriage, you both probably do lots of things that aren’t your favorite activity because it makes the other person happy, and it’s time to add taking occasional turns with the camera to that list. If prompting is required, then prompt away! He does not have to change his overall preferences, but he doesn’t get to shame you about yours. You’re not some avatar of social media gone wild, you’re his wife, and he can both take photos of you sometimes because he knows that it’s important to you and shut up and let you take your own whenever that suits you.

To get there, you need to let go of the idea that his approval is necessary or that it is self-indulgent or shameful somehow to want to see your own face from time to time. Whether you ever see yourself as an artist, on some level this really is about that bridge that every artist has to cross at some point: “Fuck it. Here I am. Like it or not, your opinion and participation have nothing to do with whether I exist.”

A selfie I took at the bus stop after a little boy asked me if I was "Sadness" from the Pixar film "Inside Out" and I gave him an autograph in blue sharpie. Jennifer/The Captain in bright blue glasses and a bright blue top (and there were blue jeans and bright blue shoes, not pictured). :)

Captain Awkward, happy in orange glasses.

Selfie in Paris with my new sunglasses on the last day of my honeymoon.

I took these photos of myself. Here I am on the day a little kid at the bus stop asked me if I was “Sadness” from Inside Out (I said “yes,” obviously), right after I hung up the phone after the first time I told my favorite person that I loved him and he said it back and we both knew it was true, and on the last day of my honeymoon in Paris when I found the perfect sunglasses and sipped café au lait on a terrace in perfect weather while a street musician played accordion music and people walked around munching on baguettes like a goddamn movie montage. You know what? I think my lipstick looks pretty great in the third one, but what I documented here wasn’t vanity, it was delight. My delight. My joy. My memory of myself at a particular moment in time. When I look at them, I can feel the remembered happiness all through my body. My face is making the smile again right now of its own accord. There’s nothing “reasonable” about it. It just is, and whether anybody else sees what I see is immaterial. For most of the last several hundred years, my face would have disappeared from history unless a man with the right skills and tools happened along and decided it was worth immortalizing. I think there are worse historical and cultural developments out there than whatever lets each of us decide that for ourselves.

Notes because WordPress is being annoying about embedding links again:

1 “The Mirror in Renaissance Paintings,” by Maria Kalbech, Atelier Balbec, Issue 6, https://atbalbec.tumblr.com/post/24476662806/the-mirror-in-renaissance-paintings, link accessed Sept. 9, 2023

2 “In Praise of Selfies,” Casey N. Cep, Pacific Standard, July 15, 2013, updated June 14, 2017, https://psmag.com/social-justice/in-praise-of-selfies-from-self-conscious-to-self-constructive-62486, link accessed Sept. 9, 2023.

3 “The Hidden Mothers of Family Photos,” Lauren Collins, The New Yorker, February 12, 2022, https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-hidden-mothers-of-family-photos, link accessed Sept. 9, 2023

Valerie L Sep 11 · Tags: connect, fusevy, love, relationships

#1404: “[Time Sensitive] My partner has ADHD. To marry or not to ...

Content note for (unintentional) ableism and mention of suicidal thoughts.This was originally going to be a 2-parter but now it’s not, I just added some stuff at the end.

Hi Captain,

I (she/her) have been with generally wonderful partner, F (he/him) for close to two years now. We’re both in our thirties, have had serious relationships before, and are compatible in our goals, politics, religion, etc. We recently also bought a house together. Getting married on paper isn’t important to either of us, but we do both want a life partner and a family—and given that I’ll need fertility treatments and his insurance covers it, we plan to get married in the next few weeks. We’re having a city hall wedding and are throwing a big party for our friends and family. That’s all to say—big things are happening (!), and they’re time-sensitive.

Some context: F was diagnosed with ADHD and started medication a few years ago, which was a minor revelation for him. I’ve done my earnest best to understand his experience and work towards finding a way of communicating, accommodating, and divvying up household/relationship tasks in a way that is judgment-free. I’m sure I’ve failed at times. We sought out couples’ therapy proactively when we moved in together, and it’s been mildly helpful but (understandably) not a panacea.

Over the past nine months, I’ve felt myself slowly unraveling. Wedding planning has been 90% on me. Household duties and pet care have been 75% me. I do believe that if I weren’t there, most (but not all) of this stuff would get done… eventually. I acknowledge that we’re on two extremes: I suffer from an excess of executive function, get depressed and anxious in an untidy space, and am not comfortable leaving things like choosing catering for our wedding to a month before the big day (true story).

An exacerbating issue is that we fight much more often than I’m used to in relationships, and I frequently perceive his tone in these fights as angry or condescending. My response is usually to freeze, go into crisis management mode (Midwestern Female right here), and cry when pressed. An example: recently it was late when he yelled, “What is this ass-early meeting we have tomorrow morning? We have to reschedule it.” We had agreed on this meeting weeks earlier, and it was in our shared calendar. I started saying I would try to reschedule it if I could. He then got upset at me for being too accommodating, and I should have just told him he was being a baby. That because I can’t say no, it makes him feel like he can’t express himself to me.

I have so much empathy for this! The way we are is neither of our faults. If we were already married, I would want to do everything we could to work things out. Given that we’re not, though, I wanted your advice (especially as you’ve shared you have ADHD)—are we just incompatible? Would the kindest thing to do be to go our separate ways? I’ve been feeling depressed and having suicidal thoughts lately, in large part because of this dynamic we get in, and I know this hasn’t been a picnic for him either. On some level, I don’t believe in asking him to change—but I also am really struggling with the status quo. I’m willing to do work to meet him in the middle but also want to be realistic about how much movement is possible/healthy.

I genuinely believe we love each other and are trying to express care. That’s worth so much. But if things were to be like this in perpetuity without improvement (especially if we add children to the mix), I don’t know if I’d make it.

Thank you.

Hello! Your deadline is noted and I will do my best. My spotty internet and WordPress conspired to eat the first version of this post so this is an attempt at reconstruction. Edited to Add: I initially planned to break it into two parts. Part 2 is now a post-script at the end. Sorry for any confusion.

I want to start by saying that you are very brave and very smart to admit how much you are struggling and ask for help. You mention a long habit of accommodating other people’s needs at the expense of your own, and your entire body has declared “Nope, not this time!” Its methods for getting your attention may be a decidedly mixed bag, but your self-preservation instincts are in working order. You are asking exactly the right question, Sheelzebub’s Question: If your relationship is a source of stress in your life, and you knew that the status quo was likely to continue indefinitely, how much longer would you stay? Another year? Five years? Forever?

You answered the question in your last paragraph: “But if things were to be like this in perpetuity without improvement (especially if we add children to the mix), I don’t know if I’d make it.”

You know that either something has to change or everything has to change because the relationship needs to end. You also know that you can’t expect F. to change no matter how much you want to. We marry our partners as they are now as the people we are now, and while changes are inevitable over the course of a lifetime together, there’s never a guarantee about what those changes will look like and when any given changes might happen. Betting on a specific set of changes to take place in time for them to be meaningful is risky, especially since the only person you can control is yourself. Since you are unhappy right now, what changes could you make right now that would take pressure off?

1) Seek immediate help for how bad you are feeling. F.’s ADHD diagnosis is of central concern in your letter (it was even in the email subject line) but if you are having suicidal thoughts after months of feeling depressed that is a serious problem in its own right. Some kinds of depression are chronic medical issues, some turn out to be more situational and temporary in nature, all can feel completely overwhelming when they’re happening, and all deserve care.

If at any point you feel like thoughts about hurting yourself are morphing into plans, seek emergency medical care. But sometimes thoughts are just thoughts, a way of turning on the emotional “check engine” light to indicate something is wrong. There is help for that. If you already see a therapist or have in the past, please get in touch and get yourself seen at the earliest opportunity. If you don’t have a therapist, ask the person you saw for couple’s counseling for a referral. All you need to say is “I am overwhelmed and depressed and I need help” and any halfway competent mental health pro will take it from there.

If you can’t access therapy immediately, please tell *somebody* what you told me. F., a close friend, anyone who can be trusted to follow directions when you say “I am not okay right now and I need you to listen and not give me advice.” This is not the time to put on a brave face and go it alone.

2) Postpone the wedding (decision phase). You are experiencing acute distress. You are having serious second thoughts about the future of your relationship.The wedding is adding more pressure and stress instead of anticipation and joy (including anticipating the joy of getting to be done with accursèd wedding planning)(#isriceagrainoraseed). Good news: Weddings can be moved. In my opinion, more people should postpone or cancel when they feel this way instead of submitting to the Wedding Juggernaut for fear of disappointing people or “wasting” so much money. (It’s not like you get the deposits back if you get married and then have to invite the government to your breakup later).

Imagine yourself telling F., “I’m so sorry but I’m feeling overwhelmed and depressed and I need to postpone the wedding. I am getting help, and I promise that we will talk about everything and figure it out together, but right now can you help me make the calls so we’re not leaving everybody hanging?”

What do you think he would say? What would you say if the situation were reversed?

People are (understandably) not at their best right when they are blindsided by bad news. F. might (also understandably) want to jump ahead to discussing and fixing the underlying relationship problems so that nobody has to make awkward phone calls. But once the initial shock wears off, the right person for you would not try to make it all about himself. He would trust that you would never do anything unless you had a good reason. He would value your honesty and courage and see them as signs of respect and trust in him. He would not want you to feel pressured and rushed into marriage. He would also see that you are struggling and want to do whatever he could to make hard things easier on you. “I love you. Whatever you need, that’s what we’ll do. Give me the list and I’ll start making calls.”

However the conversation goes, it will be revealing. Long-term incompatibilities may mean that you never un-cancel this wedding. You haven’t exactly felt like a team during the planning phase. Can he be on your team about this? I hope so. Even if you don’t stay together, you deserve as much kindness and love and help at the end of things as you did at the beginning. And cancelling will go much faster with two.

3) Postpone the wedding (breaking news phase). I suggest you tell people in roughly this order: F. first, then the venue and any vendors, then guests starting with your wedding party (if any) and your closest and most trusted people. You handle your “side” of the guest list, F. can handle his.

The pros will appreciate knowing ASAP and not having to argue about what “nonrefundable” means. Once you tell them, the thing is already cancelled, so when you talk to guests it’s not up for debate. Hopefully then you and F. can deputize your inner circle to spread the news to the rest of the guest list – “Everyone’s okay, they just realized they need more time, they’ll be in touch about future scheduling. In the meantime, I volunteered to let people know so that they don’t get flooded with ‘ARE YOU OKAY’ texts.”

As for what to tell people, keep it simple and pragmatic. While weddings are definitely about feelings, and while you are definitely having a lot of those, you know by now that there is a point where wedding planning goes into total logistics mode where you’re just like, counting stuff and checking off lists. Try to stay in that mode for just a little while longer. What is the minimum information that vendors and guests need to know so they can make good decisions for themselves? What will help you count stuff and check off lists in reverse?

a) The wedding is not happening on the scheduled date. With that information, people can cancel travel arrangements and hold off on any gifts, vendors can hopefully prevent purchasing unnecessary supplies and redirect their efforts to other clients, and everybody can reclaim a precious weekend of summer. You’ll let people know whenever there is firm a Plan B.

b) Remember, you’re informing people about a decision, not proving that you had a good enough reason to make it. Obviously guests will be curious about what’s happening and why. Is there juicy gossip? Did someone cheat? Is it permanently over? Is everybody okay? Is there anything they can do for you?

Even with the best intentions, people can get weirdly invested in other people’s relationships, as if you not getting married exactly like you planned will punch a hole in the universe that they need to plug with empty reassurances or else all the compulsory heteronormativity will drain out and be lost forever. “Oh my god, you guys are like the perfect couple!” “Noooo, but you were so happy, this is just cold feet, it happens to everyone!!” “All relationships take work!”

Ugh.You’re a person, not an avatar of other people’s fantasies about what true love is supposed to look like, and people who aren’t inside your relationship don’t get a vote. Strategically, you may want to share something along the lines of “So sorry for the short notice, but I’m not feeling well and I need to postpone” or “We decided to take more time” or even “I decided that I need more time” to allay concern and reduce friction on you and F. But neither of you are required to detail the ups and downs of your relationship or your current mental health for every person who sent back an RSVP card. I hereby declare that anyone who hears about a wedding being called off should assume that the couple has excellent reasons and has made informed choices about timing, audience, and level of detail. To answer your question, no, everything is probably not okay right now, but also, if there’s something specific they want you to know, they will tell you.

Please, take excellent care of yourself. Call off the looming stressful thing. Look at it this way: Years from now, any story about postponing a wedding has the potential to end with “…and that was the best decision I ever made!” If marrying F. is ultimately the right choice, it will still be right when you are in a better frame of mind and have had more time to consider. If postponing is the painful-but-necessary beginning of the end, the story of the time you almost married the wrong person will be more about how you trusted yourself and did the right thing even when it was hard. A bittersweet ending that averts a greater unhappiness still counts in the happily-ever-after column, and “I love you enough to be completely honest with you: I ‘m drowning and I don’t know what happens next” is still a love story.

Edited To Add: Like I said, I was originally going to break this into two parts, but I’m not sure a lot more words will help anyone right now. But I’ll give you the short version:

When people write to me about a conflict where a mental health condition or neurological differences looms large, my standard practice is to set aside the diagnoses to the extent I can and try to look at the rest of the picture. Lots of reasons for that: To avoid perpetuating ableist assumptions, to stop prioritizing intent over impact, and to stop excusing bad faith. ( It’s not as if stories about cishet men who decide that love means outsourcing all the boring details to a competent woman are rare on the ground.)

Speaking strictly in practical terms, if a situation doesn’t make you happy, making your happiness dependent on solving how another person’s brain works is going to vastly limit how you think about solutions. (ADHD runs in families, by the way, so before you permanently assign it the role of grit-in-your-otherwise-perfect-oyster you need to factor in the strong chance that any future children will also have it).

Again, in practical terms, lots of people move in together before marriage to see how they like living together. So far, you don’t like it. Being aligned with F. about big things but not “small,” daily routine things means there is potentially stuff to fight about every single day. So what do you want to do with that information?

You could ignore it and hope for the best (do not recommend).

You could break up and look for someone who is more compatible.

You could stay together and live apart. Not what you planned, and not ideal for co-parenting tiny people, but people do it.

You and F. could try outsourcing housecleaning and other routine tasks that are recurring sources of stress. You need things to be a certain level of tidy. You hate fighting about household chores. If you framed this less in terms of what F. should be able to accomplish and more in terms accommodating everybody’s needs, what else becomes possible?

Hiring a cleaning service is not affordable or feasible for everyone (including me, at present), but the one time in 49 years that I lived in a consistently spotless house where nobody ever fought about chores, that’s what we did. For a nominal fee when split three ways, the order-craving housemates could relax knowing that the place would get a factory reset every three weeks. As long as I did my dishes and cleaned up after myself in the kitchen every day (not a problem) and helped with the night-before sweep of common areas to clear surfaces and put things away, I could relax knowing that other people’s comfort didn’t depend on me noticing the same stuff they did. It was the exact right amount of structure and external accountability, minus the constant festering shame and terror of letting people down.

That was the main stuff I wanted to say. I want you to be happy, and I want you to feel like you have more choices than you did when you came in. I promise I will stop writing about your relationship now.

Valerie L Aug 13 · Tags: connect, fusevy, love, relationships

#1404: “[Time Sensitive] My partner has ADHD. To marry or not to ...

Content note for (unintentional) ableism and mention of suicidal thoughts.

Hi Captain,

I (she/her) have been with generally wonderful partner, F (he/him) for close to two years now. We’re both in our thirties, have had serious relationships before, and are compatible in our goals, politics, religion, etc. We recently also bought a house together. Getting married on paper isn’t important to either of us, but we do both want a life partner and a family—and given that I’ll need fertility treatments and his insurance covers it, we plan to get married in the next few weeks. We’re having a city hall wedding and are throwing a big party for our friends and family. That’s all to say—big things are happening (!), and they’re time-sensitive.

Some context: F was diagnosed with ADHD and started medication a few years ago, which was a minor revelation for him. I’ve done my earnest best to understand his experience and work towards finding a way of communicating, accommodating, and divvying up household/relationship tasks in a way that is judgment-free. I’m sure I’ve failed at times. We sought out couples’ therapy proactively when we moved in together, and it’s been mildly helpful but (understandably) not a panacea.

Over the past nine months, I’ve felt myself slowly unraveling. Wedding planning has been 90% on me. Household duties and pet care have been 75% me. I do believe that if I weren’t there, most (but not all) of this stuff would get done… eventually. I acknowledge that we’re on two extremes: I suffer from an excess of executive function, get depressed and anxious in an untidy space, and am not comfortable leaving things like choosing catering for our wedding to a month before the big day (true story).

An exacerbating issue is that we fight much more often than I’m used to in relationships, and I frequently perceive his tone in these fights as angry or condescending. My response is usually to freeze, go into crisis management mode (Midwestern Female right here), and cry when pressed. An example: recently it was late when he yelled, “What is this ass-early meeting we have tomorrow morning? We have to reschedule it.” We had agreed on this meeting weeks earlier, and it was in our shared calendar. I started saying I would try to reschedule it if I could. He then got upset at me for being too accommodating, and I should have just told him he was being a baby. That because I can’t say no, it makes him feel like he can’t express himself to me.

I have so much empathy for this! The way we are is neither of our faults. If we were already married, I would want to do everything we could to work things out. Given that we’re not, though, I wanted your advice (especially as you’ve shared you have ADHD)—are we just incompatible? Would the kindest thing to do be to go our separate ways? I’ve been feeling depressed and having suicidal thoughts lately, in large part because of this dynamic we get in, and I know this hasn’t been a picnic for him either. On some level, I don’t believe in asking him to change—but I also am really struggling with the status quo. I’m willing to do work to meet him in the middle but also want to be realistic about how much movement is possible/healthy.

I genuinely believe we love each other and are trying to express care. That’s worth so much. But if things were to be like this in perpetuity without improvement (especially if we add children to the mix), I don’t know if I’d make it.

Thank you.

Hello! Your deadline is noted and I will do my best. My spotty internet and WordPress conspired to eat the first version of this post so this is an attempt at reconstruction. I’m breaking it into two parts. This part is about the wedding and what you can do right now to feel better and set yourself up to make good long-term plans. The ADHD elephant-in-the-room and long-term relationship decisions will come in Part 2.