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Ahoy, Captain!

My sister and I best friends, absolutely. We get along great and rarely have real fights. She’s looking to buy a house or a condo or a co-op or whatever she can afford. We live in a VHCOL area and she’s not having any luck.

She’s suggested we go in for a place together. I don’t want to for a couple of reasons. First, I want my own space without any family; if that means roommates, so be it. Second, she’s super private and wouldn’t want people visiting. I’d want to be able to invite friends and lovers (which is currently an issue anyway!) over to host and hang out and be a real space for community. Third, she absolutely wants to stay near the family home and I absolutely don’t want that. I don’t even want to stay in the area long term, but even if I did, I’d want to be further from home.

She’s starting to kind of push the idea. she thinks I’m silly for not putting down roots. She thinks it’s not practical to rent ever. she doesn’t believe that I’ll really leave home ever and I’m just delaying the inevitable, especially since i make a little more money and together, we might get an okay place.

how do I make her realize that I really, really, really do not want to move in together? An apartment might be okay, but she wants a forever home and I am not ready for anything forever right now.

Yours truly,
A Sister, Not A Roommate

Dear Sister Not Roommate,

I have good news: You don’t ever have to convince your sister that you don’t want to be roommates or that your reasons are good enough. So long as you don’t actually buy property together or become roommates, you get to win this argument forever. The boundary isn’t where you convinced her it was, it’s where you decided to put it. As long as your actions maintain it, it will hold.

Bad news, I know you want to get your sister to a point where she understands and agrees with your point of view so that she’ll stop pressuring you, but I’m not sure how realistic that is based on her behavior so far. You haven’t been ambiguous or unclear, and she’s still going strong.

From now on, if you can stop her before she gets going, do it. “Let me interrupt you right there. I already said no and I don’t want to rehash this again. New topic!”

If you can’t successfully divert her, be blunt, boring and consistent in your replies. Stop giving reasons or arguing your case. It didn’t work, and now the answer to why you don’t want to be roommates is because you don’t want to be roommates.

“But we’d be able to afford so much more if we pooled our funds.” “But I don’t want to.”

“But renting is silly when you could just buy something!” “But I don’t want to live with you or buy real estate right now.”

“But come on, you’re not really gonna leave home, are you? You’ll end up living with me eventually, so why not just do it now?” “Because I don’t want to.”

“But you know this is a great idea! Why are you being like this?” “Because I don’t want to live with you. What is unclear about that?”

“But we’re best friends!” “That doesn’t mean I want to live with you. We can be close friends who don’t live together.”

“Why are you being like this?” “Why are you pushing me to do something you already know that I don’t want to do?”

Try changing the subject again once you shut her down. If you try a couple of times and she won’t let you, cut the conversation short. It will feel very awkward and mean to cut a call or visit short without achieving some kind of resolution. It’s also already extremely awkward to deal with someone who doesn’t believe you about your plans for your own life and forces you to keep having the same argument again and again! There’s no removing awkwardness here, just redistributing it more equitably.

Pro-tip: Delete any real estate listings she sends you on sight, without responding. If you do this, she’s probably gonna pout and claim that she just wants your opinion or for you to see how cute some place is. Don’t fall for it. People who avidly want to move in with you tend to “just” spam you with adorable real estate listings the same way Jane Austen’s Emma “just” yeeted all the single people in her town at each other’s faces and I “just” sent Mr. Awkward photo after photo of adoptable kittens the summer we adopted Daniel and Henrietta: We’re hoping you’ll fall in love. There’s no talking to people when they’re in this frame of mind unless you’re willing to fall in love with whatever they’re in love with, be it an affordable place built for two with a decent Walk Score or the idea of love or a kitten named Daniel Striped Tiger with a little watch Photoshopped onto his wrist. If you say “I like the kitchen in that one” or deploy a thumbs up emoji, she’ll assume you meant “so that’s the one I’d rather live in with you like I promised I would, let’s get rolling on the paperwork” and you’ll have to have the whole argument again from the beginning.

If at any point, she says, “Fine, I’ll just stop sending you stuff since you obviously don’t care!” that is a victory. Let her flounce! Do not snatch defeat from its jaws by relaxing your filters! You care about her, but she’s made it so that you can’t safely care about her housing search without a lot of friction for you. Hold the line and trust that she can find someone else to go Zillowing with.

If she really won’t let up, you are probably going to have to fight about it. That fight won’t be about whether you should live together, because that’s already been settled. You told her no, and you don’t want to, so you won’t. The end. No, the eventual fight will be about how you gave her an answer and she kept trying to coerce you into getting her way. Sometimes that fight requires raised voices, cutting conversations short, and taking breaks from interacting. If the hundredth time you say “Oh, thanks, but I don’t want to be roommates” doesn’t make it through her wishful thinking field and on the 101st try you snap and yell at her to fucking drop it already? Get ready for your sister and any bystanders she can recruit from the rest of your family to treat you like you were the one who caused the conflict and then escalated it unforgivably.

If that happens, please know, it’s not because you did a bad job of explaining yourself and should have found different words. It’s because you consistently explained yourself just fine and the other person consistently decided to override your consent. Anger is a reasonable, logical response to someone who treats your consent like a passing inconvenience. I hope it doesn’t get to that point, but if it does, you can offer your sister a choice: There’s no universe where you end up living together, so does she want to live in the one where you live separately but stay close and enjoy your friendship, or the one where you keep having the same stupid fight over and over until you’d rather miss out on seeing her than have it even one more time? Let’s hope she makes good choices.

Hey Captain,

Long time reader, first time, etc.

I (he/him) was recently broken up with. She(/her) and I met about six months ago, and though neither of us was in a place to have a quickly-escalating relationship (we only ever saw each other about once a week) we had a strong connection and great chemistry, and I, for one, was getting very attached.

She broke up with me a few weeks ago, saying she was still very fond of me but there were two reasons not to continue:

1. She’s headed into a perhaps years-long period where she doesn’t feel able to sustain an intimate relationship.
2. The fact is, though we were very, very good for each other in this brief period of our lives, when the day comes that she seeks more of a long-term partner… we’re probably just not super compatible for that, for a variety of reasons.

I don’t think she’s wrong. I miss this relationship terribly, but I think it probably has run its course.

She and I would both really like to remain friends. But I’m pretty sure that for me, at least, I need to both grieve what we had and thoroughly let go of the hope that I’ll have it with her again someday before I can have a genuine friendship with her.

What I’m wondering is… how will I know when it’s time? What are some things to practice, or avoid, so I can “get over” this, well, as quickly as possible? I realize the futility of trying to rush my feelings, but I guess I’m also hoping I don’t have to wait the same length of time as our entire relationship, or longer, to start a friendship with her.

She’s left this ball firmly in my court, so it’s my own ability to process all this that I’m worried about.

It feels like I have to reach the point where I don’t really care if I have any kind of relationship with her again in order to have a friendship. Which is weird and frustrating! It feels like some kind of ancient parable, where in order to have what you desire you must first stop desiring it.

I don’t really want to stop desiring it, though. I guess I will, in time. Is it just that simple? Or is there more to becoming friends with an ex? It’s not something I’ve done successfully before—there were always either too many hurt feelings, or one or both of us weren’t actually over each other. I truly do want this person as a friend, even if we can never be more than that again. I don’t want to screw this one up. What do I do? Or not do?

Signed,

X

Dear X,

You were together for six months? Here is my prescription:

Tell her you’d love to be friends, but you need a clean break before that will really feel like a good idea, so you’ll be in touch in a few months.

Give yourself a few weeks to be sad and mope and listen to sad songs.

Then mute her socials and her number and spend the next six* months focusing on every aspect of your life that does not revolve around this lady. Resolve to excel at your field of study or work. Catch up with friends and family. If you have the means and the time, go visit people who are important to you who live far away. Get really good at some aspect of caring for yourself and daily living, like becoming a kickass home cook or setting up your living space exactly how you want it. Pick up a new sport or hobby or art project, or resurrect an old one. Volunteer for a cause you care about. If you feel ready to start dating again, go ahead and do that.

Every time you feel tempted to linger on her Instagram or other feeds or text “just to check in,” make it a habit to make plans with somebody else in your life who is a source of joy and connection. She’s not the only person who will ever like you, and everything that made you a cool, interesting person when you met her is still yours.

*Six is not a rule, merely a starting suggestion that you can take, leave, or adjust on the fly as you wish. **ALSO NOT A RULE, just a suggestion for starting point purposes.

At the end of the cooling off period, here’s where you start:

1. You will eventually meet for an awkward coffee or lunch or an after-work drink. For best results, pick somewhere brand new to both of you. This is not the time to revisit old favorites, like the park bench you first made out on or the candlelit bistro a block from the apartment where you used to fuck each other all the time. Where would you take a friend you’ve never thought about That Way? Go there.
2. If you run into her naturally in the course of living your life within that clean break period, it’s okay.  Nobody broke quarantine, it just means that you have stuff in common that isn’t just about dating each other, like mutual friends or being interested in the same activities. Hold onto this thought, it will come up again. If you’re engineering opportunities to “just run into her” on purpose, then that’s a sign you probably need another six** months.
3. You will likely overthink everything about this first meeting, before, during and after. And while it’s admirable to want to avoid hurt feelings and keep the weird feelings you offgas to a minimum, you’re gonna feel what you feel when you feel it. Just know that going in. You’re both risking weird feelings because you think that the friendship that comes after will be worth it. If it turns out to be worth it, the weird feelings will dissipate and be replaced with mostly good ones. If it’s not worth it, they’ll dissipate because you got the hell out of a situation that made you unhappy and uncomfortable. Feelings are just information. You let ’em come in and you decide what to do about them later.
4. Neither of you seem like assholes, so I predict the first hangout will go basically fine and everyone will be okay.
5. Old Business: There isn’t any. If at any point you are tempted to resurrect the zombie relationship so you can learn why it didn’t work, aka “doing a Hi-Fidelity,” it is time to go home. If you’re like “Oh crap, I am still so in love,” then you probably need another 60-180 Days of Not-Summer to detox. Lesson learned!
6. New Business: “What have you been up to lately?” is where you wanna go, not the past. If you followed my previous instructions, you’ll have stuff to tell her. And if you haven’t been haunting her social media feeds, then she’ll have new stuff to tell you.
7. New New Business: If you’ve started dating someone since you broke up, it’s okay to include that as part of the general update. Keep it simple and light. “I started dating someone a couple months ago, his/her/their name is ______, they’re really into _______.” Do not go on and on or interrogate her about her dating life. If there’s stuff she wants you to know, trust that she’ll tell you. If there’s stuff she wants to know, trust that she’ll ask you.
8. There is no guarantee that you’ll bounce right back to being friends after this initial meet-up, even if it feels like it went very well. The first hang is for breaking ice and seeing how everybody does with that.
9. If it goes very well in the sense that you end up hooking up, know that it happens sometimes, and please also know that it does not mean you are getting back together. Every reunion tour is a retirement party until there’s a next one. If it goes that way, be safe and have fun. If you’re plotting to make it go that way, add a month to the clean break countdown.
10. “We should totally do this again sometime” is not a promise or a plan. Never was, never will be, isn’t now. You’ll do this again when somebody attaches a date and a time to an invitation that the other person says yes to, and not before.
11. Going forward, one of the easiest ways to forge a friendship with an ex is if there is some context other than “remember when we banged and I fell in love and you didn’t so much” where it makes sense to keep interacting. What do you have in common with your other friends? What do you and she have in common with each other in terms of interests? All that stuff that made it hard to make a clean break is now the soil you can plant this new friendship in. You’ve got an extra ticket to see the band you both like, or you need a buddy for free night at the museum,, or you’re both going to [Mutual Friend 1#]’s party, or [Mutual Friend #2] is getting the band/Trivia team/improv troupe/game night back together.
12. From there, it will work or not work like any other budding friendship. Does it spark joy? Does it work in the day to day? Is it easy to be around each other, and worth it to both people to put in the effort of staying in touch and making time? As long as those things are all true, you’ll be friends and the context you originally met in will stop mattering because what came after bloomed into its own thing.
13. Bonus Pro-Tip: Once you’re friends, if you end up hanging out with mutual friends or meeting new people, stop referring to her as your ex and definitely stop introducing her that way. Anybody who really needs to know that you dated once either already knows or will learn it eventually some other way.
14. Sometimes you want to be friends, and you do all the right stuff to make it possible to be friends, and it still doesn’t quite gel. It hurts too much. It never gets past the awkward stage. Or it does for a while, but there’s just not enough glue to hold together the kind of friendship that goes beyond the *like* button on each other’s good news and funny memes..If you don’t already much stuff in common other than The Relationship, and it feels like work to make a friendship work, then eventually entropy will take over. That’s not a bad thing, necessarily. It will mean you’ve both moved on.

That’s my list. It’s not the only way to do it, but it’s the best way I’ve found so far. It’s officially the cruelest month where we celebrate poetry as a nation, so here’s an old favorite:

Friendship after Love by Ella Wheeler Wilcox.

Sex is a gift unique to your marriage!!

Think about it… You can communicate with your neighbor. You can work on a budget with your accountant. You can argue with a coworker. You can go on an adventure with your best friend. You can set boundaries with your family. But the one thing that is sacred, that you share with no other person but your spouse, is sexual intimacy AKA your sex life! 

For many married couples, sex was once this amazing opportunity to express love for one another. But oftentimes your sex life can become complicated, mundane, or even nonexistent. We’ve been there. We made many mistakes in the first several years of our marriage, but we were able to break out of our sexual rut and we now have a thriving sex life (at least most of the time because, let’s be honest, every marriage experiences those dips in sexual desire)!

Here are 6 ideas from our FREE ebook 69 Ideas for Better Married Sex 

#1 Show desire! 

I intentionally chose this as the number one tip for good reason. Sexual intimacy is all about desire! If you’re annoyed, tired, or make comments like, “I’ll just lie here while you do your thing”, that’s a major turn off and it communicates to your spouse that you’re not really in the mood. Show them you want this! Show your spouse you want to please them and that you want them to please you! 

#2 Write an erotic letter to your spouse 

Spend a few minutes thinking about what you want to do to your spouse sexually. List the things you fantasize about and which body parts you love about them, and then write it all down. Read it to them and trust me – just talking about this will be a turn-on. 

#3 Moan and use sensual breathing

 Make an effort to be more vocal in the bedroom. If you like something, moan. If you really like something, try some sensual breathing so your spouse can hear it. It’s a major turn-on hearing your spouse moan and groan. 

#4 Use your hands and tongue 

A way to increase the intensity of oral sex is to use your hands at the same time you’re using your tongue. This takes some practice because it feels like a lot is going on at the same time. Just be sure your nails are filed and your hands are clean.

#5 Try edging

Edging is when you purposefully delay your orgasm. This is a challenging thing to do but once you try it, you’ll probably like it because it intensifies your orgasm. Once you stop penetration, give yourself about 20-30 seconds before continuing. Repeat this until you’re ready to orgasm. 

#6 Try our 7-Day Sex Challenge 

If you’ve never tried our sex challenge, you’re missing out. Each day you’ll watch a 1-2 minute video where we’ll give you a specific technique to incorporate in the bedroom. You’ll also get to hear our story of when we did our first sex challenge and it’s pretty funny! 

Now that I got you all hot and bothered, I want to leave you with this one last reminder: the main goal for sex is connection. The orgasm, the sex position, the foreplay, the passion, the seduction… none of it matters as much as the emotional and physical connection you and your spouse will experience. If both of you feel loved, safe, and enjoy your time together, consider it a big win for your relationship. 

Want to learn more? Get more ideas in our FREE ebook 69 Ideas for Better Married Sex

Become a Marriage365 member and get solutions for everyday couples. Anytime, Anywhere. 

Written by Meygan Caston

Meygan Caston is the co-founder of Marriage365 and lives in Orange County, California with her husband Casey and their two children. She loves the beach, dance parties, writing, spa days, and helping couples connect in their marriage. Her life-long dream is to walk the Camino, have lunch with Brené Brown, and get on The Price is Right.

The post 6 Ideas for a Better Sex Life and Higher Relationship Satisfaction appeared first on Marriage365®.

Source: https://marriage365.com/blog/6-ideas-for-a-better-sex-life-and-higher-relationship-satisfaction/

Dear Captain—

I thought you might like a 100% abuse-free question, so here you go:

I have an older sister whom I love dearly. Sometimes we annoy each other, as sisters do, but our relationship is largely functional. However, there is a habit that my sister has that I’ve put up with for quite a while that has gotten worse over time. I seem to have reached the kind of breaking point that has me writing to advice columnists about it.

A little background: My sister is an artist in an unusual medium, so let’s just say she makes [things]. She’s been making [things] for a very long time. It’s not her full-time gig, but she does make some cash from it. A  particular Person of Note bought a [thing] from her and from there a courtship blossomed and they’ve been happily married for over a decade.

Her husband is Kind Of A Big Deal in fandom, and knows a lot of other Big Deals. Some of them are even people-your-grandma-has-heard-of kinds of Really Big Deals. My sister has had a lot of encounters with Big Deals through my brother-in-law.

And now, the issue—my sister is a chronic name-dropper and humble-bragger about the Big Deals she’s met and dealt with. She likes to make and give [things] to Big Deals (and gets positive responses, don’t get me wrong) and will talk about how much they liked it. She will casually mention the people her husband knows and how well she knows them.

She’s always been this way, when I think about it. In ancient days when the word “fandom” had a slightly different meaning, our family (we have other siblings) were Kind Of A Small Deal in fandom at that time. She took pride in being an [our surname]. She’s even made a deal about being my sister! (I’ve had a few encounters with non-fandom Really Big Deals.)

I don’t know what she’s trying to prove to whom, and I’ve put up with it for a very long time so I’m not sure about the best way to ask her to knock it off. I’m not envious in any way—I take it in stride that she Knows People, and most of those Big Deals aren’t big deals to me. I’m happy for her, but I don’t care. Is there some way I can break such a long silence (decades!) and ask her to chill out about it?

Sincerely

Tired Little Sis

Dear Tired Little Sis,

If a random acquaintance you only bumped into occasionally were doing their best impression of Tahani from The Good Place or the fame-obsessed mom from The Other Two, I might drop you a link to The Best Time I Pretended I Hadn’t Heard Of Slavoj Žižek and tell you to have fun with it. If you say,“Right on! Remind me again, who is that?” every time she name-drops you’re not technically being rude, but you risk a) having to commit to the bit for the rest of your natural life and b) having her patiently explain who these people are to you for the rest of your natural life. This is unlikely to make you less irritated and it’s not exactly the kindest course of action, so we should probably find another way.

With any source of recurring minor annoyance within a relationship you’ve chosen to remain in, there are pretty much only ever three paths:

1. Speak up and see if the other person is willing to change their behavior or work with you on a compromise.

2. Decide that it’s not worth speaking up, do your best to tune it out, and focus on what you enjoy. Very useful for when you sense the person is unlikely or unable to change or that attempting the cure might be worse than the disease.

3. Adjust your own behavior over time and see if that results in getting more of what you want and less of what you don’t. You can’t control other people’s behavior, but you can adjust your exposure levels.

These are all incredibly context dependent and carry varying risks and degrees of difficulty. You don’t need me to continue right on with #2, so let’s focus on #1 Speak Up and #3 Adjust.

#1 is easy: In most situations I think directness is kindness, but in your case this isn’t where I would start. The degree of difficulty and risk/reward ratio of elevating a minor irritation about a minor, non-malicious personality quirk into lasting hurt feelings and a perpetually renewable argument seem incredibly not in your favor. In fact, I checked in the back and I’m all out of diplomatic ways to tell your sister that her enthusiasm for sharing her art with artists she likes, you know, that thing that forms a core piece of her identity, is honestly a little cringe and you wish she wouldn’t talk about it it so much. I’m a diplomat, not a sorcerer!

If you’ve ever seen The Good Place, then you’ll know that Tahani’s compulsive name-dropping is the saddest reminder that narcissism begins as a wound. Worst case, if this is an unconscious tic borne of insecurity or wanting to claim her rightful place in the pecking order of your famous-ish family, calling attention to it will make your sister even more self-conscious, but that’s unlikely to translate into the kind of self-awareness that would metabolize your attempt at constructive criticism into anything but a personal attack.

If this has less to do with insecurity (hers, at least) than it does with her impressive knack for self-promotion in a world where attention from better-known creators can be literal currency for emerging artists, then it will feel like you’re tearing her down every time she celebrates a success. And since she is actually friends with a lot of these people, it risks turning into the fight called, “Fine, I guess I just won’t tell you anything about my life, then. Sorry for assuming you’d be happy that I’m happy.” Nobody ever wins that fight. And, because this is a style preference/unconscious personality quirk where she’s not doing anything deliberate or malicious, it’s really hard to come at this without criticizing her entire personality. Nobody wins that fight, either.

My guess is that you know this and that’s why you haven’t tried bringing it up before. If your sister had a sense of humor about this and you were good at pushing each other’s buttons without smashing them, by now the two of you would have seventeen running in-jokes where you name-dropped increasingly famous people to the point that your whole family rolled their eyes at both of you. You always have the option of saying, “Hey, you’ve been telling me all about interesting people who aren’t here, but I came to hang out with the most interesting person in this room, right now, so can we talk less about your famous friends and more about my cool sister?” and seeing how it lands, just like you have the option of continuing to tune it out. Sometimes you just gotta let the chips fall and have the fight about it already. If you’re not sure, then maybe try out option #3, where you adjust how you react and see if it helps. I’m gonna tell you what to do and how to do it first, and then tell you why.

Allow me to suggest an experiment. The next time your sister does the thing where she gushes about how someone famous liked something she made, see what happens if you follow these three steps in roughly this order:

Step 1: Validate her. “That’s wonderful, you must be so pleased.” “What a nice compliment, that must have been great to hear.” “I know you’re a big fan of [Famous Person]’s work, that must feel so validating.” “How cool!”

The only rule is you must be nice for real. You can keep it brief, but you absolutely cannot be sarcastic, roll your eyes, make back-handed compliments or use this as an opportunity to make fun of her.

Sometimes with an entrenched relationship like family, it helps to ask yourself what you’d do if anyone else behaved the same way. If a friend told you they had an awesome day at work, would you shit on their excitement? Heck, if a complete stranger you got stuck next to on a plane told you all about the time their favorite musician’s bus broke down outside the diner where they worked and they ended up slinging hash for the band and their roadies, would you roll your eyes or would you say “How neat! I hope they were big tippers!” and ooh and ahhh over 3-5 photos before changing the subject? Think of this as an exercise in granting your sister the same grace you would to a total stranger who was excited to share something that made them happy.

Step 2: When it’s time to shift the conversation, don’t steer away, steer *through.* Say your sister will not shut up about the cross-stitch Beyoncé loved (or whatever). If you’re bored with celebrity endorsements, direct your praise and at least one question toward the part of the story that belongs to your sister alone: The thing she created.

If she’s a visual artist and she told the story without sharing an image of the thing, then that’s easy: Get her to show you  the art and then talk about what you see. (“What a lovely shade of green,” etc.) If she shifts gears to try to talk about the famous person again, ask her another question about the work itself and the process of creating it. (“How intricate, did you nail on the first try or did you make a few drafts/prototypes first?”)  Every time you do this, you have an opportunity to reinforce the message that her work is not interesting because of who likes it, it’s interesting because she made it.

People are afraid to to do this because they don’t wanna be trapped. But you’re not trapped! Once you’ve said one true compliment about the work or asked one genuine question and listened to the answer, you are free to move on.You have officially Demonstrated Interest. The conversation will either get actually interesting again because your sister has interesting things to say about her work that make you want to go deeper, or she’ll end up in a side conversation with someone else in the group who wants to learn more and you can drift away, or you will have completed the circuit where she wanted to be seen and you saw her and it will feel natural to talk about other stuff.

Step 3: Don’t wait to be asked before you talk about the stuff that’s interesting to you. Maybe you feel annoyed and frustrated sometimes because your sister gets so caught up in talking about her work and what other people think about it that she neglects asking you about your life. You don’t have to sit there forever quietly resenting it, and you don’t have to wait to be asked. If there’s stuff going on in your life that you wish your sister would ask you about, tell her about it. “Thanks for filling me in all your good news. My turn! Here’s what’s up with me.”

If you try this consistently over the next year or so, I predict that your sister will still name-drop famous people because (let’s be fair!) her work and her life bring her into contact with a whole bunch of ’em. But if you can create a ritual where she automatically gets consistent validation and praise without having to work so hard for it, hopefully she’ll chill out somewhat. Plus, if you have a reliable mechanism for changing the subject gradually, hopefully you’ll feel like a less captive audience. Doing it this way doesn’t require a ton of effort that’s different from whatever you’re doing now, and it doesn’t add friction to the situation by making your sister feel criticized, embarrassed, and attacked.

Before we go, I do not want to minimize how annoying it can be to be talked at about something that does not interest you with seemingly no regard for your level of enthusiasm or participation. This is in no way meant to be advice about how you are mean if you don’t wanna listen to your sister talk about famous people endlessly or how you shouldn’t set boundaries about how much you’re willing to engage. However, this advice is based on decades of experience of learning again and again that obsession feeds on attention. Once it has its teeth in, it doesn’t discriminate between negative attention and the positive kind. Gushing over someone’s latest crush counts as attention, but so does arguing with someone about how their special interest is inherently annoying or unhealthy. Depending on how obsessed they are, they might not need your participation so much as your presence to convert noncommittal platitudes into attention (which at least requires very little effort from you). But if someone is trying to sell you on sharing their obsession, convincing them how deeply uninterested you are counts as attention. Evangelists of every stripe positively thrive on negative attention, which is why you sometimes have to become the grey rock that they can’t build their church on.

True story, I once shared a cubicle with a woman who was fixated on getting me to go on the same series of fad diets,  come to church with her, and also join Christian Mingle to “find someone to settle down with” for most of a calendar year, hitting my personal trifecta of “not technically a hostile work environment in the legal sense, but hostile enough!” I was a temp, she was staff, I was in my mid-20s and she was about to turn 30, and she saw herself in a wise mentor/cool older sister role. Roundabout the second time I told her thanks for thinking of me but I wasn’t interested in any of that and could she possibly stick to work topics from now, she burst into tears and I got a pointed call from my agency about how if I wanted to keep working then I needed to “be a team player.” Her boss would rather replace me than have to deal with her crying in his office, and I would rather keep eating and paying rent than try to force her to do her crying in his office vs. mine, so from then on whenever she jabbered at me I pretty much stuck to saying, “Right on.” Sometimes I switched it up to “Sounds fun, but I have plans” if I sensed an actual invitation so I didn’t accidentally “Right on” my way into a double date at a suburban megachurch.

“”I really like guys that value spirituality and family.” “Right on.” “I met the greatest guy on Christian Mingle.” “Right on.” “You should sign up, there are many high-value men there.” “Right on.” “My fiancé, who I met on Christian Mingle, is driving up this weekend.” “Right on.” “He’s bringing his college roommate with him.” “Right on.” “I was wondering, do you maybe want to come to church with us and then go out to eat afterward?” “I have plans, but you have fun.” “Ha, I didn’t even say which day I wanted to meet up!” “Right on.” “That restaurant has tons of salads, it’s won’t be unhealthy.” “Right on.” “We could do it either Saturday or Sunday if you wanted.” “I have plans. But you have fun!” “It wouldn’t even have to be a double date, you could just go as friends.” “Right on, but I have plans. You have fun!”

Did this make her stop talking to me? Better question, would anything short of death or an unfortunate medical event have made her stop talking to me? If I was the only person she knew who might be Christian-Mingle-weekend double-date-at-church material, then clearly we had very different views of reality, and staying non-committal and not giving her anything to latch onto or nurture into a grievance was the safest path of least resistance I could find.

That’s an extreme example,  but I honestly cannot stress enough how helpful it has been to chalk whole categories of conversational topics up to “This person and I simply get excited about Different Stuff, and that is Okay.” Their level of interest and complicated feelings are not my problem to sort out, how hard I am possibly judging them inside my head is not their problem to fix as long as I keep it inside my head, we can just coexist being interested in different stuff without me having to do anything in particular about that. There certain topics where I can neither manufacture nor feign any interest, polite or otherwise, and people I simply do not like enough to try, and the full grey rock is for when I am disinterested in both the topic and the relationship to the point that I don’t care if my inattention comes across as hostile as long as they fuck off. In the case of the chatty coworker, I pulled it out only when being more direct backfired and it was not safe to escalate.

But the grey rock is not for people I want to be close to. If I’m interested in the person, then it’s worth the effort it takes for me to be interested in something simply because they are interested in it, at least for a little while. If they’re interested in me, then hopefully they’ll deal with hearing about the new Shōgun adaptation or The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi or whatever I’m geeking out about this week. As long as we take turns and do not pressure the other person to take an equal interest in our obsession independent of their affection for us, then we can be interestingly bored and pleasantly boring together. That all leaves plenty of room to set reasonable limits such as, “Hey, that’s so exciting, but now it’s my turn to talk!” or “Fascinating, but I should warn you that have reached capacity for [topic] for today, and we need to either find another topic or plan to pick this up another time” or even “I know you want me to read your favorite book very much, but I’m not gonna and you can’t make me, so you need to stop pushing or we are definitely going to fight.” That’s all going to be easier within a context where you’ve demonstrated that you are willing to take some interest for the other person’s sake.

If your sister is hungry for attention when she shares these tidbits with you, you can try withholding it in order to teach her to look for it elsewhere, at which point she’ll work harder, and then you can starve her even harder, and then she can try harder, and then….what’s the endgame? Politely ignoring her does not seem to be slowing her down. Hence the experiment where you spend your budget of praise and attention freely and see what happens when she finds out that she doesn’t have to go hungry and you find out that you’re not trapped inside her hungers. Don’t look at it as her being ookily obsessed with fame, it’s just that you’re interested in different stuff, and that’s okay. Like the Emily Dickinson poem says, it’s exhausting to be Somebody all the damn time. You want your sister to relax and be comfortable being Nobody with you. To do that, maybe you gotta let her feel like a Somebody, just for a ,minute. Not just any Somebody, she’s your Somebody, and you love her enough to let her bore the shit out of you every once in a while. Not precisely in those words, but you get the idea.

Dear Captain Awkward,

I (24, he/they) have been with my partner (24, he/she/they) for almost about a year now. We’ve had a great relationship and we get along together really well, my partner has an amazing sense of humor, cares about me a lot, is creative, very passionate and just all around an amazing person. I love him very much but it’s also hard to be with him. 

It’s especially hard when they’re upset, because I feel like there’s nothing I can do. They tend to spiral and feel hopeless about everything. Words of encouragement don’t work. Trying to say stuff like “oh you must be feeling xyz” just feels like I’m stating the obvious to them. And I get it. We are physically distant (not super far, just different houses), so we text most of the times and are only able to meet each other once or twice a week. 

I’m not good at comforting people. I don’t know what I can do to help. I’ve asked if they needed anything from me during those moments, but they don’t know what helps them either, so I end up saying things that don’t help or make things worse, or I don’t say anything at all and that also makes things worse. They end up feeling like they’re not compensated for their suffering, I end up feeling incompetent. They start calling everyone useless. They start feeling worthless because they feel like I’m not doing enough. I hear words like “nobody loves me”, or “nobody cares enough to understand me”, or “I’m always alone and I have to rely on myself.”

The problem? He’s right about me! I haven’t been able to do anything. All I’ve done is make stupid little mistakes like being late and forgetting my lunch and inconveniencing him. I know he has a low tolerance to stuff like this, especially when it comes to inconveniencing him, but I keep messing up no matter how hard I try. I want to be reliable for my partner but he doesn’t trust me anymore. Sorry doesn’t cut it because I’ll keep messing up again. He doesn’t like it when I apologize. And proving that I’m really sorry doesn’t feel like something I can do because I don’t trust myself to not make the same mistakes again.

I’m forgetful, I’m clumsy and I keep planning things badly. I’m passive and I don’t take charge enough. They’ve told me this both directly and indirectly. I’ve been called inadequate at times, and they’ve said hurtful things like they “don’t think its within my ability to do xyz”. I hate that I’m like this because it hurts him. I hate that he’s right. He’s incredibly independent. He does things very quickly and efficiently. He plans well. He does everything right. I’m just a doormat and I feel useless. 

It also hurts because I’m trying my best, but I can’t. I try and try and try but we always end up arguing about how I’m not doing enough and my efforts don’t reach her. She says that she doesn’t feel like I care about her, but I do. I try to be as attentive as I can be, I try to be there for her as much as I can. I keep doing research and trying to talk to her and understand her side of things, but we always end up in circles. I’m constantly thinking of what I can do for her but we both don’t know what makes my partner feel comforted, so we both end up hurt. 

They don’t have anyone else to turn to either, so it’s just me. But I have so much to deal with outside my relationship at the same time that my head hurts. 

It’s a lot easier when we’re physically together because I can do something. I can buy things or talk and be there in their presence and they eventually feel alright. But through text I just don’t know what to say, and it hurts to see her in pain. I know I can’t control how they feel. I know I can’t cheer them up sometimes. But if I can’t do anything about it then I’m not doing enough.

I’ve been hating myself more and more and I don’t know what to do. I get distracted at work and I’m snappy at my family because them being upset causes me so much stress and anxiety. We’ve almost broken up a few times now, but every time we’re almost there, I either back down or don’t bring it up at all, because in the end I still love them. He cares about me a lot until he’s upset and lashing out. Then it’s mean and hurtful words. Or maybe I’m just sensitive. Then I feel terrible because I didn’t do anything about it because I was frozen thinking about what I can do.

I ended up in a panic attack once because I forgot to talk about something serious. And yes, that was my fault, 100%. I own up to that. But they were so callous and cold about it that I started shaking. At that point, they were also very upset. They said that “all you can do is panic and cry.” They’ve since then apologized and said they were lashing out at the time but it still hurts. 

Breaking up feels like running away. It feels like giving up, but talking only makes us go in circles. I’ve already done it once and that was definitely me running away from my problems before we patched things up. But it’s exhausting because I’m constantly worried about my partner being upset over me or someone else. And she already expects me to fuck it up anyways.

The good is amazing, but the bad makes me want to die. I keep swinging back and forth between feeling angry and feeling happy, and lately I don’t know what I feel anymore. I don’t know if shes just being mean and lashing out, or if I really just am a terrible partner who can’t do anything right. Am I just that selfish? Am I inconsiderate? Is what she’s saying true? Am I really just trying to run from everything?

I don’t know anymore. I keep thinking about this and mulling it over and I don’t know what’s going on.

I’m sorry this letter is all over the place. My head is a mess too and I don’t really know what I want from this either. I’m confused and hurt and I don’t know if I should even be mad at my partner for lashing out at my mistakes.

I just want to stop feeling like I’m going crazy.

Thanks,

Very Sad Boyfriend

Dear Very Sad Boyfriend:

Thank you for your letter. Please allow me to describe the physical sensation of reading it for the first time.

I had a sinking feeling when I read that your “amazing” partner expects you to serve as their on-call unpaid personal therapist and improvisational court jester responsible for fixing their bad moods. I’m pretty sure the phrase “compensated for their suffering” turned at least some of my hair permanently white, and things sunk further when you revealed that everything you do to try to help them when they suffer gets used as an excuse to blame and punish you. Which is it, you’re the only person on earth who can possibly help them or you’re the worst at helping? They don’t seem to know what might make them feel better or be able to give you any direction about what they need, nor do they have any other plans  to mitigate these low mood spells, and yet they are extremely certain that everything you do is wrong. Could it be that manufacturing opportunities to blame you whenever they feel bad isn’t the bug, it’s the feature?

Then I read about when you had a panic attack, your partner had nothing to offer you except contempt, and you feel like that’s your fault, too. When I got to the words “all you can do is panic and cry,” all the blood that is currently inside of my body rapidly switched places with other blood. Did all the color want to drain dramatically from my face until I was white as a sheet or did it want to puff my cheeks out like a choleric beets? Yes, extremely both, NOW. I was telling Mr. Awkward about your letter over lunch and it happened the same way again. “All you can do is panic and cry.”  He got completely still and said “Beg your pardon?” in that too-quiet voice people use in old timey westerns right before someone flies out a saloon window boots first (if they’re lucky). And there it went again, all the blood from my brain just fell down through my jaw and pooled in my clenched fists, and all the blood from the lower body rose like an elevator through my trunk and bloomed out of my cheeks like fireworks. We were both so angry on your behalf that I couldn’t close my hands all the way and he couldn’t move his face for a few seconds. We were angry because that is not how people talk to people they claim to love.

I beg your pardon, but NOTHING ABOUT THIS IS YOUR FAULT AND YOUR PARTNER IS NOT “RIGHT ABOUT YOU.” What if I told you that somebody could be clearly going through it and also making choices to devalue and mistreat you, and one does not cancel out the impact of the other? Mean is a choice. You don’t always know precisely what to say when they are upset, but I guarantee that you don’t insult and berate them, blame them for everything that’s wrong in your life, or use their most vulnerable moments to find the cruelest thing a person could possibly say under the circumstances. This person consistently kicks you when they’re down, they kick you when you’re down, and now you’re in my inbox wondering if maybe you just need to work a little harder on the relationship. The automatic self-blame more than anything is the marker for abuse for me, because it means you’ve internalized the idea that on some level you deserve to be treated like everything you do is bad and that being emotionally drained and crushingly unhappy is just the price you pay for love. It certainly is convenient for them if all your mistakes are your fault and all their mean bullshit is also your fault. You clearly value accountability, but you’ll never make up for what your partner lacks by supplying more of your own.

“The good is amazing, the bad makes me wanna die.” To borrow from a past column, if I make a giant pot of delicious chili and hide a tiny cat turd in it, that’s eight quarts of Shit Stew now. There’s no safe serving size for abuse and no amount of amazing that someone can be that cancels out how mean they are  If you can’t trust that just yet, then trust how bad you felt when you wrote in. Any relationship that made you feel so exhausted and confused that you wanna die would have me looking around for exits, not fixes. I’m so sorry if you thought you were gonna get scripts for working on your bedside manner and instead I teleported to your house like the Terminator. “Come with me if you want to live.” But it is that bad. I’m sorry.

You say that breaking up “would feel like running away from your problems” as if running away from people who hurt you and make you miserable is a bad thing. I get it, our terrible culture means that any time you talk about quitting literally anything, someone’s gonna show up with a persistence narrative. “Quitters never win and winners never quit.” “Relationships take work!” “No pain, no gain.” Like leaving our book club for a hobby we might enjoy more is the only thing between us and putting another Nobel Prize on the shelf where we keep our EGOTs.

Whenever someone suggests that the best and only way to deal with a situation where you are unhappy is to invest even more time and energy, I want you to ask: 1) What do they win if you keep doing something that hurts you? Since the person applying pressure here is you, what do you win besides more feeling helpless, unsupported, unappreciated, and blaming yourself for all of it?

2) If you were to stick with it, when do you get to the good part? Be specific. “In the first couple of episodes of Schitt’s Creek, they need to make the mayor grotesquely unbearable so that the family will seem sympathetic by comparison, you can skip or fast forward through his parts without missing much.” I can (and did) work with that. When do you get to enjoy your relationship instead of feeling like it’s a job where you’re perpetually on a performance improvement plan? It’s been a year. More effort from you has not made anything better, it has only gotten worse. That’s because you cannot love another person into being okay, and you definitely cannot love someone who treats you like shit out of treating you like shit. It is very convenient for abusers to frame “running away” as something you’re not allowed to do, which is why I suggest running away from them as often as you can just because you can. “You can’t simply  run away from your problems!” Let’s find out!

If you need a how-to review for breaking up with someone who might not let you go quietly, here are some suggestions:

1. Make a safety plan. Leaving an abuser is the most dangerous time. Better to have the plan and not need it than need it and not have it. Everybody’s safety plan is gonna look different. One thing I might add to yours: If your ex threatens self-harm, what steps could you take to stay safe and stick to your boundaries? I know you worry about them, but there is no problem on earth for which your compliance and continued exposure to someone who hurts you is the cure.
2. Box up any stuff of theirs that was in your living space and get it ready to ship. With your safety plan in mind, if you can stealthily snag anything of yours that’s at their place without alerting them to the imminent breakup, do it, especially any important documents. Anything that can be replaced is probably their stuff now, write it off as the Cost of Freedom.
3. Make a list of ways they have to get in contact with you: Phone numbers, social media handles and platforms, email addresses, etc. Make a note of any mutuals who might be tempted to play peacemaker or help them get around your blocks.
4. Compose a breakup message. Sample: “I’m so sorry, but this is not working for me anymore and I am ending our relationship. I’ll drop your stuff in the mail by [date] and send you tracking info. After that, I need a clean break, so I won’t be replying to messages, and I’d ask that you not contact me. I’m sorry things didn’t work out and I wish you well.”
5. I know people think that texting a breakup is cruel and that people we love are always owed at least one face-to-face conversation. If this were a relationship where you weren’t being abused into being this person’s on-call crisis support and punching bag, that might make more sense. But you’ve tried to break up before and been sucked back in, and they know that they can use their own suffering to summon you whenever they like. If they don’t wanna break up, how you did it will just become part of the story of how you left them because you are mean and selfish, etc.Sometimes you gotta choose what’s safest and least painful for you and let other people tell the stories that they need to tell about why you did it.
6. Communicating the decision is more important than arguing your reasons. If you want to supply reasons for the breakup, make them all about you. “I’m so sorry, I love you, but I know that I am not happy with how things are and this is the right decision for me.” “This isn’t working for me and I think I will be better off if we stop trying.”
7. Please know that you’re never in a million years gonna convince this person they were being abusive. I’m not sure I convinced you that they are abusive, but if I convince you of one thing today let it be that it’s okay to break up with someone who doesn’t make you happy even if they are not abusive, and if I convince you of two things let it be that if you even breathe the a-word in this person’s direction they’re gonna DARVO-reverse-Uno you until you apologize for being abusive to them.
8. When you’re ready, send the message. Then you can either block them or use filters to make sure that their messages do not show up for you.
9. Tell mutuals what’s going on. Sample: “Ex and I broke up as of today, and I’ve asked for a clean break with no further contact. I’m letting the people who care about both of us know in case you want to check on them and so that you know not to pass on messages or news about me to them or vice versa. Sorry to make it awkward, thanks for your understanding and support!” Tell your support system what’s going on without the part where they might wanna check on your ex.
10. Mute notifications on your phone for the rest of that day, take yourself out for a treat, and drop their stuff in the mail on the way.
11. Expect an extinction burst where they try everything they can to make you respond and pay attention to them one last time. You are accustomed to being their caretaker, and it’s going to be the hardest thing to just tune them out. It will feel terrible, like you are turning your back on them. If guilt doesn’t work, they will demand closure. But you can’t give other people closure. Closure for them starts with believing you that it’s over and you want to be left alone. They will get that (or not) in their own sweet time. The more you try to fix it instead of staying gone, the longer it will suck.You must disengage and let whatever they do run its course. Reminding them of your decision counts as engaging. If they send you 27 messages with no answer and you respond to the 28th one to tell them to leave you alone, now they know it only takes 28 messages to get your attention.
12. Over the next several months, be very gentle with yourself. Let people who care about you pet you and tell you how smart and pretty you are. If you can access therapy, this is a very good time to do that.
13. Grieve. For the good parts of being with this person, of which I do not doubt there were some. For yourself, a person who was working so hard to take care of everybody he forgot to take care of himself.
14. Heal. Let anger do its work. Let time do its work. Both are cleansing if you let them be.
15. Down the road, when you’re ready to date again, try to steer clear of people who expect a lot of emotional and crisis support from you out of the gate and people who have no other friends or social connections. They might be perfectly lovely people, but until you remove the invisible “How can I help?” sign on your own forehead they are maybe not your safest bets. There’s more to loving and being loved than being useful.
16. Always steer clear of anyone who is mean to you or mean to other people in front of you, especially anyone who tries to explain why they were mean or why what they did wasn’t mean instead of saying “I’m sorry.” Those were never your people.

You can’t run away from every problem, but you can break up with people who don’t make you happy.