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A long time ago, Shepherd created folders and tags for my blog inbox, mostly categories like “Family” and “Friendship” and “Work,” but also a few like “LW Behaving Badly,” “What Is This I Don’t Even,” and “This is Not Penthouse.” 

I really, really, really try to be kind and gentle and find somebody to root for in every situation, but sometimes I fail.Today, I thought, instead of publishing certain letters with those tags, I would answer the questions but save the Letter Writers some embarrassment and the Internet from seeing some things that can’t be unseen.

 Think of it as a New Year’s cleanse for upsetting content. 

1  Hmmmm let’s do some math:

• You’re 47 and your new girlfriend is 23,
• You’ve “been good friends” “for 8 or 9years,”
• The wife you just left her for is also 47,
• Your own kids are 16 and 17, 
• You used the words “technically legal adult” and “soulmate” in the same sentence more than once. 

Like, enjoy your newfound happiness, I guess? Since you are “technically legal adults,” I certainly can’t stop you!

But if everyone who already likes and loves you is giving you a wide berth all of a sudden, I can only assume they did the same Creep Math I did and are now wondering if you serially groom lots of teens or just this one.

Sometimes getting what you want and having everyone’s trust and good opinion are mutually exclusive. 

2  I accept that “there’s nothing I can say” to make you leave him, and both ethical and logistical constraints prevent me from standing outside your house with with a boombox looping Goodbye Earl, so it appears we are at an impasse.

There’s a part of you that knows that a happy ending for you involves getting away from your abuser (or you wouldn’t have picked me, of all people, to write to), so I’m going to take some hope from that and keep right on wishing you peace, safety, and freedom.

3  I wish you had options other than making peace with someone you dislike in order to keep a roof over your head, but antagonizing your boyfriend’s mom further at the cost of safe housing while you’ve got a baby on the way is not in anyone’s best interest. There’s a difference between being disliked and being harmed or abused. For now, I recommend that you deploy a strategic* apology, find a way to be very polite, neutral, and boring when you interact with her, do your fair share of household chores with minimal fuss, and stay away from stressful topics until you have a much more stable situation.Let your boyfriend take charge of interacting with his mom while you focus on getting enough rest and food and otherwise taking care of yourself. 

*You don’t have to feel sorry in order to say sorry, sometimes it’s necessary to say the words to defuse a situation and stop things from getting worse. 

4 Whoa, thanks for the incredibly detailed accounting of your sex life as a dating couple and newlywed! I’ll enter all the stats about “precisely which acts” and “approximately how often” into the spreadsheet to prepare for The Audit, I think it will really build a logickal case for why your wife should continue maintaining quarterly orgasm quotas even though she just gave birth to an entire human. Your arguments re: “I know she’s recovering from labor but it’s not like she couldn’t do oral!” were especially fleshed out, and definitely did not make me never want to see, touch, or think about a penis ever again. 

CONVERSELY [/sarcasm]

If your data is to be believed, your wife clearly loves you and likes having sex with you a whole lot. Someday, when her body starts to feel like her own again, she will probably enjoy it again. But right now, I promise you, I PROMISE YOU, she DOES NOT want to hear your worries about how your “level of intimacy” has changed. 

If you want to be a candidate for Sexiest New Dad 2022, try making a meal and then holding the baby while your wife gets a whole plate of hot food inside her, then hand off the baby to her and eat yours. Facilitate her ability to take an uninterrupted nap or shower as often as humanly possible. Do your part to stem the Laundry Avalanche that a new baby creates. When in doubt, clean something. Run interference with intrusive or difficult relatives. Tell your wife that she looks beautiful and that she’s doing a good job. Be helpful and kind and nurturing and – THIS IS KEY – without treating any of it as a giant favor you’re doing or as a downpayment on sexytimes. You won’t die if you have to take your sexual pleasure into your own hands for a little while, but you will kill your marriage if you walk around with a giant sense that you’re owed something and that it’s your wife’s fault for not trying hard enough to “satisfy” you, when, if you haven’t noticed, she’s kinda busy. You’ll also destroy your relationship with both your wife and your kid if you treat the little fella like competition for your boner.

You have this shining, beautiful chance to not be That Guy. Please, I beg you, take it. 

5 You “didn’t take sides” when you sent holiday invitations, but by inviting all of the known anti-vaxx, anti-mask loudmouths in your family for the holidays this year, you effectively disinvited everyone else, including kids too young to be vaccinated and their parents.

I hope Asshole Christmas was a good time and that you get to meet your tiny new niblings someday under safer circumstances. Until you guarantee/enforce safer circumstances, it’s probably not happening at your house. 

All right, thank you for reading, happy new year! I don’t know about anyone else, but I feel a highly specific combination of better and worse after all that. 

The post You Survived Another Holiday Season! appeared first on A Practical Wedding: Wedding Planning, Inspiration, and Ideas.

The post The Advice I’d Give You If I Were Right Next To You appeared first on A Practical Wedding: Wedding Planning, Inspiration, and Ideas.

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Dear Captain Awkward,

I (she/her) have a Dad (he/him) and Mom (she her) who value their traditional culture and religion even though they did not raise my sister (she/her) and I to be very religious, i.e. we were allowed to go away to college, I was encouraged not to observe religious dress and they didn’t expect us to participate in daily religious activities (they didn’t either). You could say we were culturally faithful but not pious. They took a lot of crap from relatives who insisted they were making a huge mistake and would end up with kids who have no values or faith.

My sister married a guy who was of our background but even less connected to the culture and religion. My parents welcomed him though I suspect privately they were a bit uncomfortable because he drinks alcohol and has tattoos which are prohibited in the religion. Then my sister put up a Christmas tree (not Christians but her in-laws do Christmas). I happened to be there when they found out and it was like watching my parents take a fist to their face. My sister was their closest child, she could do no wrong in their eyes and they’ve always bent over backwards for her. After being so sure that they could raise us liberally while still upholding the culture and religion, they were devastated. No amount of me reminding them that she doesn’t consider it a religious act or framing it as a decoration has helped. They’ve decided they won’t go to her house until the tree is gone. My mom does daycare for my niece so BIL (he/him) drops the baby off at her house now.

I’ve tried to point out that they may regret this and harm their relationship with their only grandchild once she is old enough to figure out that her paternal grandparents happily celebrate Christmas and drink alcohol with her parents while her maternal grandparents make a stand every December, but they won’t budge. My sister is surprised they are upset and says a tree is no big deal which strains credulity in my opinion. I’m visiting and keep walking in on my mom just sitting silently with tears running down her face and my dad quietly counting the days until he can see niece again on daycare days (he is the only name/word she can say so far, total bff’s). I resent my sister for taking so much over the years (I was not similarly favored) and then so casually throwing us into this chaos. I am annoyed with my parents for not seeing something like this coming considering her husband’s background. Do I keep defending her, comforting them or should I just stay apart like normal?

Never thought I’d miss the days when they were a unit of three + me.

Hello!

Sometimes the universe sends you a twinkling light display that says “STAY OUT OF IT” and this is one of those times.

I know things are tense right now but this is part of the process of negotiating boundaries. Your parents and your sister have learned some new things about each other’s priorities. Clearly the tree IS a big deal, to both sides. Your parents feel like their culture and religion are being rejected and erased by the omnipresent colonizer holiday, and they are learning the limits of their authority and influence over their formerly obedient child. Your sister wants to assert some “I followed your rules in your house, but I make my own rules in my house” independence and align herself more with how her husband’s family does things. Both parties assumed the other would a) automatically agree with them about everything forever and b) give in already, and nobody knows quite what to do about that now that the truth has been revealed. If either party wants things to be different, it’s perfectly clear what they can do to change it (ignore the tree and visit vs. take it down). But until someone budges, this is how it’s going to be. What do they want more, to teach each other a lesson or to spend time together? Being right can be damn lonely, but either way, it’s not up to you.

The good news is that nothing has been permanently severed here. Your parents are still seeing and caring for their granddaughter and on speaking terms with their son-in-law even though they are upset. The tree is most likely going to come down in a couple of weeks and everybody will be able to resume normal relations without anybody losing face if that’s what they decide.Questions like “how will we explain this to niece when she’s older” and “what will everybody think” are non-urgent side quests. Over time, your small niece will figure out that one set of grandparents really, really, really does not enjoy the trappings of Christmas and be absolutely fine. The relatives who want to judge your parents’ parenting will anyway, so just know that if they’d been incredibly strict and doctrinaire with all of you, everybody would blame that instead.

I think you are very smart and self-aware about how the history of sibling rivalry and parental favoritism is affecting you right now. It’s understandably tempting to enjoy the downfall of The Perfect Daughter a tiny bit while also being irritated that this whole month is going to be All About Her even when she’s not here and all about the $#@! tree even though none of you actually celebrate Christmas. Still, I don’t think there are any advantages for you in getting more involved or trying to mediate a conflict. Your best path is probably one of open, unambiguous retreat. Scripts:

• “What do I think? I think that if you’ve already explained to [other party] how you feel, that’s about all you can do. I know you love each other very much, and I trust that you’ll figure it out before too long.” 
• “It’s clear that this is really important to both of you, and I hope you and [other party] can find a way to talk about it that isn’t so painful.” 
• “What do I think? I think that it’s not my Christmas tree and Sister is not here, so could we talk about something else? How is [massive subject change] going?” 
• “You never take my advice about anything, so why would you start now? It doesn’t matter what I think.What do you think you’ll do?” 
• “Nice try, but you could not pay me to get in the middle of this fight. If you need me, Niece and I will be in the other room watching Moana for the 300th time.”
• You don’t have to pretend a neutrality that you don’t feel. “Jeopardizing [free daycare from trusted family][a close relationship with your favorite daughter] over an awkward centerpiece is not the choice I would have gone with, but it’s not mine to make. I love you and I hope you all figure it out.” 

Make it clear that you won’t be a go-between, and change the subject early and often so that you’re not getting sucked in to giving The Problem Of The Tree even more attention and time. If you live with your parents, it sounds like an excellent time to get out of the house for some long walks or to see other relatives and friends so your parents can cry in peace and you’ll feel less pressure to do something about it.

May this all get resolved before the assorted birds, rings, and milkmaids wreak their terrible vengeance upon the earth (and our ears).