I was a practicing couples and family therapist for six years, working with families of kids in facilities, people with schizophrenia, children, and single moms. I could tell you about all the things I’ve learned about love and lust and dating from this six years, but those relationships are analyzed to death. Instead, here are some of the things I’ve learned about every other kind of relationship- families, friends, strangers. The relationships that are often ignored and thought to be “second nature” are the ones that end up being the toughest to navigate at times.
1. Being able to say “I’m sorry” is a skill, and one that not a lot of people possess. Hone that skill. Apologizing shouldn’t be followed by “but here’s why I did it” or “and then you did this”. An apology is you taking responsibility for hurting someone else, not a notch on a scorecard in some bizarro battle of “Who’s Right?”
2. People behave in very intense ways when their feelings are hurt. I’ve seen teenagers start punching things when their parents don’t show up for visits. I’ve seen parents hysterically cry and call themselves failures when they are told their child is setting fires. I once had a woman tell me that my dye job was hideous when I confronted her about her drug use. We are all human and we don’t like feeling embarrassed or hurt, and it’s best to keep that in mind when dealing with others. That doesn’t mean you excuse their behavior, but it’s always helpful to remember that sometimes the ego has an ugly way of protecting itself.
3. Childhoods don’t last forever, they just feel like they do. Don’t be in such a hurry to speed up a childhood that you will be pining for a few years down the line. This is why people in their 30s are so obsessed with nostalgia. Dating and drama will be there for you whenever- you do not have to chase them.
4. The only thing that is permanent is change. You cannot stop change from happening, you can only decide how you react to it, and whether or not you grow from it.
5. If a friend is making you feel small, end the friendship. It doesn’t matter if you’ve been friends for years, or if you don’t have that many friends, or if you have to see them all the time. Nothing is more damaging to your sense of self worth than surrounding yourself with people who pick away at you. Feeling lonely is better than feeling small.
6. So let’s talk about friend breakups. They are intensely painful and traumatic, and while we have a pretty standard script for romantic breakups- “It’s not you, it’s me”- we still, as a people, have no good way to break up with a friend. Years ago, I had a female friend that I glommed onto right after a breakup. Sure, I was pouring all of my relationship energy into this girl to avoid dealing with a breakup, but therapists are human too. We spent all of our time together, which I was grateful for at first, until she started getting angry with me for spending time with other people. I also noticed that she would put me down in front of other people, but at that time I felt pretty low so it matched up with my opinion of myself. After a few weeks I started feeling especially stressed and anxious around her, and I finally realized that this relationship was toxic for me. I sat her down and did my best to focus on my experience of the friendship, and not on the wrongs I felt like she had committed. I told her I cared about her and didn’t want to resent her, so I was going to have to back off a bit. It was excruciatingly awkward, and for the next few weeks, I felt incredibly lonely, but I also felt less anxious.
A note: I don’t disapprove of fadeaways with friends you no longer want to hang out with, just because the awkwardness and pain is so intense.
7. Don’t take responsibility for other people’s choices, and don’t let people bully you into taking responsibility for their choices. We are all captains of our own ships and have enough to worry about keeping ourselves afloat- the minute you take on, as your duty, someone else’s joy/career/well being, you have entered into a codependent, unhealthy alliance with them. I have worked with many parents who are trying so force to make their children to be more “normal.” I have worked with many jilted lovers who are desperate to win their exes back. In both cases, by trying to convince yourself that you can somehow control the other person’s choices, you are only setting yourself up for frustration and disappointment. One of the scariest things in life is realizing how little control you have in this world. All you can really control, ever, are your own actions. That’s it.
8. At some point, your parents go from being your leaders and trusted mentors (I’m speaking VERY generally here) to being advisors and loving but occasionally annoying adults in your life. I once worked with a completely miserable couple who came to me with problems in their marriage, but it turned out the problems in their marriage stemmed from the fact that the husband was still continually seeking permission from his parents for things ranging from what couch to buy to when to have children. Both the parents and the (adult) kid weren’t sure how to evolve their relationship, but once they did, the marital problems settled down.
9. It is tough to be considered an adult by your parents when you are still financially dependent on them. Not impossible, but tough. You can be emotionally dependent on them forever if you like, but not relying on them for finances gives you a level of freedom (albeit destitute freedom) that is unrivaled. Being financially independent makes you able to fake smile and nod at them when they make ridiculous suggestions.
10. Always always strive for more self-awareness. If you are feeling an intense emotion, do some self exploration before you decide to act on that emotion. Sit with yourself, and when you do act, act with intentionality. Sometimes that intention may be “to make you feel like shit”, but at least be aware of your intentions. Tapping into your awareness of your own behavior is my number one tip for improving your life.
11. I am especially sensitive to, and annoyed by, people who pride themselves on “just telling it like it is”. Sometimes these people possess a rare gift of insight and kindness, but more often, they’re being cruel and disguising it as some sort of lame superpower. Giving someone the hard truth doesn’t make you more insightful, it makes you the asshole who saw the same thing everyone else saw and decided it might make you feel better to say it out loud.
12. Regardless of what you choose to do with them, your blood relatives will always be your blood relatives. As you grow older your boundaries with those people may change a great deal, but it’s important to remember that you don’t get to decide how other people show love. You can only choose to accept their love or not.
13. Notice I didn’t use the term “family” above? That’s because one of the greatest lessons of life is that you get to create your own family as you get older. This family, for a lot of us, will include blood relatives. For some of us, it will not. The best family members are people who have seen every side of you, who accept you for who you are, and who are always pushing you to be the best version of yourself.
14. Saying “That is inappropriate” is a great way to shut down weird behavior. I’ve said it to children, teenagers, clients, old people, weirdos masturbating on trains, coworkers, and once, to a celebrity in a restaurant.
15. Literally everyone is struggling with some sort of demon. Yes, you are absolutely unique and your demons are unique to you, but we’ve all felt helpless/angry/miserable/empty/vengeful. Take comfort in the fact that other people have felt how you are feeling, and they’ve survived it.
Tags: advice, emily v. gordon, relationships, therapy
Giving someone the hard truth doesn’t make you more insightful, it makes you the asshole who saw the same thing everyone else saw and decided it might make you feel better to say it out loud.
This is a very wise insight that is expressed so well! I have often thought about how important it is to be kind to others and it’s something I work on in myself; this phrase is such a nice summation of why some people just can’t seem to keep their mouths shut. I will try to remember it the next time I want to say something that doesn’t need to be said!
I’ve heard this encapsulated as “People who pride themselves on brutal honesty are more interested in the brutality than the honesty.” The flipside advice is, there is always a tactful, kind, and/or constructive way to give someone feedback.
I can also kind of agree with this thought, but it is still good to be assertive when its needed, otherwise some people may think they are able to walk all over you.
Oh wow, the friend breakup advice hit home. Went through a really high drama version of it recently, and am now trying to build that skill of listening to the early signs of it going off the rails.
Also, if someone tells you she has a hard time maintaining friendships with women: RUN, do not walk. You will not be the one person who fixes that pattern.
Friend breakup is so hard! The only one I’ve ever had that wasn’t a slow phase-out was so bad that I still have nightmares about it. How do people deal with this?
I related how I recently managed a friend break-up in response to the_wooorst’s comment, below.
I’m sort of phasing out a friend at the moment-she’s had a real hard time over the last couple a’ years and I’ve really been there for her (taxis to her house at midnight when she’s having panic attacks etc) but her need (and my willingness to support) has actually sustained a closeness that wouldn’t be present were it just down to our personalities-our values and interests have diverged. I don’t regret any of the effort I put in but I want to move away from it now-she’s still a bit wobbly and it’s hard to do gently!
All three of mine were horrible traumatic events. I got nothing. (The first, though, I don’t think there is a decent way to deal with in the entire universe, because when I was six my best friend’s parents forced her to stop seeing me and stopped acknowledging my entire family’s existence because of an imagined slight by my father. It took me years to get over that one. Avoid self-professed social Darwinists, people!)
“Also, if someone tells you she has a hard time maintaining friendships with women: RUN, do not walk. You will not be the one person who fixes that pattern.”
Yep.
(And I say that as someone who – well, let’s leave it in the mists of time, shall we? But that line stems from a lot of potential places, and always always has to be excised by the person who says it and no one else.)
In solidarity with you on the friend breakup advice. But in my case it was a relationship that was like 75% friendship 25% romantic. It was incredibly, incredibly high drama. I saw her this weekend at a large conference and she pulled me aside to ask me “what she should tell people” about why we were not hanging out*. I said “tell them whatever version of the truth you want” because anything even close to the truth reflects poorly on her. She was angered by this and proceeded to tell me how terrible I am at my job. I’m so glad to have read 5/6/7/11 today.
*No one asked me about this relationship and I do not believe anyone asked her either, this was entirely in her head.
Yeeeeouch.
Don’t build intimate relationships with damaged straight girls! No amount of doing things for her will resolve her emotional issues or make her suddenly turn around one day and decide she’s in love with you. It was painful and dramatic but I have so much more emotional bandwidth now.
Addendum to that one is: if you successfully transition from lovers back to friendship with said straight girl (for two years!!), and then she tells your new girlfriend that you are emotionally unavailable/ tries to make out with your girlfriend… that is also a warning sign. I really shoulda seen it coming? Going to tape this article up on my bathroom mirror, I think. Per someone else’s comment, regular reading might be valuable, and monthly may be too infrequent :-/
Wow. Yeah. This is not even close to as bad but she HATED my girlfriend and was real rude about it, definite warning sign I missed. You in DC? Do you drink? Maybe we should get together for periodic readings and toasting to our (eventual) good decision making.
SF gal here, will raise a pint for a virtual toasting to good decision making!
I had a friend break-up a year and a half ago that is still painful, to the point of not doing things I want to do because she’ll be there. I don’t bear her any ill will, but we just couldn’t communicate (to the point that we inadvertently hurt each other all the time) and were so different we had trouble even empathizing. Ugh.
YESSSS. When I got divorced, I lost a lot of friends. Some of that was my own volition, and some of it wasn’t. I had been “best friends” with my ex’s cousin since high school, but I don’t think we actually enjoyed each other at all anymore. I know I didn’t. I tried having that hideously awkward conversation once (“I just think we’ve grown apart some as we age and -“) and she started WAILING and crying and if I’d given her another 15 minutes she’d have tracked down sackcloth and ashes.
After my divorce, I started dating someone she had dated about 12 years previously. When he mentioned casually to her that we were going on a date, she flipped the fuck out about my terrible betrayal. I simply refused to speak to her from that point on. Not a fun time.
I mean CAN we talk about #11. “Real talk: (shitty terrible thing to say)” is the new “I’m not racist, but (racist thing).”
Eleven. Eleven. Eleven.
I think though that the people who jump in with them are maybe worse? However, I am someone who blankly stares at people talking idiocy and seethes inside. Gonna try that “well that’s inappropriate” thing, tho.
Oh, God, the dittoheads. There’s a self-appointed truth-teller in my circle of unavoidable acquaintances (notice that I didn’t say “friends”) and there is always a substantial chorus of nervous/passive-aggressive laughers whenever this person says something particularly vicious, even if it’s aimed at the group they belong to!! It’s as if they think that by laughing they can deny or defuse the nastiness of what the person is saying (c.f. the bad bullying advice linked to by Nicole this morning). Groupthink at its worst.
And agreeing that a bad friendship can damage you as much as or worse, sometimes, than any romantic relationship ever can, maybe because for some of us it can be harder to justify cutting bait, so the torture goes on longer. If I’ve learned anything from my Buddhist practice, it’s the value of self-reliance. Wish I’d learned it in high school.
And NUMBER SEVEN. Dear God, how often have I taken it on when someone else wasn’t happy for whatever reason – and boy, are some people ready to relinquish their agency in that respect. And that was probably me, too, for a long time.
ALL THE YESSES TO ELEVEN.
Also #10, omfg. My mantra, for when people are doing ridiculously counterintuitive shit, is “self-awareness is not transitive”.
But Jesus poledancing Christ, I wish it was. “Why do I keep doing fucked-up shit, friend?” BECAUSE YOU ARE INTENTIONALLY CHOOSING TO DO FUCKED-UP THINGS. STOP DOING THAT.
Yanno, if people are being dicks like this and you’re not feeling articulate, silence and an inquisitive/cold look do wonders. Meanies DEPEND on people responding-that’s what keeps social smootheness going-women in particular are socially primed to keep things flowing even if it involves sucking up shit so that other people (who are being dicks) don’t have to feel awkward about it.
Also, saying, “I don’t get it – what do you mean?” with an air of quizzical sincerity can really deflate people.
Not to take away from your legit comment, but I am dying laughing at the mental image of Poledancing Christ!
Jesus poledancing Christ is IMMEDIATELY joining my repertoire of exclamations!
You are welcome
*bows*
I’ll be here all week 😀
A speaker at a conference I went to last week said “Truth telling is not the same as telling the truth”
Ugh to everybody who says “I’m just being honest!” After insulting you/your worldview/everything.
“while we have a pretty standard script for romantic breakups. . .we still, as a people, have no good way to break up with a friend.” So true. One of the most difficult interpersonal experiences I’ve ever had was a breakup with a close friend, and it’s something that still bothers me, because I still have doubts about whether I was being unreasonable or cruel or whether, years later, I should just call her and make up. But people don’t talk about that kind of thing too often, or have much advice about it.
I’ve recently needed to. . . adjust my relationship with a friend, and it actually reminds me very much of negotiating a breakup with someone I want to and am able to remain friends with. The new terms of the relationship are a lot less involved and intimate, and it’s a rather delicate thing to set these new boundaries: yes, I do want to spend time together but no, not as often; there are a few activities that I do not want to continue doing with you, and others that I look forward to doing with you. It’s not possible to avoid a little bit of hurt feelings, I think, but I also think that it’s working out okay for us–even though we haven’t had a Breakup Conversation as one would have with a partner, just lots of little boundary talks.
But howwwwwww did you do this? I have a friend who is repeatedly oversteps boundaries, and especially when drinking, does some of that horrible “Real talk: Let Me Get All Involved In Your Life And Enumerate What You’re Doing Wrong ” bullshit. However, we have a lot of intertwined friends and completely cutting her off doesn’t seem feasible, not to mention that sometimes she can be a good friend. She is, however, really codependent and considers us way closer than I think we are. She likes manufacturing drama to distract from real world things, and don’t want to feed into that cycle. I am tempted to clearcut the friendship to the roots and just deal with the web-of-friends later, but just am not sure.
Behaviors! There are absolutely things you can choose not to do with this person, like drinking or listening to her enumerate what she thinks you’re doing wrong or engaging with the drama she manufactures. You can just say no to those things, even if everyone else says yes to them. (Which, if so, wtf?) They seem like good occasions for Emily’s “That is inappropriate.” Or even physically walking away.
In my case it was more about removing myself from situations where my friend had gotten into habits which felt unfair and uncomfortable to me–it’s hard to explain without becoming No Longer Anon, but let’s say shopping, let’s pretend we used to shop together all the time but we had somehow gotten into some really toxic shopping habits. So now we don’t shop, we do other things that don’t lend themselves to the toxic dynamic, and we do things with groups more often than only one another, and we see each other less often period.
It is almost exactly like the way I’ve been renegotiating my friendship with my most recent ex, that’s what I think is interesting.
Cosign on this advice! I mean, lizneive, if you’d rather just cut it off, that has my blessing too, but if you feel like you’d enjoy the friendship outside of these specific behaviors, then the next time she starts with the Real (Horrible) Talk, tell her it’s not okay with you. Either she’ll respect that, in which case, great; if she doesn’t, you leave, and then you have your answer about whether a healthy friendship is an option with this person (because if she blows through your explicitly stated boundaries, then the situation is hopeless). I definitely salvaged a friendship for a while by telling someone, “It does not help me when you say things like that, please stop.” And she did! Eventually the friendship collapsed for other reasons but at the time, there were parts worth saving so I was glad I tried.
What I want to know is how to handle a friend breakup where you AREN’T trying to salvage things. I mean, a good amount of time the fadeaway works, but even for people who aren’t taking the hint, is the sitdown the right call? It feels really strange to me to give someone a rundown of all the things you don’t like about being friends with them if you’re not even trying to work through those issues? It feels gratuitous, like, “Here’s a parting gift of all my negative thoughts about you!” Has anyone ever been on the receiving end of this and been glad the person explained why they didn’t enjoy your company anymore? I just have such a hard time imagining that would be in any way desirable…
My ex-‘best-friend’ (I mentioned that one up-post somewhere) was similar in that “considers us closer than we actually are” and “our friends are allllllll intertwined” type of thing. I have no real advice on HOW to do it since my own breakup of the friendship was kind of a douchebag-guy maneuver on my part, but I can say that getting out and dealing with the fallout after might be the best decision in the long run.
I had to break up with a friend because she was turning into her (abusive, alcoholic) boyfriend (with whom she broke up, then secretly got back together with, after which she started drinking more and then began emotionally abusing others). IT WAS AWFUL. I felt so bad for her, and I felt like a bad friend for not sticking with her and trying to help more. But after multiple conversations and emails where she repeatedly asked for advice that she never heeded I put myself first and escaped the relationship.
I wrote her a long letter, explaining that I was breaking up with her for my own good and that I wasn’t judging her or her decisions, but her disregard for herself and others was causing me too much emotional pain. Then I gave specific examples of how I had been hurt by her behavior. I finished with a statement that I would be happy to talk with her about my decision in person. I mailed it via post instead of emailing because that made it seem more…real? More something, anyway. Less flimsy. Also, it gave her the opportunity to burn it if she so desired.
The last I heard from her was an email that said “I received your letter. Understood.”
It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, but SO much better for me than doing a slow and potentially misleading fade-out.
Just ran down here to say Hi Emily Gordon, I love the Indoor Kids! kbye!
Okay, relevant to this article:
Re #1: This happened to me this week, with a client at work. There was a miscommunication, and instead of just saying “I’m sorry”, I said “I’m sorry, but our policy is X and I was just following the policy”, which led to a second angry phone call and a call to my supervisor. Definitely a learning experience, that our apologies should be genuine and not self-serving. I wanted to justify my actions, but my client just wanted me to acknowledge that I had screwed up and that I was sorry.
Yay Indoor Kids!
This is going on my list of Things to Read Once a Month to stay sane. You are a wise one. Gracias.
I choose to believe that your name, in fact, references the denouement of #14, and you once had to shut down Gordon Ramsey.
If so, I hope she has a chance to do so again!
YS PLS.
This is great. I’m a currently a therapist at a high school, and all of this rings so true. Currently, the hardest thing for me is working with those students whose blood relatives are shit, and not capable of supporting them now (or possibly ever). I want desperately to tell them that when they are adults they will be able to create a new family out of the people who love them for who they are. While it is absolutely true, it doesn’t really help them deal with the shitty things their parents do now.
The hardest part of my job is sitting with kids in pain and not trying to fix it. Sometimes, most times, there’s not much to do, but sit with them and acknowledge that things sometimes suck.
Sometimes, most times, there’s not much to do, but sit with them and acknowledge that things sometimes suck.
This is so rare, and so vitally important, perhaps especially when you’re young and still developing your sense of a universal scale of trauma. Does this really suck or am I just incapable of dealing with life? A trusted adult who acknowledges that nope, it really really sucks can be incredibly helpful.
It’s true. Witnessing and validating another person’s experience *IS* doing something. Something hugely valuable, in fact, even if it doesn’t fix the situation.
“4. The only thing that is permanent is change. You cannot stop change from happening, you can only decide how you react to it, and whether or not you grow from it.”
Indeed. This is the truest truth & one I’m always trying to access / spread.
Great article!
re: number 11, I believe that the only entity about whom you are allowed to “tell it like it is” is yourself. For example, “I enjoy [insert transgressive sex act* here]. Just telling it like it is.” You do not get to say, “Suzy enjoys [transgressive sex act], what a slut. Just telling it like it is.”
*not sure there are any truly transgressive sex acts left, though?
ATO
That right there is some quality goods. All of it.
I’ve spent years trying to get my father to understand #1 (to no avail).
“I’m sorry that you feel X” IS NOT A REAL APOLOGY!
SING IT
The friend I had to break up with had this weird combo of #1 and #11. It would be like “I’m sorry I yelled at you but I always find you really annoying when I’m drunk. Just telling it like it is.”
ugh. I’m sorry (and glad you got out of there-sounds like a healthy decision)
Numbers 8 and 9 ahhhhh
My mom keeps offering to help me out financially and just…I don’t want it! Except maybe a flight home once in awhile. But otherwise: Ma! Stop! I am trying to be independent and mostly succeeding, I promise!
Ah, I too have an Overly Helpful Mom! This might be a good occasion to really lay it on thick. “Mom, you gave me a good education in and solid example of financial responsibility. The best thing you can give me now is some time to use those skills to take care of myself, even if I mess it up a little sometimes.” That sort of thing.
I also find it productive to be really up front about my needs at specific times–I do need you to listen while I talk about my job search, I don’t want you to try to fix it–because then she can help me in ways that I appreciate. (I find that even though Overly Helpful Moms help out of the goodness of their hearts, they get a little burned out and prickly if the helping isn’t appreciated.)
Adult relationships with parents are really hard! When my parents split, I went to therapy for ~3 years just to work on my relationship with my mother, and figure out how not to feel responsible for her feelings and put up better/healthier boundaries. It’s an ongoing process, but my counselor helped so much.
One of the things that I love about my mom is that I can say, “Mom, you’re being…helpful…again.” and she will apologize and back off. <3
Thank you for clarifying all of the knowledge I’ve been fumbling my way towards in one concise list. This is great!
[…]but it turned out the problems in their marriage stemmed from the fact that the husband was still continually seeking permission from his parents for things ranging from what couch to buy to when to have children.
Oh my god, yes. This is so huge in my relationship now. My partner and I have very different relationships with our parents (mine are loving, but generally not involved in my life and his are a CONSTANT PRESENCE GOVERNING HIS EVERY DECISION). I tried to have a gentle conversation with him about this when I found out his dad was coming over to the house while we were at work and marking up our kitchen for a remodel (??? – here these question marks serve as a visual representation of MY HEAD EXPLODING) and it backfired on me in a big way. Does anyone have any tips for broaching this kind of talk? (FIX MY LIFE, THANKS!)
This was a major, painful, exhausting issue in our marriage and a good marriage therapist was the only solution for it. I know there are books out there, but for us it really took 2 years of weekly therapy to get to the point where 1) I don’t feel guilty for coming between my husband and his parents every time I stand up for myself and my boundaries/privacy and 2) my husband realized how much he was accommodating his parents’ needs/drama and that our marriage needed to be able to respect both his boundaries and mine without resentment or blame. (Though I still get the ??? every once in awhile – like yesterday when my husband shared with his mom exactly how much we recently spent on a renovation. I will never, ever understand things like that. It’s just not something my parents would ever ask or I’d ever volunteer.) It’s so hard to deal with someone’s family of origin (especially if they’re not malicious or mean) without setting yourself up in the enemy camp in your partner’s eyes. I think it really takes a neutral party to be able to tease it out and help you get to a better place.
It’s so hard to deal with someone’s family of origin (especially if they’re not malicious or mean) without setting yourself up in the enemy camp in your partner’s eyes.
So true & it’s unfortunately been the single greatest issue in my relationship to date (we agree on all of the other important things, like sports teams and hour long crime dramas). My partner’s parents aren’t evil, but they are from basically a different planet (they’re close to 20 years older than my parents, are several class brackets above my family, and they’re so white that they think I’m ethnic because part of my family came here from Italy… SEVERAL GENERATIONS AGO.) I didn’t realize how much thought, care, and energy goes into forgiving the weirdness/difference of families – sometimes it feels like I only have the emotional resources to be forgiving of my own family’s weirdness & there’s nothing left to help me deal with my partner’s family.
I come from a very close knit extended family & have dinner on a weekly basis with my grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins, and my dad (my own parents are separated and my mom lives in a different part of the country), so I understand having a close and loving relationship with your family. But my own familial relationships have never included the element of being told what to do, what car to buy, how much is ok to spend on a vacation, etc. & my partner’s parents are so involved in offering that kind of info to him and (worse), he seems to covet their approval, which leads him to continuously defer to their judgment. I’ve never been in a situation where an outside party has such a say on the inner workings of my life & it is a very, very weird place to be.
Did you suggest seeing a marriage therapist or was it your husband’s idea? If you suggested it, was he receptive or did it take some cajoling?
Oh my gosh, that’s almost exactly the same situation as our marriage, except that his parents think I’m ethnic because I’m from a very rural, very small town and have bushy hair (seriously, my mother-in-law’s friends have asked to touch it). And I think so much of it is a need for approval from parents that is just completely integrated into their psyches and never analyzed. When we were first married we had so many arguments about eating off paper plates and hanging laundry over the stair railing to dry and I don’t think my husband ever once stopped to realize that he hated those things so much because his mom had always told him only horrible people did them.
I suggested/demanded therapy, but we would have been so much better off if we hadn’t waited 10 years to do it. I think a good, neutral way to approach it is to point out that you’re supposed to be making joint decisions now and you sometimes feel like he values his parent’s input more than yours, which in turn makes you feel like you have less control over and input into the decision, which makes you feel pretty dismissed and otherwise shitty. And because you’re both having trouble talking to each other about it for various reasons, it might be easier to bring in a third party to moderate your discussion.
That was easy to type and it’s what I wish I had said (or even emailed) calmly and rationally to my husband, but mostly there was a bunch of screaming in our house for a long time and the request/demand came up repeatedly in the screaming, but neither one of us acted on it until it got so bad I really didn’t know if I could stay married to him.
Even if you don’t want to go see a therapist, you might be able to make your husband understand that you want more control over making decisions without making him feel bad about his parents. That horribly awkward therapy speak where you use lots of sentences starting with “I” instead of “you” really works for defusing minefield-laden conversations like this in my experience. I’ve learned to say things like, “I know your mom would never buy a house with xyz characteristics, but I’d feel better informed if we got a contractor’s opinion or talked to our friends who live in similar houses.” And a lot of times he’ll tell his mom whatever info we find out, trying to change her mind, only to figure out that he had been relying on an an offhand comment she made years ago that she barely remembered.
I also do a lot of pre-emptive planning about the location and context of advice/input we got when we were first married. It’s a lot easier to get your husband to ask his mom for pointers on having a dinner party when you’re out to dinner with your in-laws in a neutral location than to watch him let her rearrange your buffet table or hide the “tacky” hand soap in your bathroom.
God, I could obviously type/talk about this all day. I really do feel for you – it’s such a lonely and frustrating position to be in. Good luck in whatever you end up doing about it!
I appreciate this so, so much. My boyfriend’s mom (enabled by his dad) threatened to have a heart attack if we moved in together (four years ago, four years into our relationship, after we had already picked a place and were ready to sign a lease), so… we didn’t. He says that will never happen again, but how can I tell if he’s never had to face off against her since?
Anyway. We’re currently long distance, but not for too much longer, and I’ve been bringing up the importance of premarital / couples therapy pretty consistently to try to get him ready. I think just the number of times its been brought up is making him see it as more acceptable.
Hm. My husband is from a culture where “a close relationship with your parents” is a life goal up there with “having friends” and “getting out of bed nearly every day” as far as thinking of himself as a worthwhile human being goes.
I find a lot of advice columns are really shitty at approaching this. They think of things in the “you can make your own family, cut toxic people out of your life” way, and that… that would make him feel like a bad person forever, and also mean that everyone in his culture would think that he is bad and I am worse. There might be a line that his parents would cross where we’d risk that, but we haven’t gotten halfway to it yet.
This might not be your problem at all! But if it is, then nibble around the edges of the problem by say, having scheduled interactions that you can gird yourself for, or having a rule that you BOTH need to know about (and approve) the visits of anyone stopping by.
We are also dealing with it and both sides have quickly picked up on using the “We’re Team [Name & Name]!” mantra. It has served us well as a POSITIVE reminder to the other person that, hey! it’s not just about you anymore whenever something like this comes up.
I have some friends I haven’t been quite sure what to do with for quite some time. We grew up together, shared an apartment in college, even settled down in the same new state. The big problem is, in the past few years I discovered feminism and they didn’t.
Now I have all sorts of thoughts. It’s difficult when they don’t understand why mocking a fat woman on TV isn’t harmless. At the same time, there was a time in my life when I was them! At some point, I put the pieces together. Just because people don’t share the same beliefs doesn’t mean they never will, nor does it mean that even if they never put those pieces together that they’re bad people. I think we all try to be good people to the best of our abilities…
When I think about them, or when I’m with them, sometimes I realize I’m bracing myself. Sometimes things go smoothly. Sometimes they don’t. At the same time, I feel like I spend more time worrying about what might go wrong or how they will compromise my values than they ever have come close to. And I constantly question whether I’m making excuses to prevent losing relationships that have brought so much value to my life over time, or whether ditching them would be hasty and self-righteous of me.
BLARG.
I had a friend like this – she always made fun of people and generally did all of the things I am trying really, really hard to stop doing. So one night while we were hanging out and she said something awful, I just started talking about it. I told her I was changing myself and that I didn’t want to be that person anymore and we had a really long discussion about feminism and kindness and self-esteem and all that stuff. It was great to get it out there, and I don’t feel like I’m bracing for stuff when we hang out. However, she still doesn’t quite “get” it, and I think she wants to call herself a feminist without actually going deeper into what that word means or how she really treats people. So I don’t think the friendship will last ultimately, but getting everything out on the table was great for both of us.
I think the key here is to also have other friends who do share more of the thoughts and convictions that you have. They can be internet/long distance friends, even! I spent a year and a half being usually the only woman in a room full of white cishet dudes, all of whom were generally decent but not particularly progressive, and the only way I could deal with it – even though I genuinely liked them – was by cultivating and maintaining some very close online relationships with progressive women via tumblr. I needed the balance and validation and the space to express my frustration with those guys. And as a result, I’m still friendly with many of them even though none of us live in the same place anymore, and I didn’t lose my goddamn marbles. (I did very rarely start actual shit over things these guys said, but I was able to keep the frequency down because of that outlet.)
Great post. Self-awareness helps a lot but I still can’t work out what to do about my base level of rage. I’ve been furious for as long as I can remember and I’ve just about stopped finding things to pin it on in the people around me but man it is always bubbling.
Oh yes, though I’m struggling with depression, not rage. I’m at the point were I am very self-aware. I know my self-destructive behaviors, I know when I’m reverting to them, I believe I know why most of the time, but I haven’t been able to stop myself from enacting said behaviors. It’s extremely frustrating.
You know, I’ve just had one of those fadeouts. We were friends for 25 damned years, and once we’d been seeing each other less and less for a long time, and finally she’d canceled/canceled/canceled/not rescheduled getting together the month my mother died, and I’d let her birthday go by without a word, and I thought, “Ok then, so we’re divorced. That should probably have happened a while ago.” But then there was, What does _she_ think happened with us? Because I know that I think she was making some piss-poor choices, and I was tired of comforting her and biting my tongue, and I couldn’t stand the way she was raising her kid, and hated having my kid around hers. But why did she drop me? Advice she didn’t want to hear? Not disguising well enough that I think he daughter is a spoiled mean girl and it’s basically her fault? This was a mutual failure. Where does she think I failed?
One of those times when you have to get closure all by yourself, but I keep picking at it. My heart is kind of broken.
This was a mutual failure. Where does she think I failed?
I have been asking myself the same thing about some of my quietly fizzling out friendships – I still care immensely about these friends and feel happy when I’m with them, but we just don’t give our friendship any care/attention. We don’t make an effort to find common free time in our wildly divergent work schedules, we don’t seek each other out even to do tiny things like say “I saw this and thought of you.” The fiance of one of my oldest friends reaches out to me more often that my friend does. At the same time… how often do I reach out to her? I’m working harder to become cognizant of the role that I play in these situations and to imagine how my (in)actions are being perceived by my friends. It seems so basic when you lay it out like that, but I feel like it was a huge thing that I was willfully neglecting for a long time.
I totally get this feeling. I have a friend who I have been frustrated/angry/disappointed with almost constantly for the last few years. But her life and my life have both been challenging and we have supported each other as well as treated each other poorly.
Recently we had a blowout of the most severe kind. I am almost relieved that it’s over, but I also still have all sorts of yucky feelings about how she must have been feeling about me to treat me the way she did…
UGH. Let me know if you figure out how to let it go, cuz I sure haven’t!
I’m looking forward to the day I really understand and can live #7. Because it’s so hard when you have the wrong patterns of behavior, and you want to take control of things, and all that codependent bullshit. It’s going to take me a long time to figure out, I think. But I have time.
“it’s important to remember that you don’t get to decide how other people show love. You can only choose to accept their love or not.”
This one killed me, especially as a person in her 30s who is still devoting an inordinate amount of time on wanting her mother to express love the “right way” (aka not the way she does). Maybe I oughta give up on that, huh?
If you can give it up, honestly it’s really freeing. I used to want my sister to want to be close to me, wanted her to be interested in my life. Then I realized it just wasn’t going to happen. We’re very different from each other and while I understand how she wants to live her life, I don’t think she understands why I want to live the way I do, so she distances herself. Once I accepted that we have a better relationship when I take the pressure off both of us to stay in touch, I felt so much better. Now when I hear from her I enjoy it instead of feeling annoyed that she doesn’t do it more. I know she’s touching base because she wants to, instead of because I’ve repeatedly reached out.
i want more!!!!!!!! I want more wisdom from Emily Gordon.
Former social worker here, and I can’t echo #1 enough. I have a fantasy of teaching a class for college freshmen called “Adulting 101”. The entire first semester would be apologies.
Wow that was AMAZING! Thank you for sharing!
I am going to try out “that is inappropriate” for sure.
After my last brutal girl friend breakup, it took me years to even try to be friends with a girl again. I became one of those “hang out with guys only” girls because there was less openness, therefore less risk. I was actually scared of other women, and assumed they would all hate me/be mean 🙁
I’m better now, and have a few women friends, but I still find it a little trepidatious.
This may sound facile, but for baseline rage, for me getting some exercise on a very regular schedule really helps – in the short term as an immediate outlet, but especially over the long term. And you can tailor the intensity of what you're doing to the level of the bubbling. I'm no star athlete by any means, but it has really made a difference for me.
"Also, if someone tells you she has a hard time maintaining friendships with women: RUN, do not walk. You will not be the one person who fixes that pattern."
YES.
I wanted to break off a friendship for over a year and half but it was difficult because not only did we used to hang out ALL THE TIME but we also worked together. Additionally we traveled frequently for work and generally had to to always share hotel rooms etc. so, as you could probably imagine it was terribly difficult to attempt a separation. My very first instinct about her when we met was that I didn't trust her. And early in our friendship, she told me how she had a hard time maintaining friendships with her other female friends. I began to notice too that she would constantly make snide remarks and judgmental comments about any female who appeared to be more successful than her and would try to "one-up" those that she deemed less successful. It was apparent she suffered from insecurity and "competed" with other females constantly.
I saw all these red flags, but unfortunately (or fortunately) my nature is to see the best in people, plus, if I knew beforehand the root of her issues, I felt that I could understand her better. But, these types of people will be good to you until they think you start to pose a threat to them, which predictably, the better I did and the more accolades I was getting, is exactly what happened. I got laid off a couple months back, but this helped to cut ties with her. Unfortunately she's decided in the past couple weeks to be relentless about trying to reconnect, but it's not going to happen.
If you don't mind my asking–how exactly did your friend handle it? I take it, not so directly, if you're not entirely sure that's what happened? Is there something you'd rather she had done differently? I'm just wondering if there's a better and a worse way to handle it, given the absence of such a script…
Never become the girlfriend of a man who does not believe in apologies.
See, I'm one of those people who tells it like it is. There is much that needs to be said outloud that too many people are afraid or unwilling to say, and I'm the person who will often say those thing. Sorry, but I disagree here. However, I do think that brutal honesty can be tempered with tact and diplomacy, but not all the time. Sometimes a brutally honest opinion is what is needed, and I don't care what the woman who wrote this blog article says.
great article! it took me awhile to see a lot of what she has said, could of used some this advice before! the friendship and family points really hit home with me lately!
As a therapist I can certify that “that’s inappropriate” is the Sonic Screwdriver of interpersonal relations.
As a therapist I can certify that "that's inappropriate" is the Sonic Screwdriver of interpersonal relations.
#11 always posting “except me as I am” meme crap on Facebook but the moment anybody else dares to be themselves they’re intolerant condescending assholes.
“A note: I don’t disapprove of fadeaways with friends you no longer want to hang out with, just because the awkwardness and pain is so intense.”
oh god, as someone who’s been on the “???where did my friend go???” end of a fadeaway, I can’t condone them in good faith. For truly toxic friendships, avoidance may be your only option, and I respect that, but it’s incredibly painful and disorienting to be ditched like that.