Dear Aunt Acid,
I’ve got this friend who comes from a clouded place, and I’m deeply concerned about her emotional wellbeing. Even when she’s good, she seems to struggle to take any joy in it, as if perpetually waiting for the other shoe to drop. And when she hits a low, she really bottoms out, to the point where even the self-care she usually aces begins to falter. She gets paralyzed by her anxiety, almost to the point of catatonia, so she ends up lying on the couch crying in silence, afraid to move — sometimes for days on end. I’ve spent the last few years encouraging her to find and see a therapist. (Her work insurance will definitely cover the expense.) She has padded gingerly in that direction, and has even gotten herself on a few waiting lists, but has never progressed further. I’m growing concerned that by continuing to provide nonjudgmental emotional support while not getting her closer to addressing the underlying issues, I may have crossed the line from supporter to enabler.
I feel I should be doing more to actively push her towards seeking some kind of formal intervention. Do you have any advice about the proper role for a friend in this situation? One thorny problem: I feel I should be setting firmer boundaries, but I genuinely do not know how to pull back or withdraw, even partially, from someone whose mental health issues are partly rooted in abandonment and social anxiety.
–Running Low On Spoons
Dear Spoons,
Think of depression like a rhino sitting on a person’s chest. The person wants to get up. The person knows that standing up would be a lot more fun than lying flat and squashed. It’s just, there’s this rhino, you know? And it’s so much bigger than the person is.
You’re being a good, supportive, encouraging friend to a person who’s been pancaked, and who can only do so much to help herself. I understand it’s frustrating. I understand that you want to see progress, because under most circumstances people can make progress, and progress is rewarding both to experience and to witness. You may even expect to see progress as time passes, because you’ve been trained to expect it from reading personal essays and watching TV.
Some of us don’t get better, though. We just get older. Or we get better for our own reasons, on our own time. Do you know how long I went without therapy, how many panic and anxiety attacks I suffered through, how many times I threw up in public – on subway platforms; in front of churches; on the curb halfway out of a cab – before I finally Got Help? Years. It was years and years and years. My friends must have been at their wits’ end with me. My first-boyfriend-then-husband certainly was.
It wasn’t like I didn’t know therapy would help. I knew it the same way smokers know that cigarettes will probably kill them. But smokers won’t quit because you hound them, and friends won’t finally do the hard, frightening work of finding the right therapist simply because you show signs of losing patience and wondering if maybe you should be “actively pushing” them toward more productive choices.
My friends and lovers helped me best by being there. By talking openly about their own experiences with therapy. By listening when I voiced my fears about therapy and what it would mean about me if I went. By reminding me that everyone is broken in various ways, and that seeking help isn’t an admission of weakness so much as a signal of strength.
Your providing “nonjudgmental emotional support” is not, as you fear, enabling your friend. It’s helping her survive. I’m not even sure what “enabling” means in this context. She’s not shooting heroin. She’s not masterminding crimes. She’s trying her hardest to squirm out from under an enormous beast. On good days she can do it, at least for a little while. On bad days, she can’t. She may or may not ever be able to get out from under it for good.
How can you help? Really see the rhino, because it’s there. She’s not being lazy when she gets stuck on that couch; she’s suffering. Your job isn’t to fix her. It’s to empathize. To remind her that help is available, and that your help is also available.
Take breaks if you need to, even from the friendship (you seem perhaps a tad over-invested?). Take care of yourself, too. Everyone has limits. But remember, as much as it hurts you to see her like this, she’s hurting far worse.
Dear Aunt Acid,
I recently realized I’m more conservative than most of my friends by a wider margin than I previously thought. This is a combination of (a) issues coming up in conversation that hadn’t before, (b) me getting older and braver and less sway-able by the opinions of others, and (c) me coming out of a college liberal phase, while they’re actually liberal. I’ve been friends with people I disagree with since my friends and I were old enough to have opinions, and it hasn’t ruined any friendships so far. But I’m starting to worry that they don’t all feel the same. They frequently talk about their views as though the natural and inevitable consequence of caring about [health/a particular group of people/whatever], so I worry that they think I’m an uncaring jerk.
Example: A while ago, a very tense discussion with “Alice” ended in me saying, “Look, I have to go study, so I can’t keep talking about this. But I love you.” She said “I love you too. But I also love [group of people].” I said I did too, and I thought it was unfair and unkind to imply that I didn’t, and then ducked into my room before I started crying. That was right before a school break, and I caught Alice before she left and said I wanted to say goodbye and I love you since we’d ended on a sour note before. She said, “Yeah. Bye, love you” and didn’t make a lot of eye contact. Neither of us brought it up after break, but now I dodge certain topics in conversation. I can’t tell if this is just a more mature and pernicious version of my childhood fear that people only talked to me because their mothers told them to be nice to annoying people, or if I’m actually in danger of losing my friends. How do I tell, and if I am, is there anything I can do about it?
–Current Paranoia/Future Loneliness
Dear Loneliness,
I’d prefer to tell you you’re only being paranoid, but what on Earth did you say that prompted Alice to reply, “I love you, but I love [group of people] too”? You can hold conservative views without disparaging, or seeming to disparage, whole subsets of the population.
If your friendship with Alice and co. matters to you, bring up the issue of political differences and ask them frankly whether and how they think you can get past what divides you. Because dodging topics isn’t a great long-term strategy. As Frances the badger says, “Do you want to be careful or do you want to be friends?” (More about Frances, who is like a furrier Ramona, here.)
Maintaining relationships despite clashing on important issues is possible, even in this age of wearing our sincerely held beliefs on our Facebook sleeves. The key, usually, is to underline your respect for the other person, even while you disagree with the other person’s positions. Part of being respectful is not proselytizing, even if you think the other person is bound for the warm place.
I have a wonderful friend of almost a decade now who does not believe in carbon dating and who does believe in predestination, who likes Libertarians and doesn’t like movies. (Luckily at least she appreciates When Harry Met Sally.) On paper, perhaps we shouldn’t be able to overcome our differences. AND YET. Being friends with her is great. We get to have spirited, often surprising conversations. And we get to feel open-minded just for enjoying the other’s company.
What allows us to maintain perspective is that both of us have plenty of like-minded companions as well, people with whom we don’t have to explain some key part of ourselves. It may help you to seek out some fellow conservatives to add to your social circle. But don’t give up on Alice and co. We don’t always benefit, as people or as a society, from siloing ourselves off with our missiles and our assumptions. Tell your friends that they’re important to you, that you respect them, and that there’s more that unites you than divides you – like presumably you all read The Toast! If, in the future, arguments start getting heated, maybe you can agree on a safe word to shut down fights. I suggest “Mallory.”
The thing with a situation like LW2 is in is that sometimes during spirited debates people lose their sense of nuance. It’s possible that LW2 is a horrible monster who wishes pain/suffering on large swaths of people, but I’m going to give them the benefit of the doubt and say that it’s likely that Alice (and perhaps LW2) are both getting overly heated and resorting to grand, sweeping overgeneralizations (which can be hurtful and, you know, reductive).
Sometimes two people who have very, very different beliefs have to be “small doses” friends and sometimes they have to be “friends who do not ever talk about [Issue X].” LW2 gets to make the call on their side as Alice does on hers. I hope both of you can come to an arrangement that feels good and calm!
And being “friends who don’t talk about [X]” doesn’t mean you’re not close friends, either. It just means you’ve looked at a thing and decided, maturely, as adults, that your friendship is healthier if you don’t set yourselves up for failure by continuing to argue about that thing.
For real. One of my best friends is an off-grid antivaxxer who thinks the twin towers were an inside job and entertains other conspiracy theories, including, I suspect, some about ‘global elites’ (Jews). She’s also the only person in a very wide social circle who had anything to say to my ex when he hit me, and her strength of character always inspires me-I often think ‘what would she say/do here’ when I’m in a tight spot. We just.don’t.talk.about the other stuff, by tacit agreement, and that is a mark of our mutual respect.
I should add, I have nothing but a very slight aside on the global elites bit, but i swerved hard when that came up because I do not want to fucking know. I was massaging her pregnant feet at the time with her toddler ‘brushing’ my hair, and we can avoid that shit because intimacy is wayyyy more politically important to both of us,
God stop talking to yourself
I should ALSO add that the relationship is not totally smooth for me because of these constraints, and i understand our differences might mean the end of our friendship at some point-if she did a Holocaust denial or something-but I don’t want that yet.
You’re having some good conversations with yourself and I’m enjoying it. But I agree that friends are often more than just a sum of their parts, and sometimes it’s possible to be friends with people who on paper might sound like they have deal-breaker views on certain topics. The fact that she was the one friend to speak against your ex shows that she has a good heart. I think a person’s heart and a person’s ideas aren’t the same thing.
Ugh yes I’ve been in way too many arguments with my out-there hippie friends (that’s what you get when your college social circle was a bunch of stoners, I guess?). I once got into an actual shouting match with one of them about whether or not we should be building moon colonies– I thought we were both being tongue-in-cheek when the conversation started but it turns out she was super serious. Also– the transhumanist/libertarian who wants to eliminate the minimum wage, the earth mother type who claims to have an eco-feminist case for being anti-abortion, and a variety of people who do not believe in voting (what we need is a revolution, man), store-bought produce, or standard hygiene. Many of those people have been truly wonderful friends, though!
I’m kind of… interested? in hearing the supposedly eco-feminist case against reproductive choice? but then again maybe I don’t want to know.
To be honest I could not reconstruct it for you, all I remember is it was ridiculous
Depending on the brand of eco-feminism, it might not be all that different from the stated right-wing case against reproductive choice (i.e., all life is sacred), just flowered up with language about “connectedness” and possibly Gaia.
I’ve definitely been in situations where I’ve had the strong temptation to blurt out something really snide and probably unfair to someone I disagree with, and I have been in arguments where someone characterized my own position in a really hyperbolic and twisted way, too. I’m going to guess that people probably aren’t writing letters to the Toast about how to balance their friendships with, say, their deep hatred of immigrants? But who knows.
Wow, L2 is a tough one. I am having trouble generalizing from it: there are definitely things I disagree with my friends on, politically. Just the other night I got into a heated discussion with a friend about credit cards, of all things, and whether they are evil or not. We just got our hackles up because we got on the defensive about our respective choices. In that case, it was about respect. I respect him and his credit card choices, he respects me and my credit card choices, but at the moment, we felt attacked. So reassuring each other of our mutual respect and avoiding the topic is a fine solution.
However, saying something disparaging about a subset of the population is something that many people would find more generally damaging and disrespectful. I don’t think it would be fair to ask one friend to just “avoid the topic” so that the other can continue to hold a belief that the first finds damaging– that sort of implicates the disapproving friend, if that makes sense?
Yeah, that letter is so vague that it’s hard to draw a conclusion. Like, “we should regulate payday loan companies vs. we should not regulate them” is something that I have debated (heatedly!) with friends without any fallout. But I don’t, for example, stay friends with people who think that gay marriage should be illegal, because to my mind that’s a moral question, and if you’re wrong on that, it calls a lot of other things about you into question.
Yeah, exactly. There are opinions, and then there are hateful opinions, and we can get mad about either type, but healthy friendships can persist through the former while the latter is mainly non-negotiable.
Yes, this is one of those things where I’ve actually been on every possible side of this sort of debate and I’m not sure I have the information to judge the LW one way or another. I’ve had friends rightly point out that my position was wrong due to unexamined privilege, I’ve gotten upset because a friend voted on issue X in a way that had negative consequences in my own life or the lives of people I cared about, and I’ve had to draw boundaries that my activist friends thought were damaging to The Cause about how much sleep and study time and general complacency with societal norms I was willing to sacrifice.
So… LW, it’s time to do some genuine soul-searching, but maybe the end result of that soul-searching will be that you and your friend are just not great at debating with each other on certain topics?
Yeah, my ex and I used to have big debates about the role of Government in providing welfare and they were great because we had similar end goals, the debate was just about how best to achieve them.
Then as we got older, his views stayed the same, but his supporting argument changed from ‘I think this is the most effective way to get services to the most people’ to ‘I don’t want my taxes (lol – you are living off me, you don’t pay taxes) going to support those lazy welfare cheats’ and what was an often heated but good-natured debate became something ugly and cruel. Instead of long afternoons arguing in the pub, it was being yelled at, talked over and ignored for holding ‘abhorrent’ views in my own home.
I’m assuming LW2 is a Toastie, so her disagreements probably fall closer to the ‘good natured debate on means to an end’ side, but I also know what a sick feeling it is realising that someone you thought you loved can be so callous to fellow human beings.
I’m a big fan of reading this whole thing http://www.derailingfordummies.com and then, of course, recognizing that it’s written as satire and doing the opposite! I consider myself a conscientious, compassionate, spirited liberal; I also didn’t realize how often I derailed others’ arguments until I read a lot of these. It’s possible the LW2 is making some conversational errors without realizing it. Maybe her friends can read it, too!
Frances! I loved those books!
I’m tempted to buy that one (as a 24-year-old) just because that quote is so good. I have some friends I have to be careful around (for non-political reasons) and need to remind myself to ask that question on occasion.
Same here.
You should! It’s perfect for when you’re struggling with toxic friendships. I read it to my daughter and was like, “I could have used this in college.” (It’s also HILARIOUS.)
Ugh ugh ugh I wasn’t gonna comment on this, but I can’t keep my big mouth shut. So regarding LW2, has anyone noticed that it’s always the more conservative people who wonder why we can’t just all be friends? At least, that’s been my observation (having formerly been quite active in the rockabilly world you can imagine the politics there). It’s like they don’t understand that the attitudes they condone, the people they vote into office, the policies they support, they are literally killing people every day. So no, I’m afraid some of us can’t look past differences when differences include things like whether women have a right to determine our own health care or where (whether!) trans people can safely use public restrooms.
Now, I’m absolutely not saying that LW2 is That Sort of Conservative (I would assume not, if they’re reading and writing to The Toast). I don’t intend to call them out or whatever, but I think LW2 needs to understand that a lot of us are really tired of playing nice with people who side with those trying to deny us basic human rights every god damned day of our lives. No, we’re not interested in being friends with people who feel like they went through a college liberal phase and no longer support our politics.
“I’ve been friends with people I disagree with since my friends and I were old enough to have opinions, and it hasn’t ruined any friendships so far.”
I’m sorry to break it to you, LW2, but, um, I think it’s likely that at least a few of those supposedly rock-solid friendships…aren’t. They’re just too polite, too shy, too sad to tell you. I agree with Aunt Acid that it’s important to have conversations about if any of your differences are dealbreakers. But I would like to add that if the liberal friends tell you they are dealbreakers, you respect that immediately and walk away from the friendship(s). Some might be cool with it, some might not. For those that aren’t, please don’t badger them to work things out or make them feel bad or responsible for the breakup.
Breaking up with friends really really sucks, LW2, and I hope you don’t have to.
+1,000 (this is what I was ham-handedly trying to get at in my own comment, but you’ve made it crystal clear and well-written. Thank you!)
Same here 🙂 I know “siloing ourselves off” is always framed as such a bad thing, but when it comes to choosing friends, who we hang out with to have a good time and feel supported, it’s really not. It’s no fun if friendships end over that stuff, but it’s not inherently bad.
Exactly. You can’t choose your family or your coworkers, but you can choose your friends, and everyone has the right (and the need) to feel safe somewhere in their life.
Right!?! And I wonder what LW means by ‘college liberal phase.’ That sets off my Patronizing Alarm, but good.
I did not want to be the one to say anything, but since you started it… i hates the “college liberal”. I have encountered a few and always been really confused when they were like “you’re ruining our friendship with your politics”. I am like “but my politics haven’t changed, but you went from granola-hippy-cars-are-bad to buying your four year old an ATV” or “why were you hanging out with me at the LGBTQ+ centre if you are scared of the gay bar and secretly were just looking for a husband?”
Note – examples may or may not be pulled from real life.
I know that person! Spooky… Or the guy who insisted that plastic wrap was evil 25 years ago but now is a lawyer defending polluters. I guess that Sierra club membership was just a resume builder, dude. But, hey, I MAY take this stuff too seriously.
Just want to say…buying your four-year-old an ATV is not only hypocritical, but largely irresponsible in every possible context. That’s astounding.
Haha, “it is an ATV designed for hids, and we also bought a helmet, I don’t see the problem here?”
Amazing.
Alberta, AKA Texas North.
lease don’t badger them to work things out or make them feel bad or responsible for the breakup.
I would have saved myself a lotta heartache if I had understood that this is what was going on at a younger age.
Okay, ngl, I haven’t ever received that gif as a response to something I said and the fact that you used it as a reply to a comment that I was a leetle worried about posting makes me feel good. I am, apparently, even more invested in gifs than I thought and I didn’t realize that was possible.
This young man and his cat are likely to send me into a diabetic coma.
It was the only possible reply!
YES
Maybe I shouldn’t weigh in, but the site is ending soon [shruggie] and this is a very good comment, so thank you for making it.
I have a really hard time with all of this, as someone from a libertarian-leaning [white] family who can’t just cut off everyone I STRONGLY disagree with on issues of great importance. It took me years to realize how strongly I DID disagree with my family on lots of things, and even longer to figure out what my own opinions really were. Lots of people were patient with me when I was trying to figure it out. I’ll always be grateful for that.
I find I have less patience than I should, perhaps, with some friends now, precisely because I DO have to spend a lot of time/energy maintaining family relationships despite the strain of political differences. Like, if I was NOT spending that energy patiently explaining to my own relatives why I don’t think they can or should vote for Trump, maybe I’d have more for other people in my life. But there’s only so much to go around. And it DOES feel quite personal sometimes. I don’t think they’re bad people at all — it’s more about the amount of time and effort I have at my disposal, as opposed to a serious moral judgment about them.
Oh, and I find various professed liberals real exhausting, too.
For me, it’s easier to find a balance if the people have been in my life for a long time. They’re grandfathered in, you know? I can’t say I go looking for lots of NEW relationships with, for example, people who complain about “political correctness.” I don’t feel it’s my place to judge anyone’s heart, regardless of how long i’ve known them, but if someone doesn’t really see or believe in your experiences, in your basic dignity, it’s hard to really trust them.
Ultimately, EVERY relationship takes work. Some require a lot more than others. If it’s too much, it’s just too much, and it doesn’t make one person closed-minded or judgmental or anything else.
The exhaustion experience – it’s real. I got into some civil, unspoken tension a while back with my companion over my draconian Facebook friend list policies vs. his habit of keeping in contact with old acquaintances who were once perfectly fine but have aged into the worst manifestations of the local conservative Id and now are in the habit of speaking and behaving terribly. We mulled it over together over the course of several tipsy philosophical conversations, and ultimately came to the conclusion that I, as a lifelong persnickety feminist and by nature somewhat ragey northerner from a liberal family full of union members and educated snarkers who has somehow ended up in Ala(fucking)bama, simply do not have the endurance level for fuckwittery that he built in the course growing up in the flagrantly hostile sociopolitical and family environments he had to somehow, miraculously, patiently endure and overcome to be the decent person he is today. He can handle a higher amount of sociopolitical strain in his associations because he’s just weathered it all his life and it’s part of the landscape now, whereas I have to expend so much energy just staying calm despite the local levels of ambient cognitive dissonance that when it comes down to the associations I actually get to choose, I curate them pretty carefully with an eye to my own stress levels. It’s not because I can’t handle acknowledging differences of opinion; it’s because I don’t have the mental and emotional resources left to deal with people who are absolutely vile about it in what is supposed to be my online personal space.
(Side note: said companion has also noted that I’ve influenced him to speak up more when his old acquaintances are being jackasses. He’s good people, this one.)
One of my brothers once got after me for telling people on facebook that I didn’t want to argue on a subject and would just delete any comments trying to start something–“don’t you want to hear the other side?” No, I don’t; I already hear it plenty, if I want to hear a reasoned case for the other side it’s easy to find, and my own facebook page is mostly for me to socialize, arrange my social life, and share goofy memes.
He said he couldn’t really argue with that, lol.
Yes, this. The devil? HAS PLENTY OF ADVOCATES ALREADY.
Also, is it me or is using “I love you” at the end of a contentious political debate sort of manipulative? Like, if you don’t believe that gay people have basic rights or everyone’s entitled to health care, I don’t really care if you love me or not.
It seems totally manipulative.
I don’t know, it seems more like the person was trying to indicate that the relationship was still okay and that there were no hard feelings on her part despite the disagreement.
Your companion and I would have much in common, I imagine. I was once accused of being a Christian apologist in a thread because I refuted the Christian anti-gay stance through a Biblical lens. My accuser immediately went into “that’s why the Bible isn’t…” and I was like, “I know, but…” If you start out a conversation by telling someone that everything they believe is nonsense, they’ve already shut you out. You’re not going to get anywhere by tearing down everything that they hold dear. Who cares what their religious beliefs are? It’s going to be a lot easier to get them to accept gay people than it is to get them to give up their beliefs. Pick your battles….
oh, but! It bothers me a bit when people say “you’re not going to change anyone’s mind” as a way of dismissing everyone who disagrees or telling you not to debate. Maybe most people do not change, but SOME really can and do. Even if they don’t always change political parties, they can change in other ways — see nuance and worth where they might not have before.
I know there are conservative friends I totally alienated when I started talking more frankly about racism. I also know there are conservative friends who are STILL way more conservative than I am who have started thinking/talking more about race because I was able to spend the time/energy on that work and those relationships. If you can’t spend that time/energy, no judgments! It’s exhausting, as I said above. But if you can and WANT to, I don’t think it’s ALWAYS worthless.
I have a friend who literally had a poster of Ronald Reagan over his bed in college who is now an intersectional feminist. But he’s one of those folks I’ve known long enough that he was, as you put it, grandfathered in.
You can change people’s minds. Not everyone, but talking about tough personal stuff and sharing a perspective that they have never had to consider makes a difference sometimes.
My parents still self-identify as conservatives, but they’ve done nearly a complete 180 on LGBT rights, which they credit in part to me. That feels good, not gonna lie.
Oh yes — the huge cultural shift on LGBT rights within a generation has been the most astounding phenomenon of the 21st century so far, I think — I don’t know if there’s anything to compare it to. There are so many cases like your parents! And it’s really because more and more people started coming out.
Absolutely. Most of my friends are liberal because most of my family isn’t, and when your own family members vote for people who support anti-gay policies when you, yourself, are gay, you don’t have much energy left for homophobic friends. However, I absolutely treasure the political discussions I have with one particular conservative friend.
Our relationship is interesting, and we weren’t ever really friends in the real sense when we actually knew each other. It’s come about on Facebook, and it’s wonderful. I was artsy, not particularly popular, and in the band. He was popular and on the football team. But we’re both informed and respectful and can discuss politics without name calling or believing everything our side says without fact-checking.
Our conversations are great, and he reminds me not to look at the entire conservative right as my enemy. That Louis C.K. show, which was problematic in many ways, definitely has a point here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3iRM1iN-3a4
And do you know what? Because we’ve both been respectful toward each other and actually LISTEN, he’s changing. In the two or three years we’ve been conversing regularly, he went from a staunch, conservative Republican, to someone who’s now registered as an independent and will likely be voting for Hillary Clinton. Not because he’s become a liberal, but because (I like to think, at least in part) he’s been able to discuss things with people whose reasons for being liberal aren’t “all conservatives are evil.”
That’s wonderful! And not to diminish your own influence at all, but I think we can also thank the GOP for marching toward Looney Tunes land. They’ve lost so many “staunch, conservative Republicans” who still have a core of human decency and compassion. Fingers crossed this will be glaringly clear in November, as it was in 2012 even with a moderate Republican candidate.
This.
I remember, growing up, that I could disagree respectfully with non-fundie Republicans about some stuff: I didn’t agree with their stances on financial stuff or gun control, but there seemed like there could be middle ground. (Reagan, FFS, was “liberal” on those issues compared to the current clowncar.)
These days? No. I can be civil to people who ID as conservative, if friends/family/job require as much, and I don’t judge other people for remaining friends with them…as long as they don’t try to defend those people to me. Because: no.
Oh, definitely. He wouldn’t have ended up there just based on our discussions. GOP madness is probably 98% responsible for his altering views, having in-laws who are proud residents of Looney Tunes land probably makes up for another 1%, at least, and I might have had a 1% influence. If this election isn’t a wakeup call for Republicans, I don’t know what will be.
Nikki, I know you weren’t in any way asking for this, but I want to say “thank you” to you for being willing to put in that energy and time and–more importantly–put yourself out there as a target for some of the ugliest trolls ever to help folks hear things (about race, about adoption, about feminism, all the things) that can help them grow and learn. You don’t have to do it but you do and I marvel at your grace and strength and general awesomeness (and I can’t wait for your book!). Ok, /gush.
This is so kind, thank you!!! Honestly, except for when trolls actually email or tweet terrible things at me, I have it so much better than most people who write about these topics because I have published a lot of things HERE, in a safe and moderated space.
I’ve been thinking a lot about what and how much I’ll want to say elsewhere, if comments aren’t moderated. And I’d be lying if i said I wasn’t already thinking about book reviews on Amazon and Goodreads. Like, fine if you do not like the book, that’s totally fair, but the idea of actual white supremacists going to town on those reviews makes me cringe a bit.
In terms of friendships and folks changing, I really was thinking of a few people I know who used to roll my eyes when I’d talk about racism and now do a fairly good job at being allies. My parents and I may never vote for the same presidential candidate, but they’ve listened to a lot of what I’ve said about my own adoption experience, and we have had some frank and important talks about race and how it was discussed (not discussed) in our family. Which has helped a lot, even if we still argue about immigration.
And I’VE changed a lot! I was raised in a politically unaffiliated (technically) but super right-leaning family, and there was definitely a years-long process by which I questioned 99% of the things I’d ever been taught and changed my views. So I’d never say change was impossible.
Absolutely. My family is all very conservative Mormon. I spend so much energy trying to get them to not get angry when I shop at Target now, or not to support all the crazy anti abortion laws popping up, etc. I just don’t have the energy to invite more people into my life where I will have to do the same thing.
Thank you once again, Nikki, for articulating something with so much truth.
My karate instructors became my second family when I was a teenager, and it was more than a decade later, when we started interacting on Facebook, that I realized some of them had really shitty opinions on stuff. And it kinda broke my heart that the woman who’s a grandmother-figure to me posts pictures celebrating the Confederate flag, but then I have to acknowledge she literally grew up in Mississippi sixty years ago, and I’m just glad it was never evident as I worked with her running her school with many diverse students.
At least it hasn’t gone much further than that. Her husband (not a grandfather-figure, but who taught me a hell of a lot of good and practical self defense) shared an image of Reagan cradling a baby monkey with the caption calling it “baby Obama,” and I fucking WENT OFF. (By which I mean I clearly told him I was both grieved and offended and disappointed that he would promote something so racist.)
The other instructor who was my grandfather-figure is actually a Democrat, but he’s also a Vietnam War vet, and his experiences then and afterward with the VA have made him extremely cynical about the government, to the point that he believes 9/11 was an inside job. At least that kind of opinion doesn’t hurt anyone, I think, not the way Holocaust denial would. And considering how he was impacted by the war and things like Agent Orange, I rather think, yeah, that’s his right to believe that.
so much yes. tangent from the LW, but i never want to end another conversation with someone telling me that “everyone is entitled to their opinions,” as a get-out-of-jail-free-card for spouting phobic and discriminatory ideology. i just want to nope right out of it. actually, you’re not “entitled” to hate speech & recognizing your worldview as hate speech is just the first step.
side note: if facebook & other social media platforms are comfortable censoring lady nipples and periods, why isn’t it comfortable censoring racism? hard to police, sure, but i feel like it should be possible to reinforce that *these are not innocuous thoughts.*
Sometimes I just want to say ‘Your opinion happens to be ignorant’ but enough about the extended family. 😉
Yup. I am related to enough people and have to be governed by enough politicians who are anti-LGBT that I do not want to be friends with more of them.
So, I am clearly not done stewing about this yet. I think the thing that REALLY hugs me about ‘college liberal phase’ is the unexamined assumption that liberalism is juvenile and naive while conservatism is the obvious result of maturity. That unchallenged assumption biases the conversation. I am not ok with that.
Also I am going to miss this space soo much.
Bugs not hugs.
Damn autocorrect.
that’s def a position a lot of conservatives take, but also lots of people don’t really hold views they like developed themselves from first principles using pure reason either way, and I’ve known plenty who will visibly bend more liberal when they’re in a predominantly liberal community (virtually every college campus) and swing conservative when they’re spending more time around conservatives, always kinda tending towards the average of their social space. It’s a real fucken delight when they remain shrilly judgemental of dissenting views all the while.
I thought the LW was saying that it was a phase for *her*, something she tried out because everyone around her was liberal, and then she realized she wasn’t. I didn’t see her as saying it’s a juvenile, naive thing in and of itself.
I had a former (male) boss who tried to talk me away from being liberal, because he said I was “a smart girl” but my “liberal college experience” tricked me into thinking that way. I beg your pardon, asshole, but I thought long and hard about my opinions, learned a ton about thinking and questioning before coming to conclusions, and quite frankly, resent the implication that my brain is so small that I’m easily duped and don’t put time and effort into forming my own opinion and sticking to it.
That’s totally the sort of thing that makes me furious!
Hahaha, I have a relative who would probably characterize me thusly.
Yes, I also had a coworker who served me the nonsense of “people tend to be Democrats when they’re young, Republicans when they’re older.” I told him my parents were Democrats, too.
This was also a case of us having dissenting politics, but I realized much later he was actually a pretty good guy despite it. We got off on really the wrong foot, because literally the first day I moved into the office with him, he 1) tried to invite me to his church and 2) expressed some strident opinions about the Israel-Palestine conflict, on the assumption that we should be basing our foreign policy on religious texts (i.e., the Bible). Consequently I kept him at an arm’s length, socially speaking (we still had to share that office for many months), and it wasn’t until near the end of the two years I worked on that client site that I realized his better qualities (he did try to help me out, defend me to our bosses, and looked the other way completely when I was clearly having a lot of personal issues for a few months).
I used to think that, but as I meet more people, I think that “college liberal phase” isn’t actually about students being young, unless you’re from a place where the assumption is that everybody goes to college. “College liberal phase” is often, in my experience, more about money and the perception of college as a period of leisure.
Excellently worded, glad you opened your big mouth and shared with the rest of us.
>I’m sorry to break it to you, LW2, but, um, I think it’s likely that at least a few of those supposedly rock-solid friendships…aren’t. They’re just too polite, too shy, too sad to tell you
I think this is a cruel thing to write to a person who professed to a lasting fear that their friends are secretly annoyed by them and only pretending to be friends out of politeness. We don’t know enough about LW2’s friendships to make that kind of statement.
“MALLORY” would solve most disputes, yeah yeah yeahhh <3
LW2, I think it’s important to consider how many political issues are also deeply personal. Like, I could disagree deeply with a friend about education policy, but if that friend had a kid in school I’d be holding back from the conversation because there’s a fine line there between that and “I think you’re parenting wrong.” Personally I have pulled back from otherwise lovely friendships where we disagreed on abortion, because it’s hard not to hear their opinion and not interpret it as I don’t trust you to make your own decisions and I prioritize my beliefs over your health and autonomy. I feel like it’s easy to fall into assuming your discussions are theoretical, when you’re actually discussing your friend’s friends and family.
I’ve also noticed over the past few years that as much as I like staying informed and thinking about politics and such, I find discussions with friends just…exhausting and unpleasant. And I’m talking about friends with whom I agree on everything! You say you’re coming out of a college liberal phase, and college politics often means a lot of passionate, informed discussion…and that takes a ton of energy. The kind of energy that tends to go downhill after college, and maybe your friends want time with you to be a restorative vacation from intellectual discussion. It feels a little like admitting defeat to boring adulthood to be like “I just want to talk about TV,” even if you know perfectly well that you’re still a smart, passionate person, doesn’t it? But when those serious conversations start feeling more draining than energizing, you don’t need to keep them up.
Love this comment Emily.
I had a spirited discussion with my husband yesterday where we disagreed about an issue and both fully understood why the other person felt the way they felt and could validate those feelings and I felt exhausted and shitty for hours.
SO, hard agree that sometimes ending (or seriously reducing) the friendship is the answer and even if it’s not, disengaging from discussions is a Good Idea.
it’s so exhausting! And yet I know there are people who find it energizing, because I see them posting every other day on FB or twitter something clearly intended to start a debate, and replying enthusiastically when it does.
I guess it’s a lot like the introvert/extrovert thing – does talking politics feel challenging in a good way or a bad way? Both are fine, but knowing which one you and your friends are is very very useful.
I’m recharged by conversations that have a brainstorming quality of sharing thoughts rather than a spirited debate or argument. Some people can’t seem to tell the difference, but it’s very obvious to me!
YES. Things that I thought were conversations that the other person clearly thought were debates make me feel as if I showed up with an oboe to play a woodwind duet and the other person brought a sledgehammer to dismantle an IKEA wardrobe.
But I can spin out ideas all day.
I think it might also be the current political climate? I feel so barraged by Issues and Politics through social media and major media (and I live in a swing state so it’s going to get worse before it gets better). I’m just tired about hearing about the same things over and over that I don’t want to talk about them anymore. Even with people with whom I can have civil, interesting discussions.
Yes yes yes. I am happy to discuss things and talk but that friend who just loves the fight and will take a ‘devil’s advocate’ position just for fun – I have to just say I’m sorry, I can’t do this, and leave. So emotionally exhausting. And they don’t and won’t understand because to them it’s just a logical discussion. Urgh.
Yep.
I’ve found that “debates” as such go two ways: either it’s a totally abstract issue, in which case I do not care, or it’s important enough that I don’t want to pull my punches, which means if you’re my friend and on the other side, we might not be friends afterwards.
If you’re my friend, discussions are much better. Like, I haaaaated the college “does God exist: have two hours of fighting” moments, but I’ve had some great times talking with friends where we describe our experiences with faith or lack thereof and then go order takeout.
Sort of the way I feel about board games. I can be really really invested in winning, or we can stay friends afterwards. Not both.
Yes– Mr. BHam tends to enjoy our discussions as a chance to marshal his thoughts and hone his views on a matter whereas I end up feeling alienated and overwhelmed. I have to be in a certain headspace to enjoy these kinds of debates, especially when I’m used to him and I being on the same page about almost everything (politically, morally, what have you).
Yeah, I think most of those looking to start debates aren’t doing it about issues that call into question the basic human rights of themselves or their closest loved ones. It’s usually for issues with much smaller stakes to them personally.
It’s like that time a few years ago, when Andrew Sullivan was still running his blog, that he took up again that awful “does this study indicate that IQ trends lower among people of African descent?” while claiming he was just engaging in an intellectual exercise. And TNC replied, essentially (but much more eloquently and persusasively), “Fuck. You.”
I have gotten to the point where I discuss politics very little, with anyone. If we are both on the same side, as most people I know are, it seems like a waste of time and preaching to the choir “I know, right”, “yeah, right”. And if we do not agree, most likely we are not going to change each other’s mind and it will be frustrating and not fun for either of us. So I just don’t.
Yeah, L2 is a tough one for me, mostly because I definitely know I have been Alice in some situation. Without knowing what was said it’s hard to judge the situation at all. I would suggest that L2 really reflect on what they said to lead Alice to believe she doesn’t love a certain group of people. Is Alice misunderstanding the situation? Or is something you said actually more harsh than you initially realized? Because there are some things that are easy to disagree on, but if someone is led to believe you are actively hostile to a group of people it’s hard to get over that.
I’ve been reading “Non-Violent Communication” and I’m intrigued by the concept of asking your conversational partner what they heard you say. On the rare occasion that information has been volunteered to me, I’ve been shocked by the difference between my intention and their interpretation. Could be a good exercise for LW2 to get some feedback for further reflection…
Whenever my husband and I fight, we usually have to take some time to do this because he and I will hear things very differently. Sometimes this is a language barrier thing, since I’m an immigrant, but more often than not it’s a difference in interpretation.
“Think of depression like a rhino sitting on a person’s chest. The person wants to get up. The person knows that standing up would be a lot more fun than lying flat and squashed. It’s just, there’s this rhino, you know? And it’s so much bigger than the person is.”
Thank you for this. It perfectly sums up what depression feels like without getting into all the nitty-gritty, and I plan on using it to explain myself (and others) to friends and family in the future.
Sometimes we can use opposing political views as a short hand for not holding the same values. What value were you and your friend arguing over? How much does it mean to you, and how much does it meant to her. You can have opposing approaches while still valuing the same thing: For instance, my husband is a libertarian-deregulator and I am like, I dunno, a marxian mercantilist. . . but what we fight over (bank regulation? free markets?) I never feel like he dosn’t value laborers, and he dosn’t think I hate small business or entrepreneurs. Its a differing approach to a shared value that we both everyone should be steadily employed and make decent money. I realize social issues (it sounds like you’re talking about a social issue with the “loving people” comment) can be more fraught, but I would try to find what your common ground and values are before dismissing each other . . .
^^ This is very good advice. It’s how I get along with and find common ground with several relatives who are more conservative than me but also thoughtful people. And I would venture that my opinions get more heard when I’m listening first than when I used to go into a conversation in full battle mode.
>go into a conversation in full battle mode.
Yes this. I often forget that other people aren’t as versed in social justice as I am, and so don’t really get the context. I’m mostly friends with white middle-class dudes, and it’s easy to forget the ignorance their privilege has afforded them.
So I try to listen to what they say, and realise i may have to patiently explain the context of why street harassment or being told to smile or being told that ‘not all men’ is frustrating and exhausting to me, or explain the concepts of justice vs equality and male privilege and other entry-level feminism/social justice topics before going on the WHAT YOU SAID IS WRONG AND BAD AND MAKES ME MAD attack. I mean, attack is never a very effective way of doing things, but I think i have startled people by being virulently against what they thought were fairly benign comments, and that makes people defensive.
I had some difficult discussions with my partner before I was able to explain that when he plays devil’s advocate and ‘not all men’ as a thought experiment it’s hurtful to me because I am genuinely affected by and firmly hold the beliefs I’m supporting. I had to explain to him that, yes, i KNOW not all men, CLEARLY not all men, because I’m living with a good one and am friends with many good ones. He doesn’t try to not all men me anymore and has actually independently informed himself on a lot of issues and I am often surprised and proud of the way he now patiently explains social justice 101 topics to people too.
Uh sorry that became an essay I clearly have Thoughts.
Even the rhino itself wants to get up. Look how embarrassed it looks. It totally didn’t realize someone was lying there.
I don’t know guys. I think maybe we should be more generous with LW2 and remember that this was an argument between supposedly close and intimate friends. We don’t know what LW2 said to Alice, or what the politics the argument was about, or what was said by either party over the course of the argument. We don’t know what kind of a person Alice is. We can’t assume that just because LW2 characterized her as more liberal that she is. Or that because she is, she was right or is a better person than LW2. We can’t assume that her comment was justified and not just a last nasty shot at LW2 who was maybe shakily trying to make amends. And we will never know.
There’s no place like a heated argument to make people less articulate and more dogmatic than they actually are. So we can’t take Alice’s last comment as revealing of what LW2 thinks or believes. We can only take it as revealing of how Alice thought LW2 believed. It seems to me LW2 was very distressed by this comment and its implications that they were unloving (towards that group, whomever they are) and unloved (by their friend). Personally, I think LW2’s distress at the comment shows they don’t feel the way their friend thinks they do based on their argument. Otherwise, I don’t think they would have mentioned it in the letter/been so upset by it.
In any case, LW2, to you I say. This sucks. I’ve been you and I’ve been Alice. I’ve been the left and the leaving. There is no more painful thing than a friendship that feels precarious. We hope, all of us, that our friends will love us in despite of our worst selves, and our shaky and sometimes misguided beliefs. We all hope to be able to be loved by someone who will forgive us our worst words. Even though we know that maybe this is a terrible thing to want., and an utterly greedy thing to demand. Its scary to have these fights because they reveal not just a disagreement in position, but in approach. These disagreements with loved ones are as much about how we argue and how we perceive the argument as they are about what we argue. Some of my most distressing political fights with friends and family had less to do with having differing beliefs than with differing perspectives. Some of them, we can come back from. Some of them, we cannot.
Which is all to say, maybe when you have a conversation with your friends, talk about how you argue and communicate, and maybe identify where miscommunication happens/ed. I think cbear had a good point about values not necessarily always aligning with politics–like do you share the same values? Do you communicate well in other areas of your friendship? Ask yourself: What are you trying to get out of an argument, whether political, personal, or both? Do you want them to understand you? Or to agree with you? What do they want out of an argument? Do they want your understanding or your agreement? In part, having these arguments with friends are about learning to trust each other, that you have mutual goodwill towards each other, as they are about larger ideas. Good luck in your conversation. I hope your friendship is not as precarious as you think. And if not, I hope you find a bosom friendship elsewhere.
Ditto. I’ve been LW2 and I’ve been Alice. I’ve been the most conservative person in one group, AND the most liberal person in another group.
LW2 says she loves whatever group of people, and we should believe her. We don’t know how the conversation went. I could say that I’m anti-abortion because “I love babies” as if I were accusing pro-choice people of hating them. (In fact, I am pro-life – not because I just love babies, but because science hasn’t convinced me that fetuses aren’t people, so I choose to err on the side of caution. I’m also in favor of contraception, sex ed, healthcare, moms, schools, financial support, everything a kid needs to grow up healthy and educated. [Edit: And affordable adoptions!] And I know that pro-choice people have thoughtful reasons for their opinions and don’t just hate babies. And like LW2, I’ve been in situations where other more liberal women talk about pro-life people as being unscientific hateful old white men who just want to interfere with women’s bodies, and absolutely any reasonable educated person ought to share their own views. Usually I keep quiet.)
I’ve become more liberal as I grew older, not because of losing arguments but from observing the world and having thoughtful conversations with friends. It can be embarrassing and awkward to be the conservative in the midst of liberals who think all conservatives are bigots and uneducated idiots, but they need your friendship too, LW2. Both sides need each other’s friendship to balance each other out and find the best common ground. You and Alice are already doing that, so keep loving and learning from each other.
(Edit: I find it startling when people say, even brag “I don’t know a single conservative/liberal person or republican/democrat in my circle of acquaintances.” So keep the mix going, LW2, and Alice.)
I found myself very selfishly disappointed that Aunt Acid’s response to LW1 didn’t really address the letter writer’s last point about how to set boundaries. Responding to “I don’t know how to set any boundaries with someone who struggles with social anxiety and abandonment” with “Take breaks if you need to, and take care of yourself” seems sort of like responding to “I don’t know how to ride a bicycle” with the advice, “Ride a bicycle.”
I personally have next to no skills at setting boundaries. I play the constant mental game of, “Sure, maybe I feel like I could use a break, but I don’t really *need* one. How can I even think I need a break when a friend is going through something so much worse?”
This, of course, is all me projecting heavily onto the letter-writer, though.
Captain Awkward has a lot of great scripts for setting boundaries, if you’re looking for that sort of advice!
Hah, I almost added into my initial post, “I know now that Captain Awkward has a bunch of scripts, but I learned about that after the last time I desperately needed them.” But thank you! I do need to read up on those. It’s very hard to get over that mental block of feeling like I’m selfish any time I consider putting my own needs over someone else’s.
I try to read some of her boundary setting scripts proactively before I know I’m about to enter into fraught situations/conversations/etc, and especially so before holidays.
I strongly recommend a book called Assertiveness At Work, by Ken and Kate Back. I use it a lot in my job (teaching comms and management skills to healthcare professionals.). They use a model where assertiveness isn’t just “putting your needs over someone else’s”, but “ways of communicating that ensure that BOTH sets of needs are balanced fairly”. Although it’s mostly framed for work, it addresses personal issues too, and it’s really really good.
Perhaps boundaries in terms of “I need a break from being an untrained counsellor” and focusing on “let us draw a boundary around the happy activities we do as friends and climb inside that boundary and be friends”? Like, hmm, you can adjust your activities but it’s like the difference between having a cup of tea and talking about the sadness of life vs having a cup of tea and talking about how great the sportsball team are going this week (or whatever). Or a time limit (ten minutes of support, twenty minutes on the latest reality TV show).
True. My most similar experience has been with a long distance online (not very close) friend who refuses to hear of therapy. I had to turn off my instant messengers (even though I felt guilty) because she kept needing to just talk at someone, and I didn’t have the spoons to always be that person (especially when I would keep saying “I don’t know how to help, but a therapist could do a better job,” and she’d keep saying no, absolutely not, and would eventually leave the conversation seeming like I’d made it worse.) It was like she was reaching out from under her rhino to grab my ankle and hold me there. I’ve been under rhinos myself, and I know how it feels, and how it’s important to have support. But sometimes it can feel like the way a drowning person is liable to drown a potential rescuer.
I REALLY appreciate the part about not “fixing” your friend.
(Edit: And in those depressed times, there was no fun and no happy activity at all. That’s not a complaint from me, because I’ve been there and I understand, but I wouldn’t have wanted to hold our friendship hostage by saying “We’re only going to talk about fun stuff” if that was an impossibility.)
Ugh, I still feel guilty about it, and about writing it out. I sound so callous.
You were not being callous. When your gut tells you something is not healthy for you, you need to listen to it, and you did.
But by writing that I appreciate not “fixing” your friend, that was about me. I hated it when I would try to talk to a friend for sympathy and she would only try to fix me instead of just listening and affirming. What I wanted to hear was “Oh no, that sounds so frustrating / painful / sad / hard for you, I’m sorry,” not “You should try getting more exercise and sunlight. That will boost a positive attitude.” I appreciate that fixing is the way that certain friend shows her love, and I learned to tell her “I don’t want advice, just some sympathy and love.” But it took a while for me to figure that out.
“Have you tried not being under a rhino? I just refuse to be under a rhino.” “Have you tried just not thinking about the rhino?” “Rhinos aren’t real, you just need to get up and walk around.” STOPPP.
*hugs you* I don’t think you sound callous at all. I was in a LTR with someone I loved and wanted to help, so much, in every way possible, while she was under that rhino. I did not know anything of boundaries and had to learn the very very hard way.
And I think turning off your IM is the best decision, by far. It is crushing when you see how badly she needs to talk to someone and yet refuses to consider a professional who could help her most. But you cannot be that person; you aren’t trained, equipped, and I think it’s accurate to say that she’s trying to grab your ankle. You are taking care of yourself by turning off your IM. And I don’t think it would even be helping her if you kept it on, if that’s any consolation.
Ask A Manager also has very reasonable scripts for the workplace. She’s great at making what you’re saying sound like the person pushing boundaries/not filing that paperwork/being unhelpful is being the unreasonable one and you are a calm and serene lake who just wants to get her job done (precipitation? idk what a lake’s job is).
Yeah, I can see this point too, but I might be projecting, like you were.
I feel like LW! was very sensitive and supportive of her friend’s best wishes, and didn’t necessarily need a Your Friend is Hurting Worse sorta lecture.
I’ve been in LW1’s shoes, about twice in my life — once, I was in too deep, it was probably unhealthy for me and took me a long time to recover. (But now that friend and I are bestest of best friends and closer than average because of it, so I obviously wouldn’t trade it.)
But because of that experience, the next time I was in this position, I tried to be more careful not to let this second person’s issues take over and dominate my life — which she took as me not supporting her, and I mean, there were lots of extenuating circumstances that led to this — but we are not close now, and for a time were estranged.
It’s a hard position to be in, obviously for both sides, but I have a lot of sympathy for a friend or family member who is only trying to be do their best to support a loved one, without losing their own self and their own needs — and not feeling sure what the best method and best practice to follow is.
(Thanks for the Captain Awkward suggestions!)
Agreed. If I’m being honest, the reply to LW1 rankled me a bit. We hear so many messages about the importance of being there and supporting others and being selfless, but we so rarely hear about how unhealthy that can become if it swings too far out of balance. I recently had to let go of a situation where I had lost myself so completely in trying to help someone else that I was beginning to fall into despair myself and feeling like I wished I could stop existing. Ending that connection was both one of the most painful and one of the most necessary things I have ever done.
Also, enabling is not only about substance abuse and absolutely can apply to other types of “overhelping” situations. I found this checklist to be quite eye-opening in my own situation.
Oh, man. As they say over on Captain Awkward, Jedi hugs* if you want them. I just went through something similar to your “situation where I had lost myself so completely in trying to help someone else that I was beginning to fall into despair myself,” with a similar outcome. It’s really hard, isn’t it? ._.
Also, thank you for posting that checklist. I sure do have some stuff to talk to my therapist about now!
* non-physical-contact brain hugs
For LW1: One thing about depression is that it makes simple admin tasks like, say, finding a therapist, seem like insurmountable obstacles. Even tasks like mailing a letter or paying a bill used to sometimes take months to accomplish. It took me years to get help for my depression because it just seemed impossible to find a therapist, make an appointment, get myself there, then maybe it wouldn’t work out and I’d have to do the whole thing over again and oh my god it was just easier to stay in bed. It sounds silly and it’s hard to understand from an outside perspective, but it may be part of the reason your friend doesn’t seem able to help herself.
oh, god, my depressed brain interprets being put on a waiting list as being undeserving of therapy–like a sign from the cosmic forces that i will never get better. while i like the rhino analogy, i’ve always described depression as feeling like I’m wearing a cellophane suit. like, i’m a part of the world, interacting with it, but never actually being able to access anything around me. i actually got better (the first time) because a friend did all the hard stuff for me, that i never could have done on my own. she navigated the referrals, the appointments, the transportation, for me. this friend literally saved my life. now, this kind of intervention may be beyond the capacity of LW1 & that’s totally understandable. but i too have a heavy dose of empathy for the “friend” having been that friend. I recommend reading Hyperbole and a Half’s depression series, because it explains why Doing Things is very close to impossible.
Just reread some of the Hyperbole and a Half book earlier today. Her explanations on depression should be in textbooks. It’s almost unnerving when someone describes so accurately and succinctly something you’ve struggled to articulate for years.
Auggghhhh, I had a suicidal friend put on a waiting list. What the HECK. It was Britain. It sounds like their mental health system is way way way overloaded. I wanted to fly across the ocean and shake them by the lapels.
This is why I will occasionally offer to do the therapist-locating and appointment-making, then drive friends there. Someone did it for me when I needed it; she didn’t make a big deal out of saying, “I know someone who will help; if I make the appointment, will you go?” so now I feel like it’s not a big deal for me to say, “Do you want me to find someone for you?”
(It doesn’t always work as well as it did for me, and admittedly I did finally outgrow the person my friend found for me. But I couldn’t have done it myself, so I remain grateful.)
I am not feeling it with LW2 or the response, to be honest, but I am limiting myself to the one little bit:
“If, in the future, arguments start getting heated, maybe you can agree on a safe word to shut down fights. I suggest “Mallory.””
No. No no no, no no no, no no.
First, the thing where people try to take “safe words” out of context to make something sound edgy or something? Doesn’t work.
Secondly. This person is clearly having basic communication issues with these people she has been friends with. Better communication is really important here if things are to be salvaged, including better meta-communication. Being able to say something like “I think we’re both getting emotional about this topic. Can we take a break, order a pizza, and then continue when we’ve had a food and a little breathing room?” is a desperately important life skill, and avoiding doing that by just deciding to scream some pre-chosen word isn’t actually going to help much.
Three. Safe words are actually an important thing. Turning them into a joke isn’t a great precedent. Lots of things can be both a joke and a serious thing, so I’m not trying to say that safe words shouldn’t ever be joked about…. but I do think that there’s a slightly higher bar to clear. Like, it should be a GOOD joke, not a throwaway joke if you’re gonna do it.
Four, and most important:
The very point behind a safe word, the very concept of a safe word, is that it’s something you DON’T talk about, and something that when you hear it, you IMMEDIATELY know something is up and wrong and not good and you stop where you are and check in. For people who read The Toast, talking about Mallory is the sort of thing that will happen from time to time as part of normal conversation.
So even if you ignore points 1-3, this just fundamentally doesn’t work because of point four.
I’m super late but I want to provide an alternative opinion.
I agree safe-words are really important and hugely useful; I don’t agree they’re not talked about. Point four seems to suggest idk, everyone has the same safe words or agrees what they are immediately. They don’t, even if BDSM communities have standard Red/Yellow/Green that are used, individuals/smaller groups might choose others and do that based on humour (if the idea is humour will be a sufficient break from the scene to instantly stop what’s being safe worded) or on squick (something that would never be said and therefore is immediately obvious as a safe word) or on utility; (Red/Yellow/Green is standard, so we’ll use it; safe word is the first thing I’ll think when I’m trying to remember the agreed safe word, so it will be my safe word.) If LW is going to have a safe word, LW can chose what it is; if LW doesn’t say Mallory enough to make it confusing (or, doesn’t tend to say Mallory in situations where a safe word would be needed,) Mallory’s a reasonable safe word.
…I got to the end of that and realised maybe your whole point was safe words shouldn’t be used casually, they should be things no-one would ever say in a non-safe word context? Sorry if so, but I think it’s confusing enough I’m going to leave that as a clarification.
I also think, while you’re right that communication isn’t happening on some level, a safe word would be a reasonable interim fix for that problem. Yes, safe words originally come from BDSM culture, but having a word that can be said by anyone in a circle of friends that immediately communicates “I am not enjoying this stop” is actually pretty useful? Particularly if your friends tend to do things like good-natured teasing or messing with others’ phones, tickling etc. Being able to quickly say “The line has been crossed stop NOW.” in a word is really useful, particularly if you want to go along with the teasing/whatever by protesting saying things like “Guys, come on, don’t do that” even though you do enjoy the game really. Especially if the alternative is asking someone to stop, they don’t, you have to explain why particularly a topic is off limits; a safe word means stop, no questions asked, no explanation necessary if you don’t want to give it.
I have a good friend with whom I argue often and she and I are so tone deaf to each others “this is something I care about vs this is something I’m arguing about for fun” cues that we regularly reduce each other to tears and, three years into knowing each other are only just getting to the point where one of us has the presence of mind to remove ourselves from the room when we start to feel ourselves get out of control. A safe word would be so good for us, because it would halt the conversation, force us to talk about different things and allow us to move on without one of us having to burst into tears or leave the room to force a halt.
TL;DR, I didn’t take the safe word comment as a joke and I do think it would be useful for LW in this case, though she should talk to her friends and agree one that is right for them, not just immediately decide on Mallory
She suggested the group of friends talk more about The Toast vs whatever they have been discussing, then suggests a conversational safe word that’s “Mallory”.
If that’s an honest suggestion, it represents a misunderstanding about safe words, since it should be something that’s not used in that context that immediately stands out (So, imagine a sex safe word of “harder”– sure, it might be fine for some people, but for most people that would be a TERRIBLE idea).
If it’s a joke, it doesn’t land for me.
I do definitely see what you’re saying! And I don’t disagree that much; I can why Mallory’s a bad safe word and the suggestion needs more thought if it’s going to be workable as part of a solution.
And definitely, if it’s a joke, I can see why it’s not one that works for you; I don’t see it as a joke, so I personally was not upset by it.
I did just really want to provide another perspective, in case the LW or anyone else found it useful.
Chiming in to agree with cosetthetable – safe words are something you use when you’re really *good* at communication and negotiation. Not when you’re just starting out trying to navigate having difficult disagreements with friends. It seems like a cute idea, an in-joke, to use one in conversation but in practice would rarely work except with very good friends who already communicate well and want to use it as a way to debate more intensely than they otherwise would. You could end up with the classic situation of one party being afraid/embarrassed to say the safeword and quietly freaking out and the other one continuing because they didn’t say the word – the opposite of what LW2 wants!
LW1 – I sympathize with your situation and really wish I had advice on how to express a need for breaks without triggering a lot more anxiety from your friend.
Dealing with very anxious and depressed people feels like enabling, for me, when expressing my own problems or desire for space results in them getting more anxious and depressed. I have family history of alcoholism and so I tend to hide feelings that lead to angst and then I know a lot about their life and emotions and they know very little about mine. It is fucking exhausting.
Anyway I sought therapy for the stuff that was me, but it hasn’t helped at all yet.
Yes, I can see that it would be very exhausting to be all give and no take. Real friendships should be a mix of give and take. I hope you have some friends who are givers too. I’m sorry that therapy hasn’t helped you yet! I wish we could have a Toast therapy center.
Expressing your need for space is not enabling. When you put healthy boundaries in place that were not there before, difficult feelings can and will come up, but that is not your fault when you are taking necessary steps to prevent yourself from burning out.
I wonder if by ‘college liberal’, the LW2 is referring to call-out culture or something? Many social progressives can be belligerent about ideology (case in point: Bernie bros) and it can be difficult to have conversations with them.
In any case, I’m a fan of the idea that you can’t argue with decent. If you’re earnest/humble/generous in this kind of conversation and it shows, you will inevitably disarm the person across the table and come to some kind of understanding, and if that doesn’t work, they aren’t worth any more investment.
I am very left leaning myself, but FWIW, I can think of a lot of non-hatey things that LW2 could have said that might have occasioned her friend’s response. Example: LW2 disagrees with the $15 minimum wage, and Friend said “I love you, but I also love fast food workers/people who earn minimum wage,” where the implication is that anyone who disagrees with minimum wage reform doesn’t care at all about the welfare of minimum wage earners. Or, LW2 is opposed to certain forms of unionization, and LW2’s friend says, “I love you, but I also love teachers/adjunct professors/members of X industry,” where the implication is that anyone anti-union doesn’t care about the welfare of union members. It’s possible that LW2’s friend’s remark was an accusation of LW2 along these lines: “You disagree with me about X social policy intended to benefit Y group of people, THEREFORE YOU DO NOT CARE ABOUT Y GROUP OF PEOPLE AT ALL.” If so, that accusation might or might not have been justified. We can’t know. And, again, I say this as someone who is pro $15 minimum wage and pro-union (who is in fact in a union).
Yeah, I could see lots of circumstances in which LW2 and Alice may have been discussing the advisability of a policy or approach that affects Y group (like minimum wage increase vs guaranteed minimum income or affirmative action at college admissions level vs investment in improving outcomes for disadvantaged groups in public schools.
I have definitely, in policy debates with my husband, occasionally gotten worked up and accused him of some sweeping generalization in anger. Specifically I once told him that if he thought Omar Khadr should be in Guantanamo maybe he was the one who ought to be there. He did not think that, and I knew it, but I got caught up in arguing over child soldier protections vs the protections granted to criminal defendants in the US/Canada. It was stupid and hyperbolic. Maybe that’s what happened to Alice. Maybe not. It’s hard to know.
Yes, I said something similar below. I’ve seen this happen plenty of times.
It’s slightly unrelated, but LW2 had me thinking about how often I’ve been accused of “making everything political.” I mean, yes, I was a political science student, and yes, I enjoy a good debate, but also? Living in an apolitical world sort of assumes a certain level of privilege. I’m a woman and I’m gay. I don’t get to be apolitical. What I do with my body is political. Who I love is political. Posting my (hypothetical) wedding photos on Facebook is political. I get that some straight, cis, white guys might be able to be apolitical, but how does anyone else manage it? I’ll stop “making everything political” when politicians stop making policies about me and people like me.
Yes, I really hate the accusation of “making it political” when you’re really talking about a significant quality of life or basic civil rights issue. That’s not fucking political, that’s reality, and the “making it political” charge is super dismissive and disingenuous.
Yes.
as a fellow poli-sci major, I really think English needs different words for “power relations” and “elections and all that.”
I absolutely agree.
Reminds me of that thing on Reductress, I’m Not Political Because I Assume I’ll Retain All My Privileges Forever
Regarding what people are saying about LW2, people can and do change! But you can’t beat it into them! I mean I know we all know that, I’m just saying that is going to be the theme of the rest of my comment, so you’re warned.
I don’t think it’s fair to assume that LW2 made some sweeping, awful statement about X group that prompted her friend to say what she did. Back when I ate dairy, I had a vegan tell me *she* loved animals and that’s why she couldn’t have dairy, making it clear she thought that I couldn’t possibly love animals if I ate dairy. She could not have been more clear about how she felt about me as a human being. And needless to say I didn’t feel persuaded to stop eating dairy at that point.
What did get me to cut down on dairy at least was a different vegan friend who explained, when it naturally came up in conversation, what is involved in the industry to get that milk to make that yummy cheese. It gave me something to think about, and I was able to listen to what she was saying without being on the defensive because she wasn’t attacking me.
I was conservative when I was in college, and now I’m very very very very much not. But I didn’t change by having someone tell me that, for example, my opposition to welfare was because, while they loved people less fortunate than me, I was a heartless person who clearly hoped all the poor people would die. I was a super bleeding heart conservative–I felt sorry for almost everyone, almost all the time. I just thought that the government did more harm than good. I STILL think the government shouldn’t be bigger than it absolutely needs to be, but the difference is that I’ve changed my definition of what’s necessary.
The problem was that I had very bad information about how welfare works, and my left-leaning college friends disagreed with me but had no knowledge to counter what I thought I knew (they were the kind of stereotypical awful white college liberal who doesn’t know any poor people or realities about their circumstances and doesn’t want to but CAN tell them what’s best for them). IIIIIII stupidly thought, well, we’re doing people a disservice if we teach them to rely on welfare for support, and we’re trapping them in poverty, so it should be there but only very temporarily, and we need some kind of job service that would totally train them how to do new jobs that they could surely then easily get. (Yeah, I had a lot to learn).
But telling me that I opposed welfare because I didn’t care about the people who needed it would have not persuaded me at ALL. Telling someone that they have a huge moral failing will not persuade them at all. What worked for me was just being around liberal friends who were open about what they believed and why but never quizzed me on my beliefs or made me feel like they were judgment me. You can learn a lot from someone you care about and respect when they aren’t putting you on the defensive.
Sometimes I think I need to develop some sort of outreach program. As someone who used to be conservative because I didn’t trust the government and thought Democrats wanted to trap people in poverty so they could get their votes, I feel like I have skills that could be put to good use in coming up with arguments that have a better chance of success (talk to me about how bad the left’s strategy is in talking about immigration!). But only regarding conservative beliefs based on misinformation. I don’t have anything to say about people who have beliefs rooted entirely in racism and fear. It’s pretty hard to counter that.
And in defense of some conservative people . . . when I was selling plasma in college so that I could buy food and had nobody I could turn to for money, I had two roommates, one liberal, one conservative. The conservative one hocked her TV and her playstation so I could have money. When I forgot to return a movie on time (yes, this was in the Time of Blockbuster), the liberal one came into my room and told me I should return the movie, because keeping it late made me a thief and was no different than stealing a car out of the parking lot. She was not kind, and she was not generous. My point is that that the left can include unkind people who care about others only in the abstract, and the right can include people with bad, unkind views in the abstract but who treat others in reality with kindness.
Well said. And oh my goodness, your friend selling her TV and playstation for you! That is so kind.
Yeah, she’s not so conservative now (and even when she was, it was of the small-government libertarian type, she has never cared about policing other people’s lives or bodies), but she was then and continues to be one of the world’s best.
I grew up among conservatives, and much of it was just based on misinformation that the adults around me were receiving and accepting. There were people who strongly opposed welfare, but who personally would work to help needy people find jobs and education, and would buy them groceries and find them a place to stay, drive them to interviews, babysit their kids, etc. I think they believed that it should be a personal choice to help people (which they did), not a government mandate via taxes, but unfortunately we live in a country that doesn’t have enough people with enough money making those personal choices. So yes, the abstract vs reality is a very good point.
And it’s good to understand that many people on both sides want what’s best for everyone (and then there are some jerks thrown in as well).
Yes, exactly. I mean, I don’t want to give people a pass for just accepting what they’ve been told. It wasn’t ok for me to do that when I was younger and it’s not ok for my parents or other conservatives. I think for this particular category of conservative that you and I are talking about, they are just very wrong about how the world works in that respect. It does not make what they think right, it just doesn’t mean that they feel the way they do because they genuinely don’t care about other people.
I will use my mom as an example. She doesn’t approve of environmental regulations because she buys the line that they aren’t necessary and they are just an excuse to make companies look bad. But she’s the type that feeds every animal that comes in her yard, traps spiders to put them outside, only uses natural, organic stuff in her yard, uses non-toxic cleaners in her home, recycles, and so on. She’s a hippie but she doesn’t know it. She unfortunately gets her info from the wrong places, and trying to tell her to reconsider her sources makes her defensive because her parents were super critical of every damn thing she did. But just being around me and my sister when we throw stuff out in conversation casually without dwelling on it is sloooooowly making her come around.
Re: LW2 and conversations that may be productive or not across the political spectrum, I find it useful to recall Jonathan Chait’s thesis that, for economic policy in particular, conservatism is fueled by a free market ideology in which outcomes are unimportant, while economic liberalism is outcome-oriented, rather than ideologically driven. Chait quotes Milton Friedman, “[F]reedom in economic arrangements is itself a component of freedom broadly understood, so economic freedom is an end in itself.” (article here: https://newrepublic.com/article/61829/fact-finder… )
This isn’t a tool for changing anyone’s mind, but it helps me in thinking about why people who can be otherwise lovely (like my boyfriend’s parents) don’t support things like universal health care. I also use it to guide me in what political discussions are worth having, and who I want to have them with. (Never with my in-laws, but with my own parents, with whom I agree on everything except abortion, it is worth it to appeal to their liberal pragmatism. Is getting them on the side of “safe, legal, and rare” the same as “abortions on demand”? Not exactly, but recently my mom schooled my dad on the need for late term abortion access, so I’m going to take that.)
You can’t forget fear. I had a discussion with my mom several years back about raising taxes on the very rich, and she was against it because she thought it was merely the first step in a federal government plan to raise the taxes drastically all the way down through the middle class. I could not convince her that she and my dad would neeeevvveeer make enough money to have to worry about being included in the highly-taxed brackets. They are middle class by a thread. For her, on that issue, it wasn’t that she didn’t want to raise taxes on the wealthy to pay for government services because she had a problem with the services being provided, it was because she and my dad are in their late 60s, don’t have much money to get them through the next 20 or so years of their lives, and she’s petrified of not having enough. So she’s not rational about it. Add to that she listens to conservative news sources who tell her that her fears are realistic, and who gave her those fears in the first place. You can’t counter those feelings with nothing more than a “Oh, that’s never gonna happen” and have them believe you.
Oh god, conservative media actively stokes the fires of fear, definitely. The ideology/pragmatism binary is a simplification, sure, and there is more at work in constructing and maintaining political beliefs. I like it as an explainer, though, because it makes sense without relying on dismissing conservative beliefs as irrational in the face of evidence. That doesn’t mean there isn’t irrationality and fear at work, and I don’t see your understanding of your mother’s thought process as dismissive, but there is an intellectually justifiable rationale at work behind economic conservatism (even if not everyone supporting specific policies cares or agrees). Recognizing that ideology and its incompatibility with my belief in economic policy interventions that produce demonstrable human benefits has helped me understand the gulf between the left and the right in this country.
Also, when I was younger, before I thought about it in this way, I would have just yelled more and been like “these idiots don’t get it!” So on a personal note, it feels good to let this go a little and focus my righteous anger places where it might be useful.
I think that’s a very constructive way to approach it!
“conservatism is fueled by a free market ideology in which outcomes are unimportant”
Holy crap, that takes so much privilege. And now everything is clear to me about the demographics making up conservatives.
Enabling is not only about substance abuse and absolutely can apply to this type of relationship dynamic if the helping aspect is taken too far. In the context of mental health, it becomes enabling if the “help” crosses a line from being merely supportive to becoming a crutch that prevents the person from accessing the professional help they truly need, and/or if the helper begins to seriously suffer due to lack of self-care. I found this checklist to be a good resource in determining when something has crossed the line from helping to enabling.
Thank you! I usually love Aunt Acid but that left a little bit of a bad taste in my mouth. It is absolutely possible to enable a depressed person. It’s hard to know where the line is, but it is possible. Thanks for the checklist, I think it articulates well where that line falls.
Sometimes, the best thing you can do is nothing.
Just listen.
If you must say something, sometimes just letting someone know you’re there and you care is enough.
Sometimes, the best thing you can do is nothing.
Ugh.
Plus, I think that originated with Winston Churchill, and "liberal' and "conservative" meant way different things in WWII-era Britain than they do in 2016 America.
I don't know, I think a word like "Mallory" (but not actually Mallory) would be perfect because it is out of context. I also don't think the concept is Sacred to BDSM, although the term was invented by kinksters.
Then again, I'm a kinky person who actually does not like safe words (beyond maybe "RED!" – I've been part of debates about what green and yellow "really" mean) and prefers people to use THEIR words (such as "please slow down", "there's a bit too much strain on my wrist", "I need to take a break", "STOP").
I was part of a mailing list that had a humorous catchphrase that was interpreted as "we're nearing a tricky topic that I'd rather not debate, and we're not going to change each other's minds, and so let's stop here before feelings get hurt and chill." Sometimes, if you keep going around and around a certain tricky area, there's no harm in rolling out a funny catch-phrase to avoid a big Feelings!Analysis when you both know it's something difficult you'd rather avoid.
>I'm sorry to break it to you, LW2, but, um, I think it's likely that at least a few of those supposedly rock-solid friendships…aren't. They're just too polite, too shy, too sad to tell you
I think this is a cruel thing to write to a person who professed to a lasting fear that their friends are secretly annoyed by them and only pretending to be friends out of politeness. We don't know enough about LW2's friendships to make that kind of statement.
I loved them as a kid and I love them even more as a mom, although now heavily spiced with envy for the badgers' warm little house and tiny doily, vase and salt shaker packed lunches.
This was a really awesome read. Thank you for sharing. I feel like I can identify with this a little bit since I’ve fought through some depression in the past. It also helped me kill some time at work. haha.
This was a really awesome read. Thank you for sharing. I feel like I can identify with this a little bit since I've fought through some depression in the past. It also helped me kill some time at work. haha.