Posted by fxckfeelings on July 24, 2014
All of us suffer from a Cassandra complex at one time or another, where we see something so clearly—from how your brother will regret eating that gas station sushi to why your wife will wish she’d never paid for a year of intensive aerial Pilates up front—but can’t get anyone to heed our vision. Sometimes you can see a disaster looming because people are too angry and agitated, and sometimes it’s because they’re complacent and don’t give a damn. In either case, before you try to sound the alarm, give thought to the reasons for their feelings and the probable impact of your attempts to warn them so that your attempts to change opinions don’t accidentally cement them. Provide wise counsel if you can, but don’t expect anyone to listen until events, even painful sushi-related ones, put them in a more receptive state of mind.
–Dr. Lastname
As long as I avoid certain (mostly political, mostly right wing) topics, I get along with my in-laws pretty well. The problem is that such topics sometimes become unavoidable, usually when they get really wound up about a specific current event, and right now, they’re very vocal about being rabidly pro-Israel. I’m Jewish (they aren’t), so they assume I feel the same way as them and shower me with links and e-mail forwards that are nothing short of anti-Palestinian propaganda, but I don’t agree with them necessarily, and that kind of thing makes my skin crawl. They see the issue as black and white, and let’s just say I just see it as complicated, infuriating and heartbreaking, and their warmongering just angers and depresses me. I want to find a way to respond to them that gets them to see how damaging and foolish their angry rhetoric is, or to at least find some consensus in getting them to agree that killing isn’t answering anything. My goal is to get my in-laws to drop the subject in an enlightening, non-provocative way, even if I can’t change their minds.
One reason it’s hard to stop angry war rhetoric, particularly if it comes from nice people who aren’t particularly angry in non-political situations, is that they feel that aggressive action is necessary to prevent or overcome a dangerous threat. From annoying e-mail forwards to amassing an arsenal, fear rarely leads to thoughtful, positive action.
So if you suggest that your in-laws are advocating useless conflict with and killing of Palestinians, you’re questioning their morality at a time that they’re calling for moral sacrifice. You’re not just spilling blood in front of a shark, but a shark who thinks he’s being chased by a kraken. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on July 3, 2014
One of the common mistakes in one-sided relationships is that the wrong side—the jilted side—tends to feel responsible. People tend to blame themselves when the other person doesn’t do their share, act respectfully, or just return a damned text. In any case, talking about it doesn’t usually change character, behavior, or interpersonal chemistry, so trust your judgment and do what’s necessary to find friends whose commitment meets your standards and drop those who don’t. When you use good judgment in relationships, there’s no need to blame yourself for someone else’s bad behavior.
–Dr. Lastname
Please Note: In honor of both Canada Day and Independence Day in the US, we’re going to take Monday off so we have the time to celebrate most of North America. We’ll be back on Thursday, 7/10.
I’ve been going out with a girl I get along with pretty well, and we’ve been comfortable about making it exclusive for the past eight months. I always have the feeling I shouldn’t push things too far though, and the other day, I really needed her help because I was moving into a new place. When I asked her, she said sorry, but she needed the time to see some friends and take it easy. It pissed me off, but now I wonder whether I’m just being needy. My goal is to figure out whether I should say something or whether her behavior means a whole lot.
There’s a world of difference between being needy and simply needing; being needy usually causes nothing but anger and bickering, but needing a little deserved help is nothing unusual, and nothing your average friend would refuse. Unfortunately, this friend is not average (and might not be a girlfriend for much longer).
Instead of mistrusting your standards of give-and-take in a good friendship, you should wonder whether your girlfriend knows how to be a friend, and whether it’s time to tell her to take a walk. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on June 23, 2014
Of all the instinctual emotions the deserve to be second guessed—i.e., lust, hunger, blind cooperation with the statement, “holy shit, this milk must be a decade old, smell it!”—fear deserves the most examination and contemplation before fully giving in. That’s because sometimes we feel very threatened when we’re actually stronger than we think, and sometimes the threat is, indeed, immense, but we’ve done much more to fight it than we recognize. Whenever you’re threatened, don’t let anxiety tell you that you’re helpless and have done nothing worthwhile. Assess your actual options and accomplishments before you let anxiety control your choices or self-respect. In other words, think before you jump (or get a nose-full of bad dairy).
–Dr. Lastname
I’m afraid my father-in-law is going to destroy my marriage. He gets insulted over nothing, and holds grudges forever, so spending time with him is torture. My wife has no trouble admitting her father is like that, and while she doesn’t exactly take his side, she wants to maintain some kind of relationship with him. I want to keep him away from our home and kids completely because he makes me very nervous—it’s already hard enough to take care of them while also trying to manage my business—but she won’t cut him off. My goal is to protect my family without letting him break up my marriage.
Your father-in-law sounds like the kind of Asshole™ who would make anyone nervous; very quick to anger, slower to get over it, and never to stop blaming are the ultimate Asshole™ trifecta.
It’s understandable that he makes you so nervous and uncomfortable that your first instinct is to ban him from your house (or, ideally, shoot him into outer space), but your first instinct isn’t always your logical best choice. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on May 12, 2014
Everybody knows that trust is a big part of marriage, but that doesn’t just mean trusting your spouse, but trusting yourself to keep both your junk and your doubt in your pants. If you find yourself with major problems in either of these areas, trying to be normal and ignore your misgivings or mistakes will probably make things worse. Instead, accept that you’ve got a screw loose, and then you’ll have a much better chance of gaining the strength you need to manage out-of-control thoughts and/or actions and learn to trust yourself, or at least your limits vis-a-vis the contents of your slacks.
–Dr. Lastname
I can’t understand why I cheated on my wife again, not just because it was so painful the first time around, but because I know, for a certainty, that I love her and don’t want to break up my marriage. I never intended cheating, but I fell into a great conversation with an attractive colleague at work, and, before I knew it, we were exchanging messages about how wonderful it was to see one another and when we would meet again. When my wife found out, it was agony for both her and me, as I felt terribly guilty and I didn’t want to lose my marriage. After months and months of couples’ therapy we patched things back together, re-established trust, and I felt happy with her. Then, without warning, it happened again at an out-of-town sales conference, almost exactly the same thing with a different woman, and now my wife wants a divorce. My goal is to know why I do this thing and whether it means I really don’t love my wife and would be happy with someone else or whether I just can’t be monogamous.
Guys who can’t understand why they cheat when they don’t really feel like it are like alcoholics who can’t understand why they got drunk when they weren’t even in the mood to drink. Emotions are the main motivation for infidelity as often as alcoholism is motivated by thirst.
More often, infidelity is, for lack of better words, a character weakness, a deeply ingrained need that you’re neither going to figure out nor get out of your system. That’s why the First Step in both AA (and CA, Cheaters Anonymous) is accepting your helplessness to control yourself. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on May 1, 2014
Unlike most pay-cable drama series, old relationships can often be best judged by how they end; bad relationships tend to leave you with lingering attachment and confusion, and good relationships can leave you feeling so free, you might even wonder whether you cared enough in the first place. Of course, what matters most is not whether a relationship leaves you feeling fettered or free, but what you did with it and how you carry it forward into the future. You might never get over how your relationship/Dexter ended, but if you look at your relationships in terms of effort, value, and achievement, instead of feelings alone, you will have no trouble finding positive meaning in what happens next.
–Dr. Lastname
I’m scared about trusting again. I met my now ex through a friend last year and the attraction was instant. When we met he was up front that he would be going traveling six months later for an indefinite period, but this was fine with me as I understand the need to travel. It was the easiest relationship either of us had been in, it just worked. At first, he changed his trip to come back every couple of months for some weddings, so we thought we would try long distance to see if it could work. Then, unexpectedly, he breaks up with me because he said he doesn’t love me and feels he should be madly in love with me by now. He also says he’s never been in love before (the butterflies in the stomach kind which I tried to explain wasn’t love but initial lust) even after being in long term relationships. I went through his phone and turns out he met someone while volunteering. the fact that he has left me for someone else and could replace me so quickly has crushed me. I feel betrayed but mostly feel so insignificant. My thoughts have become obsessive over it. My goal is to stop how feeling so horrible about myself.
When the one thing you and your beloved have in common is a belief in the power of close chemistry, you know you’re in trouble; that’s like having a relationship based on the fact that you’re currently sharing an elevator or a common cold. Don’t start planning your jubilee anniversary just yet.
Unfortunately, getting along quickly, easily, and intimately with a lover is never a good guarantee of anything other than that he’s someone with real sales potential.
The fact he intended to travel for a long, unlimited period of time and isn’t in his early 20s (I assume) also tells you that he values excitement over commitment, and the most exciting things in most long-term relationships is figuring out what to have for dinner.
Ask yourself how thoroughly you completed a due diligence character review before deciding he was a wonderful partner. You should have checked out his prior relationships and how they ended, as well as what he wanted to do with himself when he came home and whether he wanted a partner to do it with. It would be interesting to know how big a nest-egg he was using and how he planned to replenish it. These questions may not build romance or make good love songs, but they sure predict how things will turn out.
You were right to suspect that the value he places on good company might allow him to replace you pretty quickly, and probably before you knew you were history. Since friendship is all about having a good time together, there wouldn’t be much point in his continuing the relationship since you, clearly, were no longer having a good time or likely to be good company.
You’re absolutely right, you deserve someone who believes that you, and a relationship with you, is important. What you must screen out are people who feel that you’re important as long as you’re pretty, charming, and/or fun, and not for deeper reasons. You didn’t get dumped because you’re insignificant but because you didn’t make this distinction and protect yourself properly.
Let your pain teach you a good lesson, namely that it’s important to put a higher value on your definition of a serious relationship, and not to give your heart to someone who doesn’t take relationships as seriously as you do.
Hopefully, they’ll also be fun, at least some of the time, and enjoy traveling, but whether they are or not, you may someday find yourself thanking your ex, the wandering schmuck, for helping you learn what’s important to look for and hopefully for finding the real, not-temporary thing.
STATEMENT:
“I feel like I’m disposable to someone who seemed to think I was wonderful, but I know I did nothing wrong to lose his love. I may feel like shit, but I’ll accept my lesson in how to make better choices.”
I grew up with my wife, so we knew each other for most of our lives. We got married right after high school and were especially close when she died last year, so it seems very strange when a day goes by and I actually find myself having a good time. The kids give me a funny look when they see me smile, as if they can’t understand why I’m happy. Of course I miss her and often talk to her, but she was dying for two years and, now that it’s over, I can feel life getting easier and simpler. Sometimes, I wonder if I’m avoiding grief, or if I cared as much as I thought I did. My goal is to respect and value the most important relationship I had.
One thing you understand better than your kids is that a relationship is better defined by actions than feelings. It’s not that you didn’t have loving feelings for your late wife, but you’re also proud of the way you cared for her during her illness while also raising kids together. Without that actual achievement, loving feelings wouldn’t have meant nearly as much.
So don’t measure your love by how passionately distraught you are now that she’s gone; rely on your own experience and wisdom to define what’s meaningful about your love. It sounds like you could rely on one another and that you shared a dedication to the kids and one another’s lives and concerns for years. The way she lives in your heart is more important than the depth of your sorrow. Help the kids value what they shared with her, rather than dwelling on what they missed out on. Pain causes us to think about what we could or should have done or what might have made things better, so instead, lead them to think about the difference she made in their lives and the ways they helped her get through her illness.
If you feel more vulnerable and in need of support, be careful to find the right kind. Find a positive therapist or hang out with friends who are good at reminding you that your strength did not depend on your wife, and that you can find ways to keep your family life steady and manage loneliness as a surviving, single spouse without requiring an immediate partner.
A good marriage doesn’t leave a void that has to be filled or a grief that is more unbearable. It leaves you, in this case, with a strong family and confidence in your ability to keep it running the way you and your wife believed it should be. You know the advice she’d probably give you; to not make up criticism you don’t deserve while you get on with life and see how well you can manage the family on your own.
STATEMENT:
“I feel like the world should never be the same after the loss of my wife, and it isn’t, but we worked to build a world together, so if it seems, in some way, to continue on unchanged, that’s partly our doing and what I’ll continue to do until something better comes along.”
Posted by fxckfeelings on April 24, 2014
A reputation, good or bad, can go very quickly from being about you to being a part of you; it doesn’t matter if you’ve grown out of it or never grew into it in the first place, getting rid of a reputation is about as easy as removing a limb. Regardless of how unfair or painful your reputation and the lack of acceptance that it can bring, your goal isn’t to retaliate and allow it to direct your life, but to stick to your own moral standards. Your reputation may stay connected to you, but your actions always matter more.
–Dr. Lastname
Although our family therapist did his best and our marriage survived, my husband never got over his suspicions and jealousy. It’s true I was abusing pain pills five years ago after our son was a newborn and I feel very guilty about that, but I’ve done everything possible to make it right. Even though I went through rehab and get my urine tested regularly, my husband still isn’t sure I can be trusted. That means he won’t leave me alone with our kid, and when he is there, he’s always resentful and critical, so he’s hell to be around. My goal would be to get through to him if I could but, if not, it’s to split up without losing access to our son.
Trust and sobriety have a lot in common; both can be regained after a lapse, but only with a lot of hard work, patience, and dedication. Unless your husband is as successful at rebuilding his faith in you as you have been at staying sober, the strength of your recovery will beat that of your marriage.
Unfortunately, something’s snapped in his brain that just doesn’t allow him to trust you. If you felt his opinion was the most important thing in the world, his lack of trust could well throw you into relapse, but luckily you have the strength to see it as his problem, not yours. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on April 7, 2014
Love and/or laughter might be so-called universal languages, but they still require some sort of verbal communication. Hate and criticism, on the other hand, must be intergalactic languages, because, in couples especially, someone can be ripped to shreds without anyone saying a word. In any case, whether you express them openly and verbally or just quietly roll your eyes, negative feelings have a way of chain-reacting in a marriage. Few good marriages don’t have at least a bit of it, but too much can be explosive, especially when two emotional people are expressive at the same time. So, whether your spontaneous criticism is loud or quiet, try to balance it with some of that universally spoken love through deliberate praise and appreciation. That’s why most good marriages are not just a reflection of spontaneous loving chemistry, but also hard work and carefully chosen words of all kinds.
–Dr. Lastname
My wife and I spent years running our own restaurant and, though we both have strong opinions, we usually worked together pretty well. Recently, however, we got bought out by a larger restaurant group and hired by them as consultants to start a new place from scratch. The problem is, I just don’t like her vision of how it should be done, from the location to the menu. I think my own format is more exciting, cheaper, and easier to do, but she doesn’t agree. I’m afraid her plan will cost too much and get us into trouble. My goal is to get her to see the flaws in her plan before it’s too late and we lose everything we’ve worked for.
There are lots of decisions, small and large, that go into putting together a new restaurant—the color of the napkins, the cuisine, the shape of the forks—but before you make any more choices involving fusion or flatwear, you must decide what’s more important: your marriage or your vision for the restaurant.
Of course, if you and your wife are still talking after having worked closely together for years, you might think it’s easy to have both, but then you have to remember that two people with strong tastes and opinions, faced with an open opportunity to create their dream restaurant, may have a hard time finding middle ground.
So face the worst-case scenario of not reaching agreement on your dream restaurant and having to accept a plan B that is less satisfactory to your standards, but more satisfactory to your vows. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on April 3, 2014
As we’ve said before, if you’re not careful, money can be kryptonite to family, or it can be concrete, driving relatives apart or keeping them closer together. That’s why you have to try to keep cash out of the big picture, because there are always good reasons for maintaining family relationships, regardless of financial grievances, and good reasons for encouraging independence, regardless of how money and affection may promote dependence. Develop and heed your own ideas about the proper distance to maintain in close family relationships, then impose those ideas regardless of the push and/or pull of financial pressures.
–Dr. Lastname
My brother was never a warm person, and people warned me he could be unscrupulous, but we were both brought up to put family first. That’s why I was shocked when my brother manipulated our dying, demented father to leave him everything in his will. Everyone was shocked, not just because I got along well with my father, but because I still had school loans (my brother dropped out of high school), not to mention hospital bills from my wife’s illness. Needless to say, my brother was not interested in sharing the inheritance, so we didn’t talk often after that. Now that we’re both growing old and he’s my only family, I find it harder to avoid his emails and calls. My goal is to follow through on the best side of my inheritance, which is to value family, and try to be closer to my brother, though I can’t really like or trust him.
While your brother got the money and you didn’t, it still sounds like you lucked out in terms of family inheritance; you were left good values and a decent personality, and he got the gene for being a natural-born Asshole™.
If he is, indeed, an Asshole™ in the technical sense, he would see himself as deserving of whatever he could persuade your father to cough up, and you as petty, vengeful, and wrong. It’s just the Asshole™ way.
Part of you knows this, which is why you chose to cut him off rather than engage him; you understand how any mention of what he did or why he did it will probably elicit angry justifications that you don’t want to hear or respond to, and won’t bring you any closer to getting money, justice, or anything but a headache. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on March 10, 2014
If you think of your life as a rollercoaster—and there are plenty of inspirational posters that would like it if you did—than the downhill plunges will feel uncomfortable, scary, and inducing of barf. Whether you’re looking back on your best days or your worst decision, it’s hard not to fear the transitions and wonder what you did wrong to fall so profoundly, even when you’re not at fault. If, however, you accept your current low as a painful fact of life that hasn’t changed your values or basic priorities, then you need never feel like a failure and instead can take pride in enduring whatever life throws at you and still working hard. Then life will be less like a scary rollercoaster, and more like a steady old road.
–Dr. Lastname
I wish I could stop thinking about how I’ve ruined my life. I used to be comfortably well off and never worried about the food bill, basic repairs, or even taking a vacation. Then I had to make a major financial decision about my capital and decided to put it all into an investment that was a total bust. There’s no point in explaining everything that went wrong, but, by the time I got out of it, I was broke, and now, every time I thing about it, the bills I haven’t paid, or the phone calls from creditors I have to constantly ignore, I want to throw myself out a window. It was the biggest, stupidest mistake of my life, and I shouldn’t have believed any of the advisers who said it was a good risk. My goal is to stop being haunted by the feeling that my life is, or should be, over.
If you judge your actions by how they happen to turn out, then every bad luck turd that comes your way is a personal failure, including: getting the flu (you were too stupid to get a shot!); getting laid off (too foolish to prepare for the recession); and getting hit by a meteor (too busy watching “Real Housewives” to buy a telescope).
In a fair world, where everything is safe and predictable, you’d be right, but in this world, you’re just being mean to yourself over something that probably couldn’t have been helped. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on March 6, 2014
The math of human instinct tells us that self + unfair victimization = a right to punish the person to blame, even if that person is a blood relative with the best of intentions. In a fair world, the justice equation would check out, but in this one, the person who appears responsible often had no choice, and just happened to be a conduit for life’s random misery. So whether you’re a blamed parent who is helpless to stop your kid from hitting and running, or a blamed child who can’t escape unfair punishment, judge yourself carefully and fairly. Then, instead of fighting for justice, stand up for what you believe while waiting for blame to fizzle and an equation that adds up.
–Dr. Lastname
My fifteen-year-old daughter, whom I used to be close to, was always a sensitive, over-reactive kid. I was still shocked and hurt, however, when she suddenly spoke up, in the midst of her first visit with me and my new husband, to say to him, “Who the fuck are you?” She stopped talking to me for a year after I left her father, but eventually relented and then we started spending regular time together (though he has full custody, and I get weekend visitation). Now that she’s insulted my husband, however, I don’t know what to say— to not talk like that to her stepfather? To go to her room until she’s ready to behave? My goal is to figure out what to say that will address the nastiness and inappropriateness of her speech and let her know she can’t treat my husband with disrespect.
As hard as reality TV tries to find us the Cesar Milan of adolescent girls, as of yet, there is no such person as the “Teen Whisperer.” The closet thing we have is that woman on “Dance Moms,” and she’s really just an all-purpose bellower.
The reason no such teen expert exists, on TV or off, is because there is nothing you can say, in any volume, that will persuade your daughter to behave better. You have little influence and she wants you to be angry and hurt, so, as with any breach of the law anything you say can and will be used against you in the court of teen self-entitlement. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
