The Vine: March 10, 2010
Dear Sars,
I really admire your writing and your advice, so I wanted to ask you some etiquette questions that have been on my mind lately. Specifically, I had some questions about wedding engagement etiquette, and same-sex engagements in particular.
My boyfriend and I have been together for a little over a year now and we have been talking about eventually getting married (and we are Canadian so we are lucky enough to have that opportunity). We have also talked about getting a house together, and of the two, we have agreed that the house is the higher priority. Buying a house will probably be two or three years down the road yet, and I’m totally committed to that timetable.
But a lot of my friends have been getting married lately, or will be in the near future, and I find myself getting swept up in the romance of it all. I am eager to take a step towards building a life together and asking him officially to marry me.
So my first question is: how long an engagement is too long? Can a proposal just be what I intend, a promise to marry this man someday? Or does it set an expectation among family and friends that we will be getting married sooner rather than later? My three most recently engaged friends (straight couples all, if that makes a difference) are getting married after 8-month to year-long engagements, so I guess I’m worried about jumping the gun if our wedding might be three or four years away.
Our predominantly straight circle of friends leads to my next question; how should a same-sex marriage proposal work? My boyfriend says that he feels better at the smaller, everyday loving gestures than grand, romantic ones. He’s not giving himself enough credit, but I do tend to be the more mushy, romantic type of the two of us. So I have told him that when we get engaged, I will do the proposing.
That said, while I’ve got a few ideas about when and how, there are matters of protocol on which I feel fuzzy. Most specifically, I don’t know what to do about a ring. My plans thus far tend towards the heteronormative, with me getting down on one knee and giving him…something. But a diamond ring doesn’t seem like the way to go here. Is there something else cool and classy I can present to him? Should I get a second whatever-it-is for him to put on me as he accepts? Or would something altogether less traditional be more appropriate?
I am probably getting a little too excited about this a little too early, but this is advice that I will need someday at least, so I hope you (or the readers?) can help me out.
Totally Gay for Weddings
Dear Gay,
If I don’t know the particulars of a couple or their engagement, what financial concerns might factor into the decision, et cetera, a long engagement (my definition of long: more than 18 months) raises an eyebrow with me. “Pre-engagements,” same thing. Yes, yes, a wedding is expensive and takes time to plan, I get that, but if you got engaged in order to get married, and not just to say that you got engaged, or pre-engaged, or whatever, then you find a way and you go ahead and get married.
And sometimes it is that the couple just wants to have some drama, I guess, or that one party is stalling, but it depends on the couple — one friend of mine told her fiancé that she’d get engaged if he felt strongly about it, and she’s faithful to him and they own their home together and all the rest, but she just doesn’t want to get married, so they have an engagement in perpetuity. That’s their deal. Presumably your friends know your deal, and for people who don’t know the specifics, who cares what they (or I) think anyway.
That said, try to separate the emotional desire to get married from the legal and financial ramifications. You can go ahead and buy a house and have a contract between you that lays out the terms of that, and not have marriage as a condition. You can go ahead and get married, and then the property laws that apply to married couples will apply when you purchase a home. But if you love the guy and you want to build a life with him, landowners or not, leave the house out of it. You can’t line everything up exactly right in life; you can try, but sometimes you just have to go ahead with what you know you want and trust yourself to figure everything else out in whatever order.
As far as the actual proposal…you tell me. You know the guy better than anyone, presumably; if you think he would want a ring, something platinum with an engraving, you should get him that. If you think he would want to give you something in exchange, if you think he would want the same thing he received from you — I don’t know him, so I can’t really say. You get matching tattoos, you buy him a watch, whatever you think he would like and whatever token you think would have meaning to both of you is what you should go with. I can guess, but it’s like you guessing that I might like a traditional engagement setting — I wouldn’t, in fact, and anyone proposing to me would know that, if you see what I mean.
Trust yourself, and trust him to appreciate whichever gesture you pick. And congratulations in advance!
Hey Sars,
I’ve got a cat question for you. A few weeks ago my cat managed to be one of the few non-overweight cats to get herself diagnosed with Fatty Liver Disease. It seems to have been caused by her getting bored with her cat food while I was away for the weekend. She started eating immediately when I bought her a new brand of food, but the damage was already done.
Luckily, since the illness wasn’t brought on by any other underlying cause, she didn’t have to be force-fed or have a feeding tube put in. My vet pronounced her the most energetic jaundiced cat he’d ever seen and told me the main thing to do was to get her to eat as much as she could to flush the fat from her liver. I switched her to wet food since I knew that would be more appealing and she’s been scarfing down 1.5-2 cans a day.
She’s much less yellow now and I’d like to start switching her back to dry food. I tried mixing some of it in with the wet food and got the cat equivalent of a “bitch please” face. Do you have any other tips for turning a cat back to dry food?
Everything Smells Like Wellness Turkey-and-Salmon
Dear Turkey,
If she’s well enough to miss a few meals, then she can suck it up and eat what you put down. Cats will eventually eat whatever’s there; they just have to get hungry enough. I alternate my cats’ dry food between a hairball formula and a senior formula, and every time there’s a changing of the guard, there’s also the sitting next to the kibble all slumped over and sighing…and the Sarah shrugging, “Suit yourself, Butterpantses,” and leaving the room…and right on cue, the sound of crunching. Beleaguered crunching, but: crunching.
So, if it’s not imperative that she eat steadily for a couple of days, mix more and more dry food into the wet each time until it’s all dry. She’s going to get hungry after a while and eat it, and if you’re allowed to let her get hungry, the bitch-please faces won’t last long. Just ignore them.
You can also try putting a daub of Petromalt onto the dry-food mix for a couple of feedings, if she likes the fish pastes and if your vet says it’s okay (it might be contraindicated for her condition, so ask first).
Dear Sars,
Here’s the situation: husband and I have been married for 6+ years, and as relationships go, things are pretty good. We have our ups and downs, but no large problems.
Over the past three years, there’s a guy in my life who has moved into the “very good personal friend” category. That’s not a euphemism — we’ve had a lot of heart-to-heart talks over the phone, but we live in different states, and it’s unlikely that we’ll be in the same geographic region anytime soon. We’ve talked about a lot of intensely personal stuff, and occasionally our relationships to significant others are part of the discussion, but our conversations cover a wide ground — professional and personal lives, feelings, emotions, family and dysfunctional relationships — the gamut.
Recently I’ve been dealing with the near-death of a family member and a cross-country move; he’s been going through a breakup and tough job situation.Our communication tends to ebb and flow, and while in the past, we’ve gone a month or so without connecting, that’s unusual. We’re in a pattern right now of 3-4 phone conversations per week, some longer than others, and there’s something that I’ve noticed in our recent conversations. I think that I’m attracted to him and I think that he may be attracted to me.
Let me state for the record that I have no intention of cheating on my spouse. In fact, my husband and I talk about everything that my friend and I discuss, which I think allows some of the emotional tension to disappear. Friend and I definitely have a strong emotional bond, and I think that’s what’s setting off a warning signal for me. My husband is not a good communicator, and really doesn’t like having long discussions about philosophy and feelings. In some ways, this friendship has helped me to see what I’ve been missing and to attempt to develop these kinds of conversations in my marriage.
While I believe that all of us have different needs that are met by different people, and that a single person cannot “complete” me, I want to make sure that I’m not crossing a line for either my husband or my friend. I love my husband and would not leave him or cheat on him. I also really care about my friend, and do not want to desert him.
I think there’s probably a way to scale things back a bit, to allow some more of the tension to disperse without breaking things off. There are probably some boundaries that I could set.
What would you do? Can boys and girls really be friends?
Sally
Dear Sally,
Yes, boys and girls can really be friends — until one or both parties develop(s) more-than-friendly feelings, at which time you can’t keep telling yourself that it’s about the friendship, you don’t want to lose the friendship, you value the friendship too much to blah blah the friendship is gone now, sad to say. The friendship is now some other relationship, and the fact that you’ve written to me to ask about setting boundaries suggests that, while this kind of relationship isn’t inappropriate in every marriage, you know it’s inappropriate in yours.
You say you “think there’s probably a way to scale things back a bit,” but you sound reluctant to actually do it — and you’ll need to. You can tell Friend that the level of closeness is starting to feel improper to you, given your marriage, and while you don’t want him to feel abandoned, you’ll need to take a step back from the relationship for a while. You can tell Friend nothing, and pull back a bit on your own. But you need to acknowledge that the friendship is now compromised, and it’s not impossible for it to return to a strictly platonic meeting of the minds — the key word being “return.”
This hasn’t gone too far yet, but it could, and I don’t mean that you sleep with Friend. Emotional attachments do count as cheating to some people, and unless your husband has expressly stated, believably, that he’s fine with it, the situation isn’t fair to him — or you, really.
What you tell Friend is up to you, but those boundaries want setting, and soon.
Tags: boys (and girls) cats etiquette
Turkey: Cats with fatty liver disease HAVE to eat (not eating is typically what causes it), so she needs to eat something at every meal. Taking a hardline approach is definitely not an option here. I would suggest keeping her solely on canned food. Dry food is actually terrible for cats – sure, some cats survive on it just fine, but it doesn’t contain enough moisture which can lead to urinary problems, and cats don’t digest grains at all (granted, there are non-grain kibbles, but the moisture thing is a big deal and I would guess the top cause of otherwise potty trained cats peeing outside their boxes).
A high end canned food is a much better choice than dry for the ongoing health of your cat. Personally, I feed my cats raw food, and they love it and are thriving, but I understand it’s not for everyone (the frozen commercial raw foods ARE pretty easy, though, and much less stinky than canned).
Sally: While a lot of people claim that a little flirting outside the union keeps their marriage happy, I think it’s more that it keeps them feeling courted, which they miss after some time with a partner. The best advice I ever got about relationships from a married friend was this: “If you ever get a crush on someone, even a little bud of a crush that hasn’t fully formed, get away from that person as fast as you can. No commitment can trump the one you’ve made to your partner.” Trying to talk yourself out of stopping this while you still can should be a huge red flag.
Emily- Turkey, here. I feed my cat a high-end grain-free dry food and her water fountain provides her with plenty of moisture (And a fun little waterfall for her to attack and splash everywhere). She’s never had a problem with UTIs or peeing outside the litterbox. There were a few problems with the wet food-she tends to eat little bits throughout the day and would stop eating the wet food that had been put a few hours earlier unless I mixed it with water, which means she wasn’t eating while I was at work. There was also a noted increase in bugs and mice. I ended up mixing some shredded chicken breast in with the dry food and gradually lessening the amount, which renewed her interest in the dry food. Her color’s back to normal and so is her energy level. She’s doing a good job of losing her Liver Failure Sympathy Points.
Gay: I say that instead of worrying about protocol, I’d revel in the fact that BECAUSE of the un-traditional nature of your relationship, you can do whatever the heck makes you happy. I agree with Sars that long engagements tend to speak to a subconscious desire to delay the wedding, or an OCD desire to have the time to make it the PERFECT DAY. Why do you have to wait to have the house before the wedding? You can throw a fabulous party for under $5,000, or even much less if you’re willing to forgo the fancy-schmancy gala.
As for what to propose with, I think that a nice watch would be a fine gift, then you could save the rings for the actual wedding. Or something else, or nothing at all. That said, having something tangible makes the statement that that the proposal is serious and official. (Note, I just said “tangible.” “Expensive” is not required.)
@turkey – aren’t there some “moist” cat foods that look like kibble, but are a little less wet than canned food? Maybe you can step kitty down with that. Probably more expensive than canned for a few weeks, but possibly more palatable to kitty.
Yay for gay weddings! As a lesbian who got married last summer, I agree with Sars’ assessment about rings – do what feels right for the two of you. I gave my wife a ring that had been in her family, and then she got me an engagement ring a couple of months later that wasn’t at all engagement-y (it was this one: http://www.loveandpride.com/Product/ProductInfo.aspx?id=5031).
I found that the engagement is just the start of a whole process of dealing with these issues of protocol and politics. There are a huge range of options for gay weddings that all come loaded with different meanings – the courthouse steps wedding just after legalization, the very counter-culture wedding that celebrates not being tied to the same social norms as straight couples, the heteronormative wedding that says “we’re just like everyone else” to your great aunts, etc. Canadians may be over it more than many in the U.S., but I planned a same-sex wedding in the wake of Prop 8, and it surprised me how political some of the decisions felt about rings and white dresses and church vs. courthouse. At this moment in time, for better or for worse, publicly formalizing your relationship through a wedding is a political act.
All this is to say that you and your fiance will be dealing with the question of whether something is heteronormative and whether that’s good or bad a lot. Embrace it if you want, don’t if it’s not right for you, and try not to sweat it too much.
And congrats!
Gay, I agree with Sars that you can’t make the house thing line up with the wedding thing, necessarily. I’m a straight chick who proposed to my husband, because I basically woke up one morning and realized I couldn’t imagine my life without him, and, what’s more, I didn’t ever want to. I, too, wondered what to give him when I proposed, and I ended up getting him a silver pocketwatch (which I didn’t have engraved till afterwards, I was so–unnecessarily–nervous that he would say no). I ended up learning a lot about pocketwatches from Internet research into new ones and antiques, by the way, so that was kind of cool.
A lot of people gave me crap for proposing, and some people even gave us crap for only being engaged for six months. But if you want to spend the rest of your life with someone, why wait? My grandmother’s biggest regret was waiting to marry my grandfather until they had enough money. What’s “enough,” anyway? He ended up dying pretty young, and she always said she missed out on those earlier years, and what were they waiting for? The difference here is that my husband and I had actually been dating for four years already when we got engaged, but depending on your age and place in life, a little over a year might be enough time for you to know you want to be with him forever.
BTW, I still don’t have an engagement ring, and our wedding was pretty cheap, but our friends still tell us how much fun it was. Do what YOU want to do, without getting swept up into the wedding-industrial complex, okay? And congratulations!
FWIW, my vet has told us NOT to feed the cats wet food and that dry food is better. I guess it depends on who you talk to :-) We always have plenty of water out for them so there is no chance of dehydration. Mixing wet with dry and gradually mixing more dry and less wet is what has worked for me in the past.
@Emily dry food is not “terrible” for cats nor has it been shown to be a cause for urinating outside of boxes.
@Turkey, discuss the problem with your vet, since letting your cat not eat is probably not the best plan in this case. sometimes wetting the dry food with something like sodium chicken broth for a while and then slowly weaning that out can help, sometimes you get stuck with wet food forever because the cat refuses anything else and gets sick after a few days of not eating.
@Gay: Congratulations to you and your boyfriend. I’m straight, but ending up being the one to propose to my husband. I just popped the question and then he picked out a ring that he likes (carved titanium band from titaniumera.com) and I got it for him. I gave him an idea of what i wanted and he eventually found something he liked to get for me. There really isn’t a standard that needs to be conformed to regardless of the genders involved in the union so do what you think he (and you) would like best!
Sally: Reverse roles. How would you feel if you found out your husband was spending hours on the phone each week with a woman, talking about personal issues, family, friends, feelings, daily life, emotions, troubles, etc.
There.
I think you have your answer.
In comparision to @Emily … whenever I’ve tried to put my cats on wet food in significant amounts, they gotten diarrhea, which is dehydrating. Every time, and not abating over time, either; and with now eight cats, I’ve got a pretty good sample size. The brand — and I’ve tried tons of high-end ones — never matters. I still give them a daily “treat” of a partial can of wet food, and I keep a variety of dry foods out for them to free-eat from, and they’re all thriving. (A little too much in one case; I’ve got a big orange guy who could really stand to slim down, but it’s not feasible with my schedule and the number of cats, and he’s still healthy.) So it really depends on the pet. Though I have heard good things about raw diets and am intrigued to learn about frozen commercial versions ….
Maybe it’s a cultural thing, but I sort of disagree on the long-engagements issue. My OH and I will have been engaged 17 months when we make it to the altar: 18 months is average in the UK, and anything less than a year is generally considered pretty short. I think a lot of this has to do with the fact that, if you want a summer Saturday and a popular venue/church, you’re often looking at booking 2 years in advance.
I post on a wedding messageboard where lots of people have three- or four-year engagements in order to scrape the money together/get housing and kids sorted. Or people get pregnant while engaged and the wedding gets deprioritised. It was my personal feeling, and my fiance’s, that we wanted to be married sooner rather than later and we wouldn’t have wanted a two- or three-year engagement, but I think getting engaged is just a formal statement of intent to get married, no time limit implied. Sorry to sound patronising and trite, but what matters is obviously how Totally Gay and boyfriend view it – would Totally Gay’s bf want to make steam for the altar, or does he not care?
Oh, and re: ways to do it, my ex-boss and dear friend wrote his proposal into the last chapter of the book he was writing, and gave it to his now-hubby to read! I loved that one.
@Sally: The best clue is the one you gave yourself: you’re getting uncomfortable. Don’t worry about what your friend might be thinking. He might not be thinking anything about you That Way at all, and even if he is… those feelings aren’t your responsibility. How this affects you and your husband is though.
If the current level of relationship between you and this guy was truly Perfectly OK between you and your hubby, you wouldn’t even think of writing to an advice column about it. Follow your instincts and dial something back now, before worry turns to regret.
Gay Weddings (and how I wish I could attend!)
As far as an engagement token goes, Sars is 100% on knowing the kind of thing your partner would like. When my husband proposed, we went together with a jeweler freind to pick out my engagement ring. As opposed to (to me) hideously gaudy and overpriced diamond settings, I got a beautiful black pearl in a silver ring setting. I bought him a watch, and he still wears it every day (except when the batteries go out and he complains for weeks until I roll my eyes and take it in for a new one.)
When another freind of mine proposed to his fiancee a few years ago, he knew she didn’t want a ring (they’d discussed it earlier), but he wanted to get her a token of engagement, so he bought a beautiful clock in a great retro style and presented it to her at work on bended knee. Awww!
It all depends on your guy. Does he love moose hunting? Get him a rifle. Does he love jogging? Get him a super-duper sports watch. Does he love music? Buy the most awesome I-thing you can find. Don’t go broke but do go thoughtful. There’s nothing that’s not romantic if it’s given in a loving spirit.
Turkey, I’m with Emily. We had a skinny cat get fatty liver too. (Had to go the feeding tube route and it was a pain in the ass, but in his defense, he did amazingly well and more than two years later has no problems, so good things are probably just ahead for you!) That said, having spent the money, I watch him like a hawk now. Not eating is not acceptable, not for any length of time, so he gets whatever he needs to get him to eat. Doesn’t seem to milk the situation, like some “people” around here I could mention….
Anyway, we’ve also had more than one vet tell us that dry food just isn’t great for cats for the exact reasons Emily mentions. It’s convenient for owners and not nearly as messy, but even the high-quality dry foods contain lots of carbs. We have a diabetic cat as well, and recent research in that area indicates that cats need a certain amount of protein that isn’t as easily digested from dry food, meaning they’ll eat and eat and eat until they get it. So, in addition to the dietary and urinary problems Emily mention, dry food can also really contribute to weight gain in cats. Canned’s really worth considering, at least from my experience.
My marriage broke up over a friendship. My husband didn’t like to talk and I had a best male friend who did and it did become an “emotional affair” after a long period of time, and then more I am ashamed to say. It hurt my now exhusband badly and if I could go back I would have walked away form that friendship entirely. Be very careful, if you really value your marriage you may just have to walk away entirely.
On Gay weddings: at a recent work function, the conversation turned to weddings, and everybody at the table started grumbling about the cost, the major-motion-picture production values, the schedule upheaval, and how everybody hated destination weddings. Then I brought up my sister’s imminent Gay Wedding. And everybody -everybody- perked up and got really excited. From Bah-humbug to Mazel Tov! in .06 seconds.
I think there’s a wellspring of delight in 1) the novelty of gay weddings; 2) the awareness that it’s a long time coming; 3) and the understanding that whatever hidebound ‘rules’ exist for hetmarriage can safely and exuberantly be tossed for gay weddings. (Not that they can’t be tossed for hetweddings, but fewer people have expectations to be met.)
So: Yay! and Congratulations!
For Sally: I was recently reading Elizabeth Gilbert’s new book Committed, which is about marriage, and there’s a great passage about “walls and windows” — when you open a window to someone else, and/or build a wall where there used to be a window in your marriage or relationship, you’re at risk for infidelity (or at least for some kind of relationship problem).
It doesn’t sound like you built a wall, since you mention your husband has never liked to talk in that way and that you tell him about your conversations, but you have opened a (large) window to someone else. And it sounds like now is the time to either put curtains up, or plaster it over, whichever is going to make you — and your husband — most comfortable.
Even as someone for whom infidelity has never been an issue, that metaphor has helped me a lot in thinking about how I was creating communication barriers in my relationships, and it seemed very apropos for your circumstances.
I have healthy (and relatively chubby) cats. Their vet explained the wonders of wet food but the cats had issues with diarrhea (sp?) with the switch to all wet food. One actually would not eat only wet food (He’d leave more than 1/2 of it there at each feeding and then whine and try to get the treat bag while the wet food stunk up the house). Now they have two meals that alternate between dry (breakfast) and wet (dinner). The pickier eater eats at least 3/4 of his wet food before walking away – the other one finishes it while he goes after her left-over dry food. There aren’t any issues with dehydration according to the vet (and my observation of the water fountain and litter boxes).
It sounds like Turkey has resolved her problems but having two meals a day seems to work for us. Since they got 1/2 their daily food at each feeding, it was less likely to sit around all day attracting bugs and mice.
I’ve also had success mixing the low-grain high-protein dry food with the “indoor/hairbaill” formula – pehaps I am defeating the purpose of the two special dry foods but at least they don’t refuse to eat it because it smells different every time I come home from the store.
@ Gay – congratulations! no particular advice, but my experience from getting engaged was that we wanted to get married quickly afterward. We always knew we’d end up married once we got serious, so it seemed like once we made a real decision that it was time to be engaged, it was time to be married.
@TGfW:
How long is too long an engagement? I’ve been engaged to my wonderful fiance since 1993, when we were 19. Much as I adore going to the weddings of friends and family, I haven’t envied them the organisation required. Other things have taken priority over the years (family illness, Bereavements, relocations for work, financing a mortgage, blah-blah-excuses-cakes). We are totally committed to each other, we both wear engagement rings, and although I don’t feel that marriage is something I need, it is something I want. We’re now looking at a Saturday in Sept 2012, when we will have been together half my life to the day (yes, I checked) as a wedding date.
We’ve been fortunate not to suffer from any external pressure to do the deed (apart from some gentle ribbing!), so we can marry at our own (albeit slow) pace. It’s been kind of cool seeing friends meet, fall in love, move in and marry happily, while fiance & I pootle along contentedly.
Do what feels right for you both. Talk, plan, and enjoy the talking and planning. Try not to let others’ expectations, real or perceived, derail you from the timetable you’re comfortable with.
Congratulations, and good luck!
I’m going to be a weirdo about the advice to Gay to give a watch, and add the caveat that even good quartz watches have a lifespan, and will die someday, beyond the reach of replacement batteries. I have the most gorgeous sterling Gruen in a drawer, never to be worn again.
If you go with a watch, make it a mechanical one – there’s a certain romance to the idea, in its way, and all sorts of metaphor to be enjoyed. The one metaphor to avoid: the watch for which no more batteries will ever make a difference, sitting beautiful and useless in a drawer.
I love love LOVE your sig, by the way, Gay. And you sound like such a great couple – congratulations, whatever your decisions and timetables turn out to be!!!!
*Totally gay for Gay’s wedding*
Also: *Squee!*
@Gay:
Try this website: http://offbeatbride.com
YES, it is mostly geared toward women. But there are heaps of same-sex; gender neutral or otherwise interesting weddings. And there is an accompanying book that helps answer some of your tough questions.
But the most important thing this website has taught me is that there is no “right way”. Have your engagement for as long or as short as you like. And remember you are having a MARRIAGE, not a wedding. Let that be the focus. Get married now if you want, and throw the party in five years once you’ve bought a house. Whatever works for you. Feel free to abandon convention here.
And on the gift note, my friend proposed to her now-husband with some diamond cufflinks.
Sally – the Mr. and I have been together a long time – and long ago, we agreed that we wouldn’t make any new opposite-sex (hetero) friends. It has worked out very well for us. I have my old friends and had no conflict with those relationships – but have also made darn sure I didn’t create an emotional affair with a new buddy.
IMO, if you want & need more emotional intimacy and heart-to-heart talks than Mr. Sally can give you – invest in your girlfriends for it. This friendship sounds like trouble.
@Gay–I have a small group of friends at varying stages in their relationships and one of them got engaged first, and three years later, is still engaged. The couple has finally gotten past their various roadblocks to marriage, so it looks like it might actually happen, but it has been a pretty long engagement. I think that my advice has been well-covered here already, but definitely try and take the extraneous factors away from the wedding and focus on the reasons you want to get married and if your partner is on board with those. And have fun! Love the watch idea, for the proposal, BTW.
@Sally–I have a very good, straight male friend at work (I’m female), with whom I have lots of conversations about anything and everything. We have lunch together pretty frequently, he lets me drag him shopping sometimes, and we see each other occasionally outside of work. My husband actually said the other day that he loves that I have my friend, because otherwise, I would jabber at my husband all of the time, which would drive my husband nuts. That said, I also don’t talk to my friend on the phone and we rarely interact outside of work. I believe that helps us maintain a respectful, and necessary distance from any impropriety. And the fact that I’m trying to set him up with one of my dear girlfriends helps, too.
@KTB: Ah yes, the “work spouse.” I feel like most people have those, and the work spouse carries out many of the platonic, busyworky functions of an actual spouse during business hours.
This situation isn’t work spouse; this is replacement spouse, almost. And it happens sometimes, you get crushes on other people, you have certain emotional needs that this other person is meeting at a key time…it’s normal. You just have to recognize that it’s about to go too far and disrespect the existing relationship, and end it.
FWIW, having worked for a veterinarian and in other animal care related business, both foods are okay for maintenence *in moderation*.
Canned food usually is easier to digest and is more palatable for picky eaters. HOWEVER. If you’re going on an all canned route for feeding, please please pleeeeease make sure to invest in your pets dental hygiene. I’ve seen far too many cats with rotten teeth from eating nothing but canned food. And it also has a nasty habit of giving animals diarrhea. Most people can find a healthy balance by mixing in a little wet with a little dry, best of both worlds. Barring that, try some boiled chicken meat.
Jeez, sorry for the animal rant!
Sally, I tried this route several years ago. I met a guy who really seemed to click with me, we chatted about all kinds of things, he seemed to share interests my husband and I didn’t and was willing to listen to all I had to talk about and I did the same for him. I frequently pointed out to him how much I loved my husband and was definitely not looking for more than someone to chat with once in a while. At times we both vented about our spouses. My husband was aware and I sometimes shared with my husband things I had learned from and about my friend. Eventually my husband was not so comfortable with this relationship, started reading things into it that weren’t there and I decided that it would be best to cut things off. I told my friend that my family came first and sorry, but he was not as important to me as keeping my husband happy. It wasn’t like I didn’t have friends I already talked to a lot. So I went some months without hearing from this friend and then one day a message showed up in my e-mail and he called shortly after that. I made some small talk, but wasn’t really comfortable with this at that point in time. He told me at that time that he had moved, talked about the new place and when I asked how his wife liked it he told me he had left her. I gave him my sympathies on the matter but let it go. A few days later he called me again, told me he loved me, asked me to marry him. I was in shock and told him so, he said, “I have loved you since the first time I heard your voice.” It was not until this point in time I realized what a huge mistake I had made in thinking I could really know how someone else felt based strictly on what they told me they felt. And eventually I have to live with the fact that in some way I have been responsible for not only damaging my relationship with my husband, but also breaking up another marriage. I am still married, but I know that I have hurt my husband, and lets just say put a “mark on my permanant record” with my actions.
My advice for you is that you would not be writing this letter without some sense of guilt. Move on and forget this guy and put all this behind you while you still can.
I would like to second what Toni said. I had the luxury of being the youngest of 18 cousins which allowed me to witness 18 weddings. One of them was held at park and cost less than 3,000 dollars. Each of the great aunts and uncles stood up with the bride and groom and gave them a secret for happiness. It was really moving and very awesome. The 50,000 dollar designer wedding featured my mother teaching the caterer how to make radish roses and 6 bridesmaids in peplumed Gunny Sax dresses that split up the back and a wedding dress that shredded once the dancing started. It was the other definition of awesome. So what all these weddings taught me is that money is not the most important part of an excellent wedding. And that watching bridesmaids try to dance to early Madonna while keeping their ass-covering peplums from bouncing up is funny. And don’t have You’re The Inspiration for your wedding song.
Having recently been through the fatty liver disease thing myself (our end results were horrible and it pains me to realize that now after all was said and done, I should have just ignored my vet when he told me to put the cat on a diet to lose weight but that’s a whole other dramatic, sad story) I’d say this. If your cat has the inclination to not eat for an extended period of time because she’s not into her food (which then results in her getting sick), then by all means switch her to something she will eat. If that means wet food, then that’s what it is. Just be sure it’s balanced and isn’t the equivalent to ‘junk food’. Kibble is fine and yes, it’s easier for them to eat at their leisure, but if she’s not then that’s a problem. I don’t ever want to go through what I went through and neither do you. Let her eat what she wants even if that means an inconvenient feeding schedule and a little wet food smell.
I don’t understand people who cut out one sex to be friends with but I do think it’s fair for spouses to insist on knowing each others friends. A friend of either sex has the potential to come between a couple.
A close, secretive relationship raises alarms.
Sharing friends or at least introducing everyone and keeping your husband/wife up-to-date on the details of the relationship should keep everything kosher in a healthy marriage.
KTB, your last name isn’t “Beesly” by any chance is it? Because your description sounds like this sitcom I like to watch on Thursday nights…. ;)
I’d bet that Gilbert’s “walls and windows” language came from Dr. Shirley Glass’s (mother to Ira) book: Not Just Friends. She was a marriage counselor and wrote a book specifically about infidelity. Her book goes into detail about developing the self-awareness to head off affairs.
http://www.shirleyglass.com/bookmain.htm
@Turkey – if you want your cat to eat dry food try Whiskas Temptations “treats”. They are 100% nutritionally complete and cats LOVE them. They come in small, resealable bags so part of the reason I think they are so yummy to kitties is that they have the FRESH smell every time you give them some. One of my cats eats about 80% of her diet in them and the vet says that’s fine and she’s very healthy. Great shiny coat and very active. :) My cats prefer the ones in the green bag!
Or, if you want to stick with non-treatlike crunchy, I recommend putting out only small portions at a time and buying the brands that come in resealable bags. So the are very FRESH smelling! Good luck. :)
@kdub: I’m so sorry about what you went through. It’s been my experience that a cat with a couple of extra pounds (i.e., not morbidly obese for a cat: still able to clean itself and move around easily and use the litterbox, etc.) is a cat that has some resources if it gets sick, because they can fade really quickly – almost before you realize they’re sick.
Per Jenn: For cats on wet-food diets, there are actually toothwipes that you can use to clean their teeth. (No, you can’t get them to use the wipes by themselves; I tried.) It may not work for everyone, but I have cats that like to gnaw things, and which are perfectly happy to have me stick my fingers in their mouths, which makes cleaning their teeth easier.
@S: I’m sorry for your experience, and I hope you can forgive yourself at least a bit: it doesn’t sound as if what happened was deliberate on your part: your husband read things that weren’t there, and your friend wasn’t honest with you – these are things that were not your fault.
@S … ? YOU. Are not the cause of your ex friend’s marital breakdown. He may have made you a *part* of it, unwittingly, but you are not the CAUSE here. You made the choice to look to your own life, and you seem to have worked to make the right choices in the end. Take responsibility for those you feel may have been wrong choices – but don’t take responsibility for the ex “friend’s” drama. Sars, what’s your advice on this kind of thing again – just because someone puts your name on the bag of rocks doesn’t mean it’s yours to carry?
Turkey, I’m so glad for kitty! Love the return-letter-writers’ updates.
@Diane: “Just because someone wrote your name on it doesn’t mean you have to pick it up” — something like that.
I have to echo everything said thus far on Sally’s situation. I was once the other woman/work spouse in an emotional affair with a married man who had two small kids. Neither of us ever laid a hand on the other. There was no kissing, no physical intimacy of any kind. But his marriage broke up, and his son later killed himself. This was not because of me (at that point, I had not seen Mr. X in more than 10 years) but from things I heard, I suspect that this set up a pattern that later bore some fairly nasty fruit.
Emotional affairs can be every bit as devastating as physical flings, and one often leads to the other even when both parties have the noblest of intentions. The only way to avoid this is to walk away from the friend. If he truly is a friend, by which I mean he truly wants the best for you, he won’t hold it against you.
Here’s a question relating to Sally’s question. If you have a friendship, and it turns into more, and you decide to end that friendship (because it’s uncomfortable/creating problems with your relationship with your spouse), what’s the best way to deal with tangible memories of said friendship (photos, gifts, etc.)? Should you just destroy all evidence that the friendship ever existed (out of respect for the spouse, to purge guilt), or is it OK to retain these things, since the person was your friend? I suppose this is a corollary to the age-old question of: What do you do with the photos of an ex, presents an ex gave you?
Sars, thank you. I know people often suggest t-shirts of your cleverer phrases. For me, those t-shirts would be a remedial reader’s godsend. Heh.
Okay, and sorry to dump all over comments. No need to publish this one, I know it doesn’t add anything.
@Georgia: It depends on what associations those have for you. If you grit your teeth or burst into tears every time you see the things, then it’s best for your own mental health to at least shove them to the back of the attic. If your partner picks a raging fight with you every time one of your mementos acts as a reminder: ditto.
On the other hand, if your current partner INSISTS that every single reminder of past relationships be destroyed in a bonfire in the back yard, I’d call that a danger signal. I would myself not only never do this for anyone, I’d never ask it of anyone. There are better ways to work through that kind of thing.
Personally, I am not going to get rid of my photographs and reminders of my ex-husband, because that would be a denial of the good years we had together. And one day, I expect, I will want to think about all the things in my life that brought me to the place I’m at, without glossing over bits. On the other hand, I don’t have them standing around my apartment. And there were a couple of particularly personal and lovely gifts which I passed on to other people, because it was a shame that they weren’t being worn/used, and they held too many bitter reminders for me to ever do so.
(It’s a tough call. After my grandmother died, we found a bundle of letters tucked away, detailing an affair SHE’D had at one point. My father was horrified; he hadn’t known about it, and here his mother had actually begged this man to take her away with him, and been cruelly rejected! But I am actually really glad to know about it, to know this story about a grandmother I scarcely knew, and in some way, the words she used, the way she clearly thought of herself, the way she related to this man, so closely parallel things in my own life, that it’s increased my self-understanding.)
Gay: My husband and I got were engaged for 5 years before we bothered to do anything about it. Once we both committed to getting married, the heavy lifting seemed to be over. When we finally got around to planning a big gay wedding, it was really just an excuse to relive the romance and excitement of that first commitment. No one ever gave us a hard time about it, although there were often questions from friends who were anxious to see what kind of a party we were going to throw. (Awesome, as it turned out.)
Also: When he proposed to me (thus winning a race we had been joking about for ages), he gave me a $30 silver ring. It has since been replaced by something more permanent, but I will always keep that first ring. It could have been a toaster, and I would still cherish it. Don’t put too much pressure on yourself to come up with something “perfect.” He’ll love it for what it represents.
@JeniMull
“IMO, if you want & need more emotional intimacy and heart-to-heart talks than Mr. Sally can give you – invest in your girlfriends for it.”
Just saying: this does not always help in these particular situations. Talking as someone nominally heterosexual that ended up falling heads over heels in love with the girlfriend that I could talk abut everything with:-)
Sally: what if you told your husband what you just told Sars? Yeah, scary. But you mention that you do talk to him already, and he’s not stupid; he is probably somewhat aware of the situation already. So, if your context is that you put the marriage first, then say that up front, and go from there. You’re friends with Friend because Husband doesn’t talk a whole lot on philosophy, etc. Tell your husband that — he might not actually know that. Maybe, once he does, then he’ll step up, especially since you’re coming right out and saying you value your relationship with him more than relationship with Friend.
“I ended up mixing some shredded chicken breast in with the dry food and gradually lessening the amount, which renewed her interest in the dry food. ” Cara, you’re a genius. Mine just eat everydamnthing, I feel very lucky. So glad yours is better! YAY!
Gay, congratulations! I proposed to my guy too. We’ve been engaged forever, and no wedding in sight. It works for us. Do whatever you like, sweetie, it’s between the two of you & no one else’s business. Like PhoenixB says, it’s the marriage that matters. Here’s to a good one!
* clink *
Sally, Sars is right – the friendship has already become…something else. Here’s the thing though – you don’t know this guy on a day-to-day basis. Maybe he leaves skidmarks in his underpants & toothpate spatter on the mirror & whiskers in the sink & can’t hit the bowl & drinks from the milk carton & snores like a chainsaw, or worse. You absolutely know your beloved hubby’s habits & you can live with them. This guy? Is a crapshoot. Maybe remembering that he’s imperfect and sometimes disgusting in unknown ways (as we all are, I’m sure) will help you squelch this budding crush.
(Jaybird, I’m sure that pattern was there long before you, since it was there long after you – it was not your pattern & you didn’t knit it. Let yourself off the hook, hon. )
Oh man.
A few years ago I became ridiculously close friends with a married guy and fell in love with him, and I’m fairly sure he fell for me too.
Nothing physical ever happened, but I realized that I couldn’t live with myself if I caused any problems with his wife even though I was crazy about him, so I cut off our friendship.
And he was a total asshole about it and did not respect the boundaries I was imposing at all and berated me for abandoning our friendship, which, at least helped me work up some righteous anger, because he should have been thanking me for cutting it off.
Cutting out all friends of the opposite sex seems like a really drastic option. If Sally’s just moved to a new city or gone through a major life change, there may not be old friends waiting in the wings for her, in which case I wouldn’t advise immediately eliminating half the population as potential buddies.
When I moved two years ago, my first good friend at my new job was a guy. We had lots in common and he was fun to talk to. I started to talk to this guy about issues I was having with the job, with the new city, etc., and then one day, I said to myself, “No. This guy’s just for banter. You have something to share, share it with the guy at home.” And that friend hasn’t ever been a problem.
Questions for Sally: when you have a bad day and you want to vent to somebody, who is the first person you think of? When you have a great day and you want go out partying with somebody, who is the first person you think of? When you have a fight with your husband, and you need to get some stuff off your chest about it, do you go face him and say, “This isn’t done, I have some stuff to say.” Or do you call your very good personal friend and say, “The thing about my husband is he just always…”
My theory is, we’re all grown-ups, and we all have the capability of setting proper boundaries. We just have to know to do it, and we have to WANT to do it. If you don’t WANT to do it, that’s a different issue, one you need to take up with the man you’re currently married to.
@Cat_slave – Thanks for pointing that out. I also giggled a bit to myself and thought, “Wow, oversimplification!” at the suggestions that (heterosexual) paired people just reserve their friendships for people of the same sex. Isn’t working for a friend of MINE, currently, and on one very memorable previous occasion, resulted in me being stalked obsessively by someone (also nominally heterosexual) who was CONVINCED I’d be happier with her than I was with my husband. I think simply understanding one’s own boundaries, and not hesitating to set them, with friends of any kind, is essential – and addressing any discontents within your relationship, rather than bottling them up or taking them outside.
Ugh, I went through a situation with a work ‘friend’ of 5 years who gradually wanted to chat about his life daily, including wanting to tell me about his marriage issues and looking to me to cheer him up.
I thought I was very clear with him that I was not willing or comfortable listening to the personal issues, and tried to start pulling back on the friendship and telling him I was too busy to chat. Which only made him cling harder and constantly ask if I was mad at him. And then he sent me an email telling me he was in love with me and would wait. Which lead to some fun talks with HR and a very uncomfortable year at the (small) office until he finally left. Thankfully, it did not damage my relationship with my husband but I am very aware of how easily it could have.
If I could go back in time, I would have followed my sense that our friendship was starting to mean too much to him a lot sooner and been a lot more direct about it. I think there would have been less fallout and drama. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings or make work awkward and I did value the initial friendship that we had and thought things could return to that. I was way too nice and didn’t prioritize my own feelings or my husband’s enough.
Lots of thought provoking advice for Sally. It’s one of those situations that everyone has to check their emotional thermometer on.
But one thing that struck me was her comment that her husband is not a “good communicator”. Now, by this, does she mean that her spouse is just not talking about things the way she’d like, and so she’s projecting onto her freind because they happen to vibe in that way, or is her spouse more a “Yep/nope, don’t talk to me I’m reading/watching TV/playing WofW” grunter type?
If the former, well, we don’t get to dictate how people listen all the time. If one person thinks in circles and the other in squares, it takes some doing to find a common language. Farming it out to an outside source doesn’t solve the problem.
HowEVER. If it’s the latter, your spouse has a hand in this as well. I get really, really sick of persons who absolutely refuse any verbal discomfort of any kind, than get snitty when you get fed up and get on the phone with someone else who’ll give you the time of day. You are not a person’s concubine/geisha/spouse-bot who should be content to lean in the corner until he wants five minutes attention from you.
Farming it out in this instance–well, that doesn’t solve the problem either, but figure out what kind of problem you have. You may have to cut your friend off in either case, but having a partner who’s the equivalent of a wall won’t make you feel any better about your life, and you may end up seeking out another freind for relief.
is her spouse more a “Yep/nope, don’t talk to me I’m reading/watching TV/playing WofW” grunter type?
That he’s uncomfortable (or bored) talking about emotional abstracts doesn’t mean he thinks of her as a geisha. It means he’s uncomfortable or bored. Some people are just like that. Some other people who are not like that are fine with being in relationships with those who are; I don’t see myself marrying someone like that, but I’ve dated it, and in some ways, it’s relaxing.
The issue is whether this is something she requires of her life partner and whether he’s capable of giving it to her. If the answers are “yes” and “no” respectively, backing away from Friend is going to address that symptom and not the disease. And it doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with Husband or that he’s a selfish dick. It means she wants to have meep and deaningfuls with her spouse, and her spouse is not equipped for that. Not every bad match is someone’s fault.