The Vine: July 2, 2003
Hi Sars —
Love the site, love The Vine, need some advice on a matter I’d rather discuss with a neutral party.
Two months ago, my husband and I got an eight-week-old foxhound — I’ll call her “Sparky.” Sparky is a sweet, lovable puppy, but she’s also very energetic and demands a great deal of our attention. Unfortunately, I went back to school full-time this past September, and my husband — let’s call him “Andy” — is at work all day, which means that we were looking at the unpleasant possibility of having to leave Sparky at home by herself all day. With me in school, we can’t afford to put her in doggie day-care.
Fortunately, Andy’s mother volunteered to watch Sparky three days a week, on the days when I’m in class from eight to five. Background: Andy’s parents are European immigrants and very old-fashioned, and his mother stayed home with Andy and his sister when they were growing up. Her house is immaculate; she’s an amazing cook; in short, her domestic skills leave me in the dust. Anyway, things were working out beautifully — Sparky got to go to the park and play for hours, and Andy and I didn’t feel guilty about working and going to school. In fact, apparently realising that she wasn’t going to see grandchildren from us any time soon, Andy’s mom took to calling Sparky her “grand-dog,” buying her sweaters and toys, and just generally acting like the dog hung the moon.
Sounds great, right? Except that problems started appearing about a month after the dog-sitting began. First, it was comments about how thrilled Sparky was to see us when we picked her up in the evening. Then, things progressed until we were being made to feel guilty for “abandoning” our “baby.” At first I thought that Andy’s mom was passive-aggressively telling us that she didn’t want to watch Sparky any more, or that she didn’t feel appreciated. But we were very careful to thank her all the time for watching her, and she always asked us if we wanted her to watch Sparky on the weekends so we could go out at night. And any time she found out that we had left Sparky at home by herself — she’s a puppy, for god’s sake — she’d scold us for not leaving Sparky with her. In other words, she wanted more time with Sparky, not less.
I mentioned the guilt trips to Andy, who brushed it off, saying that she was just teasing us. But it’s gotten to the point where she makes these little comments every time she sees us, and it’s starting to get to me. I don’t like feeling guilty because I don’t treat my puppy like a baby.
I guess what really troubles me is that it makes me wonder how she’ll behave once Andy and I do have children. I don’t plan on being a stay-at-home mom the way she was — while I respect her choice and acknowledge that it takes a lot of talent and patience to raise kids and keep a house, I can’t see myself doing the same thing. But how am I going to deal with the same behaviour once it’s directed at my parenting skills, rather than just my dog-raising skills?
I can’t think of a way to raise the subject without sounding petty or ungrateful, and believe me, I’m not. Sparky loves her “Grandma,” and I think it does her a lot of good to spend time there. But I’m sick of the insinuations, and genuinely concerned about the feelings that are behind them. Am I reading too much into this? How can I respond without seeming overly sensitive?
Thanks in advance.
Bad Dog Mom
Dear Bad,
I loved my grandmother, but you’d better believe she had something to say about every single thing my mother did. Whether Ma should let me cry or pick me up, the fact that Ma did her own hair instead of having it done, the incorrect method of peeling a carrot which Ma stubbornly insisted on employing (keeping in mind that Grandma peeled carrots towards her, probably because it would take twice as long) — you name it, my grandmother butted in about it, and it drove my mother stone crazy. Ma asked her nicely to respect Ma’s way of doing things in her own house. She yelled at Grandma to stuff it in a sock. She pretended not to speak English. Nothing worked. Mothers-in-law know better, and grandmothers know best. Such is the way of the world. Getting bent out of shape about it is a waste of your valuable time.
Sincerely. Don’t bother responding. She will only interpret it as defensiveness (read: proof that she’s right). So, go with a perky “I’d hardly call leaving Sparky with her grandma ‘abandonment,’ would you? You take such great care of her!” and beyond that, just leave it. I understand that you feel it’s a slippery slope — that if you have human children, she will pull the same routine. She will pull the same routine. It’s fucking annoying, I get that, but in terms of putting a stop to it? Not going to happen. Accept it and move on.
Sars:
I hope you can help me, because I honestly have no idea what to do from here. My boyfriend and I have been together about eight months now. A few months after we started dating, we had a State of the Nation-type conversation, and I said that I was old enough, and had dated enough, that I was interested in a serious relationship, and that eventually I’d be ready for marriage. I didn’t threaten him in any way, but the issue had come up, and I felt it was only fair to tell him how I felt on the subject. I said it was perfectly all right if he wanted something different, but if it were the case, we probably should go our separate ways. He said he agreed, and so we kept seeing one another.
A month or so later, as we were drifting off to sleep, he murmurs, “So, will you marry me?” Naturally, I said yes, because more than being interested in marriage, I truly love him and want to be with him. I asked him if he could please ask me again when we were both fully dressed and vertical, and told him that it didn’t have to be anything fancy, just that I wanted to be able to enjoy a proposal without remembering it as the two of us lying in our post-coital drowsiness. It was the only request/stipulation I made. I don’t want hearts and flowers or dinner in a fancy restaurant; I’m not like that. “Just ask me when I’m fully dressed,” that’s all I said. He laughed and agreed. A month passed, and he didn’t say a word about it. Not a single word. At all.
I started thinking maybe he had changed his mind, maybe he wasn’t really ready. I understood, but I wanted to hear it from him, so I asked him about it. I said I knew it was relatively early in our relationship and maybe he had jumped the gun a little, and I wasn’t going to hold it against him. I understood how he might be scared or nervous, and I told him we could stay together and see what happened next. He insisted that no, he wanted to get married in December (as in December of this year), and he wanted to ask me for real. I assured him I didn’t want anything big or extravagant; I want small and simple, and I mean that. He agreed. So I waited again.
Another month passed. I grew steadily more upset and confused and hurt. I hadn’t forced him to ask me, I hadn’t threatened him with the end of our relationship; in fact, I’d gone out of my way to assure him I’m willing to wait, as long as he truly wants to stay with me in the end. But he never said a word about it. One night I told him that even a small wedding, like we wanted, would take time to plan, and that we needed to figure out what we wanted to do and what we could afford. He responded that he didn’t really want to “worry about it” right now, that he wanted to deal with it later.
That hurt me terribly. I’ve never been one of those girls who sat and planned her wedding; the only thing I ever fantasized about was that the man who proposed to me would be so eager to marry me that he wouldn’t want to wait. Instead, I ended up with a man who proposed and then seemed in no hurry to seal the deal. I told him how much that hurt me, that I felt it wasn’t important to him, that it didn’t have to be the big ordeal he was thinking it would be. He seemed to understand what I was talking about, and apologized profusely and said we’d talk about it, take care of it, he’d propose for real and we’d work out the details of the wedding. I told him it was the last time I was going to bring it up, that I was leaving the next step up to him and I wasn’t going to say another word about it.
Well, you guessed it: Another month has passed. He has not said a single word about a proposal, a ring, a wedding, anything. I don’t care about the window dressing of marriage, I don’t want a $3,000 ring or a honeymoon in the Caribbean; I care about the intent behind it. I care about the reason he proposed and whether or not he truly wants to follow through with it. In the meantime, he’s spent hundreds of dollars on computer programs, videogame systems, and I can’t even think what else. He’s done grown-up things like selling his brother’s car, moving to a new place, starting a new job. I’ve seen proof that when he truly wants something, he makes a decision and he acts on it right away. This leads me to believe that marriage is not something he wants, and yet each time he has insisted that it is, that he’s not going along with it just to make me happy.
I believe he loves me and wants to be with me. I even believe someday he may want to marry me. The problem I’m having is how much he’s hurting me in the meantime. If he hadn’t brought it up, if he hadn’t been the one to put it out there so soon, I wouldn’t be in such turmoil. I was willing to wait; he was the one who proposed, and now he seems to want to pretend it never happened. I don’t know what to do. I’ve tried being quiet and giving him time, I’ve tried confronting him and assuring him it’s okay to be scared, I’ve tried assuring him we can wait, I’ve told him time and again that he’s not going to get sucked into a $20,000 wedding because I don’t want that either! But he assures me he wants to marry me, and then he goes right back to ignoring the subject completely.
I’m growing increasingly more hurt and frustrated, and I’m contemplating petty things like saying “no” if and when he finally does ask, because the closer we get to December, the harder it will be to plan a wedding. I don’t know what to think or do. I’m beginning to resent him for seemingly taking advantage of me, and I’m resenting myself for being so damned complacent that he thinks he can. Or am I blowing this all out of proportion? Either way, I could use a reality check.
Thanks,
Fed Up, Frustrated, Feeling Foolish
Dear Frustrated,
Blowing it out of proportion? No, not necessarily. Avoiding taking responsibility for your own actions here? Yeah, kind of.
Yes, he’s the one who proposed, but it’s you who brought up your marriage goals a few months into the relationship. Not that you shouldn’t have, by any means; if it’s important to you, it’s good that you spoke honestly about it. But you have to understand that a lot of people — and not just male people, either, but people like, say, me — are going to come out of a conversation like that and feel enormous pressure, even if they really do share those goals. They’re going to feel like they can do it your way, at your pace, or not at all. I suspect that that’s how your boyfriend feels. He loves you, and he does want to marry you, eventually, I think, but he also feels like he has no agency in the decision.
Yeah, you’ve “waited and given him time”…to do what you want him to do, not to decide on his own what he wants, and when. He knows you’re waiting; he can feel you actively, pointedly waiting for him to jump through the hoop. You’ve set it up so that the only thing he can do that’s his own idea is to stall your passive-aggressive finger-drumming a few months at a time.
If it’s imperative that you get engaged and married by the time 2004 dawns, get down on your own knee and ask him to marry you. It’s the twenty-first century; you can do that. If he says no, then dump him and move on. But if it’s more important to you to stay with him, in an equal partnership that you both participate in fully and willingly, then you need to back all the way off and content yourself with what you have, instead of trying to control the future so rigidly.
I mean, he’s already pretty much told you how he feels and what he wants; he’s just done it non-verbally. It’s time to take your cue and decide how important it really is in the grand scheme of things that you get your way.
Hello Sars,
Your Vine is so wonderful, and your advice is so much on target. So I’m going to submit my own question. When I try to explain this problem, it gets me stirred up into a yell, so I thought maybe this time I’d go for a format which makes yelling impossible, and go to a woman who gives more realistic advice than most.
I met my best friend, “Rosie,” five years ago; we were freshmen in high school. She is the happiest girl I know; I’ve known her to fall on the floor in fits of laughter, and coax a smile out of the frowniest person. She is a devoted friend; she wrote me a “101 Reasons to Smile” note once when I was upset, and she was at my side through my mother’s illness and death — she knew, from across the country, the very moment my mom died, in fact. Rosie loves life; she loves to dance, she loves to flirt, she loves to write and get letters…you get the idea.
Our senior year, Rosie started dating “Greg.” Greg is a nice guy — I remember one day when my hands were so cold I couldn’t move them, and very sore, he rubbed them back to life, foregoing last-minute math homework to help me out. I feel for him, too; a year before, he lost his parents in a car crash; he and his sister survived in the back seat. Greg has not had it easy; along with his parents, he lost his chance to go away to college (had to stay home and take care of the house, as his older sister was already away at school; he’s in community college to become a mechanic/bartender), and he’s lost every previous girlfriend — they all cheated on him. So I get where he’s coming from when he behaves jealously…he has lost almost everything.
Except…Rosie is miserable. She sees Greg every day, but they don’t seem to converse much; she goes to his house, and he smokes up while she chooses not to, and they sit around. When I do hang out with the two of them, ALL they DO is FIGHT. Every exchange goes like this: “Are you mad at me?” “No, but you’re mad at me.” “Why would I be mad at you?” “I think you know.” “Are you cheating on me?” That nonsense precludes actual conversation. Greg misconstrues everything — everything she says means she’s mad at him, and every male friend she mentions is a threat to him. He got mad at her for sleeping over at a guy friend’s house when she was too drunk to drive home. He beats up his friends if they flirt with her.
Most recently, he insulted her mother for installing a curfew (she who has tried to be a second mother to him). Rosie and her mom don’t always get along, but she loves her mother, and I think Greg crossed (yet another) line. Now she has to lie if she wants to go out with guy friends. Oh yeah, and they had sex without a condom, which was “okay” because “he pulled out.” (I finally convinced her to go on the pill.) She’s lost a lot of friends because she spends so much time with him, and he hates a looooot of people. So: the present sucks, and I worry about the future; his house is a wreck — except for the fridge, neatly stocked with liquor, and the bedroom, with an assortment of bongs and pipes. (I’m not going for judgmental here — I love liquor myself, but I don’t make a career out of it.) And he doesn’t want to work (while she works her ass off). And they’ve talked marriage.
I know, I know, so what’s my question? I guess it’s this: Is there anything I can do, or am I overreacting? Whenever Rosie calls, she tells me about their latest problem, and how she cries, but then says, “I never tell you about the good times, only the bad times.” This is true. And she loves him. But I still think this is my best friend being emotionally abused, and I (and other people) have said we’ve never seen her so miserable, and we think she should drop him. Should I deliver one of those TV ultimatums, like, “It’s him or me”? Should I talk to her parents about it? Just keep telling her, when she asks what I think, that I think she should break up with him? Leave it alone? The other thing is that she is really all he has, and I worry in the back of my mind that he might kill himself if he were to lose her, and possibly she worries about that too.
This whole affair may be none of my business, but she used to be so happy, and she’s completely lost all of her sparkle.
Thanks for reading, Sars, and please advise!
Frustrated in Chicago
Dear Frustrated,
I don’t think you’re overreacting, but I don’t think there’s anything you can do, either. Given an ultimatum, Rosie will go with Greg, because he runs her and you don’t; you can expect the same thing if you go to her parents. Believe me, they know Greg is a douchebag, but they also know that anything they do to interfere will probably backfire.
And Greg is a giant loser, but I think what you’ve done so far — pointing out the giantness of his loserdom, while remaining supportive of Rosie herself — is pretty much all you’ve got in the weapons chest. If he hits her or acts in a way that outright scares you, you should throw all that out and call the cops or Rosie’s parents or whatever, but if it’s just that he’s a fuckwad, she’ll have to figure it out for herself.
Dear Sars:
I was recently hired for a six-month contract to optimize a company’s website for search engine placement. Although I was initially hired to optimize their existing site, they decided I should design them a completely new site. No huge problem there; they upped my pay, so I’m all right with it (although they have an in-house designer as well, so I don’t know why the hell I’m designing it in the first place).
The problem lies with the optimization itself. I have a fair bit of experience, and can almost guarantee top ten placement in the major search engines — as long as I can employ the appropriate techniques.
The company’s CEO took one look at my design, and immediately informed me what changes I should make — he wanted me to add elements that would majorly hinder the site’s placement. In fact, by adding in these things and by changing the site to his specifications, I would be completely unable to optimize this site to get listed in the top 100, let alone the top 10. No way around it. Not only this, he would also like me to employ additional techniques that could actually result in the site being blacklisted from search engines.
I told him this. I also reminded him of our first meeting (before I was hired), when I told him what elements could NOT be employed in this process, and I reminded him that he agreed to my specifications.
He said, “You’re wrong.” Argh.
I’ve spoken to my direct boss about it, and he’s scared to death of the CEO. He won’t challenge him. I’ve talked to the VP of the company. He won’t do a thing about it either. I talked to HR. They tell me it’s none of their business, and since I’m only a contractor, they won’t deal with me. I printed out information backing up my reasoning and presented it to the CEO and anyone else who would listen. No dice.
So, my dilemma is this: Do I make his lousy changes, get my money, and get out; or do I stand my ground like I have been, refuse his changes, optimize the site properly, and risk being canned for not following his directions? Or is there a hidden option I’m not even seeing?
It’s been…
A Really Giant Hassle
Dear Hassle,
It depends. What’s going to happen to you job-wise if you implement the CEO’s changes and the site then fails to show up on the search engines? Because if it’s a matter of you getting fired no matter what you decide to do, I would do it the “right” way. At least you’ll have done the job properly in the end, even if you defied direct orders.
But if you need the job, and doing it the CEO’s way will save said job even if it doesn’t “work,” just do it his way.
Okay Sars, I think this question is pretty straightforward, but still sticky.
I have a good friend, we’ll call him “Sam,” whom I’ve known since college. We’ve become closer in the last couple of years, since we both moved to New York. I’ve known that he has been depressed to some extent for several months — I’d say ever since he decided to temporarily move from Manhattan to his parents’ house in Jersey (always bad idea jeans!), and probably even before. He’s been partying pretty hard, and I’m always after him in a trying-to-be-your-buddy way about driving back to Jersey loaded on whatever. Well, this weekend it finally happened — he was in a terrible crash doing just that, and while he wasn’t physically hurt, he’s into some serious self-hating right now about the choices he’s been making.
In the end, this will probably be the crisis that forces Sam to take stock and make some changes. Right now, though, he just really needs a friend, and I’m ready to be there for him. I’m the only person he’s told about the accident, and how much he hates who he has become and everything about himself. He is holed up in Jersey, and I’m not far from heading to Port Authority and busing out to Jersey to make sure he’s okay.
The problem? He has alluded, especially when drunk, to having feelings for me, which apparently may go back a while. I don’t know how serious it is — we did sleep together once, before I knew that he had these feelings. But I’ve been trying to walk the line of considering his feelings while keeping our great platonic friendship going, and to my knowledge there is no ambiguity about our relationship, or at least I’ve tried to keep my signals clear. I’ve got a new boyfriend, and Sam says he’s happy for me — although noting in the same sentence all the reasons why I am wonderful and that if this guy mistreats me he’ll be on the scene with fists swinging. So, I’m worried that if I am the one person who helps him through this and is there during a very vulnerable time, he may become even more sad or frustrated because of his attraction to me.
Now, I’m not suggesting that I back off or abandon him. He needs a friend, and I’m going to be there for him. My question is, do you have any suggestions for navigating away from these boy-girl minefields while I’m supporting him and acting as, perhaps, his closest friend and confidante in a difficult time?
Thanks, Sars —
Love Him, But Not Like That
Dear Not Like That,
If you’ve made it plain to him that it’s not going to happen between you, I don’t think you should worry about it — and if you haven’t, it’s easy enough just to tell him gently that you don’t feel the same way. Surely he’s figured that out by now, and if he chooses now to bring it up again, it’s foolishness on his part (and possibly a little manipulation of the “she knows I need her, so I’ll just take advantage of that” variety).
He’s a good friend of yours, but moving on really is his responsibility. Let him take it on for himself if he needs to.
[7/2/03]
Tags: boys (and girls) cats friendships the fam workplace
