My mother-in-law is great — really. Okay, most of the time. We’re super-close; we shop, we go to the movies, we work together. My own mother lives almost a thousand miles away and I don’t get to see her very much so MIL’s a good mom substitute.

Only — she’s a bit of a snob. Her son, my husband, could have gone to an Ivy League — he got into several big schools. However, he chose to stay home and go to the state school nearby. Mater dearest was really happy at the time, because he was going to be staying at home. She never graduated from college herself so he was the first person in her family to get an upper-level degree.

That was all four years ago. This year, Hubby’s sister is going away to college — to a well-known (though not academically challenging) private college. Now MIL’s freaking out. She keeps going on and on about how Hubby “only” went to a state school, and how much it sucks that she can’t brag about where HE went to college like she can his sister. She says, “At least ONE of my children made the right choice about education.” When people ask about Hub, she instead answers with information about Sis and her fabulous new college!! Might I also add that Sis BARELY graduated high school, while my husband was co-valedictorian?

It burns me up that MIL’s putting my husband, her own son, down like this, and praising her other daughter to the sky. His father’s fine with it, and proud of him, but his mother seems to imply that he’s a failure because of what school he went to. Sars, this man has a great job and is already back in school getting his master’s. Hubby admits that his mother is ruining their relationship, but he won’t say anything to her. He says he doesn’t feel like talking to her about it because he’s too mad. Is there anything that I can do? I don’t like to see them growing apart, but I am furious at her on his behalf…and my own. I “only” went to the same state school.

Class of 2004

Besides the cheating (and I won’t deny that I, too, cheated, and I fall back on the “I cheated back” excuse, but two wrongs do not make a right and all that), he would treat me badly in a number of other ways. Verbal abuse. Randomly coming at me with things like “just don’t call me this week.” And so on. But aside from being the single most gorgeous thing I’d ever touched, I was totally head over heels for him. He was — and likely always will be — The One. The one I will always carry a torch for, the one I will always love, the one I will always miss and never forget.

We finally broke up “for good” in September of 1999. I admit that I did something warranting the breakup, but trust me when I say the fault was in no way solely mine and I daresay it wasn’t even mostly mine, but that’s not the point. We didn’t talk for seven months, then ran into each other again and spent two months unofficially together, meaning we were sexually monogamous but didn’t refer to one another as boyfriend and girlfriend. This ended in much the same way it ended the first time. After that we didn’t speak for a bit, and then ended up in the same together-but-not situation for another six months before he sat me down, told me that I “wasn’t in a good place in his head right now,” and stopped speaking to me.

After that we did not speak for nearly two years. I sent him a Christmas card in 2002 and ended up seeing him a week later, and within three days he was back at my house. I really believed by then that I’d never see him again but he came at me with the whole “I didn’t realize how much I missed you until I saw you” and insert string of what every girl wants to hear things, and of course I melted, especially when he said from the door that he wanted to get back together For Real, so we did.

We’ve been together since then and he’s lived here since the end of May. In some ways our relationship is better than it was in the past, which I attribute mostly to the fact that we’re not drughead teenagers anymore, but the relationship is steadily declining. We fight constantly, and there have been a few fights that got bad enough that they got physical. No one ever got Really Hurt and I can’t blame him without blaming myself, because in all of the occasions (I believe there were three in all) I was just as physical as he was. I’m not a battered wife or anything dramatic like that.

The fact is, though, we’re just not compatible in a lot of ways. We have fun hanging out and our sex life is pretty great, but that’s about it. We don’t have the same goals, values, morals, beliefs, anything. We don’t like the same music or movies. I like to read, he likes to lift weights. The list of dissimilarities is endless.

However, I still love him. I am still IN love with him, whether or not he is in love with me, a question I truly don’t know the answer to. And more than that, I want to help him. A lot of my love for him is maternal. He got in some legal trouble and he’s picking up the pieces of that mess. The legal trouble he’s paying the price for is, in my opinion, nothing serious. It’s not immoral and it’s a victimless crime, and I don’t think he deserved to get whapped nearly as hard as he did for it. Basically, he needs to live here. He needs a roof over his head. His parents don’t want him living at home. He can’t afford to get his own place or even move in with friends and pay rent because of all of the fines he has to pay (and frankly, neither he nor I want him living with any of his “friends”). He needs transportation to his job, which is only a few miles from my house. If I turned him loose, I’d literally be putting him out in the cold without a home, without any money (almost all of it goes into his fines), without transportation (his license is suspended and his car is dead), without anything. He’s so keyed up already that I sincerely think that if I made him leave he’d end up dead.

I realize that it’s not my job to be his surrogate mother but if you’ve ever loved someone Like That, you know how difficult it is to say, “Well, it ain’t my problem,” and slam the door in their face, no matter how much you think/know they may deserve it. And the fact that the root of a great deal of his meanness towards me has good intentions (he really DOES just want to see me get better, get a “real” life, be working, move out, et cetera) doesn’t help much either. (For the record, I’m diagnosed with several mental illnesses, and I’m currently on SSI instead of working. Admittedly, in some ways I am ready to “face the real world” — I’ve been medicated for the worst of the problems and can do a lot more than I could a year ago — but in some ways, I’m just not, plus there are other problems in my life that I feel need to be addressed before I’m ready to dive into anything requiring as much commitment as working — especially considering that I’d lose my SSI, and then if the job didn’t work out, I’d be up shit creek without a paycheck).

Then there’s the fact that his leaving would be a TREMENDOUS change in my world. I moved into the basement ONLY because he was moving in. This isn’t my space, it’s ours. All over the basement are a million things of his, his stuff everywhere, his things hanging on the walls, et cetera. I can’t even imagine all of that stuff, as well as of course HIM being gone. I think it would shatter me in a large way even if it was me who made the decision for him to leave. (We live in my parents’ house. Boy pays my father weekly for groceries/electric/et cetera and pays for all of the gas in my car and whatnot.)

However.

There’s always Someone Else getting in the way.

I have a friend. I have been friends with this guy for years, and this guy has pretty much always been head over heels for me, but I just never looked at him That Way. Then one day I just woke up and it dawned on me. You know those movies — Girl with Bad Boyfriend who has Token Male Best Friend Who Wants Her But She’s Blind and then one day she realizes it? Yeah. Insert Jennifer Aniston and you’ve got my situation.

This other guy is great in so many ways. We spend almost every night together. We never fight. He treats me like I’m made of gold, wants to marry me, says he’d ask my father for permission to do so (that’s SO FUCKING SWEET). He’s everything I wish my boyfriend was.

And I admit to having messed around with him on a few occasions to discover that not only is he EMOTIONALLY what my boy isn’t, but sexually as well. He finds the same things hot that I do. He will indulge me in all of my fantasies. He’s better at what he does. My boy won’t give anyone head, my friend likes nothing more. My boy does not like certain angles of sexual adventurousness that my friend is practically begging me to do.

The last few days Friend and I have spent as much time as possible together and frankly, we act more like a couple than Boy and I do. We curl up and watch movies. He’ll watch any movie I want, he likes the movies I like. Boy won’t sit through ANY movie I want to watch. Friend will put up with That Horrible Chick Music I Love for twelve hours straight, Boy can handle about two songs before going ballistic. Friend tells me I’m beautiful, that he loves me, that he’ll do anything for me. Boy verbally abuses me and tells me I need to “earn” his love and respect.

Clearly I am in quite a bind here.

I don’t want to kick Boy out for several reasons, the primary two being:

A) I can’t put him literally out in the cold; he may do some jerky things, but I couldn’t do that to my worst enemy much less someone I love and have such history with
and
B) What if my affections for Friend are only because I’m filling a void? What if I don’t REALLY want to be with him and I’m just unintentionally using him to fill in the missing parts of my relationship with Boy?

I don’t want to ever hurt either of these people, nor do I want to end up hurt (more hurt than I am). I am completely at a loss.

I am enjoying my time with both of them in different ways but I realize that’s not fair to any of us. Friend knows about Boy, Boy knows about Friend (but obviously doesn’t know that Friend is rapidly becoming More Than Friend). Boy used to like/hang out with Friend and they got along fine, but suddenly one day Boy decided he’d no longer see Friend because Friend was “so blatant about liking me.” I don’t get that at all, because first of all, Friend was ALWAYS blatant and this just one day magically became a problem for Boy, and if YOUR girlfriend had a male friend who was totally in love with her, would you make a rule saying she could only see him when you WEREN’T home? What the fuck?

I guess that’s my end question. What the fuck. What do I do?

Boy + Friend Doesn’t Always Equal Boyfriend

I have a problem and I could use some advice over here. See, there’s this boy. I’m in love with him, he’s not in love with me. It’s a position I’ve been in before and am sure I will be in again, so that by itself isn’t the problem. S is one of the sweetest people I’ve ever known and a good friend of mine. The crush and the friendship pretty much came simultaneously, and both were a result of me realizing what and amazing guy he is. When I told him how I felt about him, he was as cool as could be. He was very sorry that he wasn’t interested in me but really didn’t want to lose my friendship. I didn’t want to lose his either, so I’ve been doing my best to get over him and move on.

The problem? S is too nice. He completely shies away from doing or saying things that might hurt me, and unfortunately that means practically cutting me out of parts of his life. For example, he had two dates this weekend, and I only even know that much because I pried it out of him. It’s not like I want all the freaking details, but it would be nice to know, say, the names of the girls, or if he had a good time. Also, he has another good female friend, and he won’t talk about her, either. I asked him the other day how things were between the two of them, and he replied “oh, she’s mad at me.” When I asked about it, all he would say was, “I can’t tell you any more because I don’t want to upset you.”

So he’s keeping me out of this whole important aspect of his life, and it’s really irritating me, for many reasons. I think that hearing about him being interested in other girls will help me get over him, help me realize in my heart (as opposed to in my head) that he’s really not interested in me. Also, I don’t want to be treated differently than his other friends, whom he does talk about this stuff with. I don’t want to be treated like I’m too fragile to hear this stuff, like I need his protection from it. We’ve fought about it several times lately, and I’m beginning to resent the implication that he knows what’s best for me and I don’t. I’ve even told him that if he doesn’t start treating me like a friend, we’ll stop being friends, but I don’t think that’s a threat I’ll be able to actually carry out.

So here’s my question: First, am I being unreasonable in wanting to know about this part of his life? Should I just give it up and let him protect me from my own curiosity? And if not, how the heck can I convince him to treat me like any other friend?

I really appreciate your help.

Needs protection from her own emotions, apparently

I’ve known this guy for about two years. We had always got along well and always had fun together. In the beginning of the year this year we had a class together, and we would always stay and talk to each other afterwards and generally just got to be better friends. He would send me nice emails when I had a test about how smart I was and such and I would send things to him in return, always very complimentary.

So throughout the course the of semester we would be seen together a lot around campus. So much in fact that many of our friends thought that we were dating. He, however, just doesn’t seem to get the clue. I frequently make flirtatious allusions and he often responds flirtatiously but it never goes any further. He is single. But recently I asked him about his weekend plans and he said in so many words, “I’ve sworn off relationships until after med school.” Add to this the fact that we’re both extremely busy people, he works 40 hours a week plus full-time school and I have school six days a week (being pre-med sucks).

I want to say something, but I worry because we have class together all the time and I don’t want things to get weird. Am I completely screwed here?

Confused

I got married right out of high school to the only boy I ever dated. We were happy, really really happy. He was in the army, and was shipped out less than a year after we married. He never came home. He was MIA for what felt like forever, and eventually declared deceased. We had an empty casket funeral, and I tried to move on with my life.

After some time, I felt like I was still living in hopes that he would turn up somewhere, alive. His mom suggested therapy, which was covered under widow’s benefits and did me a lot of good. After some time passed, I felt I needed to get away in order to start a new life for myself. I sold our house and moved across the country to be with my brother and his wife, who helped me get back on my feet. I got a job, an apartment and started to move on with my life. Only…not. I still held out hopes that my husband was alive; I didn’t date, didn’t develop a circle of friends, and never told anyone I was a widow.

You know where this is going, right?

Enter Hot Guy. HG and I work on the same floor of a multi-division company, so we see each other often. Lately, I’ve been thinking I have a crush. But I have so many lingering doubts, the biggest of which is, “What if my husband is still alive out there?” The smallest of which is, “I don’t even remember how to flirt/date.” So, now I’m in panic mode. Not only do I get tongue-tied around this guy, but I don’t even know if I could grab his attention in that “I want you to want me” sort of way, or if I even should.

I’m not sure whom I should turn to. I thought about trying therapy again, but I’m ashamed to admit that I’m still holding onto hope that my husband could still be alive. I feel as though I’d be cheating on him if I went for HG. And what if something happens with HG and my husband comes home?

Sars, break it down for me, please.

A widow with a crush