The Vine: April 28, 2005
Hi Sars —
I have a question, but no idea who else to ask about
it. My boyfriend and I have been dating for about
four years now. We want to get married, but due to
lack of finances we know we have to save for a while
before we can even think about it. We’ve been saving
for about nine months now, and planned on it taking about
a year of saving before we could be at the point where
a wedding was possible. So here is the dilemma — his
little sister got engaged a few days ago. The
engagement was a complete surprise to almost everyone.
She and her fiance are pretty young, but have been
dating forever. They plan to get married about a year
from now.
I feel like there is an unspoken rule that sibling
engagements/weddings shouldn’t overlap. I truly don’t
want boyfriend’s little sis to feel like we are
raining on her parade if we get engaged before her
wedding, nor do I want to upset anyone else in the
family. At the same time, boyfriend and I have been
planning on moving forward at about this time for
almost a year. The idea of waiting another year
before we can get engaged is, well, a little upsetting
to us. Is there any way around this?
Thanks,
Not yet willing to give up and go to Vegas
Dear Vegas,
Well, there’s overlapping like “the weddings are a week apart,” and then there’s a little overlap with the engagement periods, which shouldn’t really be a problem for anyone, because getting married is ostensibly about getting married, not about being the center of attention without cease for six months on either side of the wedding day. I mean, come on. If your boyfriend’s sister is going to be that petty about you two getting engaged around the same time that she did, maybe that’s something she needs to deal with.
Now, of course you want to aim the date of your actual wedding so that toes aren’t getting stepped on and it’s not totally chaotic with two weddings in a month or something, but I really don’t see how merely getting engaged well before someone else’s wedding is an issue — and if she makes it one, that’s her affair, because grow up.
Sars —
Perhaps this lacks the drama of your normal questions,
but I will try anyway.
Girls don’t like me. Plain and simple. I have some
casual friends who are girls, and I get along fine
with them when I see them once a month. I even do
well with girls I just met. However, whenever I ask a
girl out, I get the obligatory one date, then I am
done.
I realize I am far from the perfect catch, but to my
knowledge not one girl has ever been attracted to me
in my twenty-three years on this earth. I find this
troubling. I am a college graduate, have a steady
job, and have interests outside work and college (as
you mentioned in your Grow Up, You’re 25 column).
Could it be that I am blah? Could I be that
unattractive? Please advise.
Thanks,
Surely I’m Better Than Him!
Dear Surely,
It’s hard for me to answer these “what’s WRONG with me?!” letters never having met the authors; sometimes I think I should do a promotion where I just follow y’all around for the day in your native habitats and read you my notes at the end all “Port-O-Vine,” because then I could give you some more specific help.
I can tell you, though, in this case, that your attitude is probably not helping. “I am far from the perfect catch” this, “I get along fine with” that — if you’re giving me those cues in your letter, over the course of a date you’re probably throwing off even more cues like that, cues that suggest you don’t think much of yourself.
And your letter is a bit…stiff. I don’t know if that means anything; some people write the way they speak, some don’t. If this is how you speak, you come off stiltedly. Again, that might just be this note, but it could also be that you’ve developed kind of a complex about this thing with girls that’s making you tighten up.
Again, I can’t say for sure what the problem is, but as always, the trick is to stop thinking of it as a problem, so much, and just accept that this is what is, for now. Don’t view every date as a caucus on your personality, and don’t go into every date bracing for the worst.
Good Morning Sars,
I’m a college student living on campus. I live in an apartment with three other girls, and we’re all in our third or fourth years. After two years of bad roommates and nightmareish problems like I’m sure you’ve heard before, I was lucky enough to live with three remarkable young women who have become wonderful friends of minte. They’re all great. I have no problems with any of them.
The roommate in my room, “K,” is fantastic. We’re extremely close and I can talk to her about anything. My problem is with her “best friend/boyfriend” — I’m not really sure what their deal is. I don’t care that she’s 22 and he’s 28. The age thing doesn’t bother me. I’m bothered by the fact that this guy “M” is completely antisocial to anyone but K. I’ve gone out of my way (inviting them both out with my friends and I, having get togethers in the apartment and inviting both of them, trying to make conversation with the guy). He refuses to make eye contact with anyone, he doesn’t say hello et cetera. Okay, you’re probably thinking M is shy or feels weird.
I’ve accepted his antisocial nature. Although his personality, or lack thereof, combined with everything he does in the apartment is getting to be an issue. This guy spent time in jail because of not paying his traffic tickets. He is still married, but separated from his drug-addict wife and he has three kids. To say he has baggage is an understatement. He reeks of cigarettes and while K and M do not smoke in the apartment, every time he is there, the whole apartment is filled with the stench of stale cigarrettes. Also, he has clogged our shower twice with strange body hairs. Now, there are four girls living in this apartment and there has never been as much hair in our shower as there was when he showers. I don’t know what M shaves, and I don’t want to know. It was disgusting to look at. He never cleaned it up, never told anyone, and left his dirty, nasty clothes in our bathroom for us to clean up. I’ve spoke to K after the hair incident and she spoke to him. Also, he clogged our toilet and didn’t tell anyone. Instead, he left it for me and one of my other roommates to find.
Outside of his disgusting habits, he also snores, for lack of a better description, like a dying cat with emphysema. He sleeps in the same room as me and K. He’s here about three nights a week. I can’t sleep when M comes to visit because he snores so badly. He also has 15-minute-long conversations IN HIS SLEEP. I’ve spent four nights on my couch since this snoring thing has started. I pay to live there and he doesn’t, yet I’m sleeping on the couch. Balancing five classes and two jobs to pay for school and then not getting any sleep is too much for me.
All the roommates except for K are uncomfortable when M is here. They don’t say anything about it because it’s not right that they can have their boyfriends over and I can have friends visit but she can’t have her “best friend/boyfriend” stay with her.
So I decided to talk to her about the snoring. I asked very politely if he could sleep on the couch if he stays here again because he snores so badly. We talked some more about her being aware that things are awkward et cetera. She said that maybe she shouldn’t live with us next year because of him. We need to decide soon and I don’t know what to tell her. I really want to live with her because she is a fantastic roommate and great friend. I trust her completely, but I can’t sleep in the same room as this guy. Also, K won’t tell someone if she’s mad/angry/upset with them because she hates conflict and would rather be miserable than the person she’s upset with about her problem. So, I just figured I would ask a complete outsider’s opinion because I am not getting any sort of answer out of anyone I know. If there is a suggestion or anything I’m more than happy to hear it.
Tired and somewhat grumpy roommate
Dear Tired,
Well, the obvious difference between the other boyfriends/your friends and M is that the other guests in the house aren’t disturbing anyone’s sleep, repeatedly clogging the plumbing, and stinking up the place. It’s probably past time to tell K that he’s over too often, that she needs to spend more time at his place if she wants to hang out with him that much, and that, basically, the next time he leaves a mess or forces anyone to bunk on the sofa is the last time he’s welcome to stay over. I mean, there’s putting up with people’s SOs who don’t live with you, and then there’s…M.
Don’t live with her again next year. She clearly doesn’t get of her own volition that he’s a pig — at least, not enough that she figures out that, you know, maybe having him over all the time and not chewing him out for treating the living space of other people like a damn flophouse isn’t appropriate behavior on her part. She’s responsible for him, after all; he’s her guest. And yet it took a discussion to get her to see that he’s disturbing the peace? That doesn’t read as “fantastic roommate” to me. “Great friend,” sure, no reason why she isn’t, but friends can’t always live together and this is Exhibit A.
Make other arrangements, or you’re in for another year of Corporal Creepy shedding into your pipes. Tell her whatever you need to, but I’d tell her the truth — her, you love, but you just can’t hack basically living with M, and you hope she understands, but you need your sleep and to not catch hepatitis and that’s that. She may decide to get angry and/or shut down, but honestly, is it worth putting up with M just so nobody’s upset with you? I don’t think it is.
Sars,
I keep seeing “God” capitalized more than I used to. Maybe I’m just noticing it more, or maybe that’s what the kids are doing these days, but I almost always find it annoying and weird. Personally, I don’t capitalize “god” unless I’m referring to a particular god specifically. It just seems more correct that way. So “God created Adam and Eve,” sure. But I wouldn’t write, and I hate seeing, things like “He’s a basketball God” or “oh God, would you shut up?” To me, even if they’re referencing a particular god, like the Christian one, those are still just figures of speech and they shouldn’t use the capitalized form. Just as I wouldn’t use “go to Hell.”
I didn’t see much help online. I’d love to know the Sars-Approved method of dealing with this!
Signed,
Capitalized, Schmapitalized
Dear Cap,
If I’m referring to God the Biblical personage, I capitalize it; if I’m writing “oh my God,” I capitalize that too. I don’t know why, exactly…I think it just looks better to my eye. But when I’m editing a recap and the recapper has it “oh my god,” I leave it alone, because I don’t think it’s incorrect; I will change “what the Hell” and “what on Earth” so that the whole phrase is down-capped, but you can make the argument that “oh my gosh” is correctly all down-capped, so “oh my god” is not bothersome to me, it’s just not the way I usually write it myself. I think it’s personal preference, really, except for “he’s a basketball God,” which I do think is incorrect, because there’s just the one God, so nobody can be “a God” — it’s just “God.” Grammatically speaking, I mean. Theologically, you’re on your own.
Speaking of gods, let’s see what Garner has to say…huh. Nothing. A whole entry on “goddamned”/”goddamn”/”goddam” (and for the record I hate that last one, it feels all trying-too-hard-to-be-Cormac-McCarthy to me), but nothing on God, and the 11C doesn’t have a usage note either.
Your take on it, that as figures of speech they don’t require you to capitalize the G, is fine, I think.
Dear Sars:
You seem to give good advice and seem to be very good at understand what people are upset about and giving them good advice, so I am writing to you for advice on a situation I have found myself in. This is not a question about boys (though the friend in question is a boy) nor is it a question about politics. It is a question of etiquette and if I did the right thing.
I regularly write on Livejournal. I have a fair number of readers — I’m not a Big Name or whatever, but a good number of people read it, between Real Life friends and Online friends. One of my Real Life friends liked my journal so much he decided he wanted to start his own Livejournal, which I encouraged seeing as he is thoughtful and (I thought) mature.
Since the presidential election of 2004, there has been a definite divide between me and several of my friends, seeing as I supported Kerry and they supported Bush. Knowing we would never agree, I refused to discuss politics with them and even took their teasing when Bush won goodnaturedly– what else could I have done? I accepted it and moved on.
I did, however, make it clear on my user info page of my Livejournal that I did not like Bush, that my journal would contain entries complaining about Bush, and if you did support Bush you could either not read my journal or ignore what I said about him. I made it clear that I did not care what other people thought and that I had formed my own (hopefully informed) opinion.
Fast forward to last week. I posted an entry about gay-bashing at a high school and about how I was angry about it. Someone had commented on my journal about how it made her want to take violent action against Christians (jokingly). I posted back and responded that I was a Christian and to please “watch where you aim” and instead to look out for those “crazy fundamentals” –- completely joking. Like I said, it’s my journal, and I’m a Christian anyway, and was half making fun of myself. From there the conversation descended into “Well if I can’t shoot Christians, I’ll aim for politicians” and you can guess where it headed from there. I even ended the “comment conversation” with “I’m just joking, there are as many bad Democrats as Republicans.” It was clearly an immature joke and we laughed and moved on.
Then yesterday I get a message on AIM. It is from B, informing me that he “doesn’t appreciate my ‘if everyone doesn’t agree with me then shoot them’ attitude” and he’s sick of all my anti-Republican bitching and if I find homophobia and fundamental Christians offensive then to call him “a zealot, bitch.”
I was taken aback, as I hadn’t talked to him in a while, and then I get pissed. I respond by pasting the bit from my user info to him and telling him, basically “It’s my journal and I’ll write what I want -– you can read it or ignore it, it’s not my problem.” I also made it clear that I was joking and that since the conversation had nothing to do with him, he had no reason to go and be an asshole and message me that way. He wasn’t actively online when I left the message, and he has not responded to me since. He is not that close a friend of mine, and if he has such a problem with my politics then it is up to him to break up the friendship –- I don’t really care about that part.
So what I am wondering is: Was I right to respond how I did? Is it against online etiquette to know what you’re typing might offend others, even if you give them fair warning? Understanding that the conversation was rude, but joking, is he just being an asshole?
Signed,
A Liberal Christian (yes, those exist)
Dear You’re Reading One Right Now,
“Is it against online etiquette to know what you’re typing might offend others, even if you give them fair warning?” Oh, man. Don’t get me started. No, it isn’t against online etiquette to have an opinion; if someone else has a different opinion, he has several choices in how to handle that difference. He can say to himself, “I disagree,” and have that be the end of it; he can say to himself, “I disagree, and I won’t read her page anymore”; he can write you a polite note disagreeing with you; or he can attack you for stating your opinion, in a personal and nasty manner, because he doesn’t share it.
On the internet, you see a lot more of that last one than you do in face-to-face interaction, because it’s easier to rip a strip off of somebody when you don’t have to do it in her presence. It’s like e-rage or something, and you see it all the time.
But the world is full of people with differing opinions, and you aren’t required to make the more fragile and knee-jerk defensive people in your readership comfortable with what is a basic element of human interaction. You have a disclaimer; you were clearly joking around; your “friend” already knows your political bent is not the same as his; his reaction was totally out of line, so don’t automatically assume that you did something wrong just because he’s acting a fool.
As the recipient, daily, of emails telling me I’m a Nazi cooze, I don’t think I’d have responded at all…but then, I don’t know those people. If a friend of mine wrote to me all “you and your stupid feminist bullshit have got to go,” yeah, I’d probably write back and tell him to eat shit. Right, schmight. Dude’s a dick; you called him on it. Block him from email and IM and consider it over.
Tags: boys (and girls) etiquette friendships grammar roommates the fam
