Sars,

I was married the May before last. As my wife and I
are both atheist,
it was a wholly secular wedding. My very religious
parents did not
approve — to the point where they refused to attend.
We pleaded,
cajoled, and begged, but as it was officiated by a
J.P., they wouldn’t
come to what they called an “empty and pointless”
ceremony.

We spent the first year of our marriage at arm’s
length from them.
It’s easy enough when you live hundreds of miles away:
brief calls on
birthdays and at Christmas, cards on Mother’s and
Father’s Day,
nothing more. As time passed, they started behaving as
though nothing
had happened, calling “just to chat,” and, despite the
fact that we
remained (and remain) deeply hurt by their actions,
for the sake of
family harmony, we have been doing the same.

This summer, my wife and I traveled to my parents’
town for our annual
family reunion. (I should note that none of my other
relatives — and
I have many — objected to our “heathen” wedding; only
dear old Mum
and Dad.) They offered to let us stay with them, and
in the spirit of
reconcilation, we agreed. Upon our arrival, my mother
took me aside
and informed me that, as we were “not really married,”
we would have
to sleep separately. My “girlfriend” could have the
spare room; I
would take the downstairs couch; blah blah blah
not-under-our-roof-cakes. We hadn’t budgeted for a
hotel, and my wife
didn’t want to cause a scene, so we acceded.

The last straw was my parents introducing my wife to
distant relatives
as my girlfriend. I spoke to my mother privately after
this had
happened and asked her as politely as I could manage,
which was quite,
to introduce her as my spouse or leave the
introductions to me. She
told me that if we weren’t married in the eyes of God,
we weren’t
married in her eyes either, that we were “fornicators,
living in sin,”
and that allowing me to introduce my wife as so would
make my mother
complicit in a lie if she didn’t correct me.

We decided to bite the bullet and rent a cheap motel,
avoided my
parents for the rest of the long weekend, and left
without another
word to them, nor have any passed between us since.

Sars, that was months ago, and typing this now
still knots my
stomach. I would be happy never to speak to either
parent again; my
level-headed other half, herself the product of a
broken home, is
urging me to reconsider. “Family is important,” she
says, and while I
agree, I also believe one makes one’s own family, and
that not all
slights can be forgiven because of blood.

I don’t expect my parents to respect my marriage, but
is it so
unreasonable to ask that they accept it? Is cutting them
out of our life
entirely too extreme a step? So far not estranging
myself from them
has brought me nothing but pain. I’ve known them for
twenty-five
years: they’re never going to change.

Your thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

Demon Seed

Dear Seed,

I understand what your wife’s trying to do; she doesn’t want you to burn any bridges.That said, I’m with you; I just don’t see an up side to even knowing these people anymore, for you.They refuse to acknowledge your marriage (and the whole “introducing Wife as your girlfriend” thing is, like, past delusional and into dissociative — not to mention smurfy).They’ve put their beliefs before your feelings.You don’t enjoy spending time with them, and it sounds like you haven’t in ages, if you ever did.So, again, what’s the up side?That your future children have a relationship with their grandparents?Why is that something you’d even want?

If your parents make overtures towards you, you can receive them, but I think you need to make it plain to them that, unless and until they’re prepared to stop acting like such mean weirdos about your marriage, you’re not interested.When they can call your wife “your wife” and let the two of you share a bed, you’ll talk.If they can’t, buh-bye.

Family isn’t just about blood.It’s about creating a home out of people.Your parents suck at that; better to stick to the people in your life who don’t.

Hi Sars,

I rooted through your archives to see if this issue had been brought
up, and I don’t think it has.Chances of that were fairly good, since
it doesn’t have to do with boys or cat litterboxes.It has to do with
diplomacy, tact, and differing procreative plans.Or non-procreative
plans.Let me explain.I’ll try to keep it from getting too verbose.

Like many people, I had close friends in college that were like
family.We helped each other with problems, whether car-, class-, or
boy-related.

A few years go by.A few various friends get married.People get
jobs.Some of them have kids.We do all those things that people tend
to do in the five or so years following college graduation.I’ve been
pretty pleased with how well some of my friends have kept in touch,
considering how busy life can be.

One friend (call her “A”) who’d been planning her whole undergrad
life around med school wound up not getting accepted, which was a
bummer.She didn’t really have a seond plan, so maybe her immediate
pregnancy right after her wedding a few years later shouldn’t have come
as such a surprise.She wasn’t ever exactly a prolific writer, but I
enjoyed hearing from her.The pre-pregnancy emails dealt with the
usual topics…work, sports she was playing, the impending death of her
ancient Toyota, boys, family drama.After A found out she was
pregnant, those topics got less and less airtime, and our correspondence
felt more and more one-sided.Once the baby arrived, all non-baby
topics vanished.Her emails became rambling, inane updates on her
trips to the pediatrician, how much her son weighs, what shots he got,
and his sleep schedule.These were always accompanied by no less than
six photos.I was using a dial-up connection at the time, too.

I kept my mouth shut this whole time, because I know there’s no
polite way to tell A that she’s going nuts, and that a few photos of
Junior at various points during the year would suffice. I write it off
as first-time-parent syndrome, and quitely delete the photos unviewed
and babyland updates unread.When I heard from her that she and her husband
are expecting a second child, I thought, “Hey, good for them! They
wanted two kids, after all!” immediately followed by, “Maybe the novelty
will wear off now, and she won’t have time for photo-spamming.”

The emails did get less frequent, and the photos fewer, but I know
now that it’s time for Sars to sit down at the piano while I sing a
couple of verses of “Friendships Have a Lifespan.”There’s just one
verse I need help with.

I have dealt with expired friendships before, but in the past those
expiration dates seemed to coincide neatly with moves, graduations,
people going MIA across the country, or other events that pretty much
spelled out, “Yeah, this is pretty much it,” in big ol’ neon letters.
Those events allowed for a graceful exit. How do I figure out what to do
at the end of that lifespan? Do I just stop answering her emails
completely? I think that actually spelling it out for her would just
come across as brutal, or bitchy, or both — especially since it’s not
like we had any kind of falling-out, just different life choices.I’m
inclined to just politely answer emails, if that, and see what happens.

Thanks for any and all suggestions you might have!

Sincerely,
Kids are cool, but cats don’t require a college education

Dear Oh, NOW You Tell Me,

Wait…but you’re already deleting A’s emails and not responding, right?If that’s the case, why not just set up an email filter, dump all her emails in “deleted mail,” and let that be the end of it?

I know it’s hard in situations like this, because, as much as you wish A well and you have nothing against her, you kind of…just don’t care anymore.Which is fine, you have nothing in common anymore, it happens.But then you have to decide how to handle it — do you continue pretending to care, which is untrue and irritating?Do you do nothing and hope she gets the hint?Do you tell her explicitly that you don’t care anymore, so that she’s not left wondering?

I don’t think there’s any need to spell it out for her either; the occasional perfunctory response is probably the best way to go with the least long-term aggro attached to it.It takes ten seconds to type “Great to hear from you; take care!” or whatever variation on that, and unless there’s going to be a test on her kids’ development, you can continue to delete the emails largely unread.

But if you’re already not responding at all, I’d just keep doing that.This isn’t really a friendship anymore; it’s a newsletter.

Hi,

A few months ago, I started hanging out with a few people from work. We’ll call them “B” and “H.” We’re getting along famously, and I always have a great time when I go out with them. I quit my job a few weeks ago to go back to school, but they’re still including me on party invitations and inviting me out, so I think we’re becoming real friends.

The problem is, there’s a person, whom I also used to work with, who sometimes gets invited out with us by my former co-workers, and to be honest, rubs me the wrong way. We’ll call him “C” for Creepy. I only talked to him a few times at work, in passing, before I left my job, and he doesn’t really seem like the type of person I’d enjoy being around. It seems like the few times I did talk to him were enough to make him think that I’d like to continue hearing from him, so he emails me from time to time.

The creepy part is, C has recently started referencing my blog. He’ll email me about something I wrote, or he’ll use something I said on my blog as a conversation starter, when I’m hanging out with B and H and he happens to be there. Sometimes I will talk about something I said on my blog, to my CLOSE friends, but I never told C where to find my blog, or even that I had a blog to begin with. I barely know C, and he doesn’t seem like a predatory person, but the thought of him actively looking for and then reading my blog is more than a little creepy.

I don’t always have an easy time making friends, so I would really like to keep spending time with B and H. However, the prospect of possibly having to be around C when I’m going out with B and H really turns my stomach. I would really like it if I didn’t have to deal with C at all, but if I can’t get that, I’d at least like him to stop referencing my blog as though we’re best friends. I’m also concerned about doing anything that would put a strain on B or H, because I assume they like C as a person, or they wouldn’t invite him along.

I feel as though I’ve done all I can to discourage C, without telling him point-blank that he’s freaking me out. I don’t answer his email, and I avoid one-on-one conversation with him. Is there any way that I can get C to back off? Do I need to just say, “Please stop talking to me about my blog”? Are my feelings of unease around C something that I should bring up to B or H? Should I be feeling this violated over a public blog at all?

Thanks,
Google Is Not Meant To Be A Personal Stalking Tool

Dear Google,

We have two issues here, I think: 1) the blog is public, and as such, you can’t really dictate who does and does not read it and communicate with you about it; and 2) sometimes we have friends whose friends are dinks.The two issues overlap in one person, in your case, but…I’m not sure what you want me to tell you.If you don’t want him to read the blog, take it down or password it so he can’t get at it.If you don’t want to spend time with him, don’t; tell your other friends he gives you the jumps, and opt out of any plans he’s in on.

But if you want him to magically go away and stop reading your blog and hanging out with B and H?That won’t happen.So, you can either endure his comments — which, I’d like to add, aren’t really stalking so much as clueless pestering — and do things like change the subject when he brings it up, or you can tell B and H that you don’t like him and don’t want to hang out with him, move your blog to a secure location, and cut him dead.

I don’t think either course of action is better than the other; the salient point here is that people who have boundary issues don’t get hints.They won’t “get it” or “figure it out” on their own; that’s kind of the definition of having boundary issues.So it’s on you to either tolerate the intrusions/awkwardness or to set the boundaries for yourself.If his talking about the blog to you makes you itchy, tell him so and tell him to stop.

An issue came up in my last relationship that has left me wondering a bit. I’d love to get other people’s perspectives, but the rather personal nature of this issue prohibits me from bringing it up around the watercooler. So, I’m coming to you, Sars.

What are your thoughts on a guy who refuses to have intercourse during his girlfriend’s period? I’ve been around the block, so to speak, but had never encountered this before. It caught me completely off-guard. There is a part of me that can understand why he would feel that way. I mean, if I had the choice, I’d likely choose to not deal with menstruation either. And, yeah, when the flow is super-heavy, sex isn’t usually at the top of my to-do list. However he wasn’t just talking about heavy-flow days, he was talking about anything-at-all days. And, in the context of a loving relationship where intercourse should be more than merely a chance to get your rocks off, there is another — bigger — part of me that thinks it is an immature and selfish attitude to have. (Yes, I did ask his reasons. And, yes, it was very simply that it didn’t “feel right” and it squicked him out to get anything on him. Oh, and a “it’s not natural to have blood involved with sex” was thrown in for good measure.)

Now, to me sex is first and foremost about intimacy, caring, and giving. And it’s not as if there aren’t any “yucky” male fluids involved. Hell, I used to feel the same way about semen. But I got over it. A long time ago. The pleasure I derived from giving my partner pleasure overrode the “ew” factor. I couldn’t help but feel he should have gotten over this a long time ago, too. (He was 38 and had been married previously.) I also felt that the reason he hadn’t gotten over it was because he wasn’t putting enough importance on the giving pleasure aspect of sex (although, to be fair, there wasn’t any self-absorbed behavior going on in the bedroom during the other three weeks of the month). He told me that we could do other things during my period, but when it came down to it his level of enthusiam for that stuff was markedly lower than usual. And he would never initiate it. All of which left me feeling like a big pile of gross.

Okay, so, I know that there’s no black and white here. There’s no real right and wrong. It’s all grey areas when it comes to sex. That being said, I still totally think that he needs to just grow up. So my question is: Do I feel this way because I’m bitter about what I took as a rejection? Or was he just being a whiny baby?

Also, is this common? I’ve only run into it once, and the one friend I’ve talked to about it had never heard of it. While young and innocent we’re not, I’m still doubtful that our list of ex-lovers is substantial enough to draw conclusions about the population in general.

Sign me,
It’s not the plague, dammit!

Dear Plague,

I don’t blame you for feeling rejected, but I don’t know that he was being a “whiny baby.”He isn’t interested in sex during your period.End of story.If a guy wrote in that his girlfriend hated giving blowjobs because they’re “gross,” I’d have pretty much the same take on it, to wit: that’s a pity, because it’s a bit limiting, in my opinion, but…that’s my opinion, and if she hates it, well, she…hates it.It’s a personal preference.A loaded one, true, but there’s not much else to say about it, unfortunately.

I don’t know enough about the guy to say, but not every sexual compatibility issue has anything to do with maturity or personal development.Yeah, I guess he could stand to be more open-minded about it, but, brass tacks, he isn’t, so there you go.It’s not wrong, per se; it’s just wrong for you.

With that said, I wouldn’t have stayed with a guy like that either; I don’t know that that’s why you two broke up, but I’d have walked — not because he’s a pig for having that preference, but because I don’t want to feel like I’m undesirable four days a month, based on something that’s a natural part of my body’s functioning.It’s not his fault, but it’s not mine either, so, better just to find someone who doesn’t care.

And in my experience, it’s a lot easier to find a guy who doesn’t care that you’re surfing the crimson wave than it is to find one who does.I’ve never been with a guy who gave a shit — the courtesy announcement is greeted with something along the lines of “I’m good to go if you are” every time — and I can’t recall even talking to a guy who thought it was gross.I don’t know if that’s a representative sample, but I think most guys get that sex is sticky, and aren’t concerned with the provenance of said stickiness as long as everyone’s having a good time.

So, I would say that that attitude towards sex during menstruation is the exception rather than the rule, but regardless, don’t take it as a comment on you.The two of you don’t mesh in bed; that’s all it is.Doesn’t mean either of you is a crappy person.

Dear Sars,

I’ve decided this year, as it’s my first Christmas
living on my own, to start acting like a grown-up and
sending out Christmas cards. The problem? I have no
idea what to write in them. None.

The people I’m
sending them to are mostly old friends, extended
family, and, in one particularly awkward case, my
boyfriend’s family, whom I’ve never met. I’ve asked
people what to write in the card, and they’ve all
basically responded with “Merry Christmas.” But the
cards I’m using already say Merry Christmas…so do I
just sign my name? I’m so confused!

It seems
appropriate to write a friendly message on the inside
of the card, but I’m not sure if this is proper
Christmas card etiquette. And, of course, I would have
no idea what to say in the case of my boyfriend’s
family. I was almost going to scrap the idea entirely,
until it occurred to me: Sars will know! She knows
everything! So thank you in advance, and Merry
Christmas to you!

(Jolly Old Saint) Nicola

Dear Saint Nic,

Here’s what you do.You put the Christmas cards down, you back SLOWLY away from them, and you PROMISE me that you won’t do anything so FOOLISH, EVER AGAIN.

Juuuuust kidding.I sent the last of mine out a few days ago, and my hand is JUST starting to un-claw, so I’m a little fragile on the subject at the moment, but: if it’s a card to someone you know pretty well, just write a little something about hoping to see her soon, or a line about some news she’s had recently, or a little note about the weather.You don’t have to get too fancy, or write a whole letter; just do something like, “Great to see you at [X event where you last saw him]; have a great new year!”

For people you don’t know as well, or at all, just stick to “best wishes for the holidays and a very happy new year,” or something fairly generic (that isn’t already in the card).Again, you don’t have to overthink it; usually, people are just happy you thought of them.

A friendly message is perfectly appropriate (and I think preferred, in fact), but don’t kill yourself coming up with The Perfect Bon Mot or you’ll never get the damn things into the mail.

[12/16/05]

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