The Vine: February 22, 2006
Sars,
So…I have a dilemma. About a girl who I am kinda-sorta-but-not-really friends with. We’ll call her…A.
Background: Back in March, A told me that she planned on going out for her birthday, which was about 2.5 weeks away, on a Saturday night, so to keep my calendar open for that day. I did. Since nothing had changed as of the Tuesday before we were supposed to go out, I made plans for the Friday with my boyfriend. I called her on Thursday, her birthday, and wished her a happy birthday and said I’d see her Saturday. Later that day, I find out she’s also going out on Friday. I call, express my regret at having made plans for Friday and thinking that she was only going out on Saturday, but offer to head down to take her to dinner that night to make up for it.
She never calls back. She never calls to tell me where to meet them on Saturday night either, despite phone calls I’d made asking about it. I was basically uninvited. She tells her roommates (who are friends of both of ours, call them B and C) that I’m a bitch for ditching her for my boyfriend and not going out both Friday and Saturday night for her birthday. She hasn’t spoken to me since. B and C were angry with me until I explained why I made the plans for Friday, and we resolved that with a little discussion and they apologized for being rude to me.
Jump forward nine months to the present day.
This Saturday is B’s birthday. A decided that instead of spending any time with B on her birthday, she’s going to go back to CT (we live in MA) to hang out with some other friends. She hasn’t told B, but C did, because she thought that B was aware of this. B’s really upset because it’s her birthday and she thought that A would hang out with her at least one night this weekend and she’s not. Nor has A told her that she’s going to spend time with friends in another state. Nor has she even asked her if she wanted to do something for her birthday since she won’t be around.
I know that A and I aren’t friends. And that’s fine by me, because I think she’s obnoxious, selfish, and unreasonable and I don’t need friends like that. But, what I want to know is, do I send her an email and tell her that she’s a horribly selfish and hypocritical bitch? I just hate how she went nuts over me missing her birthday and my friends were angry with me and how she is now doing exactly what she called me out for without thinking that she’s wrong. Or do I just ignore her like I’ve been doing and continue having ended my friendship with her without speaking my mind? I feel the second option is the more mature way out, but I just wanted another opinion. Clearly B is telling me to rip her a new one, so I needed an opinion from an objective party. Namely, you.
Thanks,
And she says that I’M the bitch?
Dear What Do You Care?,
Leave it alone. Calling her out on her behavior is basically doing this: “Fuck off, unnecessary drama. … Hey, where’re you going?”
Yes, she’s a hypocrite and self-absorbed, but in this case, these qualities are not your problem. Be grateful for that instead of sticking your hand back in it. If B wants a new one ripped, she can do it to A her own self.
Dear Sars,
I don’t want to make this a long letter so here it is short and sweet, I
hope you can provide the same. I met this guy online and we started talking
on the phone, him and I are very similar in a lot of aspects of our lives.
We have a running joke with our respective friends that it would be scary to
find our exact match and introduce them to each of our groups!
The problem
lies in that he says he suffers from anxiety and panic attacks because of
things that have happened to him in the past. My issue with this is I think
it’s all a bunch of BULL, various traumatic things have happened in my life
and I don’t suffer from any of this or take meds to combat it. My view is
stop being a wimp and deal with your shit. I’ve told him my opinion and he
seems fine with it but I’m just not sure I’d like to get involved deeper
with a guy who might be a “victim.” I spent my whole life taking care of
other people and I feel now it’s my turn to get back some of that while
still participating in it with a significant other.
I guess what I’m asking
is do you think this anxiety stuff is real, and do people get over it or do
they always have it? Should I not let this issue make the decision for me?
Stronger Than Most I Guess
Dear Or More In Denial,
Yes, I think it’s “real.” I’ve had panic disorder, so I’m probably not going to sit here all, “Yeah, I was just being a baby.” People have problems; this guy is trying to deal with his, and while it’s true that some people can be passive, or drama queens, I don’t know why you would automatically go to “victim” just because another person reacts differently from how you would.
It’s not like he asked you to go to therapy with him, or start taking Wellbutrin to keep him company. He just told you what’s going on with him, and you immediately got judgmental and angry about how you want to be taken care of, and I have to tell you, that isn’t how “participating in it with a significant other” works every minute. Loving someone means taking care of them and having some compassion for their shit sometimes. Not all the time, like you seem to be afraid of, but sometimes.
You can tell yourself all you want that it’s “bull” and you’ve dealt with all your issues, but that’s not what I’m seeing, frankly. I’m seeing you talking yourself out of this relationship because you’re afraid you’re going to be “saddled with” someone else’s problems. I’m not saying you should get therapy, but…you’re not so perfectly adjusted that you should get patronizing about someone else’s anxiety attacks. I mean, nobody is, but, you know, take it down a notch.
Sars —
My wife and I are looking at divorce, and I need some outside opinions. We get along great together as friends –- have great conversations, look out for each other, et cetera — but we’re not working out as a couple.
My wife had a father who was abusive, absent, and unfaithful, and she’s grown up with a fear that she’ll end up like her mother –- beaten, cheated on, and abandoned with six kids. Unfortunately, my father reminds her a lot of hers –- they were both overbearing, arrogant, and loud –- and she has become progressively more afraid that I might someday turn into the same abusive, cheating bastard that her dad was. I don’t see this happening, mostly because I am the polar opposite of my dad, and I’ve always operated under the assumption that being a husband meant being there, being supportive, making the family my priority, and working hard to make my wife happy. I’ve grown up viewing my dad as being a great example of what not to do as a husband, and I have no intention of making the same mistakes.
It would be great if my determination was all it took, but her fears are pretty deeply seated, and (as far as I understand) she needs to have control over where the relationship is going. At the beginning, this wasn’t a problem –- I’m pretty laid back and have no problem with her being assertive about the things she wants, or even about changes she wants me to make. This has progressed beyond the details, though, and now she wants control over my interactions with my family (I can’t hang out with them without her present and have to give a blow-by-blow of all conversations, and she checks my cell to see if I’ve been talking to them), my interactions with friends, and my professional life.
It’s gotten to the point where she is really upset over the fact that I work in policy analysis rather than engineering (she wants me to change careers) because my current jobs require that I travel and that I interact with others in my field in writing and reviewing papers. I’ve already compromised all that I can -– I’ve turned away from the jobs that I wanted, the places I wanted to live, and the career goals that we had agreed on when we first got married, but now she wants me to completely give up the work I enjoy so that she can “feel confident that [I’m] not going to leave her alone with our kids.”
I get the impression that if I didn’t have the dad I had, or if she didn’t have the dad she had, that none of this would be an issue. It is an issue, though, and she can’t stand the idea of who I might become to the point that she can’t allow me to be who I am. She’s not going to feel safe as long as there is any uncertainty in my development, and I’m going to go insane if she keeps exerting this much control over what I say and do. I would like to work this out through a professional, but I’m forbidden (by her) to talk to anyone about our relationship and she gets really upset when I begin to raise the issue of her having issues. As far as divorce is concerned, it would screw up both our lives and devastate both of our families (particularly her nieces). I would like to avoid that — I really love her a lot, and the thought of losing her hurts as bad as the thought of living like this for 30 years.
Any ideas? Anyone who can give a solution from her perspective?
Sound of other shoe dropping
Dear Shoe,
Her “perspective”? What perspective?
If you do have kids, you need to get this sorted out quickly, for their sake, because: see above. Your wife is not well, and you are not helping her by continuing to permit this craziness, and I’m not unsympathetic to her issues and concerns, but this is well beyond “issues and concerns” territory and well into “irrational phobia and compulsive behavior,” and one of the two of you has to admit that that’s the case and do what needs doing here. She’s monitoring your calls, dude. I’m sure she’s got her lovely aspects, but this is well out of hand.
Sit her down and tell her that something has to change. “But she’ll get upset!” Well, yeah, but she’s your wife, she’s lost the plot, and you’re going to have to put up with some unpleasantness here if you want this problem addressed long-term. She needs to be told — not asked for permission, mind; told — that if either she or the two of you don’t get counseling, you can’t and won’t continue to live this way. And that can mean a number of things: it can mean that you leave, or it can mean that you start growing a couple of bone cells in your back and setting boundaries with her warden treatment of you. Lock your phone keypad, or hide the phone. Refuse to give her an oral transcript of your doings; stop asking permission or inviting her along to everything. Cut off her ability to monitor your every move, and see what happens.
You say that she’s “forbidden” you to talk to anyone about these issues. Do you understand that that’s not acceptable? That you’re an adult, and that she treats you like a feral child? That, in some ways, you’ve probably trained her to think this is okay by enabling this behavior? If she won’t go to a counselor or discuss this stuff with you, at the very least, go to a therapist yourself, and figure out how to conduct yourself like a husband instead of a prisoner on house arrest.
This is insane, literally and metaphorically. Enough. Yes, divorce is very traumatic; yes, a conversation about possibly ending your marriage is unpleasant in the extreme. But she is telling you what to say, to the point where you can’t even initiate this conversation, and that isn’t really a marriage anymore. It’s you expecting to fall through the ice any second.
So 2005 was the year from hell with the laundry list of crap to be dealt with including me spending most of the year unemployed and putting us in some significant financial strain, a breast cancer scare on myself, breast cancer discovered and treated on my husband’s mother, stomach cancer discovered at Stage 4 on my husband’s younger brother (him being someone we were both close to), an abuse/neglect situation with a young family member that necessitated an intervention on the part of the family to start to resolve to a more healthy situation, my sister getting divorced, my father ending up charged and prosecuted for crimes I am too embarrassed to discuss, and it culminated with my husband’s brother dying from cancer. Yeah, year from hell.
Sadly, this is not what I need the advice about.
The need for advice comes about as a result of events on the day younger brother dies (he died very early on New Year’s Day, basically still New Year’s Eve) when my husband requests having friends around as he just wants the distraction. One of our mutual friends asks if I need to talk, and I did, as it was a very troubling and upsetting time, only she didn’t want to listen, she wanted to rip me a new one about everything she didn’t like about how I’d been behaving in the last year, how she doesn’t like how I treat my husband, and how she would prefer that our relationship terminate.
It gets worse than that, actually. She refuses to terminate the conversation even when I request it to be terminated, my crying and reminding her that I have just lost someone very close to me less than 24 hours before does not affect her, and out of courtesy and concern for my husband and his need for a quiet evening, I don’t say anything right away. I burst into tears when they leave as I was all kinds of upset and tell him what transpired after they leave, and he is upset, of course, and when he asks her about it the next day, she lied to him about what got said and why it got said, claiming I had pressed her for information.
I admit to losing my temper at that point, and scathed her vigorously in an email, as I did not trust myself to an actual conversation about the poor choice of her timing and the lack of relevance of her opinion on the subject matter she elected to discuss.
Realizing that I had spoken in anger, I did apologize for it, but she refused my apology as I refused to recant what I had said about her being out of line. For my husband’s sake, as he really can’t deal with this level of drama right now, I asked for a truce for his sake and she and I can hash the crap out later when the dust is a little more settled. She refused that as well. She went on from there to tell one of my closest friends heaven only knows what but she is now not talking to me, and the both of them refuse to speak to me or to do anything with both my husband and myself, and the four of us had previously spent a great deal of time together.
My dilemma is this: The person who cornered me and lied to my husband, she and I have overlapping social circles in several places, and she persists in her opinion that I need to apologize for telling her she was out of line for when she spoke and the manner in which she spoke to me. I’ve already apologized for as much as I am sorry for, yet she continues to lie to my husband and try and pressure him to choose sides when he really could use a drama-free existence. Is there any way to give my husband the drama-free environment he needs when he won’t remove the lying person from his social circle (he’s clinging desperately to familiarity at the moment, right or wrong — it is part of how he is coping with his grief, and I am not going to rock his boat any harder than it has to be rocked at this point, what with him just having lost his brother on New Year’s Eve) without having to apologize for things I do not regret and don’t think require apology?
Signed,
Out of bright ideas and could use a good one
Dear Bright,
Okay, I know your husband’s going through a tough time right now, but I’m not clear on why he would continue to spend time with this woman if he knows what she said to you that night, and how. I don’t think you’d be out of line in asking him to take your side over the side of a woman who, apparently, was raised by bats in a cave if she thinks the day of a family member’s death is the right time to air grievances.
But if he won’t hear that, just cut her off — her, and anyone who buys into her shit. She’s creating drama because she can, and because she literally cannot abide having the attention away from her for even one second, even if someone has passed away. She has to put herself in the middle of things. Refusing to feed it is really your only option here, and your husband can do as he likes, I suppose — although, again, I understand that he’s in a bad way but I still don’t think that really justifies him overriding your feelings in this case — but you don’t have to deal with her, so, don’t. Let her do her thing; don’t deal with it. Trying to fight her on this is just going to give her what she wants.
Hi Sars,
I know this seems like a very basic English usage question, but since a few people are disagreeing with me and I can’t find a reference with this specific example, I thought I’d turn to the one person who can finally clear this out for me.
My colleague insists that the phrase “a new and innovative product” is not redundant, saying that if it’s new it is not necessarily innovative (fine), and that if it’s innovative it’s not necessarily new (huh?). I am of the opinion that you can just say “an innovative product” and be as effective in conveying that it is new AND innovative without the clumsiness. Am I wrong?
Thanks for letting me know,
I wish I still had my CP style guide from university
Dear Style,
Garner cites “new innovations” as a redundancy, but I think, particularly if you’re talking about a product, that there’s a little more nuance there. Newness is explicit in the definition of “innovative,” yes, but it’s a specific type of newness that implies novelty or creativity.
In other words, I agree with your colleague — it’s redundant, strictly speaking, but sometimes that works rhetorically to amplify and fine-tune the meaning of a phrase or sentence. Up to you, I guess.
Tags: boys (and girls) etiquette friendships grammar
