I’m an American living in a residence hall for international graduate
students at a university in England, and the situation with my flatmates is
rapidly degenerating. We now write snarky Post-It notes to each other. I
have two more months on the lease, and I would be responsible for the rent
even if I move. As a grad student, there’s absolutely no way I could afford
that. So moving out is not an option.

I also don’t get along personally with most of my flatmates, for various
reasons which aren’t the issue here. I mention it only because it makes me
bringing up the real issue — very gross kitchen — incredibly difficult.
Until now, I’ve been able to spend about half my time away from the flat.
My fiancé is doing a graduate degree at a different university, and since
my degree is research-based, it’s easier for me go visit him than the
reverse. Also, his uni’s library kicks ass, so it’s good for my research
too. However, he’s finishing in two weeks and temporarily moving back with
his parents until he finds a job. His parents live much farther away, and
there won’t be a decent library, so I’ll no longer be able to escape, and
I’m utterly depressed at the prospect of an additional two months in my
horrible flat.

What’s so horrible about it? First of all, all of the other seven flatmates
smoke. While I don’t mind smoking in a social situation, I don’t like it
when I’m eating, and I really hate overflowing ashtrays and ash all over the
kitchen table. A couple of people are considerate, but the others basically
blow smoke in my face and tell me if the ashtrays bother me, I can empty
them myself. Second, no one cleans up after himself or herself. If they
splatter grease and assorted cooking by-products all over the stove, they
leave it. If marinara sauce explodes in the microwave, they leave it. If the
trash needs to be taken out, they take the bag out of the can, put a new bag
in, but leave the full bag on the kitchen floor. Clean dishes, various
silverware, half-empty bags of cookies, dirty saucepans, abandoned water
bottles, et cetera occupy most of the counter space and table. We do have
housekeeping staff that come in a few days a week, but it’s not their job to
put away dishes and throw away trash that some lazy ass left on the table.
They move things, clean the surfaces, clean the sink, and leave. Basically,
they make the place BARELY sanitary.

I have discussed the grossness of the
kitchen with the others, and got responses ranging from the non-committal
“You have a point, but it’s not really a big deal” to “We’re students, we
don’t have to clean.” Between the downright mean atmosphere and the fact
that the table is gross, smelly, and cluttered, I almost always take my food
back to my room to eat it, adding, unfortunately, to my anti-social persona.

Things have really gotten bad, and I have two months left to go. Any coping
strategies? If you have advice on either learning how to tolerate the
rudeness with a thicker skin, or on raising the issue of the dirty kitchen
more successfully, I’d really appreciate it. From the snarky Post-It notes,
at least one other person agrees with me about the lack of cleanliness, but
the notes weren’t signed, so I don’t know who. We have had a few “flat
meetings” about things, but only a few people show up and nothing really
changes. The prospect of being stuck in the current situation is utterly
depressing.

Signed,
Thanking God there aren’t roaches in England

I’m writing to you for a friend, whom we’ll call Deanne. Deanne has been married for several years to a guy, Bob. Bob is a really great guy except for two things: money and booze. Because they were married at 19 and 20, Deanne and Bob have had to live apart in order to finish schooling and get jobs lined up. This has caused stress on Deanne, because Bob has the bad habit of screwing up their finances when they’re apart. Bob goes out to get smashed literally more nights than not, bounces checks, and racks up debt like crazy. He’s not good managing a budget or being responsible with money at all. This is how Deanne describes her feelings:

I am awful. MY life is fine and happy and fun. But, My relationship is severely strained and stress-inducing. I’ve had diarrhea and I feel sick half the time. The latest thing is that he didn’t renew the car insurance even after I have been reminding him for weeks. He’s bounced over 30 checks now, I’m afraid to open the mail, he’s going to get arrested or sued I’m certain. I have been driving w/o insurance since June 26th. I just feel sick about it. I’ve helped, and forgiven, and forgiven and forgiven so many times. I feel that nothing I do makes any difference to him. I’m slowly giving up. He should be able to manage these adult-type activities by now. I want to be a partner not a babysitter. I should be able to leave him alone, but the sad truth is that I have to watch him. He isn’t independent of me. I’m just so disappointed by the whole mess. I just feel ill. I throw up every day now.

And he doesn’t even know how much I’ve given up to him willingly or let slide. He just thinks I’m awful for getting mad. He’s been mismanaging his affairs for 2 years and I’ve been nagging at him about it and he thinks I’m a big witch when I’m just trying to look out for him. I don’t want to get divorced, I want him to grow up but I’m faced with a different reality that I don’t want to deal with at all. The reality is that he’s never grown up. The reality is that he would rather spend $60, that he doesn’t have, in 2 days at the bar than make sure I have an insured vehicle. The reality is that he doesn’t think ahead or about what I’m experiencing. I take care of him but he doesn’t take care of me at that same level. The reality is, that I don’t ask much: 1) don’t lie 2) balance your checkbook 3) pay your bills on time. The reality is that he can’t handle that.

Deanne doesn’t want a divorce; she wants him to get responsible with the money issues and square their relationship up. The first time they had to live apart (her at university, him at mechanics school), he spent a year living with her mom and racked up $3000 in credit card bills for beer. Deanne realizes that he might be an alcoholic. He’s built up this pattern up of going out to the bars even more frequently when they’re apart. Right now Deanne is in another state setting up residency for her graduate degree, and Bob is staying in the old house working and getting dental work done with his dentist before moving to be with her. She’s gotten two huge batches of notices from the bank notifying her of overdrafts (all his, for beer and smokes) that total over the thousand-dollar range, and, most recently and discouraging, a notice that their car insurance has lapsed because he hasn’t paid it.

I’m writing to you for your sage advice, Sars, because it’s sticky. She’s really in love with him as a person, and I can vouch for the fact that he’s a great and intelligent guy, but this is killing her mentally and physically. Are there resources that they can use to save their marriage? Have other Vine readers experienced these problems? Money, I hear, is the #1 cause of divorce today…and I want to help my friend by presenting her with as many options as she’s got. Bob has resisted counseling because he feels he’ll be ganged up on, so maybe there are other steps that Deanne can take.

Friend of Stressed Wife

I am 21 years old, a senior in college, and have been dating the same guy for seven months now. My parents and I are fairly close, but I have been keeping this relationship from them. The reason is that he is black, and he is disabled and in a wheelchair.

My dad made it quite known as we were growing up that he is a racist. He has told us things like we cannot bring a black person into his home, and if we do marry “one,” then he won’t go to our wedding. For these reason I haven’t told my father, and am very scared to.

I care very much for the man I have been dating, and do not want to end the relationship at this point. For a few reasons, I really don’t know if we can make it work forever, but for right now, I feel I need him in my life. I have been honest with him about the situation with my parents, and he is being very understanding.

My problem is that I have recently been having panic attacks about this. I do not like keeping something from my parents, especially of this magnitude. I want to tell them, but I am afraid of my dad cutting me out of his life. He also pays my rent, and I fear that he will cut me off from that as well. I feel like if I can’t tell them, then I will have to break up with my boyfriend in order to stop the panic attacks. But I know this won’t make me happy in the end either. What should I do? Should I tell them now, hold off on telling them and see how it goes (while having these panic attacks), or just not tell them and break up with my boyfriend?

Sincerely,
Torn to the Core

I’ll try to be brief with this problem, although it seems complicated to me, perhaps that’s because I’m too close to it to see it objectively.

I’ve been seeing a man for a little over a year now. He and I worked for the same company when we first started seeing one another, and I really, really liked him. He has two girls (seven and eight years old – he’s 35 and I’m 30), and is their sole guardian. Things started out slowly. I didn’t push to meet the kids; I let him tell me what he was comfortable with. He talks about the kids all the time (which is great –- shows he’s an involved parent). He was pretty badly hurt when his ex left the picture (right before Christmas when the kids were three and four, said she didn’t want to be around him any more and didn’t want to be a mom either), so I understand his hesitations at getting too involved. He is, by all other accounts, a pretty great guy.

The negatives: He’s a workaholic. He works until after 10 PM several days out of the week. If he sees me, it takes time away from the kids, which I dislike (poor kids — he’s their only parent!). He’s also extremely forgetful and absent-minded, and often doesn’t call if he’s going to be late or cancel, which leaves me in the lurch. I’ve tried the whole not-waiting-around, making-alternate-plans thing, but that leaves me feeling guilty when he does call and can make it after all. Shows selfishness? Or thoughtlessness? I don’t know.

Further complication: I still haven’t met the kids yet. We broke up briefly last spring because of that after six months, which I felt to be enough time for him to want to start integrating me into his family, or at least introducing me to them. It continues to be a source of aggravation to me, because this is supposed to be someone I want to share my life with (yeah, we’re at that stage, whereas in the beginning, I wasn’t worried about it). I often invite him to meet my friends and family, and most of the time the invitations are rebuffed. Since we’ve started having some more serious problems because of this segregation (read: I picked a fight about it), though, he has made a tiny bit of an effort to accept those invitations occasionally. He is now telling me he can see us together for the long haul and eventually retiring together far, far away…blah blah blah.

Problem now: My questions these days are “do we have a future?” If I stay with him, will I be forever relegated to the edge of his life (or until his kids are 18), will I ever have a family to come home to? I’m pretty self-sufficient, I have a good job, I work hard and it’s paying off. But is that all there is to life? A date once or twice a week, an occasional weekend away with the guy, no major holidays together, no comfortable evenings because he has to leave to get home to the kids…when he gets sick, will I be called? If something happened, would his family know about me (he says yes, but I’m not sure)? When he doesn’t call for a couple of days, I’m plagued with doubt, and my brain runs convincing negative scenarios. Maybe he fell and hit his head. Maybe he got back together with his ex. Maybe he decided to move and forgot to tell me. Maybe he doesn’t care about me any more. (I know those are my own insecurities and shouldn’t take them out on him, but still…)

Because of all the pent-up aggravation, I get frustrated with him easily. I sometimes really don’t like how he parents his kids (he leaves them with his mom most of the time). It bugs me when he avoids them, and makes me wonder if he’ll avoid me like that later on (like when he works until midnight even though he doesn’t have to).

Should I a) stick it out and just wait patiently until he finds the “perfect time” to introduce me to his family, b) push harder making it a big deal until he or I crack, or c) give up now and be happy watching TV, not feeling bad for being ignored or left by the wayside or like I’m a lesser priority? I do have cats. It’s not like I didn’t have a nice life before all this. I enjoy my own family and friends. It wasn’t like I was looking for a husband and children, I just never thought I wouldn’t get to make the choice, you know?

Feeling downgraded and segregated

A year ago, I moved across the country to test out the adage, “Wherever
you go, there you are.” It’s true, if you were wondering. The move also
served well to put distance between me and some old
habits…er…”friends.” They are not terrible people, just terrible for
me. I think that they don’t even like me. All we have in common now is
moldy. We never really had much in common. So, here I am.

The problem is that I have no friends in this city. I mean, I really
have no friends in this world. My parents are great, and I have terrific
siblings (never more than a long-distance phone call away), and really, I’m
never lonely. I go out to plays, art exhibitions, concerts, restaurants,
and movies. I do volunteer work, and I’m a member of a couple
organizations. So, I’m not pining away in my teeny apartment. I’m only
wasting my best jokes and theories on myself.

I don’t know how to make
friends or make small talk. If I end up in a conversation (God knows
how!) I can’t hold up my end. I can’t think of questions to ask. I
can’t think of things to say. I don’t think I’ve ever started a
conversation. I know that you’re not supposed to talk about religion or
politics with strangers. But if I talk about the weather, will I end up
with friends that I actually like? I’m a little shy, but I’m just mostly
in the habit of keeping to myself. I just need a few socialization
pointers and some practice. Then I’ll write to you about bitchy friends
and no good boyfriends.

Yours,
Doesn’t Want To Be Stuck In The Jakob Dylan Band Any Longer