The Vine: July 31, 2002
Hey there Sars —
I have a problem that I’m pretty sure has never been covered in your illustrious column. See, my otherwise lovely and well-behaved husband is a compulsive talker.
And when I say “compulsive,” I mean “he never shuts up.” I often find myself sitting and staring at one sentence in a book, unable to finish it with the top-volume monologuing in the background.
Yes, I do ask him to can it while I’m reading or watching TV, but he only seems to be able to keep still for a few minutes; then he starts up again. After asking him over and over and over to please let me read/watch TV/stare into space, I give up. And we have a very small apartment, so it’s not like I can go into another room.
His talking doesn’t just bother me, though; it’s gotten to the point where I purposely leave him out of friends-and-family-type deals, because the way he monopolizes every conversation annoys people. My mom has asked me several times if I can’t ask him to please let someone else get a word in edgewise — but when I’ve tentatively broached the subject, he gets mortally offended. In HIS family, everyone just talks all over everyone else, but in MY family, people wait for one person to finish before another talks. Trouble is, he never finishes!
It upsets him when I try to discuss this with him, as he says that of all people in the world, he should feel he can talk to me. Which is true, and I don’t want to shut him down completely. But I find myself tuning him out more and more, missing things that really are important, because I simply cannot pay 100-percent attention to every word he says when he talks for hours on end.
It may be kind of a wacky problem, but I am truly at the end of my rope, and don’t know what to do.
Sincerely,
Silence Is Golden
Dear Golden,
Have you told him exactly what you just told me — that because he talks so much, you’ve stopped listening to most of what he says? That you’ve started leaving him out of social situations because other people can’t tolerate his yammering? Have you asked him why he feels the overwhelming need to fill the airwaves with sound every second? There’s a nicer way to put those things, of course, but if you really want him to knock it off, you’ll have to put them as plainly as possible, even if it hurts his feelings.
Your other choice is just to keep working around it, viewing him as background noise and excluding him from gatherings, and if he really won’t listen to you or doesn’t think there’s a problem, it’s your only choice. But it seems like you both deserve better than that, so try telling him the unvarnished truth — and think about how you want to handle the situation if that doesn’t work.
Dear Sars,
I am a 21-year-old college student on a program away from my home school for the semester, and I just got back from the trip from Hell.
For months, I arranged the Spring Break trip to Florida, deciding to include my roommate (since we got along wonderfully), and then her friends when my friends from my home school backed out. It was going great on the drive down there, until my roommate started being really passive-aggressive and negative once we got to Orlando. It was still okay even when we got to Miami. I disagreed about going to Key West, if only because we’d been doing nothing but long drives all week and I wanted to chill out for a change, but I went along with it. Still, I got yelled at for not smiling, for separating myself from them talking crap about me in French, and for not being the one to crawl and ask for “forgiveness.”
When we got back to Miami, in the middle of the night, they teamed up on me and kicked me out into the street over 1000 miles from home, and my roommate even talked rudely to my parents on the phone when they were trying to figure out what the problem was. As I cried, they taunted me until I left, and even went so far to walk through the lobby to make sure I was gone. I couldn’t even really protest, because the way we paid for the trip was that everyone put a section (the hotels, rental car) that had been assigned to them on their credit card, and what everyone owed was supposed to be paid when we returned to school. I made my way home from Miami, totally devastated that they turned against me. Sars, I’m no angel; I admit as they became more hostile towards me, I gave back what they did. But that is no excuse for callous group abandonment.
Back home, I wrote to the head of campus housing and the deans telling them what happened, and packed my roommate’s stuff and left it outside for her to get because I refuse to let her back in.
I’m writing because I don’t know what to do. How can I have faith in anyone after this? What is the best course of action for me to take in a place where I’m stuck for two more months where the only friends I had are the ones that turned against me? Would I be wrong to kick her ass if she tries to come in this room? (Kidding, but not really.) Any advice would be great. Thanks.
Burn Survivor
Dear Burn,
I think you have to be the bigger person here.
The Florida debacle sounds like a sixth-grade sleepover party — you know, when some sort of groupthink current gets one girl singled out and ostracized by the others for no discernible reason — and you should treat it exactly that way, but without sinking to that level. Let your roommate do what she wants and live where she wants; make your own arrangements to get out of there without tattling to the deans or your parents. Don’t kick her ass. Don’t do anything to her stuff. Just settle up the bills from the trip and get out of her life as quickly as possible. It’s better just to rid yourself of her without getting vindictive.
Sometimes, people act like little shits for no reason. Acting like a little shit in response isn’t nearly as satisfying as you think; for your own sanity, you have to realize that, in a twisted way, the little shits have done you a favor by forcing you out of their circle. Find somewhere else to live, get to know different people, and don’t make it about you; it’s not worth it.
Dear Sarah,
I love the site, and have ever since you won my heart with the “Kulturreich” piece. Unlike most Vine…um, consultors, I’ve considered asking you for advice many times. Usually I’ve been able to muddle through, but this time, I’m at a loss.
I live alone, in a one-bedroom apartment in the small Southern town where I attend college. It’s spring break, also the week of my birthday, and I don’t have the means to be on a beach somewhere, so instead I decided to split the week between my life in College Town and my parents, a two-hour drive away. I go outside with my luggage, ready to depart, and I find a Hallmark-card-type envelope under my car’s windshield wiper, addressed simply “Open me!” So I do.
The card is your standard “cute” Hallmark stuff, and the basic message is “wish you were here,” which makes no sense given the handwritten note inside: “I don’t know who you are, nor even your name, but I can’t tell you how much I want to get to know you.” It ends with the suggestion that I email her (it was feminine-looking handwriting, no one’s that I recognized) and an email address (on Yahoo). I’m paraphrasing a little, but not much. “Nor” was in there. As was a smiley face. Nothing threatening, but it was strange.
At first, I was just kind of curious, but the more I thought about it, the weirder it seemed. Given the layout of my apartment complex, many of my neighbors could easily watch me and connect me to my car without my noticing them. And I usually park right in front of my apartment, so this person may or may not know exactly where I live. Assuming there was any method at all to this. I’m kind of freaked out, at any rate. Not so much at the moment, since I’m not there for a few days, but in a general way.
Is this the mark of a stalker? An elaborate, random prank? Or just the world’s most involved scheme to get me on a porn-spam mailing list? My parents were definitely uneasy about it when I showed it to them. Am I (are we) overreacting? How creeped out should I be?
Just sign me,
Tentatively Paranoid
Dear T.P.,
A mild level of creeped-out is appropriate here, I imagine. After all, your secret admirer knows where you live and which car is yours; obviously s/he’s spent time observing you.
So, I would take precautions. Remain aware of your surroundings at all times, around your apartment complex and going to and from your car. Let your friends and family know about the note (telling your parents is a good start); maybe they don’t know anything about it, but you should let them know that you got it and that something weird is possibly going on. Let your college know that they should not give information about you out under any circumstances, and check to make sure that nobody has requested any information about you recently. Don’t answer your door unless you expect company and can identify the person.
You should do all of those things anyway; we all should. I bet it’s just a case of mild weirdness and not anything to worry about, but hang onto the note and put everyone you know on alert just in case. Keep your eyes and ears open. And this is obvious, but don’t respond in any way; you shouldn’t encourage the secret admirer. Silence will send the best message.
But if you find out that it’s a prank, rip the prankster a new one for freaking you out.
[7/31/02]
Tags: friendships rando the fam
