The Vine: March 28, 2012
A few years ago, my best friend, W, met L. I had recently moved away and W was feeling lonely (she’s pretty shy and has a hard time meeting new people), so she was really happy when L “adopted” her into her social circle.
I’ll admit: at first I was a little jealous. W kept telling me how great L was, and how much she thought we would get along, and I was afraid that proximity would triumph and I would lose W. Silly, I know. I would visit W every so often (I only live an hour away, so I would drive into the city every other week and visit with friends and family). I was introduced to L as well and also welcomed into the friend group. Although I couldn’t participate in group outings or activities often, due to my commute, I tried to keep in touch with the friends I made through Facebook and to hang out when I could.
When W and L met, L was recently married to H. L and H starting having problems and separated after about a year of marriage. I felt bad for both of them, because they were both my friends, but I had to sympathize more with H because he was completely blindsided by L’s unhappiness and request for a divorce.
During the separation, L started sleeping with a friend of mine, C, whom I had recently introduced to the rest of the group. I felt this was a terrible idea at the time because 1) she was still getting out of and over her last relationship and 2) she was looking to jump back into a serious relationship, while C was under the impression he was acting as her rebound fling. It all hit the fan one weekend when L saw C flirting with another girl at a bar and flew off the handle, accusing him of misleading her and making her believe that he cared about her as much as she cared about him. He confided in me that he found her behavior ridiculous because at no point had he intimated that he wanted a relationship with her and he immediately stopped returning her calls and refused to see her anymore.
I was torn because I pitied L for being dumped so harshly, but I also felt like both of them should’ve known better. A few months after this all came to a head, W and I started planning my birthday party. I invited L, but she informed me that she had a family event out of town that weekend and wouldn’t be able to attend. With that in mind, I invited C, knowing that he wouldn’t come unless he knew for sure L wouldn’t be there. He agreed and even helped out with planning and organizing, which was great.
A few days before the party, L mentioned to W that she was thinking about cancelling her family plans so that she could come to the party after all. W called me in a panic, wanting to know what she should say. I told her just to wait and see what actually happened. The day before the party, L herself called me to say that she would be coming after all, and to ask what she could do to help. As tactfully as I could, I explained the situation with C and told her that I really didn’t think he would be comfortable (meaning, he would leave) if she were there, that he had already helped out so much, and that I would essentially be uninviting him if she showed up.
L didn’t talk to me for a week after that. Part of me felt bad, but another part of me was pissed that she put me in that situation to begin with. I was later told by another friend that she had cancelled her family plans because she wanted to see C at the party, believing that if she could get him to talk to her they could get back together. That was the first time I remember thinking that she was deluded (for convincing herself that he cared about her and wanted to date her) and selfish (for having the gall to try to confront him at my party, pretty much guaranteeing drama). We managed to patch things up, but ever since then I’ve been wary.
Over the past year or so, I’ve grown increasingly tired of L and her antics. I don’t have to see her too often, since we don’t live in the same town, but I keep up with my city friends on Facebook and through group e-mails. After the party incident, she started an annoying habit of trying to one-up me at everything. I started volunteering with Girl Scouts; she decided to lead a troop. I joined a track club and began training for a marathon; she started running in 5Ks. I began taking dance classes at the community center; she took professional classes and cajoled our friends to come watch her recitals. I didn’t even notice this competition until W pointed it out to me, but after a while it got frustrating. I felt like I couldn’t have anything that was just mine, because L had to do it too (and better, faster, or more, if possible). I frequently found myself cringing at L’s attempts to make herself the center of attention. People who didn’t know her well would sometimes enable and encourage this behavior by finding it amusing or endearing, but W and I (and a few others) just found it obnoxious.
This past summer, L invited me to a book club meeting, telling me that there was a guy (J) she wanted me to meet. Intrigued, I agreed. I talked briefly with J at the meeting, and he seemed friendly, but not really my type. He suggested that a group of us go out for dinner after the meeting and, wanting to talk to him more, I accepted. L came, along with some others. When we got to the restaurant, L made a fuss about the seating arrangement and finagled it so that J and I were at opposite ends of the table, with L in between us. I thought this was bizarre, because it limited our conversation and I had thought that L wanted to encourage us to talk, not prevent us from doing so.
You can probably see where this is going. L spent almost the entire dinner talking to J, making sure that she had his undivided attention. I ended up talking to another man at the table, K, with whom I really hit it off. K and I began talking online and then seeing each other. I invited him to join our group at a bar one night, and was unsurprised (but nonetheless annoyed) to watch as L repeatedly tried to flirt with him. I confronted her about it (as nicely as I could), but she insisted that she was just being friendly. She then invited herself to stay at K’s apartment on a flimsy pretense (she was attending a conference at a hotel near his place, and it would save her all of 20 minutes to stay with him). I felt this was incredibly over the line, and it made K uncomfortable as well, especially considering she barely knew him.
To make a long story somewhat shorter, the bottom line is this: I’ve gotten sick of L and her selfish, deluded, and completely inappropriate behavior. I can’t tell you how many times W and I have griped to each other about something she’s done to annoy or anger us. We’ve discussed distancing ourselves from her, but she’s so ingrained in our friendships now that it’s almost impossible. I don’t have to see her as often as W, but I’m starting to resent her planning things with mutual friends when she knows I’ll be in town, because I either have to put up with her or not see anyone.
We aren’t the only ones who feel this way, but we’re the ones who have suffered in silence the longest and at this point I just want out. I’m tired of L treating me like crap and I’m tired of feeling like a bad person every time I vent about her to other people (all of whom are in agreement: I need to stop being friends with her). My dilemma is, how do I extricate myself from L without alienating the rest of the people in my social circle? I can’t exactly say, “Hey, I want to hang out with you guys, but please don’t invite L.” I’ve tried to arrange activities when I know she’s working or otherwise unavailable, but she pitches a fit and guilt-trips the others into waiting until she can participate, too. (She has no qualms about planning things when either W or I can’t attend, however.) Is there anything I can do, short of finding a totally new group of friends?
Please, Just Help Me Get Out
Dear Out,
If you want out, get out. Yes, it might suck for a month or two, but if L’s behavior is as exhausting and inappropriate as you say, everyone else in the circle is over it too — it’s just that everyone else in the circle is waiting for someone, anyone to draw the line, at which time they will all file onto your side of it to buy you a pitcher of Relief Ale. You see it all the time: the whole group is capital-D Done with one member, but it seems easier to just go along, make nice, pretend everything’s fine and the same as old times. So you grit your teeth; you text each other eye-roll emoticons under the table; you pray for someone’s out-of-town cousin, famed for his bluntness, to visit and tell her some shit. And nothing changes.
Enough already. You don’t like her. She doesn’t really like you, either; she’s obsessed with you, but that isn’t the same thing at all. Maybe a handful of people in the cohort do genuinely like L, or at least don’t find her actively irritating, but how those people handle the both of you in their social lives is up to those people. You need to egg up* and set — and enforce — some boundaries here.
And I don’t mean announcing, to her or to the world at large, that You Have Had It. You can, if you want to, but you…don’t want to. It’s exactly the kind of adversarial theater she gets off on, which I think you can sense. I mean make yourself unavailable to her. Hide her Facebook updates from your feed; go into your own feed and Aunt Ethel* her. Don’t tell her when you plan to come to town, and if others keep blowing up your spot, don’t tell them anymore, either, until you get there. At times, you can let her intrusions go, but at other times, you should repel them: “I’m sorry, I wanted to spend some alone time with [whomever] just the two of us. Let’s you and I reschedule.” And then don’t. “I’m sorry, I really can’t change the time for [meal you purposely timed during her commute], but you guys go on ahead.” If she pushes in on a meal or hangout she wasn’t invited to, call her on it and hold the line; if she’s flirting with your boyfriend or making some other kind of scene, call her on it and hold the line. When she comes into a room, you walk out of it.
“But she’s not going to get the hint!” Agreed. But it’s not her you’re trying to hint at; it’s everyone else. If you don’t want to spend time with her, act like it. Don’t spend time with her. Avoid attempts to make you. Excuse yourself from parties you know she’s going to.
If others take notice and ask you about it, you can say you need some (permanent) space from L and her shenanigans. If she takes notice and asks you about it, give it to her sugar-free: you don’t need a shadow, and she can back it up or you will do it for her.
Unfortunately, though, this problem isn’t going to fix itself, unless she gets transferred to Bahrain. That’s the bad news. The good news is, the bad news isn’t that bad, and won’t last anyway. Start putting room between yourself and L. Trust that your real friends in that group will understand, and remain your friends; trust that, even if not everyone agrees with your stance, things will have settled down by Labor Day.
But y’all need to stop letting L run you. She does this shit because it works and nobody calls her on it. That’ll do.
* “Nut up,” but for ladies. Anyone got a gender-neutral verzh? “Grownup up” is kind of fun but also kind of awk.
** Lots of variations on that theme — “mom feed”; “the Disney” — but it’s all the same idea: restricted access for older relatives, stalkers, over-likers, etc.
Tags: friendships
You were worried L would be the more appealing friend for W, and now here you are with her as your common enemy. I think it’s great that your friendship survived your relocation and L. Here’s to happier times when you take Sars’ great advice and your L-ectomy is complete.
I prefer power up for a gender neutral call to action.
“Power up” is a little too Super Mario? …Actually, maybe that’s a good thing. “To unfriend L on Facebook, jump up in the air, bump the ceiling with your head, and grab the coin.”
To avoid saying “man up” my boyfriend and I have started saying “person up” – which is awkward, but somewhat amusingly so, and people understand what you’re saying/why you’re saying it that way … along those lines, then, what about “genital up”?
I kind of love “egg up.” I immediately picture a businesslike but kind of stroppy chicken egg zooming around with its hands on its hips leading with the round end while the pointy top bit gets tipped back from the… zooming. It’s been a long day, y’all.
Does “find your spine” seem a bit more judgmental than “sack up/ovary up”? It’s my go-to, anyway. I like the Super-Sars action sequence detailed above.
For gender-neutral phrasing: gonad up, or ‘nad up would technically be correct.
‘NAD UP. There it is.
Sars’ extrication plan is excellent. I’d add that L can’t keep aping all of Out’s activities if Out stops broadcasting them. Just…train for the marathon, don’t talk about it on FB. Same with volunteering with Girl Scouts, dance classes, etc. L can’t try to one-up stuff she doesn’t know about. The whole process will, as Sars said, suck for a month or so, but L is just such an assache that it’s worth the aggro in the short term to get long term freedome from her crap.
L reminds me of one of my college boyfriend’s friends. He was whiny, childish PITA, and everyone in their friend group loved to complain about how they hated bending over backwards to keep him happy all the time. I couldn’t understand why they didn’t just refuse to put up with his shit. Still don’t.
This may be a crazy question, but have you ever actually talked to her about all the things she does that bug you?
I used to be a lot like her. I sensed that people didn’t like me, of course, and I could see by my relationship track record that my approach to dealing with people was off.
In my mid-twenties, being on the Asperger-y side, I glommed on to my well-liked childhood pal, figuring if I stuck with her and did the things she did, people would like me as much as they liked her. This wasn’t a conscious decision or anything, but I do remember trying to break down her appeal and figure out how I could be more like her.
At the point when I’d destroyed pretty much all the equity in our long friendship through my clingy, border-ignoring, high-maintenance behavior, she sat me down and very gently introduced me to a few home truths.
She told me how much my weird energy exhausted people, and how no one wanted to be my friend because no one wanted to be responsible for dealing with my insatiable need for attention and positive feedback. She told me my neediness scared away men, and my inability to get over a failed relationship was boring to everyone who had to listen to me moan about it. She told me I needed to stop trying to impress people by taking up new activities and interests, and do what interested ME.
I won’t lie. It was very hard to hear these things. I retreated from her and from our group of mutual friends for a long time (for which she may well have been grateful). I knew she was right. The way she presented the information was so straightforward and so without meanness that I knew her advice came from a place of genuinely wanting me to be better and happier. I didn’t know quite HOW to do what she suggested, but I knew I needed to do it.
Getting better was a long process fraught with trial and error. I went back to school and flunked out. I read a lot. I took up rock climbing and running. I slept with inappropriate people. I wrote page after maudlin page in my journal. I swapped out most of my old friends for new ones.
My old friend and I are still in touch, though we live on opposite coasts now. Our friendship is more distant now, in part because we’re both busy, but also because I’m not the needy emotional vampire I used to be. I’ll be forever grateful to her for having the guts and the kindness to be honest with me about why she and everyone else we knew found me difficult to be around.
It sounds like you probably aren’t close enough to L to do this, but it would be an enormous favor to her if someone would.
“‘Nad up” is good. I use “ovary up.” I think “egg up” is fun to say, but we don’t say “sperm up” for men; it’s “nut up.” I use “ovary up” when I speak to men, too. But then, I also accuse men of being on their periods when they’re cranky…so yeah.
@jennie: I LOVE that image. Cracked me (oh god, no pun intended) right up.
Haha, I was going to say, didn’t you use “ovary up” or some such not too long ago? But now I totally want to steal “genital up.”
I say ‘man up’ all the time completely irrespective of who I’m talking to. I said it just yesterday to an 8yr old Brownie. So…yeah.
@Buni, 1) nice use of “irrespective and 2) hee, and I’m of two minds about it in that way. On the one hand, I call everyone “bro” and “dude,” including my mom and my friend’s 18-month-old daughter. On the other hand, “man up” et al. can imply a bunch of things about the exclusivity of courage that I don’t care for.
“Moxie up”?
This happened to me with a girl in our group of friends who started doing everything I was doing, complicated by the fact that within six months she was stalking my gay best friend. Not creepy “I’m outside your house watching you through the window” stalking, but “I need to spend the night at your house because I have trouble waking up in the morning” stalking. No one liked her, and they would all join in to bitch about her, but then she would show up and tell some outlandish lie and no one would say anything to her about it. I was just as frustrated with all my friends and how they just ignored it, as I was with her behavior. Finally one day I told my friends I was done and if she was around, I would not be. And that was all it took. Everyone did the same thing I did and just left, and my best friend sat her down and told her she was creepy and that none of us wanted to be around her because of her behavior. If you stand up first, and everyone is as tired of her as you are, things will settle down and you won’t lose any friends.
Sars is also right that it’s not about making her change her behavior as much as it should be about not having to deal with her behavior. But is THAT ever hard to accept. I guess the only thing to say is to be prepared for her to learn nothing, and continue to act exactly the same way she’s acting now. And take comfort in the fact that you don’t have to be around her if you don’t want. That was the hardest part for me, and the part I am still working on: letting her be immature somewhere else without letting it get to me.
@ex drama queen
It’s so great to hear a vine-like problem from the other side of it being fixed. In my mid-20s I always felt like I hadn’t quite learned proper social interaction. Particularly when it came to guys, half the battle was accepting that I was never going to be cool and casual about relationships. It felt like everyone else was just so grown-up. Of course, as we all know, just being yourself is grown-up. It was so simple and liberating when I finally figured out that all you needed to do/say was “hey, this is what I want/am, take it or leave it.”
Anyway, if anyone you know was a bit of a dick in their mid-20s, you might be surprised how they’ve settled into their 30s.
In my world it’s ‘man the f*ck up’, but I’m usually shouting it at the TV screen during a rugby game.
One thing the letter writer should brace herself for is L confronting her and doing a big whiny ‘it’s like we’re not even friends anymore’ drama. To which the answer should be ‘I know – I think we’ve grown apart’. And then get on with your day. But nobody is so dense that they won’t get the message when you never see them, never contact them, and actively engineer things so you don’t have to be around them.
But nobody is so dense that they won’t get the message when you never see them, never contact them, and actively engineer things so you don’t have to be around them.
HA HA HA HA HA! Oh, Jacq, you’re adorable.
…I’m just teasing, except in the sense that I do think there are people who are deliberately obtuse about that stuff, because they don’t want to look at their own shit, and this is probably one of those cases.
I had a “friend” who drove me crazy, but since she was roommates with two of my other good friends, I really couldn’t remove her from my life. Just recently, after several years of increasing drama from her, those two friends, after they were all no longer living together, finally had a falling out with her and have cut ties with her completely. They were so surprised to find out that EVERYBODY was thrilled to find out about this, since no one has to put up with her anymore to hang out with the two of them.
So anyway, my point, in addition to Sars’ advice, is that something like this is likely to happen eventually with your group of friends. You and W are likely not the only people who feel this way. Hang in there!
In my house we say “pull up your panties” to indicate the need to find fortitude.
If my daughter is really frustrated, she will tell you to “pull up your big girl panties”.
Hilarious when she does it to her grandfather/great-uncles.
I am so stealing “pull up your big girl panties.” Love it.
Regarding the letter, I think Sars is right on. Eventually there will be some residual drama from L — maybe not because she figures it out exactly, but because she realizes that a source of attention/drama isn’t around so much anymore. But in the meantime you’ll have less drama, and I think other relieved friends will have your back.
One of the best things I ever did was realize, and act upon, the fact that I don’t have to hang out with people I don’t like. “Is L gonna be there?” “Yeah.” “Well then I can’t come.” It’s amazing how the friends filter themselves after that happens. You really, really don’t have to hang out with someone you don’t like, no matter who else is there, no matter who else is in the “group.” You can do things without the entire group. I promise.
@Fay, if I’d realized that wonderful truth ten years earlier than I did, I’d have had an aggro-free adolescence and years after… it’s amazing how the “But I want to invite Maria so I HAVE to invite sucky JESSICA” mindset is hard to shake.
@Out, best of luck with your extraction!
I love Vines like this, for Sars’ responses. I could read one a day.
@ex drama queen
Oh, I recognize that and sympathise. The Straight Talk, which is so hard to hear, but really can help you become a better person. I remember one of my favourite teachers at the uni gently, but firmly, pointing out to me (in private) that I was hogging the discussions all the time. “Give the others some space to say something too.” It made me cry, but he was right and I’ve been watching myself closely for steamroller tendencies since. Your friend did you a great favour indeed, but the point is just that it needs to be somebody who does it because they like you. Otherwise you’re just not going to listen. It doesn’t sound like Out is that kind of friend to L, more’s the pity.
Ahh, the group waiting for that truth to sound like a pistol shot so they have an excuse to run for the door.
I wonder sometimes how L keeps up such a busy schedule, because EVERYBODY knows her–the way she won’t go home after coffee but decides to come back with you to you to your house to “hang out” (so much for getting the dishes done…) the flirting-esque behavior that she insists is just “freindly” even though if it was she wouldn’t be working so hard on keeping it on this side of the line, the weird competitions.
It may not seem fair that you’re the one to have to pull up those panties and fire that pistol, but if you want L out of your life, you have to make the decision that “niceness” is a virtue but too much of it just makes everyone flabby and aquiecent to annoying behavior.
It’s not your job to teach L any kind of lesson. It is your job to place boundries on your life. The more quietly, kindly, and efficiently you do so, the more you will feel a clarity of vision about what you want and respect.
Ok, here’s the part that puzzles me, Help Me Get Her Out. If these are events you’re organizing, or you’re helping plan, and that people are saying “well, L threw a snit because the time didn’t work for her, so I’m wondering if we could change it?” to, why in dog’s name haven’t you stuck to your guns yet?
“I’m sorry [Friend’s name], but I’m not in love with the idea of having L run my social life, especially since I can’t make another time work on my schedule. Tell you what, why don’t we stick with the same meeting time for the group, and you and L show up when you can?”. It’s not bitchy, it’s not “it’s me or her”, it’s just saying that L can deal with it, and it’s up to them to accommodate her if they believe otherwise, not you.
If nobody shows because of L, you have your answer as to whether you have to disengage from the group. If people show sans L, then you don’t have to deal with her.
As an aside, I think “put on your big girl panties” is something I’ve heard used before as the companion to “nut up”. I’ve also used “stop being a jellyfish” in the past, as a gender neutral form.
“‘Nad up” is awesome. I will be using that. I do like “egg up” though. It reminds me of a friend from high school (which was a long time ago) who wisely pointed out to me that saying someone “has balls” implies that you have to be a guy to be bold. So for girls/women, she would say “She’s got eggs.”
I think that since, as usual, all the advice is spot-on, we need to sit down as a Nation and focus on pithy female/gender-neutral versions of “man-up” and “nut-up.” While I use “woman-up” frequently, it lacks a certain oomph, which I believe derives from a surfeit of syllables. Ditto with “ovary-up.” I do like and use the phrase “put on your big girl pants,” but, again, it’s not as succinct.
Perhaps a contest is in order, along with voting brackets?
What Fay said, exactly. I used to be some kind of magnet for drama queens, and I don’t even like to think about how many people I’ve had to somewhat aggressively avoid for a while to get them out of my space. But it does work, and it IS liberating. Will mutual friends get it pretty much right away? Sure. And then they’re in the middle…but if they’re secretly done with her too, they’ll just follow suit, and if they’re not then they will at least find ways to hang out with the two of you separately, and warn you if the other will be attending a group event so you can make your own choices about contact vs. being forced/blindsided into hanging out with her. I never had to ask, friends just got it, and did it, and my life is blessedly, blessedly now drama-free. Well, free from that particular brand of drama, anyway.
PS I use “put on your big girl/boy pants” all the time, but I like the panties version even better. :D
+1 for ‘nad up – gonad is the gender-neutral term for reproductive glands (testicles and ovaries), so it works in either case (as opposed to ‘sack up’, ‘nut up’, ‘egg up’, ‘ovary up’, which are more specific).
Definitely “put on your big girls’ knickers/pants” round these parts.
Gender neutral, but now that I think about it, often said to a male (of any age) who’s being a whingy little boy and needs to woman up. So to speak.
1. I LOVE ‘nad up. Also, “grow a backbone” works nicely.
2. Do men *ever* get into these complex who can and can’t be invited dramas? Seems like they never have such problems, except for when they can’t invite certain women they dumped or something, but not amongst themselves. Any insights?
3. Sars, can you come run my life please? :-)
I’m not sure a woman who just filed a story about how Russian president Dmitry Medvedev’s cat totally did NOT run away after all is someone you want running your life. …Wait, actually that story is hilarious. Send me a Google Map and I’ll get started. Hee.
I use “put on your big girl panties” with my girlfriends, mostly because I love the juxtaposition of the intent with the word “panties”. Hee.
Can’t use that at work, however. I work in HR, and part of my job is to push a bunch of (mostly male) manufacturing Operations and Production managers to finish the projects they don’t want to do. So I have begun to lean on “spine up”; they can tell each other to “nut up” all they want (and often do; it’s so much easier to tell others what to do than actually do it yourself), but I can’t: I *am* HR.
As for the friend drama: I got nothin’. I left that behind long ago, and have little to no patience with that now. However, @ex drama queen: my hat is off to you. It is extremely difficult to hear the truth about yourself, internalize it, and work to make a change. You sound like a really good egg, and are probably a better friend for it.
@Kristin: As a longtime honorary member of boys’ clubs and co-ed sports teams, I can say with some certainty that yes, men do get pouty/bitchy/gossipy about who can and can’t be invited places.
And, heh, the first instance that I thought about was on a co-ed team where a woman was the one to ‘nad up and call out the fucker no one liked. (She did not do it nicely at all, but it got the job done.)
…not that the letter writer is being pouty/bitchy/gossipy–I was thinking of some boys I knew…
Why doesn’t just “grow up” and/or “act like an adult” work? I’m confused about why the phrase needs to be associated gender or reproductive organ at all…but then, I detest the words “balls/nuts” and “panties” so maybe I’m not the right person to answer.
I, too, like “’nad up” for a gender neutral alt. On occasion I’ll say “labe up” for women — short for “labia.” And I’m sure I’ve seen “ove up” used a time or two.
I have grown fond of the folksy “cowboy/cowgirl up.”
My Utah is totally showing right now, isn’t it?
I thought “Cowgirl up” was the female version of “man up” but I could be wrong.
I agree with those of you who’ve noted that it’s not PJHMGO’s responsibility to educate L about why she’s being dropped, and that she doesn’t like L enough to present that information in a kind enough way that it would be well-received, at least at this point.
But I sympathize a lot with the Ls of the world. They’re like the paste-eaters in elementary school who can’t figure out why no one wants to be their friend.
Just reading the account of L’s behavior makes me cringe in recollection of my own similarly desperate and clueless behavior. She probably thinks she’s being a good friend. She coordinates group outings! She works to make connections with everyone in the friendship circle! She demonstrates her likeability by charming everyone, including your boyfriend! She takes an interest in your activities–hey, she even takes them up herself! And when she gets dropped by the friendship circle (and I’m guessing it won’t be the first time it’s happened to her), she probably won’t conclude, “Oh, everyone was put off by my immature, melodramatic behavior.” She’ll instead think, “I tried so hard to be the right kind of friend, but I clearly didn’t try hard enough.” And then the next time she’ll redouble her off-putting behavior.
No one wants to be the one to say, “Look, everyone notices when you eat paste in art class. They think it’s gross. You should stop. If you stop eating paste, you might have friends.”
At least anonymously send her the link to this Vine. She’ll feel like she’s been socked in the gut, but she’ll at least have the information she needs to start recognizing and working on her issues.
I thought “egg up” covered both genders, but maybe it’s only us Texans that refer to balls as “huevos” (eggs).
May I humbly suggest “sprout a set.” Applicable to both genders, avoids the whole explanation of, “okay, okay, use of the word ‘nut’ was rhetorical in your case, Marilyn, sheesh,” and as a bonus, sometimes provides entertainment while watching the figuring-out process, as in: “…uh…a set of what, now?”
Flora, I think that while “grow up” or “act like an adult” do have the intended meaning, they just sound a little harsh. As does “grow a spine.” I think the idea is to have a little fun with it and recognize that even as adults we face schoolyard situations we’d rather avoid. I don’t think it hurts to use a more visually amusing phrase to get at it.
“Grow a pair” technically could refer to either gender, although I think most people would assume it refers to a pair of testes rather than ovaries, so the association isn’t gender-neutral.
“‘Nad up” is nicely succinct.
In cold-water scuba-diving circles, anyone being a cissy about jumping into freezing water or similar is told to “HTFU” or “Harden The Fuck Up”. A useful expression in many situations. :)
Nad up!
I’m a fan of other phrases, though, like “grow the eff up,” “get your shi- together,” etc. I like adding the curse words in there for all the oomph you’ll ever need. ;)
I also find the answer “WAAAAAAH” sends a nice message. For example:
“But I don’t know if I can do that…”
“WAAAH”
She then invited herself to stay at K’s apartment on a flimsy pretense (she was attending a conference at a hotel near his place, and it would save her all of 20 minutes to stay with him). I felt this was incredibly over the line, and it made K uncomfortable as well, especially considering she barely knew him.
I don’t get this AT ALL. There’s a lot here that is just L being drama-y, sure, but you’re also borrowing other people’s drama. Is K not capable of saying no? And if he’s not, it’s not your problem, except insofar as it’s probably not a good idea to get into a thing with him if he’s not capable of saying no to random women inviting themselves to his house!
My family doesn’t do a gender “neutral” term, really. But since I’m a lady and I was raised by lesbians, I have always been told to “cowgirl up.” On the rare event there was a whinging man present, we would tell him to “cowboy up.”
I also have thinky thoughts about gender-specific terms like “grow a pair” and “take it like a man,” wherein I feel like they do indicate an inherent quality in men that is not present in women, which…obviously bullshit. On the other hand, I frequently appropriate traditionally masculine terms without any shame. Like Sarah’s above comment, I call everyone “dude” or “bro,” and I am more likely to say “lady” than “chick.” I have also appropriated and spread to my friends use of the terms “jerk off” and “rub one out” when referring (delicately or not so) to our delighting ourselves (TM New Girl).
So, that’s a long way of saying that in my family, we go with cowboy or cowgirl, which I personally feels references the “cow” part more than the girl or boy–in that it’s an attitude one is supposed to emuluate, not a gender-specific trait.