Hi, love the site, and I think your advice generally rocks, so here goes. I have a problem that I don’t quite know how to deal with. You see, there was this guy. Yeah, I know lots of letters start with that, and so does this one. I used to date said guy, for about five months. Things never went too far (no sex, nothing like that) because I refused to give in to his requests. I suppose he became sexually frustrated, so he broke up with me, citing the fact that I was “no fun to mess around with.” I was like, eh, no great loss (he had other problems, like being extremely jealous and possessive, and also anger issues).

This was all four months ago. Since then, I’ve found that he’s been spreading rumors about me. Not the typical “she’s such a slut, she’ll do anything” type that you’d normally hear, but more like the “she’ll do anything when she gets drunk” type. Now, I don’t drink. Ever. Well, I shouldn’t say ever, I did have champagne once at a wedding, but I don’t think that really counts. I’m only 17, and I’d get in serious trouble with the parents if I got caught drinking, so I don’t do it. I’ve also seen what happens to girls when they’ve had too much to drink, and guys take advantage of them, and it isn’t pretty. I don’t really see the appeal of alcohol.

Now, I wouldn’t really care about these rumors if they would have just stayed in his circle of friends, but they have reached mine as well. Not that my friends don’t believe me, generally, but they think I have a serious drinking problem. I deny it, of course, but they just think I’m in denial! They believe I am just not admitting that I have a problem. I don’t. How can I have a problem with something I don’t even do?

The situation hit its climax a few days ago. My friends, thinking they were acting in my best interests, went to some of those school mediator people, explaining that I’m some sort of closet alcoholic, and I had to go to a meeting and “talk it out.” They want me to return in a few days (I’m pretty sure the meeting is mandatory). I’m all for therapy (I plan to major in psychology), but not if the person doesn’t need it. So here’s my question: how can I convince everyone that I don’t have a problem with alcohol? It’s really kind of insulting that they believe rumors over me, but I do understand that they want to help. So, any advice you could dispense would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Teenage Teetotaler

My problem is, as you have probably guessed, my boss. In short, I
despise him. The long version? Okay. I work in a very small office of a
non-profit organization. I mostly deal with volunteers, my boss, the
general public and district suits. I don’t have problems with anyone else
but him. I like my job. But my reaction to “D” is something like the
anaphylactic shock people get when they are allergic to shellfish and
they dive headlong into a container of curry shrimp.
I…just…can’t…breathe.

I am in my early thirties and he is in his
mid-fifties. We are both married. We are supposedly from the same
species. Other than that, we have little in common. Now, to me, that’s
fine. I don’t expect to be friends with my boss. I have had bosses who
barely remembered my name. I have had bosses who yelled, threatened,
accused and made passes. None of them have irritated me half as much as
D. Outwardly, he seems like a nice enough guy, but I work for him, so
I know better.

Under the “nice guy” is a manipulative, sneaky, lying, micro-managing,
emotionally needy, hypersensitive asshat who is completely undone by
mechanical objects (computers, faxes, printers, scanners, copiers,
phones, microwaves, toasters…you get the picture). Again, people are
assholes. Fine. But this one wants to be my best friend. I just
want to come into my office, work, build my resume and go home. D is
very much a schmoozer, and everyone who does business with him has to
have lunch with him, have coffee with him, golf with him, et cetera. I am the
administrative assistant. I answer the phones, type the letters, publish
the newsletter and perform various office-type duties, none of which
requires me to go anywhere with him outside of the building.

He hired me himself, after chasing two admin assistants out of this
office within a six-month period. So, now I’m like a glorified teacher’s
pet. He tells everyone how wonderful I am and what a great job I’m doing.
Meanwhile, in the office, he stands at my desk and proofreads my
documents before I am even finished with them. He takes gleeful pleasure
in my every typo. He lectures me for not catching his mistakes. He
schedules meetings without telling me and then bitches at me for not
reminding him of them. He gives me a project at 9 AM on Friday that needs
to be done by the end of the day (of course, he could have told me
earlier in the week), and then he checks back every half hour to see if
it’s done yet. When something is done? I put it on his desk.

He attempts
to assign me tasks that should be performed by himself, his wife, or a
personal assistant. I am none of these things. He has some of his
personal mail sent here, to the office P.O. box. A few months ago, he
moved to a different home address, and guess who got the job of switching
off his phone service and filling out his change of address forms? Yup.
Got it in one guess. You’re good. Of course that was when I was young and
green. Last week, he tried to get me to cancel his Wall Street Journal
(which was sent here to the office in his wife’s name). I informed him,
sweetly, that I didn’t think I was allowed to change anything with his
wife’s name on it because I don’t work for her. This was accompanied by
innocent eyelash-batting on my part.

And to my unending horror, someone has decided to grace this humanoid
with a PhD. Yeah, I know. Apparently you don’t need common sense to get
one of those. He waves this “degree” in everyone’s face and uses it as an
excuse to treat us as if we are just using our brains to keep our heads
from imploding. For example: He will show me a document, and instead of
just saying, “If you’ll notice, on the second line of the first
paragraph…”, he will point out every single word with his big fat finger
and read aloud to me, like I am a Brownie who hasn’t earned her reading
badge. I have told him that I can see it and that he doesn’t have to
point it out. But he does it anyway, so I gave up.

That kind of thing.
All of the time. Like telling me stuff I need to do, that I do every day
and have done for over a year. The other day, he suggested that I might
need to get some more stamps because he has a mailing going out. From my
office, I can spit in the eye of the chick who works at the Post Office.
Yeah, thanks, D. And you’ll remind me when it’s time to flush, right?

So, he has extended several invitations to me and my husband. Come to our
barbeque. Come to dinner. Come out to lunch. Come to a show. My husband’s
boss (who is so cool, by the way) has never made us eat at his house.
Bosses are for picnics and Christmas parties. End of story. I also found
out that he hasn’t extended these invitations to the other people who
have worked here a lot longer than I have, so I don’t think he wants to
pal around with me just because I work for him. It has been my
experience, since I have worked for this man, that the people who don’t
hang out with him end up leaving. I have heard the way he talks about
the people who are “unfriendly.” I have generally found them to be
perfectly nice people, by the way. So I have managed to avoid these
outings because a) my husband is busy, b) my kid got sick the one time we
were gonna go (reluctantly) to his house for dinner, and c) we are really
homebodies.

I feel some manipulation is at hand here. He is constantly trying to
pump info from me about other people in the organization with whom he
knows I am friendly. I have noticed over the past year that anyone who
is not part of his “coffee shop crowd” ends up being passed over for
committees and talked about, by him, like three-legged dogs. It’s almost
like he can’t get friends on his own and he is trying to force people to
be his friend. If they don’t comply, suddenly their lives are very
unpleasant here.

So, with every brushed-off dinner invitation on my part,
there is an almost instant retaliation from him. Suddenly the newsletter
I put out, which was nothing short of brilliant according to him, needs
work. He’s not happy with it. He might assign someone else to oversee it
instead of me. Suddenly he’s deciding which articles are going in. And
now he is adding things and making changes at the last minute, holding up
publication. Now he has handed off a project that I designed to a
volunteer in the organization. This was after he told me it had to be
finished and in circulation right away. So when I finished it, it was
great. Now all of a sudden it needs work. He won’t say specifically what
is wrong with it, but he reminds me (several weeks after I finished the
project) that “L” will be reworking it, every chance he gets. He keeps
throwing little hints around that I need to be doing more, but he won’t
say what he means. He also even suggested that I was too cold to people,
and my coldness was the reason why people don’t hang around in the office
and talk a lot. Little does he know that people call me and ask if he’s
around before they will come by the office. And when he’s gone, they sit
in my office and bitch about him for hours.

He will stand in front of my
desk and lecture me for thirty minutes about nothing. He calls me into
his office for “meetings” which end up being glorified gossip sessions
where he tells me stuff he shouldn’t be telling me about people he
shouldn’t even be talking about. He then sits back and waits for me to
tell him shit, which I no longer do, since I’ve figured out what he’s up
to. And when I don’t open up, he accuses me of not doing my job.
Apparently, I am his personal spy. He seems to think that what is going
on in other people’s personal lives is his business. I do not. His new
thing is “testing” me. A couple of times, he has witheld info to see if
I would get it from someone else. He also lets things slip and tells me
the info is confidential. Then he goes around asking if I have shared
this info. I know this because these people talk to me.

So, to make a long story even longer (sorry!), I spend my day with my jaw
clenched in anger. I don’t feel I can talk to this guy without getting
slammed in some way. Once, when I said something vaguely critical about
his prying nature, suggesting that perhaps my personal life was not
something we should be discussing in his office, he said, “fine,” and
practically threw a paper at me like a petulant child. People have
written letters complaining about him, but he’s still here, so I doubt
he’s going anywhere.

Is there a gentle way to tell your boss that you
just want to be “not friends”? Right now, this job is great for a lot
of reasons. He is the one horrible thing. When he’s gone, I’m happy.
But when he’s here, I want him dead. Can I sue for “friendly harassment”?

Hugs and kisses,
Not friends

The Cliffs Notes version — we met, we dated for a year, we broke up (his
doing). We didn’t talk for a month or two, then slowly eased back into
something slightly resembling a friendship. I, by this point, had moved on
from the sobbing heap of a person surrounded by Kleenex, and while I wasn’t
ready to jump back into the dating pool, I had moved on from this guy.

Of course, as is often the case with exes, while the romantic attraction had
died, the physical attraction was still going strong. Whenever we’d happen to
be in the other’s city of residence (we were long distance — about an hour and a
half apart), we would use the opportunity to get it on. This wasn’t a regular
occurrence; it probably only happened six or seven times in a seven-month period. Aside
from the random sex, we really didn’t talk much, and it was usually initiated
by me.

Eventually, I forgot how much breakups suck and started dating a new guy
(hereafter known as “W”). Lo and behold, the second M found out about W, he
changed his attitude completely. Before you ask why I even told M about W if
we didn’t have very many meaningful conversations, M and W were friends in
high school — and putting myself in that situation, if my ex started dating an
old friend of mine, I’d rather hear it from the ex than the high school
grapevine. Suddenly, M was talking to me daily, being moody and
introspective, asking questions about my life — needless to say, I was a bit
confused by all of this.

A few months later, W and I parted ways (rather amicably), and M went back to
the same old, same old. A month or so ago, I finally told him that there were
no redeeming values to the pseudo-friendship we had, and unless he was
interested in making it something close to a 50/50 split of effort, I had
better things to do with my time. M began making more of an effort, and I’d
say we finally became good friends — to the point that I could tease him
mercilessly about his latest romantic mishaps.

Now, I’ve begun dating “L.” L is wonderful. Since M and I are now at the point
of occasionally asking the other person what’s going on with their dating
life, M is aware of L.

And M has begun the daily contact, moody and introspective, asking even more
questions about my life again.

Thus, I come to the point(s) of this letter:

1) What the hell is the deal with M?
2) Dependent on your thoughts on the above question, what the hell do I do
about it?

Sincerely,
And men say women are confusing

I have a problem for which I would appreciate your advice.

Some background. First year at college, two of my new friends, Sam and Alice
became a couple. Over the next four years we all remained part of the same
social circle but I’ve admittedly grown closer to Sam than to Alice. Out of
the blue, Sam confided to me that he wished to end their relationship, that
he loved her but wasn’t IN love, hadn’t been for months, please don’t tell
anyone, she doesn’t know, blah blah, all the usual. He said he wanted to
end it soon but three months later they’re still together. But that’s none
of my business and not my problem.

Where I come into this is, I was planning an overseas holiday at the
beginning of next year and the person I was going with pulled out. Sam
voiced an interest in going so I said sure, sounds great, and we both began
planning. I’m an idiot because only then did I start to wonder where Alice
fits in. I asked Sam where Alice fit into these plans and he said he hadn’t
said anything and to give him some time. I’m afraid because this has the
potential to look very bad.

I don’t want to go on holiday with a couple. I don’t want to go on holiday
with Sam if he’s only just broken up with Alice and she didn’t know about
it. I’m doubtful that if they are still together she’ll allow her boyfriend
to spend three weeks in Asia with another girl (he has cheated on her in the
past — but again, that’s their issue). I don’t want to pressure Sam with his
thesis due in two weeks but I do want to book airline tickets.

My question is this: Is there any way to work this so that Alice does not
get hurt with Sam going on holiday to a foreign country with a female mutual
friend for a period of approximately a month? Is this wishful thinking?

Thank you,
Want to go with a friend but will probably end up alone

I have a problem that’s not really a problem and is sort of dumb and I’m probably just looking for permission or someting, but here it goes…

There are a few ladies I work with. I don’t particularily care for them, so I would say good morning or some of that vague chit-chat with as little eye contact as possible and that seemed to work. They didn’t really want to talk to me, because I didn’t make it easy. I didn’t want to be overly mean, I just wanted to have a completely superficial relationship. I didn’t want to hear about their kids or their spouses or anything. I think that’s fair enough, you can’t be everyone’s best friend, right?

So the problem? I’m pregnant. My first. And I’m happy about it. I’m sure I bore my friends to death with all my little discoveries, even though they assure me they’re not bored (what a bunch of troupers!). Anyway, the pregnancy has gained me completely unwanted access to a horrible club I don’t want to belong to…the LADIES’ club. They corner me and ask me questions. Horrible questions like, “How are you feeling today?” and so on (okay, that was a little tongue in cheek, but still). I answer them as briefly and almost tersely as possible, but it doesn’t stop them. They use whatever answer I give to expound on their pregnancies/children/world view. It makes me so mad I could scream (maybe that’s the hormones, I don’t know — I have a lot of rage lately…). I want to be civil for the sake of the office, but for god’s sack leave me alone already. It’s like I’m a magnet or some type of challenge to them.

Any suggestions? Am I being passive-aggressive by not just telling them to bug off? Is it even worth it (I mean, it’s work, it’s not like they’re my family)? Thanks for listening, I feel the rage subsiding just by getting this out there.

Don’t Touch My Belly