Dear Sars,

I’m easily irritated at certain grammatical mistakes. “You’re” and “your” are two different things! However, I can’t be a grammatical snob since I have one problem involving bad and badly. It is absolutely horrible. “I feel bad”? “I feel badly”? “I feel bad for someone”? Please help! It’s been explained to me fifty million times and I am still not getting it.

Thanks,
Feeling bad or badly about everything

Dear Feeling,

According to Garner, a.k.a. The Lord, “When a linking verb — such as is, feels, seems, or tastes — appears in the main clause, the predicate adjective bad is required, not the adverbial complement badly.”

So if your friend’s dog just died, you feel bad or you feel bad for her.If your stomach hurts, you feel badly, although most grammarians would advise you to use “feel poorly” or “feel sick” to avoid confusion.

In other words, it’s “I feel bad.”

Hi Sars,

I have a problem with a friend, and the more I try to explain myself, the more I sound like an asshole. I’m beginning to worry that I AM an asshole.

I met this girl at my boring temp job, and hit it off with her on the basis of a shared disgust for our surroundings, lack of funds, lack of boys, et cetera. Pretty soon I was having lunch with her most days, which turned into after-work drinks and phone chats, and a lot of office conversations. I realized she’s very unhappy, maybe depressed, and I feel bad for her, but now I’m realizing that even when she’s in a good mood, we have NOTHING in common. Our outlooks on life, love, work, and sex are just very different, and not in a good way. She bugs me. She complains about her life and then goes out and makes the same mistakes over and over, and while God knows I do the same thing and so do most of my friends (complaints and mistakes are the cornerstones of my favorite conversations), somehow with her it’s just irritating and depressing.

Normally when I realize I don’t like someone, they’re having the same realization about me, and we just don’t call each other. But she keeps calling. She doesn’t have a lot of friends in the city, she’s lonely, and my way of dealing with awkwardness is to make jokes, so I keep making her laugh and she thinks we’re great friends. I don’t want to hurt her, but I don’t think it’s my job to make her life better either, especially since I just don’t enjoy spending time with her. I would feel terrible about cutting her off completely. I’ve tried to point out our stark disagreements in conversation, but she just brushes them off and returns to discussing her own problems (which I’m sick of hearing about). What do I do?

Not A Therapist

Dear Not,

You’ve got three choices.You can tell her that you don’t like her and you don’t want to spend time with her anymore.You can continue pretending that you give a shit out of pity while surreptitiously checking your watch.Or you can start phasing her out.

Obviously, I think the third option is the way to go here.Start screening your calls.Start turning down invites.Start making yourself less available.Don’t explain yourself; just say you can’t go to lunch today/get together for drinks later/hang out over the weekend/whatever, because you have other plans.You probably can’t avoid her as easily at work, but after hours, reduce your exposure.You aren’t doing her, or yourself, any favors by encouraging her to think that you two are close.

If she doesn’t get the hint and/or confronts you, explain gently that you don’t have much in common with her, so you’ve started spending time with other people who do.She probably won’t take it well, but if you don’t like her, you don’t like her.So stop acting like you do.

Share!