Hi Sars,

I myself have $40K student loan debt from theatre studies, and I can feel C.L. + T = B.’s pain. I was able to regain my financial footing and sanity through loan consolidation through the William D. Ford Direct Consolidation Program. The Federal government operates it, so you get more options and are able to retain more rights when you consolidate.

My advice is whatever you do, do not — I repeat, do not — consolidate with a private company.They will hound you to the depths of hell and refuse to work with you on getting a payment schedule you can live with. The Feds have four different repayment plans to choose from, and one of them is income contingent (meaning if you make almost nothing, you pay almost nothing). This does mean that you will be paying more in interest over the long run, but interest rates are at so low right now that it will definitely be worth it.

I started with the income contingent plan, and when I finally started making more money and got married, I was able to change to the extended plan.

Hope this helps,

Li’l loan helper

Dear Li’l,

Thanks so much for the additional advice — and thanks to everyone else who wrote in with similar counsel.I had the great good luck not to need student loans for my undergraduate education (thanks, ‘rents!), so my understanding of the set-up is a bit murky.

Sars,

I’ve got problems. First, some background: I’m a freshman at a very tough,
very small university. In high school, I was so studious and shy that I
didn’t meet my first boyfriend until I was a senior, didn’t have my first
kiss till I had graduated, didn’t have my first orgasm till my 18th
birthday, and, almost 19, am still a virgin. My boyfriend and I were
separated by college, but we decided to try to maintain a long-distance
relationship (needless to say, it ended as soon as we saw each other
again). Meanwhile, I had secretly fallen in love with my best friend here
at college, who now is blessed with a wonderful, dear girlfriend.

After
the break-up, I have had to get used to being alone again, and I hate it
with
all my heart. I miss companionship and deep conversations, I miss hugs, I
miss all those little touches and looks. I miss knowing that someone out
there cares for me. I’d really like to start dating again, but my problem
is that, at a university where the (rather sparse due to excessive
nerdiness) social scene is based on loud parties and beer, I don’t drink
and hate big loud parties. I’m very shy, and while I’m not at all
bad-looking, I’m not one of those girls constantly circled by a pack of
guys. And I’m tormented by my secret affection for my best friend, who I
know I can’t have but who is the only person I’ve met so far that I would
ever consider dating.

What’s a shy gal like me to do if she wants to meet
guys? Please respond, as I’m beginning to feel like I’m destined to be…

Forever Alone

Dear Alone,

You feel lonely, and you hate it, but it’ll pass — and you have to let it pass before you start shopping around for another relationship.Everything in your letter screams, “I want a boy, any boy, to pass the time and take up space,” and that’s no good.The thing with your best friend is no good either; find a way to minimize your exposure to him.Yeah, yeah, he’s your best friend, but now you’ve got feelings for him, and believe me when I tell you, trying to split that difference is a lot of wasted time and tears.Take a break from him.

Accept the loneliness.Wallow in it a little.Do weird crap with your hair.Write melodramatically in your journal.Lie on your bed and listen to Etta James and feel capital-T tragic.When that gets boring, do some homework or go bowling with your other friends.Live.

This isn’t about shyness.This is about faith.Have some.The great thing about life, I’ve found, is that although it’s not a movie, a lot of times it looks just like one.There’s a leading man on the way.In the meantime, just keep hitting your marks.

I need some advice on how to approach a very emotional situation
with my sister.You seem to have a very level head on your
shoulders and aren’t quite so close to the situation.I hope
you can help.Here’s the background.

My sister started dating a seemingly nice guy, “Gil,” about
seven months ago.He was very respectful of her and seemed like
an overall good boyfriend.He has a decent job as a sys admin
at a small software company.They met when her company hired
his company to upgrade their web servers.He’s about ten years
older than her, but thirties versus forties hardly matters.He
also seemed miles better than the total losers she’s dated
before.

However, our mother and I kept having a nagging feeling that
something was slightly off about him.He’d occasionally get
oddly defensive, or deflect perfectly normal questions about his
family, work, college, whatever.Still, unable to put our
finger on anything specific, we kept out traps shut.They both
live a few hours away, so it’s not like we saw him often enough
to get a really good impression anyway.We tried to convince
ourselves that he must be a bit shy around new people.Besides,
“Cindy’s” relationships never last long.We figured he’d be
gone soon.

Then they moved in together a few months ago.

Then they got engaged, and things got decidedly stranger.My mom
almost immediately asked how to contact his parents so she could
open up relations between the families.He got angry and
informed us that we had no business interfering in his family
life, and to butt out.Cindy later informed us that his
relationship with his parents went bad when he left their
church.Okay, we let it drop for awhile.However, my mom is
very strongly of the belief that all parents should be invited
to the wedding, no matter how bad the relationship.I warned
Cindy that it would come up again down the line when we started
wedding planning.

Skip ahead a month to when we’re trying to get an idea of what
kind of wedding they want.My mom’s first request was for them
each to make a rough list of who they’d want to invite — just to
get an idea of size, so we could make a budget and start looking
at locations.Gil’s list contained six people, all current
coworkers.He talked about college and his college friends all
the time, but didn’t want to invite any to the wedding?No
family?None?Every last one of them disowned him for leaving
the church?No coworkers from previous jobs?He’d only moved
to his current location a year ago.

The excuses flew fast and furious, as did his attempts to change
the conversation to discussing wedding registries and ceremony
locations.My mom was not deterred.She wanted to know about
his family; family must be invited to weddings.Also, didn’t he
have more old friends he’d want there to see him get
married?Well, he left his last job after a bad break-up and
wanted to cut all ties to start over.He never had much family
to start with.All the grandparents are dead.His parents are both
only children and he has no siblings.He lost touch with all
his old college friends and wouldn’t know where to find them.
Uh, that sounded wrong.Any one of those things, sure.All of
them, no.Still, Cindy thought nothing of it, so we didn’t push
the issue with her, beyond asking if she thought it was strange.

Feeling uneasy, Mom and I hired a private detective to look into
Gil.Yeah, we watch too much Oprah.We did not tell Cindy
because, if we were over-reacting, it would have caused trouble.
Turns out Gil has been married three times before.He’s been
arrested four times (two for drug possession, one for writing
bad checks, and one for assault and battery).The charges were
dropped on the assault and bad checks, but he pled out to
community service on the drug charges.He’s wanted for writing
bad checks in six states.He never went to the college he
claims to have attended.He has two sisters, several aunts and
uncles, his parents aren’t even churchgoers, and none of them
have heard from him in years.They are rather concerned about
him and would love to hear from him.His credit rating is below
crap.There are several outstanding civil cases against him
(mostly regarding those bad checks).He has a kid, and not with
one of the ex-wives.He owes child support.He’s lived in
fifteen states over the last seven years.He has a few aliases.
He’s using one right now.There’s more, but you get the idea.
He ought to have “bad idea” tattooed on his forehead.

So, armed with all of this information, we’re at a total loss as
to how to present it to Cindy.She obviously needs to know.My
mom thinks somebody impartial would be a good option to present
the information, as doing it ourselves could get ugly.The
private detective is perfectly willing to go over all the
information with her.My mom likes this idea, but I think the
detective lacks certain people skills and it would be a disaster
to have him talk to her first — maybe later, to clarify her
questions.Dad suggested telling her ourselves, with help from
some kind of counselor to keep the discussion on track and help
her cope with the inevitable breakdown.I kinda like that idea,
but I’m not sure how it would work.Cindy’s got a bit of a thing
against therapists.Maybe a mediator?Would they do something
like this?We could also hand her the report and simply ask her
to read it.Although I think that’s a real cop-out and offers
no support.

Okay, so you’re probably getting the idea that we’re a really
nonconfrontational family here.Cindy is also the drama queen
type. We’re afraid she’ll be mad at us for prying if we present
this to her in the wrong way.She could also explode in any
other direction.She’s never handled change/surprises well.
What do you think is best?Clearly, she has to know the truth.

Thanks in advance,
Anna

Dear Anna,

I have no experience with interventions, and without knowing a bit more about your sister and how the drama queenery tends to manifest in various situations, it’s hard for me to say exactly how you should handle it.In any case, here’s what I’d do.

Invite Cindy to your parents’ house, preferably on a weekend, as soon as you can.Set aside most of the day.Tell her that it’s a family matter and it’s very important that she, and only she, show up at the appointed time; make it clear, in so many words, that Gil is not invited.Leave the P.I. out of it, but ask him if he can make himself available by phone or for a visit that day, in case Cindy has questions for him.Once you’ve blocked off a time, draw up a broad-strokes plan for if she wants to leave Gil immediately — where she might stay, whom to call in law enforcement if Gil decides to get ugly about it, et cetera.

When Cindy arrives, tell her that you’ve got something to show her, but before you do, you want to know that you love her, and you hope she can forgive you for going behind her back.You’ll understand if she’s terribly angry, but you couldn’t let her go ahead and marry Gil without all the information, and you will help her in whatever way you can.Offer your condolences on the situation.Then hand her the report and ask her to please read the whole thing.

Before you do any of that, though, you and your parents should know that once you’ve given her the report and expressed your love and support, you’ve done everything you can do.Cindy may refuse to read or believe the report; she may dump Gil, but dump the family too, for betraying her.You can furnish her with the facts she needs to make an informed decision about Gil, but she may not make the one you’d hoped for.Not that telling her isn’t the right thing to do — it is.But like the man says, no good deed goes unpunished.

Good luck.

Dear Sarah,

While “M” and I were dating, we promised each other that if we broke up, we would still be friends.Of course, you know the rest of THAT story: We DID break up, and things weren’t as easy as that.We tried at first to ignore the history we have.We hung out a couple of times, talked on the phone a bit, and it was okay.There was some weirdness (he gave me a letter with a poem he’d written about me and never shown me; I cried.He invited me over for a “talk”; he asked me to cuddle with him; I recoiled; hurtful things were said; we both cried), but overall, it was okay.I thought things would sort themselves out in time.

After a little while longer, though, he had a falling-out with one of his best friends, who in turn made the rest of his friends angry at M.The result is that he suddenly lost both his girlfriend and the majority of his friends in one fell swoop.His major confidante at this point is his mother.He’s also working at a job he doesn’t care for, and has just begun attending a school that he despises.

He got depressed.He decided that he wasn’t over me after all.He decided that it was too painful for him to see me.To be honest, that came as kind of a relief.Every time I saw him, I wound up feeling awful.We weren’t ready to be friends, I decided.

He continued to email me.I wrote back.Things seemed to improve.I still avoided his phone calls, because he still maintained the ability to make me feel like crap when we talked.I did miss him, though.He dropped by to see me at work a couple of times; we chatted and things were okay.Now, since he’s started school, every other email he sends me is full of misery and despair on the level of: “I’m happy when I sleep; everything else is hell.”One time recently, he wrote for the sole purpose of telling me that he had nightmares about me all night and that it “really fucked him up.”

I don’t know how to deal with this person anymore.This is not who M was for the year that I dated him, unless I was completely deluded or he was hiding it the whole time.I feel awful that he is so unhappy, but on the other hand, it isn’t really my fault that he is; he works at a job he doesn’t like (and didn’t expect to like), he attends a school he knew he’d hate, his actions made his friends mad at him.But he won’t consider that there are any alternatives to this hole he’s dug for himself.He tells (well, emails) me stories of drunken weekend adventures, then feels bad when I do the same, because “it sounds like I’ve moved on,” and he hasn’t.

The worst thing is that I’m kind of angry with him, because I feel like he’s either saying these things to me because he doesn’t think at all about how it will affect me, or worse (because the M I dated was anything but a thoughtless person), that he’s purposely trying to make me feel bad.For a year, M was one of my closest friends.Now I feel as though I hardly know him, and our relationship — what little is left of it — is merely a drain on me (and maybe on him, too).

How horrible would it be for me to cut off contact with him now, when he could really use a friend?Do I have an obligation to stick around and try to help (difficult when we don’t actually SEE each other, and he won’t actually CHANGE anything that’s upsetting him)?Am I a horrible person for wanting out of this situation?

(Ex-girl) “Friend”

Dear Friend,

In order: Not that horrible, no, and no.

Staying friends with the ex is an admirable goal, but it only works if you take the “staying” out of the equation.In other words, you can’t downshift from “romantically involved” to “friends” right away; you need a break from each other to process things.

Tell him you need space, and take it.He’s not dealing, and if the two of you go on like this, he’s not going to; either he’ll get his shit together or he won’t, but it’s not your job to supervise that anymore.

You may become friends again later, and you may not, but the odds of that will look a lot better if you take time apart now.

[11/14/02]

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