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September 17, 2008
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T-shirts! Get yer t-shirts! Miss Information has teamed up with the gang at Neighborhoodies on a line of t-shirts called "Think Ups", all designed by Miss Info herself. A new shirt will be launched daily, featuring Dr. Ruth, the UTZ girl and more. Check it out. As always, you can email your questions to erin@nerve.com. Letters may be edited for length, content and clarity.
Dear Guiltily Jealous,
Whoa, whoa, whoa. Don't go hogging all the blame there, pumpkin. Yes, you're being jealous. A little neurotic? Yeah, sure. But let's go back to what you said earlier — about his not being up-front. That's what's really bothering you, and why it's such a bitch to let go. Not telling your partner about a saliva exchange that turned into a long-term friendship is perfectly understandable. Some would even call it a sound decision. Same with a sloppy one-night stand you can barely remember, or an intense but entirely unrequited crush. An ex-girlfriend or boyfriend, however, warrants some type of introduction: "Hey darling, there's a person you're going to meet at sushi tonight. We dated in grad school. We're just buds now. I'm not trying to make you feel weird. I just thought you'd wanna know." Now your significant other has the time and information she needs to prepare herself. You wouldn't throw a regular eel into a cage with an electric eel and not tell Ms. Regular Eel the score. You'd make a little eel sign or eel leaflet or something and tell her what's up. Not that all electric eels — or by extension, ex-girlfriends — are predatory and harmful. In fact, most are docile. It's just good for eels — or girlfriends — to know what the other is capable of. In non-overblown-animal metaphor terms, your boyfriend was wrong. I'm sorry he was so dismissive with you when you asked him about it. I don't really buy the Ronald Reagan amnesia excuse, "Sorry honey, I can't recall." But this should quell some of your fears: I really don't think this is evidence he's going to cheat on you or is covering up something deeper. He was just being conflict-avoidant. He knew you'd probably have some uneasy feelings about these particular friendships. Instead of doing the adult thing, i.e., acknowledging that and initiating a discussion, he did what a lot of people do — minimized the situation to the point where he felt comfortable with the less psychologically taxing course of action — i.e., ignoring it.
People like your boyfriend do one of two things when confronted: 1. Apologize and cop to what they did, or 2. Hold their ground and stick to their original excuse, repeating it using different volume levels, word choices and tones. The latter is much more likely. Therefore, getting him to at least agree not to do that again should be the focus. Tell him how much it hurt you. How you felt foolish and left out of the loop. Reiterate that you trust him and care about him a ton. You know you're prone to jealousy and you're going to work on it. In the meantime, he needs to work on his disclosure. When he withholds information, it breaks down trust. You want to meet him halfway, but you need a little hand-holding. Sound cool? Cool. Finally, you need work on that there self-esteem, Guiltily Jealous. Get so busy you don't have time to ruminate over who your boyfriend is seeing or what he's doing. I used to fight all the time with an ex over his many female friends. Then I got all earth-mother and enrolled in a pottery class and yoga. Soon I was so busy doing downward dogs and making hideous tea cups that four months had gone by without a single skirmish. As Lord Byron wrote, "The busy have no time for tears." Not that you want to listen to him. Cute guy and great writer. But kind of a slut.
Dear Blue Collar Blues, I'm sorry, is this a script treatment? Big ups on the writing style. A nice change from the plz 2 show me threesumz!! guy from a few weeks ago. I think I know my readership. I don't. You guys are all over. On this relationship, I'm equally diffuse. I get leery when people base a large part of their identity on reinventing themselves. It says to me that they're the type to make black-and-white judgments: "I am a good person now. I was a bad person before." They favor wide-scale, dramatic fixes that demonize one set of people — "Old friends bad!" — and elevate another — "New friends good!" — in lieu of little changes to their relationships over an extended period of time. Evolution, not revolution, tends to be longer-lasting. Then again, I could be full of rutabagas. I think it's fantastic that she's woken up and smelled the Brandon Davis sweat and realized the life she was living was unfulfilling. I just question whether it's a great idea to get involved with someone whose primary means of bonding with you has been severing ties with others. We need those others. They ground us and remind us of the person we were before we met this wonderful person (uh, that'd be you, Blue Collar Blues) and fell in love. In the real world we have messy, conflicted relationships with the people we love. We do not have knights in tin-foil armor who provide us 100% of our emotional sustenance and support. I think you need to encourage your GF to live in the real world. Rather than worrying about her reconciling with her father, you should be pushing for it. It would show she realizes she's got a long future ahead of her, values her relationships and is willing to at least try to hash it out. And yes: at the risk of losing her. Because your odds of losing her anyway are pretty good if you stay with the status quo. One day, maybe far off in the future, she's going to miss one of her old friends. She'll feel like you won't approve because of everything she's told you, which you probably won't. You'll feel jealous and unappreciated. She'll feel resentful and torn. Or maybe she'll get tired of having you as one of her sole friends, and you'll get tired of being her caretaker and rock. It's this dynamic, not the money or lifestyle issues, that threatens to pull this union apart.
©2008 Erin Bradley and Nerve.com
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Commentarium (10 Comments)
The first story reminds me of the time when my ex-boyfriend did not invite me to his wedding citing "ex" factor. We were friends (and I thought close friends) for 2 years prior to the wedding. Another ex got invited though, and I had been told that the fiancee said "No one you dated for more than 6 months!" - which was the category I fell into. God, was I pissed at him! Who needed to know how long we dated? What if it was 5 months and 29 days? I never got over my grudge, really.
My current BF doesn't always know when he's meeting an ex. Some of them I dated for less than six months more than 10 years ago. I don't think of them as ex's; I think of them as friends. If it came up, I wouldn't deny it, but I wouldn't expect the BF to make some kind of stink over it either.
Some of us know how to be friends with the opposite sex and some of us will never be able to deal with it and the two types maybe shouldn't date.
Guiltily Jealous, The bottom line is men and women should cut their exes loose and focus on the partner they're with. The fact that your man won't/can't shows he doesn't respect you and/or is too immature to fully invest in developing and maintaining a healthy, loving relationship with you. Also, your timing is late. When he wanted to date you exclusively, that's when you should've asked him if he still regularly stays in contact with /sees any of his exes. If he had said yes, you should've said that you prefer to keep things casual. He'd have gotten the message. If he had said no, and you later caught him in a lie, then you cut him loose at that time for breaking your trust. And, yes, if the situation were reversed, I'd recommend the same course of action to him. Now that you know, I'd tell him he either ditches the exes or you start dating other guys. This isn't jealousy; it's respecting your partner.
I have a number of exes as friends (and ABC, anyone I was dating who tried to tell me with whom I could and could not be friends would be dumped immediately), and I was always up front about them with whoever the current girlfriend was. Miss I's advice is spot on. Guiltily Jealous, you're feeling that you're the "excluded third," with the boyfriend and the ex having information you were denied. You're justified in being upset about that, but the lesson to teach your boyfriend is to be up front with you -- what's upsetting is not the truth, it's the omission of truth.
For BCB, I disagree with Miss I that you should push your girlfriend to reconcile with her father. It's not your business, and pushing her could alienate her. Your position should be, "I support you in who you want in or out of your life." If she understands you accept her for poorer or for richer, I'm guessing she'll stick around -- it sounds like, more than anything else, she needs to be accepted for who she is, rather than, as historically, what she had or has.
Blue Collar Blues: Unfortnatley, it looks like things aren't working out between Dan Humphrey and Serena Van Der Woodsen. They still love each other, but their worlds are just too different!!
Sorry, I just couldn't' resist. Good luck to you crazy kids. Focus on why she loves you--the more you dwell on the money thing the more it will creep into your relationship. Support each other, and you'll find your own success together. And if you find yourself without a job, you totes have a future as a Gossip Girl screenwriter.
Blue Collar Blues, let's forget the rich/poor thing for a moment and look at this from a different perspective. Your girlfriend's father has plans for her and wants her to be and act in a certain way. She doesn't like this chosen path and wants to be her own person. Dad gets mad and says that if she won't do as he wishes, she'll get no more support from him. She says "Fine!" and stalks off to go her own way. Sound familiar yet? Thousands if not millions of young adults are in a similar situation. Most of them wind up establishing themselves in their new lives, and eventually reconcile with their parents, maybe years later, but of course, it doesn't always work that way. I can't guarantee that she won't miss being able to jet off to Paris for fresh croissants on a whim and slink back. However, give her some credit for her bravery in doing this in the first place. A lot of born-rich people (not the self-made-rich ones) are absolutely terrified that they wouldn't be able to survive if the big fortune went away. (And the way the markets have been behaving lately hasn't helped much.) The fact that she's there with you now is a big step. She knows you're not going to be able to afford the things she had growing up, and that's OK. Just support her as she settles into her new lifestyle and discovers herself, and let her know that you'll be there for her if she never speaks to her family again, or if she eventually wants to mend the fences.
I agree with ABC. Anyone who thinks they don't have to cut ties with the exes to have healthy long term relationships is sadly mistaken.
Thanks for the link re: Brandon Davis! Cheers!
Steve aka Whup-Ass Master aka WAM
http://canofwhupass.typepad.com
Ex is Ex 4 a reason. There is no need to keep in communication. Feelings will come back or it is too convenient to screw. Once in pant, access gets easier.
Love don't pay bills! She will leave you!
I propose not to wait until you earn big sum of money to order all you need! You can take the personal loans or student loan and feel comfortable
Now you say something