When my husband and I first got married (and married young, over 20 years ago), his job was physically intensive, but he enjoyed it and it paid well. Not too long ago he got injured, and it was bad enough that he can’t go back to that line of work, so he’s collected disability and taken over the childcare, which he does well. I found a good job, so we’re making enough money, but I don’t like working and miss spending time with the kids, so I push him to find a desk-job, but he obviously hates that kind of work and can’t seem to find anything that suits him. The whole thing is so unfair, I can’t help but dig into him sometimes, in a way that I know, even as I’m talking to him, is just nasty and inappropriate. It’s really putting our marriage through the ringer, but as hard as I try, I can’t control my temper. My goal is to get through this problem without getting divorced.

You clearly value your partnership with your husband…even if you hate your new role as breadwinner so much that it awakens the asshole within.

It leaves you with a big lump of anger and disappointment that you can’t get over and won’t go away. The expression might be “like it or lump it,” but sometimes, you have to do both.

You’ve found it isn’t easy to shut up about your anger because your inner asshole wants to whine and complain and punish your husband for the unfair suffering he’s put you through. Yes, it’s unfair, but it is what it is, and your inner asshole could ruin things for you and your family.

The good news is that you’re not a complete (or “perfect”) asshole, which, as you know from our scientific papers on personality, is a person whose nasty problems are always everyone else’s fault, and who can be reliably counted on to never, ever change, regardless of the number of treatment programs he or she is sent to by spouses, bosses, judges and bishops.

The bad news is that, having an inner asshole that isn’t the total driving force behind your personality means that you will frequently experience the remorse of a were-asshole, who is always trying to put herself in a locked cell before the moon turns full.

So don’t assume your anger will go away by talking about it with your therapist, friends or husband an understanding where it comes from. Women usually think that talking about things makes them better, but, in this situation (and in most situations), it often makes them worse.

See, while you’re talking away, waiting for your internal rage to ease off and your inner-Oprah to soothe your soul, your internal asshole is venting its stuff and ruining your marriage. So your goal isn’t to get relief; it’s to push your inner-asshole voice down so deep that it might emerge out of its namesake.

You might speculate whether your inner asshole is more like your id, or a reaction to loss or an aspect of your inner child. If so, you might want to shut up. You’ve avoiding the fact that you won’t control it by becoming an inner proctologist. Your goal is to close it.

You’ll discover that, if you’ve got an inner asshole, it doesn’t go away. Close it today, it’s just as strong tomorrow. If you’re ashamed of it, it gets stronger.

So dealing with it requires, as do most such problems, a shameless acceptance of the fact that your inner asshole is going to share your personality for life, and that you need to work hard, every day, to keep it in check, one day at a time.

If you don’t, then there’s more than your marriage at risk; like your actual anus, if you don’t control your inner-asshole, it will shit all over your life.

STATEMENT:
Prepare a statement to help you bear your burden and tighten your sphincter. “I have a right to be disappointed by the change in my family life but the real problem is that life sucks, my husband doesn’t, and my marriage will if I can’t keep my disappointment to myself. I’ve put together the best compromise for keeping us afloat. Supporting a big family is never easy. The rules are subject to change without notice. The more I hurt, the more I’m proud of what I’ve been able to do. My job is to share that pride and keep the hurt to myself.”

I know it’s a cliché to hate your mother-in-law, but I actually don’t have a problem with mine; it’s my wife who’s decided that my mother is the devil. To be honest, I know that my mother isn’t perfect—she gets on my nerves a lot, too, and has never been good at butting out of my life, and does tend to give my wife a hard time about a lot of things—but I never should have admitted that to my wife, because now she can’t contain herself. When the topic of my mother comes up, my wife becomes a totally different person, like, she dislikes my mother so much it’s almost unhealthy. My goal is to get my wife over her hatred so she can be a normal person all the time.

Blessed be the peacemakers, because they’re always getting fucked by the angry, out-of-control people they like to hang out with.

That’s what warring parties means—people who are angry and out of control—so don’t think for a minute that you’re going to make peace. If anything, you’re going to get blasted from both sides.

Your mother and wife may both have nasty, overbearing tendencies—what a coincidence! Perhaps we should start a linked website, menwholovewomenwithinnerasshxles.com.

The good news, I take it, is that you think your wife is basically a good, reasonable partner, as long as she’s not focused on your mother. The bad news is that she doesn’t see her inner asshole as a problem (and neither does your mother, further coincidence), so you can’t expect her to change and her control will never be great.

Now that your expectations are properly shattered, the real healing can begin. Start by giving up on notions about Sunday brunches with the extended family, and accept the fact that your partnership with your wife is priority one, of necessity.

You can see your mother whenever you want, as long as you don’t see or talk about her with your wife. Don’t try to put them in the same room, because two women will enter, and only one will leave..

Suggest to your wife that it will be in her best interest, and the kids’, to participate in occasional family get-togethers but that, if she agrees, she needs to decide when it’s necessary and how she can best get through it. If your wife won’t agree to contact, there’s nothing you can do about it except to develop your own ways of keeping in touch with your mother and trying to negotiate some contact with the kids.

Either way, don’t try to help your wife to get over her hatred; just make sure to put a healthy distance between her and her hatred’s source.

STATEMENT:
I have a good partnership but my wife turns out to have an inner asshole that will always make it agony for her to spend time with my mother and it’s my job to work around that fact. I won’t try to bring them together. I won’t listen to their complaints. I’ll make it clear, to both women, that I love them and see the animosity as an unfortunate fact of life, rather than something either one caused. I’ll urge my wife to view the problem as my partner in family management and hope that, without changing her feelings, she can see reasons for occasional diplomatic engagement; but if she doesn’t, I’ve done the best I can and must be proud of that fact.

I’m fine now (I’m 14), but I’m trying to figure out how to deal with a crazy father who physically abused me until a couple of years ago—that’s when my mother finally figured out what was happening and had me come live with her. The trouble is, I guess you could say my father doesn’t see reality the way other people do and he never remembers hitting me. In his mind, when he’d hit me, it was because I was trying to destroy him, so what he tells the judge is that he loves me and that my mother is a raging alcoholic who has brainwashed me to hate him (my mother stopped drinking after the divorce, years ago) and he really believes what he says. My goal is to get him to stay away from me and convince others that his version of reality isn’t real.

Kids aren’t the only ones who have trouble accepting the fact that we often can’t protect ourselves from scary crazy boogeymen, particularly when the craziness isn’t obvious, and the boogeymen are family.

We’ve said it here before: certain crazy people are not obviously crazy and are particularly good at persuading other people to see them as injured victims because they truly, truly believe they are, no matter what really happened. It’s a kind of sickness for which no one has the cure, and nobody feels sicker than the victims in the wake of these sickos, who don’t necessarily feel sick at all.

So cops, judges and social workers often can’t figure out who is telling the truth for a long time. Meanwhile, they often make mistakes and put restrictions on kids and families that hurt everyone and cost more money than the family can afford. It’s a sad fact of life, but they’re trying to do the right thing.

The system usually works to try and protect the weakest party, and when you’re aggressive, even if you’re just aggressively trying to get people to see the truth, you make sickos look that much more weak and innocent. It’s unfair, but pushing hard to express the truth will often push it underground.

So Dr. Lastname’s advice for kids is the same as for adults: don’t think that expressing your emotions sincerely and eloquently will solve the problem. If your father is sincere and has a good lawyer, he’ll persuade the judge that you have, possibly, been brainwashed by your mom, and they’ll treat you like a poor, emotional kid who deserves pity but doesn’t really know his own mind. Then everyone will spend lots of time visiting shrinks. Thanks for the business, but no thanks for the bullshit.

First things first, give up on the goal of convincing others, and try instead to make positive sense of this experience and prepare a statement that you could, if necessary, read to your father.

The less anger and fear you put in your statement, the more it will help others get at the truth. I’m not saying you shouldn’t have negative feelings—of course, they are what they are—but the goal of your statement is to keep out the negative feelings without in any way holding back on the facts of what really happened.

You might not make his sickness go away or get people to see the truth, but being clear, honest, and emotionless is the best protection against the boogeyman.

STATEMENT:
Here’s an example. “I think it’s a bad idea for us to spend time together. I know you care about me and want to see me, but I think you forget about the bad things that happen when you get upset and lose your temper. You forget about (put in details, including bruises and dates). I don’t want to hurt you and I want you to be happy but I don’t think we should spend time together until I’m old enough to protect myself from your temper. Sincerely.

I’d like to get help for my wife’s younger sister because she drives the family crazy. Simply put, she’s a lying drug-addict, and my wife’s parents are always trying to help her in a way that ruins things for the rest of us—they give her money, pressure my wife and me to accept her at family events, and then make us feel guilty if we don’t want to see her. She’s totally poisonous as she is, but I know she can’t help herself, and I’d like to get her real help, not just hand-outs and pretending everything’s OK, so we don’t have to continue like this.

Your goal is just as bad as your wife’s parents’ goal, because you’re both assuming that your sister-in-law can be helped when all the evidence points the other way. They’re throwing their money away at her directly, you’d be throwing your money away at “real help” she isn’t ready for. It’s a lose/lose.

Really, everyone wishes your sister-in-law could be helped, but proceeding on that assumption when it’s not true is a good way to make things worse, and that’s exactly what you’re complaining about.

The sad fact is, treatment is often hopeless. You know that’s true for lots of medical problems, from cancer to Crohn’s disease, so why not accept the fact that it’s equally true for everything else.

Instead, stick with the realistic hope that she’ll change someday, and that you (and others) will have an opportunity to help. It might happen, but it’s not something that you can make happen or are responsible for.

In the meantime, don’t blame her, because there’s a good chance she has as little control over the problem as you do, even though it’s her body and her problem. Blame life, it sucks more reliably than anyone or anything else.

Now that you’ve listened to me and given up on your goal of getting help for your sister-in-law, realistic thinking suggests some positive things for you to do. Since you’re not responsible for saving your sister-in-law or protecting your parents-in-law, you can bow out of family events you don’t really want to go to.

Ignore feelings of guilt or responsibility. You’d help if you could, but you can’t, and there are other important priorities, like going on with your life and enjoying time with those you love.

STATEMENT:
Prepare a statement that responds to the most guilt-provoking accusations you can imagine. “I’m concerned about my sister-in-law and take full responsibility for helping her whenever possible. One thing I’ve learned, though, from watching her parents do a wonderful job of trying to help her is that, for the time being, it’s just not possible. When it’s not possible, we do more good by distancing ourselves from her problems so as to limit their harm and provide her with more incentive to change. Distancing ourselves from her problems does not mean distancing ourselves from her. The better we protect ourselves, the more welcoming we will be if and when she begins recovery.”

My ex-wife cares about our kids, but she’s always been overbearing and intense, which is why I ‘m very happy not to be married to her now. Her latest rage, in both senses, came from her new therapist, who persuaded her that she’s depressed and has bad dreams because she was neglected and maybe abused by her alcoholic parents, so now she wants our kids to have no contact with them, their grandparents, at any time, whether the kids are staying with me or with her (we have joint custody). Now, I’m not crazy about her parents and they sometimes drink too much, but they never did anything unsafe and the kids love them, so I was shocked to hear from the kids that they miss their grandparents (my wife never informed me about her new policy). I don’t want to trigger a court fight with my wife—I can’t afford it, and neither can she, but she spares no expense when she feels her kids are threatened by the forces of evil—and I’ve got no great wish to put myself on the line for her parents, but I don’t like having her tell me what the kids can do when they’re with me and I don’t think losing their grandparents is good for them. My goal is to send her a message that she can’t control what our kids do when they’re with me and protect the kids from losing their grandparents.

The short answer is, you can’t win a pissing contest with a fire hydrant.

Yes, your ex-wife has no right to tell you what you can and can’t do with the kids when they’re with you, and yes, it hurts them to be cut off from their grandparents, and yes, in the short run it’s entirely within your power to facilitate grandparental visits.

No, none of this matters in the big picture.

If your wife is the kind of self-righteous, crusading, angry asshole you describe her as being, then you have very little power to make things better and many, many opportunities to make things worse.

In the trade, we call people like your ex “bad borderlines”, meaning they’re madder’n hell and get even madder when anyone, therapists especially, try to change them. “Asshole” is also a totally applicable term. Or, as you used to call her, “dear.”

The sad fact of life that you and your kids must live with is that your ex has her rages and there’s no stopping her. She’s itching for a target to drop her bomb on, regardless of how much damage she does to herself, her finances, or the feelings of all around her. Don’t oppose her unless it’s absolutely necessary and then, if at all possible, don’t be in the room when the bomb goes off.

If you think about it, your goal isn’t to protect your kids from her rage (not unless she leaves slap-marks or the equivalent, you can’t). If you try, predict what happens next; she gives the kids an emotional overdose (tears, sorrow, worry, anger) about the re-awakening of her trauma by their undoing her unselfish attempt to protect them, and after an hour or so, they’ll do anything for her to stop.

After all, they have to live with her for another eternity and, unless they’re pretty hardened cases, her disapproval hurts like hell. They then cop a plea against you, saying the crime was your idea, and she threatens to take you to court with the kids as her witness and a crazed, victim-rights lawyer as her champion. The asshole’s undefeated streak continues.

Instead of unleashing her ever-ready, hydrant-esque deluge of abuse, choose your battles. If the grandparents want to take her on, you can give them secret support, but save your energy for the big ones.

Yes, it might feel humiliating, but that’s the price of doing right by your kids when you chose an ex-wife like this one. So no, don’t take this one on…and don’t get tied down to a partner like this ever again.

STATEMENT:
Refresh your parenting mission statement. “I can’t protect my kids (or me, the dog, the grandparents or the postman) from my wife’s nastiness, but I can show my kids how to avoid unnecessary conflict, eat shit when required, and be proud of my ability to smile and say ‘that tasted goooood.’”

My boyfriend and I have a 2 year old son together and, for the first year, he was very loving and we lived together, though he was never great at keeping jobs or getting anywhere on time, but in the past year he started drugging more and staying away for days after I criticized him and never coming by when he promised to and then, when I’d tell him he couldn’t just drop by unannounced, he said he wouldn’t give me money if he couldn’t see his kid when he wants to and he’s been pretty bad about providing money anyway. Our son loves his father, but he now looks unhappy when his name comes up or when he drops by, and I don’t know how to protect him. The boy gets very upset when he hears us fighting, so I try to avoid conflict, but I can’t let my boyfriend come by and take his son whenever he wants. I don’t want him back because I don’t think he’ll ever settle down and be reliable, but I’d like him to see that his behavior is hurting his son and he needs to stop.

The first thing you need to do is separate your righteous emotions from what you want to accomplish. If your goal is to express yourself so beautifully, articulately, passionately and forcefully that you persuade your (I don’t think you’ll disagree that he’s an ex-) boyfriend to act like less of a jerk, you’re nuts.

He doesn’t get it, and he’ll tell you it’s all your fault for being mean and controlling and poisoning his son against him, and you don’t want to have that conversation again and again. Your friends will pat you on the back for standing up to him, and you’ll feel good…briefly, until you fight about the same shit again. It’s not worth it.

Decide for yourself whether you’re right about your son’s needs, regardless of how you feel about his father. Ask yourself if it’s in his interest to see his father at random times, given the disruption to his routine, yours, and the uncontrolled nature of his father’s mood, mouth, and sobriety, or to have his financial support dependent on his father’s feelings for you.

Even if it’s in his interest, ask yourself the most important question; if you can live your life that way. If you decide that your ex’s position is harmful and unworkable, and that your anger has nothing to do with your opinion, then you may be able to improve the situation, but only if you keep your feelings in check.

Accept the sad fact that you can’t change his mind, get him to understand, or communicate better. Then you’ll be much more effective at finding a legal way, if one exists, to get protection from his financial blackmail and bad visitation behavior.

Ask a lawyer what the law can do for you, how much it will cost, and what you need to do to document your ex’s bad behavior. Then you can decide whether the fight is worthwhile and how to strengthen your position while refusing to be drawn into a shit-slinging contest that will make you both smell as bad as you already feel.

STATEMENT:
Begin a business-like, positive, written correspondence. “My dear partner, I’m sorry we’re no longer together but I want you to have a positive relationship with our son and will do everything I can to make it happen. Given what I’ve seen of his negative reactions to your unscheduled visits and my own efforts to make ends meet when we run out of money, I think the following is necessary to make things work. You need to schedule regular time with him, come on time, provide regular child support (remember, it’s child support, not ex-partner support), and refrain from expressing unhappiness with me in his presence. If you can’t or won’t do those things, my legal advisor tells me the court will force these conditions on you because they’re what’s best for our son. I’d rather we agreed to these conditions ourselves. Sincerely.

I’m a therapist who takes great pride in being available and supportive to my patients, but I’ve got one who’s driving me crazy. At first, he thought I was great at helping him get more confident and functional, but lately he’s been slipping and drinking too much and fighting with his wife, and, instead of seeing me as a supporter who wants to help him control behavior that’s hurting him, he blames me for giving bad advice and being critical. I asked if he’d like to see a different therapist but he said he wants me to apologize and listen to him more carefully so I can make up for the pain I’ve caused. I’ve listened, and all he does is give me an endless earful about how badly I and other people have treated him and how I’ve made him feel worse, not better. I want to refer him elsewhere, but I can’t, because I wouldn’t wish this guy on my worst enemy but I can’t abandon him, and I don’t want to get sued or burn any bridges in what’s a pretty small professional community in this area. My goal is to get rid of this guy without feeling like I’ve abandoned him or triggering a malpractice suit.

If your goal as a therapist is to make people feel better, then it’s no wonder you’re fucked; as such, you’ll have no defense against the kind of asshole who feels you (or really, anyone but them) is responsible for their happiness and pain (mostly pain) and therefore deserves punishment when things go bad.

Under your rational exterior, you seem to agree that you’re responsible, Dr. Feelgood, so he’s got you, and he knows you speak his language. Asshole 1, Therapist 0.

There’s nothing wrong with being supportive, but what’s toxic is sounding responsible for his happiness, and then acting defensively when he accuses you of ruining his life. Sounding guilty when an asshole whines at you is like waving a red flag in front of a bull or showing fear in front of a lion.

Certainly, he hurts a lot, in both the active and passive sense, and truly wants relief. When initially he felt better, however, and told you that your good treatment was responsible, he also meant that he now knew whom to call when things went bad.

You probably said something modest and supportive like “Gee, that’s nice, but you should credit yourself with doing a better job of managing your feelings.” Then treated yourself to extra cake after dinner for a job well done.

What you should have said, in retrospect, is, “feeling better is great, but what really counts is how you manage your behavior when you don’t feel so hot, which we know is bound to happen sooner or later.” Alas, it’s at times like this that we all wish we were magicians, or could at least travel through time.

The sad fact of life is that, if he’s a perfect asshole, nobody can make him feel better, not a fellow therapist like you or a common civilian, and giving him an opportunity to make you feel guilty offers his inner demon a Happy Meal.

Remember, you’re professionally responsible for easing his pain if there’s a way to do it. Otherwise, you may feel terrible, helpless, and irrationally guilty, but your only responsibility is to let him know, politely, that you can’t help him, and you will be most helpful at that time if your demeanor indicates sadness but absolutely no sense of guilt or blame.

You should be clear that there is no hope, none, ever, about your ability to ease his pain, but that there is definite hope that he will eventually feel better if he can gain better control over his behavior.

He might not want this hear you on this, or might not be able to because he’s cursing at you, but either way, in this confrontation with an asshole, you’ve done your best as a doctor or just a mere mortal. At that point, you can treat yourself to extra cake after dinner, and hope he doesn’t sue.

STATEMENT:
Prepare a statement that addresses him and your own, no-boundaries sense of responsibility. “I would very much like to help you feel better and gain more control over the behaviors that are messing up your life and I regret your feeling that my contribution has been negative and destructive. In my opinion, the problem isn’t bad treatment, it’s that no treatment has yet been invented that relieves the kind of pain you’ve got. Sorry. When something hurts you, it’s so overwhelming you lose your perspective and do things, like drinking and arguing, that make it worse. That’s simply the way your brain works. But if you ever think you can control your behavior when that kind of feeling comes over you, then there are lots of treatments that can help your control, and eventually, control can make you feel better. Meanwhile, I’m firing myself from your case because your negative feelings about me distract you from thinking positively about your own needs. Think about what you need, and, if you want to focus more on changing your behavior, I’ll be happy to give you recommendations and referrals to other treatments.”

Like you, I’m a doctor, but unlike you, I’m a surgeon, and as you probably know, surgeons aren’t really interested in chit-chat when it comes to patients; we do our best work when patients are heavily sedated and have nothing to say. My issue is that patients come into my office dying to open up to me, even though the only problems I’m willing or qualified to help them with involve the use of a scalpel, and I’d like to help them because I believe in being compassionate, but talking isn’t my thing. (They might think I’m verbal because I’m one of those rare female surgeons, but guess what, being a woman doesn’t make me Oprah, I’m still an MD.) Anyway, since you have to hear people’s problems for a living, I was wondering if you knew a polite way to get out of hearing those problems without hurting their feelings or failing them in any important way. My goal is to get my patients to shut up, without sedation and without guilt.

If being a good doctor required you to be sensitive, compassionate, and eager to listen to people’s feelings, then there’d be no room for men in the profession other than for lifting heavy tumors. Sorry, Oprah.

Fortunately, however, there are good ways for the non-verbal, the verbally challenged, Aspbergers sufferers, “dudes,” and cowboys of all kinds to do right by their verbally articulate/needy friends, clients, and spouses.

You’re off to a good beginning because you’re not trying to change yourself into someone you’re not; imagine Richard Nixon or Bob Dole attending a sensitivity training group. Thank goodness you don’t feel that’s your job.

Trying to be sensitive when it’s not your nature will undermine your self-confidence and get your knife to slip, so don’t do it. You show no sign of shame, so I don’t need to tell you to attend Cowboy Pride meetings.

The important thing is that, sensitive or not, you treat your patients decently and meet your own standards for attending to their needs. You can do this by taking time to answer all their questions and by teaming up with someone, a nurse or social worker, who’s good at listening and responding to their feelings.

Nurses and social workers often need to team up with someone who’s good at non-emotional logic and procedures, and vice versa. We’re all retarded in one way or another and need to know our weaknesses so we can manage them well.

You’ve got no shame or false pride, so you’re ready to do what you need to. You handle the knife, let a nurse or social worker do the emotional heavy lifting. Yeehaw.

STATEMENT:
Here’s a statement that’s polite and meets moral standards. “The demands of my surgical activities do not always allow me to meet my patients’ emotional needs as well as I would wish, so I urge patients to bring me all their factual questions about surgery, recovery, and possible complications, and to schedule time with other members of my clinical team to address their feelings about these issues.”

I don’t know where I failed as a parent, but my daughter announced over Christmas that she’s leaving her perfectly nice husband after cheating on him, and it’s the last straw in terms of me wanting to just ask her why her behavior is and always has been so self-destructive. These aren’t the values I taught her—for one thing, I’m still married to her father after 30 years—and I’ve always pushed her to follow through in life and work, but she seems incapable of doing anything but sabotaging herself. My goal is to get my daughter to tell me why she feels she has to mess up her own life.

If your greatest joy as a parent is to see your kid happily married off, then it makes sense that one of your greatest sorrows is to see her unhappily divorced, particularly if she’s messed up and there’s nothing you can do to stop her.

If it hasn’t already occurred to you many times about parenting your daughter, this is certainly a good time to realize that you have no control, and that parents with good values and solid self-control can, and often do, have fucked-up kids and lose sons-in-law they’ve learned to love.

The gene for fuck-up-edness can skip a generation, or lay dormant until fed with alcohol, or it can wave a bright red flag in the form of the names “Randi” or “Amber.” Or it can just come out of nowhere and make parenting really hard, which is what it’s done to you for years.

Giving her a good, solid, come-to-Mohammad talking-to (Dr. Lastname knows that it’s dangerous to be flip about certain deities, but heck, there are no pictures), is likely to drive her away and make her act more crazy (like it would to someone deeply offended by the mention of Mohammad).

As you probably already know, most fucked-up kids can’t stop themselves from fucking up and get used to ignoring chidings or responding with true consistency, by fucking up more. Her guess as to why she messes up her life is probably as good as yours; all you both know is that it’s something she’s good at, and will continue to do for some time.

Your goal then isn’t to vent righteous wrath, but to help if you can. As a parent, that’s your job description. Don’t complain, because, while you haven’t been lucky so far in the daughter department, you knew there were no guarantees, and complaints can make this bad daughter worse.

Be supportive without taking sides, embracing infidelity or divorce, or welcoming her back to reside in what is now your office. The key to your support is, as usual, not caring too much about her happiness or lack of it, but more about her ability to do what will work best for her in the long run. Don’t press her as to why she’s a mess, but as to the best way (this time) to clean it up.

STATEMENT:
Prepare a statement to guide your tongue. “I liked your husband and I’m sorry about your divorce, but what’s most important in the long run is that you find a relationship that really makes your life better and, until such a relationship comes along, you need to be independent enough to avoid bad compromises. Right now, misery and loneliness may make you feel less capable and more needy. Hang tough, wait it out, and build up your own life. In the end, you can learn a lot from this divorce that will help you find something that will work better.”

My sister-in-law has never been one of my favorite people; I admit I’m always hard on my brother’s girlfriends, but she was always rude to me and the rest of our family, and aside from her job (in the entertainment industry), I really have no idea what my brother finds appealing about her. In the past, I’ve kept my mouth shut around her because it really upsets my mother when I react to this woman’s rudeness in kind, but this past Christmas my sister-in-law was so rude that she actually made my mother cry. I love my brother, but my mom and I are especially close, so this really feels like the last straw. My goal is to figure out whether I can just cut this awful shithead (who brings my mom to tears!) out of my life, or whether/why I have to keep tolerating her awfulness.

Add obnoxious in-laws to the long list of insoluble problems that makes life the pain it is. The more you love your brother, the bigger the shit omelet you must eat to keep your love for him alive after he marries a bitchmonster.

You might be tempted to free him, and the rest of your family, from the conjugal beastess who took him captive, but you know which side he’s likely to wind up on, so shut up. Like the fuck-up who will do worse when confronted on her behavior, somebody who loves a meanie will, upon being confronted about those feelings, be driven further into the meanie’s tentacles.

Your job isn’t then to free him, because it can’t be done, but to make the most of what you’ve got and not make it worse.

Here are the standard operating procedures; first, say farewell to the old, happy get-togethers, because since she hit the scene, they’ve stopped being happy, and she appears to be on the scene for good.

Invite him and his dear spouse only if the party is relatively large and public, so misbehavior will be less likely and easier to escape. For one-on-one, use modern technologies, like email, cellphone, and video-chatting. Never takes sides against, or exclude, his spouse, lest he be suffocated in her tentacles’ grasp.

Of course, you can count on your mother, or some other sweet, vulnerable family member, trying too hard to be nice and get close, and thus stirring up the unwinnable nuclear shit-storm you’ve been working so hard to prevent.

The more the hurt and humiliation, the harder for other family members to see the value of what you’re trying to do, and the greater their temptation to gang up on the horrible intruder; but sooner or later, they’ll find there’s no way to solve this problem, save hypnosis or murder, and that diplomatic distance is the best compromise.

No matter how bad things get, avoid the temptation to band together with the ones you love. Instead, do what you think is right and encourage them to join you. Hold your ground, hold your nose, and keep your brother and your beast-in-law in your life.

STATEMENT:
Prepare a statement to protect you and yours from the discouragement of loss and humiliation. “I treasure the lucky fact that our family is warm and close, but what I value even more, because it’s so difficult, is our ability to include obnoxious people when it’s necessary and stay relatively pleasant. We’re good at accepting change, however painful, and managing relationships that aren’t meant to be.”

Please note: There will be no new post on Thursday, 12/24, due to the holiday. Please continue to write in, however, because there will be a new post on 12/28. Thanks, and happy holidays!

My ex-wife was always a wild outlaw in high school, (I got the kids), she’d show up from time to time, but rarely when she said she would, and you never knew when she’d be high, so the court imposed supervised visitation. I want my kids to have a mom though, but when she no-shows, the kids are crushed. Of course, the kids want to see her, particularly for Christmas, but what they don’t know is that she and her current boyfriend were caught on video robbing a liquor store, so if she’s going anywhere, it’s probably straight to jail. . My goal is to figure out a way to break this to my kids so that they don’t hate their mother (even though I sort of think they should).

You can’t protect your kids from the hurt of loving an outlaw mother, any more than you could protect yourself for falling for her years ago. Telling your kids that she’s a bad person inflicts a worse kind of hurt, because it devalues the love you and the kids have given her (which, as you know, you can’t get back).

Even if you can’t protect them from hurt, you still can and should protect the value of their love for her and whatever is meaningful about hers for them.

To begin with, don’t buy the idea that outlaws are regular people who make bad choices. That’s one of those stupid, false-hope ideas that assumes that everyone has the choice to be good or bad and can redeem themselves by making better choices. It’s sort of a hybrid of Milton’s “Paradise Lost” and Santa’s “Naughty/Nice” list…and it’s bullshit.

As someone who’s counseled a lot of bad people and their innocent bystanders (like you), I can tell you that people who do bad things don’t have the same control that you or I do.

Maybe their control was weakened by childhood trauma, or addiction, or maybe they were born that way, but it doesn’t matter. Life isn’t fair and some people are fucking weak in ways that cause all kinds of trouble (and some of that trouble gets caught by the crook cam).

So think about which is better: to think of mother as a self-made asshole who chose to neglect her kids because she didn’t care and the people who loved her couldn’t get through to her; or, to think of her as having a fucked-up nervous system that made her unreliable and vulnerable to drug addiction and criminal behavior in spite of all her good impulses and the good love of people who cared for her.

Don’t tell me that saying that your wife was fucked-up lets her off the hook or tells the kids that crime is OK; they know that crime isn’t OK because her life and relationships are fucked and there’s pain everywhere. Nobody’s off the hook here, except maybe for you.

Tell your kids the truth—Mom can’t help it, but she loves you—and Christmas will not be lost. If Santa had a heart, he’d give her presents in prison because, with the gifts she’s lacking for good judgment and impulse control, she doesn’t stand a chance.

STATEMENT:
Write out a statement you could share with the kids. “There’s something wrong with your mother and you have to be careful with her, no matter how much you love her. Most of the time, she can’t meet your needs or anyone else’s needs or even her own needs, other than the need to feel good right away. Recently she stole something and got caught and she’ll probably get put in prison for a while, so I don’t think you’ll see her this Christmas. She probably didn’t mean to hurt anyone, but she certainly hurt the people who love her and need her and she hurt herself. But that’s the way your mother is. You’ll never know, when you hear from her, whether she will keep her promises or get you in trouble. But I’ll teach you how to be careful so you can keep in touch with her as much as possible. And maybe someday she’ll get more control of herself and you’ll be able to trust her as much as you love her.”

My alcoholic father and whiny, always-in-trouble younger brother were asshole buddies who always felt neglected by selfish, got-it-together me and they took great delight in cutting me and my kids out of my father’s will. I was angry for a long time after my father died, but when my brother reached out to me recently (he explained that he’s on medication now, although he didn’t offer to give me any of the inheritance), I was happy to meet and socialize. But now he wants my grown-up kids to be part of his one-happy-family-at-Christmas reunion, and the kids, who are now grown, aren’t interested. Their memories of him are negative but they’re not mad, they just don’t care. My brother genuinely does not understand why they’re cold to him and don’t respond to his calls or emails and he asks me to intervene. My goal is to get my brother to back off without reopening the rift.

Don’t let yourself get sentimental about a Christmas reunion. You might yearn for a re-unionable brother, but you don’t have one and never will (especially now that you’re father’s gone).

Your brother will always be a high risk earthquake zone, so don’t make yourself responsible for avoiding a rift or you’ll find yourself triggering one. His dangerous expectations could easily cause a natural disaster, no matter what you do.

Medication may have made him more even-tempered, but you have no reason to believe his attitude has changed. He’s probably following the 12-step shuffle and doing gracious forgiveness now, but then, when the kids don’t respond, he’ll think he has the right to feel wounded by your neglect all over again. Of course, he’s more likely to feel that way if you say something negative about his past behavior.

So your goal isn’t to prevent a rift, but to make sure you and the kids aren’t responsible for it; not in his eyes, of course, but in your own. Make the best of the tentative, fragile, potentially explosive relationship that you have, and that means putting caution ahead of sentimentality.

Stay calm, don’t bring up the past, and remind your brother that Christmas with just the two of you isn’t so bad. Just don’t get carried away by your fucking Christmas spirit, and hopefully he won’t get carried away, either.

STATEMENT:
Prepare a statement in response to his Christmas expectations (and yours). “It’s nice to get together, forget about past conflict, and share Christmas as brothers. Life is complicated now that the kids are grown and have lives of their own and we can seldom get everyone together at once, and they probably expected me to tell you that they wouldn’t be able to join us because they consider me responsible for brother-to-brother communication. I don’t pressure them because I respect their other priorities. I look forward to seeing you.”

My daughter is turning into a petty criminal. She’s getting kicked out of school again, she won’t stop messing around with drinking and drugs, she has unprotected sex, and her boyfriend is probably the guy who broke into our house and stole our TV, though she refuses to believe it. My husband and I have tried so many times to get her to see what she’s doing wrong and steer her in a better direction—we’re our own private “scared straight” program at this point—but every time we confront her about where she’s headed, she says she feels terrible, that she’s sorry, that she never wants it to happen again…and then she gets wasted and everything repeats itself. If only we could get her to understand the harm she’s doing, maybe we could get through to her and turn her around. Meanwhile, it’s killing us. We try to forgive her, but it’s hard. My goal is to forgive her and get her to see what she’s doing to herself and everyone who loves her.

There’s no point in getting your daughter to see what she’s doing wrong if she can’t really stop herself from doing it, and she really, really can’t. You can’t scare straightness into a boomerang.

Regret and remorse will make her feel bad, and you might think that will stop her from fucking up next time. Well, au contraire, my dear unHarvard-educated sap. It’s not fair, but that’s the way it works. You should know that since you’re the one missing a TV.

According to Christmas movies and sentimental parts of the Bible, repentance leads to redemption, but I say, goddammit, that’s just wishful bullshit.

Repentance leads your daughter to hating herself more for the shit she does when she loses control, and self-hate makes it that much easier to lose control again. Your goal isn’t to get her to repent. It’s to get her to accept that she’s fucked and should nevertheless try for better self-control.

Fuck forgiveness, too, while you’re at it. You wouldn’t forgive a snake for doing its thing with your foot and its fangs, because it does what it does, and your daughter’s lack of self-control is probably the same kind of thing. If you weren’t around, she’d still be having the same problems. She’s just steal someone else’s TV.

No one knows why some kids have so little self-control over anger and neediness, or sometimes we know but knowing does no good. Acceptance means you aren’t entitled to judge or forgive; just to make the best of things.

Making the best of things means trying all the standard tricks for keeping a kid of any age away from over-stimulation and temptation. Keep her busy, move her away from the bad kids if you can, and find good activities you can schedule regularly. Above all, stay calm and positive, and don’t show how scared and upset you are about her fuck-ups.

Don’t expect treatment to change her. Sometimes a 24 hour control-your-every-activity residential school will break bad habits and build new ones, but it’s expensive and often doesn’t work.

As for the oft-derided “Good Will Hunting” one-on-one psychotherapy, it’s less expensive and similarly unlikely to lead to a basic transformation. More realistically, therapy can do the same thing as you’re doing: positive coaching towards better behavior. As for achieving that better behavior by getting her to take responsibility, own her actions, and feel bad…you’d have better luck with a snake charmer.

STATEMENT:
Compose a statement of purpose that will keep you positive. “I think you want to be a good kid and that you regret at least some of the things that happen when you mess up. But it’s hard for you not to mess up because your brain pushes you so hard to act before you think, that’s just the way you are. So we’ll keep on trying to keep you away from risky situations and slow you down, so you have more time to think about what you really want to do. There are some troubles we can’t protect you from. You may get HIV or go to jail. But nothing will change our determination to help you get the control that you need, sooner or later.”

My sister and I have had issues over the years, but we’ve always managed to stay cordial despite our differences, at least until she got married. Just after she got married five or so years ago, she did something to my parents that really pissed me off—she was basically stealing from them, as far as I can tell—and while, in the past, she and I would have eventually gotten over it, her husband got into the crossfire (I chewed both of them out, not just her), and now he won’t let me anywhere near my sister to even try to move past this. I still think what she did was awful, and I still think her husband is an asshole, but she’s my sister, and she’s family, and I need her in my life. My goal is to figure out how and whether I should make amends to my brother-in-law, even though I’m not really sorry, so I can put my family back together.

You’re right to start thinking about what’s best for your family relationships and forget about who’s a conniving criminal, because you’re never going to stamp out family crime or protect its willing victims. You’re not God, or even Judge Judy.

On the other hand, you may benefit in the long run by avoiding unnecessary conflict, retaining your family membership card, and participating in events that allow you to make the best of the family you have, crooks, liars et al.

If forgiveness is important to you, you’re fucked, because whatever you forgive your sister for, she’s likely to do again, which will destroy your faith and make you nasty. Fuck forgiveness. Again.

If she’s a criminal, she is, so your goal is to accept her the way she is and decide what you want to do with her and the family relationships that you will always unavoidably share.

Figure out if the fight with her is worth it, and if it’s not, and you decide that peace will give you a better chance of enjoying family events, then mend fences, declare the war over, and let all hostilities from this point on be for her and her husband to sustain, or not.

You can’t stop her and her husband from continuing to hate you or freeze you out, but by refusing to hate them back, you just may lull them into giving it up, shutting up, and making nice.

STATEMENT:
Prepare a statement that stays positive, doesn’t lie, and lays out the advantages of peace. It may sound like an apology, but it’s not. An apology would be dishonest. “I know we’ve had our differences, but there were tensions in the past that no longer seem important, at least not to me. I believe you and your husband are an important part of my family and I think we’ll all be happier if we can share some friendly time together. I think it’s better to put the past behind us and remember that we share lots of good childhood memories, a love for our parents, and responsibility for their welfare as they grow older. I think we’ll all gain from resuming a positive relationship.”

It’s been a tough year (surprise), and so I’ve been a little more quick to anger than I usually am, and I tend to have a few more beers after work than I would normally have. Things with my wife were kind of rough because of all of this, so she told me to see a therapist, and for the sake of my marriage, I agreed, because losing my wife would be the worst thing that could happen. Six months or so ago, my therapist started asking me about my childhood, and it finally clicked that my dad also had a really bad temper, and was also a pretty lousy drunk, but I’d never really thought of him that way, and I’d never really made the connection to my own behavior. My therapist was really pleased at my breakthrough, but here I am, six months later, and I don’t feel any better, and my wife is ready to leave if I don’t stop yelling at her. My goal is to use what I’ve learned in therapy to solve my problems, but what is it I haven’t figured out, why do I keep acting this way, and why am I spending money on therapy if I’m getting nowhere?

Once psychotherapy helps you figure out where your mean streak comes from, you can write an interesting book about it and, usually, blame it on a brutal ancestor and tell Oprah all about it.

What all that hard-earned knowledge probably won’t help you much with is keeping you in check the next time you get irritable and/or drunk. Bad daddy or no, what will help you a lot more is to get sober and learn how to shut the fuck up.

No one knows why some people have a mean streak, but such a trait is probably one of those things that are both bad for you and good for you; in the right situation it helps you survive (no one messes with the Hulk) and gets passed onto your green children in your genes.

The Darwinian solution provides a good answer to most questions—”no one knows why you do X, but it’s probably not all bad”—because it’s hard to disprove, and carries an implication that you can probably guess by now: you’re probably not going to get rid of your mean streak, unless you’re agreeable to a friendly lobotomy.

Many therapists think they can help you overcome your anger if you work hard with them, and, while they’re sincere, they’re usually wrong. They can help you manage it, but nothing more than that, and, in your case, not until you get sober.

If you wait for your anger to go away before doing anything about it, you’ll be on wife number 5 in no time. This is why certain kinds of therapy can do lots more harm than good unless you’re willing to ask yourself the one question you’d prefer not to: what do I do next if this treatment doesn’t make my anger and dependence go away (just my money and patience).

So your goal isn’t to figure out why you’re angry, or to stop feeling angry, or even to stop feeling thirsty. It’s to accept the feelings and urges that you’ve got, and get better at managing them.

You’ve got to accept the shame of not being able to control a natural and unavoidable tendency to transform into Superasshole (maybe you were bitten as a child by a radioactive rectum).

Once you make that your goal, you’ve got a much better chance of succeeding; not at feeling better—because c’mon, you’re not stupid—but at reacting to life’s misery with fewer tantrums and beers, daddy be damned.

STATEMENT:
Here’s a statement you can use to keep yourself on track. “I hate being mean and I know that, when I’m mean, it always seems like other people deserve to be put down. But it hurts me and my family more often than not, so regardless of whether people deserve it, I’ve got to improve my self-control and learn to eat shit, rather than become an asshole (there’s a consistent metaphor here). Which means controlling whatever releases my anger (tasteful restraint on the metaphor), like drinking. I will have no shame about admitting my asshole tendencies, as long as I know that, whenever I tighten up (can’t escape the metaphor), I’m strengthening my self-control.”

I’m not a stupid girl, but it took me fifteen years to realize that I always date the same kind of guy, someone who is kind of sad and wild but always turns out to be nasty and unreliable. I don’t know why I’ve always gone for mean sad sacks, but I have, many, many times, and knowing that, I want to avoid my deadbeat curse. The problem is, I don’t know how to start being attracted to different kinds of guys, or even where to find them. And meanwhile, I’m still a deadbeat magnet, so I want to know how I can stop attracting such losers and reel in better quality material. My goal is to get out of my romantic rut and date guys that don’t suck.

If you can find a survival benefit to being mean, (under the appropriate football field or nuclear apocalypse scenarios), you can also find a survival benefit to being attracted to the mean.

For example, your partner’s cruelty will protect your genes, or, maybe you’re so good at nurturing you can’t distinguish between babies and outlaws. Whatever.

Again, the genetic explanation is far from scientific, but fits the fact you’ve already encountered: you, and your tastes, are not likely to change, no matter how much you talk about them.

So tell your friends that you’re tired of hearing them tell you they told you so–almost as tired as they are!—and that you want to change your ways and are open to suggestions.

The usual ones that come up, like drawing up a list of negative screen-outs for your dates and sticking with them (e.g., no guys who had nasty fights with prior girlfriends unless the girlfriend was clearly nastier and crazier). Have your friends screen your dates.

Don’t be discouraged if you’re not attracted to nice guys. Remember, there are some songs you dislike the first time around, but wind up liking a lot in the end. You can’t force yourself, but give yourself time and you’ll probably wind up liking a nice guy well enough.

Sure, you may not get as hot about a nice guy as you would about an outlaw. But if your primary goal is to get turned on, stick with outlaws and get a good, solid humiliation at the same time. And if you yearn to nurture and live with a nasty, vicious, out-of-control criminal, get a Jack Russell terrier.

STATEMENT:
Announce your policy with a statement. “I may want to tame a beast, or beastly guy, who’s in pain, but I don’t have the touch, the whip, the chair, the whispering technique, whatever, and meanwhile I need a friend and partner I can trust. So I’ve got to watch out for my sick yearnings, stick with better ways of screening out the ones I want, and stay single, lonely, and unsatisfied until I find the one I really need.”

My mother is a drama queen– she thrives on family conflict and gossip and needs to control every step of my life. She has her nose in everyone’s business, talks badly about most people, and also has a violent temper (at 79 years old, she still throws things and flips people [like me] the bird out of anger). Several events happened that finally made me so angry with her that I literally told her off and have cut ties with her for over a year, but during this year I have suffered from terrible guilt and shame for turning my back on my elderly mother. Believe me, I feel better and more relaxed without her constant turmoil, but there are nights that I wake up from a dream where I am shunned at her funeral as “the daughter who abandoned her mother”. I have tried, in the past, to talk sense into her and explain my feelings but she creeps back to her same troubling ways. My goal is to get over the guilt that I feel about cutting my mother out of my life.

Anger is never a good reason for doing anything, and particularly not for cutting off ties with your mother; after all, anger’s a feeling, and you know that’s a dirty word. It’s not that you don’t have good reasons for being angry, just not for letting anger make your decisions.

As you’ve now realized, once you let anger take over, it’s very hard to protect yourself against guilt, which is where your major problem lies now. The only good, healthy defense against guilt, other than drowning your neurotransmitters in alcohol, is to know you’ve done the right thing, regardless of how unhappy you’ve made someone feel or how badly they’re suffering while you’re the one standing watch.

In this instance, unfortunately, you haven’t done the right thing, so guilt has become your master.

It’s not so bad to tell your mother off, but you’ve kept the bad feelings alive by cutting her off and letting her know that she’s at fault. That’s where you’ve assumed a share of responsibility for the conflict between you, and that’s not just a guilty feeling, that’s real guilt.

You have good reason to want to punish your mother and avoid the pain of her abuse, but that goal has two major flaws. First of all, your mother doesn’t deserve to be punished, because she can’t help being who she is, and there’s no point in punishing an asshole for being an asshole any more than punishing a snake for being a snake. You’ll wind up feeling guilty and responsible for the pain you’ve caused because the snake had no choice, but you did.

Second, that goal creates more conflict and commits more of your attention and energy to the worst part of your mother and your relationship with her, and that’s simply not what you want, because that will make both of you more miserable and part of your misery will be, you guessed it, guilt.

And you won’t just be tortured by the guilty feeling aroused by your mother’s accusing look and defiant digit—a guilty feeling you can tell yourself you don’t deserve—but by the real guilt of causing pain you could have prevented.

A better goal is to protect yourself from your mother’s anger, and your own guilt, while making the most of whatever good you can find in her. If there’s no good there, and she really lacks any redeeming features that you may someday recollect with fondness, admiration, or even bitter laughter, she may well be someone with that rarest of psychiatric DSMIV diagnoses, a “perfect asshole.”

Well, come to think of it, she already meets criteria for being a perfect asshole, because she always sees her nastiness as merely a reaction to other people’s faults, and that’s why there’s no point in reasoning with or trying to get through to her. On the other hand, she may also be an irredeemable asshole who is perfect all the time, which would be remarkable because few human beings are perfect, even in that way. But perfection rarely flashes the middle finger.

Yes, it may seem disrespectful or disloyal to say “my mother is an asshole” but, really, it’s the only way to make it not personal. It’s a scientific fact that being an asshole is not an obstacle to getting married and having children, and may even help in those pursuits. So, without any offense intended, you’re the child of an asshole and it’s your job to deal with it getting shit on (so to speak).

So don’t try to “talk sense into her” or “explain your feelings.” You’re not going to change her and trying is a waste of time, an invitation to more trouble, and an aggravation to your mother. It will also lead to your assuming more responsibility for the bad feelings that happen next.

Surely you’ve done business with people who had their nasty side but could be pleasant if you caught them on a good day and treated them carefully; as long as you didn’t try to hold them accountable, correct their behavior, or offer them lip. So do the same with your mother and treat her like an asshole who has, at times, taken good care of you and probably done some other good things (like given you life).

You know the drill. Talk about nothing personal, go with a friend when you see her, meet in public, keep it short, and leave quickly and politely if her inner demon appears.

And yes, you’ll feel better in the short run if you tell her that she’s an asshole and refuse to talk to her until she apologizes and attends assholes anonymous. As if an asshole would ever settle for anonymity.

In the long run, however, you will come closer to living by your values and protecting yourself from guilt if you suck up your pain and humiliation and maintain some kind of polite (on your side) relationship. She’ll never do right by you on your terms, but if you do right by her on your terms, you can tame your guilt and reclaim your life.

STATEMENT:
Since you’re not going to confront your mother, prepare a statement to answer someone who says “how can you take that abusive shit lying down without seeing yourself as a total victim and wuss?” “My mother has never had much control over her inner ass-hole which makes her a giant pain in my ass. But fighting her is pointless and makes me act nasty, which is the opposite of what I want to do and is worse than the humiliation she occasionally throws my way. I don’t need to prove I can stand up to her. What’s more important to me is to try to act decently regardless of the shit she throws at me.”

After 10 years of marriage, 8 of them fairly miserable, I finally got a divorce from my husband. We have a daughter together, which is why we tried to stick it out so long, but he was a really terrible partner; rarely worked, often angry, and not even that available to our kid. Now that we’re over, however, things aren’t much better in that he’s become this cloying, pathetic presence who’s always lurking around, fishing for pity and reconciliation. When we were married, I was pretty good at keeping my anger to myself, but now that we’re divorced, I have no patience for his bullshit and find myself really digging into him all the time. I try not to do it around our child, but his behavior brings out a really mean side of me to the point where I almost feel guilty for the way I treat him, even though he’s a pain in the ass who’s never done one nice thing for me aside from give me my little girl. My goal is to stop feeling bad about treating this asshole so badly.

Sadly, when you make your goal to feel better about treating an asshole badly, you’re actually hoping to become an asshole yourself. Only assholes can torment without guilt, just ask your ex-asshole. I mean, -husband.

So if you back up and think about it, your goal is actually to stop acting like an asshole and stop treating your ex- badly, so your guilty feeling doesn’t become the real thing. And the best way to do that is to have less of a chance to act around/react to your ex, period.

If your pathetic-acting ex- succeeds in making you feel guilty, you’re more likely to act mean, which will allow your guilty feeling to cause you to act badly, which will leave you with real guilt, which will confirm your ex-partner’s reality.

So another major reason for your loss of control may be your inability, because of your guilty feelings, to create a boundary and shut off your contact with your ex- when he starts to drive you crazy. If you’re feeling guilty, you may bend over backwards and spend too much time listening to him. Which will then get you irritated and mean. Rinse, repeat.

So your goal isn’t to stop feeling guilty, but to tolerate guilty feelings while acting reasonably, and the first reasonable thing you can do to protect yourself from your ex-husband’s neediness is to create a boundary that defines what you talk about, and excludes everything else.

It’s OK to talk about anything child-related, but not to express feelings other than admiration for the children, the weather and/or your favorite baseball team. If your ex- tends to ramble, sigh, or otherwise emote, politely leave the conversation and give him your email for dealing with any left-over child-care issues.

Cut it off before anyone gets a chance to be an asshole, and you’ll have nothing to feel bad about.

STATEMENT:
Prepare a statement to respond to any protest he might lodge against your lack of empathy or respect. “We both deserve respect and it’s important that we treat one another with respect. I believe the best way to do that is to avoid expressing negative feelings about our marriage or lives or discussing issues that used to cause us conflict. Instead, let’s focus on informing one another about our kid and making arrangements to care for her. If I stop a conversation or appear abrupt, it will be to keep the conversation away from bad topics and focused on good topics. It will not be intended to express disrespect.”

I’m a landscape designer, and I’ve just spent 6 months living in planning hell with a pretty difficult client. We had different visions from the start, but he insisted I was the man for the job, even though we differed on every decision, every step of the way. And really, I was willing to put up with it if it meant getting to do the grounds (you heard me) on this guy’s country estate, which was an extensive project that would’ve paid a ton and given me the chance to do something spectacular that could gain me a national reputation. Finally, we agreed to some blue prints, which he paid for…right before firing me. Now, I know that he paid for the plans and they’re technically his, but the thing is, I put half a year into putting this project together—and turned down a lot of other work because I thought I’d need the time to make it happen—and if he’s going to screw me over like this, I feel like he deserves to get screwed over right back. He’s called asking for the plans, and I keep making excuses as to why I can’t give them to him, but he keeps pushing, and now I’m stuck. Should I tell him the truth, that he’ll get those plans over my dead body, or should I relent and give him the plans along with a piece of my mind? I know you dismiss the notion of justice, but this is my livelihood, and my goal is to get what’s owed me.

Cases like this are the reason you have ethical rules, so you’ll do what you think is right, regardless of provocations by the egregious assholes who are drawn to be your clients. Lucky for you, you at least acknowledge this is a dilemma, instead of feeling entitled to a landscaper jihad, so there’s hope for you yet.

Look, if you’re in the landscape designing business, most of your clients are richer than you are. Just on a practical level for your quest, that means they can higher bigger lawyers and fund battles that can outlast any puny resources you can haul out of your pockets.

Being rich also brings out the inner asshole, so your profession will naturally attract more of them than a Crane’s white porcelain standard edition. So if you feel that war is your calling, drop this business and go carve out runways and golf courses for a tour at Fallujah.

Plus, rich people tend to travel in packs, and that pack makes much of your possible client pool. Make one of them your enemy, and suddenly you’ll find yourself with a lot of free time on your hands.

Attacking this client might, you guessed it, feel good, but the long term effects, like going to court and/or going out of business, won’t feel so great. Feeling frustrated and screwed will also feel subpar, but again, better to feel screwed than actually be screwed when you’re out of work and professionally radioactive.

But if your goal isn’t to punish assholes but make art out of nature—and I assume that’s why you went into your life of work in the first place—then eating shit is part of the job description. Check your professional ethics to see how much shit you should expect for your portion of the meal.

Probably, your professional society would tell you the following: you have a right to get your client to waive the right to hold you liable for damages that happens as a result of his using your drawings. You have a right to expect him to pay fully for your time in creating the drawings. Then they’re his. Dinner is served.

Next time, don’t be so hungry for the big job, and you won’t wind up dining at la table de merde. You probably knew he liked to dangle people on strings and then cut them loose, but you thought you’d be the exception. Now you’re angry, but wiser nonetheless.

STATEMENT:
Console yourself with a statement. “I like what I created and I learned much from the creative and interpersonal process. And sometimes, doing this job, I will wind up feeling used and humiliated, no matter how careful I am or how big my reputation grows. I’m proud of my ability to absorb the pain and keep on doing my job.”

I’m taking a semester off college this fall, and I’d like to go back for the spring, but the problem is, really, that I can’t stop myself from lying. I’ve always been this way; I know the truth, but I’d rather tell people what I think they want to hear, so before I even know what’s happening, not-the-truth is coming out of my mouth, and it’s stupid, so I always get caught and people are much, much angrier than if I told the truth. I can speak so frankly about this because my mom’s been shuttling me to therapists since I was 10, but nobody’s been able to figure out why I do it or how I can stop it. I got in major trouble last year at school…I don’t want to say how exactly, but of course it involved telling a massive lie, and my school spared me expulsion but I had to agree to take some time off. I’m afraid to go back though if I’m just going to end up getting in trouble again…the older I get, the higher the stakes get, the bigger my problem becomes. My goal, as always, is to control my lying.

The good news is you’re in good company; there are some very nice compulsive liars. The bad news is that you’re not alone because compulsive lying is a common problem which compulsive liars have a hard time overcoming.

For whatever reason, it’s more stigmatized than alcoholism (somewhere between being a junkie and a child abuser) so it’s hard for liars to write about it or seek out one another for support. (Unless you’re from Crete—that’s a classical allusion, from Harvard).

Therapy has probably showed you why you’re a liar, with the usual short list of reasons. You want attention, hate to displease people, need to express inner rebelliousness, want to punish yourself, feel compelled to react to an intrusive mother/distant father/vice versa/whatever. And after learning all that, and talking to a therapist you really liked and trusted…you’re still a compulsive liar who now failed at therapy. Who to blame first, your therapist, your distant father, or yourself. I’m guessing you blame yourself.

Moi, I can’t tell a lie, so it saddens me to inform you that you will probably never control your lying completely. I don’t know why, but that’s the way it is. (That sums up a lot of what I learned at Harvard).

Let’s think, instead, about what you can do about it. You can become a writer (most writing is a kind of lying). Most politicians share your curse and have an instinct to tell people what they want to hear, but, as you’ve experienced, that can get them into big trouble if they’re too talented. Again, you’re not alone, but you probably shouldn’t run for office any time soon.

In the meantime, you can form a Liars Anonymous group of one, and use 12 step ideas to manage the impulse. Look for triggering situations and strategize how to manage them, and always try to keep your mouth shut until you have a chance to think.

Develop polite, ethical formulaic responses to difficult questions that will buy you time. Don’t blame yourself for the problem, just do your best with it. And even if these techniques work, don’t ever tell yourself you’re cured, because, as if I need to tell you, that’s total bullshit. You’ve just got to take it one lie at a time.

STATEMENT:
Here’s a statement to start your day: “I’m a liar and I can’t control it, but I take the problem very seriously because it prevents anyone from trusting me, including me. So I try to accept the shame of being a liar and let people know I’m a liar who tries to fight the lying impulsive every day of my life and, whenever I do that honestly, I’m proud.”