Posted by fxckfeelings on January 12, 2012
People say that the most important factor in relationships is timing or chemistry, but you can’t have a relationship to begin with without luck, and you can’t be a loser in love if you don’t take your bad luck personally. A good match is hard to find and a not-good-enough match is hard to leave, but as long as you do a good job searching and, when necessary, leaving, you’ll never be a loser, regardless of whether you get “lucky.”
-Dr. Lastname
I am in the fourth year of a partnership with a great guy—smart, athletic, caring, fair, trustworthy, all of it—but I am bored out of my mind. Although he loves outdoor activities like biking and skiing by day, his only hobby in the evenings is watching TV. I am a musician, artist, craftsperson, not an outdoor whiz, and I feel like I am completely uninspired in this situation. I have talked with him about at least not watching TV every night, and we try for a while, but it always ends up back where we started, with him watching TV, and me in another room reading or doing something somewhat productive, or just giving in and watching with him (I hate TV, wish we didn’t have one). I want to do things together but he is not interested in any of the things that I am interested in. Maybe this is just the most a person can hope for in life and I’m spoiled for wanting more than loyalty and love from someone, but I feel guilty all the time for hiding these thoughts from him. Maybe he would be better off without me, too, you know? Maybe I should let him go so he can find a girl who is really IN LOVE with him.
How much you love someone depends, in part, on the effect of partnership on the necessities of your life, as well as your interests. In your case, however, you don’t seem to see partnership as necessary for the necessities, so the difference between what you two want may be be more than television.
If you’ve been struggling to make ends meet and/or raise kids and someone enters your life who’s decent and willing to share the load, you’re probably going to wind up loving him, even if you don’t love everything you do together.
On the other hand, if you’re a fairly self-sufficient person who doesn’t need a partner in order to have a decent standard of living and raise kids, then there’s no reason to live with anyone who doesn’t ring your bells or leave the couch. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on September 8, 2011
Getting over a relationship can mean a lot of things—a bad haircut, eating entire pints of ice cream, sex with people you wouldn’t normally make eye contact with, etc.—but what’s most important isn’t how you get over it, but what you get out of it. If you come out the other side with bad feelings but great insight, you’re feeling worse but doing way better than the person who feels great but lacks perspective altogether. Those who don’t learn from relationships are doomed to repeat them, no matter how many bad haircuts it takes.
-Dr. Lastname
I can’t seem to recover from my wife’s infidelity. Six months ago, when I found out, it nearly destroyed me. I stopped sleeping, and started eating compulsively, and felt depressed and anxious all day. I have a demanding job and we have a 2-year-old son and I simply had to keep going. Now, after months of couples therapy and my wife’s promising to stop drinking and then starting up again, I’ve gotten strangely detached. I don’t think our marriage is going to make it and, on some level, I don’t care. I can’t lose the 20 pounds I gained, I don’t exercise the way I used to, and I can’t seem to get my confidence or happiness back. What more should I be doing?
I want to take this opportunity to congratulate you, not for losing a horrible spouse (that seems both insensitive and obvious), but for becoming a fat, lazy mope. Most people consider “letting themselves go” to be a bad thing, but in this instance, it’s a positive side-effect of recovery at work.
After all, the best measurement of how well you’ve recovered from trauma is not how good you feel. This Sunday marks a rather grim anniversary for many Americans, and after 10 years, some of those people still hurt, and some of those in pain are also in shape. Trauma doesn’t factor into it. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on December 20, 2010
Whenever people are hurting at work, management will try to boost productivity by easing pain, which makes them feel both competent and compassionate. Trouble is, most such efforts piss everyone off by trivializing pain and suggesting things can be better when they can’t. Instead of trying to coddle your workforce or push up your company morale, both the employee and the employed would probably do better if they respected the fact that work is often painful, kept the personal bullshit to a minimum, and just got back to work.
-Dr. Lastname
[Adapted from a reader’s comment.]
Our boss tried to improve sagging morale by having us meet regularly in small groups led by a psychologist. I wish I could figure out what she’s trying to do and not be so annoyed by the way she’s doing it. She asks us to think of a wish-list of how to improve the way the organization functions, and then asks if that’s alright, and then, when someone describes something they’d like to see, like making people feel special by recognizing their birthdays, she praises them for having a great idea and makes them think of ways they could implement it, and then asks us if that’s alright, and then tells us we’re doing great and asks for more and is that alright. She sounds like Hal in 2001 and acts like a computer reinforcing people for contributions that will lift the group. Frankly, she creeps me out and the reason morale is bad is because we’re working too hard and not getting paid enough. My goal is to figure out what to do about someone who is being false and unhelpful.
Your work colleagues are not your family, regardless of what the boss and the boss’s psychologist tell you. When they start holding “sharing” sessions like this, the office becomes “The Office.”
Positive recognition and communication are not the answer to your work troubles, if only because work often sucks, which is why you get paid to do it. If you’re unhappy about doing too much for too little, it sucks even more.
WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on November 1, 2010
Technically speaking, any citizen of the first world has the opportunity to be rich and powerful…except for the fact of life’s shitty, unavoidable obstacles, like being sick, poor, or just plain unlucky. If you can’t reach the dream of power and a powerboat, especially after working hard and overcoming an obstacle or two, feelings of loserdom begin to sink in. Neither owning a mansion nor overcoming poverty, however, make you a worthy individual (though they may make you feel like one). You can never be a loser if you make the best of your hard luck and build values that will protect your self-respect from the helpless humiliation of being poor and yachtless.
-Dr. Lastname
It took me forever to get my engineering degree because I had to work and go to night school, but I stuck with it because I believed it would get me a good, secure job. What’s killing me is that, now that I’m qualified, I can’t find one, because I don’t have a driver’s license, because the idea of driving gives me panic attacks. Meanwhile, my classmates have gotten all the good jobs and are moving ahead. I’m feeling angry, bitter, and depressed, and I know it’s my own fault. My goal is to get over my fears so all my work doesn’t go to waste.
You’re right to be frightened of panic attacks, because, in addition to making you feel terrible, they can come on just when you need to be at your best, look confident, and show you’re reliable. They’re the acne of mental health.
Like bad zits, they tend to come back whenever they want, for no reason you’ll ever understand, and picking at it just makes it worse.
WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on September 2, 2010
Being a negative pessimist doesn’t necessarily mean you’re chronically depressed, and being a blind optimist doesn’t exactly mean you’re a flakey idiot. However, if you do find yourself unable to see a silver lining, or have to deal with someone too blissed out to ever see storm clouds, it can be problematic. Instead of trying to change yourself or someone else, you’d be better off learning to accept whatever you get in your glass, whether it’s half-empty or half-full.
-Dr. Lastname
What I would like to share with you, and in turn, hear you share your thoughts about, is chronic unhappiness. Is there ever an end to depression and its shadow? Is there a way to “get over it’? My goal is to be able to live beyond depression and to actually grow from it. Sure, I hate those books where people claim to be grateful to their depression… but I hate it mainly because I resent their ability to feel that way! What do you think?
There’s no way to “get over” problems you have no control of in the first place and, no matter what form it comes in (shitty in-law, brain tumor, Hurricane Earl, etc). Chronic unhappiness is high on that “uncontrollable” list.
So now you have to ask yourself what it means to “get over” an uncontrollable problem. Usually, it means you’ve asked yourself to do the impossible and thus given yourself a chronic headache to top off your chronic unhappiness.
WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on August 26, 2010
Just as everybody wants to go to heaven without having to die, everyone wants to find true love without having to suffer through dates. Lucky people make it look easy, but good partners are very, very had to find. That’s because you can’t force someone else to change and changing your own personality is almost equally impossible. Know what you’re looking for, what’s important to you, and how much compromise is really possible. If you do, you’ll also know what all that dating is for and become better at protecting yourself from the hell of loving someone who can never be good for you.
-Dr. Lastname
Just after my girlfriend and I started dating, she decided she had to stop hanging out with her closest friends, not because I told her to, but because she decided they partied too much and it wasn’t good for her anymore. I supported that 100%, but it puts a lot of pressure on me to spend a lot of time with her since she literally has no one else to hang out with anymore. Plus, I have to travel a lot for work, which is why I took the job, because I love being on the road. Even though she knows this about me and tells me it’s OK, I can tell that my leaving town really depresses her and so I feel really guilty because I know she’ll be really lonely when I’m gone. I want things to work with her, but I can’t change who I am and don’t want to change what I do. What can I do to feel less guilty? How much compromise is too much?
I’m not sure if this is comforting, but it’s not guilt telling you that you’re making your girlfriend unhappy. I can see why this is confusing, because your girlfriend isn’t outwardly saying she’s unhappy, either.
Still, guilt isn’t your problem because you haven’t made vows, you don’t have bad intentions, and you don’t owe her something for giving up friends and a lifestyle that weren’t good for her in the first place.
You feel guilty just because you’ve chosen a lifestyle that may make her unhappy, but, given that you’re the ramblin’ kind, it’s also your responsibility to find out if you’re the right boyfriend for her.
WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on July 15, 2010
We Americans love our stuff, but the lust for said stuff can cause individuals to behave badly (see: the demonic/orgasmic audience reaction to Oprah’s car giveaway). Usually, when someone goes overboard with longing for/accumulation of stuff, it’s a family member who steps up to put the breaks on, but when anyone, family or no, gets between someone and their stuff, things can get uglier than anything Oprah could imagine. If family members put limits on their responsibilities, however, there are still ways for stuff-addicted loved ones to break the stuff cycle.
-Dr. Lastname
My parents have decided to retire, sell the big house I grew up in and move into a smaller condo closer to my sister and me. The move makes sense—my sister and I are adults with our own families—but it’s brought up a sort of taboo issue for my parents, which is my mother’s attachment to stuff. She’s not a hoarder, but if my dad wasn’t around to put his foot down, I sometimes worry it could be, because my mother has trouble throwing anything away. She says that moving all the time as a child has given her a different appreciation of objects, and that it’s better to regret having too much stuff than to miss something you threw away and can’t get back. Problem is, there’s no room for this stuff in the new condo, they won’t have the budget for storage, and my sister and I aren’t able to put all of her old work files, souvenir spoons, and elementary school textbooks (seriously) in our basements. What I’m afraid will happen is that my father, who has always taken responsibility for managing their money, will try to get my mother to agree that they can’t afford to move and store her stuff when they move, she’ll keep complaining, and he’ll get nasty. How can we get my mother to learn to let go?
I know you and your father want to make your mother happy and have harmony, but it looks like she’s not eager to adapt a sparse, Zen lifestyle.
The problem is, trying to make someone happy when it’s just not possible usually causes more unhappiness. False hope is dangerous, no good deed goes unpunished, and stuff happens (sometimes in great quantities).
WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by fxckfeelings on July 1, 2010
When a relationship fails, you can either accept that you can’t really accept them, or accept that, no matter what you do, they can’t accept you. After all that acceptance, you think it would be easy to not let that person aggravate you, but the temptation to speak your mind will stick around as long as the other person does. Your last bit of acceptance is that you need to keep your mouth shut until you make up your own mind about how to go forward, then accept your decision and politely speak your peace. No exceptions.
-Dr. Lastname
My husband quit drinking four years ago. I supported his decision to get sober, but I’m disappointed with the result. He used to be a fun goofball, but now he’s a dull grump, and I don’t like his company (and he doesn’t seem to like mine, either). We’ve started to go our separate ways but he’s not interested in talking about it. My goal is to restore the chemistry of our marriage and the good parts of his character without driving him back to drink.
Having fun with your husband is not your top measure of a partner. If you want fun, go out and have a drink.
Acceptance, rather than fun or passion, is the most essential requirement for a long-term relationship, and now you know it. Oh, first marriages have so much to teach you.
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Posted by fxckfeelings on June 21, 2010
Much is made in both the personal and professional worlds about the value of communication. Speaking your mind to your loved ones isn’t necessarily the best way to work out family problems, and speaking easily at networking isn’t the best or only way to get ahead at work. Abstaining from communication is often the best choice, because on this site, we value shutting the fuck up.
-Dr. Lastname
I’m not crazy about my grown-up step-kids, but they’re not bad people, they just tend to be disappointed in me for some reason or other and then complain to my wife, who then tries to smooth out our relationship by telling me about their issues and urging me to talk with them, maybe with a therapist. She’s very nice about it, but every time I try to speak up about what actually happened or clear up a misunderstanding, I sound like I’m calling the kids unrealistic and self-centered (which they are) and it makes things worse. My wife doesn’t blame anyone, but it distresses her that I and her kids don’t get along better and I hate to see her unhappy. So how can I improve things with my step-kids when we really don’t see eye to eye?
Your poor step-headaches. They’re unhappy and assume that mom should play diplomat.
Instead of justifying their complaints with “I’m just being honest” they should really say, “I’m just being an enormous jerk.”
This is a good example of honest sharing by people who are honestly unhappy with you but haven’t given much thought to whether there’s anything you can do about it (other than by being someone else). They haven’t even considered whether making them feel better is your responsibility.
Unlike them, don’t assume it’s your responsibility to return the favor with an equal amount of honest sharing—not unless you want to give your wife a headache and enjoy a long, dirty bout of Greco-Roman mud wrestling.
If, as you say, the step-sort-of-adults want you to be someone you aren’t, and it isn’t a matter of your bad behavior, then you can’t make them happy or reach a better understanding by improving communications. If only you were behaving badly, you could make things better by improving, but you’re not, so you can’t, and you’re fucked.
Whether her kids complain to you or her, your job isn’t to work things out (unless you believe it’s really possible); it’s to live up to your own standards for being a respectful step-dad and keeping conflict to a minimum.
If you can’t make things right for your wife, you can respect her wish to improve family relationships while minimizing your exposure to criticism. The technique is simple, but requires you to shut up about your real feelings and give up on the idea that your wife can understand your predicament.
So let the step-kids complain all they want. If these were actually your kids, you would’ve imparted an important lesson to them early on: when it comes to sharing feelings, honesty is not always the best policy.
STATEMENT:
Here’s the formula. “I know your kids are not entirely happy with me and I’ve given careful thought to the problems they’ve shared with you. I intend to let them know I’ve heard their concerns and, to the degree that I can, I’ll make things better. If, as I suspect, some of their distress arises from differences in our personalities, we can’t expect it to go away or be resolved by discussion, but we can certainly learn to accept one another, avoid negative interactions, and make the best of your wonderful relationship with your children, which I am determined to support in any way possible.”
I know I’m good at what I do (let’s just call it finance), but I get held back because I’m terrible at networking and socializing in general. So much of my business is about going out and making connections, and I find talking to strangers, especially ones I’d like to work with or for, to be the most painful and awkward experience in the world. I get incredibly self-conscious, feel like I’m talking too much or too little, get distracted and antsy, and just want to go home or back to work. I also don’t drink anymore—I was never a drunk really, but I thought it held me back in college—so that makes my awkwardness even worse. If I don’t learn how to shmooze, however, I’m never going to get ahead. My goal is to get over my awkwardness.
Don’t hate your own awkwardness. People who have a heightened sense of shame about their social behavior become more awkward, which makes them more ashamed, and you’re spiraling into social phobia. It’s like stuttering; the more you think about it, the worse it gets.
It’s true that, when you’re in school, social awkwardness seems to condemn you to being a nerd loser who never gets laid. Fortunately, nerds have their revenge, and they get it, not by becoming socially gifted, but by entering a world that also rewards skills, reliability, and experience, and this boosts their confidence as they get older.
While networking is a big part of the business world (as you know, most business school tuition should include a bar tab), it’s not the only way to get ahead. You could get your job to pay for further business courses, or try to talk to/impress your boss one-on-one in a small talk, anecdote-free environment.
If small talk is necessary, you don’t have to be talented to learn how to do it; you just need to be humble enough to stumble through exercises that others could do easily. Again, accepting your disability makes it easier to manage it.
In the meantime, when you do find yourself at networking functions, don’t get tied up trying to be the cool guy you aren’t. Try for more one-on-one conversations, sip your Diet Coke, and enjoy a night out with your awkward self.
STATEMENT:
Here’s a statement to chart your course of self-improvement. “I value my achievements and values but recognize that I could use better people skills. There’s no point in criticizing myself for being ungifted in this area. I’m proud that I’m willing to work on my weakness if and when I think it’s necessary.”
Posted by fxckfeelings on June 14, 2010
While most people have multifaceted personalities (or should), there are an unlucky group whose personalities aren’t so much nuanced as they are binary; fewer shades of grey, more Jeckyll and Hyde. If you’re dealing with someone who’s double sided, or trying to hide a part of yourself from the world, it can feel like a never ending battle to reconcile and/or expose both halves. Occasionally, it’s worth exposing your secret side to end your own torment. Other times, it’s better to let people keep their Mr. Hydes to themselves if it means keeping their drama out of your own life.
-Dr. Lastname
Most people thing my mom is really fun, if a little flaky and emo, but they don’t see how crazy and mean she gets when there’s no one around but my brother and me (my parents are divorced). When she’s in a bad mood, she tells us we’ve been mean to her, and reminds us of things we’ve said that hurt her, and tells us how bad we are until we’ve apologized, and then she forgets it ever happened. There’s one cousin who’s seen what she gets like and I rely on him to remind me that it’s OK, she’s crazy, but the other day he seemed charmed by her and then, when I complained, he told me I had to get over her and not be so angry, and now I feel totally unsupported. My goal is to get someone to understand what’s going on.
Nothing gets people more stirred up than dramatically pitched false accusations and punishments by a powerful, inescapable, totally two-faced authority, like your mama.
The good news is that, while you’ve got the makings of a perfect soap opera, it sounds like you’re not getting swept away by it.
The trouble with soap operas, of course, is that they trap the good guys into endless rounds of angry, hurt reactions to crazy bad guys. In the process, they take up huge amounts of time and energy for tears and talk, talk, talk before, finally, there’s a glimmer of comfort and validation…before the cycle starts all over again.
WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
