Like a lot of artists, I don’t think I’m good at anything else. I’ve been “the arty one” since I can remember, I went to art school on a scholarship, and I’ve gotten illustration work pretty steadily since then. Ever since my last job, however, I’ve started to wonder if I’ve lost it somehow. I got a steady gig in a graphic design department, and at first, I totally got along with my co-workers and we seemed to share a sensibility. Then, for some reason—maybe it’s my age (I was the youngest one), the new department head, an off-the-mark project I completed, I don’t know—the group consensus turned on me and I was treated like an untalented hack for the first time in my life. I’ve never dealt with this before, and I still don’t get it, because the higher-ups were still pleased with my work even if my peers decided it sucked, and I was always nice to everyone. The only thing that did happen was that I started to doubt my ideas more, because every time I’d come up with something I’d immediately think of all the reasons my co-workers would hate it. After a few months of this, I couldn’t take it anymore, so when a college friend told me there was an opening at his work, I jumped on it. The problem is that I still can’t get that negativity and doubt out of my head—maybe I am a hack, after all—and I’m terrified of starting this new job and either not coming up with anything good or not coming up with anything period until eventually I can’t get a job at all. I’m not good at anything else, but what if I’m not good at design anymore, either? My goal is to get my mojo back (or at least get these assholes out of my brain).

One of the curses of being talented, in arts or sports, is that talent becomes the heart of your self-esteem. Talent and ego have a flawed-yet-symbiotic relationship.

It’s particularly true if, like many talented people, you’re actually not so hot at doing other things. It’s as if your talent takes up extra brain-space, crowding out room for the basics and leaving you both gifted and klutzy, brilliant and ADD, hyper-capable and totally incompetent.

Other people might tell you that you’re good at other things, but those other people are wrong; they don’t have or understand an artistic mind. They had to decide on a career, whereas you probably felt like you didn’t have a choice. They also probably have health insurance.

What you’re “good at” is what you and others respect until you come to believe that nothing but hard work stands between you, success, and being a somebody. That’s when ego starts to assume you’ve got control over your artistic career when, in truth, no one controls art.

Even with all the hard work in the world, art is outside of your control. Sooner or later, you’ll perform poorly, perform well but meet an unresponsive audience, and/or get ill, injured, or misunderstood. And that’s when, if you rate yourself by performance, you’ll start to fear failure, and then fear the fear of failure, which is the fear of losing your mojo.

The feelings are awful and there’s no avoiding them. You can sense the rejection and feel your creative juices drying up, like you’ve lost your gift and can’t get it back. Meanwhile, you feel like there’s nothing good you’re good at. Without talent, ego feels like a total failure.

So here’s the hard part for people who want to do well at what they’re good at (and everyone else): develop a deeper set of values. You’ve already got the hard-work ethic for managing the controllable part of your gift—no need for improvement there. Now, learn to respect yourself for dealing with shit, which is just a technical term for that part of life that you don’t control.

Counter those fucked-up feelings with your beliefs; that you’ve done your best, and if you can’t do what you’re good at, you’ll do your best with other things. You’ll try to make a living and be a good friend. You’ll do what matters with what you’ve got.

Remember, what you admire most in others is not their ability to do great things, but to eat shit and still be a good person (unless, of course, you’re one of those shallow people who admire nothing but good performance, and then you don’t really have any friends and you’re probably an entertainment executive). Suck up the pain and remember who you are.

That’s the antidote to losing your mojo: redefining what you value. When you decide that mojo doesn’t matter, it comes back. When you care more about trying and less about results, results improve.

No one can stop the agony of unfulfilled talents, but the real challenge is to bear that pain, remember what you’re here for, and do what you can with what you’ve got until your ego’s healthy enough for talent to return.

That’s not easy to do—it’s a lot harder than being lucky and performing well—but it’s an art in itself, and a much higher achievement.

STATEMENT:
“I’m stuck with excruciating feelings of failure and self-doubt, but I have no doubts about my hard work or my ability to do whatever is necessary when I think it’s worth doing. I have no doubts about my ability to be a good friend. I will not let my feelings touch my self-respect.”

I can’t deny that I’ve had success as a musician—I’m well known in the area—but fashions have changed over the last few years and now gigs are far from plentiful. Financially, though I have a day job, I’m just getting by. I do my best to schmooze and talk up producers, but I’m basically a shy person who’s happiest to be alone, practicing. I know the economy is bad and every performing artist is having a hard time, but I can name at least 3 other musicians of my generation who are doing much better than I am because they’re more energetic and sociable and maybe more talented. I feel like a failure who’s wasted his life and watched his professional reputation ebb away and now I’m facing a sad end in a lonely rooming house. My goal is to turn this situation around.

As noted above, it doesn’t matter whether you’ve proven yourself as an artist; sooner or later, the pursuit of an artistic career exposes you to an unusual amount of shit you don’t control and, when that happens, it feels personal.

Fortunately, you’re too old and well-established to worry about the negative impact of your feelings on your music, and thus on your career, and thus on your music, etc. It’s good not to worry about the losing-your-mojo whirlpool.

It’s not much better, however, to fear that no one cares about your mojo, you’re facing a sad and lonely decline, and you’re sure it’s your own fault, as proven by the fact that your peers are doing better.

That kind of proof, however, is one of the nastier tricks the human mind plays on itself in the name of so-called reason. You know you’ve managed a good career for many years, in spite of a shy temperament, and you’ve never neglected the business side of music-making. You also know that other people’s gifts, both musical and non-, are different than yours. So real logic tells you that the only thing that deserves criticism is your luck.

If you believe in making music, you also know it’s a meaningful thing to do with your life, whether or not it pays. Remind yourself that no artist in his or her right mind expects to get rich and that living with poverty is part of your job description (though one you hope to escape).

Be proud of your choices and the good music that resulted. Keep with your successful formula, playing when you can and paying your bills when you’re able. Don’t doubt that you chose a tough life…and did well with it.

STATEMENT:
“When I’m poor, old, and gig-less, it’s hard not to feel miserable; but music is important, I worked hard at it, and I will not regret past or future sacrifices. Life is hard, but good music is forever.”

I was a terrible mother to my kids when they were younger—I yelled all the time and even hit them, and my husband had good reason to divorce me and allow nothing but occasional custody. Still, I love them dearly and I’ve always wanted to make amends; we’re all older now (they’re in their 20s), I’m a lot calmer after a lot of therapy to work through my anger issues. I’d do anything to help them, but one of them threatens to stop talking to me if I mention the fact that she drinks too much, and the other is polite but pretty distant. I feel I can’t get through to either of them because the mistakes of my past have ruined things forever. What can I do to mend our relationship?

I don’t doubt you want to help your kids, but that help comes with a high price– forgiveness for being an asshole when they were younger.

That was years ago, though, and you’ve continued to care for them and pay for them while learning to control your behavior (their being older probably helped). So before you ask how to get their forgiveness, ask what you have to do to forgive yourself.

Sure, an abusive mother is probably the most stigmatized villain in the world. What people forget about mommy dearest, however, is that some people have very little control over their tempers, including those who would really, really like not to be assholes.

Depression and bipolar illness can make people very irritable while weakening their self-control and their ability to see themselves. Some people are born with terrible tempers, so the personality you got is the personality you got and it’s what you do with it that counts. That you’re trying to do the right thing is commendable.

You’ve taken your lumps without blaming others or backing off. You can’t help having the temperament of an asshole, and you’re still trying to be a good mom. That takes strength, determination, and good values. Taming one’s temper is never easy, so be proud.

What you shouldn’t focus on is whether your kids accept your transformation and apology. (If one is alcoholic, she may not accept it unless you give her a drink). You goal isn’t to get absolution from her, but to be a good mother, despite the distance between you and your kids.

So instead of repeating your apologies, let them know you’re proud of what you’ve done with motherhood, in spite of a terrible beginning, and that you’ve got good love and good advice to give, if they want it.

That said, you won’t take shit, either from yourself or from them; asshole behavior, be it internal or external, will not be tolerated. If they can agree to those terms, then you will be there for them, anytime, free of charge.

STATEMENT:
“I wish I didn’t abuse the kids, but I can’t change the past. I’ve done lots of good things, too, to protect them from myself and help them grow up. Now what they need is not more apologies, but the knowledge that I’m here with good, safe parenting to offer. If they don’t take me up on it, I may feel hurt and cut off, but that happens to lots of good parents. I won’t let those feelings make me retaliate or grovel. Good parenting sometimes means waiting.”

My husband is a good guy, but sometimes he seems to take me for granted, particularly when his family asks him for help and me and the kids are expected to agree to being a lower priority. The other day he informed me, without saying please, that he had to leave me with the kids for the long weekend because he needed to drive his sisters to another city to visit his dying aunt. I let him know I don’t like the way they seem to come first and wondered where that leaves us. I think I’ve got good reason to gripe, but I can’t seem to get him to see what he’s doing wrong. What can I do to get him to see that it hurts me and us when he’s over-responsive to his family?

You know that getting your husband to see that he’s in the wrong won’t work. From his point of view, he’s on a mission of mercy and you’re needy, competitive, and lacking in compassion. You lost the argument before saying word one.

In addition, you may not be sure that your position is right. After all, you’re reacting to the fact that he didn’t say “please,” not to whether or not his weekend trip is necessary. He may have neglected to say please because he was nervous about possible criticism, thus making the criticism more likely. You don’t want to get drawn into a personal injury war over his tone of voice, when he might be right, and you might have to agree, about his actual choices.

So ignore his impolite presentation and examine the necessity of his making this weekend pilgrimage. Ask yourself how much good his trip is likely to for his aunt and her sisters, whether it will give him some good time with his aunts, and whether there’s no one else who can help them out. Obviously, it’s less necessary if his dying aunt is already in a coma and her sisters have other ways to travel.

If, after examining the facts, you think the trip isn’t worth it, let him know you appreciate his good intentions but that you’re questioning whether the outcome of his good deeds outweigh the burden on the rest of the family. You’re on the same side—you know he’s a responsible dad who also cares about his aunts—but you’re hoping he’ll do what he thinks is right, rather than be overly responsive to his aunts’ emotions.

Once you’ve created a context of respect and made the issue of his weekend commitment less personal, you can also tell him you wish he’d take you into his thinking before making decisions that affect your partnership. Your intention is not to trigger a conflict of loyalties nor to make it a question of whom he loves more, but to urge a method of decision-making that will benefit both of you with no arguing at all.

STATEMENT:
“It feels demeaning to be told, not asked, to do double weekend duty by my dearly beloved while he tends to the needs of his aunts, but he’s a good dad, and a good partner (usually), so I now have an opportunity to suggest better ways of communicating if I can just keep my anger out of it.”

I always suspected that I was attracted to women more than to men, but I liked my husband, and we’ve been good companions for the past 20 years. It hurt him deeply, however, that I wasn’t interested in him sexually and finally, when he pressured me to tell him what was wrong, I told him I thought I might be gay. Now he feels I lied to him, that our marriage has been meaningless, and he wants a divorce. Our life together is over and I feel totally to blame, like I’ve let down my husband and betrayed our marriage. What can I say to make amends?

There’s one important step people sometimes forget to take before making amends– asking yourself what you’ve done wrong.

Obviously, your husband is hurt and he thinks you’re to blame, but, as we’ve said many times, that’s the whole point of marriage—having someone to blame. Real sin requires knowing that you have something to hide, and that doesn’t seem to be the case.

With only 3 shopping days left until Yom Kippur, you might wish to remind yourself that the Day of Atonement, when Jews make a special effort to examine our sins, begins with a thrice-repeated statement claiming that no one should ever be responsible for vows they can’t keep.

In other words, life is often impossible and it’s not rationalizing to say you can’t be responsible for what you don’t control– it’s Old Testament.

So look what you’ve done with your (newly coined) homosexual feelings. You haven’t been unfaithful, or blamed your lack of attraction to your husband on his being fat. If you kept a secret from him, it was because you also kept it from yourself, and in spite of your uneasiness, you forged a 20 year relationship. That’s a major accomplishment for both of you.

So don’t let your sexual identity shock shake your confidence; you’ve taken a step forward that allows you to be more self-accepting and spontaneous. While it damages your husband’s matrimonial ideal, it shouldn’t diminish your pride in what both of you have done with the marriage so far, or your hope in what it might become in the future, if your husband calms down.

After all, this doesn’t need to be the end of your relationship; you maybe not have been a great sexual partner, but you’ve always been a great partner, and there’s no reason not to continue to be great friends.

STATEMENT:
“I wish our sexual chemistry and my sexual identity were less complicated, but I feel my husband and I have been good partners, not because of my lying, but in spite of it. I wish it didn’t hurt to face these sexual realities but I’m glad we did and think we can be better friends now that I no longer have to hide who I am.”

I would like to stay off pain pills and I attend AA meetings regularly, but I get the pills from an old friend of mine who also goes to the meetings. She’s been sick with HIV and needs all the support she can get, so we wind up hanging out and then getting high. I wish my husband gave me a little more credit for trying to stay clean, even if I haven’t been successful. It’s hard to say “no” to spending time with a dying friend.

Forget for a moment why other people think it’s bad for you to take pain pills; instead, do your own assessment, not just for whether the pills are bad, but for whether or not amends are in order.

Obviously, the good side is that they make you feel better and you enjoy passing time with a sick friend. Then again, pain pills have a magical ability to kill pain while also causing a ton of it.

Start with a checklist of possible negatives, so you won’t miss the big picture. Include the weekly cost and whether the pills interfere with your ability to work, either directly or by risking a positive drug screen. Ask friends and family whether they see a negative effect on your behavior, and ask yourself whether your focus on feeling better has pushed aside other priorities, like being a good friend or parent.

Finally, assess your friendship with this friend in the same way. Ask yourself whether this is a friend who, in addition to being fun to hang out with, is someone you can count on. Look carefully at whether the feel-good focus of the friendship excludes the more important priorities above.

You need to find your own reasons for being sober, and the strongest reasons will come, not from your need to please your husband or meeting-mates, but from your sense of what it takes to be a good person. As the AA saying goes, you are the reason for your own sobriety. If you’ve used drugs a long time, however, you tend to be super-aware of how other people feel about you and relatively insensitive to your own standards. Those standards give you the reasons to stay clean.

Remember, however, that standards aren’t the same as sentiments. You may feel like a good woman for supporting a sick friend—a nice sentiment—while failing to meet important commitments to manage your health, work, family and other friendships.

Be careful not to bullshit yourself, or your good deeds will, surprise, get you little appreciation or, more importantly, little self-respect. If keeping your friend company keeps you from doing the right thing, then, like the pills themselves, you’re causing more pain than you’re preventing.

STATEMENT:
I feel good when I can help out an appreciative pal and share some good times, but if I want to keep my relationships with people who really care about me, I need to put commitments ahead of good feelings.

My friends tell me I’m too good to my ex-wife because I always take care of her when she’s in town by giving her a place to stay, feeding her, and tending to her medical needs. Even our kids say she uses everyone, promises everything, and gives back nothing, and, after many years of marriage and an equal number divorced, I know they’re right. I argue back that it’s not smart for me to antagonize her after she’s promised me half the estate she inherited from her dad, but they tell me that she never keeps her promises and she always figures out a way to blow her money on impressing new acquaintances and going on shopping sprees. My goal is to find ways to protect myself and maybe satisfy my friends’ concerns without fighting with my ex- and maybe losing her bequest.

God bless the giving people of the earth—kindergarten teachers, foster parents, 02% of psychiatrists—but I’ve said many times that, no matter how saintly their exterior, the givers’ biggest recipient of generosity is often their immediate feelings.

Let’s face it, giving feels good (partly because it offers peace of mind to the persistently guilty), and that means it’s bad, at least under some circumstances. Giving too much, like any source of good feelings, is dangerous to you and detrimental to the object of your charity.

When you experience the joy of giving, you may be ignoring other personal responsibilities. You may also be enslaving yourself to someone who senses your secret addiction and threatens you with guilt if you don’t do what s/he wants.

Admit it, you’re not taking care of your ex- for her inheritance—you’d probably kill yourself helping her without a cash reward—but now that it’s in the picture, it should be a strong motivator to help less, not more. After all, the big risk here is that you’ll feel bitter if/when she dies and leaves you nothing, either because there’s nothing left or she gave it to her new best friend. Now your bullshit excuse is bullshit in more ways than one.

Meanwhile, your current relationship with her makes her too important, interfering with your ability to find better friendships. Giving can make a compulsive giver very passive, like a waiter (or worse, a manservant).

The opposite of giving isn’t overindulging yourself or aggravating your ex; it’s giving sensibly while considering all your responsibilities. There’s nothing wrong with being kind to your ex, but there’s no need to give unless you think it’s necessary and can afford it, meaning that you’re mindful of your own needs as well.

Ask yourself whether there’s a big trade imbalance between your exports and imports with her. If, when she comes to visit, you think the relationship is unbalanced (meaning she doesn’t put in the time and attention you would expect from a friend), then it’s not good for you.

If your relationship is one-sided, offer a plan for balancing it. Tell her you believe your relationship will work better, in the long run, if you readjust what you and she contribute. She could do this by creating a trust fund to protect your bequest, or making some regular or hourly gift for your services. You’re not critical of her character or past actions, just trying to protect a valued relationship from being spoiled by a destructive imbalance.

If she tells you that she’s entitled to your services and that you’re the one who is ungrateful and un-giving, don’t argue. Simply express your belief in what you think is best for the two of you and insist on your right to agree to disagree.

Don’t throw your friends and other family under the bus to give everything to the one person who doesn’t deserve it. Generosity may give you a buzz, but the cost doesn’t justify any of the rewards, real or fabricated.

STATEMENT:
“I believe it will do nothing but good to equalize the give and take of my relationship with my ex-wife and that it does no good to let fear, guilt or worry about her feelings control what I do. If she refuses to accept what I believe is a reasonable proposal and blames me for destroying our relationship, I will bear the pain of her criticism knowing that we’re both better off putting the manservant into retirement.”

My brother drives me crazy in many ways, but nothing is more infuriating than when he decides to attempt to be generous. He remembers my birthdays and urges me to tell him what I’d like him to get me, but then he doesn’t get around to buying it until my birthday is long past, if at all. The problem is that he has money, I don’t, and if I ask him for something, it’s probably because I can’t afford it myself. Then again, if I really, really need it, I have to get it for myself somehow, which then offends him (and pisses me off). He tells me I’m overly sensitive and paranoid about delays he can’t really help. If I offer him reminders, he acts like I’m nagging him and moves even slower. He’s always been competitive—is he rubbing in his success or just totally oblivious? Should I just stop expecting things from him altogether and get some space?

Poverty and neediness have a way of inspiring resentment and injury. If someone denies you when you’re poor (particularly when you’re not used to being poor), it feels like a personal insult that you should have avoided and should never tolerate again. So it’s entirely possible to feel shafted and shat upon by someone who basically has more good to offer than bad and doesn’t mean to hurt you.

If your feelings take over, you may drive away your pain-in-the-ass brother (assuming he’s not a total jerk), leaving you poorer and madder. It’s like a poverty riot that burns down your own neighborhood.

So put aside your poor-guy feelings and do a business-like evaluation of what your brother has to offer, taking care to value the ways you can count on him (if any) and the things you enjoy about his company. Feeling insulted is not as important as what you think about his ability to be a good friend (sometimes) and to add meaning to your life, simply by being your brother.

While you’re at it, examine whether he does his bait-and-delay to other people. Poverty makes neglect feel personal, but he may be treating you the same way he treats everyone.

If he’s a jerk who usually takes more than he gives (see case above), then you’re right to pull away. It’s sad, but the best you can do.

If, however, he’s not all that bad, then learn to suck up the pain of being a downwardly mobile member of a lower economic class and make the best of your relationship. Not to please him or your family, but for yourself.

STATEMENT:
“I can’t help being poor and having a brother who’s late on delivering stuff I really need, but I won’t let a little pride and/or fury get in the way of a relationship that I value.”

Please Note: There will be no new post on Monday due to the American firework festivities. We’ll return to posting on Thursday, assuming we don’t blow our fingers off.

I never feel as though I ultimately have any power in a relationship beyond what’s given to me by the woman I’m with. The early stages always evolve easily, organically, the two of us meeting each other’s needs. I give a lot of myself and feel very happy and safe and good as she reciprocates. At some point, however, an imbalance always arises, and I find myself doubling-down on staying patient and compassionate while she’s acting less committed to meeting my needs. It leaves me feeling confused and betrayed, like I’m serving at her pleasure, and if I complain, then that’s it, it’s over. This happens again and again and I sense I’m missing a transitional skill set. I’m not going to stop being the type who invests a lot emotionally in a woman I want to be with. The question is, how do I transition out of that early, romantic stage into something that allows me to stay compassionate but preserves my self-respect as things invariably start to get complicated?

Questions like this are tricky, because at best they’re vague, and at worst, they’re a tad creepy, because they refer to girlfriends entirely in terms of their impact on your feelings, rather than the details of who they are and what they do in life.

Since we’re all about giving our readers the benefit of the doubt, we’ll assume that just pointing out that girlfriends are people doesn’t solve your problem.

Instead, we’ll take it that your approach to relationships, like your case, is simply too reactive to your emotions, rather than self-involved and narcissistic.

In the absence of specifics, the main focus of this case seems to be the importance of meeting emotional needs in a relationship, and evaluating relationships in terms of how good they make you feel is obviously something we’d frown upon.

If you want your needs met in a relationship, it’s better to focus on what’s more tangible and under your partner’s control, e.g., she might not make you happy everyday, but, in the long run, you’re better off if she makes car payments on time (because you’d be pretty unhappy if visited by the repo man).

It’s up to you to define what you really need, choose someone who has the capacity to give it to you, and assess whether you’re getting enough to be worth the hard times when it feels like you’re getting nothing but crap. That sounds fairly business-like, and it needs to be business-like, because, otherwise, your feelings will run you into the ground.

If you rely on feelings alone to tell you what to do, any kind of mutual attraction will make you satisfied, whether the attraction is based on lust, money, infatuation, or a mutual hatred of the Yankees. Your needs will be met and so will hers, but meanwhile, you haven’t sized up whether she’s a steady person who shares your values and shows an ability to accept your less attractive qualities, and vice versa.

You’re not missing a transitional skill set, you’re just failing to define your values and do pre-screening. Yes, this process means forgoing the joys of fast romance and frustrating your short-term needs by going slow, doing fact-checking, and tolerating horniness, loneliness, or both until you’re confident you’ve got someone and something solid. It also means avoiding the kind of frustration described above.

Your current approach leaves you feeling betrayed and wondering what you did wrong. The more you accept those feelings as true, the more actively you’ll pursue anyone you’re attracted to, while feeling passively dumped once things don’t work out. You’ll become a depressed victim and wonderful shrink-fodder.

From now on, don’t invest a lot in anyone or anything, emotionally or otherwise, until you’ve checked them out carefully, drawing on your experience and self-knowledge. Focus on the details, if not for us, then for your own sake if you ever want an actual human wife.

STATEMENT:
“The more attracted I am to a woman, the harder I will try to remember what I’m looking for in a partner and look for evidence that she has it. Meanwhile, I will try to keep my heart and other organs under control.”

I’m scared by the way I’ve started to snap at my ailing parents. They expect me to do what my two older sisters used to do for them, but my sisters have moved away, and I’m not well, and there’s only so much I can do, but my parents don’t seem to understand that. I’m feeling drained and I want them to understand I’ve reached my limit. I can’t do any more.

When you’re a kid, it’s normal to regard your parents as the authority on needs. If they tell you you’re not meeting their need for you to do chores or school work, then so it was written you’re a bad kid.

You may complain that they aren’t fair, but you haven’t yet developed your own standards or the strength of mind to believe in them. If you feel unjustly accused, it’s hard to feel happy with yourself until they’ve withdrawn the accusation and declared you innocent.

Now, like a lot of adults, you feel the same way, even though you’ve probably developed your own standards for what a good person should do to help her parents. If you were judging a friend, you’d expect her to respond to her parents’ needs by doing anything that would make a difference, that couldn’t be done by others, and that she could afford to do, given her other obligations.

You’d also point out that she had little control over most of their problems and should be careful not to give herself responsibility for them. You’d remind her that her parents had less ability than ever to judge her actions and restrain themselves from complaining or making her feel responsible for their pain.

So caring for your parents is a trying time. If you listen to them as a child would, however, you’ll knock yourself out and resent them for never being satisfied or appreciative. You’ll get nasty, helpless, and passive. Victimized, you’ll talk yourself into feeling desperate.

If you’ve learned by living and watching them, however, you can use your own standards of right and wrong to protect yourself from their unhappiness, and the guilt it triggers. If they don’t like your performance, you can agree to disagree. You can find your own balance between meeting their needs and attending to your own, without needing their approval.

Take time to consult your own standards, and don’t respond to them before you do. Dismiss the kid who wants to be approved and understood. They need grown-up help now, and if you can act like one, you’ll wind up giving them better care without losing track of your own needs.

STATEMENT:
“It hurts to see my parents struggle and hear their disappointment with me, but I know I love them, I’m determined to help them, and I believe I can do a good job of caring for them without having to do everything they ask or winning their approval. I just have to do what I think is right. “

I have a friend who has a history of being diagnosed with depression, self-mutilation and, recently, suicidal thoughts. She was forced to seek treatment with a counselor in HS (now 24-years-old) whom she said was no help, and now she says she won’t ever seek treatment again because it won’t help her. She acknowledges she has issues that need addressing, but she doesn’t believe in mental illness diagnoses, states she just needs to “deal” with it. However, all we talk about is how much she hates her life, hates feeling this way but isn’t willing to do anything about it. I’ve told her she’s an adult, and makes her own decisions and no one can force her to do anything, but I’ve been very honest with my concerns about her, and that she needs help. I don’t want to treat her with kid gloves or enable her but I also don’t know how much I can push her, since I know its her mental illness that’s clouding her view of the world/reality. How can I continue to be a good friend without beating my head into a wall and enabling her?

For many people, “help” and “cure” have become interchangeable words, as if good motivation and proper treatment will always make things better (tell that to the common cold).

Sadly, the help your friend needs, just like a cure for what ails her, may or may not exist, depending on her luck, the severity of her issues and whether she sees them as hers or just a reaction to other people.

Regardless of treatment, the normal course for severe problems like depression, eating disorder, and urges to hurt yourself are the same; off and on, for many years. There is certainly no cure, and very rarely can anyone provide the help to stop recurrence completely.

Don’t then assume that treatment would make your friend feel better if she were “willing to do something about it,” because, unfortunately, this might not be true. After all, she was willing to try something, and it simply failed to take.

Instead, find out what she knows about the various kinds of treatment available to her and what she thinks about their possible benefits and risks. If she lumps them all together as useless because the one didn’t work, you have good reason to warn her against the power of negative thinking when people are in pain and/or depressed.

If you can persuade her that depression-pumped negative thinking has clouded her judgment into fearing and avoiding options that are worth exploring, you’ve also provided her with some excellent cognitive therapy and shown her that she needs it—a beneficial trifecta. If not, you’ve shown yourself that she’s too negative to be logical, you’ve been as helpful as you can be, and you just can’t get penetrate her depressive pseudo-logic.

Never buy the idea, however, that you have to get better to get better. If she has, in actuality, exhausted all likely treatments and nevertheless keeps trying to work and be a good friend, respect what she’s doing, because that’s what beating an illness is all about.

It’s easy when treatment works, but the true heroes are the ones who keep on going when it doesn’t. If you’re there for her during that struggle, that’s the best kind of help there is.

STATEMENT:
“I hate to see my friend suffer and I’m worried that she could do herself serious harm, but I know that mental illness and negative thinking can brainwash good people and that help, from me or a professional, is not necessarily the answer. I will always insist that there is a hopeful way forward, but accept the fact that she may not agree and that argument is not helpful.”

I can’t stand the way I’ve become a disorganized idiot when I used to be incredibly good at juggling multiple responsibilities. I’m only 35-years-old and, while becoming a father has been stressful, it shouldn’t have destroyed my basic organizational abilities. Admittedly, I ‘ve been through a major depression or two, but I’m in a good mood now, I love my work, I’ve got a great wife, and my life isn’t a lot more complicated than it used to be. Nevertheless, I ruminate over tasks that go nowhere, get distracted before I get important things finished, forget my priorities and miss important meetings. I’m a mess, I’m an incompetent ditz, and I hate it. Medications haven’t helped so far, and neurological tests show nothing. There must be something that will give me back my competence.

If there was some way to restore your mojo, you probably would have found it by now, because you’ve had yourself evaluated and tested, and you’ve tried treatments and nothing has worked. In other words, here lies your mojo, may it rest in peace.

It’s sad, but I’ve seen this kind of acquired ditziness happen to people who’ve had a bad depression or two, as well as to people who’ve been concussed. Things may get better in the long run.

Meanwhile, a part of your brain has shut down, even though you feel normal in every other way and nothing shows up on an MRI. Only a voodoo doctor will notice the missing mojo, and your insurance won’t cover all the chicken blood that likely requires.

On the plus side, there’s lots you can do to help yourself if you stop trying to turn the clock back and substitute your old brain for the one you’ve now got. Yes, it’s humiliating, but so is a colonoscopy. Accept it, and you can keep yourself in the clear.

You can ask your wife and friends for help, take a course on organizational techniques, buy a to-do calendar book to write down priorities and create a schedule. You can also put alarms into your smartphone, and set up habits for checking your book, your messages, and your checkbook. Accept the need to learn simple, dumb-looking methods for doing things you used to accomplish intuitively, and you may be able to compensate 100% for your dysfunction.

Ambitious perfectionists fight this notion, because they want to control their lives in their heads. They get mad at themselves for losing control, then depressed, then more dysfunctional, and then more depressed. They also keep me from becoming unemployed.

Fighting your ambitious nature will not be easy, but remember, your goal isn’t to be who you were; it’s to be organized enough to make a living, run a family, and keep your life together, that’s all. The next step is to accept that what used to feel like “that’s all?” is now “that’s a lot.”

STATEMENT:
“I feel like a brain-damaged ex-whiz kid, but my real goals haven’t changed. If I can force myself to endure rehabilitation, and become competent enough to keep my major commitments, it will be the biggest achievement of my life so far.”

Is infidelity a sign of some problem in a relationship or just a natural and inevitable part of relationships? I feel it as a betrayal and my partner feels it has nothing to do with us and has no effect on our relationship. Is it possible to have a relationship between two people who feel differently about this issue?

There’s not much point in having a partner if you can’t count on him (and we’ll assume it’s a him); what doesn’t work for cops doesn’t work for civilians, either. First, however, you gotta figure out what you want to count on him for.

There are partners—admittedly, they’re rare—who have compulsively wandering weenuses but are reliable when it comes to covering the kids, the bank account, and your back. They won’t keep secrets from you, other than the tales of their penis’s travels.

It may be humiliating to be married to a guy like that, but the lifestyle and dinner table conversation may be worth it, particularly if he’s rich and famous. It’s fun to be king, and fun to hang out with him (at least until the press catches on to his shenanigans).

At least you know, from what they do, that it’s not personal. Your partner, for instance, is telling you that he is who he is, not that you’re not lovable. For you, relationships include monogamy, and for him, they don’t, no matter whom he’s partnering with.

So, as usual, the person you really need to consult is yourself. You want to know whether your heart can stand the strain, not to mention the ability of the rest of your body to fend off STDs.

The trouble is, the more vulnerable your heart, the more likely you are to fall for the guy because you love him, regardless of the fact that you probably knew, right from the start, that he is a wanderer. Your heart is also more likely to talk you into the false hope that that he’ll change, or you’ll change, and it will be OK. If that happens, the betrayer isn’t him or his parts, but your own little heart persuading yourself that you can get him to change.

The other risk of partnering with a wandering guy is that they often forget the facts of life—their penises have about the same brain-power as your heart—with the result that there’s another unexpected kid out there with a legitimate (or illegitimate) claim to your family resources. That’s a surprise that can send the wanderer on the lam for good.

If you’re honest in presenting yourself with the risks and benefits of your decision, you’ll never be a victim. Know your heart, however, and remember that he’s not going to change, and neither are the facts of life. Trust your ability to decide.

STATEMENT:
“I’m angry and hurt by my partner’s infidelity, but it’s a waste of time to argue, with him or myself, about whether he should change or be ashamed, because the real question is whether I can stand him the way he is, accepting that he’s not going to change and that there’s a price to be paid for loving him.”

I was pleased at first when the middle school principal took an interest in my 12-year-old daughter—he ran into her every day at the crosswalk in front of the school, and he liked her for all the right reasons—but now it’s 7 years later, she’s in college, he’s 45 and divorced with 2 kids, and their relationship has become serious. As a father, I can’t tell her to drop him because he has a reputation for being a good guy and makes no secret of the fact that he loves her. In any case, she won’t listen and will just pull back from me, which will reduce my influence even more. My goal is to get her to drop him before she gets trapped in something that really won’t be good for her.

As always, if you want to have an impact on your kid, don’t blurt out your fears. You’ll go from being a knowing authority to the scared party that needs convincing, instead of the other way around.

If you imply she’s too easily influenced by a guy old enough to be her father (it will be hard for you to avoid that phrase, but avoid that phrase), she’ll show you you’re wrong, by defying her actual father. If you talk about his baggage—age, ex-wife, child support—she’ll see a man in need of love and a family that she can heal.

Instead, put your protective emotions aside, treat her like an adult, and ask her how she sees the advantages and disadvantages of this kind of partnership. Respect the obvious advantages, i.e., he’s a guy who seems solid (although you want to know more about what happened to his marriage), probably makes her feel safe and secure, and has a lot to teach her (no snideness intended).

Then make sure she considers the obvious drawbacks, as if you were discussing a business deal. If the attraction is fueled by the normal admiration a young person, uncertain about her gifts and independence, feels for an accomplished person who knows the ropes, or by the pleasure it gives the old guy so admired, there’s a risk. After all, things will change as she grows older, acquires more confidence (partly thanks to him), feels more like a peer, and wonders whether they really have that much in common any more. Both of them have a lot to lose.

Unless she makes a good living and saves up some money, there’s also a risk she’ll help take care of his kids without there being enough left over for the two of them or for starting a family, so advise her to watch how he manages his competing obligations. He should do right by his kids without being overly responsive to his first family with time, money, or emotional reactivity.

If he has credit card debt, or doesn’t manage his money carefully, her admiration will disappear the moment they have to pay for something big together, whether it’s upsized digs or a hospital bill. She’s thinking love, but you need to channel Jane Austen and think money.

Don’t expect to change her mind. All you can do is alert her to possible roadblocks and disappointments while making it clear that your main interest is her best interest and that you accept her, regardless. Then you’ll make it clear that if she’s interested in a man who really is like her father, he’d want her to do what’s right for her and not bind her to premature or crippling commitments.

STATEMENT:
“I’m sad and worried about my daughter’s relationship with an older guy, but I’ll make clear that the risks I see are not due to her being foolish or her boyfriend’s not being a nice guy, but to the fact that life is hard and that their age difference puts horrible stresses on relationships as time goes by.”

I need to find a doctor who will tell my daughter she needs to take her medication. She’s always had a problem with depression, and she did well in high school when she took antidepressants. Now, however, she’s 24 and very reactive to however she’s feeling, whether it’s not getting out of bed, or not working, or feeling dizzy and deciding it’s the medication and stopping it. My husband and I can’t get her to stick with anything, and she won’t listen to us in any case, so our goal is to get you, or some professional, to tell her what she needs to do.

Whenever parents want a doctor to tell their kid what to do, you can be pretty sure they’ve lost faith in themselves and overestimated the power of communication/a medical degree.

And no, it doesn’t matter how old the kid is or how many Harvard degrees the doctor has; the doctor doesn’t have more power than the parents, no matter how powerless the parents feel.

In your case, I don’t know whether your daughter can be induced to take her medication, but I do know that she’s not going to be persuaded by the authority of a doctor at the age of 24 if her own experience and your words haven’t done it by now.

The probable reason for her unresponsiveness, by the way, isn’t stubbornness or a lack of respect, but a lack of control over her own impulsivity (probably enhanced by depression). In other words, it’s not clear she can make herself take medication regularly, even if she sincerely believes she needs it. At some point, other impulses take over, like the impulse to stay in bed indefinitely.

Fortunately, even though persuasion is probably useless, you have other tools that a mere doctor can’t touch. You can access them if you believe you know what your daughter needs, regardless of what she has to say about it.

For instance, if you believe that she needs to get up early and follow a daily activity regimen, then let her know that’s what you’ll pay for. If she says she’s too blah, tell her you know it’s hard, but she needs to try, and that she might be able to do it if she puts together a schedule and asks friends to help her keep it.

If she argues that she can’t do it until she feels better, tell her that you don’t know when she’ll feel better, so she’d better start trying to keep busy now, and maybe that will help her feel better later. Your tone should say that you believe what you believe, and there’s no point in arguing.

If she tells you that you don’t know what she needs, tell her that you’re the mother and you have a good idea what she needs. Don’t ask a doctor to be the authority– get whatever information you need from the doctor, and then assume you’re the authority. At 4 or 24, your kid needs to hear the same thing; you’re the mommy, that’s why. End of discussion.

If your incentives don’t work, don’t blame her or yourself, because, again, you don’t know whether she’s too sick to have the control she needs. By putting a priority on self-control, however, you provide her with a blueprint for moving forward that is not reactive to negative feelings or thoughts or painful side-effects.

You’re urging her to embrace goals that arise from her values and that she can stick with, regardless of how she feels or how much she accomplishes. Knowing medicine isn’t as important as knowing your daughter and what’s best for her. If she won’t listen to me, you can, and I’m telling you you’re the most qualified professional for the task.

STATEMENT:
“I’d like to think my daughter could respond to persuasion from someone she respects, but I suspect it’s not true. I’ll push her towards doing as much as she can, regardless of how she feels, and hope that incentives for good habits will take over where persuasion has failed.”

I need an answer about what’s wrong with me, medically. I’ve always been healthy and athletic, right into my early 70s, and if there’s something I can do to improve my health, I’ll do it. Along with my husband, I ran a small company before I retired, and I’m good at getting things done. Lately, however, I’ve been having bowel problems and dizzy spells and fatigue that no one can explain, and I’ve gone to some terrific doctors. It’s gotten me down, and I haven’t been exercising or getting out as much as before. I need some answers about my medical problems so I can get going and get my old life back.

The weak side of being a great problem-solver is that it’s hard to change your expectations when you hit a wall, and old age is a wall. You’re accustomed to believing in the value of hard work, perseverance, intelligence and ingenuity. That’s a dangerous belief when their value happens to be zero.

What happens when hard work, and your belief in hard work, don’t work, is that you feel like a failure, try harder, and feel worse. You can’t undo the effects of aging, but you can always make them worse. I’m sure that isn’t a comfort, but it’s the truth.

Give yourself credit for getting yourself the best medical care, and then suck it up and admit that there’s nothing more you can do to get a diagnosis or find a cure. Cry if you must, but then figure out what comes next (besides death, which is everyone’s sad conclusion).

What comes next, once you give up on getting to the bottom of your medical problems, is using your good, well-developed discipline to get yourself going and re-claim as many of your old activities as possible. If being strong means achieving great results every day, then you may never be strong again. If you decide, however, that being strong means achieving all you can with limited equipment, then you’re about to become stronger than you’ve ever been.

Once you accept that there’s no curative treatment for aging or mortality, you can explore a wide range of treatments, including medication, that may improve your symptoms. Nobody lives forever, but there are plenty of ways to live a little better, and do what’s meaningful despite diminished capacity, at any age.

STATEMENT:
“It feels like a defeat to accept the limitations of age, but it’s actually a bigger defeat not to. Once I’ve completed a reasonable search for a definitive answer, I need to stop myself from searching further and re-order my priorities. I’ve got defective equipment and correcting the defect isn’t my department. I will do my best with the equipment I’ve got.”

I was a wild girl as a teenager and took drugs and cheated on my boyfriends, but one of them stuck by me and now I’ve got a good marriage and 2 nice kids. Life has been pretty good to me, but lately, I don’t know whether it’s getting older or having some acquaintances die, but I feel preoccupied with death and a feeling of not being a very good person. I mean, focusing on those things makes me feel ungrateful, because I’ve been so lucky, but then I feel guilty that I’ve had so much while people I came up with didn’t get the same things I did. I wish I wasn’t so worried about death and thinking about what a jerk I was and how I didn’t get what I deserved.

What we all deserve is a good childhood and a decent set of genes. What most of us actually get doesn’t come close.

Instead, most people end up with a random mishmash that easily includes an extra dose of wildness and parents who are too wild themselves to help us manage our own impulses (the apple, and the genes, don’t fall far from the tree). In a world that’s this unfair, nobody can claim to deserve anything.

If you’re disturbed by the unfairness of life, especially the way it doesn’t punish you the way you deserve, you’re not alone (although it might not comfort you to know you’re in the same company as Woody Allen). Think of it as an instinct, a need for justice, that’s both good and bad.

The good side is that a passion for justice helps you be fair with your kids, and keep your mean side under control. The bad side is that it gets you mad and upset when things aren’t fair, which causes you to try to straighten things out, which, in this messy world, usually winds up with causing more unfairness (see: Vietnam). Instead, you need to get used to living with the feeling and keeping your hands folded in front of you.

The awareness of death is another one of those painful feelings that can be good or bad. The bad part is that it’s painful to lose people or die before your time or die almost any time (unless you’ve been previously softened up by a long, punishing course of illness, suffering and disability, and that’s another story).

The good part is that death-awareness helps you get your priorities straight. Yes, you’re gonna die, but that should make you think hard about what matters today. Hint: it’s not about feeling better, being happy, or owning more. It’s about doing whatever you think is important.

So what counts is what you do with this mess. If your boyfriend loved you enough to stick by you, you were smart enough to appreciate and take advantage of what he was doing, which means you both deserve credit. You’re not into drugging and excitement, but building a family together.

You’ve done the right thing, but don’t expect it to make your pain go away. Life isn’t just unfair, but painful and difficult. Don’t feel guilty that you’ve avoided so much of that pain, but proud that you’ve achieved so much in spite of your flaws. Doing good things, in spite of losing friends and facing death, is what makes us great.

STATEMENT:
“Life has been better to me than it was when I started out, and that’s partly because I’ve done the right thing and I’m on a good course. Sometimes I feel like I don’t deserve it or that I should be more happy than I am. Wrong. Unhappy feelings are part of the territory, part of what I work with. Fuck’em. I’m proud of my ability to ignore them.”

I don’t know why, but my grandmother always relies on me whenever she has a problem with her health, her roof, her taxes, whatever. She doesn’t rely on my mother, because she’s a flake, and she doesn’t rely on my brother, because she sees him as an important lawyer who doesn’t have the time to spare on her little problems. I’ve always pitched in because I’m a good guy who likes to care for people, (I’m a social worker), but I realized, recently, that my grandmother has willed the largest part of her estate to my brother because she assumes I can take care of myself and besides, I’m gay and don’t have any children. My goal is to deal with how angry I am and get my grandmother to see that she’s being unfair.

There’s no way you’re going to make things fair in your family (see above) or change your grandmother, so ask yourself instead what you can do with the situation as it is. I know that doesn’t take care of your anger, but that’s the idea, because almost anything that makes your anger better makes things worse. Anger is only useful to actors, professional fighters, and hack comedians. For everyone else, it’s a detrimental, dangerous pain in the ass.

It’s nice that your grandmother has money; that means she can pay for services without your having to worry about what will happen to her if you don’t help. Which allows to me to review the Three Laws of Giving.

1) Don’t give unless it will actually do some good (not a problem here, because your grandmother doesn’t misuse help). 2) Don’t give beyond what you can afford (meaning you’ve got other responsibilities). 3) Don’t give when it would be better for someone else to do it, and that’s the one that applies here.

If you charge market rate for your services, then your grandmother gets what she needs from someone she loves, and you get paid for your time and a little bit of the lost inheritance. Everyone wins, no one blows a gasket.

You can always try to overcome your grandmother’s prejudice by noting how much you enjoy helping people and how much more you could do if you weren’t as tight for cash. That’s the same pitch you would make with any potential funding donor. Beyond appealing to her rationality and generosity, however, you don’t want to go.

Most prejudiced people tend to feel it’s the other guy’s fault, so confronting them usually causes nothing but conflict. You might feel proud of yourself if you stand up to her, but when you add in the pain it causes her and everyone else involved, and her inability to understand where you’re coming from, it’s probably not worth it. You’re not an ultimate fighter, you’re a put-upon grandchild; don’t get angry, get paid, and then, get over it.

STATEMENT:
“I’m proud that I like to help people and I’m getting smarter about doing it while keeping other things in mind, like my obligation to take care of myself and consider other values and priorities. I can’t help but feel angry at my grandmother; but I will keep that feeling under wraps, if necessary, while I stick with my original goals.”

I’ve been very helpful and patient with my husband since he suffered brain damage after being hit by a car, but I’ve just about had it. Everyone in our families focuses on finding a new treatment for him, and we’re all happy that he’s recovered some functions and can now talk and stand up. The trouble is, I’m exhausted, I’ve got no time to go out and make a living, and he’s gotten into the habit of telling me what I’m supposed to do without a please, thank you or may I. My goal is to set him straight and let him know I can’t keep it up at this pace and that he needs to improve his tone.

Setting someone straight when he wants too much from you usually leads to a guilt fest; you make him feel guilty, he guilts you right back, and it’s a regular guiltapalooza.

You wouldn’t be knocking yourself out in the first place if you didn’t feel responsible and, yes, guilty for not doing more. Of course, you may be knocking yourself out doing things that are really, really necessary, but that’s unlikely. Guilt rarely works that way.

Almost always, the #1 reason for exhaustion is that you’re already doing everything you’re asked to do and everything you can think of that could possibly be helpful, regardless of whether they’re likely to help or have been done before, so of course you get tired and cranky and afraid of the limitlessness of the task you’ve accepted for yourself.

If you complain, prepare to feel guiltier, particularly if you seem angry at a hapless victim of brain damage who needs your love and support, which obliges you to do even more and so gooses the RPMs on your vicious-cycle-mobile.

If you’re lucky, your husband will understand your feelings and change his tone, but his brain damage may not let him. And your families may channel their own guilt into expectations about what you’re supposed to do, and so react negatively to your protest like Monday morning homecare quarterbacks.

Instead, consult your own standards about how much a good person should do. Without compromising on your determination to help your husband, question the need for each treatment based on how likely it is to help, how much of an improvement it is over doing something easier, and how well it seems to be working. Ask the doctors how long you need to try a treatment before deciding whether it’s helping, what you should look for, and what you should do if that treatment doesn’t work.

You’re not young, you’ve been married a long time, and you’ve become an expert on his illness; you’re entitled to draw your own conclusions about treatment because you’re in the best position to observe how well your husband responds. You’re the one responsible for the tough decisions, and, while that might seem to be a source of guilt, it also gives you the right to do what you think is best.

So don’t focus too much on his tone of voice or the advice you’re getting from the family. Educate yourself, observe, and make your own decisions. Then you’ll be able to say “no” to your husband when necessary without become negative, either to him and to yourself, and give the guilt fest a rest.

STATEMENT:
“I wish I could do more to help, but we’re stuck with a limited amount of time and, at some point, a level of damage that won’t go away and that we’ll have to learn to live with. It’s bound to get frustrating and you may well want me to do things I can’t do, even though I’d like to if I had more time and energy or good reason to think they could help. Regardless of your frustration, or even criticism, I’ll always do what’s important and we’ll get through this together.”

My wife and I have been depressed lately since we looked at our finances to see when we could retire. A lot of our friends are preparing to retire and spend time with the grandkids. We realized that my wife’s divorce 20 years ago destroyed her savings and my job doesn’t have any retirement or pension plan, so we’re really screwed. It’s clear we don’t have any good prospects for retiring, other than living in a trailer down by the river, and that we’ll be left behind when our friends up and fly south. I should be happy that we’re healthy and like our work, but I’m not. We both made mistakes, and now we’re paying for them.

Modern expectations are a killer when it comes to almost everything associated with happiness: health, sex, money, relationships, and aging. Retirement seems to cover all those bases and more.

TV ads make it seem that you should always get a good result if you work hard, exercise, and buy the right products. Experience, on the other hand, says that life is hard and lots of good, hard-working people don’t control their happiness or ability to reach their “golden years:’ and, if they do, it gets taken away from them without notice.

The answer isn’t to find a guy in the gutter so you can feel thankful for what you’ve got; that’s a dumb idea that will always come back to bite you. If you’re supposed to thank God for your good luck, then you’ve got good reason to complain and feel angry and/or to blame for your load of shit. Never thank God, because he has a wicked sense of humor.

The idea of luck is that you don’t receive it for any reason—it just is—so don’t make believe there’s a good luck fairy you can thank or piss off, or you’ll feel much worse when it’s your turn to suffer. Accept what you don’t control, even if it means trailer living.

Focus on what you do with the shit that comes your way. Baby, you’re not a rich man, but it sounds like you and your wife married well, after a hard start, and that you’ve done well by one another. You haven’t spent money on bad things, and worrying about life hasn’t driven you apart. That’s a major achievement and one to be proud of; prouder than being rich and retired.

If there’s a big difference in income between you and your friends, well, who cares. Soon enough, it will tell you who your real friends are. I’m not saying it doesn’t suck to be working hard when your back hurts and your bladder has declared its independence from central control, but you should never, ever let your hurt affect your pride. Even if you keep working, you can happily retire from petty bullshit.

STATEMENT:
“I don’t want to be working and there’s no reason I should be slaving away when my friends can afford to take it easy; but life was never fair and there’s nothing wrong with the way my wife and I have handled our money. We believe in paying our bills, being independent, and helping others, and that’s what we do. Not being able to retire sucks, but that’s not our department.”