I can’t get my ex to forgive me, even though I had good reason for doing the things he’s mad about. He’s the one who said we should just be friends (no sex) after we’d been living together for years, which was OK with me, but then when he found out, by accident, that I had a discreet fling (I like sex), he flipped out and told all our friends I’d betrayed him, and walked out. I can’t get him to see I care or that he really has no grounds to be pissed, and it’s an awful way to end things. I now know what his parents meant when they told me years ago he was difficult. My goal is to get him and others to see that I wasn’t a slut and that our relationship wasn’t a farce.

Even before the existence of cable news, gossip websites, and Stephen Colbert, opinion has come more from feelings than facts.

Your hyper-emotional ex sees the past through the “veil of truthiness,” so determining the meaning of what happened is something you’ll have to do on your own.

In any case, if your goal is to persuade someone that you aren’t so bad, you’re fairly screwed. Certainly, in this case you’re unlikely to succeed, no matter what, and the more you struggle, the more defensive you appear to your ex and all the spectators he summoned to watch.

What’s worse, however, is that trying to change someone’s mind about your integrity tends to elevate the importance of his opinion over your own and make him feel he can hurt you by withholding his approval.

Of course, you’re both hurting, and it can’t be helped. Talking about who’s hurting more, however, or who hurt whom, or who shouldn’t feel hurt, or who doesn’t have a right to punish whom, is a great way to have a really horrible conversation. Enter a misery pissing contest, and you just walk away with the urine of self-pity stinging your wounds.

Instead, investigate his complaint of infidelity by focusing on the facts of the case and your definition of a moral-enough response. Start by reviewing what you said and did, and if you decide you acted like a jerk, apologize and focus on your efforts to keep yourself in check in the future.

If you decide your behavior was good enough, however, don’t apologize. Either way, don’t consider whether you could have prevented his pain. That kind of would’ve-should’ve thinking will drive you crazy with guilt and prevent you from giving yourself a fair trial.

While it may go against lady instinct, don’t seek understanding or support from your friends. It’s nice to know that they care and it may be helpful to hear their views, but a good judge can’t let herself become dependent on reassurance.

The most important part of your assessment is factoring out blame and negative emotion in whatever went down. Go through the events and determine the actual truth to figure out if, according to you, you aren’t so bad.

And if you do come out thinking less of yourself, go before the jury of your peer (still you) to figure out what to do next.

STATEMENT:
“I know you feel betrayed and hurt. I’ve thought hard about what I might have done wrong. There’s something in our chemistry that has been splitting us up for the last few years and that may be why we stopped having sex. I don’t think it was your fault or my fault, because I don’t think either of us did anything terribly wrong. It was sad to be drifting apart, particularly since we’ve been good friends and partners in many ways for many years. When you’re hurting, it’s tempting to think that the whole relationship sucked. Don’t accept that idea. I don’t.”

Raising a family hasn’t brought me any of the warm fuzzy feelings I thought it would. For years I would get home after a brutal day’s work and listen to my 3 kids whine and fight while my wife did nothing to stop them. No one had any interest in hearing about my day or my opinion, so I’d go to my den right after dinner and put on the earphones and play computer solitaire until bedtime. No conflict, but I wasn’t happy. Now my oldest is finished high school and he’s always disagreeable with me and blames me for everything. My goal is to figure out what went wrong and who’s responsible and why everyone’s miserable.

It’s impossible to figure out who did what wrong after you’ve started doing something wrong yourself. It also doesn’t matter.

As long as your first priority is pinning the blame, you’re going to have unpleasant conversations that will give you the brief pleasure of unloading followed by the exasperation of being unloaded upon.

Whether you hire a family therapist to preside or not, such conversations are seldom good for you. We often compare the unloading process to releasing a large fart (cathartic for you, poisonous for everyone else), but no matter how you look at it, venting stinks.

Running a family requires you to follow a higher priority, which is to get the best behavior out of your kids regardless of whether you’re feeling exhausted, neglected or disrespected. By that logic, you should have tolerated bickering more and played solitaire less, but your son’s decision to designate you as loser of the blame game won’t fix the past.

Now, you’re stuck in a game of “you ignored me, so I’ll ignore you, no I’ll ignore you more, no I don’t even see you so I can’t ignore you.” This isn’t parenting, this is a vicious circle you don’t want.

So, when your son decides to confront you, don’t share your negative feelings, though you’ve certainly got a right to feel them. If you guilt or intimidate the kids into acting nicer, they’ll get you later.

Forget who started it or who’s the biggest jerk. It’s your job to break the log jam and move things forward, and you do that by being a good guy, which you can do at anytime, even after your kid finishes med school and becomes a shrink to figure out how to deal with dads like you.

STATEMENT:
“I know I’ve been reclusive in the past, but I’m interested in what my kids have been doing, and I think it’s time I made that clear. I understand that they may not initially welcome my attention, perhaps because they’ve learned to shut me out, or they may be jerks. Whatever. I’ll be consistently friendly and interested over a long period of time and that will either lead us to reconnect or let me know which kids aren’t going to. Whatever happens, I won’t let my fatigue or neediness stop me from being an available, positive father.”

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.

Know your exact strain of chronic unhappiness so you can figure out what you can and can’t do with each one. Depression is unique in being a thought-distorting illness: it’s more than a poor outlook or a bad mood caused by bad luck or a rough divorce (or both at once). It’s a bad mood that goes on and on, even when you win the lottery or hit your 50th anniversary.

As an illness, it hits you with a variety of complicated, brain-related symptoms, like messed-up sleep, appetite, focus, energy, social urges, and sexual reflexes, and that’s not counting the storms of anger and/or anxiety. It’s a bad mood on steroids.

Having an unhappy life, on the other hand, can make you depressed, but not necessarily. Some people with happy lives can get very depressed, and some people with grumpy personalities aren’t depressed, although other people may wish they were. In each case, figure out, through trial and error, what you can and can’t do. Each strain is unique.

To “get over” your “getting over,” try cognitive therapy. It protects you from negative thinking by attacking the plausible, idiot assumptions you make without thinking, the most dangerous of which is that you should be able to get over chronic unhappiness.

Once you’ve done what you can do with your particular flavor, whatever that is, give up and chill out. It’s time to go on with work and relationships, however much your chronic unhappiness hurts or slows you down. The better you do that, the more you’ll grow.

No, no one should be grateful to aging, loss, and chronic pain—I think we’d all be happier with fewer “growth opportunities”—but there’s no choice. This is the life we’ve been given, so take pride in what you do with it, with or without depression (or a brain tumor).

STATEMENT:
“I don’t know why these blues won’t leave me alone. Maybe I inherited them as part of a gene-package deal from my creative, reach-out-and-connect-with-people ancestors. In any case, I’ve done what I can to manage them and I haven’t let them make me lazy or isolated or self-absorbed, and that’s a major accomplishment (which I’d be happy to do without).”

My younger brother is four years younger than me—that makes him 26, but you’d never know it because he acts like a freaking toddler. He’s not mentally impaired, he’s responsibility impaired. He dropped out of college to “find himself,” and he’s still searching, sometimes getting crappy jobs but mostly going on “adventures” and landing our parents with the bill (and sometimes the bail). I love him, but the older we get, the more I worry, because our parents won’t be around forever and I can’t be the one to clean up his messes—I’m not rich and I have my own kids to care for. Is there anyway to get him to take life a little more seriously?

Sorry for the obvious response, but the real question is, are you serious?

I’m sure your brother would say he’s serious about experiencing joy and living in the moment and that you ruin your chance of present happiness by worrying too much about things that aren’t going to happen. In other words, he’s not going to change.

Even thinking about trying to reform him will backfire and trigger conflict. You’ll give your brother a worried look, he’ll return that with a look of tolerant condescension, and your parents will accuse you of undermining his confidence. This will all leave you stewing about good deeds, their punishment, and his bullshit.

Forget about your responsible feelings and figure out what a good sibling should do to help one not-so-good. Your parents have shown you that rescuing him does no good, so rejoice. Since they’ve proven there’s not much you or anyone can do that will actually help him, there’s nothing much that you have to do, period.

When he makes a mess, help him help only when you think it will do good and it’s not someone else’s job; that won’t be often and it won’t drain you dry. The rest of the time, give him your best wishes, condolences, and directions on what he can do if he can get it together.

Don’t expect to feel comfortable, at least not at first. Your guilty, responsible feelings will be stirred up, but if you don’t keep those feelings hidden, other people will stir the pot. If experience and logic tell you that you’re not responsible, believe them and act accordingly, regardless of how you feel or what the rest of the family has to say.

Announce, don’t communicate. Let him know what you think is best without paying much attention to his response. Yes, it would feel better if you could get him to agree, but your need for agreement opens a door you want to keep closed.

He’ll keep his carpe diem attitude, and all you have to do is keep your end of the bargain, on your terms. He can go find himself, and you can find some peace.

STATEMENT:
Here’s a statement to keep you from trying to change him or win him over. “As much as I want to protect my brother and parents from his irresponsibility, I know I can’t. He will wind up in horrible messes. I will not stop loving him, caring for him, or doing for him if there’s a real chance to help. Most times, it will hurt to watch him suffer, but I will not turn away.”

I have a hot temper, Latin temper, whatever. I am tired of losing my shit and want more control. I have two children, a loving husband, a usually good job, a fine house and truthfully a full and rich life. So why do things like not getting out the door on time and literally spilled milk make me lose it? I should disclose that I grew up with insanity in my household, my father is a full blown paranoid schizophrenic, my mom a bit of a drinker, however that said I truly do try to parent better than I was parented. I wonder many times am I crazy and would like to have a better handle on my temper.

The kind of anger that ruins everything isn’t your problem. If it was, you wouldn’t still have the loving husband, good job, and lack of restraining orders.

It goes without saying then that you have pretty good control over your anger, but let’s say it, because it needs to be said. Your temper hurts and humiliates you and stirs your remorse, but it’s not ruining your life because you’re good at managing it.

It would be nice if you could get rid of your temper and become sweet, calm, and serene, but for most of us, our temper is part of the internal wiring. Sure, your parents/family history might contribute, and exploring “the real cause of your anger” might help; but often it doesn’t. Usually, the temper you’ve got is the temper you’ve got.

Lobotomy is the one treatment you can count on. (I’ve been wanting to re-tool as a surgeon for some time because procedures pay much better than talking treatments, with the death panels and whatnot, you know the drill.)

If, however, you’re too much of a sissy to accept the necessary frontal lobe alterations, your temper is something you’re stuck with, and you’d better get used to it, because nothing makes a bad temper worse than hating the one you’ve got.

Remember, there’s a stigma against anger. Oscar the Grouch is one of the uglier Muppets and the Hulk is hardly handsome.

On the other hand, if bad tempers were really terrible, then evolution wouldn’t have produced so many of them. They’re probably good for being a soldier or a litigator. God/Darwin/The Flying Spaghetti Monster/etc. always has his/her reasons for the strong inheritance of painful traits.

Now, if you’ve stopped fuming about being an ill-tempered mama, draw a line for yourself on what prevents someone with an evil temper from being a bad person. The first thing on the list of forbidden line-crossers is the obvious: no hitting. Following that is no causing friends and family a lot of pain, no useless bridge-burning or house-burning, and so on.

Your goal then isn’t to get a new temper at Target (they’re fresh out), but to keep that bad temper from turning nasty, no matter how much you feel that it would be a great relief.

Yes, if you don’t let it out, your anger will build up inside, but that’s the price you pay. Keep it there until you can yell in the bathroom, or hit a punching-bag, or practice the drums for hours at a time.

If you want help learning how to further manage your anger, read up on, you guessed it, anger management. It can help to talk to other, more accomplished anger-managers—some are quite nice, if you don’t step on their toes—and you can certainly use all the tools of self-acceptance and self-control that 12-step programs offer. It’s more expensive, but you can also check out the ideas and exercises offered by a cognitive behavioral therapist.

If your temper is really impossible and other methods don’t work, consider seeing a psychiatrist for a medication trial. For some reason, psychiatric medications can help, though they’re not a cure. They pose very little risk of serious side effects when you’re just trying them out for a month or two.

In your journey to accepting your rage, do yourself a favor and avoid books about healing your inner anger. They’re not just useless, but also incredibly annoying, and if you hurl such a book through a window, I’m not paying for the damages. The offer for the lobotomy, however, is still on the table.

STATEMENT:
Here’s a statement to stop you from getting mad about getting mad. “I don’t like having a bad temper, but I must be pretty good at controlling it because my family hasn’t (yet) run away, locked me up, or restraining-ordered me out. So I’ll respect myself for doing what I’ve always tried to do: shut up, pull my punches, and keep my temper under control.

I seem to instinctively know which battles to pick with my kids, however I clearly have “battle planning deficit disorder” when it comes to my wife. Neither of us likes confrontation of ANY sort, so we “appear” to ignore things that bug each other…but not really. Instead, we try to ignore the giant gorilla in the room and this negative undercurrent hangs around until some outside force like kid drama, aging parent issue, health..SOMETHING happens to distract us from whatever it was we were both “ignoring.” If, on the rare occasion I do confront her on some issue, she gets so DEFENSIVE, the conversation comes to an immediate halt. If she confronts me on something, we tend to go round and round. We’ve been married 20 years, so obviously this has become a well choreographed routine, but one that I’m still not comfortable with. How do you know what’s “confrontable material”, and what’s just “white noise” in a relationship that should be ignored?

I’m assuming from the fact that you’re doing well with the kids and not talking about divorce that your marriage is worth it. I often hear from patients who wish they could argue less with their spouse, so someone wanting to figure out how to argue more, or at least argue better, is an interesting change of pace.

First, figure out your criteria for deciding which battles are worth—I won’t say fighting, because the two of you aren’t compatible fighters—so let’s say, addressing.

Let not irritation be your guide, because you don’t want anger to determine your choice. Choose the issues that matter in the long run because they involve your values, safety, health, financial security, the kids’ development, or anything to do with lawyers.

With any battle, you’ve got to ask yourself what you hope to accomplish and whether there’s any way to win. No matter how much you want it, or how much it might lead to an increase in the total amount of fairness in the universe, you’re not going to change your wife, so there’s no point in trying. So ask yourself, given that fact, whether there’s any way you can make things better.

If, as is often the case, her agreement or understanding is unlikely, don’t talk to her before you decide whether there’s something you feels needs doing, and are prepared to do on your own, whether she agrees or not.

Knowing that you’re thinking for yourself will help you feel less angry and wimpy, even if, as most often happens, you decide there’s no reason to take a stand.

Talk to her if you think you’ll have to act independently because of disagreement. Don’t feel obliged to be eloquent or good at explaining your actions, because the important thing is not what she thinks, or whether she agrees, but that she sees that you believe in what you’re doing and that you’re not doing it out of anger or disrespect.

In declaring your intentions, show respect and keep your announcement short. Tell her what you plan to do and why you think it’s better, and, of course, invite her to join you. When you’ve said your piece, close the discussion so as to prevent filibuster.

Ultimately, it’s not about arguing at all, just about sharing your choices vis a vis the negative undercurrent situations in your marriage. You can acknowledge the metaphorical gorilla in the room as you would the real thing: calmly, confidently, and with a quick escape route.

STATEMENT:
Here’s a statement for picking issues and avoiding battles. “It’s too bad that my wife and I are not good at arguing our way through disagreements, but that hasn’t stopped us from achieving 20 years of pretty good marriage. It also won’t stop me from taking a stand if and when I think it’s necessary, as long as I can accept the fact that, as much as I love and respect her, there are times that we aren’t going to understand or agree with one another.”

I’ve worked hard at managing my temper—I can’t help it, I can always find something to be mad about, even when my family is behaving perfectly—and I’ve become really good at not snapping at my husband and kids. The kids are great, but my husband doesn’t seem to give me credit for how much better I’ve gotten, and he hasn’t gotten any nicer himself. He still treats me all defensively, as if I’m Godzillette, and it’s starting to get me mad. My goal is to get some credit for the progress I’ve made and achieve more marital peace.

If you want credit, here you go; One million space bucks worth of reward for your good deeds and strong effort. Now go in marital peace.

While you deserve marital credit from your husband, too, making it a goal to get what’s fair from anyone, especially a spouse, is usually a bad idea.

The search for justice, marital or otherwise, leads to your telling your spouse why it would be fair for him to be more appreciative, and then he explains to you how he’s been very, very appreciative and you haven’t been appreciative of his efforts, and you’ll wish you never started.

Then perhaps you two go to a marriage counselor who tries to make you both feel appreciated, which feels much better . . . during the treatment session and for a short time thereafter.

Once things go back to normal, which they inevitably do, you’re both more disappointed and resentful because, after you’ve invested all this time and money in treatment, you both still feel unappreciated, and now you’ve blown all your entertainment money on therapy and you’re stuck in the house together even more.

So, as much as you might wish and deserve for him to appreciate your new temper-control muscles, (and as much as it would serve his interests as well), it’s dangerous to make it your goal. Your goal is to accept the fact that, for some reason that has little to do with you, he doesn’t notice your efforts and/or is too negative to be appreciative. And they say opposites attract.

Come to think of it, you probably have some reason to believe that that’s the way he is. It’s not a matter of his loving you more or less; it may be depression, or being overwhelmed by other things, or he’s color blind and you’re explaining red.

You’re aware of your temper, and kudos for that. Your husband, however, is not aware of his negativity, and trying to get him to see the light will do the opposite. You do the work, he doesn’t, but that doesn’t mean you’re doomed.

Assuming he’s still a good partner, ask yourself how to make the best of things. Your main job is to give yourself credit and lower your expectations for his judgment and appreciation.

Keep up the good fight, which is the fight to keep your temper from getting the best of you. Give up the bad fight, which is the one for a deserved pat on the back.

STATEMENT:
Here’s a statement to counteract the inner protest to the life fairness referee. “I’m proud of how well I’ve been managing my temper, and I’m even prouder since I realized that I’ve been tolerating my husband’s infuriating inability to understand what gets me mad and give me credit for dealing with it constructively 99% of the time. We’d both be a lot happier if he wasn’t so dense; but he is, and I deal with it amazingly well.”

I’m really not a good friend, because I don’t like to call people regularly or bring them food when they’re sick, and I think it’s because I’ve never been able to grieve my father’s death. He was a warm, kind person who drove me crazy by wanting to know why I was unhappy and telling me what I should do, and I couldn’t stop fighting with him and then he died before we could make up. Now, I’ve got some good people in my life whom I’ve known for years, but I don’t have the kind of closeness with them my dad could create with a stranger. My goal, if I could do it, would be to get over my father’s death and become a better friend.

It’s hard to have a father who lives up to your values better than you do, but it’s a mistake to try to fit into his shoes when they’re just the wrong size.

Yes, it’s possible that grief has blocked your ability to be a better friend and that psychotherapy could release your potential. If you’ve had a good try at psychotherapy before, however, a connection between grief and your friendship deficit is less likely. Aside from the fact grief and friendship share a few letters, the connection isn’t immediately clear.

The bad news then is that, unlike your father, you’re a more guarded person, which likely won’t change. The good news is that you haven’t failed to live up to your father; you’re simply a different person, and not necessarily a worse one.

Being a little warmth-deprived does not need to stop you from being a good guy and a good friend. You just have to work harder, which is hard to do if you blame yourself for poor friendship performance, which makes you more isolated and less energetic, which makes you withdrawn, which makes you more self-critical, and around it goes. Self-blame and shame are probably your biggest obstacles to being a better friend.

Once you give up believing that your basic approach to friendship can, and should, change, and accept the fact that you’re not like your father, then you’re free to examine the obstacles to your being as good a friend as you can be, given your own style and personality.

The problem may be one of distraction, disorganization, or not being able to keep track of non-crisis priorities. If you examine what interferes with your friendship-homework, you’ll probably find some ways to be a better friend. Even if you aren’t just like you’re dad, your efforts honor his legacy.

STATEMENT:
Meanwhile, you need a statement to fight the paralysis of self-blame. “My loneliness is not a result of, or punishment for, my inability to live up to my father’s friendship achievements; it’s just a fact of life that happens sometimes for someone with my personality. I honor his values by trying to be the best friend I can be with the personality I’ve got, and I talk to him, in my mind, with respect and gratitude and without reason for guilt.”

My biggest frustration on a daily basis is having someone ask me a question and then either get angry in response to the answer or the fact that a decision has already been made and then ignore the answer they asked for. My wife will ask “do you mind if I do/go/be “x,” and if I answer “yes I mind” then she’s angry and usually proceeds with what she’d already scheduled anyway. Just today my sister asked if the coffee I was holding was warm enough. I said yes, and she then proceeded to take the cup from my hand and run to the microwave with it. OK, so maybe her intentions were good…but why the hell did she ask me, when my answer didn’t matter? Because this seems to happen to me ALL the time, by MANY different people, I’m getting to the point that I don’t even want to be around other people. Should I just shut up and quit even answering questions, or start answering with what I know they want to hear? Giving honest answers is clearly NOT working for me. Can you shed some light on what I’m doing wrong here? And more importantly, what do I do about it?

Nobody likes to feel ignored—at least by people we like and particularly by the ones we love—but some people are particularly sensitive to it.

They feel it as a kind of peace-destroying personal injury that injects them with a festering dislike of their fellow human beings. This leads to a desire to learn wilderness skills or get a solo gig on a space station.

You’re the kind of person whom being ignored gets to, and if I asked you to change, you couldn’t help but ignore my request, even if you tried not to.

Unfortunately, as you’ve noticed, people ignore one another all the time because that’s the way they are. They ask your opinion when what they really want is your OK, they ask how you’re doing when they really want nothing more than to avoid enmity, and they don’t actually care if you drive safe.

Some people who ignore you are, nevertheless, nice and reasonably respectful when they aren’t tired, distracted or irritable. If you’re lucky, and that’s whom you’ve got in your family, then you don’t want to fight over an irritation you can’t possibly change. Even if you’re rich and powerful or order a third-world wife, your family will always, eventually, tend to treat you like chopped liver.

Trying to eliminate the irritation of being ignored usually makes things worse, as I’m sure you’ve noticed. Make a fuss, and they’ll consider you a temperamental grump or autocrat. You’ll get more irritated and feel less respected, they’ll see it as your problem, and everything will get worse.

So don’t make it your goal, like the late, great Rodney Dangerfield, to get respect. The only way to avoid feeling disrespect is to become mean, insanely rich, and/or live in total quarantine from the human race.

Instead, make it your goal to do and be a person you can respect. If you’re not getting respect when you feel it’s deserved, do your best to, you guessed it, ignore it.

STATEMENT:
Here’s a statement for motivating yourself to eat the shit of feeling ignored and proclaim its tastiness when necessary. “I’ll never like being ignored, but I know when it’s an unavoidable part of a worthwhile relationship, so I’m proud of the way I tolerate it when I have to.”

I’m a pretty miserable person sometimes because I get mired in regret. For example, my biggest hang-up to this day is the “traditional” college experience (good friends, staying up all night studying or watching movies with members of the opposite sex, getting top-/transformative academic experiences). I graduated college three years ago and still wonder why things hadn’t gone, well, my way. Whining and pining over past/imaginary circumstances keeps me focused on my own perceived setbacks and flaws instead of moving forward. How do I stop sighing and lamenting, and start valuing and appreciating what I do have? Also, how can I identify what I really want to do in life? Should I learn to be content with doing something, anything, rather than searching for that something? I’m sure I must possess some innate fear of something, as implicit in this message.

Some people tend to ruminate about the contenders they could have been, just as some dogs tend to chase their tails. If your goal is to be happy—which is never a good goal in the first place—stop now, because, like those determined dogs, your tail will always remain out of reach.

Unfortunately, like many people, you’re not the happy type. Of course I don’t mean that you can’t be happy—bring a chocolate cake out after dinner, and everybody’s ecstatic—but anyone who obsesses as much about the difference between what was and what might have been is always going to have a shitload of unhappiness on his plate, which will cause more rumination about what a bad state of mind that is, in infinite regression.

Begin then by accepting the fact that, as a person, you’re a happiness-impaired ruminator. Unlike most shrinks, I don’t want you to ask yourself why you’re a ruminator, not just because I don’t care, but because I don’t think it’s good for you. Figuring out why will ignite yet more rumination and delay the day when you decide you just have to ignore yourself.

Now that you know you ruminate excessively, try to block off the ruminative chatter in your head and prevent it from influencing your actions. In other words, instead of sitting and thinking and fretting, keep doing.

If that seems easier said than done, therapy is an option. Good therapy will help you ignore your ruminations, focus on the here-and-now of your life, and keep moving (or they’ll gain on you). On the other hand, bad therapy will help you ruminate about why you ruminate and keep you so firmly ensconced in your navel you’ll forget what daylight looks like.

Yes, it can be helpful to identify the shortcomings or weaknesses that prevented you from being a college all-star, but the point in knowing your shortcomings is to do the best with them. If college was a bust, then fuck it, and thank goodness you don’t have to stay in college; there’s a world out there where your strengths may serve you well.

So, once you accept that you over-think/under-enjoy, stop over-analyzing your past and start focusing on making a living and creating a social life. It’s not easy, and you might not end up happy, but at least you’ll stop spinning in circles and start moving in a straight line.

STATEMENT:
Meanwhile, here’s a positive way of thinking of college that will protect you from ruminative “might-have-beens.” “I’ve always had ideals and dreams about the college guy I wish I could have been, and the tough side of those perfect superhero dreams is feeling how often and in how many ways I fell short. I did my best and, despite having had no great social or academic triumphs, I learned enough to get my money’s worth and was a decent guy (to whatever dweebs wanted to be my friend). I believe life can get better if I find my niche; meanwhile, I’m proud of what I did with what I had.”

My son’s a good kid, very smart, and he does pretty well in school, although they’ve diagnosed him as having attention deficit disorder. Anyway, he’s so busy I rarely get to see him, so I thought we should spend more time together, and I made a deal that I’d give him some extra money for video games if he’d put aside some time for the two of us, and he agreed very willingly, but then he kept on forgetting about our scheduled times and blowing me off. Now, I feel I can’t give him the money without giving him the message that it’s OK to be irresponsible and disrespectful. Frankly, I’m hurt. My goal is to get him to be a good kid.

People often assume that hurtful actions by others are a personal affront. In fact, often when people get shat on, it’s totally thoughtless—they’ve been blown off because everything gets blown off, and nobody’s special. Feel better?

In terms of ending that behavior, however, you’ve got a bad plan; by putting a personal, moral spin on accidental fuckups, you’re making it harder, not easier, to make them better.

Yes, telling the kid you’re offended and he’s let you down will catch his attention and make him think twice before blowing you off again. The reason you’re writing, however, is that thinking twice wasn’t enough (although he’s probably too ADD and “in the moment” to do much thinking at all).

Now that you’ve given your warning in vain, you’re more hurt and reacting to his behavior as an insult and/or deliberate stubbornness. In turn, your efforts to get together are pushing you apart.

I’m not sure why you had to offer him a reward to spend time together—I should think that finding something pleasant to do together would be reward enough—but let’s go with what we’ve got.

Your goal now is to help him get that reward—and the good feeling that goes with keeping his commitments and having a good time with you—in spite of the distractive influences of his social life and ADD.

Remember, it’s your job to help him manage his ADD and not got caught up in reacting to it, and ADD often prompts a mixed reaction from friends and family. It often gives people attractive spontaneity and “in the moment” energy while blocking them from following-through, so they accumulate a circle of disappointed ex-friends about whom they feel guilty, which makes them more avoidant, worsens the problem, and widens the circle.

Don’t try to reform him from being a selfish kid who doesn’t care about his dad, because that’s not the kid you’ve got. Swallow your hurt and abandon the need to seek amends.

He’s probably a good kid who loves his dad but isn’t good at managing his schedule, just like you’re a good dad who loves his kid but isn’t good at not taking his ADD personally.

STATEMENT:
“It’s good that you’re busy, but now we’ve got to work harder to make sure we get time together. I’ll help you plan ahead, we’ll set up a system of reminders, and I’ll devise incentives for remembering. Sooner or later, my person will talk to your person and we’ll figure out a way to make it happen.”

I don’t hate my sister, but we have this odd relationship where we have a fight about once a year (my kids tease me about it). We live pretty close to each other, but we’re both busy and maybe a little disorganized, so we don’t call each other that much; but whenever I give her a call, she says she wants to get together and then does nothing, so I get pissed off and stop calling, until she feels bent out of shape by the fact I haven’t called, and then a holiday rolls around and that gives her the excuse to let me have it. My goal is for us to have a better relationship.

You can’t have a better relationship with your sister if you keep on doing things the natural way and rely on her to be active and organized in a way she never is or was.

The only way to have that relationship is to have another sister, and your parents are probably a little too old for that.

Also, like the father above, you can’t have a better relationship if you’re going to take her unresponsiveness personally and feel hurt by it. You both are who you are, and yearly blow-ups won’t change anything but your kids’ annual jokes.

Yes, it’s normal to feel hurt when someone doesn’t follow through on a plan to get together; but you’ve known her a long time and have good reason to think that she cares (especially if you have an annual make-up).

As such, your hurt feelings are a reflex that will make things worse if you let yourself express them, either actively or passively (if you stop calling/hang up on her). The ADD father would reward his son fruitlessly, and you’re punishing your sister in the same manner. Ultimately, you both end up punished, and the only result is a new round of punch-lines from your kids.

Assume she’s disorganized and that you need to do more than hint if you want to get together. It’s annoying that you have to do more of the work, but it’s better than the alternative (less of the work, none of your sister).

If you put in the extra effort and it doesn’t work, the knowledge that you’ve done your best can help you avoid a fight in case she accuses you once more. Still, you need to edit out your hurt and retribution.

An occasional-albeit-peaceful relationship is better than no relationship, and family is important, even when they’re unwillingly ignoring or willingly mocking you.

STATEMENT:
Here’s a statement to keep your efforts positive and safely protected from the vicious circle of hurt. “I value our relationship and wish we saw more of one another. I’ve tried to arrange get-togethers, but they don’t happen easily because your life is busy and it’s hard to juggle priorities. Whatever the problem, I know you love me and we’ll get together whenever it’s possible, and no one is at fault. Maybe it will get easier when we get older.”

I hate life. What is the most reliable and painless way to commit suicide?

You hate life, and I hate the kind of dangerous, self-lacerating whining that makes a painful life seem meaningless, when it isn’t.

Hating life is an understandable feeling, whether the problem is a hateful life or your own, reflexive intolerance of life’s general hatefulness. There’s no doubt that life is sometimes hateful, some people’s lives are more hateful than most, and some good people are more sensitive to its hatefulness.

There’s more than enough hate to go around, and you can’t help how you feel.

Any time you let hateful feelings shape your goals, however, you’ll make life more hateful (after a brief burst of genuine satisfaction) and destroy what’s left of your self-esteem.

Yes, taking your hate out on yourself may give you the satisfaction of protesting life’s unfairness and heaping guilt and contempt on your so-called friends. What it also does, if you think about it or survive to see what happens next, is define your life as a reaction to your hurts and the people you value least. It both fuels and destroys, hateful little fucker that it is.

What you really want (and what your survivors will try to do) is to remember the times you did better things and followed your own values. It’s not as exhilarating as being a nihilist, but exhilaration is, by its nature, short-lived. You shouldn’t be.

During its short run, hate is a lot more attractive and satisfying than reminding yourself about what you stand for and thinking about values and consequences. That’s why you need to work on building a philosophy and preparing for hate before it arrives, instead of boarding the hate train and then finding the will to get off.

You can do that by going to the right church or temple (one that doesn’t waste too much time on holy this or ecstatic that), hanging out or reading about people who’ve made the same journey, or getting the right kind of therapy. DBT (dialectic behavioral therapy), which borrows heavily from Jewish, Christian, Buddhist and 12-step ideas about living with anger, can be particularly helpful.

Therapy or no, you can find ways to keep your hate (and my hate for your hate) under control.

STATEMENT:
Here’s a statement for taking pride in good hate management. “I know what it’s like to hate life, but I won’t let myself forget what I value about life and my own ability to make it better. I can’t escape hate; but I will make myself strong enough to protect myself from its destructiveness and use its energy for my own goals.”

I feel like it’s finally time to confront a serious problem I’ve had for years; when I drive, I become filled with rage. My mother was the same way, and it was scary. She was never violent and neither am I, but the amount of anger I feel can’t be healthy, and I don’t want my daughter to do the same thing. I want to feel less furious.

I hope you’re not expecting therapy, a pill, or some Tibetan meditative experience to take away your anger, because it probably won’t.

Whatever causes anger—mommy’s genes, bullying by your older brother, or one rotation too many around a Boston-style rotary—it’s usually yours for life by the time you’re old enough to write me a letter.

Sure, psychotherapy may help, but my rule of therapy thumb is, if it hasn’t helped in a few months, move on. Therapy just isn’t that powerful (not even in my Harvard hands), and sticking with it when you’ve got anger to control delays your acceptance of the red-hazed reality you need to start managing.

What I’m really advocating isn’t to give up on therapy, but to give up on the idea that it will make you feel better by taking your anger away. Instead, use therapy (like DBT, see above) to help you manage anger.

I know you’ve probably seen kung fu monks master their anger by thinking pacifist thoughts while smashing bricks, and maybe you think channeling your rage into big muscles and loud thuds will improve your control while intimidating your tormentors into not cutting you off you in the first place.

Wrong, young grasshopper. The only reason martial monks don’t get sued for everything they own by everyone they lay a finger on is that they’re monks and own nothing. For the rest of us, the slightest adult physical altercation, combined with martial training, is as bad as a car-crash without insurance or witnesses: an endless goldmine for lawyers (and shrinks) at your expense.

So now that you’ve abandoned all hope of ever getting rid of your anger, you’re ready to improve your ability to manage it. Instead of tailgating those who dare offend your road-warrior sensibilities, learn to shut up and back off until you have a chance to think and decide whether a battle is worth fighting (almost never) and, if so, how to do it most effectively (by never appearing angry).

Feeling angry is unhealthy because it raises your blood pressure, but expressing it is even more unhealthy because it causes you endless misery that raises your blood pressure higher for longer.

You can’t control the former, but you can learn to get a handle on the latter (even if you can’t break a brick with your fist).

STATEMENT:
Here’s a statement for taking pride in frustrated rage. “I hate the way other drivers ignore the road rules, put my life in danger, and never get punished. Teaching them a lesson would make them think twice about driving like assholes. My goal in driving, however, is to get from one place to another as safely as possible, without being endangered or diverted by people whom I least respect. I’m proud of my ability to eat my anger and never, ever fight.”

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.

To find out whether you can accept a prospective partner, don’t go on a bar crawl; spend time together sober, tired, stressed, hungry, and short of money.

You’ll find out whether you can work together and trust the guy to do his share, shut up about the things he doesn’t like, and not irritate you too much by what he says when he’s dumb. That’s a better measure of true love than the tingle you get from laughing at one another’s sloshed jokes.

You have two choices at this point in your marriage. One possibility is to accept your husband the way he is and try to put aside the understandable anger and sadness about what you’ve lost. You can’t have the happy guy back unless you also want his alcoholism, and you don’t.

By the way, if your goal is to communicate with him before you’ve decided whether you can accept him, you’ll probably give him an earful of your sorrow, disappointment, and anger, and that will drive him away, but not before giving you an earful in return. Your best bet is to shut up until you’ve made up your mind.

The other choice, if you can’t accept your husband the way he is, is to stop being married. It’s not pretty, but the fact is, you can’t talk him into being the guy you want. Talk instead to yourself about whether you can accept the sober guy he now is.

Having finished your most important conversation—with yourself—you’re now ready to let him know which direction you want to go in. Either you can make it work with your dry husband, or take your newly acquired wisdom to marriage #2.

STATEMENTS:
Here are two alternate statements that avoid negative statements about who he isn’t and say positive things about what you want to do.

If you think you can accept him: “I want us to spend more time together. I’ve been hung over from the indirect effect of alcohol on our relationship; but I respect what you’ve done and I want to try new, sober ways for us to have fun, find common interests, and work together.”

If you know you can’t accept him: “I admire your sobriety, but alcohol interfered with my ability to get to know you, and, now that I know you better, I respect what you’ve done but think that we’re not meant for one another.”

I’ve been working for the same company for almost twenty years. I started at the very bottom and have worked my way up to a respectable position in middle management. I’ve never gotten a poor review, never had a dispute with a superior, never let my responsibilities slide. That’s why I’m totally bewildered by my new boss’ persistent criticism of my performance. I haven’t changed a thing, but he’s constantly telling me he thinks I’m slow on my projects, even though he can’t pin down anything I’m doing wrong. My goal is to get him to see that it’s his judgment, not my ability, that’s flawed.

The trouble with telling your boss he’s wrong is that it pushes him to find more fault with you. The chance of changing his mind, if he’s really down on you, is zip.

If anything, he’s more likely to prove he’s right by making it his project to get you fired. If you can’t convince him he’s wrong with your stellar performance, a talking-to won’t help. Sadly, you’re now employee of the month at Fucked Industries.

If you pay too much attention to his response, you’ll get angry at his lack of respect or appreciation for your good work, which will cause you to scowl, lose your motivation, and do less work, which will prove him right and make your actions and self-respect reactive to his stupidity. Don’t talk to him, and don’t react to him more than absolutely necessary.

Instead, assess your own work and be sure it meets your own standards; if you have two decades of positive reviews, that’s tons of evidence that it does. Then move forward, knowing that your work is OK, you’re probably not going to change your boss’s mind, and you need to make a living.

If it’s safe, see if you’ve got enough support from other higher-ups to counteract your boss’ influence. Warm up your résumé, and start looking at other options (e.g., if there’s an opening at It’s A Living And Co.)

Now you’re ready to talk to him. Give him a prepared, positive response that edits out all anger, attack, or defense, and pose for your “employee of the month” picture with a shit-eating grin.

STATEMENT:
“I greatly regret that you have not been satisfied with my work. I paid close attention to your comments, reviewed my work habits, and considered ways of either improving my work, if I thought it was deficient, and/or presenting it to better advantage if I thought communication was the problem. I’ve reviewed supervisory input from the past 20 years—all of it positive, I’m happy to say—requested additional input from current colleagues, and compared current with past performance. My conclusion is that I’ve been doing good work and that your dissatisfaction results from a difference in our styles. I will continue to listen carefully to your input and hope to win your satisfaction.”

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.”

I don’t know what I did to drive my husband away. I guess I’m a pushy type of person—I’ve got an executive job—and he’s an easygoing carpenter who spends every spare moment rehabbing old houses, and he gradually got sick of my nagging him to spend more time with me on the weekends, until one day he just moved out. Now, when I reach him on his phone, he tells me he loves me, and agrees to meet with me to talk things over and work things out, but then he doesn’t show up. I wish I hadn’t given him such a hard time, but now I want to know how to get him to come to couples therapy and put our marriage back together.

Some girls prefer being married to someone who’s never around but pays the bills. Those girls and your husband have something in common, whether you like it or not.

Before figuring out how to save your marriage, ask yourself what you want your marriage for (and don’t say love—you should know better).

You’re an executive, so be as specific about the amount of availability you would write into the partnership as you would for a job description: hours per week, time of day, degree of alertness, freedom from inebriation, etc.

Keep sitting on that save-your-marriage urge long enough to ask yourself, regardless of how much you nagged him and/or how much he loves you, what the likelihood is of his doing the amount of necessary face time with a non-shack-rehabbing marital partner.

The way you describe him, not fuckin’ likely; he’s not into hanging out with a girl who’s not into holding a hammer (unless maybe she’s handing over a credit card).

If that’s true, you’re in luck and out-of-luck. Out of luck because there was never much chance he’d meet your marital requirements, and the chances aren’t going to improve, no matter how sweetly you try to entice him into marital therapy and how persuasive the therapist is.

You’re in luck, however, because your nagging isn’t at fault, and you have nothing to blame yourself for, so we’re not going to talk about how your nagging drove him away or how a therapist can glue him back on.

Now that we’ve killed off false hope, think about ways to make the best of things. Ask yourself how to avoid making the same mistake twice, given the fact that you probably knew his habits from the beginning and then talked yourself into believing he’d change.

If you still think guys change, slap yourself. People don’t change, but that doesn’t mean you change your approach towards relationships. Be an executive at work and in your personal life, and be glad your husband quit.

STATEMENT:
Here’s a statement to point you forward. “I hate losing this marriage, but my goal is to find a good partner, not create one from someone who doesn’t have the right material. Partners aren’t made, they’re found. My job is to use my experience with this marriage to choose better next time.”

When we were in training, I used to depend on my wife completely—she was a year ahead, and I couldn’t stand it when she was on call and would leave me alone overnight. I wasn’t jealous, I just needed her. But then we got married, and I graduated and started my own specialty training, and suddenly—it was like a switch clicked—I stopped needing her and didn’t really want to be around her. Now it’s 4 years later and we’ve got a couple kids and the trapped feelings just keeps getting stronger. It’s tough, because she’s a very nice person, she doesn’t do anything wrong, and she wants to make our marriage work, and I feel totally guilty, because I just don’t want to be with her. How can I get our old chemistry back?

Some people believe the measure of a good partnership is an equally balanced feeling of need for one another—wanting her as much as she wants you—and you’re the living, breathing example of why that’s not so.

You didn’t want your neediness to blind you into thinking your then-girlfriend had strong feelings about you, if she didn’t. Congratulations, she did and does really love you. Unfortunately, what you were blind to was the depth of your own feelings.

The trouble is, needy feelings come and go depending on your confidence, mood, loneliness, horniness, whatever. Neediness makes you blind, which is why satisfying your needy feelings shouldn’t be in the partnership job description.

Instead, consider your actual needs as you would if you were looking for a partner in your practice. You need someone you like to spend time with and can rely on, whether you’re needy or not.

So here’s the standard procedure: the more you’re crazy about someone, the more you should take it slow. Clean out a basement together, travel long distances and sleep in crummy motels together, foster a diabetic cat together, whatever, just put your relationship to the test to see if it’s a shared partnership or a personal fix.

Meanwhile, the old chemistry can’t be retrieved and wasn’t the real thing, in any case, so give up that goal and stop wallowing in guilt. You might not need her anymore, but your kids do, so you’ve got to figure out how to make the best of it.

STATEMENT:
Here’s a statement to address her and your own conscience. “I would do anything to make this partnership work but I made a mistake in thinking my need for you was the same as good, solid attraction and acceptance. Now that I’m feeling less needy, I can’t find the necessary chemistry and I can’t help not loving you. You haven’t changed. It’s no one’s fault. Meanwhile, we have a good family, and I need to keep it strong while managing the bad chemistry that makes it impossible for me to give you what you deserve.”