General Relationship Thread

Aaron? Not being a pedant? Unpossible.

I understand the love for a child, but I have no idea what that other thing is. Even at the start of past relationships it hasn’t been like that. Thinking back, I don’t think I’ve ever started dating someone because I fell head over heels for them. It’s always been some variation on “We seem to click on some level, so what the hell. It beats being alone.”

I don’t trust intense emotion, I think. I don’t expect feelings to be returned, so I compartmentalize attachments to other people.

Thanks peeps. I don't think she was intentionally misleading me as her current relationship progressed from "I'm kinda seeing someone" over a year ago to "boyfriend" now. With that in mind, the backup/see what happens theory she may have been operating under doesn't bother me so much. This trip is the first time we've been able to hang out in some months and so is probably the first good time to kind of get it all out in the open in person rather than text message conversations or whatever.

Also: I was coming to NY anyway (for work) and walking around the city anyway (for tourism) and eating pizza anyway (for science*), so I don't feel that it was wasting time either. I was doing something already, she came and joined up, and the timing was good to clear out the closet. The timing is good for me as well with all the other life-changes happening this last two months; get it all wrapped up at once.

*open and honest: I definitely see the appeal of NY style but there's just something about Chicago.

Well, as long as you feel that way, you probably won't get to that level of emotion. You have to open yourself up and be really vulnerable, in my experience, in order to reach it. Obviously, that can set you up for a pretty hurtful rejection, but as far as I know, it's the only way to reach the deepest type of love. In the two cases I mentioned, I definitely made myself emotionally vulnerable, but I was fortunate enough to have it all reciprocated. I've experienced rejection, of course, but not once I've reached that level. That probably makes it easier for me to recommend it, and there may be others that can discuss the downsides better than I can. However, I still think it's worth doing. "What the hell" doesn't seem like a great basis for a relationship to me personally.

The Fiance had a terrible moment a while back when she met my mother, and suddenly realized that HER family were "The Inlaws"

My mom is awesome and generally just figures whatever I do is whatever makes me happy. Her mom is.. well, yeah. I think I've sold her on the idea that living more than 30 minutes from her family would be an awesome thing for our collective sanity.

edit: which reminds me, when she moved in with me a while back her mother kept being concerned that I was beating her or some shit. Simply because she didn't come over to her mother's house as often anymore. I don't even fucking know! CRAZY PEOPLE ARE CRAZY. Seriously, this family was having internal drama and it came out that they all keep each other's voicemails for like a year in order to listen to them and try to glean subtle slights from them. CRAZY PEOPLE.

Yikes Kildorn!

I would advise against this. Basically, parents have been disapproving of their daughters' choice of boyfriends since Helen was dating Paris. It's not worth cutting your family off over, just let them herp their derp and get on with your life.

Disagree. You choose your relationships, you don't choose your parents. Choice > happenstance, therefore relationships that you choose are always more important than parents. It's just math.

I don't think I can be friends with you anymore.

At least get your butt to Tony's in North Beach and get some REAL pizza.

I like a lot of things about Chicago but their pizza just fills me with seething rage.

I think "cutting parents out of life" can be interpreted both here and by any parents as a hostile act of escalation that in itself feels like an attack or a betrayal, but setting very clear boundaries that have some two-way empathy embedded in them and then enforcing those boundaries firmly but transparently can have a broadly constructive impact for all parties over time.

As someone who has mostly cut a parent out of my life, I only recommend it for situations that involve abuse or serious threats to health, well-being, or safety.

However, if "cutting them off" simply means "time-out from communication for a short period of time so they can cool off," that's something different and I'd support that :)

It depends. I've got a perfectly good relationship with my folks, but I have friends for whom their parental relationship is almost pure poison, regardless of any attempt at boundary setting.

Yeah, but to be fair Paris was a total dick. I'm sure Aaron isn't a moronic pretty boy who ruined one of the most influential marriages for funsies (I would've gone with skill in battle anyway) and accidentally started the destruction of an entire city.

Man, this all suddenly makes me appreciate just how relaxed my relationship with my mom is. She's never hassled me about meeting the right girl and having grandkids, she gets along with all my friends, she likes hearing about how work is going and is supportive... I sometimes feel guilty about not calling her enough, but she never seems disappointed or tries to guilt-trip me over it.

Thanks, mom!

Well right, you don't just stop at boundary-setting and then shrug your shoulders if people run roughshod over them. If anyone in your life proves to your satisfaction that they simply cannot or will not treat you in the way you expect to be treated, then yes, there is the nuclear option as a last resort.

I'm simply saying that going straight for the nuclear option without any intervening attempts at clearly communicating some expectations and working out a framework for meeting them is likely to be counter-productive at best and may leave you with unintended or less-than-desireable results in the long run.

Oh, of course you're right about that. Obviously with your parents - or any other long-held relationship - you should try some intermediate steps to salvage things. I'm just observing that sometimes people are determined to be a poisonous presence in your life, and at that point you just need to cut them off.

Yep, no argument there. This is like some of our previous conversations here where someone says "my girlfriend and I had an argument and I'm mad" and then there's this weird dogpile of "SHE'S A TOTAL BITCH DUMP HER RIGHT NOW" reactions from the rest of us.

Forum interactions on issues like this are generally skewed toward righteous indignation on behalf of the aggrieved - as a kind of aggressively protective expression of support - but generally speaking there's a lot more room for intermediate steps that build some pathways to safe communication and understanding where possible.

Where not possible - as evidenced by repeated attempts with little to no payoff for either party - there's always the option to sever a relationship completely, but those choices tend to be permanent and severe and often result in unintended collateral damage.

I like this as generalized advice. At the same time, I've been with my (now) spouse more than a decade with a kid on the way and the crazy mother-in-law still privately asks when she's leaving me to move back home. I've been such a horrible influence! Her daughter likes sushi now and did not as a child, so clearly I am abusing her in some way.

Sometimes crazy parents actually are crazy and worth cutting ties to.

my mom, at least, is awesome

I get that a lot, and I'm attempting to train my mother out of it. Every time she asks me if I'm "coming home" for the holidays, I politely inform her that I am home, and I might visit her next year. If she does it a second time, then I make plans to spend my holidays at home the next year. I think her refusal to accept the fact that I have advanced my station in life due to separating myself from my family comes from the fact that she left her podunk Ohio town at 17 to run off with her high school sweetheart and hasn't made a good decision since. She bailed on her family safety net - which is not a bad thing, mind you, she was the oldest of ten kids of whom three committed suicide before they were 20, two that I know of are in prison and I'm pretty sure that at least 50% of the cousins on that side of the family look like the COPS hall of fame recap show - and I can understand her desire to want to be supportive for me like her family wasn't for her. The two problems with that are a) she's not exactly capable of being supportive since her life consists of equal parts gambling debts and mood stabilizers, and b) I have absolutely no need of any support she could offer. Just because the rest of her family is a bunch of genetic dead-end failures doesn't mean I'm choosing to be one.

She hates when I bring that up. "But they're your family!" No, mom, they're your family. I've overcome whatever handicaps you decided to throw me with whatever junk DNA turns your entire family line into irredeemable shitbags, don't presume that makes me feel any kind of sentiment towards them. I never believed in that tradition of "family comes first", and I won't be guilt-tripped into acting otherwise.

I mean, I'm not advocating that everyone just cut off their family when they're being total berks - god no, some people actually have emotional ties to their family and cutting them off entirely can be pretty traumatic. But I can completely understand and support people who choose to. When a relationship - any relationship, be it personal or professional or familial - starts having the negatives outweigh the positives by a significant margin... well, I suppose everyone makes a choice to how much shit they're going to eat for the sake of sentimentality and tradition.

I am nodding in empathy and understanding, but mostly, I'm just giggling.

Edit now that I've read Nute's post: my parents are each the token responsible kid in their family, and I'm sure that's hammered on their relationships with their kids as well. My mom's siblings are druggies and in and out of jail, and most of my dad's are in dead-end jobs with their kids heading for the same dead-end jobs. The one of my dad's siblings who's actually made something of himself is still struggling to overcome severe bipolar disorder and now has two kids with developmental disorders as well. I understand, both through my own intuition and through their constant reminders, that my parents are terrified of their kids ending up the same way. They may have just picked a way to go about it that didn't work for both daughters.

I'm not going to nuke things with my parents unless they get irrational enough to be dangerous. Mom reminded me again yesterday that they're keeping me on the health insurance as a favor, but for now, they seem willing to maintain that favor until I'm well enough to get back to school and job hunting. And she's flying back today, so all harassment from here until probably Christmas will be long-distance and easier to deal with. It'll be okay.

I'm not in any hurry to jump onto Mr. Alligator's plan; I won't be saving my dad any money since my brother is still on his plan anyway. If your sister is on your parents' plan still, then it's unlikely that they're actually doing anything that could be considered a "favor" since they are bearing no additional expenses, and would take far more effort to remove you to save exactly zero dollars in premiums.

Of course, if Maryland's laws are far more fucked than that and they can charge per-child premiums then I take it back. But at least in Missouri, you pay the same rate for having multiple children as you would for having a single child.

It's even funnier if you've ever met Kildorn; he's about as manly and capable of beating someone up as, say, my 5'1", 68 year old mother. Actually I'd put money on my mom in a fight.

I dunno, Aaron's hair is pretty fantabulous.

A tax break doesn't usually make up for the additional premiums, for the record. I get your overall point, but it's still costing them, and they apparently paid over 2k out of pocket.

That said, they are parents and so they signed up for this kind of thing. It's right there in the fine print!

For this particular surgeon, there was a $2500 non-insurance-covered fee associated with the procedure (long story), along with a $399 copay. Which wouldn't have broken the bank had I taken a loan from Aaron or something, but if I'd tried to cover it on my own, well, it would have been several more months before I could have afforded the procedure. Several more months during which I'd be barely functional anyway.

I wasn't criticizing you, SWB. I dont think you've done anything wrong here. I was just noting that they did actually pay for something. I still think it's wrong for a family member (especially a parent) to hold that over another.

Them's fighting words!

I mean, not fighting with me. I'm a lover, not a fighter. Well, not even really a lover. Look, I enjoy books goddamnit!

There's disapproving of a boyfriend, and then there's the fuckton of bullshit they're dumping on Speak.


EDIT: To clarify, I didn't necessarily mean SHUT THEM OUT FOREVER AND EVER, AMEN, but they are being obnoxious and controlling and if they can't control enough through guilt over the phone, her mother flies out to manipulate her in person. That is staggeringly unhealthy and there needs to at least be a period of time where it's made clear that bullshit needs to stop or they'll lose more than they expect.

Thinking about winding up in one?

They suck. Straight up. If I hadn't had a specific time frame of when it would stop being a long distance relationship, I would've gone mad. Even WITH the time-frame, it is not something I would ever want to repeat. I got far too lonely and far too sad and was very bad at keeping myself distracted from how much I hated the situation.

Shit, I still hate dropping Ingmar off at the airport because it makes me remember the Before Time, and I hated it.


EDIT: Obviously, I think they're workable (as mine worked), but the people involved have to be either hardier than I am about how often they get to actually SEE their beloved, or have something really special, I think.

Also, if you don't belong to a frequent flier program, you might want to look into it. ;)

It's easier now than it was when I was in one - advances like Skype and whatnot make communication a lot more convenient. The big question is how much actual physical presence you need to be happy with the relationship. That's going to be in constant flux, but you have to establish - and communicate - what will make you happy. If it's seeing each other for two or three weeks at a time, twice or three times a year - then work with that. If it's going to be nine months at a time between getting to see each other, that's a lot different than if you have the means to see each other every other weekend.

Like Sjofn says - have a timeframe in mind. Maybe not immediately, but soon. If you go too long without deciding how long you want to maintain the long-distance relationship, you start accepting the infrequency of it as the default. And believe me, things stagnate and spoil fast when you do that.

If you're talking about "on another continent" long distance, then figure out how each of you is going to make it work. If it's "on the other coast of the US" - pfft. Amateurs. That's not real long distance.

Yeah, it was "just" opposite coasts for us. I had a coworker who was maintaining one that was East Coast versus Ireland. He was pretty funny about mine, he pointed out that at least it's not an international phone call and I didn't need a passport. ;)

Hello and welcome to all of my dating experiences, how may I help you?

They are not for everyone; you've gotta be completely okay with the thought of not being able to do whatever physical shit you wanna do with the other person whenever you want to. And that can be reaaaaally hard sometimes. That's kind of the hardest thing about it, I think. If you want to give a hug, the most you can do is type it out/draw it out.

I've been in LDRs with someone in Louisiana, New York, and Singapore.
consequently i now hate ny and singapore just saying

Long-distance relationships are tough, but not impossible - Matt & I were long distance for two years at the start of our relationship. The most important advice I can offer is to make scheduled time to "see" each other (via Skype, IRC, phone, what have you) regularly and keep to those, just as you would make and keep dates if you were in the same city.

As a guy who's been in an LDR for the past 5 years (though we had the advantage of being in said relationship for around 3 years (EDIT: I have just been informed it was actually only one year, I am horrible with dates) prior to it becoming an LDR; said relationship was one of the few parts of High School that didn't suck), I'm nodding my head in agreement with all of these statements. Like Sjofn and Rapunzel said, they're workable, but it can be tough not being able to physically be with your significant other... so you learn to really cherish those times (I took a month vacation last fall specifically to be with my SO, for example).

Also seconding the timeframe bit. With our LDR, we quickly decided that after we both finished college in our respective states (I'm in Wisconsin, she's in Indiana), one of us would move back to be with the other. We will both be done with college this year, so in about 10 months we will finally be together again. I'm not quite to the point where I start counting the days, but give it a few months... I'll try not to spam the thread with "T-minus 95 days to end of LDR" style posts.

Really, the only thing I can offer ya is a hearty 'good luck'... How far away is the SO, Elyscape?

I think we may have the same mom.