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By CAROLYN HAX
Dear Carolyn, I am single, educated, retired, I have a beautiful house in a unique place, I am involved in creative activities and I travel a lot. What I do not have is a spouse or children. I am separated from my siblings because they are mentally ill – the average variety that deliberately inflicts damage to property. I am alone.
I just experienced another friend who expresses his jealousy critically – holding his breath, laughing with laughter – on my ability to travel. I do not brag and do not talk about experiences. These friends are surrounded by family and love. I am sure that none of them would exchange places with me. What can I say to defend myself / protect myself?
— Only
Hax: I understand your impulse to "defend / protect". This is the effect snark tends to have.
But if you recognize the urge of your friends as a defense mechanism – and that's the case – then you suddenly have a group of people rushing to defend against each other.
This is a missed opportunity to listen, learn, understand, support, appreciate. Especially if you are all supposed to be friends.
I hope that you will repel this desire to defend yourself and that you will become more vulnerable, counterintuitively: "You're kidding, I'm sure, but it stings." I kill for some parts of your life. Or: "I like being able to travel, but that does not mean that the reasons for which I am free to travel are not painful".
The purpose of an answer is often to prevent further discussion on a topic that is too painful or overworked – understandably, and the ability to do so is an important skill to possess. But this is not the only answer, and it is not always necessary at the moment.
In cases like this, where you are among friends and where more understanding can really help you – unless you simply need more enjoyable friends – try at least to find an answer that calls for a more meaningful discussion depth. Think empathy. Think: "Do we always want the only thing we do not have, or is it just the way our mind tries other lives to remind us why we chose ours?"
Think about it too, if it helps you deal with it with a detachment level, which is a less distant form of alternative protection. This will still help you to know if your friends are serious about what it means to be friends – or if they are just looking for foils.
Dear Carolyn, My husband recently took a new job in a very demanding industry. His previous job required him to work from 8:30 to 7:30 pm most days, also on weekends and some very late nights – like 5 o'clock in the morning. I'm doing well enough to adapt his schedule, but he often complains that he does not have enough time for his friends, and he's frustrated that he has put a lot of life changes (well, mostly kids) into a go "until it has a very different schedule.
I see this job change as an opportunity for him to set realistic limits to his new job because it is a bigger company and he has more employees in his team. . I do not think it's unreasonable. However, he seems happy to see how things are going.
Am I unfair of waiting for it to set boundaries with work? Especially before embarking on major changes in life, such as children? Do you have any suggestions for him to set these limits?
– Frustrated Spouse
Hax: The reality is that fairness is hilarious. Expectations too. And he thinks that the reasonableness is so cute that he could pinch his little cheeks.
If your husband will not change, so he does not change.
Whatever the degree of strength of the ground to ask for changes and set limits until it does.
And if it does not change, then you have to accept that as a basis and then decide from there what you want your life to look like. Of course, you can start by asking him again, explicitly, what you want (no threat, however, the forced change tends not to stick): "I would like you to reduce your hours of work, and I'll 39, would like to have children. "
But if his answer to this is anything other than a real reduction in the number of hours or a credible explanation, supported by evidence, why this can not happen now but will occur in X month – which will be done later in X months – then you must delete "husband as available parent" from your list of possibilities.
This is because the only choices you have are the ones you really have – and unless something changes, you have an absent spouse. Your choices are therefore: marriage with an absent wife, no children; marriage with absent spouse, with children; ex-marriage with absent spouse, new life with or without children.
That's all. And the more you work with the real, the more your expectations make sense.
Send an e-mail to Carolyn at [email protected], follow her on Facebook at www.facebook.com/carolyn.hax or chat with her online at 9 am ET. Pacific / noon every Friday, at www.washingtonpost.com.
(c) 2019, Washington Post Writers Group
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