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She is silent now to avoid fights. Carolyn Hax said: If she does not feel safe to express her thoughts, he is not what he has for her.
CHER CAROLYN: I'm going out with this guy for about five months. Since I live in the city, where there is still a lot to do, he usually travels from the suburbs to see me.
Since we are more comfortable with each other, he now arrives in my apartment and expresses a lot of inconvenience to the homeless to whom he has put his car, often for asking money aggressively or wandered on the road in a dangerous way.
His frustration borders on anger and really bothers me. I understand that harassment or dangerous driving situations can be very painful and frustrating, but his anger seems to be focused on the homeless population and I would not spend my time and energy being angry at a group of people as obviously less fortunate than me. . My boyfriend is very well off and has had a comfortable education of the middle class. I see it as a reflection of his values that he can not seem to feel any empathy for this group.
Lately, I just let him escape, because we all sometimes need it and also because it provoked intense debate when I protested. But I can not shake the discomfort I feel when he complains.
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How can I approach this without seeming to reject feelings of harassment or insecurity?
– Comfortable in town
DEAR COMFORTABLE IN THE CITY: If he's irritated by the panhandlers but not so much by a certain Bimmer who passes his tail for staying in the passing lane for a nanosecond for too long, then you might well have a classy idiot for a boyfriend.
But it's neither here nor there.
What is important:
– You question his character.
– But I learned not to do it aloud;
– Because his annoyance "borders on anger";
– And he rejects your questions with "intense arguments".
Do you see him?
The specific question could be just about anything. Let's say, for the sake of argument, that it also rages against the drivers of the Series 7, so it's not about empathy for the oppressed. You always have a dynamic where you have legitimate concerns – his right and his regular anger, carry-back – which you choose not to talk about because it makes you pay too much for speaking up.
It's at best a recipe for misery and at worst dangerous. He has become comfortable enough with you to start showing his true self, but you actually become less and less so, according to your own story of how you learned to hold yourself. You can not say, "When you express yourself about panhandlers, I hear a lack of empathy and it bothers me.
You do not feel safe to say what you think about this man.
Game over. This is not the guy.
CHER CAROLYN: Today, it is the birthday of my big brother (in the middle of his thirties). I did not call and I do not plan. The only time he calls, is when he needs something – and even then, he calls our mother to ask the rest of the siblings. He did not call me when I got married, for Thanksgiving, for Christmas, for the birth of his niece, for my birthday, and he did not return my calls.
Apparently, I'm not the only one of the siblings who "forgot" his birthday because he complained to mom that no one called. So Mom sent us each an SMS reminding us to call our brother, with a guilty trip. I do not try to count the beans, but honestly, I do not want to call it. What you say?
– "Forget it"
Dear "forgotten": Call, do not call, that's fine, and both are now beside the point.
But your brother and your mother, in their succession of choices, have drawn a well-ordered diagram of what probably went wrong here.
Your brother has never mastered the "give" part of giving and taking. And your mother has never stopped trying to isolate the consequences of this disconnection, striving to make sure that he still has to "take it".
Instead of counting the beans or staying quiet, ask yourself the big questions:
"Mom, why do you think he's addressing you rather than talking to us?"
"[Brother]I heard you were looking for X. Why did not you call me straight? Even just to say hello?
Do not put yourself in the middle, of course, without demanding or waiting. But you have little to lose by calling the name of the elephant.
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