Ask Gynomite!
Gynomite is a licensed therapist in 2 1/2 states and she would love to take a crack at your emotional dilemmas. Write her at askgynomite@gmail.com- all emails stay confidential. Today, Gynomite takes on being concerned about a friend’s mental health.
I am worried about a friend of mine. We both live in a big city, and our families are far away, and she has just been acting very jumpy and strange lately. I’ve known her for about 8 months and haven’t seen anything like this until recently when she started calling me in the wee hours of the morning asking me questions about philosophy and trying to read me stuff she found on the Internet. But then she’ll kinda be fine for a day or two afterwards. Then it’ll happen again, and she’ll get sweaty and kinda frenetic when we’re out at a bar, yelling at strangers about weird things. I feel like I’m the only person who is concerned, but I don’t even know what I should do? Do I make her go to therapy? Call someone?
Ask Gynomite!
Gynomite is a licensed therapist in 2 1/2 states and she would love to take a crack at your emotional dilemmas. Write her at askgynomite@gmail.com- all emails stay confidential. Today, Gynomite takes on being someone’s parent/lover.
My girlfriend and I have been together for about a year, and I love her. We get along great, but I feel like I’m kinda running her life at this point. She never remembers to pay her bills, or take lunch with her, or do laundry, and I end up doing all this stuff for her. Not paying for her bills, just literally opening her mail and getting stuff organized. And she sometimes gets too drunk when we’re out together and I have to get her home safe. We don’t live together but I think she wants to move in together soon. I love her but I don’t think this is fair to me. What do I do?
Oh my, you are in a pickle. In my previous life in North Carolina, I worked with mainly children and their parents, and I became pretty well-versed in parenting skills. So let me impart some of them onto you now, because you have effectively become this girl’s daddy.
Ask Gynomite!
Gynomite is a licensed therapist in 2 1/2 states and she would love to take a crack at your emotional dilemmas. Write her at askgynomite@gmail.com- all emails stay confidential. Today, Gynomite takes on boyfriends of BFF’s that hit on you.
Last night I was out with a few friends, including my best friend and her boyfriend of 5 or 6 months. I have a boyfriend but he wasn’t out with us. I went outside for a cigarette with my best friend’s boyfriend at some point in the night and he told me that he was attracted to me and wished that we were both single so we could hook up. I kinda laughed it off, but he seemed pretty serious about it. Do I tell my BFF?
In a word, yes.
Ask Gynomite, kinda!
Lauren Lapkus and Lauren Ashley Smith run this awesome site called Fix My Facebook where they address Facebook dilemmas. I thought this was pretty brilliant, so I decided to slide them one of my more Facebooky questions, and they slid me one of their more Gynomitey questions. Kinda like Freaky Friday, but instead with blogs.
I work in radio, and while I’m not really “big” enough for a work profile, a few listeners have added my personal profile. No big whoop, so I thought, it’s not like I have anything to hide. Just might have to cut back on the expletives.
Unfortunately, there’s one listener who is way too talkative on my status updates (and way too political for my tastes). It’s gotten to the point where my friends are starting to bait him into getting into arguments. Last night, I acknowledged an on-air screw-up I made, and when some friends started joshin’ me, he comes in like he’s riding on a white horse to protect me! I had to tell him to back off.
I don’t want to block the guy; he’s a hardcore listener. But I’m honestly afraid he’s gonna piss someone off.
Ask Gynomite!
Gynomite is a licensed therapist in 2 1/2 states and she would love to take a crack at your emotional dilemmas. Write her at askgynomite@gmail.com- all emails stay confidential. Today, Gynomite takes on forgiving a cheater.
I recently found out that my boyfriend of 2 years cheated on me. It happened a little while ago, and he is incredibly contrite about it and wants us to stay together. We have our ups and downs, but I always thought our relationship was good and I just feel so lost. I love him so much and am so hurt. I want to stay with him, but part of me also wants to punch him in the face and never see him again. Should you forgive a cheater?
Ask Gynomite!
Gynomite is a licensed therapist in 2 1/2 states and she would love to take a crack at your emotional dilemmas. Write her at askgynomite@gmail.com- all emails stay confidential. Today, Gynomite takes on that creepy little feeling you get when you think there’s something wrong in your relationship.
I’ve been in a good long term relationship with my guy for just over a year. Lately something between us just seems off. He’s distant, he’s irritable, and we don’t have any fun anymore. I’ve asked him what’s going on and he says everything is fine. I think that’s a lie. What can I do?
I like to think of relationships between people as actual things that are separate from each of the two people involved. So there’s you, there’s your boyfriend, and there’s your relationship. It’s a thing you two have created. So the first thing to do when you get a feeling that something is just wrong is to see if you can isolate who is actually affected.
Ask Gynomite!
Gynomite is a licensed therapist in 2 1/2 states and would love to take a crack at your emotional dilemmas. Write her at askgynomite@gmail.com- all emails stay confidential. Today, Gynomite takes on the terrifying prospect of hanging out with children.
Gynomite, I have to hang out with a 8 year old boy in a few days and I have no idea what to do. It’s my cousin’s kid and my cousin and I were best friends growing up, so now that I’m visiting home, my cousin thought it might be good for me to spend some time with her son. I am freaking out. I’m not great with kids and only met this one once, when he was a baby. I know nothing about him except that he likes Ben 10.
Hanging out with children can be really scary, especially if you’re not used to it, so I feel your pain. I worked as a therapist for children for a bit, and the hardest part of the job was the weird rapport you have to try and develop with a person who has the capacity to think and speak and feel emotions, and yet, is a full 20 to 30 years younger than you.
Ask Gynomite!
Gynomite is a licensed therapist in 2 1/2 states and would love to take a crack at your emotional dilemmas. Write her at askgynomite@gmail.com- all emails stay confidential. Today, Gynomite takes on cyberstalking.
About three months ago I broke up with the guy I’d been dating for just under a year. Things are fine now, we’re cordial with each other, and we’ve both dated other people since then. Last week I went to his Facebook profile once and since then, I’m hooked. I check it and refresh it constantly, and there’s lots of stuff to obsess over on it. I thought I was over him, but I cannot stop checking his profile. Does this mean I’m not over him?
Ask Gynomite!
My boyfriend’s family includes some ex-addicts and a relative who goes in and out of jail. My mom knows some of this information and while it doesn’t please her, she seemed to have gotten over it. Last night I told her about the relative in jail, a fact she didn’t know, and it really got to her. She is very concerned for me and thinks I am not making a good choice by being with my boyfriend. I am moving to be with him in a few months and she is starting to think this is a bad idea because of his family’s choices. I tried to explain that he has not done anything bad and never would, and would never put me in harm’s way, but she does not get it. She’s also not pleased that he doesn’t have a college degree, which is something she brings up to me time and again. How can I reconcile this with her and make it so she sees my boyfriend for who he is, not what his family has done? She already liked him before all this, the jail thing really got to her though.
It seems like a lot of people I know in their mid-20s/early-30s are in proud opposition of what their families are. Their parents are conservative, they’re liberal; their parents live in the country, they’re citified; their parents are in low paying dead-end jobs, they’re producing films. Our generation seems almost obsessed with the idea that everyone gets a clean slate, everyone has a chance to make their own legacy that is separate from their parents.
We believe this. But our parents don’t.
