Ask Gynomite!
In her former life, Emily “Gynomite” Gordon was a couples and family therapist licensed in 2 1/2 states. In this life, she’s a freelance fighter of your emotional woes with Ask Gynomite. Write her at askgynomite@gmail.com- all emails stay confidential. Today, Gynomite takes on good old-fashioned talking to girls.
Im a sophmore in high school, and there’s a girl that I think is really cute but I don’t I know any sweet sorccery to get her to like me. All of the advice I’ve gotten is be confident but that answer seems so vague. Is confidence tangible as a quiet 15 year old? I know everyone has an awkward period, I have plenty of friends but I can be kinda shy sometimes. I’ve never actually talked to the girl and I don’t have any classes with her this year, I had a few with her last year, but I never talked to her. It seems important to mention that this girl is more shy than I am. I talk to her friends sometimes in school and make them laugh and stuff. Should I wait until next year and hope we have classes together? Is it too late? Will she think its funny if I casually poo in her backpack!? Kiddin.
Oh man, your email put me right back into my 15 year old shoes, and let me tell you, they felt uncomfortable. This stuff is never simple, but there are few things I can recommend to you.
Ask Gynomite!
In her former life, Emily “Gynomite” Gordon was a couples and family therapist licensed in 2 1/2 states. In this life, she’s a freelance fighter of your emotional woes with Ask Gynomite. Write her at askgynomite@gmail.com- all emails stay confidential. Today, Gynomite takes on the growing distance between friends.
I am drifting away from my closest friends. We have distinctly different idea of how to have fun lately and there is no sign of this letting up. I have tried do what they do on weekends and some weeknights but I find it awful. I can’t ask them not to do what they want for fun though since that would be so selfish. I don’t know what to do. The idea of moving in a different direction really scares and saddens me but I don’t see a real solution. I’ve been friends w/these people for such a long time too but I guess people just drift a part. It just really sucks. I am sorry to sound like I’m whining I am just really concerned about this problem and have spent a while thinking of a solution and continuously come up empty.
The crowd is sometimes a little too young for my liking, is obnoxious, and it really is hard to hold an engaging conversation with the people there. I would never ask them not to go there, especially since the two of them enjoy it and believe it’s a viable place to meet girls, but it’s frustrating to know that we are developing two completely different ideas of how to hang out. These are my two best friends and quite frankly, I put all my chips in their basket.
Ask Gynomite!
Ask Gynomite!
In her former life, Emily “Gynomite” Gordon was a couples and family therapist licensed in 2 1/2 states. In this life, she’s a freelance fighter of your emotional woes with Ask Gynomite. Write her at askgynomite@gmail.com- all emails stay confidential. Today, Gynomite takes on cheating and responsibility.
I am worried about my friend. Her boyfriend of over four years, the guy she thought she would marry, broke up with her in April. Within a week or two, she had a new boyfriend. I thought, Ok, not so healthy but she needs to rebound. Around Halloween, that guy broke up with her. Within days she had another “boyfriend.” (I never meet this guy and he sounded sketchy to me, like he only asked her out b/c she said she wouldn’t have sex outside a relationship.) At some point that relationship ended and she had yet another boyfriend, which I realized because of Facebook. Now, they can’t have known each other long than a month, I would say and now she is looking for apartments with him.
I am really worried about it. I kind of let it go when I thought she was just rebounding. I saw her behavior as unhealthy but I thought, She needs validation and I can’t make that change. But moving in with a guy — really, a stranger — so soon worries me. She had said before that she wouldn’t want to live with another boyfriend because she thought it made it difficult for her and her long-term boyfriend to break up and that it may have contributed to the relationship dragging. Also, she said it took away some of the romance and she would rather wait until she was engaged next time.
I’ve been fairly supportive of her decisions till now and have checked my judgment although some of other friends have said something to her. I feel like I shouldn’t keep quiet on this, but it’s also not my life. I don’t want to alienate my friend. I don’t think my opinion will change her actions. But I don’t think it’s right to keep quiet, either, when I am legitimately concerned. What should I do?
Watching a friend make poor decisions that aren’t life threatening is truly miserable, because there is nothing you can do. There’s nothing illegal or unsafe about making poor decisions in relationships, although god knows it should be illegal. I feel your pain.
Ask Gynomite!
In her former life, Emily “Gynomite” Gordon was a couples and family therapist licensed in 2 1/2 states. In this life, she’s a freelance fighter of your emotional woes with Ask Gynomite. Write her at askgynomite@gmail.com- all emails stay confidential. Today, Gynomite takes on cheating and responsibility.
My boyfriend and I were together for 2 and a half years and he was my first real love and adult relationship (I met him when I was 27). I have never had what felt like such a healthy, loving, fun, and stable relationship until him. However, early into the relationship, I snooped through his email and found out that he’d been emailing Craigslist Casual Encounters looking for sex. When I confronted him, he basically begged me to stay with him and said that he’d never followed through on anything and it was just ‘fantasy’. I only snooped because I was suspicious of a friendship he had with an ex, but I didn’t expect what I found! Over the next year, I found an earring that wasn’t mine in his apartment, flirty texts and emails with other girls, and a public review he wrote online reviewing an escort he slept with several times. Whenever I confronted him, we’d fight about it, but always decided we loved each other too much to break up. Everything I found was due to my own snooping, and he blamed my inexperience in relationships on our trust problems and made me feel like I was crazy for always being suspicious. We are now broken up because I caught him on Craigslist again, I wanted to work it out, and he finally said he was done for good. I’m a mess about it, I ultimately blame myself for the demise of our relationship because I was so needy and suspicious all the time. Even now I can see how destructive he was to me, but he was AMAZING at hiding all of this and looking like such a great, successful, witty, funny guy to me and everyone else! So I guess I have two questions…1.) Why did he stay with me for so long (in what appeared to be a very loving relationship) if he was constantly cheating? 2.) Once a cheater always a cheater, or will he finally be a good boyfriend to the next girl he dates? I hate that I put up with all of this for so long hoping he’d change and the next girl will get the boyfriend I always thought he’d be.
I have a hard time knowing where to start with this question, but let me start here: your trust problems in this relationship were not a result of your “inexperience in relationships”, but instead, in your ex-boyfriend’s near constant infidelity. Period.
Ask Gynomite!
In her former life, Emily “Gynomite” Gordon was a couples and family therapist licensed in 2 1/2 states. In this life, she’s a freelance fighter of your emotional woes with Ask Gynomite. Write her at askgynomite@gmail.com- all emails stay confidential. Today, Gynomite takes on snooping.
I just found out that the guy I’ve been seeing has a long distance girlfriend that he is still sending pining, swoony emails and texts to. I found this out by checking his phone while he was in the bathroom, but I checked because I was feeling suspicious- he would get a text and giggle to himself, and it just seemed flirtatious. Anyway, I told him I have to talk to him tonight. How exactly do I handle this?
The bigger issue here, to me, is how to deal with damning information you acquired by snooping. Traditional wisdom and romantic comedies will tell you that the cardinal rule is that you never snoop, because if you snoop, you will find out something you don’t want to know. The secondary cardinal rule to snooping is that the information you find is inadmissible evidence in the court of love. Some would argue that if the crime you find evidence of outweighs the crime of snooping, confrontation is allowed (having sex with an entire basketball team > reading someone’s open email account). Some would argue it is not.
Ask Gynomite!
In her former life, Emily “Gynomite” Gordon was a couples and family therapist licensed in 2 1/2 states. In this life, she’s a freelance fighter of your emotional woes with Ask Gynomite. Write her at askgynomite@gmail.com- all emails stay confidential. Today, Gynomite takes on keeping boundaries up when Mom moves in.
My mom has been out of work since January and can’t find a job in the city she lives in right now. She asked me and my husband (of two years) if she could move in with us so she could shut off her utilities and keep making her house payments so she wouldn’t have to face foreclosure. We know that this is the only way she can keep her house, so we said yes. We have tried to do it the most responsible and honest way that we can be laying out rules (for example, she’s usually pretty messy and cluttered and I prefer a clean home and I told her that it was expected) and asking for a timeline. I told her that I would prefer if she start transitioning back to her home no later than May 2011.
If I had a normal, happy relationship with my mom then this would be a non-issue. However, my mom has always been a little overbearing. Her “sense of humor” as she calls it can be sarcastic at best and mean-spirited at worst. I spent my entire life growing up waiting to get out of the house so that I could live my own life without her trying to control my actions and decisions. She’s not a bad person, our pesonalities just clash. After I moved out and got married, our relationship improved, but that was after years of me reinforcing the fact that I was an adult and did not have to stand for her behavior any longer.
I’m afraid that her moving in will place a strain on my relationship with my husband, first and foremost, and that it will also damage the shaky relationship I’ve managed to cultivate with her so far. I have tried my best to lay down some ground rules before she moves in, but I’m not entirely sure how well she will adhere to them. What is the best way for me to approach something like this with her? If she consistently breaks a rule, I don’t know what I will say to her without making her feel humiliated. She already had an issue with swallowing her pride and asking to move in with her daughter because she’s on the verge of losing her home and I don’t want to aggravate the situation.
I am really dreading the move (that happens in a couple of weeks) because I have no frame of reference for how to handle something like this.
My goodness, I can’t imagine what a pressure cooker this situation could be.
Ask Gynomite!
In her former life, Emily “Gynomite” Gordon was a couples and family therapist licensed in 2 1/2 states. In this life, she’s a freelance fighter of your emotional woes with Ask Gynomite. Write her at askgynomite@gmail.com- all emails stay confidential. Today, Gynomite takes on how to best brush off an unwanted suitor.
Ask Gynomite!
In her former life, Emily “Gynomite” Gordon was a couples and family therapist licensed in 2 1/2 states. In this life, she’s a freelance fighter of your emotional woes with Ask Gynomite. Write her at askgynomite@gmail.com- all emails stay confidential. You can also check her out on her weekly advice column over at Lemondrop. Today, Gynomite takes on getting over an ex that you want to murder.
I’m having a hard time getting over my last boyfriend. We split up with a huge fight, with both of us screaming and cursing each other, but we split up because he was cheating on me and being a terrible dude. So I’m not like, pining for him, I actually hate him hate him hate him and I can’t seem to stop being pissed. How can I calm down? It’s been almost a month!
Your anger is totally real, and justified, and warranted, and all that jazz. You have every single right to be pissed. But that’s not what this is about, really.
Ask Gynomite!
In her former life, Emily “Gynomite” Gordon was a couples and family therapist licensed in 2 1/2 states. In this life, she’s a freelance fighter of your emotional woes. Write her at askgynomite@gmail.com- all emails stay confidential. You can also check her out on her weekly advice column over at Lemondrop. Today, Gynomite takes on when the sex is good but everything else is bad.
I’ve been dating this guy for about 8 months, and honestly, it’s a pretty lame relationship. At first we got along totally great, but we quickly went from being flirty and having fun to either ignoring or snapping at each other. I have stuck around because I love him, and also because for the first time ever, I have a great sex life. Every time we fight we end up having sex, and it’s always passionate and mindblowing and amazing. That’s worth sticking around for, right?
Wow, good question. Here’s what I will say: while it’s tough to have a good relationship without a good sex life (thanks Mom!), it is totally possible to have a horrible relationship with a good sex life. And this is what you have. The question is, what does it mean?
