“When not telling feels like ‘hiding,’ it’s time to tell. There’s your opener, too. ‘I should have said this sooner.’”
Carolyn Hax. As it is in relationships, so it is on the web.
Tag: carolynhax
Resentment might start with a wrong that’s done to you, but harboring it in silence is a wrong you do to others.
Carolyn Hax: A quick trip from travel mode to grump mode – The Washington Post
Alone time is a gift many people don’t feel comfortable asking for, and not having it when needed is a common cause of stage sighing and other put-upon theatrics.
*ahem*
Carolyn Hax: A quick trip from travel mode to grump mode – The Washington Post
Getting along isn’t luck, it’s a skill.
The best way to communicate your needs clearly is to trust them, vs. spinning them in the most favorable way or second-guessing your own normalcy.
Listen for follow-up questions, because when those dry up, that means your companion’s interest usually has, too.
Carolyn Hax: A friend with seemingly everything still has time for fine whine
Classic Hax. You have to be pretty open-minded and self-aware to be able to sympathize with those who appear to be (and may objectively be) more fortunate than you are.
Or she’s genuinely unhappy. It can, of course, happen amid gaudy equity, lovely kids, an attentive spouse, a flexible career, stable finances and ambitious travel; just because these have societal value doesn’t mean they’re valuable to her.
And just because the decisions were “very-thought-out” doesn’t mean they were the right ones for her. If a person’s baseline understanding of herself is a degree or two off, then her choices can lead her, over the years, hundreds of miles off-course.
Carolyn Hax: A friend with seemingly everything still has time for fine whine
Give your past, present and future selves influence in proportion to what each has earned. Which one of you is working with the most reliable information — about you and nobody else?
Live by the schedule as a gift to yourself. Deferring to it will take many high-stakes, high-guilt decisions out of your day on a daily basis.
Carolyn Hax. Previously in Carolyn Hax wisdom.
Carolyn Hax: Weddings bring out the worst in an unmarried couple – The Washington Post
Plus, I wonder whether you’ve actually just talked about it in a non-charged setting and, if you have, why one or both of you isn’t accepting the outcome of that talk as your current reality. “Fighting” is really just a nickname for an attempt to renegotiate what you already know is the truth but don’t want to accept.
Oh, snap. Carolyn Hax bringin’ some real talk.
Carolyn Hax: Weddings bring out the worst in an unmarried couple – The Washington Post
Be gentle especially when you’re right.
Any time you’re trying to explain something based on what broad categories of people do, it’s time to stop, back up, stick to the facts at hand, and ask yourself why you’re reaching so far to get a more appealing answer.
Carolyn Hax. My Hax tag is the best.
Any gifts and time you give to family members are investments in them as people, vs. investments in your relationship with them. It’s “I want the best for you” vs. “I want the best out of you” — a fine distinction, but an important one.
Hax!
Heroism is often some seriously boring stuff.
There’s no need for you to “decide” on one feeling. If we don’t allow ourselves multiple, confusing, even conflicting feelings, then how else do we learn to deal with people when the going gets gray?
The full story is never as tidy as the one that starts with “Obviously . . .”
State your needs, don’t test people on them.
Take the hard feelings away, and this is the right thing to do. Put the feelings back and it hurts like hell, but the right thing to do hasn’t changed.
Do yourself proud, in whatever shape that takes.
Fear and defensiveness, the architects of so many of our lowest moments.
Mark Larson 