I can’t look her in the f***ing face 🎃
co-parenting with someone you can't stand, unfollowed and unfriended, making friends as an adult in Seattle, a depressed husband, dogs in Halloween costumes
Happy fall, gremlins. Substack gave me a free subscription to Getty Images, so this advice column heavily features pictures I found searching “dog halloween costume.”
Here are the questions I’ll be answering today:
I was with my wife for 10 years. I thought she was the love of my life. We had our ups and downs, but I thought we were generally happy. Then, 8 years into our relationship, we had a baby. My wife changed overnight. She became juvenile, sarcastic, and cold. She showed no interest in bonding with the baby and complained nonstop about his occasionally annoying but very normal baby behavior.
My ex-girlfriend unfriended me and I want to ask her why.
I moved to the Seattle area by myself pre-pandemic and started an intense job. I'm a very gregarious person and friendships are very important to me. I can't tell if it's just hard to make friends as an adult or if Seattle isn't a great town for extroverts! Do you have advice about how to make queer friends as an post-30s adult in a city known for its cold shoulder?
My husband (we are both bi/queer) has lost his job because he’s become depressed because his mother died during early Covid days and he stopped doing work. He says he is unable to get another job because his mental health is too bad and that he’s too depressed to work. He refuses to take antidepressants and refuses to get therapy. How do I get my own needs met so I don’t resent him and can still help him and what can I say to get him to want to help himself?
Gay babies gallery!
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Kindly,
Maddy
I was with my wife for 10 years. I thought she was the love of my life. We had our ups and downs, but I thought we were generally happy.
Then, 8 years into our relationship, we had a baby. My wife changed overnight. She became juvenile, sarcastic, and cold. She showed no interest in bonding with the baby and complained nonstop about his occasionally annoying but very normal baby behavior.
I did everything I could to bring her in. I scheduled baby-free dates. She spent the entire time whining about the baby. I scheduled baby-free couples time at home. She pushed me away and took a nap. I held her hand, I let her cry, I told her it was ok, I told her that we were a family and that we’d get through it together. She demanded that I do more. I stopped asking her to take care of the baby. I let her go out with friends while I stayed home with him. I worked two part time jobs and did 100% of the childcare as soon as I was off the clock. She kept having come to Jesus meetings with me about how I wasn’t doing enough, wasn’t earning enough, wasn’t keeping the house clean enough, etc etc etc.
I was absolutely blindsided by her behavior and it had me googling “brain tumor symptoms” because she refused to talk to me about it. I scheduled a 15 minute intake session with a couples counselor and she walked out. Then I discovered that she was cheating on me with a coworker. (An UGLY coworker. I know you’ll tell me it shouldn’t matter but WOW!) She has been seeing this person for months on business trips while I was at home with our child, now a toddler. Oh— and we had an open relationship! She didn’t have to cheat. I had noticed her budding relationship with this person and asked her about it point blank, and she lied about it. I can only assume it’s because she wanted to end the relationship and was too chickenshit to tell me (and maybe even wanted to hurt me in the worst possible way).
Anyway, obviously, we are getting a divorce. She has moved out. I’m a wreck. Single parenthood is lonely. I’m cleaning the apartment and finding all of the expensive gifts this person gave her and I feel like such a fucking idiot for ever, ever trusting this person or believing she ever loved me for even a moment. Her side piece is moving to this coast and I assume they are going to move in together. I can’t know for sure. She seems to think it’s none of my business. She will not discuss the breakup. She doesn’t think she owes me any kind of apology or explanation beyond “sorry you feel bad” and “I didn’t think you’d find out.” After 10 years, that’s it???
Here’s the thing. On her way out the door, she cried and said she still loved me. I didn’t believe her because nobody makes a fool out of me twice.
But now she wants to be a parent! I’m asking for full custody and she wants visitation. All of a sudden, she wants to be Mom of the Year. She is here every evening for dinner. She notices the kid and praises the things he does. She offers to have him over at her new apartment on the weekends. She buys diapers and offers to take him to the doctor. Also, she wants to be friends! She brings treats and speaks to me in upbeat, cheerful tones. She talks about having an amicable divorce. She dreams of our perfect modern queer coparenting relationship. She can’t understand why I’m not ready to just pick up where we left off (but as friends). What the FUCK? This is someone who ignored me or told me to shut up every time I tried to talk to her over the past two years. It’s a complete surprise to learn that she even likes me at all.
I can’t fucking do this. I can’t look her in the fucking face. I want to scream every time she walks through my front door. I want to throw up every time I accidentally brush her arm in the kitchen. I can’t talk to her without picking a fight. I wish she hadn’t wasted an entire decade of my life. I keep dreaming of an alternate reality where I never met her and had kids with a cooperative, engaged coparent who treated me with love and respect. Didn’t I deserve that? But, I have to do this because I can’t legally prevent her from seeing the kid. (Thanks, gay rights! Yayyyyyyyy) So how the fuck do I do this?
Sad Single Mom, 36
This is a big question and I wrote a lot in response, but first I have to ask: are you in therapy? You need a space to work through your disappointment and anger that’s not my flimsy little advice column.
My second question: have you ever heard of the grey rock method? It’s a strategy for dealing with people who have poor boundaries and no self-awareness. It comes out of “narcissist” and “toxic person” online discourse. I’m not always sure how I feel about personality disorder buzzwords and Instagram therapy culture (I am not labeling your ex a narcissist, that’s so beyond my lane) but I think grey rock offers a specific set of rules for dealing with someone who draws you into conflict and turns you into the worst possible version of yourself. From ecounseling.com: “The grey rock method is a practice where an individual becomes emotionally non-responsive, boring, and virtually acts like a rock. Emotional detachment serves to undermine a narcissist’s attempts to lure and manipulate, causing them to grow uninterested and bored.“ I’ll let you do your own research, but here’s a blog I found about grey rock and co-parenting.
Your ex does not have to come over for dinner or stand in your kitchen. She can take the kid and return him at the agreed upon time. You don’t have to talk beyond necessary, practical communication (preferably written). Pretend like you’re co-workers. Is this a groovy queer co-parenting situation with potlucks and shared vacations? No, but it’s so much better than feeling enraged and stressed and like you have to pick fights in front of your kid. Ask anyone who was raised by parents who fought constantly and refused to get divorced—it would’ve been so much better to have been raised by civil adults who were slightly cold with each other than in the middle of a complicated and sad adult situation that they, as a child, did not have the power to change or the life experience to understand.
The next thing that comes across from your question is that you’re waiting for your ex to own up to her behavior and apologize. I don’t blame you for wanting that!! Your ex changed drastically and without warning at an incredibly vulnerable moment in your life. It’s human to want her to feel real remorse and regret. At the same time, you have to accept when someone simply does not have the range. You have to give yourself permission to move on and DiY your own closure. I can’t tell you how to do that, but I can attest that time helps a lot. So does physical space and taking each day as it comes.
I know it’s easy to think about the past 10 years of your life as a waste. I’m not going to tell you to make a list of good memories with your ex or imagine an alternate reality where your kid does not exist. I think this perspective only comes with time. I will say, however, that you could still end up with a loving partner and cooperative co-parent. There are billions of fish in the sea. All the more reason to go to therapy, establish firm boundaries with your ex, and really deal with your shit sooner than later.