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Dear Dana: I Don’t Want To Be My Friend’s Bridesmaid Anymore

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Dear Dana: I Don’t Want To Be My Friend’s Bridesmaid Anymore

Dear Dana is a bi-weekly advice column for humans who engage in romantic relationships. Please send your dilemmas, issues, conundrums, assumptions, conflicts, anxieties, worriments, obstacles, complications, predicaments, queries, questions, and any other synonyms for “problems” to deardana@rolereboot.org.

Dear Dana,

I’m supposed to be a bridesmaid in my friend’s wedding in a few weeks but I don’t want to do it anymore. My friend and I met in college and we used to be really close. She was a bridesmaid in my wedding and did so much to help me out. She kept me calm and really went above and beyond to make my wedding day really special, which is why I agreed to do the same for her. I’ve already bought the dress and the shoes. I co-hosted a bridal shower for her and I’m helping the other bridesmaids to put on the bachelorette party. But the truth is that our friendship is different now and I’m not sure I want her in my life anymore. She used to be so much fun when I was drinking, but now that I’m sober she grates on me. She gets really drunk all the time, I don’t get along with her soon-to-be husband, and I try not to see them at all outside of mandatory wedding-related events. It’s like we used to be friends and now we’re people who can only talk about fun times we used to have because we can’t have good times now. She’s gets agitated about every detail of the wedding and I just roll my eyes at her most of the time, which I know is pissing her off. Part of me thinks that I should do my duty and be there for her throughout her wedding, and then part ways afterward. But part of me feels like a fraud and like I should just own up that I never should have said yes, seeing as we don’t have much in common anymore. Should I abandon my friend on her wedding day? Or should I fake a smile and be her bridesmaid?

Signed,

Fake Bridesmaid

  Dear Fake Bridesmaid, 

A wedding is a social situation that calls on us to rank those we love. I have a good number of friends who I’m very close with, but now I’m getting married and I suddenly need to decide which ones are close enough to me to warrant becoming wedding attendants, while my partner has to do the same with his wedding attendants. We have to think about who we’re going to invite to the wedding, to the reception, to do a reading at the ceremony itself, who gets to come to the engagement party and bridal shower and bachelor/ette parties. Being asked to be a bridesmaid is an honor, while being a bridesmaid is often arduous and expensive. It’s something you do for a friend that you love who loves you in return, not an obligation that you’re required to do in turn for someone because they did it for you. I mean, it’s standing in a position of honor during a ceremony of love, not picking someone up from the airport.

I was once asked to be a bridesmaid in a friend’s wedding. I was dating her brother at the time, and I was so excited to have been asked to stand up at her wedding because it showed that she felt about me the way I felt about her — that we were friends, and soon-to-be sisters as soon as her brother and I got engaged and then married. But then my relationship with her brother fell apart, I broke up with him, and I had to make the awkward call to his sister. I dialed her number with shaky hands and was so grateful to the universe when she didn’t answer. “I’ll still be in your wedding if you want me to,” I said to her voicemail. “But, if not, I totally understand. It’s your wedding and I’ll do whatever you need me to do.” She called me back and I, of course, let it go to voicemail. “Thanks so much,” she said into my voicemail. “At this point, it would be too awkward for you to still be in my wedding party. But you’re still invited to the wedding for sure, as long as you and my brother stay on good terms.” We didn’t stay on good terms, so I wasn’t invited to the wedding, which was totally understandable. We were honest with each other.

I’m glad that you’re honest enough to admit that you don’t like your friend anymore. Friendships can ebb and flow over time — they don’t have to be all-in or all-out — but then this wedding came around and you’re suddenly asked to exhibit all-in behavior that you aren’t feeling. I would tell you to stay in this wedding party if you were just going through a rough spot with this friend, if you were simply annoyed by her behavior during this intense wedding-planning process, and if you had indicated to me at all that you wanted to stay in her life afterward. “Plaster a smile on your face and do your damn job,” I’d say.

But I’m not going to say that, because one of my bridesmaids stopped talking to me soon after my wedding. A few weeks afterward, I invited her out for dinner, as a way of saying thanks for being in my wedding party, and she responded that she was busy for the next six months. I thought, maybe that was true, and I was just being sensitive, and maybe she needed time away from me after all the wedding craziness. But then she stayed away — didn’t return my emails or texts. It was so clear what was going on, but it was hard for me to accept because she had just been my bridesmaid. Who would be a bridesmaid and then immediately end a friendship afterward? It didn’t make sense. When my birthday came around and I still hadn’t heard from her, I knew that we were really done. Her service as my bridesmaid had been a swan song of sorts, a farewell gift. I can only guess as to her reasons for cutting off our friendship because, and this is not a great trait of mine, my stubborn pride prevented me from ever actually asking her why we weren’t friends anymore, but I realized that she had been planning to exit my life since before the wedding. And, really, I’m still not over it.

When I went through my wedding photos I saw pictures of happy people drinking and dancing, my husband and I smiling and dancing, my nieces stealing flowers and hiding under tables, my dearest friends in the world all in the same room, and then her face. Her smile tight, her head always tilted just so. I winced each time I saw her. There were no pictures of just the two of us, though I had tried to get some taken on that day, but she always slipped away. I couldn’t find her to get the shot so I gave up.

Knowing that she had known then, on that day, that our friendship was over, made it impossible for me to have a neutral reaction to her image in those pictures. When I put my wedding album together, I cropped her out of it. Our friendship ending in no way ruined my wedding, but it did cast a shadow. Would the shadow have been there if she declined to be in my wedding party and had instead parted ways with me before hand? Probably, but it also would have saved me the time I spent editing her out of the photos.

No one wants to look at their wedding pictures and see a lie. So don’t be that lie. As easy as it would be to just keep going through with it, showing up to events, smiling nicely, leaving as early as possible without anyone noticing, it’s just going to make the eventual end of your friendship all the more difficult. You are not obligated to be in this wedding and, if you truly don’t like the bride or the groom, you shouldn’t be in this wedding. Hell, if you truly don’t like them you shouldn’t be at this wedding. You’ve changed the way you relate to the world by removing the hazy filter of booze, and this has lead you to reevaluate your old patterns and old relationships. You’re wholly within your rights to walk away, but you need to do it now.

It’s going to suck to break the news to your friend. She’s going to be upset and you’re going to be upset. But pretending to like someone isn’t a gift the same way that a beautifully wrapped box of shit isn’t a gift. Eventually she’s going to open it, and see the shit, and know that there was shit in there the whole time. Don’t give her the gift of shit. Give her the gift of the truth. Bow out, allow your ex-friend the space to rage and grieve and find a replacement bridesmaid, and live happily, knowing that you aren’t going to be cropped out of anyone’s wedding album.

Dana Norris once went on 71 internet dates, many of which you may read about here. She is the founder of Story Club and editor-in-chief of Story Club Magazine. She has been featured in McSweeney’s, Role Reboot, The Rumpus, and Tampa Review and she teaches at StoryStudio Chicago. You may find her on Twitter at @dananorris.

Other Links:

Why Is It Always Women Who Have To Adjust?

How I’m Unlearning to People-Please

Why Respect Is More Important For Men

The post Dear Dana: I Don’t Want To Be My Friend’s Bridesmaid Anymore appeared first on Role Reboot.

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How I’m Unlearning To People-Please

New Post has been published on http://foursprout.com/love/how-im-unlearning-to-people-please/

How I’m Unlearning To People-Please

Meeting the demands of others, rather than my own, will only lead me astray from what matters most: my happiness, health, and wholeness.

I do not remember a time in my life when I was not a people-pleaser. Maybe it’s because I am a firstborn, so, at an early age, I began overachieving. Maybe because, as an empath, I dislike absorbing anyone’s negative emotions—disappointment, resentment, worry—especially if I caused them. Or it could be because of my elaborate insecurities, which tell me that I better work (hard, harder, hardest) for any worth I hope people will find in me.

Whatever the reason, I people-please chronically. Between my desire to make, or keep, others happy, and my desperation to avoid conflict, I say yes when I want to say no. I apologize often, and unnecessarily. Too frequently, I feel at least a little empty until I receive affirmation. Although, finally, I have started to speak up when my feelings are hurt, I still prioritize others’ satisfaction over my own.

And yet.

A number of years ago, I learned, in some ways, to honor what I love, even if society has not prescribed it for me. For example, although it defied expectations, after college, I did not get a 9-5, or enter a graduate program; instead, in some of Baltimore’s most neglected neighborhoods, I completed a year of service through AmeriCorps. Later, when I did attend graduate school, it was in Europe. While living there, I made arrangements for my next step: another year of service; this time, in Africa.

In fact, ever since my early 20s, when it comes to things like where I live, or how I pay my bills, I have made choices for myself. Boldly. At every transition, I have opted, unapologetically, to do what feels right. Others’ opinions or expectations never interfered with that part of my path; my compass has led me to my own North.

However, in the day-to-day decisions, what I commit to, or not; what I permit people to say to me; what I set as personal aspirations for myself, I have never ceased to people-please. I still overextend myself, bite my tongue, pretend not to care. I continue to strive for standards that I believe could actually, finally, guarantee others’ love for me.

Even at the cost of my relationships.

Although I came to know my North while pursuing the right places and professions, when it came to finding the right person, it seemed, for a long time, no North existed. On this particular path, people-pleasing maintained precedence; meeting others’ expectations seemed important enough to neglect what was best for me. Thus, for a five-and-a-half-year relationship, I was nearly frantic to marry someone I knew I shouldn’t. But because I loved him, and because apparently you’re supposed to get married in your mid-to-late twenties, I not only stayed with him, I would repeatedly persuade (read: practically beg) him to stay with me.

He, too, knew we should not be together, and periodically, would attempt to break up with me. With each “I don’t think this is working,” or “We shouldn’t do this anymore,” I learned a little more how life-breaking the demise of our relationship would be. Every time he suggested splitting up, I would plead for him to hang on; I did not want to ever need to try to remember the sound of his laugh, or smell of his cologne.

But, in addition to heartbreak, each of his efforts to end things would make me feel something else, too: the splintering of my future. At that time, despite our incompatibilities, nothing made more sense than a life with him. We had already invested so much time into building an “us.” In the eyes of our families and friends, we had become a unit. Nothing about living solo appealed to me, especially because hardly anyone I knew was single. When everyone heard we broke up, after all this time, what would they think?

Imagining a life without him made my entire existence feel small. “Our society is designed for couples,” a stranger, not-too-long-widowed, told me at a wine tasting once. Even there, I was the guest of a friend who did not want to attend alone, so he had asked me to join him. This widow was the only person at the table without a drinking partner.

When we eventually, inevitably, unraveled, the personal loss was all I could endure; for weeks, I delayed making our break-up public. Even my parents, with whom I have always immediately shared big news, did not know for a month. Finally, sitting on the floor of their house, crying and apologizing, I disclosed my single status.

In the midst of comforting me, my mom asked, “What are you apologizing for?”

“Because your daughter is 30, and not in a relationship.” I remember thinking this was obvious, that they had valid reason to feel shame. Instead, they rubbed my back, and offered advice. They promised hope.

I needed it. At that point, I felt that my legitimacy as an adult depended on our relationship. As much as I missed him, I missed even more the validity, and value, that being with him made me feel.

Maybe sooner than I should have, I joined OkCupid, and permitted friends to introduce me to the random single coworker or acquaintance. My quest for a new relationship had specific criteria: a name to drop when people mentioned their significant others, a guest to accompany me to social events, someone with whom to spend idle time. If I could just find one person to simultaneously satisfy my emotional, mental, social, and physical needs, I would have regained the accomplishment we are all expected to attain, but what my break-up robbed me of: coupledom.

But, after a few dates with a man I found funny but with whom I (initially) did not foresee a future, I realized: My relationship does not need to mirror those around me. Our evolving dynamic revealed that relationships do not require a constant eye to what’s next, or knowledge (let alone proof) of what your partner does every night, or a quota of daily communication. Commitment does not necessitate confinement.

Well-intended loved ones encouraged me to set certain boundaries, and to request that he “define” us; out of habit, I obliged. While this may have placated them, all I felt was inauthentic. I savored the organic evolution of our relationship, and these demands were artificial. But it wasn’t until repeated tone-deaf comments from dear (married) friends — calling him “just a booty call,” or remarking about one of our photos that we look like a “real” couple — that I finally, fully understood.

The choices I make regarding my relationship, or lifestyle, or hobbies, or religion, or wardrobe, should aim to please me, no one else. Meeting the demands of others, rather than my own, will only lead me astray from what matters most: my happiness, health, and wholeness. While I appreciate that people want what (they think) is best for me, I alone know the climate and seasons of my North, and I alone determine how I arrive there.

Kerry Graham lives, teaches, writes, runs, and photographs in Baltimore, Maryland. Her work has appeared in The Three Quarter Review, Spry, elephant journal, A Quiet Courage and Vine Leaves Literary Journal, among others. Connect with her on Instagram and Twitter: @mskerrygraham.

Other Links:

We Need To Learn How To Handle Unrequited Love

How I’m Teaching My Boys To Change The World

When You And Your Partner Have Different Libidos, It’s OK

The post How I’m Unlearning To People-Please appeared first on Role Reboot.

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Fighting for love 📸 by @daviddrebin

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Swiping Me Off My Feet on Tinder: Relationship Matters Podcast 69

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Swiping Me Off My Feet on Tinder: Relationship Matters Podcast 69

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Relationship Matters Podcast Number 69 “Swiping me off my feet: Explicating relationship initiation on Tinder”: Professor Leah E. LeFebvre of the University of Wyoming, talks about her paper which delves into how mobile dating apps like Tinder are changing how relationship initiating functions.Read the associated article here. 

Interested in learning more about relationships? Click here for other topics on Science of Relationships. Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get our articles delivered directly to your NewsFeed. Learn more about our book and download it here.

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Tag your babe ❤💋

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*Double tap* and tag Bae! ❤️ @randevudating

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Holding Hands with Loved Ones Creates Interpersonal Synchronization

New Post has been published on http://foursprout.com/love/holding-hands-with-loved-ones-creates-interpersonal-synchronization/

Holding Hands with Loved Ones Creates Interpersonal Synchronization

When the couple was sitting next to each other holding hands, the brainwave sync was the strongest. How incredible is that?

The post Holding Hands with Loved Ones Creates Interpersonal Synchronization appeared first on The Gottman Institute.

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We Need To Learn How To Handle Unrequited Love

New Post has been published on http://foursprout.com/love/we-need-to-learn-how-to-handle-unrequited-love/

We Need To Learn How To Handle Unrequited Love

We are hard-wired to think that we can change people who don’t love us back. The problem is that life isn’t really like that.

There was a time when I was epically bad at dealing with unrequited love.

It was my senior year of college and I had a crush on a friend of a friend that I’d met by pure happenstance. Really, it was more of a crash – I flubbed my own name when I introduced myself and spent over an hour picking out The Perfect Outfit the first time we went to the movies. When I found out that he liked me too, I was over the moon with joy. But when I finally worked up the nerve to tell him how I felt, everything screeched to a halt. Let’s just be friends, he suggested. Instead of accepting this, I tried to assuage my sadness by inventing a scenario where, if I just worked hard enough, I could generate romantic feelings out of thin air.

The cliffs notes version of the rest of my story is pretty standard. Our relationship settled into a friendship, albeit one fraught with sexual tension. I tried to deny my feelings. Things happened somewhere in that mix of tension and denial and casualness, and I fell harder. We entered a period of terrible awkwardness. And finally, one night, I rounded the corner and saw him kissing another girl, ran to my car, and cried so hard on the drive home that I thought I was going to throw up. The next time we saw each other, I unloaded everything I’d been feeling for the past several months. How dare you break my heart and date someone else. How dare you.

It’s not a time I’m proud of, but it was a time of necessary learning and growing. The first rule: Unrequited love sucks. There’s no possible way that it doesn’t suck, and unless you and the other person have absolutely no investment in each other, it sucks for both parties. “It’s not easy to learn that you can be in love with someone, and they can be kind to you, and think you’re great, and want to spend time with you, and never love you back or be willing to give you the relationship you want,” Clarisse Thorn wrote back in 2012. “But it’s also not easy to care about someone and be afraid that you’re hurting them, or screwing up their incentives.” Having also been on the other end of unrequited love, the chased rather than the chaser, it’s never easy to let a friend down, or to feel guilty for not being able to make them happy in the way they’d like.

The second rule took regrettably longer for me to get a handle on: My unilateral crush was not this guy’s problem. My unilateral crush was my problem. Yes, bad communication and mind games and manipulative behavior certainly happen in some relationships, but this was not that. This was an instance of someone telling me plainly how he felt about me, and I chose not to listen. Instead, I chose to try in vain to turn a no into a yes, and lashed out unfairly when that failed to happen.

*****

Last month, a young man named Alek Minassian drove his van into a Toronto crowd, killing 10 and injuring 14 pedestrians. A Facebook post of Minassian’s from earlier that day openly praised Elliot Rodger, the man responsible for the 2014 shooting spree in southern California. Minassian also called for an “incel rebellion,” referencing an online community of self-described “involuntary celibates” that perpetuate openly misogynistic ideas and aims.

Last week, a school shooter in Santa Fe, Texas, allegedly shot and killed a female classmate who had refused his advances, along with nine others. And a few weeks before the rampage in Toronto, a high school senior by the name of Austin Mills shot multiple students at Great Mills High School in my home state of Maryland. Working with the information that one of Mills’ victims was a recent ex-girlfriend, multiple news sources deemed him a “lovesick teen.” Readers immediately took issue with this language, asking ABC News to stop romanticizing domestic violence and call the shooting spree what it was: “not knowing how to cope with rejection in any other way than violence because he felt entitled.”

I mention my story next to these two horrific news items not because it is comparable to them, but because it lies on the same spectrum, just as locker room banter and cat calling lie on the spectrum of rape culture. The spectrum, in this case, is entitlement. And if we’re going to change the way we think about feeling entitled to relationships, we need to tackle the full scope of the problem. Not just the murderous bursts of outrage, but the little things too. The seeds that sow the belief that we can claim other people.

That belief runs deep. From an early age, we are constantly reassured that things will work themselves out no matter how seemingly impossible the situation. See: fairy tales, every romantic comedy ever made, and even one of my favorite TV shows (as much as I love How I Met Your Mother – dear God, Ted, give it a rest). One of the myriad reasons that I can’t stand Love Actually is how persistent Mark is in stalking his best friend’s new wife: He takes creepy close-up photos of her at her wedding and shows up at her house to profess his love on a bunch of poster boards. Mark’s reward is a kiss, because romantic comedies only teach us that our dreams will come true and never how to handle life when they don’t.

*****

We are hard-wired to think that we can change people who don’t love us back. The problem is that life isn’t really like that. And while romantic comedies and pickup artist culture train us to work until there’s a payoff, realistically, that shit isn’t fun. It’s exhausting. Speaking from experience, remaining hung up on someone who doesn’t feel the way you do only guarantees that you’ll blow off some really good people who actually reciprocate your interest.

My old flame recently re-friended me on Facebook, and I took the opportunity to apologize for my past behavior. I think that’s the solution to the “problem” of unrequited love. Not acting out or disappearing into terrible communities online. Not figuring out how to “redistribute sex” like it’s a commodity or working to change a fantasy into reality. Just working on being better versions of ourselves.

Chelsea Cristene is a communications associate and English professor based in Washington, DC. She has been published by the Good Men Project, Salon, xoJane, and MamaMia, and runs a film review blog, Catch Up, with fellow Role Reboot contributor Telaina Eriksen. Find her on Twitter.

Other Links:

When You And Your Partner Have Different Libidos, It’s OK

Dear Dana: I’m Pregnant With My First Child. Should I Reconnect With My Estranged Mother?

Stop Telling People Not To Take Antidepressants

The post We Need To Learn How To Handle Unrequited Love appeared first on Role Reboot.

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An Open Letter to Prince Harry and Meghan Markle

New Post has been published on http://foursprout.com/love/an-open-letter-to-prince-harry-and-meghan-markle/

An Open Letter to Prince Harry and Meghan Markle

While we could send flowers to Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, the best gift we can give is sound relationship advice.

The post An Open Letter to Prince Harry and Meghan Markle appeared first on The Gottman Institute.

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Tag your bae 😍❤💋 ••• Credit: unknown

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hi follow my twitter @/relationshaps im gonna be posting there alot nowww, goodnight 💘

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