stopit

Whenever one of you brings up a little anecdote, try to expand on it by asking deeper questions. It might seem unnatural at first, but it'll get less awkward as time goes on. If he tells you about a time he stubbed his toe and he mentions some detail that catches your attention, like if he tells you the time he stubbed his toe resulted from his alcoholic uncle whamming a hammer into his foot, then there's potential there for discussion on his past or alcoholism, etc.

I hate that feeling when you seem to have dead conversations with everyone no matter what you talk about and no matter who you talk to, but if you "spice things up" it gets easier to have meaningful talks. For me it tends to result from mental constipation or mental catatonia, both of which are eased to a certain extent by writing in a journal. I know it seems lame if you don't keep one already, but it helps you articulate your ideas.

If your conversations with him in particular seem limp, then go outside the routine and do something exciting together. Common experiences always lead to great discussions. Instead of leading the questions to purposefully get somewhere meaningful, just let it happen on its own accord. If it gets unbearable, then watch the news together and commentate on the reports. And as a last resort, read a book outside of class and discuss its deeper meaning together.

Is it the same way when you're in one-on-one conversations with them?

Maybe you just haven't met the right people to hang out with yet. Everyone's different, and if you're immerged in a homogeneous population, then the number of people not getting you will be higher, unfortunately. I've had this experience my entire life: I'm somewhat... unconventional... I don't know. I have a strange sense of humor, heavy on sarcasm and heavy on bitterness, and to most, it initially comes off the wrong way. People who are too literal scarcely get me. I'm okay though because I found friends who won't judge or question me, and though the number of friends I have is far smaller than the number I might have if I had the typical, girly, blush-and-giggle sense of humor rampant among the gals, it's just more rewarding to be able to express myself without having to check myself everytime I speak and keep a list of formulated expressions handy whenever spoken to, like "OMG" and "No way!".

Don't get frustrated! Don't change who you are - if all else fails, there's always life after high school to look forward to (it took me years - years - to finally meet these people because they moved to my school late in life regrettably; the absense of people who understood me took its toll on my confidence, in any case, because I attributed it to a personal flaw, one that I couldn't identity, which lead me to conclude that I was just generally a flawed being). Conformity is such a huge concern at this age that it's difficult for the atypical yet interesting people to fit in (this is by all means a compliment!). Unanticipated remarks are bound to get the gaping jaw and unwarranted eye throb just because they're outside the norm.

What exactly is your relationship like with your friends? Do they include you all the time in the things they do? Have they given you reason to doubt their intentions regarding your friendship? (as in, that they would talk about you behind your back)

My parents are like that. It doesn't happen every night, but in weekly (or every-other-week-ly) bouts that last for a few nights. If I put music on the loudest (comfortable) setting on my headphones, I can still hear it. My father does the yelling, but doesn't get physical about it. But ditto on the degrading names bit.

Do you feel concerned for your own safety? For your mothers? I know it seems like a habit at this point, like an annoying fleck that has become part of your daily life, but it's not healthy. It has the potential to become something terribly out of control. Domestic violence rates are astonishingly high, but that doesn't make it acceptable. You should talk to a counselor about it to get help. They'll know what's best for your particular situation. If it's more comfortable for you, confide in an adult you can trust and seek help from them.

I'm sorry that you're hurting, but if it's any consolation, you're not alone. Being the child in that situation is hard and painful, but you can either wait it out until you move out or do something about it with outside help. Even then, you should get counseling just to learn to cope with your feelings and prevent the cycle from continuing.

Are there any opportunities for you to actually talk to her without you having to go out of your way? Maybe a mutual friend? Or some event you're both going to?

When you see her smiling at you, just smile back and use that as leverage to say hi. From hi, start small talk about common, everyday things. After a while things will get more comfortable and it won't seem like you're strangers.

Hey, at least you know she's got an interest in you, so you've got to do something extraordinarily bad to get rejected (like insult her... I know you'll somehow resist that). If you stop her in the hall, she's likely to respond very positively, so be confident when you approach her!

Your plan sounds good! Start escalating the conversations in small steps; next time ask her how she's doing and then feed off of what she says.

To ease the pressure, don't put all the weight of your expectations on a single day. Don't expect things to come into effect immediately. And don't get disappointed if at first she doesn't respond. Approach her as a friend, not a prospective boyfriend.

If you care about the person, sure. But it's a dangerous situation if you still have expectations that you know the other person cannot meet. Needless to say, it's exhausting being friends with someone knowing you can't be more with them. Realistically, it would be difficult at first, but possibly quite rewarding in the end if you come to terms with the other person's decision.

Depending on how outgoing the girl in question is, girl's generally make it somewhat obvious (or at least detectable) when they're flirting with you through body language. Of course, this is assuming that the girls you're talking about are comfortable with themselves and are experienced at flirting (that is, few self esteem issues, or else the language tends to be the reverse of what you would expect).

Girls generally will be open - instead of slouching over and crossing their arms, they'll roll their shoulders back. A girl might try to accidentally bump into you, and when she does, do so for more time than might be required for a standard bump. Eye contact is pretty key. She'll make an excuse to touch you, either accidentally or purposefully. The typical sort of thing. We don't come with manuals but if we're flirting with you, we're not that hard to figure out.

As for your experiences at uni, that's a pretty low level to stoop to, though it's still unsurprising. Hopefully you can detect the difference between fabricated and genuine flirting now after all that...? Or at least keep your guard up when they start asking about hw.

A lot of my friends have multiple crushes at once, or they have alternating crushes every other few days on two or three people. I've always been the type to have a single crush that lasts for months, if not years. I found the contrast a bit strange, and I wanted to know what type of crushing style you have. (I'm not concerned about "what's normal" or anything like that: I'm only curious to get other opinions)

Why are you refuting the power of love? It might help us better answer your questions if you explain what background you're coming from.

The love shared between family members and friends is just not on par with that of romantic love. You know what? Forget romantic love: it's simply about love (romance not implied) between two individuals who are committed to one another. Not to relate love to a lump sum concept, but having the standard loves is just a diffusion of what could be a single, concentrated love augmented by all these other loves.

It's about attachment: as children, we primarily attach to our parents. Sure, we make friends and other relationships, but parents are the main people we turn to in times of crises or in times of happiness. Later in life as independent beings, we lack this primary attachment and fill the void with a mate. It's just human nature to development this main relationship throughout life (an evolutionary defense: children primarily attached because guaranteeing through fondness that at least one adult who could care for the child would look after her increased her likeliness of surviving; adults because it was just convenient / efficient), which is complemented by all the other relationships we make (from which we reap other benefits).

Skipping the entire sociological perspective above, love is just founded in human desire. Some of us are realists/skeptics and do just fine without it, but for all the romantics out there, we find ourselves craving it in its absense. It's just human nature, and to most its so natural and secondary that we don't even think about why we want it, but find ourselves engulfed in the desire to pursue it.

None of these explanations may satisfy you, but when you get overanalytical and start to examine which hormones and neurons lead to the desire for love, the meaningful answer gets so diluted in all the facts and statistics and cause-and-effect relations that you just lose sight of the deeper truth. If you just question the purpose of everything, the purpose of love or the purpose of life, everything gets so jaded and dull - there's a human element that can't easily be accounted for, and we lose sight of this. I may as well ask you what's the point in love in general, love between family members and love between friends. As long as you've got food and water and a decently deep enough hole to take a dump in, what more could you possibly need?

It seems like you've already got the answer to your own questions. You know well enough that you're not the controller but the victim of her lies and backstabbing. You know that what she's done is wrong.

These seem like WHOA issues to me, as in, "Why are you still with her?"

You shouldn't feel like you need to justify her behaviors and accept your flaws: you need to start justifying your OWN behaviors (why are you still with her if she takes advantage of you, doesn't take you seriously, doesn't make an effort to work through the holes in your relationship, backstabs you, lies to you, etc.?) and accepting HER flaws as legitimate.

Three years is a long time, and if things haven't changed thus far, what reason have you to believe that they will in the future?

Don't rush her, but maybe try passively pursuing her? I don't know, let her know you're still into her without pressuring her. For instance, compliment her or bring her little things to brighten up her day. If she's initially receptive, then keep it up; if not, stick with friendship and focus on making her happy, but just as a friend. Tough situation...

It's absolutely normal to have a crush that long (it's really sweet actually). Hey, I've had one last over 3 years (a crazy period in my life too), and this figure is by no means impressive when you compare it to (some) others!

You can't really find out what he wants unless you're straight about it. Hopefully he's sensitive, sweet - the works - so that he's got the decency to not string you along (in a perfect world, but sometimes this world can be slightly perfect). It's difficult to not succumb (i.e. sleep with him!), but stand firm until you get what you want! Be clear and don't misled him into thinking that you're available for that kind of stuff without any commitment!

Wow, that's quite a love story. But in many screaming ways, not a healthy love story.

Yes, you are absolutely right: you're girlfriend shouldn't be someone who walks all over you and makes you feel small and irrelevant, shouldn't turn your acts of generosity into acts of shame, shouldn't talk about you behind your back and have questionable relationships with old men. One would assume these things are somewhat basic and fundamental to having an honest, real relationship.

I don't know you're story or the background to the breakup, but you seem so unhappy and insecure about your status with her, that I have to ask not why is she still in the relationship, but why you are! She makes you question yourself and make you feel bad about yourself and make you wonder about the relationship, whereas she seems to be freeloading and having a jolly old time ripping you off. You shouldn't feel "betrayed" and suffer the "worst feeling in the world" regularly at night!

A relationship is a two-way connection: if you're putting all the effort into establishing it and into nurturing it, while she is doing nothing and making legitimate concerns seem unimportant or reassuring you that she won't do something yet continues to do it behind your back, then it's not a healthy relationship at all.

I get the sense that you're in this mood and leaving out the positive side (hopefully there is a positive side), but I have to wonder what care are you getting? If this is the way things are now, how can you realistically expect them to get better if nothing changes? You have to exert yourself and stand up to her if you want her to take you seriously. She makes you happy in some ways, but in many flaring other ways she makes you upset: communication is key, and if this is an "adult relationship" to her then she'd be more than open to discussing these issues.

Speaking as someone wanting to be in a relationship, I suppose that being in one would lead to a sense of fulfillment more than anything. Everyone needs to make an attachment to someone -we have parents, relatives, friends and mentors - and a romantic attachment is just another type, perhaps a type that's at another level.

You could argue it's biological or environmental; either way, does it really matter? You want what you want (assuming you're one of the people who want it? if you're cynical about love and actually posing this as a rhetorical question, then sorry in advance, lol), and it eventually becomes a goal. The media certainly doesn't help, ingraining in us this expectation that we must get married at some point in our lives. Personally, I think a life without love wouldn't be very satisfactory unless you have another passion to fill its place (love for work, etc.).

Relationships also provide you with stability. You'll always (theoretically) have someone to support you during tough times, and someone with whom to share your victories and triumphs. Relationships (theoretically) are commensalistic, benefitting both parties in social, emotional, economic ways, but these benefits (which I'm assuming you wanted us to enumerate... A, B, C...) are highly personal, but they're there. I suppose that's the universal A, B, C: that there are benefits in the first place, enough to compensate for the "burden" (sorry for the technical terminology) of being in a relationship.

But then again, I'm probably just overly wistful.

As far as dress goes, it should probably reflect your personality. Someone edgy in bright colors or vice versa is probably going to come off as contrived - if it feels natural to you, it looks good in general because you hold yourself differently when you're dressed comfortably.

As far as complexion goes, just take care of yourself. In general what matters most in terms of how you look is how confident you feel as a direct result of your looks. It's your style, how you express yourself, long hair or short, clean shaven or not. It's also about convenience.

You can look through magazines to get a sense of what is thought of as attractive, but that's Hollywood's opinion, not the opinion of the person you're with/want to be with/want to attract. Real people most likely have different preferences in terms of what they consider attractive than the media. So you might see a ton of tall, toned guys with clear faces and rigid features, but hey, that's after hours in makeup, and those people are only attractive to people who actually get magazines (and not even all of them) and not all girls.

Okay, so this isn't something that's easy to describe, just because the situation changes so much, and I haven't told anyone about it. It's something that's kept silent in my family, and it's actually somewhat normal (though becoming accustomed to it doesn't make it any less painful).

It boils down to alcoholism on my father's side. He's verbally abusive to my stepmom, the parent that I'm very attached to. He victimizes her at his pleasure - always at night after he drinks - and threatens to send her to her parents who live accross the country, or to take away her credit cards. He's a lonely pathetic man, one who's become a hermit within this world (friendless) and seems to have lost his correctness around people (e.g. he talks to himself a lot out loud in whispers... you can be two feet and he doesn't seem to realize that you can hear him...).

The alcoholism has grown worse since I was 5. It used to be a six pack of beer, like any other dad. But then years past and he added on a bottle of wine. It used to be just a casual thing, but now if he comes home late, he'll wait until his bottle is dry till he goes to sleep. It's like a guarantee now that he'll stay up however long it takes to get that damned bottle empty (if he comes home at 1, he'll sleep at 3 or 4). His drinking glass has gotten bigger. He now hoards the bottle at night and keeps it by his side rather than keep it in the fridge (my stepmom has a glass or two, but I suppose this new arrangement enables him to savor that deficit).

There's no real correlation between this escalation and his emotional/verbal abuse. Some months, some years, it's bad (every night, or every other night). Sometimes there are patches of peace. I only know that it started about the time I hit 9. I'll never forget the first time he started yelling. It just didn't make sense to me at that age. Since my parents are bilingual and I don't speak anything but English, I couldn't get the specifics, but the tone of his voiced conveyed all the hatred I needed to understand. The episodes, as I call them, were space far and few between for those first 2 years, but then things worsened. And then they would always seem to get better again. It's been on and off ever since, and it's reason downward trend has prompted this entry. The worse it ever got was one night when he downed a bottle of vodka (pure). I remember every minute of it, and my heart still palpitates when I visualize the night. I was 12 maybe. It was the only time he hit her, but it's still something - 4 years later - that I cannot forgive for the life of me, and something I feel I shouldn't have to forgive. Something I haven't been asked forgiveness for - the next morning things were seemingly normal (just amazingly tense), and the day after things were as they always had been. It was bad enough that my stepmom had to call me into the room to protect her, she called my name because pride and denial were overruled by the threat he possessed, this drunken large man who I can't stop hating. When his system cleared up hours later, I reckon he realized what a mistake he had made, because he made to hug me, and because of all the fear aching in my veins I consented. It felt like I was selling my soul to him. It was a gesture that suggested I accepted him, that suggested that I was okay, but I wasn't.

So far it sounds like a typical abuse story, but this is where it gets weird: his fights are based on all these weird- * * * accusations, like he suspects my mom works for the CIA and is a spy. He once yelled at her because the internet has so much junk on it... ? I think he yelled at her about UFO's once. He's discriminatory against clerks (just exactly what my stepmom is... *irony*), and because all my mom's friends are clerks too, he threatens divorce if she keeps talking to them. He's paranoid about phone calls and demands to know who's calling whenever the phone rings. But all of this absolute absurdity only exists at night, when the poison is in his system. But I don't hate the "poison;" it's the beast I hate. This beasts that insults my step mom (he calls her stupid often though she's amazingly intelligent) and her heritage and her family and her friends - her whole freakin life, don't know how he does it, but he does - and then loads all this extra gibberish crap about UFOs and spies on top of that when he yells at her. He once got angry because he broke something and he somehow managed to find a contorted way to blame it on her. He belongs in the loony bin.

I've got two years left of school, but it's just getting worse. I write about this and it may seem like a mere inconvenience by the way I'm describing it, but that's probably only because it's become a fact of life for me. Regardless, I used to think I was okay, that I'd toughened a bit more than the average person but I was still average. I used to justify it by thinking that abuse and domestic violence are common - scarily common - and by that way of logic they are things that are normal (and hence acceptable).

I'm strong enough to handle this and to take care of myself, but I love my stepmom and need to protect her. I'm afraid that making a stand would then invite him to pounce on me, and I know it wouldn't make it better. But I'm just waiting for the next time he gets a vodka bottle and decides to become physical - it's like whenever he begins I mentally register where the knifes are in the house. I know it's very unlikely that will ever be necessary, but I brace myself to stand forth, yet I never do. I don't think I could even stand up to his verbal accusations when he yells. I feel tough on the exterior, but it's a brittle sort of tough, the type that's ready to rupture at any minute at the slightest shove. I think the worse thing about this lifestyle is how afraid he makes us. Every day when he begins his alcohol feast, I wonder if tonight will be another night. The only thing I could equate it to is terrorism: he harvests this sense of terror in the house, and the dark hours are awful as a result. I'm afraid to leave the house. I'm afraid of coming home after dark. I'm afraid of being home after dark. The next worst thing is seeing my stepmom suffer and be victimized, and just becoming a statue in this diabolic scene, witnessing this event and wanting so badly to get in there and set things right, but being too cowardly to do anything. My defense mechanism is dissociation, but it doesn't fill the void that not having a father creates. I can act indifferent to his existence, perpetuate this perennial cold shoulder towards him at all times, but I can't heal unless this makes sense or until this stops (2 years is a very long time). I can wait it out till college... I don't know what else to do, but I don't know how far down this trend is capable of going.

I don't really know what I'm asking you guys for. I don't see how this situation can change. It's difficult because we live away from family on the other side of the country. I guess I'm asking for support. Indifference has carried me this far, but you can't cut the blood supply to your hand forever. I'm also afraid of either marrying or becoming an alcoholic. I'm afraid of falling into abusive relationships and thinking that it's the norm. I'm not that 9-year-old girl confused and scared witless anymore, but when he yells, nothing makes sense because all this anger surges and swells but my body is overcome by inertia, and the conflicting interests collide till the former is defeated into smithereens.

Do you believe that there is someone out there for everyone? And I don't mean in the sense that there's only one person, the one or anything like that. It's much simpler than that: is there at least 1 person out there for everyone?

This has probably been brought up many times, but I'm not looking for optimistic responses along the lines of, "If you want it bad enough..." or "If you look in the right places and try hard...." I just want realistic responses - I mean, some people die without having had experienced romantic love.

I don't know why - I try to fend off the media and other influences as much as possible - but I've internalized this notion that I need to be loved in order to be validated. Love leads to fulfillment. I know it doesn't, and I'm actually quite content with my life as it is, but it feels like there's something missing. It's not a conspicuous absense, it's not an absense I mourn: it's just there, like a long faded scar, a subtle reminder with it's daunting implications. (Is there something wrong with me? Am I un-lovable? etc. etc.)

All this is probably just setting me up for major disappointment when (if) it comes. I've got this idealized notion of what a relationship is supposed to be like, and the expectations are probably impossible to meet. But I think disappointment would be far easier to handle than all this anticipation and this constant waiting. At the same time I'm afraid of not being able to handle a real relationship, of screwing it up, so that fear is just mingled in with the anticipation. Truth is I'd rather screw it up than be unable to screw it up.

The problem with small schools is that your business is everyone's business. I don't know the specifics of your school, but cliques are pretty much impermeable at small schools. If it's such a defining factor for her in who she even so much as talks to, then maybe you should consider who she is if those are her values.

I know it's hard, but don't take her reactions personally! I agree with iamteddybear and think you should give her some room and see how she reacts. I mean, she should at least respond to small talk out of common courtesy... Don't get too personal when you talk to her - just try to lay a foundation of common interests. And if she still doesn't warm up, then you should be proud of yourself for trying and accept the fact that situational and incompatibility factors just weren't working to your advantage.

So today's been a fairly bad day due to a number of factors. I got a bad grade on an assignment I worked hard on, I made a fool of myself by tripping and landing on my butt in front of everyone, and I did several other things that were horribly wrong. I know I'll be fine - it's just one of those days - but how do you get the sourness out of the stain, however temporary the stain may be?

I'm very conscious of the fact that I'm a teenager going through changes and having mood swings and the whole charade, and I know it'll all pass. But the question is the now and the here of it - what do I do until it blows over on its own accord?