Y’All Need Help #29: What to Wear, When to Quit

Oh, hi! I didn’t see you there. Please have a seat. Today we’ve got a mix of advice from yours truly, our HR Director, and some cute pics for outfit inspo. Let’s give some people advice!

Q: Outfits to impress my stick and poke artist

I need help figuring out what wear to get a stick and poke tattoo. I wanna impress this super rad queer tattoo artist and also this seemed like a question y’all might want to weigh in on.

A:

Darlin’, you super haven’t given us enough info to really help you out with this outfit! But I LOVE A CHALLENGE so I asked some people what they’d wear to get a stick and poke tattoo if they wanted to impress their artist. Here’s what happened!

Mika (Find Your Fit)

“Cool tattoo fit — tank top underneath so I can be comfy and anything can be accessible.”

Archie (Grease Bats)

Archie: I have thoughts
Like, I need to know who this tattoo artists is to know what kinda style they are into!
Also the tattoo artist will judge you more on WHAT you’re getting tattooed onto your body than what you’re wearing to the appointment
At least that’s my experience doing stick n poke tattoos.

Laneia: Archie what’s the coolest stick and poke you’ve ever done

Alyssa (Oh Hey! It’s Alyssa!): U better say one of mine
This is a trap!

Archie: ‘butch please’ on Alyssa
Also tho: A bloody tampon on a pals ankle, a unicorn, a woman with hairy pits on my best pal, the word PERVERT in a heart on someone’s butt and the word CHUB SLUT in a heart on THREE people’s butts!
I also did a sweet Godzilla tattoo once with buildings and fire coming outta his mouth.
I also like my truth or dare rose that I did on myself! And my scissors and my Homo tattoo!

if the person meant to ask WHERE instead of wear: I like doing upper arm tattoos, leg tattoos, shoulder tattoos and stick n pokes make great hand/write tattoos! Anywhere too stretchy (like rib cages or stomach) don’t make great stick n poke spots
The exception being butts, where is an IDEAL spot for a stick n poke.

Stef, Vapid Fluff Editor

NOT A STICK OR POKE

“literally wear a t shirt made of hepatitis”
“do not wear the same needle as your friend”

Jeanna (Starstruck):

Hi hello I am your resident Capricorn killjoy. In no way need to dress to impress your tattoo artist. Tattoos can hurt. Stick and pokes REALLY hurt. You are probably going to make some awkward faces, and they are going to be more focused on giving you badass ink than on what you’re wearing! Also! Being comfortable is the most important thing in a tattoo session! You don’t mention where you’re getting the tattoo, but my one recommendation is that any cute clothing be breathable and easy to remove.

Q: My new job is terrible and homophobic

I’m a month into a new job. I was very open about being queer in the entire interview process. My boss seemed nice and the job seemed like it would have the creative control I was looking for in a next step.

I hoped to make it through a year, but I already feel like I need to get out of here. Many of my current and former coworkers know each other. I don’t want to harm my career or get a bad reputation. I also don’t understand how I could have been so wrong about this job. Is there anything I can do to try to make this job work? Is there any way that I can look for something new and leave quickly without damaging my career and reputation? How do I avoid making the same mistake again?

A:

Crystal, Human Resources Director: Hello, first up, revealing your queerness during the interview process is badass. Good for you. It’s a risk, for sure, and there are plenty of valid, weighty reasons why people choose not to come out to employers in interviews or at all, but when you show someone your whole self and they say, “yes, I want you”, it feels so good! And I’m sorry if those clowns in HR have made you regret it. I’m coming back for them in a minute.

Unfortunately I think it’s a fairly common experience for people to fall in love with a job offer and then feel totally bamboozled when the reality doesn’t match up. Some managers over-promise and omit undesirable details just so someone talented will accept the offer, even though there are whole entire books dedicated to how dumb and pointless that is! That’s how this happened, and there was no reasonable way for you to know that the opportunity was being misrepresented.

Now that’s been said— follow your instincts and get out of there as soon as you can.

It doesn’t sound like you are seriously entertaining the idea of going back to your previous role, but for kicks let’s take this moment anyway to remind you that you left in order to grow, and the reason they’d welcome you back is because you are good! Clearly they see that, and I’ll bet other companies will see it too. (Although, it couldn’t hurt to explain to your former employer what you’re looking for in your next role—who knows, they may be willing to offer you something different to the role you had).

On leaving quickly without damaging your reputation: I think recruitment people have just really done a bang-up job of scaring everyone into avoiding short stints and resume gaps on their resumes, even if it means spending an entire year or more slugging it out with terrible managers. And those concerns are not entirely unfounded! But here are some things to consider:

You took this new role because it promised creative opportunities and the company just isn’t delivering them. If the next interviewers ask why only lasted a month, that’s going to be an acceptable answer for reasonable people. You don’t even need to get into how your boss is a nightmare and there’s no work/life balance and HR are all homophobic assholes (don’t do that).

You don’t need to put this job on your resume. Your resume exists to provide an overview of relevant experience and it doesn’t sound like this past month has given you any valuable content to add. You *do* need to put this experience on the official job application, though— however my observation has been that managers rarely see those.
I’m not suggesting you lie or pretend like you’re not currently in this job, but I also don’t think you need to volunteer the info before you get to the interview stage.

Lastly, your homophobic HR team. Y i k e s. If the entire team responsible for the human element of the business is broken then that doesn’t bode well for the company’s future or your career, and especially not your health. Get out as soon as you can.

Q: Got fired from homophobic job, feeling like I’m set up to fail

I had a new job I was excited about but it quickly turned horrible. My boss was like a combo of the Devil Wears Prada and VEEP — incompetent but also totally controlling and condescending. I got insulted and talked over regularly (and my boss wasn’t even a man). People in positions of power at the company made homophobic comments and when I complained they had a condescending lawyer come talk to me. I also have chronic medical issues and my boss constantly gave me a hard time about going to doctors and other treatments. I was only there a few months but I already hated it. I got fired a few days ago and I suspected that would happen since my boss did nothing but insult me even when I did great work.

They want me to sign some legal documents too that I won’t sue or speak ill of them and I feel so overwhelmed by needing to decide whether or not I should. People in my family keep telling me that I shouldn’t have come out and that there’s no use in being upset. I wish I could stop but it feels like I was insulted and treated horribly for months and then fired in a way that felt personal when they could have just said it wasn’t a good fit. It’s making me question whether I will ever work at a place that respects and supports all of my identities and whether I can even continue to work in the progressive world. I don’t know what to do anymore.

A:

Crystal: Hello, firstly, read the first paragraph of the answer up there, because it applies to you too.

Secondly, the folks in your family might be smart people who are right about many things but they are not right about this! Being upset when you’ve been wronged– and you have been wronged– can be pretty healthy and helpful, actually! The decision to come out anytime, in any situation, is a purely personal one and doing it was right if that was the thing you wanted to do.

Thirdly, where you are right now emotionally makes perfect sense. Your last employer sucked and even though other opportunities are already knocking, getting fired under any circumstance— let alone after enduring ableism and homophobia— is a real kick in the teeth!

Let me normalize for you (do I sound like a therapist? mine says this a lot) the way that having your spirit crushed by an awful boss who wore you down bit by bit, only to fire you, can suck up any ounce of energy and will you might have had for job-seeking and the whole notion of being happily employed ever again.

When I first immigrated to the U.S. I couldn’t find work despite being an expert in a field that doesn’t have many experts! I don’t have a college degree and the U.S. is so dumb and elitist about college education, you know? After almost a year I found what felt like a dream job, except the boss would shout at me and criticize me in front of colleagues, and remind me that he gave my unemployed alien ass a chance when no one else would. Real prince, that guy. It ended with me being fired in a spectacularly degrading way.

But even though intellectually I knew that that guy was just an egotistical insecure jerk and I was smarter and better than him in every possible sense, it still got to me. Things got pretty dark; I began doubting whether I could be happy professionally in this country and there were many, many of days where I felt too crushed and too pessimistic to look for work.

It’s okay to cry and feel defeated because you’ve been through so, so much. Shitty jobs are hard, medical issues are hard, homophobia is hard, getting fired is hard. Feeling like you’ll never actually be able to succeed or you’ll never really fit somewhere is depressing as hell. And I don’t know how to make employment-related trauma feel better. I think it just takes some time, like recovering from any shitty relationship. But I do feel confident in saying that being upset is justified, and if you can afford to carve out some time to just be sad about the way you were treated and breathe a little, maybe that will help. Maybe then you’ll start feeling like you can tackle interviews and prioritize your health.

Don’t sign those papers, though. Fuck ‘em.

Q: Engaged and afraid

My girlfriend and I have been together for two years and recently we became engaged. At first I was ecstatic! But now every time the wedding gets brought up I have this fear that this is all a big mistake. She keeps taking her moms side in all the wedding planning issues and I feel ganged up on. I mean my fiancé is great and I love her so much but…I don’t think she is ‘the one’ you know? We are such different people, and although we initially connected strongly emotionally-I don’t feel intellectually or sexually satisfied in our relationship. She has low sex drive and thinks of sex as work. I have a high sex drive. I have a strong political identity and pay attention to social issues and she doesn’t pay attention to politics or the news at all. We’re just very mismatched. She gets angry at the smallest things and it takes a lot to make me lose my cool. I can’t help but feel there could be someone out there who would be a better fit for me and my goals in life but also I love her? And we’ve come this far? Is this just FOMO or cold feet? If it’s not…how do I end things cordially?

A:

Do not marry her if you don’t think she’s the one! I have no idea how you can back out of this cordially or without obliterating her heart, but generally speaking, the best way to do anything is honestly. You have to let her know, as kindly but as honestly as possible, that you can’t marry her.

Q: Not Like Other Straight People™

Most of my friends are straight. (That’s not the topic I’m writing in about, though). I’m not out to all of them, but the ones I am out to are really good at not making a big deal out of it. And then…well, then there’s my friend Susan.

I realize that this is a much longer letter than what you typically answer, but I don’t know what to do and any advice would be greatly appreciated. Please send help/other queers.

A:

Damn, Ellen. These are some valid concerns! Your friend is overcompensating for something and if you have any idea what that might be, you could possibly address that topic in a generous and tender way, as an entry point into a larger conversation about being a little too vocal/familiar/braggy about one’s intentions and knowledge. I mean yes, the Current Political Climate™ is making a lot of [white] [straight] people feel very panicked about being clocked as a racist piece of shit when maybe they’re not, so this is probably playing out all over the place, but that doesn’t make it any less annoying or misguided.

You’re doing a lot of forward-thinking in this letter and you’re concerned with how you’ll handle the situation if and when she says a certain thing, and the truth is that you’ll handle it the way you usually handle confrontations. If you usually give a tight smile and try to change the subject, that’s probably what you’ll default to when Susan gets on her parade float. Not a judgement call — that’s usually how I handle most confrontational situations! But if you’d rather not default to that, you’ll have to make a conscious active decision to have a plan in place — talking points, redirection, quotes, questions — and you’ll have to be willing to brave the very uncomfortable task of enacting it.

You can’t control how Susan will conduct herself, ever. But you can decide what you’re willing to let slide and what you can’t abide, and how you’ll handle the latter.

Y’All Need Help is a biweekly advice column in which I pluck out a couple of questions from the You Need Help inbox and answer them right here, round-up style, quick and dirty! (Except sometimes it’s not quick, but that’s my prerogative, OK?) You can chime in with your own advice in the comments and submit your own quick and dirty questions any time.

Y’All Need Help #28: Being Careful With Your Sex Eyes

Hello it’s time for us to help some people live happier and more fulfilled lives! Throughout this post you’ll see some updates from past needers of help! I LOVE UPDATES.

You looked so great!!! Congratulations on graduating! // YNH #17

Q: I’m a cowardly lesbian

Hello; I am 32 years old and about a year ago, I partially came out as a lesbian (out to friends, not to family).
I want to embrace my identity and my sexuality as I have been hiding for a very long time. (I have been with women before but not for a long time as I was stuck in an abusive marriage which resulted in him going to jail, yay!) And me being a single, solo mom.

I entered into that relationship at 18, trying to turn myself straight bc I was too scared to tell anyone what I was going through and it truly was the worst mistake of my life. I’ve been in therapy for years now and am dealing with the trauma, my sexuality, all of it, but I still can’t bring myself to talk to my parents about it.

I wonder if it’s too late for me. If I’m too old, and if having a child will mean other lesbians won’t believe me or want to date me anyway.

Please help me. I really don’t know what to do to move forward.

Sincerely,
-Isolated

A:

Buddy, have I got some EXCELLENT news for YOU. You’re definitely not too old, it’s not too late, and other lesbians will be super chill and possibly even excited that you have a kid. I’ve written a lot about this! In fact, I think it’s the thing I’ve written the most about! Take a look at Q18 in Y’All Need Help #24 —

Here’s my story, here’s Katrina’s story, here’s Jeanna’s story, and there are books like Dear John, I Love Jane, and are you familiar with Glennon Doyle Melton? Even if you don’t see yourself in any of these accounts, it’s important that you do see yourself somewhere, so please keep looking. You can live through this because other people have! You can make hard decisions that make you feel like Wile E. Coyote pressing an enormous detonator. You can you can you can!

Don’t. Panic.

Q8 in YNH #25 was in a similar situation. Q2 from YNH #4 had three kids and a husband when she wrote in —

I used to think that no one my age (25 at the time) would want anything to do with a newly out lesbian who had two kids and an ex-husband, so I kept them all a secret for months, years.

Coming out is hard. Divorcing your children’s parent is hard. Potentially disappointing your mother is hard. But being silent and miserable is harder. Being scared and fake is harder. Being anyone other than who you are or who you want to be, is shit. Your kids need to see hope and honesty in action, even when it’s hard, especially when it’s hard. Your kids deserve the entirety of you. You deserve the entirety of you.

And these are just the first three that came to mind! I keep including questions like yours in these advice posts because people keep needing the reassurance and I LOVE TO REASSURE. I LIVE FOR IT. Now you can search our archives for dating and coming out advice! Get a babysitter and get out there!

Lorna! Thank YOU! // YNH #25

Q: Not Feeling Pride

I was dumped by my girlfriend 6 months ago, for a few reasons. Suffice to say, we were doomed from the start since we were in very different phases of life. Before we dated and during our relationship, I was very into gay culture and full of pride and happiness about queerness. She was pretty closeted and conflicted about her sexuality when we were together, so I made a pretty active effort to get her to feel the excitement about being in a new world. But since our breakup, the tables have turned and now all gay things make me sad- even Autostraddle pieces just bum me out. I’ve tried reintegrating with the community by going to queer events, but it just makes me feel lonely. How can I get out of this funk and be myself again?

A:

Oh yes yes yes, I am familiar with this. On the bright side, this Autostraddle piece can’t bum you out because it has YOU in it! I think full immersion is probably the quickest way to get out of this funk, or you could try ‘more time’ which isn’t quick at all, but will still work. Have you asked some friends to go with you to the queer events? Who did you go with before you met her?

It could also be that you’re actually just missing the feeling of introducing someone else to the queer things you love. Are there other people in your life who could use an introduction to the big queer world? Or maybe a better approach would be to find new aspects of queer culture that you haven’t fully explored yet. There’s so much to learn and try! I feel like a children’s television show but it’s true!

Y E S !! //  YNH #26

Q: Platonic female friendships ??

Hello. I have a question about an ongoing issue in my life that is directly related to being gay, and I’m hoping you can shed some light on it: I’m constantly worried that being “too friendly” with platonic female friends and acquaintances will be perceived as flirtatious. As a result, I often feel awkward around women, like I’m constantly editing myself. For example, I’m not sure how to buy someone a coffee, or ask them to join me at a concert, without a ton of anxiety about how those actions could be misinterpreted. So, I avoid those types of gestures, even though I know they’re part of normal friendships. I come across as emotionally distant and “cold”, which is ironic because the whole thing is…a cover for my fear that it might appear as though I care about a friend “too much”.

Am I the only one with this anxiety? How can I reframe my thoughts to get over this so I can just be myself and be kind to people?

A:

You sure as heck are NOT the only one!! This has plagued our people since the dawn of time. I think, especially when you’re thinking about straight women (or even “straight” women, ok), one of the markers of being hit on is when someone tries to pay for things — drinks, coffee, tickets to a concert, dinner, etc. Try not paying for anything. Invite them to do things with you! Just don’t pay! Then, later on when you’re quite good friends and everything is chill and nice, you can be like “hey I got this” and instead of looking flirty, it’ll look like a nice chill gesture from a quite good friend.

Oh and be careful with your eyes. Some people have extremely sexish sex eyes by nature, and it can seem like they’re flirting when they’re not, they just have sexish eyes. Don’t lean in, don’t touch them unnecessarily, let them get the door, don’t pay, and keep your eyes decidedly unsexy.

Y’All Need Help is a biweekly advice column in which I pluck out a couple of questions from the You Need Help inbox and answer them right here, round-up style, quick and dirty! (Except sometimes it’s not quick, but that’s my prerogative, OK?) You can chime in with your own advice in the comments and submit your own quick and dirty questions any time.

Y’All Need Help #27: But Back to YOU

WE’RE BACK!

After a short summer break, Y’All Need Help is back and ready to boss you around town. Just a quick content note for you: the last question in this batch deals directly with sexual assault in detail. There’s another note above the actual question and I’m asking that anyone responding to that question in their comment please preface that portion of your comment with “Q4” so everyone can take the best care of their mental health on this gorgeous Saturday. Thank you!

Q: Moving on after ruining a friendship

I recently had a falling out with my best friend months ago which has probably left our relationship irreparable. It turns out that I was the friend who was constantly confiding in a friend about mental health problems when I should have just seen a therapist. Along with that I always said and did some bad things that made her think I didn’t respect her. She was my best friend in the whole world and now we hardly even talk to each other.

She blames some of this on her not communicating with me which is partly true. But I can’t help but feeling I ruined this relationship. I feel incredibly guilty all the time and the initial split really sent me spiraling. I’m not sure if there is anything left to save? And I don’t know how to prevent this from happening in future relationships. I’m seeing a therapist now but how do I know when sharing is too much?

A:

This is such a tough and sad and lonely position to be in, and I’m so sorry! I really related to you constantly being the one confiding in her — I had a similar relationship dynamic with my best friend in my early 20s and it wasn’t great. Every single time we’d be in the same room together, I’d need to tell her about whatever my most recent issue was, and she’d kindly try to process with me, only to have to do it all over again the next time she saw me! HOW AWFUL. I’m squirmy right now just remembering it aaaahhhhh!

But back to YOU. Try not to be too super hard on yourself — we are imperfect and we will absolutely fuck things up, several times over the course of our lives! You’ll do or say so many things that you’ll need to learn from and actively forgive yourself for, and this is for sure one of those things. Obviously I can’t speak to whether or not this particular friendship is salvageable, but! It’s so great that you’re seeing a therapist! Hopefully it’s one you like and you’re having a hell of a useful time when you’re there, and talking with them is helping you parse out if there’s anything left to save with this person.

When you’re thinking about how to avoid this in future relationships, maybe focus less on ‘not sharing too much’ and more on balancing your own concerns about yourself and your problems with the concerns and interests you have for the other person and their life. Show your genuine interest in them frequently, especially when you won’t immediately be asking for anything in return.

Another thoughtful thing I try to do is ask the other person if they actually have the time or emotional bandwidth to help me with something, before I tell them anything about it. This is just a little heads up that I hope shows them that I don’t take them or their own mental health for granted, and that they shouldn’t feel obligated to be my emotional support at the drop of a hat. Life isn’t a neat little series of steps though, so sometimes I definitely offload my worries without checking in first. Again, we are imperfect angel beasts!

I bet the readers will also have some tips for practicing good boundaries and being a good friend!

Q: Working this body hair at work

Hello Autostraddle! I’m a femme queer who works a desk job at a university. My office is very liberal, I’m out at work, and even though it’s a pretty small office, I’m not even the only queer! Now that it’s getting warmer out, I’ve started wearing my spring/summer dresses, which I love and make me very happy. Here’s the thing, though–I don’t love shaving my legs. This isn’t an issue in the winter, since tights exist, but now it’s the season of bare legs. My supervisor, though very cool, is a sharp, professional, and feminine dresser (she’s also super-straight). Nobody has ever said anything when I wear dresses and am a little fuzzy, but I’m not sure what is “work appropriate”. I realize that most masc-presenting folks and people who don’t often shave usually stick to pants at work, but that’s just not my style. So what do I do? What is professional? And just how hairy can I get without crossing the “work appropriate” line?

A:

BOY HOWDY you wear the dang dresses, is what you do! Your legs being hairy or shaved has zippity doo dah to do with whether or not you should wear those dresses. You can braid that leg hair right at your damn desk if you want to. If the dress itself is work appropriate, that’s all that matters.

If any men in your office are asked to shave their arms or legs before they’re allowed to wear certain clothing, call me.

Q: Is it even worth coming out?

I’m a lady in my early thirties finally coming around to the notion that I’m probably (definitely) queer, or at least sexually fluid, after years of everybody telling me I’m probably (definitely) queer, which for the record was extraordinarily unhelpful. I’m about to get married – yay! – to a man who would fully support my queerness. It’s a hetero appearing relationship, and we’re monogamous, so… is there any point to the coming out? What does it mean to come out and “explore” your sexuality if you’re, you know, not sleeping with other people? Also, as a bonus, is there a way to prevent folks from harping on with the likely combination of many unhelpful “I told you sos,” and handful of “I don’t believe yous” if I do come out???

A:

I wish people would stop doing that! Everyone reading this has to promise me that you’ll never tell someone who identifies as straight that they’re actually probably queer! It’s so obnoxious. Gaydar gossip amongst queer friends is one thing, but presenting your unsolicited gaydar findings directly to the person in question is just tacky. TACKY.

Sorry, thank you for letting soapbox in your answer! A, congratulations on your upcoming marriage! B, only you can decide if there’s a point in coming out! But also consider, does everything you do have to have a point per se? I meannnnn. Realizing you’re queer is a pretty exciting development in a person’s life — lots of things click into place, lots of things are relearned, lots to think about! If you decided to share this personal development with other people, it would be well within your rights as a human and totally legal and cool. Sharing things about yourself with the people in your life who care about you is never pointless, in my extremely unhumble opinion.

There are lots and lots of ways to explore your sexuality if you’re not sleeping with other people! Look into queer history because you definitely weren’t taught any in school. Get to know the local, state, and national policies that affect the queer community, and find out how you can leverage any of your personal privilege to help move the needle forward for other LGBTQ people. Join in on the local queer happenings, because you’re queer! Play around with your look — heteronormativity’s #1 job is to put everyone in tight boxes determined by genitals and relationship status, and one of the best thing about being queer is smashing all those boxes to hell and building your own life and sense of self in a way that actually works for you.

If learning about discrimination laws isn’t sexy enough for you, you can also bring some queerness into your actual sex life by ummmmm (sex advice isn’t my forte, so) letting your fantasies get really really gay, reading queer erotica, pegging your fiancé, buying yourself a lap dance, etc!

And finally, I’m afraid there’s no way to prevent people from being total douchebags, so if you think someone will likely respond with “I told you so!” your options are to not tell them at all, or to tell them clean off when they say that to you. People who don’t believe you’re queer are really just saying they don’t care what you say about yourself, thereby making them useless assholes who are stupid to boot, and they also cannot be helped. Pay them no attention. Surround yourself with the people in your life who respect you, care about what you say, and would never be obtuse or tacky enough to say “I told you so!”

Oh and just for the record, you do not have to wear a cage bra to get into queer girl events. It’ll seem like you do, but trust me on this.

This is the final question today and it deals with sexual assault in detail. If you’re not in a mental place where you can safely read about this topic, just know that you can scroll right past it now to get to the comments and discuss the other three topics.
If you do choose to read this portion and include a response to it in your comment, please preface that portion of your response with “Q4” to give other readers a heads up. Thank you!

Q4: Was it sexual assault?

When I was 18, not out, and completely denying the fact that I was gay, I wanted to fit in. All my friends had boyfriends. I grew up in a smallish town with no access to gay friends, either. I started dating a boy (man) who was about 5 years older than me at the time. We’d spend time at his house together and one day I was laying on his bed and he started to take off my pants. I said “no” and tried to pull them back up. He insisted that he just wanted to make me feel good. I still said “no,” but he continued to pull down my pants. He performed oral sex on me. I was a virgin at the time and had no experience with anything even remotely sexual. I’ve struggled with the idea of justifying this as rape afterward, because there was a part of me who liked it. It did ‘feel good’ to have someone touch me in that area. But I’ve always felt sick about it. About liking it. About saying no and feeling like my voice didn’t matter. About not wanting to be a victim of something that seemed like a very minor case of sexual assault when so many other people have had it so much worse. But now, over 10 years later, I still think about it. I feel upset at myself for putting myself in that position. And for letting him feel as if that was ok. For not having any backbone. And yet, I still find myself not thinking about this incident as rape. Am I wrong in thinking that this incident doesn’t belong in that category because it didn’t cause me physical harm?

A:

I’m so sorry this happened to you. I’m sorry you’ve carried the shame and guilt for over a decade when you did absolutely nothing wrong. You didn’t put yourself in any position, you didn’t let him feel as if it was ok, the existence of your backbone is not in question.

A culture of rape and violence against women put you in that position on the day you were born, and it let him feel as if what he was doing was ok. His own moral shortcomings and sense of entitlement let him tell himself, and you, that he was doing you a favor that day. A society that devalues women and discourages women’s bodily autonomy created an environment that lets all this shit happen every motherfucking day with impunity.

The definition of rape is “sexual activity carried out forcibly against a person’s will.” It doesn’t have to be physically violent, it doesn’t have to hurt, it doesn’t have to involve screaming, it doesn’t have to result in bodily injury. But listen, if you don’t want to put what happened to you in the category of rape, you don’t have to. Maybe using the term “sexual assault” would be easier for you; it would certainly still be true. You could even just call it the worst fucking sex of your entire life, if you’d rather. Whatever words you use to describe it to yourself or to other people won’t change the fact that it was traumatizing, not your fault, and 100% not ok.

I know this is way easier said than done, but really try to give yourself permission to let go of the shame you’re carrying for liking the way it felt. Genitals are designed to feel good when touched. That’s it. Erectile tissue responds to stimulation. One of the most insidious elements of abuse is the fact that it can and sometimes does feel objectively ‘good’, and the shame and anger and confusion that comes with this can be overwhelming. It’s like your body betrayed you, or like something is seriously wrong with you. It can even make you question whether or not you really didn’t want it to happen after all. But your body just did what it will do, and nothing is wrong with you. You can trust yourself.

RAINN has both a hotline and a live chat, if you think you might find it helpful to talk to someone, especially someone specifically trained to have that conversation. (I think you might.) (I did.)

I’m sorry.

Y’All Need Help is a biweekly advice column in which I pluck out a couple of questions from the You Need Help inbox and answer them right here, round-up style, quick and dirty! (Except sometimes it’s not quick, but that’s my prerogative, OK?) You can chime in with your own advice in the comments and submit your own quick and dirty questions any time.

Y’All Need Help #26: Spring Cleaning Part 5

Hello, it’s you! This weekend’s episode was conceived in a car driving through the California desert on I-10, and then midwifed at a desk in suburban Phoenix while “Africa” played on repeat for the better part of a couple of hours, and THEN finalized at that same desk several hours later while I ate an enormous taco that I made my damn self. And no, it wasn’t a burrito, just an enormous taco. You have to trust me on this.

Y’All Need Help will be taking a little summer break while I rest my advising muscles, but I’ll be back on August 11 so full of feelings you won’t even know what hit you.

Here I also made this:

Q: Do I have to come out?

Okay here’s my question, I am in my thirties and I’m a lesbian. For pretty much my entire life my father and I have had a rocky relationship. He’s never been a father to me. My parents divorced when I was five. When I was younger he’d make remarks like ‘Gay people are disgusting!’ and say things I don’t want to repeat. I’ve never told him anything about my personal life ever. As far as I know he thinks I’m straight. I don’t really have a relationship with him but I am his only child, do I still need to come out to him?

A:

You sure as hell do not! ? Cheers! Happy Pride! ?

Q: Bad haircut.

I recently got a short haircut and I really hate it. It wasn’t impulsive-I thought about it for weeks, researched photos, and asked friends’ opinions. I really wanted that Big Gay Haircut, but now that it’s all done, I just don’t like it at all. I love babes with short hair, but I just don’t love it on myself and it doesn’t feel like me at all. Obviously hair grows and it won’t look like this forever, but how do I stop feeling so insecure? I cut off over 15 inches of hair so I’ve got a lot of time before it looks like it did, and I’m miserable everytime I look in the mirror. Any tips?

A:

Oh oh oh! What if you colored it? The cut I have right now is like, fine whatever, but it in combination with the different color not only makes it Very Gay Indeed but it also levels up the haircut to a style, you know? I wouldn’t like the cut by itself, though. So ok that is my advice: a color situation.

Readers! Your turn!

Q: Anxious at work.

Hi! I have a super amazing job that I’ve wanted for a long time, only now that I’ve been here for over 6 months I’m finding myself struggling. I don’t get along that well with my boss, and I feel that she doesn’t take my concerns that seriously (for example, she made a joke about being a looming shadow of shame when I confessed that some of her feedback makes me feel anxious and ashamed). I changed my life for this job, moved countries, extended the distance on an already LDR, and currently live onsite at my workplace so feel that work-life balance is especially difficult. Adding to difficulties of work-life balance are the isolation of the workplace, 1.5 hours drive from the nearest city, and small core team I both work and live with. I worry that my life is becoming about work and that I’m not really enjoying the work that much. I feel guilty because I should be feeling lucky to have this job. I signed a two year contract and I’m less than a year into it… Should I cut my losses and quit? Should I keep trying? Is there something else I can do that I haven’t thought of?

A:

First of all I’d look for the HR department re: your boss not taking your concerns seriously and making light of your reaction to her feedback.

Next up, isolation is a mindfuck and this is definitely something to focus on fixing! Did your employer provide any mental prep or like, a list of things to expect while living and working in this situation and how to deal with them? Anything in the way of resources? If they do offer any support in this area, take advantage of it. Also a remote therapist — maybe from Talkspace, which we’ve talked about before and a couple of our own team members have used — could be a solid step in a better direction. Even short-term therapy can be extremely helpful.

If there are any personal projects you’ve always thought you’d like to work on one day, like learning another language or how to knit (why are they examples always learning languages or knitting? I don’t know) or learning more about literally any subject whatsoever, this might be a good time to start! Whatever free time you have away from actually working should be force-filled with strictly personal things that move a needle for you.

Keep an eye on yourself! Which you’re obviously doing but I mean, if it’s time to cut your losses and quit, you should know it in your guts. I’ve seen several people who’ve landed their dream job or dream study program only to realize that it’s not right for them at all, and that’s totally FINE. It’s great, even? Because that’s one more thing you know about yourself!

I don’t have a nice way to wrap this up but I want you to know that I’m imagining you on Antarctica, reading up on a complicated conflict in history and thinking, “Oh now that makes more sense” and feeling very proud of your growing knowledge in this field. GOOD LUCK.

Q: Should I tell my therapist about my crush?

Should I talk to my therapist about how I’ve developed feelings for her? I understand that it’s unrequited but I want to be completely open. However I’m concerned that it would damage our professional relationship and that she would be required to tell her colleagues, and I would be down on record as a needy client. I think the healthy option would be to talk through it with her (I already have several hypotheses of why I feel this intensely about her…) Or would that be foolish? Perhaps even selfish, because it’s putting a burden on her?

A:

You know, my knee-jerk response here was to scream — like, blood-curdling and everything — NOOOOOOOOO0000000OO00O00oo0o0o000ooo000000oooooo, but the more I sit here and drink this late-afternoon adult beverage, the more I’m realizing that I really can’t answer this question without more context re: you, your goals in therapy, what brought you there, etc. So buddy, I don’t really know. If you’re in therapy in part to deal with a pattern of misplaced idolatry or pathological crushes, then maybe bringing this up would be helpful because it would speak to the reason you’re there to begin with. But if you’re in therapy for all the other things in the world, maybe you need to just walk yourself through this one alone, reminding yourself that this woman is being paid to be attentive to you and that’s where her interest and care for you begins and ends.

Q: Coming out AGAIN.

HI! So here’s the deal. When I was 18 or 19 I came out as bisexual to my family and friends. It was a very easy, non stressful, impulsive move, and everyone has been quite okay with it. Even though I identified as bi, I have dated almost exclusively guys, and I’ve always kinda regretted it. I have dated abusive guys but I have also dated really caring and great guys, but either way I never felt any connection. I felt like dating was a chore, and I was always SO relieved when those relationships ended.

Now here I am am almost a decade later, thinking about all this, and I had an epiphany last week: I AM A LESBIAN. DUH.

This realization makes me the happiest human being on the planet right now: I feel refreshed, liberated, overjoyed and like all my problems have melted away. I never want to date guys again. I really wanna date girls. It’s like something just clicked that I am actually allowed to do those things!

My problem tho is I am terrified of coming out to my friends and family. I feel like this time around it is a much bigger deal than coming out as bi. I am scared they won’t believe me. I am scared they won’t want to talk about it and avoid the subject. I am scared they will say it’s because I had bad experiences with guys. I am scared they will say “but you’ve never dated girls, how can you be sure?”. I’m scared they’ll tell me I’m way to old to realize my orientation and if it were true I would’ve known before.

Obviously these fears stem from my own insecurities. So how can I tell them I’m gay without letting these insecurities get to me? I don’t want to debate with my (wonderful) family if my orientation is true or not.

A:

Wait, reread this:

“This realization makes me the happiest human being on the planet right now: I feel refreshed, liberated, overjoyed and like all my problems have melted away. […] It’s like something just clicked that I am actually allowed to do those things!”

If your family and friends don’t want to hear about a realization that makes you a) the happiest human being on the planet right now, b) refreshed, c) liberated, d) overjoyed, e) feel like all your problems have melted away and — most importantly!!! — f) allowed to do the things you want to do, then those motherfuckers cannot be saved. They can’t be convinced that it isn’t a phase and they can’t understand that your life isn’t just a reaction to the men you’ve known, and so those people can’t be your problem!

If you want to share your excitement and liberation and potential and energy with the people who mean the most to you, DO IT. Give it to them! Give them the chance to show up for you.

Also and this is just for the record but LISTEN even if even iffff your decision to date women exclusively had something to do with your previous relationships with men, IT’S STILL A VALID DECISION. What on earth makes more sense than taking past experiences into account when planning your future adventures? That’s just good critical thinking skills if you ask me.

Q: Lonely

How do you I feel less lonely? I moved to a new city almost four years ago and I still don’t feel like I’ve made any real friends. I go to queer events and have met some nice people, I love my career and I have hobbies. I go to counseling. I’m doing everything I’m supposed to but I’m still so lonely my whole body hurts. People invite me to hang out, but I’m way too shy and anxious to have fun or to really open up to anyone. I don’t know how I’ll ever find someone who wants to be in a relationship with me. My heart just hurts all the time like something is missing. Does it ever feel better? How do I feel like I’m not alone?

A:

I’m so sorry that your heart hurts and that you feel so alone. When you’re in counseling, are you working on your anxiety and self-imposed isolation? Have you tried any anti-anxiety medications? This isn’t helpful to hear I guess but I think the only way to start having a different life is to do some things differently. So instead of being too shy and anxious to have fun or open up, you have to push yourself past the thresholds that you’ve set up. Not to say it’ll be easy or even like, not semi-traumatic, but the only way you can have people who are close to you is to open yourself up to that kind of closeness, you know?

If this were an American romcom I’d tell you to go to Italy, rent a moped, and wait until you accidentally bump into a Manic Pixie Dream Queer who’ll invite you to a party they happen to be going to that night, where you’ll already be feeling so out of your element that you’ll have no choice but to dance when asked, and when you fall over because you’re not the greatest dancer and the person catches you and laughs and laughs and then you laugh and y’all get some ice for your knee and the stars are twinkling up in the night sky you’ll realize Wow, I have really put myself out there tonight. I have really let my guard down. This Manic Pixie Dream Queer has helped me see how fun it can be to just be open to the universe’s energies and now look at us, kissing in this freaking Italian moonlight etc etc etc.

Q: Overcoming fear of rejection

Hi! I’m in high school and have never been in a relationship. I’ve been crushing on one of my close friends for a while now. I know that she’s gay, so that’s not an issue, but I’ve developed really low self-esteem and can’t imagine that anyone would ever want to date me due to some past trauma. Plus, I have no idea if she’s interested in a relationship or not. We spend a lot of time together and she transposed all of the music from our school musical so I could play in the pit orchestra with her (which takes a ton of time), so I know she cares about me, but I can’t tell if it’s romantic interest or not. Both she and I are pretty oblivious when it comes to flirting, too. How do I overcome my fear of losing our friendship if I ask her out, and how do I know if she’s actually interested in me? (We learned to waltz when hanging out alone once, which seems more than platonic, but I’m a baby gay and quite confused.)
Thank you!

A:

Aaaaaaahhhhhh it’s probably going to feel awkward and difficult and maybe impossible (it’s not though!!!) but the only way to find out if she’s interested in a relationship or interested in you or interested in bees or pancakes or the global inflation rate is to just ask her! It’s the only way you can ever know anything about anyone, and it’s just the admitting-that-you-care part that makes it excruciating, but you already know this. So that’s the deal: you just ask her. It’s a bold thing to publicly wonder and care about other people, and you can be bold! You have permission to just boldly be like HEY I HAVE A QUESTION ABOUT YOU AND YOUR INTENTIONS ON THIS EARTH.

Friendships aren’t lost because someone asks a question like this, they’re lost because of the other person’s own fears, and those things are beyond your control anyway.

Be bold! Like some kind of living breathing embodiment of calligraphic wall art someone bought at Bed Bath & Beyond. I believe in you.

Q: Straight girl strikes again

I am at the end of my junior year and somewhat madly in love with a girl in my grade … again. I liked her for a few months at the start of the year, then was distracted by another girl who I now know to be annoying beyond compare. I’m starting to fall even harder for this girl again, likely because we had to complete an involved and dare I say intimate project together for our English class, which created the kind of emotional connection I usually end up being ensnared by. In a classic turn of events, she is, to the best of my knowledge, straight until proven otherwise.

All that said, my very queer friend group is divided on the question of her sexuality, and even one of her closest friends who I enlisted to answer this burning question came up with no definitive answer. General consensus seems to be that she is emotionally repressed to the point where, if she is into girls, she wouldn’t know it yet. She always speaks about theoretical romance using gender-neutral pronouns, has called girls attractive, and is physically affectionate – similar behaviour to the girls described in Q6 of YNH #24. She’s almost like a femme Abby Wambach (except I’m definitely NOT Glennon Doyle) – very athletic, intense commitment to cross country, goes running for fun, archery, etc.

Should I ask her if she’s straight directly or go through an intermediary? If this turns out positively, I’m also not sure how I feel about being someone’s closet girlfriend/lesbian experiment.

A:

Ask her!!!!

Just ask her. Don’t go through an intermediary. If you want something done and done right, you do it yourself. “Are you straight?” It’s three words. The ball’s in her court after that. COOL. You’ve done your part. You asked the question and held the door open and what happens next is just on her.

You’re also a living breathing inspirational wall art, ok? We’re all GOOD VIBES ONLY and NO SHOES NO PROBLEM and DANCE LIKE NO ONE’S WATCHING! Be bold!

Y’All Need Help is a biweekly advice column in which I pluck out a couple of questions from the You Need Help inbox and answer them right here, round-up style, quick and dirty! (Except sometimes it’s not quick, but that’s my prerogative, OK?) You can chime in with your own advice in the comments and submit your own quick and dirty questions any time.

Y’All Need Help #25: Spring Cleaning Part 4

Welcome welcome, to the fourth round of Y’All Need Help Spring Cleaning! Imagine me covered in cobwebs and figuring out how to use the vacuum attachments, listening to The Moody Blues, burning some incense with the windows open. Spring cleaning.

Let us begin.

Q 1: Queer wedding planning resources?

Hey Autostraddle! My nb-partner and I are super excited to have a big ol’ lesbian wedding at some point in coming years and are pretty sure we’ve picked out some rings we want to propose with! It’s a REALLY cool thing to contemplate doing – they’re my best friend and a kickass partner. We’re doing the international long distance thing (I’m the Canadian girlfriend and they’re American) which is part of why we’ve got loads of time to plan for marriage because of logistics and money… but in the meantime we could use some help. We’re mostly looking for any book / website / general recommendations for planning the actual ceremony, but in like…. a customized gay way? Or a forum / community in which to discuss gay weddings in a chill way? We both miss the days of livejournal and are wondering if something like that still exists somewhere that we don’t know about. Thanks in advance for any suggestions and much love for your website and this column!

A 1:

Congratulations! By far the most useful resource that I found when planning my wedding in 2015 was A Practical Wedding, specifically their Getting Started section. They have everything you need for planning and logistics and numbers and protocol (obvs it’s up to you whether you want stick to that protocol, but it’s useful to know) without dragging you down with heteronormativity. My favorite places for inspiration were H&H Weddings (we’ve also worked with the founder, Kate Shaefer, in the past and she’s SO GREAT), Offbeat Bride, and Catalyst Wedding Co. — all of which have Instagram accounts so you can be obsessing over weddings from sunrise to sunset with just a flick of the thumb. After the wedding I immediately found about a million other queer-specific wedding sites/Instagrams, including Dancing With Her and F Yeah Gay Weddings.

Now let’s see what the readers have up their sleeves!

Q 2: Communication and stress

If my girlfriend (of 6 months) were more relaxed I’m almost certain she’d forget to breathe. I, however, have Olympic medals in stress and anxiety. I absolutely adore her but we are both in the midst of a very busy patch with work/university/general life stuff, and we have both noticed a distance growing between us. We are going weeks without seeing each other and while that is not an huge issue, our communication is really breaking down. I don’t need to know every detail of her day, but not knowing when she has plans makes me feel a bit unimportant and sends my anxiety into a tailspin, especially when those plans override plans we have made together. Her relaxed ass, however, does not really see this as a problem. Is there any way I can communicate this with her (and explain why I need her to communicate better) without sounding like super-needy-needer?

A 2:

When I’m feeling needy, I like to get that truth right out on the table immediately, plop it down like 50lb steak in The Flinstones. HERE’S WHAT I NEED. And listen it’s not always pretty, usually I’ve waited until I can’t stand it anymore and it’s very nearly a need-emergency. But if you’re trying to play it slightly cool, I think instead of explaining to her why you need her to communicate more/better, it would be less super-needy to succinctly express that you’d like to carve out some time without distractions when the two of you can just relax into each other again like you used to.

Busy patches like the one you’re going through are part of life, and it’s important that you prioritize your relationship (and your own downtime) somewhere on your list, otherwise you’re both going to burn out and feel like garbage AND you won’t have anyone to talk to about it! Make personal obligations as important and unbreakable as professional obligations. That’s what the life coaches say.

Q 3: The universe is a cold, cold place

Hi. So I’m a shy demisexual with walls higher than Troy. However, I know this awesome girl and managed to ask her out. She was all up for going out and we have been talking most days since. Never actually managed to go out due to work (both of ours) and an accident (hers). A few days ago she let me know that on scans they have found a tumour (unknown prognosis as yet). She won’t put me through what’s coming and has gone for radio silence. I understand this/that the last thing she needs is someone else to worry about/bad time for distractions/needs to be with family etc but man it hurts. I am so angry with the universe – I’m scared stiff for her, helpless, and angry that bad things happen to good people. And almost grieving what could have been if that makes sense. Does that make me bad? I stick a toe outside my walls and the universe drop kicks my heart off a cliff, but she’s going through hell so who am I to be upset?

A 3:

These are normal feelings you’re going through! You are perfectly and bitterly normal. You took a chance with your heart and its feelings, and due to circumstances — terrible, truly fucked up ones — beyond your control, this hasn’t gone the way you’d hoped. Not the way anyone would’ve hoped. It makes sense that you’d be sad and angry and scared and grieving. Those are all very normal reactions to what’s happening. Are they pretty reactions? No, and the realest ones rarely are.

What would make you a self-centered asshole is if you pestered her for answers, or went to her or any of her friends or family with these feelings, expecting comfort or even an understanding nod, but you already know that. Send her a note or something that lets her know you hope nothing but the absolute best for her.

Her health has nothing to do with you at all (except that you care about her) and you’ll get no sympathy from the world at large because of it. I know that’s not what you’re even looking for, but just to be super clear. Don’t try to make her health scare into the reason you never take a chance on someone else again. Let this be a reason to be radically tender and loud about it, to everyone you care about.

Q 4: Relationships and bi identity

Hey, I could use some help. I’m a bi girl in a five-year (and temporarily long-distance) relationship with a straight man whom I met in college overseas. He’s super awesome, I really love him, want to marry him, whole nine yards. Thing is, sometimes I idly wonder what it would be like to date a lady (or just someone else in general, he’s only the second person I’ve dated). Kind of a vague, “oh, I’ve never done that, wonder what that might be like.”

However part of me is also wondering if it’s less that I actually want to leave this guy and more that I want to be seen more as bi in general and not just as filling out the perfect straight dream life that pleases my family. I’m out to my bf and about three close friends (who are all supportive) and that’s about it.

See I’m back in my super religious and conservative home country for a bit (yay immigration issues) and it’s really not safe to be out and queer because it’s seen as having a mental illness/just having something wrong with you in general/being seen as terribly forward and in your face/spitting in the face of God/not wanting to be a functioning member of society/a fair target for violence. All of these statements I’ve heard from my family members and coworkers. Needless to say, I am not out to anyone here.

A lot of this, “I want to date a lady” has only come up in the last year, when I moved back to my home country, almost three thousand miles away from my bf who I’m missing a ton and in a really unpleasant situation that makes me feel invisible and stifled. So…I don’t know. Can you give me some advice with how to deal?

A 4:

It’s normal to idly wonder what X would be like while you’re doing something else, so don’t let that panic you or make you feel like a bad person (not that you are panicked or thinking you’re a bad person now, I just want to make that clear). I think you hit the nail on the head in your second paragraph — your whole self is being stifled while you’re living at home and those parts of you that can’t see the light of day right now are understandably really pissed about it, and wanting to get out. I’m so sorry you’re in a situation that makes it impossible for you to be fully yourself! Is there an underground queer scene in your area, or maybe an adjacent area? Are you active in queer spaces online? I feel like it sound like I’m trivializing the severity of the anti-gay sentiments of your country and I don’t think my actionable advice is especially helpful here.

I’m hoping our readers with similar experiences will have some more solid advice for you!

Q 5: Help ignoring internalised homophobia

So, I recently met a really awesome girl who I have a lot in common with and is definitely queer, single and looking to meet people. Great! But I’m so super scared of asking her out/letting her know I’m interested, and while talking it through with a friend I realised that I’m dealing with some internalised homophobia – I can’t let go of assuming that if anyone finds out I like them their response will be ‘ew that’s gross!’ I’ve been out for years and I’m generally pretty ok with my sexuality, but I’m really struggling to move past this.. any ideas??

A 5:

You just have to do it! You have to do the thing that scares the hell out of you in order to prove to yourself that it won’t kill you! It might hurt or something, but it won’t kill you. Like ripping off a bandaid and then slamming that injured body part against the wall a couple of times and LOOK it didn’t fall off, you are safe.

Try to imagine the worst case scenario — and I don’t mean let your imagination go wild and imagine literally the worst case scenario, involving armageddon or your eyelids being held open by little pins. I’m talking about just your regular, boring, run of the mill worst case scenario: you, looking very cute in that one outfit you love the most and having an impossibly good hair day, express your interest in this really awesome girl, right to her face. She, looking devastatingly gorgeous in that one shirt that changed the way you thought about shirts and having an impossibly good hair day of her own, sitting in the perfect shaft of sunlight or is it the soft glow of an exquisite lamp?, very gently (because she is truly as awesome as you claim she is and therefore isn’t mean or rude) turns you down.

Are you with me? Imagining? Ok great.

What happens next? Maybe an awkward half-sentence comes out of your mouth, maybe she changes the subject immediately. But there are no hellfires, no bloody screaming demons raining down from the sky, your face has not melted off, no one passed gas, the earth did not swallow you, you still have to do your laundry later, seasonal fruits and vegetables are still at your local grocery store, birds still chirp. YOU LIVED.

So that’s all you have to do! Just do the thing you want to do but are scared of doing. It’s as simple as lifting a large boulder that’s actually not nearly as heavy as you thought it was and then throwing it over a cliff. Poof!

Q 6: Discussing scars

So, I’ve had various mental health issues throughout my life, but I’ve been working through them and finally managed to access some therapy (I’m in the UK, so therapy is free but waiting times are looong). I’m now in a position where for the first time I can actually picture myself in a healthy relationship and it’s something I really want. However, I have quite a few self harm scars, which are fairly noticeable. I really don’t know how I would discuss them with a potential romantic partner without scaring them off. I’m fine at talking about mental health in general, but talking directly about my own issues is really hard and previous self harm even more so. I can’t hide it so I’d want to be honest in a relationship but I have no idea how I would even start that conversation! How can I bring it up without making it a super big deal that’s really scary??

A 6:

So happy for your therapy and progress!! Aaaaaaaah I’m yelling for you right now I’m so THRILLED! Ok so these scars are both a very big deal and not a big deal at all, depending on how we’re looking at them. Big-deal-speaking, these fucking things represent a fucking time, one that you lived right through and fought your way out of. That fucking time was no joke, and one way or another, even if you didn’t have any physical scars to show to anyone, you’ll be carrying that time around inside you for the rest of your wild beautiful life. There’s a bookshelf of you on your insides, and that fucking time is on one of those shelves, next to the first rollercoaster you went on, the time the teacher embarrassed the hell out of you in music class, the time you fell and broke your thumb, the first time you saw the ocean, the night you really quietly cried yourself to sleep at summer camp and then the next morning when Natalie let you eat some of the cheeseballs her mom had packed and then she showed you how to shave your legs, the best quote you’ve ever read, the first framed art you hung on your wall, the first time you had to dress yourself to go to a funeral, the time you couldn’t remember how to ride a bike after all and E laughed at you because it really was hilarious and so dumb. All those things and a trillion other things, and that fucking time when the scars were created is right there with them! That’s a lot!

But also, those scars don’t mean shit. They had their time and now that’s over. You’re bigger than they are, and you do more important things and matter more to people than they do. YOU you you. The scars take up just that little bit of room on your bookshelf and there are so many more interesting things surrounding them. They’re there, yes, but tell me more about when you broke your thumb, and I wonder what Natalie is up to these days.

I have scars and I don’t even remember how I brought them up to Megan. I think I was just like “Oh, yeah. I have those.” and she must’ve been like, “Hm, ok.” and that was probably that. We’ve talked about them since then and I’ve always been in charge of how much of an explanation I gave and the tone of the conversation, and she’s never pushed me for more or made me feel like a broken beast. I was with another girl once who also had scars — we weren’t close and had no intention of dating seriously at all — and as she was taking off her shirt she said, casual as a motherfucker, “I have some scars right here because I used to [etc], and you really can’t miss them so I’m just telling you?” and I said, “Ok” and then we kept making out.

A potential romantic partner who’s worth your time will understand all of this and anyone with even a general acquaintance with the idea of politeness will take their cues from you. Bring it up when the time feels right to you, and don’t apologize for them — they’re you. Don’t apologize for you.

Q 7: Needing more.

I’ve been really into this girl for months and finally told her so a month or so ago! It was really scary but we ended up hooking up and spending more time together and that has been really nice. The problem is that she is the world’s WORST texter (as in, short responses with lots of punctuation 6 hours after I text her) and I have been doing all of the work in this bizarre semi-relationship. I always have to text her first if I want to see her at all and she doesn’t pick up on any of my attempts to flirt. I know that I need to have a conversation with her where I ask her how she feels and tell her that I really need more communication from her and more security about her liking me, but I literally haven’t been able to get her alone for weeks and now I’m feeling like I’ll seem overly eager if I keep texting her. How do I get her to have this conversation with me without sounding like a crazy person and scaring her off? What do I do with a person who doesn’t know how to communicate feelings the way I need her to?

A 7:

Hmmmmm I believe this is just who she is. Where you’re a person who texts and wants to be texted, she appears to be a person who does not wish to text. Does she speak full sentences to you and seem to care about you when you’re in the same room together? Which is to say, do you really need to have a conversation with her about how she feels about you, or do you already know? I feel like this sounds harsh but I’ve been mulling over your question for some time now and this is what I think is true! Talking about texting sounds like the worst conversation I could ever imagine. She doesn’t want to respond to your texts immediately, and so she isn’t — whether this is because she’s not into texting or she’s not into you or doesn’t have time or whatever, this is what she’s giving you right now.

If you’re texting her little things throughout the day that don’t require an immediate/semi-immediate reply — like you’re not setting up a date or asking her to come over and lift this piano off of your chest — and she’s taking hours to reply to them for whatever reason, do you really want to keep sending them? Are you having fun? If so, keep doing it and having fun! I fucking love texting my wife while she’s at work and can’t respond. I actually prefer it to texting her when she can respond. I send like 300 one-line texts over the course of a few hours and I know she won’t reply to any of them — not even later, when she could reply, because she won’t remember anything I’ve said — but I send them because I’m bored or I think it’ll semi-annoy her (in a cute way, you know) or because I think what I’m saying is brilliant and hilarious and she took a vow in front of like 40 people promising to love me forever so she’s the person who has to get these texts! It’s a BLAST for me! But if I was hoping she’d respond to every little thing I’d sent and then she did not respond, I would not be having fun, and I would not do it anymore. I’d wait and say those things to her cute face instead, so she’d be forced to respond because that is what a conversation is.

So why are you texting her? If you have something to say and she’s not a texter, just say it to her face. If she can’t seem to find a time to put her face in front of yours for the purpose of exchanging words and ideas (either because she truly can’t because she’s busy or she can’t because she doesn’t want to), she’s not prioritizing this relationship. In which case I don’t think you need to have the talk about feelings because it’s the not talking that has told you everything you need to know.

BUT MAYBE I’M JUST BEING A CYNICAL OGRE so let’s ask the readers what they think!

Q 8: Coming out to a husband

Hi there, I am a woman in my mid-30s who’s been married to the best man in the world for 10 years. I realized around 7 weeks ago that I’m gay instead of bisexual (as I always thought I was). I accidentally got really drunk and told him. Then I immediately took it back and said I’m still bi, but we’ve both been in a really dark place ever since. I lost around 10 pounds from being too anxious to eat, and got super depressed. My therapist wants me to keep dropping hints to him of my attraction towards women, or to keep communicating in some way, but I’m so scared. I had a panic attack about two weeks after the revelation and ended up in the ER, and when I asked him to come be with me he said he was too busy at work. I had this vision of him leaving me and got terrified. Since then we haven’t communicated, just pretended like everything’s fine. How do I open the gates of communication when things are so fragile? For what it’s worth, he’s from the opposite side of the planet and all his friends and family live there. I’m his only support network here, and I’m also scared that if we broke up he would move back there and I’d lose the opportunity to keep him in my life. Also, my doctor told me I have to get pregnant by the end of 2018 or freeze my eggs, and having a child is something we’ve always wanted to do. The clock is ticking on my making a decision, or at least owning up to my uncertainty and what it will cost us.
Thanks for any advice you can give, I’m super alone.

A 8:

I’m yelling on the inside for you because this is too fucking much for one person to carry alone and I’m really mad that you’ve had to do it! Damn it! Right now the person who needs the most from you is YOU — not the husband who doesn’t have a support system and won’t come to the ER with you and is pretending not to know that you’re gay, and not the baby you may or may not have. You have to show up for yourself and you absolutely deserve to be happy and fully who you are, and this situation is actively preventing all of those things. You have to have a very real conversation with your husband. I don’t think dropping hints is the way to go, but your therapist probably knows more about you and your situation than I do, so possibly that’s the right approach for you! Either way this isn’t a sustainable situation and it has to be changed, for everyone’s sake.

Go ahead and make plans to freeze those eggs, because now is not the time to get pregnant. Freezing them, if that’s a financial option for you, will eliminate at least one giant looming thing and free you up psychically, so you can devote yourself to figuring out the here and now.

All the great wonderful best husbands in the world who are married to gay women also deserve to be happy! And being a straight man married to a lesbian isn’t fun, you know? It’s not great. So while this — having the difficult conversations, possibly divorcing? — will probably feel like the most selfish thing you’ve ever done, never forget that you’re also doing it for him.

I’m so sorry this isn’t easier, but you’re not alone! Go back to the comments of previous Y’All Need Helps and see just how many women have been in your shoes. There are, um, a lot of us. YOU CAN DO THIS you can have the hard talks and make the hard decisions!!

Q 9: Please help me to not ruin this lesbian wedding

Next month one of my best friends is getting married. It will be a lesbian wedding, and a large portion of the guests will be ex-girlfriends/people I hooked up with when I slept through my friends group in my early 20s. I am stressed as hell and have been for months now. It will be a small wedding, and there were no plus ones on the invites so I’ll be going solo. I am nervous about seeing so many of these people, but I am v. v. v. nervous about seeing The Ex Girlfriend (who I was in love with for many years and it had a horrible ending and we haven’t seen each other in a very long time). My question is, how do I navigate this situation? How do I make sure I am prioritizing celebrating my friend’s marriage, instead of just thinking about myself and my own history? Do I full on ignore my ex, or do I go make nice to her and be polite? How do I avoid spending the night crying in the bathroom/getting too drunk from the anxiety/throwing myself at another ex/taking too many Xanax/making a total fool of myself/causing general drama/JUST RUINING THE ENTIRE WEDDING?!?!?

A 9:

D O  N O T  G E T  D R U N K !

I love you, look at me in the eyes THIS IS NOT ABOUT YOU, Lorna. I’m calling you Lorna. This is your best friend’s YOUR BEST FRIEND’s wedding! It’s not your ANYTHING do you hear me? The only feelings you’re allowed to feel on that day are the ones of pride and love and hope for your friend. THAT’S IT, LORNA. That is IT.

Be nervous, be sick to your whole entire stomach if you must, but squash it all the way down into a fine powder and blow it the fuck away like the compartmentalizing, grin-and-bear-it motherfucker I know you can be. Lorna, look at me. Look at me. Is this about you at all? This wedding? Is it about you?

NO IT IS NOT.

Here’s what you’re going to do Lorn, you’re gonna get a gorgeous outfit and a haircut, maybe a color, too, I don’t know your life. You’re gonna make sure your skin is opulent and glowing, that you are well-rested, fresh-breathed, bright-eyed, HYDRATED. Look down at your shoes, they are perfect. Smile in the mirror. What a killer fucking smile, Lorna. Excellent. You are doing great. Who are you here for, Lorna? Who matters today? Your best friend, correct.

You absolutely do not ignore the ex. You smile with a face that says, “Denise, it’s not about us today!!!!! NOT TODAY!!” and “Aren’t you so, so fucking happy for my best friend? I am.” You are not here to make friends and you’re not here to make enemies, Lorna. You’re not even here to fuck. WHAT ARE YOU HERE FOR, BABE.

YOUR FRIEND THAT’S RIGHT.

You are a self-assured, hydrated, sober/mostly sober woman in the prime of her life. You’ve moved beyond any petty behavior, including gossiping, glaring, laughing sarcastically, giving anyone the silent treatment, getting drunk in public, crying in a bathroom that doesn’t belong to you, taking too many Xanax, falling down, throwing oneself at one’s ex, or participating in anything that anyone could ever describe as “drama.”

Now you get your ass to that wedding and you be an example for all lesbiankind. MAKE ME PROUD.

Q 10: Broke and done with this place, but…

I’m currently very unhappy with where I live, and I’m doing everything I can to move to a new city, pretty far away. It’s a slow process because I’m also at a financial low in my life right now; I’ve had to move back in with my parents. I can’t afford to simply get up and change locations right now.

I’ve also been feeling pretty emotionally low because of all of these factors, and a few friends have suggested I should start dating again. I haven’t dated in a while because I’m broke and I don’t want to be here anymore. Dating seems like a great way to stay broke, and get attached to someone in a way that keeps me from leaving (although granted – kissing a woman would probably improve my mood tremendously).

Should I stay single? Also if anyone has any suggestions on changing locations while broke, I’d love to hear them.

A 10:

Stay single but hang out with people! Make more friends and do more cheap/free things and keep saving that money!! You’re doing GREAT. You have a plan, you have friends, your parents have opened their home to you, I bet your hair is cute. You are on the path! Get out of your house, do free things, have inexpensive fun experiences, take pictures, make a new playlist for every month, have a good day. Never forget that you have a PLAN, and keep your eye on that prize.

Readers, if you have tips for moving on the cheap, let this person know!

Y’All Need Help #23: Spring Cleaning Part 2

It’s the second weekend of spring cleaning the You Need Help inbox and BOY ARE MY ARMS TIRED. Just like Part 1, I’ve numbered each question and answer to make it easier for you to talk about them in the comments! Please feel free to do any/all of the following:

-disagree with my advice
-talk about yourself as it relates to the question
-make a perfect graphic
-attach links to better advice
-share your favorite cookie recipes for the heartbroken

Here’s an update from a previous advice seeker and I’m sorry to say, it’s not a happy one. It sucks and I wish I could send them a brontosaurus balloon and a bag of pineapples. ? But! How great is it that we all have each other during shit like this? PRETTY FCKING GREAT.

You printed my question in December in which I asked, “Is it normal or ok for my girlfriend to keep reminding me that she doesn’t know if she wants to be with me in the future?” [Y’All Need Help #17 Q3] and I just want to follow up. Despite everyone’s advice, I kept dating said girl (also despite constant fear that she would break up with me), and probably to no one else’s surprise, she just broke up with me. In the future, I plan to take the autostraddle community’s advice more seriously. Thank you all for your warnings though!
-naive and heartbroken

Q 1:

I thought my girlfriend and I would get married and we would have kids with her pretty curly hair and I would watch the lines around her eyes get all cute and wrinkly. But instead she broke up with me unexpectedly and I’m past the point of caring if I cry in public. So, like, what should I do? Any advice would be very much appreciated as my cat doesn’t have the emotional intelligence I thought she had.

A 1:

There’s a pretty comprehensive list of breakup advice down there in A8, but I reached out to a writer who’s recently gone through the very same thing, and here’s what she says:

all i can say is when we decide to love someone, to make the decision to go all in, we open ourselves up to the possibility of this very thing, the opposite of what we’d planned. you have to accept that grief is part of the process, give yourself some time, be gentle with yourself, and know deep down that their leaving isn’t a reflection on you, it’s them.

Time time time, is the thing. It takes a lot of time. Keep talking to your cat and going out in public. You’re more resilient than you think.

Q 2:

I’m an out lesbian in my early 20s with a very straight best friend whose enthusiasm for my gayness is becoming grating, verging on offensive. For example, when she introduces me to new people, the fact that I’m “the huge lesbian one” comes up almost immediately, whether it’s relevant or not — so I become one-dimensionally just The Big Homo to mutual friends. I can’t make passing eye contact with a woman on the train without her saying “omg you should fuck her.”

Recently, I was visiting her in the major European capital where she’s studying, and when I mentioned wanting to go to the gay district/bars, she jumped at the chance to “be my wingman” so I could “fuck so many girls.” Notwithstanding the fact that I don’t particularly want an obnoxious, unsubtle, boy-crazy wingman, I didn’t know how to politely tell her that the few gay bars that are left are temporary places of refuge from straight people, I would feel uncomfortable with her there, and I would rather go alone.

Lately I feel like a zoo animal on display, like being a lesbian makes me a crazy wild child who she can carry around for cool edgy social cred. (FWIW, almost everyone else in our friend group is bi or pan, and they don’t seem to get this treatment.) She’s anxious and easily wounded, and I’m worried that if I bring this up it’ll end with her sobbing that she’s an awful friend and I should just never speak to her again. I know she thinks that she’s being super accepting by acting like this and showing off how “okay” she is with same-sex relationships, but it makes me feel like a porn category, not a person. How to I tell her to piss off and let me be gay in peace without sounding like a mean, bitter dyke?

A 2:

She’s projectinggggg !!!

Practical advice-wise, if she really is your best friend, you have to tell her that the way she acts re: you being gay is embarrassing to everyone involved, mostly her, and it’s not OK. You’re well within your rights as a not-mean, not-bitter dyke to let someone know when they’re being incredibly rude, and you should do that! Your best friend would want to know if they were making you this uncomfortable, and moreover they’d want to FIX IT. Try to come up with an analogy that contextualizes your point through her own experiences, and if she protests that you’re being too [whatever], she’s not your best friend.

Also she reallllly wants to sleep with you byeeeeee!

Q 3:

Me and my girlfriend are each others first and only partners (we’re in our early 20’s). Everything has been great so far, except for one thing that bothers me a little. We have very different fingers! My hands and fingers are very small, and hers are quite a bit bigger than average. She doesn’t feel any discomfort during sex even with her hymen being intact. As for me, our first sex did hurt, then it was much better, but even two fingers sometimes seemed like too much, and now when we haven’t done it for quite a while (we’re in LDR), I fear it’s going to start all over again in terms of pain and trying to figure out how to make things better. So, my point is: I love being penetrated, and I want to make it easier, even if it means letting go of my hymen (unfortunately, it didn’t break yet). I don’t have enough guts to break it by myself, so maybe I could ask my girlfriend to do that for me… but what exactly should I ask her to do? I don’t want to resort to sex toys yet. Thank you so much for your help :)

A 3:

I reached out to a real lesbian gynecologist and here’s what she had to say:

The hymen isn’t really something that you need to break. It’s a stretchy membrane that sort of separates the vulva from the vagina and runs circumferentially around the vaginal opening. In the vast majority of women this membrane stretches. Occasionally this membrane covers more or less of the vagina. If it’s more, sometimes you might start having pain when you first have sex. On a small percent of women there are bands of tissue connecting one side to the opposite side. This is called a septate hymen. An even smaller percent have hymens that totally cover the vagina except for a few holes. This is called a cribform hymen. And an even tinier percent have a hymen that completely covers the vaginal opening. This is called an imperforate hymen. Except for an imperforate hymen (which will cause menstrual blood to backflow into the uterus and body) none of these will harm your health, but they will make sex more uncomfortable.

I recommend anyone who is having pain with sex to see their gynecologist. If she has a septate or cribform hymen she will be able to tell right away. She may even be able to tell if there is just more hymen in one area making sex uncomfortable. We often resection these hymens in a very small procedure/surgery called a hymenectomy. I did one just two days ago. A hymenectomy isn’t for everyone, but if the opening is so small someone can’t fit tampons in or have sex the way they want to, it might be a good idea for some women. Other women find that slow dilation of the openings they do have with either good quality silicone dilatory (or even bigger and bigger tampons) is more their style.

The most important thing is that you are having pain with sex to see your gynecologist. Most of the time this isn’t from the hymen but from the muscles. Pelvic floor spasm (aka vaginismus) comes in varying degrees and from various causes. Often one of the ways that vaginismus occurs is by continuing to have sex when you have pain. The body learns to tighten up to brace for pain… which just makes pain worse.

ARE LESBIAN GYNECOLOGISTS THE BEST OR WHAT.

Q 4:

I’ve been in a relationship with my S.O. for six years. We’re polyam, and over the past few months I’ve started to have sex with other people in a non-group setting (ie, my S. O. was not there) for the first time. I always thought that I had a low sex drive or was somewhere on the ace spectrum, but after starting to have sex with women (trans and cis), I realized that I’m just not attracted to men. I was on the verge of breaking up with my partner when they came out to me as nonbinary. It still doesn’t change my lack of physical attraction to them, but I’m afraid that if I tell them, it will come off like I’m not respecting their gender identity. Am I being transphobic? Do I need to re-evaluate my internalized perceptions and prejudices? What do I do???

A 4:

I hesitate to give you really quick advice about this, especially because six years is a pretty long time and I can only imagine how tangled up your lives are in each other’s, but! Here’s some hasty advice from someone who doesn’t know you: you should break up with your partner! Not because you’re not attracted to men, but because you’re not attracted to them.

Breaking up with someone is GARBAGE even when you want to do it — it’s garbage all the way around! It’s not easy and it’s stupid and painful and fucked up and just exactly like being dropped onto a brand new planet where everyone else is acting like things are extremely normal and fine but you know that they aren’t. Breaking up is also part of being together, the same way dying is part of living LISTEN I’M NOT EVEN ON MY PERIOD THIS IS JUST HOW DARK THIS ADVICE POST IS GONNA BE.

You’re not being transphobic, this isn’t about internalized prejudices or a lack of respect. This is about you being honest about what you want, and it sounds like what you want is a woman. AND THAT’S FINE. It’s legal and fine.

Q 5:

I am going to A-Camp for the first time ever!!! I am so excited and I have been reading all the re-camps, looking at all the pics, and just looking at the A-Camp website in general a LOT. Every day is passing too slowly and I don’t know how to speed it up to just be at the camp already! All of my straight friends are tired of me talking about it and my queer friends are at A-Camp in the future waiting for me to meet them because I don’t have any yet! What do you guys do to pass the time while waiting for the time to come?

A 5:

!!! I am so excited for you and everyone else coming to A-Camp for the first time ever this year!!! When we were packing up and leaving the mountain after our very first A-Camp in 2012, I was sobbing — not because I thought I’d never see my friends and coworkers again, and not because I thought there wouldn’t be another one, but because I knew there’d never ever be another one like that one. And I’ve cried every single year since then! For the same reason! We get to live in a world that we make for ourselves there, and it’s not perfect but damn it, it’s ours.

Which is a long way of saying — to you and all new A-Campers and queers going on first dates and people making their first strawberry rhubarb pie and and and and — that it’s already yours and I hope you have SO MUCH FUN.

I think I speak for everyone at Autostraddle when I say that we pass the time by panicking about what we’ll wear and which snacks we’ll need to buy on the way.

Q 6:

Hey, I live in a communal situation. Can I use antimicrobial gel to clean my silicone sex toys in my room, or will the alcohol fuck with the silicone? Will antimicrobial gel get them clean enough? Any other suggestions short of, like, bringing a bucket of water to my room and washing them in it?

A 6:

Carolyn Yates, our Sex Editor who has ridiculously good hair, says that alcohol-based antimicrobial cleaners are safe for silicone toys! Also though if you just want to keep buying things in this world LOOK WHAT I FOUND FOR YOU.

Q 7:

Oh boy here we go… So. I’ve identified as queer/bisexual forever, but I’ve only dated one woman and the relationship was abusive and deeply traumatic. It kind of scared me off of dating women for a couple years, so three years later here I am engaged to a cis man. Except now I’m questioning whether I want to be with a cis man at all. I can’t stop thinking about women, I fantasize about women during sex, I daydream about a “someday” in the future when I’ll get to be with a woman, even though in reality I’m supposed to be marrying this man. But I still love him, deeply, and wish that I had no doubts about spending the rest of my life with him. But these feelings have been here for a year, and I don’t think they’re going to go away no matter how hard I try to suppress them. What the fuck do I do?

A 7:

Do not marry this man. You don’t want to and you shouldn’t make a commitment that you don’t want to make. When I was married to a man and thinking I was straight but fantasizing about women during sex and daydreaming about a “someday,” that daydream relied on him eventually leaving me. Think about that for a second.

Do not marry this man.

Q 8:

I’m a baby queer going through my first breakup. What are your best queer breakup tips? We are friends and everything is ostensibly fine but, you know, ouch.

A 8:

Ok are you ready? Get ready.

The Best Break-Up Advice You’ll Ever Get
Where Does the Good Go? A Break-Up Open Thread
The Lifespan of a Lesbian Heartbreak
A Playlist for When You Break Up in Autumn
Top 10 Special Weirdo Things I’ve Done Since My Very First Break-Up
Playlist: Breaking Up Is Hard to Do
So Your First Girlfriend Broke Your Heart — Now What?
Playlist: It Was Time to Go

? ? ? ?

Q 9:

Any advice on how to make space to have friends/try to date while super overwhelmed? Like everyone else I’m working all 158 hours a week trying to change the world, learn new things, build a resume that will get me a job, but I’m absolutely miserable because I have no friends, and I’m not dating, and sometimes I’m not sure why I’m doing all of this because I am just so miserable, but it doesn’t feel like I can stop doing anything that I’m doing. How do I have time for a life when I have no time for anything?

A 9:

You are burning out and you have to stop or something terrible will happen! It’ll probably mean giving up something you’re working on/towards to make time for other things — like rest, relaxation, interacting with the rest of the world — but you have to do it. I SAY THIS BECAUSE I CARE ABOUT YOU. Make the time for yourself because if you don’t literally no one else can or will.

Q 10:

I’m nearly 30 and only came out a few years ago. I am coping with depression, I struggle with alcohol dependency, and I’m still undecided on what I want my career to look like. I don’t really know how to date or be in a relationship. (Longest I’ve been in was a few months, and it was pretty aloof.)

Obviously I’m not just a bundle of negative traits. I have a good job, it’s just not something I want to do forever; I have passions, and I’m pretty good at following through on fulfilling them; I’m in therapy for my drinking and depression and it’s going pretty well; I’m mature, thoughtful, kind, funny, creative, supportive, enthusiastic, and humble enough to feel weird listing my good qualities like this. I really want someone in my life who can joke with me and support me, who I can touch and tell them I love them and hear it back. I want someone who I look forward to seeing every day, who I want to hear stories from, whose opinions I trust, who would be willing to build a life with me. I’m lonely and this all seems so nice.

But I also feel like I’m not there yet. I’m sure I could bring something to a relationship, but would I be enough, or would I be dragging some wonderful person down? And I’m not sure if these feelings of insecurity are me being down on myself (yay depression), or just me being realistic about my current situation and the real struggles I am going through.

I was pursing dating/relationships basically as a part-time job from June-Nov 2017, but I cooled it off after the last person I dated because, in addition to us not being a good fit at all, I also felt incomplete, unfinished, like I wouldn’t compliment anyone so long as I had my main hang-ups (drinking and self-hate) still so prominent in my life. This is also when I started therapy. I don’t think it’s fair to drag some innocent person into my shit when I haven’t dealt with it. But also: everyone has shit in their lives, so am I being too self- critical? And, if I am being realistic about my depression/drinking and if I don’t ever get over these issues, do I really have to stay alone forever? At what point do I actually get to feel like I’ll be someone that another someone would want to be with?

A 10:

Today! Today is the point when you actually get to feel like you’re someone that another someone would want to be with. TODAY. Even if you don’t start dating someone by this afternoon, today is still the day when you say OUT LOUD “I am someone that another someone would want to be with!!!!” because it is true.

I know that one of the deals of AA — which you have not said you’re participating in, but I’m using their guidelines as my guidelines because I don’t have any other ones to go by — is that you don’t start dating until you’ve been sober for a year. You take that whole year to focus on yourself and your recovery. So ok I just want to acknowledge this before I say what I’m gonna say next, which is that every single person, no matter how not-depressed or not-alcohol-dependent they are, has baggage that they bring to the relationship. Don’t be afraid of that. You’ll bring your depression and your drinking issues with you even if you have them under control because it’s your life! It’s what you’ve lived through and it shapes how you live now, and that’s cool and normal.

I’m so happy — I want to say proud but it always sounds so infantilizing to put it that way, but! — that you’re seeing a therapist and working on things! That is SUCH a huge fucking step in the right direction, massive. I hope you keep reminding yourself how much strength it takes to even schedule an appointment, much less go to the appointment and then make more and keep going and going! You are out here doing the damn work. Be impressed with yourself.

I brought your question up to my wife because we both also deal with depression and go back and forth between having it under control and super not having it under control, and I thought she’d have some wisdom. She did. She said you should get a dog.

I was alone for YEARS and so lonely. I was miserable. Everyone told me not to get a dog but I knew I needed one, so I went to the shelter and started taking some of the dogs out on walks. When I met Emily [her dog], she’d been in the shelter for weeks and was labeled Aggressive On Impound — she was a couple of days away from being euthanized and it was clear no one was coming to adopt her. When we went out for a walk, a guy came by and said, “Is that your dog?” and I said, “Not yet, maybe though.” He said, “You two look good together. She looks like your dog.” I used the money my grandmother had left me to adopt her that day. She ate everything in my house — the couch, my shoes, the miniblinds, the doors, the carpet. Bringing her home was the best decision I’ve ever made. I mean you were also a good decision but I love Emily so much.

From the mouths of babes, dear reader.

Y’All Need Help #21: You’ll All Be Painters

Q:

I’ve known that I’m queer since I was maybe 14. I dated a couple of girls briefly in high school, but then was busy being too busy dealing with mental illness, neurodivergence, a whole bunch of chronic health problems, etc, to really get involved in the queer community back then. I had horrible self esteem and ended up dating whatever men would ask me out, because at least someone acted like they cared about me (although they mostly seemed to care about my boobs). So at this point, everyone just assumes I’m straight.

I’m 27, I’ve had genuinely enjoyable sex with a person I was genuinely attracted to exactly once in my life – which was, of course, the only time I’ve ever had sex with a woman. But I’m still dealing with a lot of chronic health issues, and I’m such an introvert that whenever I start to maybe make some queer friends, I pretty much ignore their texts and hide under my bed. I feel really awkward and uncomfortable about having to be “new” to the queer community, and about having to basically come out all over again, when I’ve felt queer forever. I know this is all normal shit that you’ve probably answered 100 times before, but… it feels like I’m too old and too shy? And I’m so afraid of not being accepted.

A:

Forgive me but at 27, the only thing you’re too old for is like, ordering off the kid’s menu at O’Charley’s or getting your mom to do your laundry. You’re certainly and absolutely not too old to break into a queer community and make friends. It will be so awkward and feel so weird and you will be so out of your element! The emotional equivalent of wearing a wet wool sweater filled with sand! An exciting time!

The only way on earth to have a different life is to do things differently. I understand that your neurodivergence, mental illness and health problems have limited your social engagement, and that’s extremely valid. Working with your limitations in mind, try to figure out how you can safely start baby stepping outside of your comfort zone and take life by the twisty horns and turn it in the direction you want it to go in.

If you had been painting since you were 14 but had never shown anyone and never really talked about it, you’d still be a painter. If, at 27, you wanted to go to an art museum opening and talk to some other painters, you’d all be painters, in a room, talking. Some painters there will have been painting since they were 14, too, and maybe they even talked about it to other people. Cool. Some painters just picked up some brushes at Goodwill LAST NIGHT and have never even actually painted anything with them. Still cool! Some painters there will get paid money to paint, and they’ll go home and paint that very night and then again the next morning. Some painters there will be latent painters who aren’t yet aware that they are, in fact, painters. They’ll just know they like being around other painters, for some reason, and will be at the opening feeling somewhat like an outsider looking in. Also cool. One day they’ll pick up a brush and paint something amazing, and they’ll look back on this opening and laugh to themselves. YOU’LL ALL BE PAINTERS.

You’re queer. You’re exactly just as queer as the rest of us. You’re so queer that you wrote into a queer advice column on a queer website, and a queer person replied to it, and other queer people will relate to it. You couldn’t be any queerer if you hosed yourself down with local organic honey, rolled around in biodegradable glitter and showed up on Jodi Foster’s doorstep holding a signed copy of Swamp Ophelia. Go out there and be yourself all over the place.

Q:

I am an avid swing dancer, in my second year of uni. There is a dance studio close by my campus that hosts a swing dance every Saturday. Problem is, the operators of the business love to use male and female instead of saying lead and follow (meaning that they think a man is always a lead, never a follow, and a woman is always a follow, never a lead). This bothers me, as I am a female lead, so I don’t really want to pay the price of admission to dance there.

BUT, on the other hand it is the only swing dance place in my area and I love swing dance. What should I do? Confront the operators and explain why their language choice is piss-poor? Never patronize the business again? Go and keep quiet? If I confront them how should I best go about it?

A:

Swing dance! I’d give it a shot, at least, just to know in your own heart that you did all you could. Wait until they definitely have time to talk to you — this is obvious but people are always more receptive when you’ve signaled that you respect their time and are willing to be on their schedule. It might be chill to start with a genuine compliment about the class, your excitement to have found it, etc. Then maybe just say that you’re a female lead and noticed they used Men/Women instead of Lead/Follow, and would they consider using the more widely accepted neutral phrasing to encourage more dancers like you to participate. Reiterate that it’s a small change, really, but one that you know would have a positive effect on how people engage with the dances and the business. Leads are always leads, but leads aren’t always men, and look you’re living proof of that, so using “men” is just inaccurate and don’t they want to be accurate? People love being accurate!

And then you will have done all you could, which is a great amount.

Q:

To get right into it, I’m having confusing and exhausting feelings re: my ex. She was my first girlfriend, she broke my heart, and she has been in a happy relationship with the girl she left me for ever since. After months of therapy and crying myself to sleep, I too am in a happy relationship! With someone wonderful who makes my heart glow! But for some reason (masochism? Lack of closure?) I can’t stop checking in on my ex via social media.

I almost feel like we’re locked in a competition. I’ve noticed myself posting pictures with the express hope that she will see and notice how well I’m doing. But I strongly suspect that I’m the only one playing this game and that she is not thinking about me at all. This makes me feel dumb. It also makes me feel that I’m being unfair to my current partner. What do I do?

A:

Yikes, this is a terrible way to spend your time. You’re right that it’s unfair to your current partner — it’s unfair to both of you. You’re dragging this broken, actually-non-existent relationship around like a muddy duffle bag full of raw unwrapped steaks. Stop it! You should’ve thrown this duffle bag away six months ago, but instead you’re bringing it with you to the nice restaurant with your partner, and putting it up on the sofa while the two of you cuddle up to watch a movie, and every time you pose for a picture that you know you’ll put on social media, you’re hauling this dripping, foul-smelling, likely maggot-filled bag right up next to your cute smiling faces. It’s gross! Throw it out! You have a better duffle bag now, you don’t need this one anymore! Look at your new cute duffle! It’s clean, smells great, the zipper still works, it’s full of organized pouches and that one journal you love to write in, people compliment it when you walk by even if only to themselves. This bag deserves to be taken care of by someone who’s genuinely excited about it. You have a really cute great new duffle bag that isn’t full of rotting meat and THAT’S THE BAG YOU NEED TO PAY ATTENTION TO.

Q:

I’ve been friends with a girl for over two years now, and realized that I had some more-than friends feelings for her at least a year ago. However, she had been in a long-term relationship the ENTIRE time we were friends. Then, I moved (I live in the Bay Area & she lives in LA) about 6 months ago. We still text & comment on each others instagrams a lot. She also wrote a poem kinda about me & later called it a “cheesy love poem) Almost every message we send includes a red heart emoji. About a month ago she started posting a lot of sapphic content (pics of titties, saying she was “so in love w/ ___ actress) & so I did a little social media investigating & am now 95% sure her & the aforementioned long-term boyfriend have called it quits.

I’m visiting LA in about a month & I want to tell her how I feel, but I’m worried that it might fuck up our friendship & does it even matter when we live 400 miles apart?? We are often on the same wavelength, we read the same books & watch the same movies. Her friendship is important to me and I’d rather she was in my life in some capacity.

A:

Well you only live once! Does it even matter when you live 400 miles apart? Who can say! There’s truly just the one way to find out, and that’s by talking to her. Most of us have lived through some version of having to tell a friend that you have more-than-friend feelings for them, it’s like the price you pay for being a person with a heart. She’s clearly not squicked out by you being gay or she wouldn’t have been friends with you all this time. It might be awkward and she might not be into it, but at least you got that fun harmless secret off your chest!

I feel like a lot of people will disagree with me on this, but I’m standing my ground. Tell her.

(Please note that the Tell her advice in this answer DOES NOT apply to friends you know are straight. For straight friends, please see YNH 10: Q1.)

Q:

Hello Queer Friends! As I approach my late 20’s I’m starting to have set in panic about finding “the one”. For the majority of my mid 20’s I was with someone who I thought I would be married to by now. Sadly, that did not work out after their transition. I thought I have given myself enough time to work through it when I met someone who absolutely dazzled me. I thought it was the universe telling me all the crap I had gone through was worth it. Cut to three months in and they lost complete interest in me and I broke it off. Not too much later they are dating someone they claim is the one and I’m still sobbing into my Ben and Jerry’s at night. I can’t seem to let either of them go. Every time I meet someone new I immediately compare the experience to the butterflies partners 1 and 2 gave me. Nothing comes close to the connection I felt with these two people. I’m terrified that those were my chances and I’ve some how fucked it up. Help?

A:

You have not fucked it up! Stop looking backward. If you are listening and looking out for the universe to give you signs and send things your way — and I’m not knocking that, I do it myself — then you have to see and hear all of the things, including the stuff that’s hardest to take in: these two people were beautiful parts of your life for a time, and then they had to go. And you have to let them.

Comparing anyone to someone else is futile and wasting your time. Would you compare every Saturday afternoon to your one and only trip to Disneyland? No, that would be useless and you know it. Also, there’s tiny beauty in every Saturday afternoon — every afternoon at all really — and if you’re always looking for fireworks and confetti and oversized grinning cartoon characters in the places they simply will not be, you’re missing out on literally everything that is there. Give yourself the gift of seeing each new person and every interaction for what it is: the unique experience of right now.

What did you learn about yourself when you were with these people? Or about the world? What new things did you try and fall in love with, and what old things did you decide to release? These relationships, especially in combination with every other human interaction you’ve had in your lifetime, have shaped you. Being with you also shaped them! Instead of focusing solely on how wrong you were about being married by now, find the actual beauty in how it’s all brought you right here, reading this screen today. You are an incredible person with so much more to learn and so much more to teach and give, and you get to do it!

Let go of the expectations you had and the futures you imagined then. Make something brand new and real here.

Q:

My girlfriend and I have been together for one year (long long distance- different countries) and I am planning to move to her city. However, she isn’t ready for me to move in so I have to find roommates in a city that is unfamiliar to me (which I find stressful). Is it crazy that I’m making this move and uprooting my life for us to live separately? Another factor is that she works a lot and I am working on my dissertation so I am worried we won’t see each other a lot.

A:

A similar situation was brought up during a panel conversation at A-Camp one time: a person was moving to a new state that she wasn’t thrilled about in order to be with her long-distance girlfriend. She wanted to know if she was making the right decision, given how much she thought she disliked the place she’d be moving to. The overwhelming response was that if she did go (and she did want to go, for the record, she was just nervous), she’d need to make that place her home, instead of just her girlfriend’s city where she also happened to be living — meaning make her own friends, find her own favorite places, live separately for a while if possible, and make her own connections and ties to the city. That’s what you should do, too. If you decide to make this move, living separately and meeting new people and independently familiarizing yourself with the city is the best way to go. You’ll be so much happier in the long run if you establish your own foundation and ties, instead of relying on your girlfriend to be your connection to everything there.

You’ll still each other and you’ll still be together! You’ll just be living a healthy, balanced life outside of each other, too, which is GREAT.

Q:

I haven’t talked to my ex in 6 months. It was messy, i’m still attached and post sad song lyrics on twitter; she also posts sad song lyrics on twitter. She loves everyone’s lesbian aunts Cameron Esposito and Rhea Butcher; I love everyone’s lesbian aunts Cameron Esposito and Rhea Butcher. DO I GIFT HER SEASON 2 OF TAKE MY WIFE ON ITUNES WITH NO EXPLANATION OR IS THIS THE WORST IDEA.

A:

I love you, do not do this.

Y’All Need Help is a biweekly advice column in which I pluck out a couple of questions from the You Need Help inbox and answer them right here, round-up style, quick and dirty! (Except sometimes it’s not quick, but that’s my prerogative, OK?) You can chime in with your own advice in the comments and submit your own quick and dirty questions any time.

Y’All Need Help #20: Is This Too Many Metaphors?

Look what I got in the mail!! Look!

Dear Laneia,

I submitted a question to Autostraddle last year, which you replied to in Y’All Need Help #10 Q1. I just wanted to say thank you so much for your advice, for dispensing your words of wisdom, and just being so kind. It really meant a lot. I took screenshots of your reply and just kept them as a reminder that things will get better during an emotionally trying period and it was just so inspiring. Your framing the issue and getting me to look at the issue from a different perspective I hadn’t thought of previously helped a great deal in me getting over my crush eventually. And you were just so kind! Thank you!

Love,
No longer crushing on a straight girl

I AM SO HAPPY FOR YOU !!! Thank you for this update. If y’all ever want to send an update, please do. This is the best thing that happened to me all week! Now on with the show.

Q:

I live with my parents, and my mom and I are very close. She was pretty upset when I first came out and weird about my first girlfriend (understandably tho, my first gf sucked), but she’s come to accept it. Now I’m in a long distance relationship with a woman I really love, and my mom’s met and liked her. She’s told me a couple times how glad she is I have a “friend” like her. My problem is, she sometimes says things that come off as bitter? For example I told her a story about how my partner spilled a drink on herself at work, and my mom responded with “too bad, so sad,” a phrase I have never heard come out of her mouth. My mom is usually very compassionate, so I’m really confused by her behavior. I have approached her about it before and she claims not to know what I’m talking about and reiterates that she likes my partner. Am I being overly sensitive? Or am I right to be hurt by these comments? Should I talk to my mom about it again or just let it go?

A:

I think you should let it go unless she says something out of character again, and then just very plainly ask her if she’s having a stroke. JK BUT NOT REALLY that’s 100% what I would say to my mother.

A few years ago, a very generous and brilliant executive-level businesswoman offered to help Riese and me learn how to be better at this job because we were very bad at it and she could tell that all the way from the other side of her computer. She taught us a lot, so much, but the technique I come back to almost daily is this idea of the Five Positions, and I tell everyone about it all the time and it’s not annoying about me at all. I can’t explain the whole thing to you because of this cold medicine I’m on but basically and in an extremely tight nutshell, position 5ing someone (that’s what we call it for short) is a thought exercise where you acknowledge that your initial take on someone’s upsetting behavior is probably the most drastic take and that it’s likely inaccurate and colored by your own fears and insecurities. Then you force yourself to assume good faith — the best faith, really, like the Megatron of Assuming Good Faith — and come up with a take that’s on the complete opposite side of this spectrum from your initial take (your initial take was position 1, this Megatron Good Faith Assumption take is position 5, imagine a pendulum ok, a Take Pendulum. Is this too many metaphors?). Position 5 is also most likely inaccurate and drastic, but the goal is to get you far away from your first take and out of your own head a little. The ultimate goal is to get to position 3, which is the desired middle ground of your Take Pendulum’s journey across the spectrum and it is the most chill. Position 3 is informed a little by position 1 and a little by position 5 and it’s where your Take Pendulum should come to rest, having seen the most upsetting take and the most generous take.

Ok so your initial take (position 1) is that maybe your mom secretly hates your girlfriend, hates that you’re gay, and is passive-aggressively making these out-of-character comments to blow of steam. If we position 5 your mom, we could imagine that maybe she thought “too bad, so sad” would be a funny thing to say and would lighten your mood? You know your mom better than I do so you’ll have to position 5 her more accurately for yourself. What’s probably happening is that your mom is mostly fine with you being gay and does think this your girlfriend is a great gal, but doesn’t know what to say when you talk about her because she’s tripping on the fact that your significant other is a woman and not a dude. Maybe, since your girlfriend is long-distance, your mom isn’t forced to confront your queerness every day, so she doesn’t, and then when she does, she stumbles because she hasn’t had enough practice.

All of which is to say (!!!), to test our [cold-medicine-informed] position 3 theory, maybe try talking about gay stuff more often for no real reason and without it having anything to do with people you love, so if she reacts weirdly it won’t carry as much weight. Talk about the out Olympians or like, Elton John. Moms love Elton John. Force her to confront the reality of your big gay world. Then, when you do talk about your girlfriend again, if she says something out of character and seemingly a lil’ rude, just stop her right there and say, “I’m sorry wait, why would you say that? That’s a weird thing to say.” or “That’s a weird thing for you to say, I thought you’d say [something better]. What’s going on?”

And that, friends, is the story of how position 5ing people can lower your blood pressure, water your crops, and clear your head so you can come up with reasonable solutions to your interpersonal problems. Amen please tip your waiter.

Q:

I broke up with my ex-girlfriend six months ago, after being unhappy in the relationship for a while and knowing that splitting was the right move. It was initially amicable, but after going back and forth about whether we could get back together over a period of several months, she told me I was manipulative, cruel, and a user, and that I didn’t care about her. I felt blindsided and so hurt by this, and started questioning everything I had done in our relationship. We cut off contact after that, and she immediately started seeing someone. Now, I’m truly obsessive about all the things she said to me in that last conversation, and the fact that she has moved on, and thinking about her feels like opening a wound. I still love her even though I know that I felt breaking up was the right decision. Why can’t I move on? What can I do to help this feel more resolved for myself?

A:

You can’t move on because her words are making you second-guess what you thought you knew about who you are and what the relationship was. A of all, this is a very normal reaction to the situation, so don’t let yourself get caught up in the tangle of hating yourself for having a negative/confused feeling about yourself etc infinity — just don’t. You trusted this woman at some point and now she’s said things about your and her time with you and it makes sense to give it some weight. Do that! Give it weight. Accept that you made her feel manipulated, used, and uncared for. Apologize sincerely — either in a journal entry or to her, but probably just in a journal entry — and vow to be better in the future, then forgive yourself. It’s all you can do now.

Being in an unhappy relationship that needs to end can make even the best people turn into worse versions of themselves. IT HAPPENS. It happens it happens. Sometimes we hurt people without meaning to. Sometimes we even mean to! These aren’t proud moments and we don’t want to repeat them, and the only way to do that is to keep living and moving on and getting further away from them, every single day. Every day you live and breathe and you’re not in a unhappy relationship with someone who feels bad around you (for whatever reason, whether that’s on you or her, or both of you!), you’re doing GREAT.

Put the love you still have for her into yourself. Be proud of yourself for having the capacity to love and see the best in people. You’re not a robot, you have a heart and you can do great things with it! Go do them! Do a great thing with your heart right now and tell yourself you did the best you could with what you had at that time — you both did — and now that time has passed. Find the things you learned from that relationship and be proud of them, take them with you into all your future relationships. You’re a good person, she’s a good person, you weren’t good together.

Q:

My family is big on gifts and surprises, and makes minor events into gift-giving occasions. My style has always been very laid-back—minimal jewelry, jeans, hoodies, sneakers, no make-up, no frills, no lace. I’m in my thirties and have been wearing men’s clothes since middle school.

However, every gift I’ve received since coming out (about 2 years) looks like it was meant for someone else-dresses, make-up, jewelry, lacy tops, and bedazzled nonsense. Maybe I’m over-reacting, but it feels very coincidental that I have dressed a certain way since childhood and everyone was fine with it, and then I came out and suddenly everyone (especially my mother) wants to gift me overly feminine clothes and jewelry. She didn’t do this before I came out.

How do I handle this without being a total bitch? I know I should be excited someone is giving me a present. How do I convey that I’m thankful for gifts, but they are throwing their money away buying me things that I’ll never use? I’ve never attempted to return anything because the process seems so complicated and rude to me (having to ask the gift giver where they bought it/needing a receipt/finding how much they paid/etc).

And how do I even begin to convey (to my mother, especially) that these gifts really hurt my feelings because it feels like she’s buying for the daughter she wants and not the daughter she has?

A:

You know what? I think it might be time to be a bitch. A lowkey bitch who asserts her actuality until everyone else is either on board or they stop buying you gifts altogether, their choice. Also real quick, now’s a good time for all of us to put this in our mini marquee lightboxes: asserting your actuality doesn’t make you a bitch at all! The patriarchy says you’re a bitch because you want to be seen. You’re not. You’re actualized. Also that will not fit in a mini marquee lightbox so maybe use a letter board.

It could be that these people in your family are buying gifts for the someone they wish you were, absolutely. It could also be that, since you’ve come out, they feel like they’ve lost track of the north and south poles of who you are, and how they fit into your life. So their compass is completely haywire and the easiest thing to buy for you, in this gift-giving bonanza they call life, is whatever Kohl’s has decided to put on those tables in the middle of their aisles. Most likely it’s a little bit of both, but either way there’s a real disconnect between you and your family, and it’s worth traipsing it out into the open so everyone has a chance to look directly at it!

Before we get any deeper into this very lengthy reply I’m putting together here, I want to step up onto this soapbox and say that organized/cyclical gift-giving can quickly become an exercise in just performing mindless tasks, where the value of and the connection to the gift itself means very little to the giver and the givee, bless our hearts, because people are more focused on the fact that a gift was given, full stop. It’s gross, I hate it, so do you, so do we all. And yet here we are in this consumerist society and we are MAKING DO, friend. We are making do! The dreamers and the makers and the minimalists and the people just trying to fucking not fill their house with useless garbage, WE ARE MAKING DO. Ugh I love us for it; we’re doing our best.

So! Try all or some of these things, maybe:

• Make an Amazon wish list and just copy/paste that motherfucker to everyone you know.

• Have real, no-walls conversations with your mother about some things you really do want and need. Bring her into your actual life and show her the poles. Here’s why you like this kind of shirt, here’s why you could really use a membership to the Lightbulb of the Month club, here’s how you really feel about LACE.

• In the gift-giving off-season (which is probably now?), be blunt! “If you’re ever going to spend money on me, I hope you know what I really need is [this very specific brand and cut of jeans]!!!”

• When receiving a useless disconnected gift, respond in kind: a cursory smile, maybe a stiff one-armed hug — the one that’s front-to-front but you have something in one hand and the hugging arm becomes one enormous animatronic elbow + hand. You know what I’m talking about.

Context is everything everything everything, so there will definitely be times when asserting yourself is unnecessary — NOT because the assertion itself is unimportant, but because your energy is a finite precious thing that deserves to be rationed, and some people are beyond helping. That’s fine. Donate the things you can’t return. Return the things you can. Unless someone bedazzled it themselves or like, baked it in a kiln, it probably meant just as much to them as it does to you (very little) and they won’t even notice that you’re not wearing that necklace or carrying that hot pink purse, ever.

Y’All Need Help is a biweekly advice column in which I pluck out a couple of questions from the You Need Help inbox and answer them right here, round-up style, quick and dirty! (Except sometimes it’s not quick, but that’s my prerogative, OK?) You can chime in with your own advice in the comments and submit your own quick and dirty questions any time.

Y’All Need Help #20: First Admit That You Don’t Know Yet

Q:

My girlfriend and I have been together for about 10 years (met freshman year of college) and have been discussing getting engaged for quite some time (yay!) and I’m about ready to pop the question! In hetero millennial relationships, that would mean that the dude would propose, the girl gets the ring, fbook pics go up and then planning for the rest of their lives begin! However, what would you suggest for a couple where both parties want a ring, want the fbook pics, but still want an element of surprise and want to be considerate of each other.

It may be strange, and a good thing to need advice for – but what creative suggestions do you have for giving the ring to the proposer that doesn’t feel sorta weird and after the fact?

A:

Further proof that love is in fact not a lie! Hooray! Ok you both already know you want to be proposed to / receive a ring / get married, so the surprise of “wow you love me enough to spend forever together?” has passed. (I mean, this fact alone will continue to surprise you forever, but Now the surprises have to come from other things — like what the ring looks like, how it’ll be given, where you’ll be when you receive it, and what you’ll say to each other — which is great because those are very fun things to get creative with and to show how much you know each other.

If it were me, I’d get together with her and set aside two days (at least, depending on how elaborate your plans are) where neither person has any other obligations, and each of you claim a day to be in charge of. That’s the day you’re going to propose. Plan everything on that day — activities, locations, foods, super specific details that are unique to the other person and your relationship. And yeah she’ll know that on this one Saturday, she’ll be getting a ring, but she doesn’t know anything else, so everything that could be a surprise is a surprise, and you get a whole day to show off what she means to you. (And to take so, so many pictures!)

And then she’d do the same for YOU, planning the day, giving you your ring, doing and saying all the things. Surprises abound! Everyone’s happy! So many photo ops!

I hope this helps! I know the readers will have amazing ideas for you, too. Good luck and congratulations!

Q:

My soon-to-be-husbutch and I are getting married this year and are planning to jump aboard the baby train next year. Exciting times! I’m a pansexual, cisgender high femme and she’s my handsome genderqueer human. We’ve talked a lot about how we’d like to raise our future spawn and agreed on the importance of respecting our children’s genders. Until they start expressing themselves and communicating with us about their genders, we’re planning on giving them non-gendered names, clothing, and toys as much as possible and trying our best to avoid enforcing gender stereotypes and roles. All good! However, my partner asked me the other day whether we could use they/them pronouns for our kids until/unless they specify otherwise. To be honest, I was surprised by her suggestion and have conflicting feelings about this idea. I think I’d be more comfortable with it if my partner used they/them pronouns too – my initial reaction was that I didn’t want our kids to feel alienated by being the only people in our immediate and extended families who use they/them pronouns. I feel like a bad ally and partner for having this reaction, and a little out of my depth. How are other parents, especially those with one or more trans or gender expansive humans, dealing with this? Any help appreciated.

A:

I took your question to Twitter and got some interesting responses! To my knowledge, everyone who replied identifies as cisgender, but it might be reassuring to know that one parent does outreach for an LGBTQ youth center and provides training on gender and identity throughout the country.

Most parents raising their kids gender-neutrally are using gendered pronouns, at least until they hear otherwise from the kids. Lauren explained her decision like this:

My partner and I put a lot of thought into this. For background, we’re both lesbian-identified cis women. In my understanding, “they” is a pronoun we use for people whose gender we don’t know (“oh no, someone left their wallet!”) but also it’s the deliberately chosen pronoun people with a nonbinary identity. Using “they” for our baby felt like it would be trying to choose a nonbinary identity for our baby, not avoiding a choice and staying truly neutral. In the end we decided to use “he” and “him” pronouns for our baby, but try to create an environment that keeps gender-neutral and feminine expression accessible to him. We hope that he approaches gender with a sense of freedom, playfulness, and room for exploration as he grows– whatever his future identity may be.

In Erin’s case, after explaining that each person experiences gender in their own way and that gender can change for some people throughout their lives, her 4 year-old chose “they/them” as their pronouns. Some family members aren’t honoring her kid’s decision — which is an incredibly stupid hill for these family members to decide to die on, but whatever — and Erin and her partner are already coming up against unnecessarily gendered situations at school. They’ve suggested to the school that they try lining the children up by some other kind of binary — like peanut butter and jelly, or who likes cats and who likes dogs — instead of by their gender.

Oh! Everyone who replied is also super serious about making sure their kids have a variety of role models and acquaintances across the gender and presentation spectrum — this was a big deal to all the parents!

For what it’s worth, Lauren also reported being shocked by just how upset their families were when the sex of the baby wasn’t announced during the pregnancy, so that’s something to brace for! Several people also suggested checking out GenderSpectrum.org, specifically their Resources page in the Parenting and Family section.

You’ll make the right decision! And you can absolutely change course if you see that your original ideas need to be rethought. There’ll be so many additional things to worry about getting right, I bet the pronoun situation will feel easy in comparison. Maybe some non-binary readers could share their thoughts in the comments!

Q:

I was engaged in 2014, and then got married in 2016, to someone else. Okay, let’s back up. My 1st fiancee was very young and I was her first girlfriend and it was the first serious relationship she ever had. She was my best friend and greatest love. But I somehow got it in my head that I was being selfish and shouldn’t keep her from experiencing so many things that I knew I had experienced in the span of our age difference. So I ultimately sabotaged that relationship. Cut to a little over a year later when I met someone who I thought I clicked with and would be able to ride out this thing called life with. We got engaged in under a year and married a few months later. But now I feel like she isn’t the person I thought and we don’t really fit that well together, at all. I can’t stop thinking about what I threw away and that I married the wrong person. My wife is kind and I care for her but I’m so unhappy. I don’t even know how to bring all of this up! Help!

A:

Yes let’s please back up. I’m just going to get right to it, so please know before we jump into this deep end that I respect you and wish you nothing but the best in life! Ok! You might have married the wrong person, but that doesn’t mean you threw away your one true love.

A couple of things are going on here.

First of all, it looks like you’re rewriting your history and leaving some things out in order to soothe yourself into believing that you’d still be with your first fiancee if only you hadn’t purposely ruined everything. If she was your best friend and truly your greatest love, why did you not trust her to know what she wanted? You say you somehow got it into your head, but I bet there were some red flags, even if super tiny ones, that helped you know on some level that your relationship with your first fiancee wasn’t going to work out. Something was going on beyond just you knowing what was best for her and pushing her away, because that only happens in soap operas and romantic comedies.

Second but most pressingly, you’re now married to a person who doesn’t feel like the right fit anymore, which is a deeply unsettling situation to find yourself in after just two years. You said she isn’t the person you thought she was, which makes a lot of sense because it’s not really possible to truly know most people after only a handful of months. WAIT HEAR ME OUT there are definitely some wild otherworldly people out there who are so self-aware and so honest that maybe it is possible to know them on a deep personal level after just a little while, maybe, but most people take much longer to figure out. Most people haven’t even figured themselves out yet, so odds are good that whatever we think we know about them is just a version of what they think they know about themselves, which is riddled with inaccuracies and blind spots, AT BEST.

You’ve committed yourself in extremely serious ways to two different people over the span of four years, and I think it’s probably difficult to come to terms with these commitments not lasting, or in the case of your wife, at least not lasting the way you thought it would. It seems like you’re subconsciously searching for a line of reasoning that explains this away, and looking back on the first fiancee as The One You Were Meant to Be With kinda acts as a way to get you (and your wife) off the hook for whatever’s going wrong in this marriage.

Also your wife 100% knows that something’s wrong, even if she’s not acting like it or admitting it to herself. You should talk to each other and to a marriage counselor to see what your next steps might look like.

For the record, it’s ok to have two failed serious relationships! Don’t be afraid to stand up and say Both of These Women Were Wrong Fits for Me, Actually, or hey, maybe even Both of These Women Were Good Fits for a Time, But Then They Weren’t, and then sit with yourself in that honesty while you figure out what it is that you really want and need in this world! I mean, first admit that you don’t know yet, and then start figuring it out. Don’t rush into people — whether it’s your romantic partner or it’s the version of yourself that you see when you’re with them.

And real quick: you didn’t mention this, but just from my own experience and anecdotal situations I feel the need to say that if you find that you’re a different, better, more interesting exciting stable happy person when you’re in a relationship with certain people, unpack that. Figure out why you couldn’t or wouldn’t be that person without them, and if you like that version of you so much, just be it, all on your own. All of you is right there, even the stuff you think only other people can bring out!

So in closing, stop holding a candle for the past, start taking some hard looks at what you’ve got going on right now, and resolve to move forward one way or another.

Y’All Need Help is a biweekly advice column in which I pluck out a couple of questions from the You Need Help inbox and answer them right here, round-up style, quick and dirty! (Except sometimes it’s not quick, but that’s my prerogative, OK?) You can chime in with your own advice in the comments and submit your own quick and dirty questions any time.

Y’All Need Help #19: “Happy Senior Old Lady Giving Thumbs Up, Supporting Your Decision Fully”

Q: A Clean Bandit

My girlfriend is very messy and I am very neat. We do not live together and both tend to be respectful of each other’s spaces. Mostly. Sometimes. I don’t want her to change who she is, or how she lives her life, but sometimes it straight up grosses me out. Is there a way to compromise on cleanliness? Follow-up: Am I an asshole for letting this bother me?

A:

Yes there is a way to compromise on cleanliness and no you’re not an asshole for wanting things to be clean! You’re only an asshole if you act like an asshole to her about it. The good news is that you don’t live together and that if you DID ever live together, it would be totally legal to set up expectations from the get-go re: things that must be clean and tidy and things that can be a little messy sometimes. Or maybe you should just break up and never speak to her again and live alone in your home where everything is tidy all the time and no one makes any messes. These are your options I think.

Q: Bottoms Up

Are two bottoms who love each other very much going to work out?

A:

They sure are! Has one of you tried just rolling on top of the other one and then wiggling a lot?

Q: Insurance!

The only health insurance I can get offers no out of network benefits and will cost me $150 a month. None of my (trusted, long term, necessary mental healthcare) providers take this insurance in-network*. My meds will cost less monthly with an Rx discount card ($75) than they will with insurance ($150 + $5 co-pay). Since I’m not gonna get any coverage for the only doctors I see, and cant afford out-of-pocket along with a premium, should I or should I not go without insurance for 2018? *(no mental healthcare ppl that I can get to take this insurance, actually.)

A:

THIS IS A TERRIBLE SITUATION. I HATE THIS GOVERNMENT. WHY DOES THIS COUNTRY DO THIS TO PEOPLE.
I’m not an insurance expert and I could never answer this question for you. It does seem like going without insurance would be the best route for you financially, barring any unforeseen tragedies. Could you talk to your doctors about different payment options, sliding scales, or other resources they can suggest or offer you? They could also recommend providers who would be in your network with the new insurance plan! I would take this directly to my current healthcare providers because I wouldn’t know what else to do, to be honest. Or cry a lot. Or both!

A commenter has mentioned the tax penalty to consider, and that’s also true. Basically you have to learn every single thing there is to learn about every single option possible and then make an informed decision based on what’s right for you and your budget and your budget a year from now!

Q: Luna

Is the moon a lesbian?

A:

Yes. The moon used to identify as bisexual but that was just a phase.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA I’M KIDDING HAHAHAHAHAHAHAH I LOVE YOU.

Q: Short Hair DO CARE

I’ve been thinking about cutting my hair super short for awhile but I know my mother will hate it. Should I do it anyway?

A:

Q: Real Question

Should we start a letter-writing campaign to get Roberta Colindrez some sort of Devon-related spin-off now that I Love Dick is cancelled?

A:

I think Riese has already started this, but if she hasn’t then yes, someone has to pick up the mantle.

Q: Kids??

Should I have kids? I am broke but in my mid thirties sooooo what do you think?

A:

You will literally never have enough money for kids unless you’re like a Vanderbilt or something! But also real talk I think if you have to ask someone on the internet if you should have kids the answer is probably no BUT DON’T LET ME TELL YOU WHAT TO DO WITH YOUR REPRODUCTIVE SYSTEM, OK. Make good choices and water your plants! Get some rest!

Q: Cher

Do you believe in life after love?

A:

I HATE THIS SONG.

Q: Uhaul

I told myself I wouldn’t get into a relationship for at least a year and I found a cute smart pretty girl who I really LIKE. Is it dumb to not date her just because I said I wouldn’t?

A:

Yes that is dumb! She’s cute and smart and PRETTY and you REALLY LIKE HER. What are you doing still reading this?????!

Q: Grey Gardens

Do I need a gray accent wall in my bedroom? Picking a gray is exhausting there are so many.

A:

You do need a grey accent wall, yes. You have to just buckle down and do the work, OK. Nobody said life was going to be easy! Least of all the part of life where you pick a paint color! NOW GET OUT THERE AND MAKE IT HAPPEN.

Q: Dreamsss

Hello! Do I take out loans and pursue a different career or just stay at a job that provides a decent paycheck and be thankful I have health insurance?

A:

Always always always stay at the job long enough to save some money and get all of your teeth fixed and your doctor stuff done and THEN take out the loan and pursue a different career! Give yourself a date like maybe a year out and then get down to the business of preparing your life for a major change. DREAMS ARE GOOD AND WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE let’s do stuff while we can!

Q: Be Honest

Is it wrong to feel that straight people are just more boring than queers? They are SO BORING.

A:

Y’All Need Help is a biweekly advice column in which I pluck out a couple of questions from the You Need Help inbox and answer them right here, round-up style, quick and dirty! (Except sometimes it’s not quick, but that’s my prerogative, OK?) You can chime in with your own advice in the comments and submit your own quick and dirty questions any time.

Y’All Need Help #17: You Don’t Know How Any of This Will End

Q:

I’m graduating from university next summer which is super awesome. It’s a really big moment because I went to university before and had to drop out for health reasons and it was this whole horribly traumatic ordeal and we didn’t know if I’d live let alone if I’d go back to university!

BUT. Because of all of the trauma – and it wasn’t just traumatic for me, it was also horrible for my family – it feels like there’s a lot of pressure on this graduation. And I don’t want to wear a dress. I’m nonbinary, I’ve changed my name and my parents are… trying to accept me but they do not understand and they still get my name wrong 50% of the time. But they’re trying and I appreciate that!

The big problem is what do I wear to graduate. People keep telling me to just do what makes me happy because it’s my graduation, but it’s wrapped up with so much trauma for my whole family, and I want a picture that my parents can show off to everyone without feeling like they’re ashamed or have to explain things about me. Especially because my gran is a super strict catholic who does not have any idea that I am not cisgender and straight, and she will also want a picture of me graduating!

I don’t know what to do or how to approach this with my parents. My mum has even said that she’s sad she’s never going to get to see me graduate with my deadname, as if I’m a different person now, which was really hurtful because it felt like my achievements matter less because of my queerness.
Please help.

A:

Congratulations on being alive and also thisclose to graduating!! I felt your heart so much in this question and I wish I had an easier answer but I really think this is the flat and uneventful truth: we each have to decide what’s worth it, and then we each have to actually follow through with that thing and live with the outcome. There’s a lot going on here — identity, validation, obligation, bonds, honesty, struggle — and everything is important and real, but when you boil it all the way down, this is one of a million times you have to decide between two imperfect situations and either way, live with one of the not-so-great outcomes. You can wear your favorite snappy outfit and deal with your family’s reaction, or you can wear what you think they’ll like and deal with your internal self. And only you can decide which not-so-great outcome is worth it in the end.

You might impress them with your favorite outfit, though. Your gran might see the confidence bursting from your face and declare that you look AMAZING. It might be that no one connects what you’re wearing with how you identify, and maybe they’ll think it’s weird or trendy or interesting for a second and then move on. Maybe they’ll faint right there on the spot and never speak to you again (this is very unlikely). Maybe you’ll wear whatever you want and it’ll rain that day, and the waiter at the restaurant will be hilarious and kind, and maybe you’ll lock your keys in the car, a speech will make you cry, someone will step on your foot, a giant hawk could possibly swoop down and kidnap some lady’s tiny dog right in front of everyone. Maybe you’ll wear a dress and all those things will happen plus your mom might still cry about your deadname. Maybe the day will be ruined or saved by a number of other things entirely out of your control, and no matter what, you’ll still have to live with the outcomes of all the things — the dripping umbrellas, the perfect meal, the locksmith, the tissues, your sore toes, the look on that poor woman’s face — everything!

Sometimes you swallow your pride and discomfort and take the road of least resistance, and other times you stand up for yourself and face the pushback. Nothing you decide will be 100% right or wrong, and neither makes you an asshole or a pushover.

I think it’s normal for your mom to feel sad about you shedding the name she chose for you. This is absolutely not to invalidate how hurtful it was that she shared those feelings, but it might help you process that pain by remembering that parents put a lot of thought into the names they give their children, and it almost always means something to them, for better or worse, and she probably is conflating your deadname with who you are as a person. We all conflate names with people because that’s the reason we have names to begin with. If names didn’t mean anything, you wouldn’t have changed yours after coming out as nonbinary. Hopefully with time she can understand what your new name means to you and she’ll let that overshadow any lingering sadness or loss she feels. Kristin Russo talks a lot about how we as queer people had time to process ourselves and that we should give our families time to process as well — almost like a grace period. And those periods are often painful and awkward for everyone, but it’s still growth. It’s important that your mother finds someone else to process those feelings with instead of putting that burden on you, but it’s also important that we give our loved ones the space to act or feel imperfectly for a small period of time.

I AM SO EXCITED FOR YOUR GRADUATION AND YOUR LIFE.

Q:

I’ve been in a relationship for about 6 months and things got serious fast (stereotypical lesbian alert). We were talking about the future and making plans and I was very happy and very much in love. But lately I’ve just felt separated and not as “in it” as she is… I’m not excited when I see she’s texted, I don’t want to call, and I find myself questioning if we should make plans a couple months in advance.. I’m not sure what to do. Some things complicate matters, like the fact that the holidays are coming up and I always get a little depressed around this time due to some past trauma, and the fact I’ve had to be out of town for work for the past few weeks and we’ve had to rely a lot more on electronic communication.

I’m really hoping that once I get home things will be better, but if it doesn’t what do I do? How long should I give it to work itself out? How can you go from being unbelievably happy to so dissatisfied so quickly? What if we break up and I die alone??

A:

Just real quick: this is totally normal and it happens. It sounds like you’re not that into her, and I’m giving you full unbridled permission to break up with her, today even. You will probably not die alone. I’m currently happily married and there’s still a chance I might die alone because no one knows the future, but I’m banking on not dying alone, you know? Makes it easier to get out of bed every morning.

But back to you! You mention that XYZ could be making you feel less into the relationship, and that might very well be the case, yes. Also, ABC could’ve had a lot to do with why you felt so into the relationship so quickly in the first place. LMNOP could be why you’ll miss her in six months, or why, in six months, you’ll wish you’d ended things sooner. WHO CAN SAY. Who can every truly say? I’m sorry to say, no one, not even you. And so you do what you must when you must! Any number of things could be at work, making you feel any number of feelings, and regardless, there you are, feeling them and living with them. Maybe the feelings pass after XYZ passes, but maybe they don’t! Maybe the feelings are there all the time and XYZ and LMNOP just highlight them? Maybe ABC only stood to highlight other always-there feelings. Doesn’t matter! Tweedle dee, ho hum, we do what we must.

New relationships are usually quite fun when they begin and any relationship is usually quite dull and not fun when it ends. This sounds like that. It’s perfectly normal and you’re not doomed and I hope you’ve had a damn lovely holiday. YOU’RE DOING GREAT. HAPPY NEW YEAR.

Q:

Is it normal or ok for my girlfriend to keep reminding me that she doesn’t know if she wants to be with me in the future? I understand that no one knows what will happen in the future, but it hurts my feelings when she reminds me that she doesn’t know how long she wants to be with me.

A:

WOW I JUST SAID THAT. No one knows what will happen in the future, that is true. It’s also true that we don’t go around saying “You know, we might die alone after all,” to everyone all the time, because that is stressful and no way to live. Which is to say, no it’s not ok for your girlfriend to keep reminding you that she can’t guarantee that she’ll be with you this time next year! Your girlfriend is not special: no one knows if they’ll want to be with anyone in the future. Not even me! Again I will remind you, I am married, and YET I still truly honestly if we’re being totally honest here have no idea if I’ll still want to be with this woman in five years. Any number of things could happen! I could join a cult and leave my entire family behind. I mean is it likely? No it’s not, but also was it likely that I’d move from California to Virginia, realize I was GAY, fall in love with a woman I’d never met in person, divorce my husband, MOVE TO ARIZONA for this woman, help start a p cool website for queer women, get a deer tattoo, break up with my girlfriend, hate it here but stay anyway, use an online dating platform to meet a woman who’d also moved to Arizona for weird reasons, find her extremely attractive while she also found me attractive, help elect this country’s first black president, live to see gay marriage become not only legal but also a constitutional right, GET MARRIED ffs, and one time I even owned a Saab, and now Donald Goddamn Trump is in charge of nuclear weapons??? No! None of that was likely! All of that was insane and wacky as fuck! And yet here we all are, reader.

We don’t date or marry or move in with or trust or love people because we can all see into the future and know that this ends well. We do all those things precisely because we have no idea what’s going to happen but based on what we know right now, in this gleaming moment of time, we think we’d like to hopefully still be with the person no matter what the wild future might bring. I got married because I wanted to actively face the unknown with her. That’s the deal. And we don’t go around reminding each other that one day one of us might very well joint a cult or just lose interest or have amnesia or DIE or whatever! Because that would be batshit and mean.

This was a lot of talking about myself and also a very long way to say that your girlfriend either needs to look deep inside herself to figure out why she keeps saying this out loud (is she scared of the future? does she know she doesn’t want you in hers and is too chicken shit to say so? is she just a morose type of person who has to talk about this kind of thing all the time?) or, the next time she says it, you could say “Actually I do know the future and get this, we’re not together in it because I’m breaking up with you right now. Ta-da.”

Y’All Need Help is a biweekly advice column in which I pluck out a couple of questions from the You Need Help inbox and answer them right here, round-up style, quick and dirty! (Except sometimes it’s not quick, but that’s my prerogative, OK?) You can chime in with your own advice in the comments and submit your own quick and dirty questions any time.

Y’All Need Help #16: You Can Do Things About You!

Q:

My problem is that after 2 degrees, I’ve finally qualified to be a professional (in healthcare, I’m paranoid anyone might see this). I got a job right away, less than a month after our results came out, after a recommendation from a mentor.

However, now that I have begun this 9-5 job, I’ve had the sudden clanging realisation that this is not for me. I think 40 hrs/week anywhere isn’t for me? I’m so burnt out my mental health can’t take it. Also the cowardly part of my mind that always hoped I’d be brave enough to be a writer is surfacing in a most unhelpful and despairing way now I’m not.

I think I hate having this job that I thought I wanted so bad, that I hoped would be fulfilling and which really isn’t terrible, that was so hard to get to. I think what I maybe want to do is freelance or start a little business and earn a lot less but control what I do with my time? I feel like I’ve finally realised what I want my life to look like and it’s not what I’ve been aiming for. Is this stupid? Does everyone feel this way about full time work? Am I just lazy and unrealistic and I should be grateful for what I have?

I’m only on contract for a year, should I wait til the end of the year then quit? Go part time? Change my life or stick it out? Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

A:

You’re not lazy! This is not stupid! It’s great that you’ve realized what you want your life to look like! I think you should work until the end of your contract, then quit or go part time. That gives you several months to save save save and plan plan plan. Get all your ducks in a row and then GO OUT AND GET THAT DREAM.

In the meantime, take extra care of your mental health — do all the things you know you should do but sometimes/usually don’t because it isn’t always easy to take care of ourselves. But do it! Take care of yourself and also your dream.

Q:

This year (with some trepidation) I decided to move in with an old friend. Before that, we didn’t see each other much (he often disappears into the Introvert/Depression Void) but we still talked about the Serious Issues in our lives whenever we got together. He’s a messy and disorganized introvert who likes science. I’m a clean perfectionistic extrovert who almost became a therapist. Total opposites in every way.

Our lease is about to be up and he wants to renew. Mostly because I’m his best friend. But he is not mine. We are both mentally ill but his manifests in not caring about anything while I have a hard time letting go of anything. Sometimes this push-pull moves us both into healthier places but usually not. I feel like I’m always nagging him and he says he doesn’t mind but it feels terrible to me. I often feel lonelier when he’s here than when he’s gone. We have had some heart-to-hearts but I feel like he just wants to believe this is the right thing. In the past our friendship has benefited from more space.

But maybe I’m painting this as a terrible situation when it’s not. He has really been there for me this year, and there’s times I’m so glad I live with someone I can be myself around. If I could let go a bit more maybe this could work? Staying is also wayyy easier than trying to find a new roomie in an unfriendly city. I’m super torn, and probably overthinking this. Help!

A:

It sounds like your instincts are telling you to go and your logical brain is trying to find a way to guarantee that these instincts are correct. The super terrible and silly thing about this is that the only way to tell if your instincts are right is to either act on them or don’t, and then live for a while, and then look back on them and everything that happened and be like, “oh.”

You know that quote about how no one ever said “I wish I’d spent more time at the office” when they’re on their deathbed? That’s how listening to your instincts goes. I can’t remember a single time — like literally not a single fucking time in 36 years of life — when listening to my instincts was the wrong decision. I could, however, write my ol’ magnum opus about all the times I acted against them! Oh man. Just last Sunday I didn’t listen to my instincts and the whole time I was like YOU CAN STILL TURN THIS AROUND, LANEIA, THERE’S STILL TIME. But did I do it? Did I turn it around? No! Because I’m a stupid old bat!

You, friend, are not a stupid old bat. You’re also not obligated to stay in a living situation with someone who you really don’t want to live with! It seems like this living arrangement has run its course and it’s time for you to take the next step. You can still be friends with someone after you move out! Happens every dang day.

Q:

So I live in a small town and I recently started to hit it off with this girl. She’s really caring and beautiful but there is one problem. We have the same last name and our birthdays are on the same day. We haven’t done any genealogical testing or anything but we asked around in our families and are confident that we aren’t related or separated at birth. For us we find it kind of funny and convenient we have such similarities and our friends love to makes jokes.

But she and I have realized when our relationship status is brought up with acquaintances and our similarities are mentioned we are met with a lot of questions, negative conclusions and looks, even though we aren’t similar in appearance or personalities. It’s already hard enough being homosexual, and having this reaction about our relationship makes it even harder.

So I’m asking since I’m curious to know if anyone else has been in a relationship like this? I’ve also been pondering whether I should tell people about our relationship and have to deal with the millions of question and looks or if to just keep our relationship to ourselves because of the stigma?

A:

I want to scream THIS IS SO CUTE AND NEAT ! in my happiest scream-voice! I’m so so sorry people are making it awkward for you but honestly, just knowing there are two queers out there (!!) in a small town (!!!) who’ve found each other and get to have joint birthday parties (!!!!) is the best thing that’s happened to me all week! THIS IS SO CUTE. THANK YOU.

Ok, whew! Listen, sharing a last name and a birthday is not a big deal at all. Lots of people date and even marry and procreate with people who have their same names, sometimes even the same first names! Lots of people look alike, too, which you’re saying you do not, so at least there’s that. But I mean it, this is not a big deal! Get a piece of paper out and write IT’S FINE on it, and then look at it. Read it to yourself. It’s fine that you have these similarities, it’s fine that you’re queer and dating each other, it’s fine that other people have their own reactions to the fact that you’re dating and/or your similarities. It’s all fine.

Don’t let other people’s reactions to you — especially the things that are intrinsic to your very existence, like the day you were born! — affect how you feel about you. That goes for like, everything. IT’S FINE. That’s them. You can’t do anything about them. You can do things about you though! And you should be having fun with this really caring and beautiful woman RIGHT NOW. Go do that. Stop thinking about this thing — which is actually a very cute and neat thing! — and just figure out where y’all want to eat on your next date. Everyone always talks about how they want to go to a fondue place but does anyone actually go? I mean, I don’t know why but I don’t trust the cheese situation. It just seems like it could be really hit or miss! You know? Have you taken her to fondue yet? Distrust of the cheese situation notwithstanding, I’d probably still be amped about a fondue place, to be honest. I don’t know, think about it.

Q:

I need help! I’ve been with my gf for 4 years. We’ve lived together for 3 years and have been engaged for a little over 2 years. I love her, and I love our life together. Sure, some things aren’t great, but thinking about breaking up makes me so sad. Problem is, thinking about actually getting married scares the crap out of me – and I can’t tell why. On one hand, I like how we are now, and I don’t see why getting married will make things different. On the other hand, I’m scared and worried to actually set a date.

Part of it is my family. My parents think my gf is ok, but don’t particularly love her. I’ve been told she doesn’t “suit me”, whatever that means. They are nice to her and everything, but they aren’t thrilled and it makes me anxious. (Side note, my mom didn’t love the woman my brother married, but she seems fine with her now – especially that they have a baby). My aunt hates my gf (but my aunt is also a very difficult person to please, so that bothers me less) and she says my grandma doesn’t like her too. All this makes me sad and nervous that I’m making a mistake.

The other part of it is I’m sort of embarrassed to have a wedding celebration. I don’t want to make a party with my family unhappy about it, and I don’t know how to make it a Jewish celebration without upsetting my father and other family members who are pretty traditional. I don’t know what traditions to include, I don’t want to be the center of attention, and I don’t know what to wear. Help!

A:

It sucks that your family isn’t head over heels about your girlfriend, but it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re making a mistake. You get to decide who and what suits you, and what that means is that you’re in charge around here damn it! Whatever you want for your life — this woman, a tattoo of a rocking chair, pineapple and anchovies on your pizza, an oddly fitting pair of shorts, a dog with a broken ear, the studio versions of any Grateful Dead song over the live versions — no matter how controversial or dull or unexpected or pedestrian, is what you should get. Ta-da! It’s your life! Who cares if your grandmother and aunt and 20 other relatives don’t like your fiancee! If you like her, that’s it. I know that’s easier to say than it is to live by, but say it you must! “I will not let my aunt’s personal feelings about something or someone affect one of the most important decisions I’ll ever make about my own life. Amen.”

Now about this wedding. I got married in 2015 and so of course I am an expert in all things weddings and marriage, ahem. Um but seriously, I 100% fell you on being embarrassed about a wedding. I was perfectly plagued by everything having to do with my wedding, all of it. I can’t even list all of the things I’d do differently if I could. It was just too much! Weddings are so much! You’re asking all these people to come and be actively happy about YOU. And on top of that, YOU are the one deciding every single thing about the party. The whole damn thing was your idea from start to finish and you’ve invited other people to look at it. I meannnnn, that’s bold and crazy! I’m breaking out in hives.

Being embarrassed about a wedding doesn’t mean you don’t want to get married, though. A wedding is nothing like being married. It’s pretty much the total opposite of being married. A wedding is so many logistics, so many decisions oh my godddd, so many dollars, so many details. And then being married is just exactly like being alive last Tuesday. That’s it. Did you have fun last Tuesday? Wanna do it and/or a version of it pretty much every day kinda forever? Cool you’ll probably be super into being married! And it’ll have fuck all to do with a party you threw one time.

THAT SAID, babe if you want a Jewish celebration, GET. IT. Do what you want! Everyone told me to do what I wanted, to make the day mine (ours, I mean) and I was like yeah ok ok sure I am trying to do that, but I didn’t really get what they meant until afterward. Sit down and look me dead in the eyes:

do

whatever

you

want.

The minute you start to think “Mmmmm I don’t know, I wonder if this will be fun for X” or “Hmmm gotta be honest, I wonder what Y will think if we say this” or “Will this make everyone roll their eyes in boredom and then turn into slugs” PINCH YOURSELF. Do you think straight people worry about this shit? No they do not. Scream at the top of your lungs IT DOESN’T MATTER !!! Literally nothing matters! All you have to do, legally, is the bare minimum of whatever your state mandates. Everything else is a sea of things that don’t matter! ISN’T THAT EXQUISITELY LIBERATING.

I’m fucking serious. I am not joking with you. Do whatever you want at your wedding. Elope even!

I was talking with Riese about this and I have to admit that internalized homophobia was likely at the center of my wedding panic. I was so wrapped up in whether or not this or that relative would feel awkward about something, I just collapsed in on myself. DON’T DO THAT. Don’t let other people be in charge of how you celebrate your happiness. It sucks and I wish I could go back and plan our wedding with just us in mind, instead of trying to make sure everyone else was comfortable. Learn from my sad pathetic mistake please!

Oh and if you don’t actually want to get married you shouldn’t get married ok bye love you.

Everyone gets to share a motivational poster this week! This goes for all question askers and also anyone reading who needs it:

xox

Y’All Need Help is a biweekly advice column in which I pluck out a couple of questions from the You Need Help inbox and answer them right here, round-up style, quick and dirty! (Except sometimes it’s not quick, but that’s my prerogative, OK?) You can chime in with your own advice in the comments and submit your own quick and dirty questions any time.

Y’All Need Help #15: With a Face as Deadpan as the Aubrey Plaza Sea

Q:

Whenever friends and strangers (or worst of all, first dates) ask how my love life is going, it turns into a long sad story that even *I* don’t want to hear myself give!! It’s been over a year but I haven’t broken out of sad saga mode… is there a way I can
a) move on, STAT
while b) taking my own time to heal
and c) not diving into patterns of destruction or phunking with someone else’s heart?

A:

Yiiiiikes!! Stop telling the story! Craft a public statement and stick with that. Rehearse it, write it down. That’s your story now. Save the actual story for your journal or your therapist or five years from now. Above all else, absolutely do not ever tell your story on a first date! When you tell your breakup story on a first date, it’s not a date anymore. It’s an awkward beginning to what might be, at best, an awkward friendship built on commiseration which, while with its extremely occasional and situational merits, is not what you really need right now. You need strong healthy happy foundations that will go on to support the eventual commiserations and admissions of blargh and all that jazz that come later. But you can’t start with that jazz. You start with F-U-N, baby!

Unfortunately there’s no such thing as Moving On, STAT. Doesn’t exist. There’s a thing that looks like it — we call it Compartmentalizing, and it’s fine but not great! But! You can sure as hell shake yourself out of a thing, if temporarily! Like fake it ’til you make it. Couple that up with your public statement and LOOK OUT, WORLD!

As for taking your own time to heal, absolutely take it, but also recognize that you’ve already made progress on that front. Look back on the last year and make a list of the ways you have broken out of the sad saga mode and found healing. Like you definitely got dressed and went for coffee after at least a day or two of not showering or leaving your house, right? That counts. What else have you done? What are some ways you’ve put distance between yourself and that explosion of grief? Be proud of what you’ve done and be gentle with yourself. You’re doing GREAT. Every day you live is a day you’ve gotten further away from that time and a day closer to another time.

The way you don’t dive into patterns of destruction or fuck with someone else’s heart is to make the active decision 24-hours a day to not do those things! You stop at stop signs, whisper in libraries, turn your phone off at the movies, resist patters of destruction, lock the door behind you when you leave, etc. You just do it!

Q:

So, I figured out I was gay at 16 and, due to some unfortunate and shitty reactions at that time, had a lot of shame and guilt about it and have been in the closet ever since. I’m 32 now, so I’ve been in the closet half my life. I have dated women, I’m in a queer book club, and I’ve seen Tegan and Sara live five times, so I am not hiding 100%, but I straddle this really weird place of not being out at work, not being out to my friends on my soccer league, monitoring myself so that I don’t “look too gay” when I go grocery shopping, etc etc.

A:

I AM SO HAPPY THAT YOU’RE SO SICK OF IT !!! I’m also excited to hear what readers will say! If I were you, I’d just come the fuck on out — flatly and with a face as deadpan as the Aubrey Plaza sea. Who gives a shit about what they wonder or think? Like who’s world is this, theirs? Nope! It belongs to you, too, and coming out after five years of knowing them is perfectly fine. You make your choices around here and it sounds like you’re choosing to do something different. Do it!

image of Sam as a kitten generously donated by Kristin Russo

Internalized homophobia is a mother. fucker. No one deserves the anguish it causes and I’m truly sorry you’ve had to deal with it for so long. It’s fucked up that you’ve been stuffing down this fundamental part of who you are because of how other people have reacted to it. Whatever other people think about you is on them. It reveals who they are, not you — it has nothing to even do with you! And yet you’ve been doing all the contorting and making all the adjustments in an effort to prevent them from possibly having a reaction. FUCK THAT. I am furious on your behalf. Be who you are, and be loud about it. Take up the fucking space.

Q:

I broke up with my girlfriend earlier in the year and she’s had significant mental health issues since. It didn’t end well between us and I’m worried about her but also worried contacting her will make things worse. Should I contact her to check she’s ok?

A:

Nope! You could try reaching out to friends who might know other friends who would know how she is, but don’t insert yourself back into her life like that. I understand that you’re worried about her and that this is coming from a genuine place, but it would be profoundly fucked up to put your curiosity above her health. If you’re the praying type — or the type who sends energy out into the universe — do that instead.

Q:

Should I come out about my toxic biological family at work?

On the one hand, I am already feeling isolated and awkward at my very cishet workplace. On the other hand, the holidays are hard enough without people asking what my parents are doing for Christmas. Help?

A:

On one hand, it is very difficult to constantly be reminded of a thing you’d rather not think about, especially when it’s so deeply personal and painful. On the other hand, life is a series of exchanges, some comfortable and some uncomfortable, some are a mix of both, and it keeps going on and on like this until we die. You get to decide which type of discomfort is the one worth living through — is it the discomfort of lying to your cishet coworkers about your holiday plans and, by extension, your personal life? Or is it the discomfort of being blunt about something that your cishet coworkers might not* relate to and the possibility of follow-up questions and/or awkwardness? Who knows??! You do!

It’s also entirely possible that one or more of these cishetters will actually relate to your experience after all. Life is also a series of opportunities to relate to other people! On and on and on until we croak out. Maybe they’ll relate but won’t share that with you. Maybe they won’t relate but it’ll make them more thankful for their own family and they’ll call the grandparent they’ve been putting off calling. Maybe they won’t relate but ten years from now, while they’re sipping on a soda at Applebee’s and reading the latest from Oprah’s book club, they’ll be reminded that some people’s families are toxic and shitty, like that one queer coworker’s family from a decade ago, and it’ll change the way they interact with strangers from that point on.

It’s your call and I’m really rooting for you over here!

Y’All Need Help is a biweekly advice column in which I pluck out a couple of questions from the You Need Help inbox and answer them right here, round-up style, quick and dirty! (Except sometimes it’s not quick, but that’s my prerogative, OK?) You can chime in with your own advice in the comments and submit your own quick and dirty questions any time.

Y’All Need Help #14: Yes or No Edition!

Q:

I have never so much as romantically hugged another human and I am 24 years old. Things are made extra complicated by the fact that I’m a christian and don’t think I want to do the sex thing for a Very Long Time. Question: do I try Tinder for my first experiences of… everything? Follow up question: do I tell potential dates (either on Tinder or not) about my level of experience?

A:

No to all of this. ALSO YOU’RE DOING GREAT. ??

Q:

Hi! I need help with something. My partner and I have the chance to enjoy our first Thanksgiving together (!), but my mom is hinting that she wants me to go home instead and hang out with extended family. Should I feel guilty for wanting to be with my new family?

A:

No! And have a great damn time!

Q:

I like what I do at my current job and, although my boss recognizes what I do is valuable, my salary does not reflect that. Should I leave this job just because of the money?

A:

Yes, if you need more money and have job prospects.

Q:

My boyfriend is great, we love each other a lot, but I always want more attention, more time together, more emotional intimacy. Should I just tell him that? Let him know and see what he says?

A:

YESSSSS. TODAY.
WHY ARE YOU STILL READING THIS.

Q:

My mom’s in rehab (again) and asked me to write her a letter describing how I feel about everything. Should I really tell her EVERYTHING?

A:

Yes, if it’s that thing they do in rehab where they make you get letters from people explaining how your addiction fucked up their lives. The trick will be asking yourself what is truly everything and what’s just an offshoot of the most important things.

Q:

Should I tell my straight crush I like her, Y/N? (Extra info: she used to be my boss and we stayed friends, now we work at the same company but not directly together, I’m probably leaving the country mid next year.)

A:

A CHORUS OF NO.

Q:

Would you like to come visit me this Sunday?

A:

Yes but only if you are my mother.

Q:

Is a new L Word with “you know who” at the helm a good idea?

A:

Yes and to be honest, we’ve brought this on ourselves.

Q:

Is Bar Girls officially the worst lesbian movie ever?

A:

I’m waiting for Erin to answer this.

Q:

Can I get my (new) girlfriend a birthday gift even though we agreed not to get one another birthday gifts?

A:

No! You promised! (Get her a gift and save it for a random day that isn’t her birthday.)

Q:

1. Do Caity Lotz abs deserve their own spin off?
2. Will we ever see Katrina Law again on ARROW?

A:

1. Yes.
2. No.
(Answers stolen from Valerie Anne.)

Q:

4 years ago I met this girl and we became casual acquaintances. We would talk when we ran into each other, but that’s pretty much it. In the last 8 months though, we’ve been interacting online a lot (we no longer live in the same place) and casually flirting. She just asked me if she could come visit in a few months and I want to know, yes or no, is there a chance she secretly likes me as much as I like her? (Probably important to note she is also queer)

A:

YES! (Please update us as necessary.)

Q:

I’m thinking of changing my major to Joan. Should I do it?

A:

Without a doubt.

Y’All Need Help is a biweekly advice column in which I pluck out a couple of questions from the You Need Help inbox and answer them right here, round-up style, quick and dirty! (Except sometimes it’s not quick, but that’s my prerogative, OK?) You can chime in with your own advice in the comments and submit your own quick and dirty questions any time.

Y’All Need Help #13: You’re Gonna Make It Count

Q:

My sister and I attend the same college (yay!) and are both super gay (extra yay!), unfortunately, this has resulted in both of us having a possible crush on the same (also queer) person on our rugby team. My sister definitely has a crush on them, but I’m not sure if I have a crush or I just really want to be friends with them. When we talked about it, I told my sister that I’m pretty sure I don’t have a crush on them, but we just went to a concert together (explicitly not as a date), and now I think it might be a real crush. I’m really close with my sister and I don’t want to have some weird sibling rivalry thing happen with this poor person stuck in the middle. When I talked to them, they said they don’t really have a crush on anyone, and they know about my sister’s crush but not mine. How do I keep this from becoming a Thing, especially since we all have to play rugby together and would like to remain friends?

A:

Ok, right out of the gate I have to tell you that I wasn’t convinced you hadn’t just emailed me the synopsis of a Disney Channel Original Movie, so I had to consult with the rest of the staff to make sure I wasn’t being bamboozled. What follows is the Slack conversation dedicated entirely to you and your question. In it, I believe, you will find the advice that you seek.

Vanessa: this is a non-issue cause you should never date a fellow teammate
problem solved xo
Stef: this is definitely the plot to a movie
Sarah: wait is this the plot to that amanda bynes movie
Audrey: I think it’s actually the plot of pretty in pink except replace rugby with teen class warfare
Mey: Why don’t both sisters date the same girl?
Just be poly
Alaina: Mey that is incest
right????
Mey: No???
If I sleep with Demi Lovato and my sister sleeps w Demi Lovato my sister and I aren’t sleeping together
Riese:oh wow
Mey: Did I read the situation wrong?
Alaina: maybe it just gets a little too close to incest for my comfort then.
Riese: i think this was a storyline on pretty little liars
Mey: My life is s storyline on pretty little liars
Stef: wait what if they’re identical twins
the sweet valley high twins did this all the time i feel
Riese: didn’t that happen on jane the virgin
Stef: or am i thinking of some other lovable scamps
Alaina: i honestly thought they were identical twins at first
Stef: maybe they’re parasitic twins and her sister is just a couple of organs and some teeth, with a crush on their fellow rugby player
Sarah: for some reason i also thought they were identical twins!
Stef: consider all the facts, people
Vanessa: wait why did everyone think the question asker has an identical twin
what is going on!
Mey: I assume all siblings are twins
Stef: who was it who would like secretly go on dates with the other one’s boyfriend? was it tia and tamera?
Mey: Phil and lil did that in an episode of rugrats all grown up
Stef: i think the only way to settle this
is for the sisters to play rugby against each other
i don’t know how rugby works except that you get hurt all the time
but the winner gets to take the other girl on a date
Sarah: i love this idea
Stef: it’s the law of the land, sarah
i don’t make the rules
do you need other people to play rugby?
i thought it was just jumping on top of each other and smashing people into the ground, i think two people could do that
Alaina: why are they in college at the same time on the same rugby team??? that’s why i thought they were twins
Vanessa: maybe one is like a year older
or two years older
Sarah: also queer twins : tegan and sara
Stef: do you know how many times tegan and sara had to settle scores this way
except they’re canadian so it’s hockey
Alaina: i would only go to the same school as a sibling if we were twins
i feel like twins like each other?
Mey: WOULDNT IT BE AMAZING IF TEGAN AND SARA MARRIED THE SAME WOMAN
Alaina: NO
Vanessa: MEY NO
Alaina: NO IT WOULD NOT
Stef: that’s not how it works
Mey: that’s my gay agenda
Alaina: i feel like only twins like each other enough to continue to live with each other/see each other every day after 18 forced years of it you know?
Vanessa: why can’t they just be siblings
Tiara: If it’s college then one of them could have entered late or something, like after a gap year
Stef: is one of them on a rugby scholarship?
Tiara: rugby legacy
they come from a long line of rugby players
(is that even a thing, i know not much of american college life)
Stef: wait here’s a novel idea
what if the person they’re into decides who they feel like dating
which might not be either of them
Mey: That sounds risky
Stef: OR
ALTERNATIVELY
does that person have a twin?

Q:

I am in a relationship/in love with a woman who is incredibly kind and with whom I am very compatible. The only issue is that her religion is very important to her and I come from a secular background and do not claim any religion. I respect her and her commitment to her religion so much, and I also know that she wants to raise her future children in the faith, have a religious wedding, and be around people who understand and can talk about her faith tradition. She is someone I want to spend the rest of my life with and I want to be a part of this very important part of her life. How can I approach this issue respectfully and share in this part of her life in any way she wishes for me to share in it?

A:

This is great! She has a thing she values immensely and you want to be part of it! I can’t even tell you how great it is! I think this is one of those times when the only thing you can do is talk to her about it! I imagine she’ll be receptive and happy and more than willing to share. One of the top activities of having a religion is sharing it, right? Be your whole self and say, “BABE, YOU HAVE THIS PRACTICE AND FAITH THAT INFORMS SO MUCH OF YOUR LIFE AND WHO YOU ARE, AND I REALLY LIKE WHO YOU ARE AND I’D SURE LIKE TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THIS IMPORTANT PART OF YOU.” Or I mean, say it the way you’d normally say a thing.

Natalie, a staff writer here at AS, suggested there might be a class for new members that you could attend, possibly at a neighboring place of worship instead of her usual spot, if you wanted to be lowkey about it at first. Maybe some readers will have even more advice about easing yourself into a new religion!

Good luck!

Q:

I’m getting divorced from my wife, and I feel like I don’t know how to date, or even reconnect with the wider LGBT community. We’ve lived a very suburban life, and we have a kid together. I’m in my mid-thirties, I know there’s a lot I can and should be doing to get back out there, but where do I even start? And how do I even handle explaining that I have a kid, and all that? Help!

(As anxious as I am to get back out there, I know I need to take it slow. Not only am I still working through the whole divorce, we’re still cohabitating while selling the house, and I somehow think “Hey, I sleep on an air mattress in the attic of a house I share with my ex-wife…wanna hang out?” is not going to attract anyone who isn’t going to axe murder me.)

Please help!

A:

You start by starting! Get yourself some new clothes — this is just a great idea when you’re entering a new life phase, so don’t argue with me here. New clothes! Ok now you just get out of your house and do things that genuinely interest you. What are those things? Cool, now find ways to connect with other people who also have an interest in them. No matter what you’re into, there’s a chill socially acceptable way to do it with other people. Look for things to do in the nearby big cities. Go see some art and volunteer at places that are a making a positive change in the world. It’ll probably be intimidating at first — most new things are — but LISTEN. You didn’t live to your mid-thirties to let a little nervousness stop you from being HAPPY and LEARNING NEW THINGS and MEETING NEW PEOPLE. Hell NO. You have a kid and the rest of your life ahead of you and you’re gonna make it all count.

Regarding that kid and how you explain it to people: wear your parenthood on your sleeve. In whatever casual and relevant way you can, let everyone know from the jump that you have a kid. If they don’t like it they can SCRAM. You get to decide who has the honor of knowing your small weirdo and who doesn’t, so take that job very seriously. For the right people, dating or even just hanging with someone who has a child is a privilege and not a burden. It’s a big deal to be involved in a kid’s life and they’d be lucky to have even the smallest shot at it.

Y’All Need Help is a biweekly advice column in which I pluck out a couple of questions from the You Need Help inbox and answer them right here, round-up style, quick and dirty! (Except sometimes it’s not quick, but that’s my prerogative, OK?) You can chime in with your own advice in the comments and submit your own quick and dirty questions any time.

Y’All Need Help #12: The Straight Girl Is Back

Q:

Hi, I could really use some help. I’ve known that I liked girls since I was 9, and I can pinpoint the moment in time it hit me: I met an amazing girl and was a complete goner. Somehow in my young mind I knew that this was a person that I would be happy to spend the rest of my life with, but it was the classic “in love with my best friend story”: she’s straight . I came out to her and the rest of our friends when I was 15, and while the news was receive well by everyone, she and I began drifting apart. Our friendship ended quietly when she started subtly being mean to me and I gave up trying. I was hurt and heartbroken, but there wasn’t much I could do. She was done so I had to be done too.

So here’s my question: what does one do to when they find themselves still pining for their ex-best friend (who was kind of shitty to them) and they can’t escape?

A:

HEY you’re not still attracted to this person. You think you are because your subconscious is replaying the only loop of feelings it knows for her — the crushing, the hope, the pining, the anger, the sadness. But all of those feelings are from 15 year-old you. You’ve had no interactions or dealings with this person since you were a teenager, and so there’s nothing else for your subconscious to go off of.

You have a couple of options: 1. Go with what your therapist suggested and just get it all off your chest. Tell her everything — how you felt, how what she did hurt you, how you never really processed or got over it because now here it is, like a raging party you left at 3am in 2005 and then walked right back into in 2017 and the same fucking song is still playing and you’re doing nothing to turn the music off or turn the lights on or clean up. And then see what she says. Or! 2. You can spend some time recalibrating your take on this relationship.

Somebody or something had to be that catalyst for you realizing you were gay, and it happened to be her. To you this was a milestone, to her being friends with you was just another part of her childhood. That’s not a super balanced exchange, but it’s no one’s fault. This woman is, for better or worse, the other side of a huge thing that happened in your life, and no matter what you do, that experience will never be the same thing for her as it was for you.

So let’s look at where it’s gotten you. In addition to coming out to yourself, you also learned some coping mechanisms through the course of this relationship, and so you learned even more about yourself and the world and how you process it. You learned to pick up on subtleties. You learned your breaking points. These are all very important things! You grew! Be grateful for and proud of yourself here. You lived through a thing and came out of it with more than you had going into it.

Pluck this girl from the pedestal your subconscious keeps trying to put her on, then put yourself up there instead.

Q:

In May my ex partner broke up with me. I was really heart broken at the time but looking back on it now the relationship was really unhealthy. We took some time apart and then became friends again since then and while on the outside it’s been pleasant, I still feel as though our friendship is retaining the same toxic power dynamic.

I’m not sure what to do anymore. This friendship is making me feel really ashamed and unloveable, and its not helping me move on. I’m not even in a relationship with this person anymore and I feel clingy. It’s really destroying my self-esteem. At the same time, they mean a heck of a lot to me and I just don’t understand why we cant go back to how we were before we’d even dated and we were just good friends without any weird power dynamics.

A:

This isn’t a friendship, it’s a super gross unhealthy extension of whatever you two were doing before, but even more insidious in that it’s masquerading as a friendship. Friendships don’t make you feel ashamed and unloveable. Toxic relationships that need to end, on the other hand, are really good at doing exactly that. The weird power dynamic you’re dealing with will still be there as long as at least one of you isn’t trying to fix it. Right now it seems like you’re the only one putting in the work, so nothing’s changing, and that is bullshit and bad and you deserve better.

It’s also important to remember that no matter what, you’ll never really be able to go back to how you were before you dated, because you’ve dated. Time has passed and experiences have been lived. You can be something different together — maybe even something resembling what you were before — but you can’t be the same as you were in the past. None of us can, actually.

As a woman who lives all the way out in Arizona and has never even seen your face and only knows a small part of one side of this story, I feel confident telling you that this person does not have your best interests at heart and you could probably find a better friend in the parking lot of PetSmart this afternoon.

Q:

I’m supposed to be a bridesmaid in a very conservative wedding. I said yes a while ago to a friend that I’ve always “agreed to disagree” with. But since then I’ve come out as bi/pan to most people in my life and I have a girlfriend. The bride doesn’t know because it seemed safer to tell her after the wedding because I’ve heard her say homophobic things about sin and hell.

A:

Ayyyyy. I humbly submit that your first order of business is calling about your flight. Just see what the deal is there.

And wow yeah, she does sound like the kind of person who would reject you because of your queerness! What do you want to do? Like what feels like a decision you could live with. If I were in your position, I would slap a shipping label on that gift and take myself out for a milkshake. If I were in your position and feeling especially obligated for some reason, I’d change my flight to arrive closer to the actual wedding date, get my own hotel room, and be the cutest happiest friendliest son of a bitch at that party, where I would talk openly about my darling girlfriend and share my thoughts on a single-payer system and how abortion bans are class warfare, then leave with an air of smug superiority the likes of which that town had never seen.

Do what makes you feel like the best version of yourself, whether that’s protecting your feelings by not attending, or taking one on the chin to avoid a fallout. Make the decision you can live with, but above all else please know that you deserve friends who care more about your injured leg than the optics of a wedding party. Also, you know who has ceremonies that last for several hours when that shit can easily be handled in 45 minutes or less? Showboating assholes, that’s who. THERE I SAID IT.

Y’All Need Help is a biweekly advice column in which I pluck out a couple of questions from the You Need Help inbox and answer them right here, round-up style, quick and dirty! (Except sometimes it’s not quick, but that’s my prerogative, OK?) You can chime in with your own advice in the comments and submit your own quick and dirty questions any time.

Y’All Need Help #11: Being Ghosted Says More About the Ghoster and Less About the Ghostee, So

Q:
I’ve always hated having boobs. I cried when I realized I needed to buy my first bra, used to wear only sports bras and never ever take them off (I had heard it would stop them from growing. Lol did that not work), and have always been jealous of my small chested friends and family. I recently have looked into (became obsessed with) the idea of getting a binder, but I’m not a particularly masculine presenting person and identify as a cis-female (for now? Gender is confusing and hard to figure out). What I don’t know is if that makes me a poser… I don’t really know very many (any) cis women who bind regularly and don’t want to be looked at weirdly for it….

A:

See also: You Need Help: You Want to Bind But Need Some Help by Alaina!

Q:
I met up with a new woman from Tinder a couple weeks ago and we had a great time, I thought. We had a good conversation and laughed a lot and even kept texting for a while after that night. When I said goodnight I told her I’d like to meet up again and she said she would, too. But then I texted her to set up date #2 and she never responded. A couple days later (at the advice of friends) I tried again, with a more specific time and place, but still haven’t gotten an answer. And, look, I’m well aware that online dating puts you at risk for ghosting. But I’ve had such a stream of bad luck recently. This isn’t the first date that’s ended this way (more like the 10th). So, what do I do? Call her out for disappearing on me? Or just move on and add her to a long line of ghosts that already haunt me?

A:

Q:
So I recently broke up with my partner. We had previously been best friends, and feel very strongly about remaining close post-breakup. We both care about each other and want to remain a part of each others’ lives (the relationship ended on amicable terms, also). However, this is (of course) much harder in practice than in theory. I still feel frustrated and angry, and I want to give myself time to hold those emotions and work through them, but I am also worried that if we have a break in communication, we won’t be able to rebuild to a healthy friendship. I don’t really know how to process the reality of our no longer dating when we still are very much in each others’ lives, but I also don’t want to not be close with them.

A:

Y’All Need Help is a biweekly advice column in which I pluck out a couple of questions from the You Need Help inbox and answer them right here, round-up style, quick and dirty! (Except sometimes it’s not quick, but that’s my prerogative, OK?) You can chime in with your own advice in the comments and submit your own quick and dirty questions any time.

Y’All Need Help #10: Your Crushes Are Killing

Today’s installment of Y’All Need Help is brutal and quick, like a roundhouse kick to a sweet little piñata. I DO THIS BECAUSE I LOVE YOU.

Q:

So. Is there any way to make this less painful, or to get over a girl faster while still pretending everything’s fine in front of her, other than just lying on the floor while my heart bleeds out and waiting, watching it bleed?

A:
I’m truly honestly sorry to say that you’ll have to bleed this out for a while. It’s been six months and where has this pining gotten you? NOWHERE, FRIEND. The energy you’re putting into this situation is the same energy you could be putting into literally anything else, and the energy you’re receiving from this situation is tepid and ultimately destructive. Straight women who’ll never date their queer friends that have crushes on them still manage to receive the positive energy of a queer relationship without having to reciprocate any of it. Think about that. You’re giving her your dating/loving energy and she’s giving you pal energy, and she loves it — not because she’s a selfish asshole, but because that energy is GLORIOUS and AMAZING and she’s probably never received anything like it before.

Find small ways to pull some of your energy back from this friendship. If you grab a water for her when you get up to get your own, stop doing that. If you text her about the insane soufflé you just made on a Saturday afternoon, stop doing that. All the small things, kill ’em.

Imagine that you told her your feelings and she gently but firmly rejected you, and then move through your life as if this scenario you imagined actually happened. Every time you have a fluttery thought about her, pinch your inner thigh and read five pages of Infinite Jest, out of order. Make a list of at least 25 things you want to do or experience for yourself or for the greater good of the universe and pick five of them to do before December. After you do those five, choose five more. Clean your house and get some flowers for your tables. This is not the person for you. She is not for you. She is your friend.

You call the shots in this hectic blur of time and space! CALL THOSE SHOTS. Send your energy to the right places. Take care of yourself.

Q:
I’ve recently discovered that I have a total crush on my BFF of 4 years. We hang out at every opportunity. We’re each other’s closest friend, share all the same interests, jokes, and secrets. As you do. The problem is, she’s also queer and beautiful, and I’ve started to wise up to it. Neither of us are seeing (or have seen) anyone. We’re both juniors in high school and homecoming is fast approaching. Part of me is hoping she’ll ask me, or that I’ll get up the nerve to tell her how I feel. But at the same time, I know part of the reason I love her is because of our friendship. She’s my only queer friend, and without her I don’t know what I’d do. Her parents also want me to stay with her the whole weekend when they leave town…in two weeks! Its not that I have ‘intentions’ but I feel disingenuous. What should I do? Tell her? Or crush in silence?

A:
The most distinct difference between you and the person above you in this post is that your crush is queer, which lends some hope to your situation. It lends some hope to me, dear friend. Also you’re in high school and if there’s ever a time to hurl caution right into the wind, it’s now. Did you watch Riverdale? I wish I hadn’t, but here we are. You are Betty and she is Archie, and that’s why I’m telling you to ask her to homecoming. Did Betty and Archie end up dating? No they did not, spoiler. However, did Betty grow as a human after confessing her feelings and taking ownership of her own ambitions? She sure did!

Having said that, you know the situation better than I do, so if you just read that and thought, “wow, trash advice there,” then feel free to disregard everything I said and go your own way. GODSPEED, GENTLE SOUL.

Q:
I have straight girl problems! So the straight girl in question is my (now former) colleague, who I am close friends with. She lost a parent last year right after moving abroad and these changes have put a strain on her relationship with her longterm boyfriend who lives in another country. While on a break with the boyfriend and dealing with the grief issues, she fell in love with one of my male colleagues (who is very romantically immature; he hasn’t ever had a girlfriend) and now they have some sort of 2nd grade pulling-pigtails relationship. They both have feelings for each other but he doesn’t want to go further so they are basically a couple without the touching and emotional commitments (which hurts her). In the meantime she got back with the longterm boyfriend, who knows all the stuff with the other guy and doesn’t like it.

On top of it all, I fell in love with her 3 months ago and the childish toxic relationship with the office guy became unbearable for me. It really hurts to see my friend that I basically love fuck herself over with this shit and I may be a bit jealous, too. I am starting my new job away from her soon, so I hope not seeing her on a daily basis will allow me to get over her. But my question is, do I tell her how I feel? I have no expectations that she’ll return my feelings, I just sometimes feel that I can’t hold it all inside me anymore. I’ve asked some people for advice, who all think I should not say anything and get over her, and my brain agrees with them. But not my heart.

A:
Whoaaaa! Reader, my friend. Do not, under any circumstances, known or unknown, hell or high water, tell this straight girl how you feel! Circle back to question #1 up there.

As for her, your friend has had a profoundly fucked up and difficult year, and is likely making some strange decisions out of grief and confusion, which is totally normal, if super hard to watch. You can give her advice and guidance, but it’s ultimately her call, and it sounds like she’s finding something she needs in this childish relationship with the immature dude. Maybe she likes that it’s easy and mindless and going nowhere? Sometimes we put ourselves on autopilot as a not-necessarily-great form of self-preservation. The best thing you can do for her — and most importantly for yourself — is just be a friend. Support her and be there to help her, but set some boundaries for yourself. If it’s hard to watch her go through this portion of her life, know that you can back away when you need to.

Y’All Need Help is a biweekly advice column in which I pluck out a couple of questions from the You Need Help inbox and answer them right here, round-up style, quick and dirty! (Except sometimes it’s not quick, but that’s my prerogative, OK?) You can chime in with your own advice in the comments and submit your own quick and dirty questions any time.

Y’All Need Help #9: You Don’t Owe Anyone a F*cking Explanation

So, up until a few months ago, I identified as a lesbian. Cut-and-dry into-women-and-exclusively-women lesbian. But then I met this guy and we got to know each other, had lots of fun, flirted a bit and now we’re dating. It’s pretty casual but I’m really enjoying myself and I don’t really have a problem with the idea that my sexuality might have changed or that I’ve just met a great human who I really enjoy dating and their gender doesn’t matter. The real issue comes when telling my friends that I’m dating a guy. Some of them are great about it, but some respond with ‘oh, so you were straight all along?’ and others ask ‘why did you come out as gay if you were actually bisexual?’. It’s especially difficult because I haven’t found a new label that really resonates with me and am just sticking with ‘queer’ for now, so I can’t even really *come out* as anything. So, any advice on (re) coming out to people, or just how to politely tell people to mind their own business regarding my sexuality?

Congratulations on being with a person you enjoy! I’m glad some of your friends are great about it — that’s how all of your friends should be, because they’re supposed to be your friends.

Unfortunately, the friends who aren’t great about it are turds. I get that some people just can’t fathom a world where others are free to change and grow and shift around without it having a single thing to do with them, but damn. Who you’re dating has shit to do with your friends and their lives, unless they’re like, allergic to his fabric softener or something? In which case, fine. But this itching scratching burning desire to organize every personal thing about you — their friend — into a shape and form they can easily ‘define’ and ‘understand’ is some tedious bullshit. There’s no need to clarify anything to these amoebas. What and who you were “all along” was YOU. The decisions you made, including the sexuality you declared to them, were yours to make, and you fucking made them. Now here you are, INCONCEIVABLY, I GUESS?, making EVEN MORE DECISIONS about yourself! End of story!

This would be like if you always ordered waffles for brunch and one day you ordered an omelette and these friends flipped a table and demanded that explain yourself. Your brunch order has nothing to do with them. Neither does this.

As far as how you label now, labels should only be used when they’re useful! Being queer is a thing, so it can be a thing to come out as, but not if you don’t want to. If trying to pin a label to yourself is causing more harm than good, that probably means you don’t need one right now. Maybe there isn’t a perfect one for the specific shape of you today. That’s cool. You’re still you! You’re still a person who’s done all the things you’ve done, and who’ll go on to do all the other things you’ll do. Still you!

In conclusion, do what you want! Be who you want to be! Floss twice daily! You’re doing great!

It’s been nine years since I’ve been in a relationship. During that time I’ve slept around, dated a couple people casually, fallen in unrequited love with a friend, come out as bisexual, and activated and deleted my okcupid/tinder/etc accounts more times than I can count. I’m educated, employed, independent, have lots of good friends, go out frequently, and am working on a master’s degree! I genuinely love my life, I just wish I had a significant other to share it with. I’m not sure why it is so hard for me to find a person that I click with who is also attracted to me. Dates are either your typical online dating horror stories, or else I like the person okay and then one of us loses interest after a few weeks. I’ve only been dating women for 2 years, so maybe these are just growing pains? I turned 30 this year and I’m still repeating the same tired story of getting ghosted by girls after 2 weeks or having my flirting mistaken for “let’s be friends.”

My question is this: When do I stop trying? When do I quit talking to cute people or scrolling through the depressing abyss of gay okcupid? Is this it? Nine years is a long time to be single. Is it usually this hard?

I think you know what I’m gonna say but GUESS WHAT, I’m gonna say it anyway! If you want something for your life, you don’t stop trying to get it. That includes finding a person you love who also loves you. Boom the end. But let’s dive on down there, into the weird pond where nothing you’re trying seems to be working, and maybe try to figure out why.

A of all, if gay OkCupid is a depressing abyss, get the whole hell out of there. Just stop scrolling as soon as you start. In fact, look around you. What else can you identify as a depressing abyss? Detach from those things, too.* No More Depressing Abysses Than Absolutely Necessary 2017.

Second of all, I forced everyone on Autostraddle’s staff to tell me the longest they’d gone without being in a serious/committed relationship and here’s a smattering of their responses:

5 years
6 years
8 years
2.5 years
5 years
4 years
“I stopped keeping track”
4 years
3.5 years “and counting”
6 years
3.5 weeks (self-identified as Team Slutty Go-Getter)
1 month (see above)
3.5 years “it’s going great” (I believe this was sarcasm based on the respondent, but still)

Maybe this doesn’t make you feel any better, but I found it interesting because I’m nosey. But also! I do think it shows that we’re all in this together and there’s no set amount of time that’s more acceptable or normal than another amount of time when it comes to being single.

Another thing that is universally true and real is that really great opportunities present themselves when you’re busy focusing on pretty much anything else. This is especially true if your focus is on enriching your life and being a good person. It sounds like you’re enriching the living daylights out of your life already, so that is cool and great. Is there anything else you’ve been interested in but have put off getting into for whatever reason? Maybe get into it. Maybe that’s a step in the direction of a path that includes a place to find something or someone else you’ll love. I mean, don’t do it for that reason, but do it! Do it because you want to.

Can I make another suggestion? (I can.) What if you swung on by a therapist’s office to just sort of check in with yourself, shake off some of the pond weirdness and see what you see? I feel like it can’t hurt!

*This is said with the understanding that not ALL depressing abysses can be immediately evacuated, but by all means please do try.

Hi! I’m a relatively baby gay that’s still trying to find their community. I’m at the point where I’m out of school and finding out people in high school/college are also queer. Question: is it okay to talk about these people I knew that came out, to other people that may/may not know these people are out? By talk about, I don’t mean maliciously, simply mention their existence as fellow LGBTQ+ people. (Of note: I am also not fully out at this point.)

It’s my understanding that if you’re finding out certain people are queer because they’re out, somehow or another, that means you can discuss them as being part of the worldwide LGBTQ+ community with impunity. Obviously use your best judgment in each situation, but yeah I think it’s ok to include them in your non-malicious conversations!

Coming out is usually a lifelong process, in that you’ll come out to this group of people and they’ll tell some friends and wow so many people know now, but then here’s this other group of people you’re also involved in, so you come out to one or a few of them, too. Then they tell some friends. Then you go somewhere else — maybe the dressing room at Nordstrom Rack — with your butchy wife and the attendant tries to stop you both from going into the women’s dressing rooms, so you have to turn on your heels and look her right in the eyes while she shouts SIR! to your wife over and over again, and you say, over her shouting, (so you shout), “SHE’S A WOMAN. WE’RE WIVES. TWO WOMEN.” and turn back around and keep walking to your dressing room where you’ll try on the stupidest dress you’ve ever seen and it’ll have all been a big waste of time anyway but LOOK you still had to come out to another person today!

Which is to say that in these cases, you would be one of the friends who told a friend who told a friend. And that’s how it goes.

I think unless you were specifically told that X person is expressly NOT out and that this knowledge is confidential, you can assume it’s not confidential. Some people won’t agree with me on this, so you should hear their arguments, too (they’ll be here in the comments, or maybe on Twitter if we’re very lucky), and then make your own call!

Y’All Need Help is a now-biweekly advice column in which I pluck out a couple of questions from the You Need Help inbox and answer them right here, round-up style, quick and dirty! (Except sometimes it’s not quick, but that’s my prerogative, OK?) You can chime in with your own advice in the comments and submit your own quick and dirty questions any time.

Y’All Need Help #8: Cross That Bridge When You Come to It!

I identify as a queer cisgender 17 year-old female and I am not out yet, but I want to be by the time I go to university. My friends are a mix of: homophobic Christians ( I am a Christian but I don’t believe being LGBT+ is a sin), some people who don’t care about LGBT+ issues, and people who joke about gays. Besides that fact, they are mostly good to me since they don’t know I like girls. Am I obligated to tell them in due time — when they often have secrets from me as a group — (even though I know I’m not obligated to come out to anyone) or, since we’ll probably lose touch, should I be ok with them finding out eventually through mutual friends or Facebook in the future (and having to answer their questions and face their gossip at that time)? As you can see I’m unfortunately too concerned with what people think (especially those who might mean or have meant something to me) so my question is perhaps how do I distinguish when to care and when not to care what people close to me think of my sexuality? I don’t want my sexuality to define me but most of the time I just want to talk to someone queer about how hot Kristen Stewart is and discuss the L Word coming back.

If you want to be out by the time you leave for university, you should absolutely do that! But you should do it because you want to, not because you’re worried these people will be even more gossipy if they find out a few years from now. For the most part — barring any sort of life-altering personal growth — people who’d be gossipy and nasty about your queerness in five years will probably be gossipy and nasty about it tomorrow, too. And maybe even 10 years from now. And that brings us to this important point: it doesn’t fucking matter what they think about you.

You are NOT obligated to come out to anyone, ever! Not in a million years! You get to decide who knows what about you, and when, and how. What you don’t get to decide is how they react, and that goes for everything. Like literally everything. You can’t control people’s reactions and they can’t control your queerness. That’s not to say it’s easy to stop caring what people think about you! It can be really hard actually, but! I’m 36 and I can tell you, I give fewer and fewer fucks about what anyone thinks of me with each passing day.

For what it’s worth, coming out or being out to new people is generally easier than walking up to the people who’ve known you since you were coloring in pictures of the alphabet and saying LISTEN UP, BUDDY, GOT SOME NEW INFO FOR YOU RE: ME. Because yes, absorbing new info about an old subject can be hard! But also! Everyone on the planet will be asked to update their existing knowledge of a thing, several times in fact. All different kinds of things! How they choose to integrate that information will be on them, regardless of how long they’ve been working with the old information.

To thoroughly answer your last question — how do you distinguish when to care and when not to care? Never care. You just never care. To the best of your abilities, just decide not to care. Not because not caring is easy — it’s not — but because you deserve to be you, period. Everybody all over the place is just trying to figure out who they are and how to be, and we all deserve that space. You deserve queer friends who’ll talk about KStew with you and what a clusterfuck the new L Word will be. YOU DESERVE TO BE YOURSELF. So if you want to come out, come out! And if you want to let those turkeys find out in their own damn time, fine. If you want to wear a space helmet that says OUTTA THIS WORLD QUEER GIRL and never talk about anything heterosexual again for the rest of your dang life, COOL. Everything’s on your terms. Take up that space.

So I’ve been seen this amazing woman for some time, she’s pretty much everything I ever thought I needed in a partner and I’m crazy for her. She has a kid, though. A kid that she’d been wanting to have for a long time -she wasn’t married or dating-, she went through IVF because she felt the time to be a mother was right. I, on the other hand, have never wanted kids. When I met her the baby had just been born and I still decided that I wanted to get to know her better and somehow I ended up so, so in love with her.

I don’t know what to do or what to think because I wanna be with her, I just don’t know if I want to be with a baby and I don’t want to break her heart either. I need help!

Hello here I am to help you! The short and quick answer is that you should probably break it off with this woman. But let’s keep talking because it wouldn’t be an advice post if I just gave one-sentence answers now would it. So basically if you really truly do not want a child, then you really truly do not want this woman, because this woman comes with a child and there’s absolutely no getting around that.

I’ve been trying to think of an analogy to express the degree to which this woman’s life is altered and informed by her motherhood, and how much that’s never changing, but to be honest I’m struggling. Like ok, how do you feel about your head being attached to the rest of your body? It’s pretty much non-negotiable, right? Your head’s gonna stay right on your body ’til you die. Just head and body, forever and ever until death. Not going anywhere. That’s how having a child is! And it just keeps being that way, even when they move away and don’t call for weeks. Just like if you never washed your hair or looked in a mirror or rested your head on your hand, your head would still right there, perched on top of your spine. Not going anywhere. And if someone wanted to date a person who didn’t have a head, that sure would eliminate you as a possibility, no matter how much of an otherwise perfect match you might be.

Some people — maybe even your own self — might try to convince you that you could continue dating this woman and still not be involved in this child’s life, but in my experience that is incorrect. Even if you somehow managed to devise a way to never see this baby, its mother is still gonna talk about it. She’ll still have availability based on the baby. She’ll still make every life decision with this baby in mind. She’s still someone’s mother. Just like if you put a large box over your head, it would still be there. Your head, I mean. You’d still need to put food into your body via it. Your head would come up in conversation, likely often. Thoughts would come from it, it would keep existing right there. No getting around it. You have a head. She has a baby.

The thing is, you’re dating a mother but you don’t want to be dating a mother. And that doesn’t make you a bad person! Just want to get that all the way out there: not wanting a child is A-OK. Cool cool. But she did want a child, to the extent that she went out there and made one. So even though this woman is pretty much everything you ever thought you needed in a partner and you’re crazy for her — and I’m really not making light of those feelings! — she can’t be the person for you because the person for you is all of those things (more or less) but with NO child.

Speaking as a mother who’s dated people who didn’t want kids, it’s just not going to work. At all. Not in the least. Kids are an all-in situation and you can’t be lukewarm about the prospect of helping a small human become a large human. It’s just too important. Unless she wants to keep dating you in a hella casual way that doesn’t involve you being part of the baby’s life at all, which is a possibility and maybe even a doable one. But you have to have an honest talk with this woman about how you feel, what you want, what you don’t, what you’re afraid of. Give her all the information so she can also make an informed decision about who you are and how your hopes and dreams fit in with hers.

I’ve been seeing this girl for three weeks, and things are going REALLY well. This is SUPER unusual for me. I haven’t been this into anyone in a LONG time, and I’m pretty sure she’s just as into me. Problem: We had “the talk” the other night, and she kind of surprised me by saying she wasn’t looking for anything serious. Specifically, she said that since she’d just moved to this city (our first date was 6 days after she’d moved here), she wanted to build her own life and friend group and community before getting into a serious relationship with someone who already had a life and a community and a friend group that she would inevitably end up subsumed into. I got the impression, though she didn’t go into detail, that this situation happened with the last girl she dated (they broke 6 months ago after 3 years together).

I REALLY like this girl, I want this to work, I’m willing to wait and go slow, but I’m just not sure what to do now. Help!?

Listen I’m not judging or anything, but I don’t think you had THE “the talk.” I think you had one of those preliminary talks that pretty much only serve to concede the fact that you are, indeed, enjoying each other’s company. “The talk” is supposed to lay bare exactly where you both want to go from here and how you plan on getting there. This prelim talk just made you both admit that you really like each other even though you didn’t plan to, which honestly, congrats! That’s a fun weird talk to have AND how fucking great that you found a person in your radius who’s cool and cute and fun and sexy and neat! AND she likes you, too! Damn that is lucky.

Ok, re: her mixed signals, it’s 100% likely that she’s sending herself mixed signals, too. Neither of you expected to actually connect with each other, and here you’ve gone and done just that. But you both have these logical minds that are trying super hard to be heard because, last they knew, they’d laid out a perfectly reasonable and sound plan for you to follow and now you’re clearly deviating from The Plan. That’s Mixed Signals City, population 2, come on in, etc. What a confusing fun time for both of you!

What does taking it slow mean to you? Not moving in together, not saying I love you? Not meeting each other’s families or being the person the other one calls when she has the stomach flu? You can totally prevent yourself from doing all of those things! Like, it would take more effort to do those things than to keep yourself from doing them — except for maybe the I love you part. That might be tricky. If you find yourself slipping and saying “I love—” just stop yourself right there and stuff the words “your hair today!!” into your mouth before before the “you” can fall out. EASY FIX. “I love the way you’ve got this room decorated!” “I love knowing what you think about global trade!” “I love that we can all agree on gravity, you know??!”

Keep sending those heart emojis and being excited to see each other again! Keep having separate friend groups and making your own lives! You’re doing GREAT this is SO FUN. And when/if you find yourself throwing up in the bathroom floor this winter and wishing you could ask her to come over with soup and Theraflu, well you’ll just cross that bridge when you get to it, ok? Now go live it up!

Y’All Need Help is a now-biweekly advice column in which I pluck out a couple of questions from the You Need Help inbox and answer them right here, round-up style, quick and dirty! (Except sometimes it’s not quick, but that’s my prerogative, OK?) You can chime in with your own advice in the comments and submit your own quick and dirty questions any time.