Reject one-sided arrangement
Carolyn: This fall, I’ll be a senior at a college in Maryland. My boyfriend graduated and moved to New York to take this really great job, and we’ve decided to try to make the distance work until I graduate in December. However, I question his commitment to this whole thing. He wants me to do all the commuting – ALL of it, though we’ll split costs. He justifies not coming to Maryland with: “New York is so much cooler,” and, “I need to lay down my roots here – connections are really important to my job.” While there’s some truth to each of his excuses, isn’t a relationship about compromise? I have a job, too, and full-time school, and friends here. I don’t want to harbor angry feelings toward him because I’m making all the effort. – Greyhound Girl
“Connections are really important to my job”?
Maybe someone should point out that not insulting people’s intelligence will also be important to his job.
When you hear a load like that one, especially from someone who ostensibly cares about you, please don’t just let it thud to the floor unchallenged. Not only will you be providing him a valuable career assist, but you’ll also be honing a crucial relationship skill of your own.
When you can express how you feel without flinching – in other words, without devaluing yourself in the process of but-what-if-he-dumps-me?! calculations – then you’re positioned to be your own advocate, vs. somebody’s victim.
Conveniently, expressing angry feelings – a la “What a load of (unprintable)” – is also an excellent preventive strategy against harboring angry feelings.
The way things stand, you and he have decided that you will try to make the distance work – because his time/locale/comfort/job is worth more than yours. Please feel entitled to reject not just these terms, but also the very idea of a mate with so little respect for you. If he wants to see you, he will.
Carolyn: I don’t really care for my roommate’s girlfriend; she’s flaky, way too cutesy and does whatever he tells her to. But I realized she shares many of these attributes with my girlfriend of three years, except: flaky equals innocent, cutesy equals adorable, etc. (Subservient doesn’t apply here.) Is it possible to hate in others what you love in your significant other? Or is my realization a warning sign? – Hypocrite?
There are certainly ways to explain why your girlfriend doesn’t annoy you. That she isn’t subservient, for example, may suffice on its own. Respect is powerful enough to swing feelings all the way from loathing to love.
There’s also the tiny-details-matter-big argument. I’m sure you know at least one family in which the kids share a strong family resemblance, but differences of a few degrees here and there make one homely and one a knockout. The same can apply to minor tweaks in personality, behavior, intonation.
It could just be that people are more complicated than your question allows. Two common traits do not the same person make.
And, finally, it could be that she is obnoxious and your cutesy receptors have been blocked – by infatuation, inertia, even confidence in your own good taste. If so, you probably know it by now; just think how hard it is to tune out an annoying noise after you’ve noticed it’s there.