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You're listening to Life Kit from NPR.
Hey, everybody. It's Marielle.
The relationships we have with the people we're close to
can be so good for us, and they can also be incredibly frustrating.
Our friends, our partners, our family members, our colleagues,
they sometimes disappoint us, often in patterns that repeat over and over again
and make you feel like you're at an impasse.
Mariah Seger De Geer is a licensed marriage and family therapist.
Her practice is called BFF therapy, and she has a lot of advice for navigating these moments.
On this edition of Dear Life Kit, the series from reporter Andy Tagle,
Andy asks Mariah a series of anonymous questions from listeners who are at the end of their ropes.
The questions will come from different arenas of life, friendship, romantic love,
work, but they all come from folks who've reached a breaking point with the people around them.
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Okay, Mariah, here's our first question. Dear Life Kit, my best friend is back
dating her abusive ex-boyfriend. He was physically, mentally, and emotionally abusive towards her.
Eventually, she broke things off and got a restraining order. Flash forward five years,
she just got out of a different relationship and started hooking up with her old ex.
I explained how it would be hard for me to accept him after knowing what he's done,
but she says that he's changed. I pretty much avoid speaking about him or hanging out around
them, but it's put a rift in our friendship because she says I can't accept her happiness.
What should I do? Signed for Lauren Bestie.
Mariah, there are a lot of questions in this question. Big picture here first.
What is the best friend's duty in this situation?
Yeah, and this is a really hard one. It's not just about this person they're hooking up with,
it's about also the fact that your friend, their values are very misaligned with yours right now
because they came out of this breakup. I would imagine they're in a place of a very different
type of loneliness than you have ever felt. They're stuck in whatever cycle it is.
It's also important to think about is we often see our friends in the best way possible. It's
not just we want the best for them. We don't see them with their insecurities. We're seeing
them as these capable, majestic human beings who we've known and who we absolutely love and care
about. How can someone we see so magically, even with all their faults, you can be magical and
have faults, go back to that? It's so hard to even fathom why they would do that because we see them
as a really capable, lovable human being that can have a healthy relationship hopefully.
In this is honoring the fact that you're not going to know exactly what they feel
in this relationship, but you also can't pretend, which is really important,
that you're going to co-sign the relationship. It's really important to not continue to build
your friendship on a big fake version of yourself. That was going to be my next question. Is
the avoidance of the relationship, is it possible to just skirt around it? Just get your nails done
and talk about work and talk about, I don't know, talk about politics, talk about everything except
for the boyfriend, not possible. No, if you think about it another way, is if you avoid the
boyfriend or create a friendship of avoidance, you're actually reinforcing the exact thing your
friend is doing. They're creating a relationship that's probably mostly avoiding the amount of
abuse in the past to get another need met. You're doing a similar thing of, I'm avoiding this big
thing to get a need met, which is maintaining this friendship that has such value to me.
I would also be really curious, how is he coming back and re-entering this system? Because this
is your system of people, your community. Is he doing any actual repair? Repair is so
key. He must have done a repair, you would hope, with the partner that he went back to.
But also, if we sit here and think about it, if you're going to build a life together,
how have we created any repair with these other important people in their life?
Yeah, that makes sense. I'm also thinking about the episode Life Kit has done on supporting a
friend in an abusive relationship. The advice there, similarly, was to stay in touch with a
friend and just let them know that they're loved. Final thoughts for our forlorn bestie?
It's hard. Adult relationships are hard, friendships are hard. Considering we're growing up with our
friends over the years, we really are able to mature together. It's a really beautiful thing,
and that coming back together in friendships can be some of our most cherished moments of
reacquainting and going deeper. It's profound intimacy that you have in these non-romantic
relationships. Before we move on, if any listeners find themselves in a domestic abuse situation,
they can call the National Domestic Abuse Hotline at 800-799-SAFE.
Let's move to question 2.
Dear Life Kit,
My wife and I have tried and failed to have a child via IVF three times and are now scraping
the bottom of our savings. We're both heartbroken. She wants to use the last of our savings to try
one more time, but I want to move on and try to adopt. She is distraught and can't move on.
I'm grieving too, she knows, but I'm trying to move forward.
As for her, she often runs into the other room, cries, or gets angry when someone brings up her
sister's new baby or someone plays a movie on TV with any pregnancy or childbirth in the plot.
Our daily conversations veer into crises as our focus returns to babies.
I don't know how to help her. Signed, Baby Blues. Mariah, my heart goes out to this couple.
Yeah, my initial thought is we're looking at two pieces to this question. We have,
how do I support this person who I love, who's everything, in this moment of grief that I'm
feeling too? How do I support my partner and who's just tender? So, so, so tender,
very much on edge. Everything's hurting them related to baby, related to future.
Then also, what do we do? What's that collective decision?
And the third part that they're not even asking is, how do I tend to my grief
when this person is weeping next to me with much bigger expressions of grief? It's not just the
baby, but it's grieving the entire image of what your future life was going to look like.
And there's a lot of fear. And so for this couple, it feels very much in this urgent emergency space
without a plan. Because the plan was that thing over there way before they probably ever started
IVF. And so now we're just being like, okay, 10 more grand, do more. You know what I mean? It's
just like, it's almost like you're gambling a little bit for the person who's stressed about
the money and the other person's feeling like, well, I'm gambling, but what if, what if it all
works out? Yeah, I feel that urgency. And there's not a lot of middle ground. What steps can they
take to ensure whatever move they make, they're doing so together and not apart when it's, when
it feels a little bit black or white for them? Yeah. So really, for both partners to talk about,
what do we need to feel safe about having these conversations again? And so to get to that
conversation could be therapy, could be overall wellness right now. Before we even get to
making a plan, thinking about our options, I need to help calm my body down. And are there things
you want to do together? Do you want to work out together? Do you want to meditate together? And
even if we're thinking about getting pregnant, you're going to want to do all those things that
are bringing less stress to your life. Then really talking about, yeah, like what is a meaningful
life for us? And as we set that up, what, you know, what is the risk in spending? And then if
we think of each of their own history on money, their relationship to money growing up, what
they're each potentially giving up in these decisions are really big things. I think what
makes this question is so painful is that the outcome that they're hoping for is so entirely
out of their control. And maybe not everyone out there wants to become a parent or has gone through
IVF, but I imagine a lot of people can understand that feeling. What advice do you have for us on
how to hold on to hope in moments of powerlessness? Allow yourself to grieve, right? It's actually
easier to hold on to hope when we allow ourselves the space of like, it simply might not happen.
You know, one of the hardest things I find when I work with couples is that, you know,
to carry a child and birth a child themselves. It's what are they telling themselves they won't
have in the future if they open up the idea to fostering and adopting in these different things.
Right. And a lot of times it is about other wounds of like, Oh, I wasn't close with my mother.
So if I adopt versus caring, like I'm not going to be close. And so it's, I've attached all these
other things to what that means though. And what does that mean for me as a person and purpose?
Got it. So you have to get underneath all the other things. Definitely not easy. You ready
for number three? Yep. Dear life kid, I'm having trouble respecting my husband because of his work
habits. We've both been working from home since COVID. I pride myself on my work ethic and have
a very good reputation amongst my peers and my company in general. My husband makes a substantial
amount more than me, but he doesn't work nearly as hard as I do. He spends his morning doing
personal things. We're talking hours at a time. He often signs off early or runs around during
the day when he should be at his desk. This bothers me so much because while he's slacking off all
day, my work has been so stressful lately that I'm considering leaving my position after 20 plus
years on the job. Going back to the office isn't an option for me. It is for him, but why would he go?
He has it too good. My husband and I get along very well in every other aspect of our lives,
but this pesky nine to five situation is driving me up the wall. Please help. Signed, cranky
coworker. All right, so this situation is perhaps a bit more lighthearted than the last few we've
heard, but I can really feel CC's irritation here. To me, Mariah, the main issue I'm seeing here is
envy. Are you hearing this the same way? Yeah, I'm definitely hearing envy, jealousy. They feel stuck
in their position deeper than that. I think there's two really big things. One, they're
telling us right in the beginning, I pride myself in their work ethic. Their sense of belonging
purpose value is tied to output. They're seeing their partner even though they're bringing in
the nice income, their output isn't there. I think it's envy, but you've lost some respect for your
partner in, twist into that because that's how you respect yourself. If you were slacking off,
in reality you're unhappy and probably overworking, so you probably should be working a little bit
less, but how could you do that? Because that is how you see value in yourself. You got to talk
about that as a couple, but you don't need to force them to be miserable so that the misery
loves company so that you're happy. Why would you do that to them? You love them. Why would you do
that? Absolutely. I think we all have those buckle boots. We have things about our partner
that really get under our skin. How can we gauge when it's worth speaking up about or trying to
make a change and when it might just be your own issue to deal with? Well, if hopefully your
partner's able to say that to you, to be like, I think this could be some of your stuff, right?
You know what I mean? Can you hear that if your partner says that? To be like, I'm wondering if
this has to do with you and your unhappiness at work and it's easy to blame the relationship
for your unhappiness, which is such a hard thing to hear from a partner because some of it is the
system of the relationship that is bringing it out. They sound very burnt out, so what are we
doing about your burnt out versus projecting out? You fix that, I'm going to feel better.
That's not sustainable either. Last question, are we ready? Dear Life Kit,
my husband and I have been together for six years and we have a one-year-old son.
Before we met, we had both been in serious relationships. I have a courteous but distant
relationship with my ex. My husband's ex, on the other hand, is very much in our lives.
She sends us Christmas cards every year without fail. She mails in packages with sentimental
objects, texts him about once a month to chat, and occasionally calls hysterical over some
issues she's experiencing. My husband is aware that all of this bothers me, but he feels
conflicted because he still cares about her and because she suffers from extreme mental illness.
I've been patient about the situation for six years, but I'm tired of her inserting
herself into our lives whenever she feels like it. How do I make my husband understand enough
is enough? Signed, six year itch. Okay, this is clearly a sticky situation.
The complicating factor here, I think for me, the reason why it's gotten to an end of the rope type
situation is the mental health portion of this. To what extent should the husband feel responsible
for the mental health of a past girlfriend? Yeah, I believe what's happening is,
he, I mean, honestly, he's enabling the past girlfriend because he's available.
So I think the husband understanding, it's not just about, it is about boundaries and your new
relationship and family and your parent now and all that, but it's much more around like, really
think about this relationship with your ex and what is this doing for her? He needs to reinstate
to the ex like, hey, you know, please don't call after a certain time in a moment of distress,
like who else can you call? Ex or not, I think having a friend that only reaches out in distress
can really impact relationships because it's, you know, during dinner, family time, things like that.
And it's, oh, here's so and so calling again, because they reach for you as sort of like the
fake therapist, you know, thing over and over and over again. So it's okay to tell a friend
to set some boundaries and be like, I have to love my family right here. And I do care about you.
Um, and to sort of hold some of those boundaries.
It sounds like our letter writer six year itch has tried to get this message across to
her husband and it's fallen on deaf ears. Yeah. Her question is how do I make my husband understand
enough is enough. Yeah, it's hard to make someone understand your perspective and feeling. So keep
talking about how it feels for you versus telling them what to do. And if the couple was in the room
with me, like if this brought them into couples therapy, I would ask the husband, tell me about
when you were abandoned. Tell me about that wound. If you understand why the husband feels like I
cannot abandon someone in distress, you can start to see it's not about the ex. It's about my
partner's need to show up here. And the important thing to tell to the wife is something's going on
that they can't step away. And it doesn't mean if they loved you enough, they would. And a lot of
times we struggle with that when a partner doesn't change or we tell ourselves when they do change,
it means I've won. I'm enough. They care enough. They're choosing to be here. But when people can't
change, something huge is happening. And most of the time it's not that he's in love with his ex.
Right? It sounds like worry, fear, guilt. What this, what this letter brought for me is a larger
question of, of what do we owe the people we love? You know, I think we all make sacrifices
for our friends and family to some extent, playing nice with that uncle. You can't stand
picking up the late night phone call, moving, lending some money, et cetera. Where do you
draw a boundary so you can avoid ever getting to the end of your rope with a loved one?
Yeah. I love the quote, boundaries is distance between loving myself and loving you.
What do we owe people we love? Love is not 1000% showing up at all times in any state or any form
and just at any cost to yourself. That's not love, right? That's something, right? We have a lot of
different names for those things, codependent relationships, all these different things.
This partner is doing something that is creating instability in their active life.
It is not an act of love picking up those phone calls because it's hurting them,
right? It's hurting someone they love, who they have a child with, who's right here in front of
them. So it's not coming from a place of overall wellness and building towards a life that's
stable. It's coming from something else. My secret here. Thank you so much for your time,
for your advice. Before you go, we ask every guest of your life kit for their best piece of advice.
I would love to hear yours. My advice that I'm really sitting in is about listening to yourself.
When we don't listen to our intuition, we're actually really betraying ourself
and we need to stop doing that. Thanks, Mariah. Thank you.
That was Life Kit reporter, Andy Tagle. This episode of Life Kit was produced by Sylvie Douglas.
Our visuals editor is Beck Harlan and our digital editor is Malika Garib.
Meghan Kane is our supervising editor and Beth Donovan is our executive producer.
Our production team also includes Margaret Serino and Claire Monique Schneider.
Engineering support comes from Tiffany Vera Castro. I'm Mariah Elsigara. Thanks for listening.
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