ask bear Archives - The Toast

Ask Bear: Be Glad in Love

S. Bear Bergman The Butter Aug 25, 2015

Dear Bear,

So there’s a boy, and I really really like him, and I’ve liked him a while, and he likes me back in a kind of getting married-like way, though we’re not engaged. But we’ve talked about “our life” as though it’s assured going forward. He’s from a family that’s like my family in various ways, and there’s a lot of expectation and positivity. It’s clear that if I marry him I will be showered with all the love and gifts and approval you can imagine (and as I said, I really, really like him).

Then there’s a girl (if it matters, I’m a girl). I have known her less long but I like her a lot too. Differently, and I don’t know if that’s a boy and girl thing or some other kind of thing. I’m different with her than with him. She and I are having a thing that I thought was going to be a fling but isn’t. Besides which she and I are also from pretty similar families and backgrounds. I am not sure how my parents and so on would receive the news that I was breaking up with the boy they’re all so excited about to take up with a girl, but she would be a soothing choice for them.

The boy doesn’t know about her, but she knows about him.

They live in Boston and Chicago, respectively. I live in New York, but I will graduate in December and there will no longer be any reason to boing around like a pinball. I should move to where one of them lives and set up shop there.

I bet you can guess the question. But I have to say one other thing first. It might sound stupid, but I love them both SO MUCH. Just really differently. Like night and day, like sunset and sunrise, like stars and dew. How is it possible that having so much love in my life sucks so bad? That is not what I was promised.

* * *

42 Comments

Ask Bear: How Do I Learn About Happiness?

S. Bear Bergman The Butter Aug 18, 2015

Dear Bear,

How do I move on from thinking life is miserable to actually enjoying the happiness I have found? I spent much of my teens sitting in my room with the company of power ballads like Heart’s Alone, progressing to the angsty grunge of the ’90s and then the lesbian cliche of Indigo Girls. These songs were comforting and confirmed my view that life is lonely and full of sadness. I battled my way out of the closet and found a way to express my female masculinity only to have my heart broken twice. See, I was right all along, I will die alone and unhappy.

In the 15 years since then I have met and married a beautiful woman who shows me the joy in the small stuff. I have studied and worked hard to get a job I love. I have lived in the same city for longer than I have ever lived anywhere in my life and as a result have some amazing true friends. But I still slip back to those miserable tunes, expecting the worst to happen and wearing sorrow like a comforting chunky cardigan. How do I shuck off this jacket of misery and feel the warmth of my life to its fullest?

***

17 Comments

Ask Bear: You Need to Stop

S. Bear Bergman The Butter Aug 11, 2015

Previous Ask Bear columns for The Butter can be found here. If you have a question for Bear, The Butter’s advice columnist, send it along to asking.bear@gmail.com.

Dear Bear,

I had a thing with a boy. In the way that one does sometimes. To make a long story short it turned out that he wanted more from the situation than I was willing to give, something he made clear via a multiple paragraph Facebook message, and so I ended things. I very specifically ended them. I have not responded to a single message since.

There have been lots of messages, however. At last count 48 messages that have gone without a response. Yet here I am months later and messages keep coming. What do I do? I was clear when I ended things, and have ghosted for like five months now. But it’s not working. I don’t want to have a conversation, I just want to stop getting text messages from this boy (I would use the word man but it seems like an exaggeration considering the above mentioned behavior, though he is for sure old enough to be a man if he had those skills). How do I make it stop?

***

42 Comments

Ask Bear: How Do You Know If You Want to Have Kids?

S. Bear Bergman The Butter Aug 04, 2015

Previous Ask Bear columns for The Butter can be found here. If you have a question for Bear, The Butter’s advice columnist, send it along to asking.bear@gmail.com.

Dear Bear,

I’m married and 29. My wife and I have been married for five years but together since college. Our marriage is pretty good. We like doing a lot of the same things, she’s very cute still. Sometimes it feels like we’re playing the easiest level though. Come home from work, have a drink or two and some dinner, watch the TV, go to bed. Weekends we go to movies and such. But I guess that’s what people do.

People keep asking us when we will have children… I have no idea. Or even if I want children really. When is it time for that? How do you know if you want them? I kind of feel like we’re on autopilot and having kids would shake us up but also be a lot of work.

I’ve asked her about it, and she’s always pretty meh about the whole idea when we’re together. But then when her mom or someone asks us, she makes it seem like any minute now we’ll be making babies. I don’t understand that part either. Am I not asking the right questions? What’s the deal?

***

59 Comments

Ask Bear: On Making Decisions

S. Bear Bergman The Butter Jul 28, 2015

Previous Ask Bear columns for The Butter can be found here. If you have a question for Bear, The Butter’s advice columnist, send it along to asking.bear@gmail.com.

Dear Bear,

I really like your column, and it makes me want to ask you a million questions. What should I do about my shitty landlord – move or sue? Should I quit my job and go back to school to study art history and look at paintings all day? Is this boyfriend I have The One or am I settling? I want to confront my mother about her terrible behavior toward me and my sisters. Is this a good idea or should I keep stuffing it down and hope for some magical resolution? Boxer briefs or jockbriefs? Vodka or gin?

Because in one version of my life I am a single gay condo-owning curator who wears a jock every day and doesn’t speak to his mother anymore. That version of me seems like he would be very happy. But isn’t everything we don’t have just a dream we can never compare to what we do have? That version probably also has problems. How do I compare without knowing what they are? And if I can’t compare how do I decide? And if I can’t decide do I just wait until things happen to me?

Maybe my real question is this: “How the hell does anyone ever decide anything and then act on it without second (third, fourth, fifth) guessing themselves about it until they just stay stuck?”

***

15 Comments

Ask Bear: Advice for Helpers

S. Bear Bergman The Butter Jul 21, 2015

Dear Bear,

I help too much. I can’t stop. It crops up in all kinds of ways, but the bottom line is that I am constantly giving too much help. Too much as in more than is wanted sometimes, too much as in more than I can afford (time or money or both) some other times. People feel like I don’t have confidence in them. Or sometimes they take advantage. Or sometimes I am supposed to listen and empathize with their feelings, but I don’t get why I would want to do that when I could be fixing it and then they wouldn’t have to have those feelings at all.

I do kind of get why I do it (or what my therapist says about why) but it’s all past stuff. So I’m not trying to be funny, this is actually awful and I don’t know what to do.

Please help?

***

Dear Brave Correspondent,

Man, writing an advice column is so illuminating. Anyhow.

I too am a helper, and I too have had all manner of trouble with this over the years. Also many good things, it must be said, but in general most of them have come as I have gotten older and figured out how to get a somewhat tighter rein on my horses. I’ll tell you what I have figured out, and perhaps some of it will be useful to you?

59 Comments

Ask Bear: On Parenting and Prison

S. Bear Bergman The Butter Jul 14, 2015

Previously: Ask Bear: Is This a Good Idea? If you have a question for Bear, The Butter’s new advice columnist, send it along to asking.bear@gmail.com.

Dear Bear,

I pled guilty to a non-violent drug crime and am now facing 6-12 months in federal prison. The good news is that in my case, there is no mandatory minimum sentencing and I have many people willing to write character letters on my behalf, so there is a possibility that I could avoid prison time and do only probation, though my lawyer says that is a very slim possibility.

My question is, when should I tell my two children (ages 12 and 6) about prison? My first instinct was to wait until after my sentencing hearing, so that if I am going away I have a concrete time period that I’ll be gone. However, my wife pointed out that after sentencing I will only have a couple of weeks before I need to turn myself in to the prison, which may not be enough time for the kids to process this huge transition.

So which is worse? Telling them now, and having it hang over their heads for a month and a half? Or telling them after, and having it be a sudden shock before I’m gone? For what it’s worth, these past few months of not knowing if/for how long I’ll be going to prison have been a nightmare for me and my wife.

Any help you can provide would be appreciated, we really don’t know what to do.

***

27 Comments

Ask Bear: Is This a Good Idea?

S. Bear Bergman The Butter Jul 07, 2015

“Dear Bear,”

(you have written me. Dozens of you have written to me. And the body of the email that makes up over half of your responses from my initial callout for questions goes more or less like this:)

“Circumstance, circumstance, mitigating circumstance, qualifying statement, bitterly detached acknowledgement. Hopeful note, damning detail, hopeful note, statement of pure fresh stupid optimism.

“So ultimately, I guess my question is: is this a good idea? Is it okay for me to be fucking this person/working on fucking this person/fantasizing about fucking this person?”

***

Dear Reader,

I think we all know by this point in the history of our romantic and sexual lives that by the time we’re asking, “Should I be fucking this person? Is this a terrible idea?” the answer is almost certainly “Do not do this, it is a TERRIBLE idea.” However, that so rarely stops anyone from going right ahead and getting mucus-membranes deep in a bad plan. So it seems worth talking a little bit about why that’s the case, since I don’t want to waste the precious pixels allotted to me by trying to talk you out of something that you’re pretty definitely going to carry on with regardless.

18 Comments