#181 Dear Baby: Am I fit to be a parent?

+ fame fears & overthinking my boyfriend

Good morning!

Welcome back to Dear Baby. Today I’ll be answering questions about 1) the tendency to over-analyze your relationship for clues as to its longevity, 2) navigating old friendships following a new brush with fame, and 3) how to grapple with the kid-question when you’ve seen too much. That last one was asked by a care-worker who helps families with children with disabilities. She wanted to know: Does her fear of having a high-needs child mean she isn’t fit to be a parent? Much to discuss/explore as always and forever.

Dear Danny is back next week! This round we’ll be answering questions about an unexpected windfall, an ugly gift, etiquette around nudes, the old jealous-of-an-ex conundrum, a red-flag-flying situationship, and an unusual ick. Wednesday @ 9am!

1. On ultimatums

“You recently gave advice to a [Dear Danny] listener on ‘lowering the stakes’ within their relationship (I believe it was a couple having issues right after getting married). I’ve been thinking about this a lot and could use your help: I (30 f) have been with my boyfriend for nine months now, and whenever we get in an argument, or if he says something unkind that hurts my feelings, my mind will tend to go anywhere from ‘should we break up over this?’ to ‘are we actually compatible as potential life partners?’

At just nine months, this is the longest relationship I’ve ever had. I was a late bloomer and spent my mid-20’s dating in New York, so a lot of short-term situationships whether I liked it that way (sometimes) or not (often). Now that I’m with a committed partner, when there’s any sign of trouble, I immediately evaluate the long-term implications. I would love your advice on how to de-escalate this kind of high-stakes thinking. Haley, you’ve said for you and Avi that breaking up is never an option on the table. Was this something you both felt early in the relationship or a knowing that developed over time?”

You’ve given me such a flashback to old therapy sessions. My therapist used to point out this all-or-nothing tendency in me all the time. I loved to analyze a single experience—in a relationship, friendship, job, city—and conclude whether it was proof things were destined to succeed or fail. I always wanted conclusions. I knew not everyone lived like that, but their approach seemed dangerous: to move forward without a plan, to commit to things that still raised questions, to stay in situations that weren't ideal. What an untidy way to live! So vulnerable to mistakes and regrets. 

The irony of organizing your life around mistake-avoidance is that, rather than making you feel calmer, it keeps you in an anxious state, ratcheting up the stakes of your life until you’re moving through it like you would a decision tree, each notable occurrence redirecting you toward a different destination. We’re meant to be. Wait no, we’re doomed. Ah, wrong again! This is an exhausting way to live. You become so focused on staying in the driver’s seat, hands at 10 and 2, that you forget the point is to enjoy the ride. I’m not talking about being passive—I’m talking about relinquishing control. Control is what you’re looking for when you draw hasty conclusions about your relationship. What would happen if you just coasted for a while?

Being in an uncertain situation that seems to demand certainty is hell. It’s tempting to believe the answer exists somewhere if you just analyze deeply enough, but I want to reassure you that sometimes it doesn’t. There may be no clear answer right now as to whether you and this man are right for each other. And I don’t mean you don’t have access to it, I mean fundamentally. The answer may not yet exist. There’s a heaven to that too—to accepting the unknowable, to allowing yourself to live the questions and all that. It’s an extremely difficult skill to withhold judgment, and it’s one worth practicing.

I do want to pause on one thing you wrote though, which is that your boyfriend sometimes says unkind things that hurt your feelings. Maybe that phrasing was tossed off, but if you chose those words deliberately, I hope you feel entitled to drawing some conclusions. No matter how much work or navigation of difference a relationship may take, respect should be a given. You don’t need to “live” that particular question.

But I’ll take the rest of what you wrote at face value. Something I try to do when I find myself placing unnecessarily high stakes on a situation is simply noticing the way I’m escalating things, and thinking of that impulse as a symptom of my anxiety, rather than a solution to it. Even if you do end up concluding this relationship isn’t right—even if some part of you already knows that deep down—there will come a moment when that conviction arrives without you calling it up. Per this perfect Lynda Barry quote someone sent me last week: “The thinking part of you can tell you that a decision has been made, but it’s not the part of you which decides things.”

To answer your question about me and Avi, it absolutely took time. I may have had a strong sense about us in the beginning, but I didn’t develop a more grounded (less delusional) confidence until much later, and not without plenty of humbling, questioning moments in-between. And we still get humbled and shaken every once in a while. It’s amazing how many ways two people can relate or fail to relate to each other, and how many novel circumstances can emerge to reveal new ones. If you’re patient, I trust you’ll stumble into your own revelations. In the meantime, your calculations are probably less important than you think.

2. On fame fears

“Hello! I have a question that I’m aware might make me sound quite arrogant, but it’s something that’s happening in my life that I want advice on approaching kindly, both to myself and others. I’ve achieved some success in my chosen career path of acting. Since this has happened, I’ve had figures come out of the woodwork of my past (from school/teenager years etc) asking to hang out and catch up. I’m not saying this is definitely to do with my newfound public ‘success,’ but they are people who have not seemed to be bothered until now. 

I already feel (like we all do) that I have barely enough time to see my True Friends, and whilst I’m open to new friendships in theory, my current goal is to work on nurturing my existing friendships. I don’t know how to respond to the requests I’m getting to hang out without sounding like a dick who’s too big for their boots. I don’t want to ignore them, but I also can’t take on any more in my social calendar!”