#98: On gossip, secret bisexuality, & anti-vax in-laws

Good morning!

And welcome back to Dear Baby, my end-of-the-month advice column. Today, I have questions about the merits of gossip, a Covid wedding conundrum, and whether a woman should tell her husband she’s bisexual. If you’d like to submit a question for a future column, go here or call my voicemail 802-404-BABY. On Tuesday, look out for a new episode of my 💘beloved 💘 advice podcast, Dear Danny. We’ll be covering a whole new batch of questions (on having a secret baby, slow texters, people claiming to be “exhausted” online, hating your boyfriend’s dog, a clingy friend, a scientologist, and—my favorite—accidentally dropping a pair of dirty underwear in a corporate office). If you’re a free subscriber, I unlocked my last Dear Danny episode as a preview of the series for the curious.

On gossip

“I love gossip. Like, live for it. I used to work as a journalist in the political world and maybe it’s a carryover? But I just love learning things about people and then discussing the implications of the things I know and the things I’ve learned with a friend. I feel like it’s a great way to bond with people and honestly it’s just fun? I’m never malicious, never spread rumors, and never speculate (I think that might be important). Mostly, I’ll talk about the funny things I see people post on social or, like, ‘Ashley was wild in college.’ 

This is something I genuinely don’t think about a lot and has never bothered me, but recently my best friend told me my gossip makes her uncomfortable because gossiping, in her view, spreads negativity. I’m honestly not sure what to do because I don’t really see gossiping as a character flaw, nor is it a negative, it’s actually kind of a basic function of humanity. It’s like no more negative than having to eat food or needing social interaction, to me. How do I proceed in this situation? Do I just stop gossiping with her? We do talk about other things, but I always feel like it’s fun to banter about our own lives and others’ too, to an extent, and now I’m so unsure of what our friendship is supposed to be, and I have no idea what to do. Maybe I’m fully in the wrong and I shouldn’t talk about how wild Ashley was in college. Any advice or thoughts would be appreciated.”

I also love gossip, but gossip has its limits as a social tool and connector. Per Ani DiFranco, “Any tool is a weapon if you hold it right.” (Shout out to Jacqueline Novak who used that quote in a recent Poog episode.) You mention that you never spread rumors or speculate or intend to be malicious when you gossip, but is that entirely possible? What is gossip without a little speculation? A little in-group-out-grouping? I appreciate that you’re owning up to your habit, but I think that ownership might need to start including the more dubious sides of it. I’m willing to bet it’s not only your curiosity as a political journalist that motivates your desire to talk about other people behind their backs (although that made me laugh). I think you’ll be in a much better place to evaluate your friend’s comment if you can admit what gossip does for you, when it becomes mean-spirited, and why someone might say it spreads negativity.

In your defense, your friend painted gossip with too broad of a brush. After all, you can gossip about whether someone’s going to get married, or quit their job, or show up to a party. You can gossip about why that person might have said that thing in that tone, or what may have motivated them to make a decision that surprised you. These are natural curiosities you may want to work out with your friends—the kinds of conversations that set social mores and broaden (then sharpen) our understanding of people. But just as often we gossip to vent, to bitch, or because we feel jealous, insecure, or annoyed. As I’ve written on this topic before, gossip is never really about the subject of the gossip, it’s about the people doing it. You may not mind being a little petty in private if it means bonding with a friend, but not everyone feels that way. Maybe your friend isn’t comfortable being your sounding board; maybe she senses you’re looking to form a camaraderie against another person that she’s not interested in joining. That’s a reasonable desire! Even if it makes you feel like an asshole.

If I were you, I’d apologize for making her feel uncomfortable. I’d own up to why I was gossiping (insecurity, curiosity, bonding, etc), and then ask how she felt when she asked me to stop. Maybe it was just a mood. She might have nuance to offer on what she considers negative versus neutral gossip. You might get the opportunity to offer your perspective on it, too. I think it’s totally possible to have a casual followup about this. (A gossip about gossip itself?) Sometimes when I’m overthinking something a friend said, the next time I see them I’ll just be extremely straightforward about it. “By the way, I’ve been thinking about something you said the other day and have been feeling bad for ___!” Said in the right, easy tone, a comment like that doesn’t have to feel intense or confronting. It can even diffuse the tension, creating the possibility for a more open conversation. I would guess your friend has a story to tell about why she’s been feeling gossip-fatigue, if you ask her to tell it. Maybe you’ll even find it interesting.

On Covid weddings

“First of all, apologies for adding to what I imagine is a veritable sea of wedding-related questions (it's springtime! it's 2022!) but buckle in: My partner and I are getting married in May, and at a loss for what to do about his parents. They're midwestern, have become deeply evangelical over the past several years and—surprise!—are anti-vaxxers. For our wedding, which will be in San Francisco, we're requiring all of our guests to be vaccinated. Not only is this compliant with state/local requirements, but we think it's the right thing to do: My parents have both had cancer, and many guests will be older/immunocompromised. We have communicated this to my partners' parents, who are not budging, and say that the most important thing is their ‘freedom to choose’ when it comes to their health (I could write a whole separate essay on the anti-vaxxer co-opting of reproductive rights language).

At this point, with Covid cases mercifully waning in the Bay Area and many places lifting proof-of-vax requirements, we recognize that we could feasibly have them come if they produce a negative test. However, my partner feels that at this point it's less about the Covid-safety aspect (though that is still extremely important!) and more about the fact that they have proven themselves unwilling to exert care toward the people around them, or to consider the harm their potential refusal to adjust their stance is doing to their son. Complicating this whole situation now is what they told us a couple weeks ago: Regardless of what we end up deciding, they are still planning to be in San Francisco the weekend of our wedding. Just...lurking. We think this is so they're still able to tell their midwestern community--where failure to attend a child's wedding, even for weird libertarian reasons, is akin to an identity crisis--that they are traveling for their son's wedding.

Now we’re facing a few options: Do we let them make this trip and continue to hold the line that they cannot participate in the wedding at all? Do we let them attend the ceremony, which is outdoors? If yes, are we letting down our other guests, among whom we've set the expectation of 100% fully vaxxed attendance? Is there another solution you can pick out of this situation that might not result in a total blow-up?”