HighlandAmy's advice column | HighlandAmy's Advice About Families

askHighlandAmy

advice column ask question view feedback favorite columnist advicenators

Q: I have been with my boyfriend for 3 years and he's a wonderful guy and to me he's the type of guys girls look for not him as a person but his qualities like he's kind, sweet, generous, will leave his friends just to be with me, and different things well i really do love him and he wants us to get married but my dad hates him but he will not tell me why and my boyfriend has no secrets from me or lies to me but my dads always brining up things like "i know he's a liar and a cheater but im not going to tell you what it is i know" what should i do to make my dad like him please help me i don't know what to do?

As a rule Dads hate the guys thier daughters date. I'm going to guess that your Dad doesn't know any dark secrets about your boyfriend. If you like him, and you don't think he's liar and cheater, then I say don't listen to dear old dad. He's probably just upset that he's losing his baby girl to another man ;)
I'm sure if your guy is as good of a guy as you say he is, your dad will come around in time.

Q: HighlandAmy,
Long time reader, second time writer.
I feel awful. I feel so disgusted with myself, and I don't know what to do.
I love and respect my family but am terrified of them, I find myself spending all of my time (when I would rather be with the people who know and care for me) with jerks who could not care less if I was dead or alive.
I find that I put myself around these bad people when I'm feeling stressed or depressed and the irony is these people only magnify the feeling. Maybe I think it's safer to be around people who can't see me? Maybe I just am worthless?
A few months ago, I stopped taking my SSRI after an adition to my medication turned out to be a pharmacutical alergy of mine. My instinct is to CONSIDER going back on the original medication...
The thing is this, when I was taking an SSRI every day, I was still around bad people who did NOTHING positive for me. I like the way I feel now, without the brain drugs editing my feelings before I feel them. But I need to stop behaving the way I do and learn to talk to the people who matter to me. More to the point, I need to learn how to talk to the people that I matter to.
Would you say I should try the medication again?

No magic pill is going to help you make the right decision about who to spend your time with.
Honestly, I think more often than not, people use medications (like SSRIs) as a crutch, rather than do the work to make their lives better and themselves happier. The long and short of it is that you must make the choices every day to do what is right and good for you.
If someone constantly makes you feel bad, tell them (in no uncertain terms) that are not welcome to be part of your life.

You say talking to your family can be hard when you are depressed. The only way I can think of to start talking to them about it, is again, to be clear and say what you mean. Like: "I am feeling [blank], it would help me if you [blank]." But understand that they may not always be willing or able to do what you want them to do to help you.
The best kind of help is the kind you get from yourself. It's important to remind yourself, every day, that you are someone special who is worthy of being treated well. You don't have enough life to waste it on people who don't treat you as such!

Q: My mother's boyfriend is very inconsiderate to my little sister and I. He seems to think that anything that we have to say can not possibly be more important than what he might be saying, even if we need help with our homework or are cooking dinner and can't find something. He also does not seem to think that the rules of the house apply to him. Another big problem is his phone behavior. He will call while one of us is on the phone with a friend (we have call waiting) and when we tell him that we are on the phone and that we will have our mother call him when we are done, he still calls back about ever five minutes. He has done this when we were on the phone long distance, and we finallly got irate and yelled at him (he had called back six times, we counted) Then when he talked to our mother, he told her that we were rude to him. We have told all of these things to our mother over the last two years, to no avail. How can we get her to break up with this jerk?

Unfortunately, I'm not sure that there is a way to get your mom to break-up with him. Your mom is a grown-up and probably feels like she doesn't have to answer to you and your sister.

It is pretty lame that he treats you and sister so badly. The only piece of sound advice I think I can give to you is to talk to him and your mom about how you feel. Calmly voicing your concerns and stating certain examples may help them to see exactly how you feel and why. I would use a lot of 'feeling statements,' like: "When you call the house 5 or 6 times after I have told you I am on the phone, it makes me feel like you don't think my call is important."

I don't think trying to get your mom to break-up with him is right route to take. Your mom may not think that he's a jerk, and when you or your sister try to tell her that he is, she may think the two of you are resentful that she is dating.

Bottom Line: Your mom is an adult, and if her mind is made-up to date this man, I don't see anything you and your sister doing or saying changing that fact. If I were you, I would just try to make my feelings know and smooth out my relationship with her boyfriend.

I hope things work out for you guys!

bio

I'm totally Rad! I have lots of sage advice and words of wisdom to offer the world. For more info please visit my home page HighlandAmy.com, or my blog Blog.HighlandAmy.com