I always feel very awkward offering sympathy in situations like that, even to the point of feeling like I'm coming off fake when I do, even though I'm being sincere. It's very annoying and I always worry that it makes me a bad friend.
Yeah, likewise.
Self-consciousness is a vice, robbing us and those we care about of a good friend.
Maybe you didn't like the girlfriend, Stanley? I often find myself reacting to a breakup with a particularly despised gf or bf by saying, "Oh that sucks" but in a tone that actually communicates the opposite, I'm sure.
You weren't dating the girlfriend, were you Stanley?
I think it's good to express genuine sympathy even when people are going through breakups with people who were bad for them/you don't like. I think in real ways a relationship is like it's own person, and a breakup is like that person dying. Someone needs to be pretty bad for the funeral to result in "you're better off with him dead" rather than "I'm very sorry for your loss." I know I should self-ban for the analogy here, but it's really the way I think about it. I blame Hofstadter's "I am a strange loop."
I agree with 5 intellectually, but I don't really have a grasp of feeling that way. Mostly (there are exceptions, but not usually), if something's gotten serious enough to call a relationship, I have a hard time thinking of a breakup other than as something indicating important bad behavior on someone's part, at which point my felt reaction on a friend's behalf is "Good thing that's over."
at which point my felt reaction on a friend's behalf is "Good thing that's over."
Assuming that your friend is in fact the injured party. When this is not the case, it's extremely difficult.
In cases like this, my general m.o., learned after many painful years, is to try to say something that reflects what the other person is feeling. That keeps me from having to say something I don't (yet) emotionally feel, but also protects me from being unintentionally callous towards people I like.
Offering encouragement is good regardless. You can say things like, "I'm sure by next time you will have learned how to not drive people away." Something like that.
In the case where I clearly was the wronged party in a serious breakup, I still had a deep feeling of loss. Sure I was angry and sure I also appreciated hearing "Christ, what an asshole," but even amidst that I also wanted to hear "I'm sorry for your loss."
I was in what many people might have considered a bad relationship for five years, with someone many would consider to be a manipulative and unfair person. Breaking up was probably for the best, but also extraordinarily painful. Here's the thing: It's entirely possible to deeply love an impossible person! Families do it all the time. People who aren't directly involved can step back and do the cost-benefit analysis out of earshot, but IME there's really no meaningful difference between the grief that comes from the end of a healthy and an unhealthy relationship. Sympathy or GTFO.
7: Well, it actually works either way. Sometimes it's "Good thing you've let that poor man go on with his life, maybe he'll find someone who will treat him better." But that still fits under "Good thing that's over."
And I know it's wrong to actually say that -- it's just that I have to semi-consciously fake sympathy rather than relief. My underlying beliefs about relationships are fairly Emersonian -- I always find it vaguely shocking that anything works out for anyone.
In general though, I find expressing sympathy well very difficult. I think the main reason is that the language I understand for responding in certain situations is heavily theistic, and although I don't believe that anymore I've never really learned the atheistic way to say "I'll pray for you."
I don't say this myself, but I think "You're in my thoughts" gets used by some people as a straight substitution. I murmur a lot of "I'm so sorry", and ask questions "Are you doing all right?" and "Is there anything I can do?" Not that there's much obvious to do for someone else's breakup
Start with "are you okay?" If they say "ugh I dunno not really it's hard", pour on the sympathy, talk about how it's hard right now, and so on. If they say "ugh, I mean, I guess. It had to happen", then talk about how wrongity-wrong-wrong the former partner was. Easy!
You have to be very careful with the "wrongly-wrong-wrong" approach because there's always a solid chance that they'll get back together.
Stupid Lion spellcheck. Wrongity is totally a word damnit.
Also sometimes it's a good thing to give your sympathy later. The sadness of a break-up isn't over right away but it can feel like everyone wants you to stop 'dwelling' on it and move on.
}}
Dead blog
10-yr-old Angie Vazquez doing a great cover of an Adele (?) song.
Friday I listened to some Sarah Jarosz (folk-country) and however great she was, and she was top-rate, I could still tell she was 16 yrs old. But I wasn't able to say how I knew that. Nasal? Lack of lung capacity?
|?
I don't know anything really about singing, but I remember reading somewhere that serious opera singers don't come into their full voice until quite late -- thirties maybe? I think the vocal cords keep changing somehow?
I tend to think about the topic of the OP in slightly different terms, having something to do with being what's sometimes called a 'fair weather friend'.
Some people freeze up when bad news comes along for a friend; some go so far as to absent themselves, and probably all of us who've gone through something bad have come across friends who simply didn't know what to say or do, to such a degree that they just disappeared, or talked gaily and helplessly about ... other things.
That's a bummer, but I don't tend to condemn people when they freeze up in such a way. I do tend to come to a new appreciation of those who don't, though.
For what it's worth, I've noticed that there's also just a fair weather person sort of thing: someone who just doesn't want to talk or say much or interact much when something bad happens to them.
23: So, basically, I'm a terrible friend? Got it.
I don't see what's so difficult about saying "I'm so sorry you're hurting" or like. That would be true (if true) no matter how beneficial the hurt. I've said it to people after cancer surgery for example. ffeJ annaH has it right.
"Virgina is for lovers. We're no good at friends."
24: No no. I mean that people just do what they do; some people have trouble in times of trouble. It's understandable. I really suck at times of death, myself; I sort of freak out (like, I cry badly, even if it's a cat who's died) so I try to avoid funerals. Which is not best for friends, so I do my best, as long as everyone understands that I'm probably going to get really emotional.
I'm taking this kind of seriously, Stan -- if you're worried that you haven't done right by your friend, maybe just say that: "I didn't know what to say, I'm sorry if I froze up, and are you okay?" I don't know.
27.2 is about right. The most most people can do.
27: I was mostly just needling you. And I think there's some truth to 19's "Also sometimes it's a good thing to give your sympathy later."
I'll work the late shift, friends.
On the "they might get back together" front, I've found helpful something like, "I'm so sorry. S/he has some growing to do," some sort of sympathetic and non-judgmental acknowledgment of the known problem. I wish I could recall the exact phrasing. But a friend of mine said something like that, something that got across, "Hey, I can understand how you loved him, but I think this decision is the right on for now." I appreciated it.
Learning how to deal well with people in crisis is hard. It is a skill. It takes a lot of work and practice and time.
Speaking of delayed support, thanks to Facebook, I learned that an old friend of mine is now a widower with kids. I lost touch with him years ago and never met his wife. I didn't know his wife had died until after I had friended him for a couple a months and I figured it out. We were never close as adults but I feel I should say something. But, by the time I knew to say something, it seemed much too late.
21-22: the great Leeann Rimes recorded Blue, her first hit at the age of 14. She was perhaps a touch emotionally underdeveloped as a vocalist but she already had essentially unlimited chops (here she is live at age 14 ). To make it spookier, she projected a very adult sexuality.
I imagine Whitney Houston might have been similar in her mid-teens but I don't think she ever recorded until her early 20s.
christ, I'd forgotten a) the pipes on that girl and b) as you say adult-style knoqingness; between that and the pan-cake makeup she looks about 27.
What's perhaps more amazing is that by age 17 she was doing Patsy-Cline level covers of some of the deepest, darkest songs in classic country.
She's become more generic musically (standard empowerment ballads), plus skinnier and more beautiful, over the last decade. But she's also accumulated a spectacular home-wrecker type divorce and sued her family for millions of dollars, so I'm still rooting for her to fulfill her over-the-top country diva destiny.
(sorry for the thread derail!).
OT: I've just had a long conversation with my brother which turned to politics during its middle section. I was somewhat stunned and saddened to hear this from him: "At this point, when I go into the voting booth, wherever I see 'Incumbent' next to a candidate's name, I'm voting for the other guy."
Oh dear. His elaboration had to do with starting all over again fresh, etc.
I can't say I avoided being strong-minded in my replies. I wound up saying many negative things about Republicans, and assuring my very much loved brother that he would be making a very bad mistake in voting for some random unknown jackass out of some misguided sense that all of those currently in office are bums, and anyone else would be better. No, anyone else would not be better; Republicans are in large part responsible for the current Congressional paralysis. Etc. I also told him that he should pay attention to Elizabeth Warren (of whom he'd barely heard, though he's in Mass.).
This all turned to Occupy Wall Street at one point, and I worry as Stanley did not too long ago here: my brother really thinks that now that they've got our attention, they should tell us what they think we should do.
After all we've discussed about whether OWS should develop a platform or agenda, I still didn't know what to say to that.
||Folks have been breathlessly awaiting the FCS bracket, right?|>
Buy your friend a drink and don't ask questions. If he elaborates anyway need to use the bathroom a lot.
Carrying lettuce soaked in e coli is a good way to need to go to the bathroom a lot.
This all turned to Occupy Wall Street at one point, and I worry as Stanley did not too long ago here
I just rode home from a gig, where I answered the bandmates' question, "What, specifically, does OWS want?" in a seemingly helpful way thanks in part to that conversation. The internet: it works.
Glad to hear that, Stanley. What did you say?
That it's a protest of our current way of life, more or less.
from a different branch of the music tree: great cover of a great song.
Marginally OT (and I tried to say this on Friday I think but am fairly sure it didn't go through): I know many of you read academic-adjacent blogs back in the midpart of the decade. If you know the one whose daughter needed liver transplants, she's back to blogging and having personal problems where the support of old friends would probably be more helpful than that of long-time lurkers like me. No link because she doesn't need drama, but I thought there might be people here who didn't keep her on their feed readers years after the blog went silent but might want to know.
41,42: My one word answer cribbed from my wife has become, "accountability" broadly construed.
Our local paper had a story y on the encampment's new big tent, and ended with a quote from one of the occupiers: "it's not a protest, it's a process."
