Dear Eric: When I share good news with my father, his reaction is always to predict the worst outcome. “My son got his first job in DC!” “The traffic is going to be terrible for him.”
How do I deal with an Eeyore when I’m a Piglet?
– News Blues
Dear Blues: As A. A. Milne showed us, Piglets get most of their emotional energy from conversations with Poohs and Tiggers. You shouldn’t avoid telling your father good news, but it would help if you shifted your expectations. Tiggers rarely change their stripes and the same is true of Eeyores.
That being said, you should communicate what you need to your father. Avoid “you always” language; instead try “I want to tell you good news now and it would help me a lot if you could find something positive to say about it.”
I hope your father is able to honor your request, but he just may not have that much sunshine in him. Is that something you can accept? In any case, communicating your needs and boundaries will help you both. That done, don’t be afraid to then go to the Tiggers in your life to give you the kind of enthusiastic cheerleading you’re not getting from Dad.
Dear Eric: I’m a 31-year-old queer woman and I’ve been with my partner for 11 years. They’ve known their whole life they don’t want children and have absolutely no doubts. I didn’t think I did either, and didn’t think I had doubts. But now all of a sudden many people in my queer community are coming out of the woodwork and starting the arduous process of making/adopting babies, and I’m like, “I thought we were all on the same page about this!” It’s making me question my lack of doubt.
If I decided I want children, I’d have to blow up my very settled, happy, fulfilling life with this person I love. That doesn’t sound appealing at all! I feel disoriented to have doubt on this topic all of a sudden, and time to decide feels bizarrely scarce.
I’m also having trouble parsing out what is female/heteronormative socialization and what are my actual desires. Have you experienced this or seen other queer friends go through this? How do I know what to feel?
– Babeless Babe
Dear Babe: We’re just beginning my tenure with this column and I’m still deciding how much of my own personal drama to put in and whether it’s appropriate, but I can assure you that, YES, I have felt many of the same feelings you’re having.
To my mind, there’s a couple things going on here. First, even in lives full of contentment, it’s normal to look around and wonder about the path not taken. If it wasn’t, the whole genre of time travel and time loop movies wouldn’t exist and I just don’t think I can live in a world where Jennifer Garner didn’t do the “Thriller” dance in“13 Going on 30.”
Sometimes contentment itself is the thing that prompts the question. Maybe you think, “If I’m happy now, does that mean I could be even happier making another choice?” This is why I stay out of casinos.
Another thing that’s happening is good old-fashioned FOMO. When one person in any relationship system changes, it changes the whole system. So I imagine that this baby boom in your community is akin to the Big Bang. And here you are spinning on a lonely planet, wondering if you’re really as happy as you could be.
Even though it might create tensions, you should talk about your feelings with your partner, preferably with a couples therapist. They can help walk you through the landmines that are often inevitable in a “Hey, don’t freak out, but I’m considering having a doubt or two about a thing that we settled” conversation.
It’s OK to change your mind and I hope your partner will support that exploration. But you’ll both be better served working with someone who can ask the right questions and put a pin in the answers that are going to take you two off track.
While there may be biological factors that make this a time-sensitive matter, I really want to encourage you to let this take the time it takes. Acknowledge that you’re part of an evolving system. And while it may look, initially, like your role in it should be an evolving one, too, your community may benefit from you and your partner remaining constants. Maybe that feeling you’re having is a yearning for kids of your own, maybe it’s a yearning for another kind of life, maybe it’s the beginning of the happy designation as the fun aunt. Whatever it is, embrace the possible. Lean into your doubts.
(Send questions to R. Eric Thomas at eric@askingeric.com or P.O. Box 22474, Philadelphia, PA 19110. Follow him on Instagram and sign up for his weekly newsletter at rericthomas.com.)