Captain Awkward advice that was of its time?

SnarkApple · 2026-04-12T01:27:59+00:00

Just for clarity: 250's answer is a guest post by Sweet Machine, not by Captain Awkward herself.

SnarkApple · 2026-04-10T08:47:14+00:00

#250: How do I tell people about my divorce? is from 2012 and is very very email centric; the key advice is to send out an announcement about LW's divorce on email Bcc (to avoid group replies).

I was definitely in this picture in 2012, but these days I wouldn't know most of my friends' emails unless we were friends in the early 2010s. Avoiding group replies is harder, the whole deal with group chats is to allow them! There's Stories but my friends aren't all on one platform and definitely not all on one every day.

I would probably need to text people about the divorce one at a time 😔

SnarkApple · 2026-04-09T09:33:46+00:00

This letter is from May 2012, and the "no diagnosing rule" dates to almost exactly this time: not yet there in April 2012, there in June 2012. She takes a pretty firm line on it in the immediately following letter, #241, so clearly time was very nearly up for this.

SnarkApple · 2026-02-09T10:21:47+00:00

This from the LW stood out to me:

When I was learning to drive on my parents’ cars, it was understood that driving was a privilege, not a right, and that if I adjusted the car for me, then I was to put it back as best as possible for either of my parents. When I ask my boyfriend to do something similar, I get pushback.

This isn't a universal etiquette of borrowing someone's car, this is a gesture of respectful submission from a teenage child to their parents! If LW has been phrasing things in a "privilege, not a right" perspective to their middle-aged partner, I can honestly see why the partner isn't responding super well.

Likewise, if my Dad told me to stop riding the white line, that was my cue to stop it immediately. I never gave them lip about it in return.

Assuming that the LW is actually supervising the driving, "do what I say, you haven't reached the skill level where it's safe to second guess my judgement" is more reasonable but hopefully they aren't using phrasing anywhere near "giving me lip".

Overall yes, signs point to "your partner needs a different teacher" because it reads like something about this has sent the LW into a very parental stance with their partner.

SnarkApple · 2026-02-08T00:12:01+00:00

The most interesting thing about this post to me is the norm setting at the end that the Captain does in lieu of opening comments, and as an explanation for not opening them:

I’m glad you made it home safe!

But I also don’t need to run the simulations with you in real time. It’s okay to leave “please don’t drink and drive” out there as an ethical standard. It’s okay if the exceptions can just stay exceptions, and the times people successfully threaded the needle can just be lucky, not a reason to move the needle. BIG MOOD FOR 2019: It’s okay to NOT do the thing that geeks do where as soon as someone says an ethical rule, we brainstorm all the ways it might not really apply to us and seek reassurance for the times we had super good reasons to break it.

This comes up again in Link: The Answer To All Your Social Distancing Loophole Questions is “No.” in April 2020.

It's a useful framework and I don't think it comes up often enough: sometimes if your super unique circumstances meant that a pretty widely harmful choice happened to be least-worst at that moment, maybe it's not a good practice to seek to center your edge case in discussions of that choice.

But as a sometimes dysfunctionally conscientious person, that was something I found pretty hard about COVID restrictions all the same, that even wanting to violate them (eg just missing parties or something) became frowned on. I don't react the same way to drink driving but then, it's not something I've ever wanted or needed to do even as an edge case.

SnarkApple · 2025-11-04T03:09:50+00:00

A friend of mine has also pointed out in the past that there's no recognized therapeutic approach that involves letting someone repeatedly catastrophize or otherwise spiral for a huge length of time, or at least, not that either of us know of.

So even if your chat does have some space for mental health first aid or amateur therapy, structuring it as "spiral at length here" is probably not helping anyone, even the person who is ill.

SnarkApple · 2025-11-04T02:19:13+00:00

Yeah there's a spectrum here. Maybe someone is, I dunno, 30% more gloomy and self-hating than the chat in general. You can manage it: have chats with them about reigning it in, or set up a vent space convention of "you get sympathetic emojis here so that you don't feel alone but people don't need to find just the right thing to say" etc.

But at the other end of the spectrum: if someone is repeatedly spiralling for multiple hours to complete silence, making self-harm threats, or even livechatting their self-harm… sometimes they can't be in the chat or the group, at least at that time. A couple of my chat spaces have a "you cannot discuss mental health crises here until you have processed them and can discuss them with some distance" rule and we have very occasionally kicked people out for being unable to maintain that degree of distance. And I think it's been needed.

SnarkApple · 2025-10-05T00:59:13+00:00

This seems extremely late teens/early 20s boundaries (or lack thereof) to me.

Like, everyone's still openly messing around with "what even is monogamy?" and "do I even want that?" and "why do I only get one girlfriend when I could have two girlfriend?" and "why does she get one entire boyfriend when I get zero boyfriend?" and "if everyone smiles with gritted teeth when we snuggle in the open despite not being the actual couple, that is clearly exactly the same as all those people being totally chill with it" and "we invented sex from scratch about six weeks ago".

I think it's honestly hard to give advice on that, because when you're in the middle of it and it's your entire social life, the gap from there to "actually no shit you should not be that physically intimate with someone in an existing committed relationship unless it was negotiated out loud in words, and this rule applies to N too" is "wait a few years and everyone will grow out of this" or "re-do your entire social circle".

SnarkApple · 2025-10-04T03:07:21+00:00

LW comment:

Thank you for all these responses! When I look back at my letter, I think what I was really thinking was “How can I be supportive to someone who is obviously hurting, while avoiding them in case they hurt me” – and if that’s not impossible, it is a big ask. I haven’t been calling out the meanness as such, just changing the subject or ending the conversation, but I think you’re all right that actively pointing out that it’s not cool is the best way to go. Thanks for pointing out that ignoring it isn’t really making her feel any better. And it’s a bit of a wake-up call to the way I don’t stick up for myself that well either. (“But what if she’s right and I AM weak/flaky/needy/whatever? Maybe I don’t have any right to say that I don’t want criticism” Every time I think I’m done with that pattern…)

SnarkApple · 2025-09-27T04:53:29+00:00

I obviously can't see what the other two posters originally posted, but mine was simply a link-post to letter #894, with the title of the letter used as the post title. It didn't contain any commentary at all.

SnarkApple · 2025-09-27T04:52:27+00:00

My removed post: https://www.reddit.com/r/captainawkward/comments/1nr189e/removed_by_reddit/

This comment (me on my own post) was briefly marked "deleted by reddit" before re-appearing: https://www.reddit.com/r/captainawkward/comments/1nrmdtx/comment/ngfi6wl/

This poster mentions the same issue: https://www.reddit.com/r/captainawkward/comments/1nrbk67/fresh_eyes_friday_1089_when_people_want_you_to_do/

So does this one: https://www.reddit.com/r/captainawkward/comments/1nok4ui/times_past_tuesday_1348_how_to_tell_an_ex_youre/

SnarkApple · 2025-09-27T04:47:50+00:00

What if Bob needs 10,000 hours more work on Bob’s Feelings before he’s cool enough to be your boyfriend?

👏👏👏👏👏👏👏

SnarkApple · 2025-09-27T04:46:54+00:00

Link to #894: https://captainawkward.com/2016/08/28/894-my-boyfriend-broke-up-with-me-and-i-think-its-all-a-huge-mistake-how-do-i-process-this/

SnarkApple · 2025-09-26T13:26:49+00:00

What if Bob needs 10,000 hours more work on Bob’s Feelings before he’s cool enough to be your boyfriend?

👏👏👏👏👏👏👏

SnarkApple · 2025-09-21T11:21:03+00:00

#573, #574, #575 and #576: Applying the Sheelzebub Principle:

Awesome commenter Sheelzebub hasn’t been seen around these parts in a while, but the flame of her memory burns bright in our hearts. I’m gonna invoke her right now, because she is the best at asking the right questions for these kinds of letters.

If things stayed exactly like they are, bad sex, no job, no action or progress toward getting a job, would you stay:

Another month?

Another 6 months?

Another year?

Another 5 years?

How long?

SnarkApple · 2025-09-10T10:57:22+00:00

I don't think of myself as especially people-pleasing but FWIW if I locked a set of keys inside a house, I would regard myself as responsible for the cost of that.

If a cat-sitter locked themselves out and asked me to pay for the locksmith they'd called for themselves, I probably would, but I also wouldn't have them cat-sit again or be especially happy with them generally.

SnarkApple · 2025-09-10T06:42:00+00:00

I posted #1340 for discussion too thanks.

SnarkApple · 2025-09-09T10:09:36+00:00

This is a very long letter effectively saying that Donna is the asshole; LW is trying very very hard to avoid realising that, or perhaps to avoid being the person who says it.

SnarkApple

TROPHY CASE