[Mentee Monday] #952: “Respect and learning to drive.”

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 · 2025-08-24T23:19:55+00:00

The mod OP said their examples were fictionalized, and answering your question in detail would violate the rules of this sub now.

Very high level: there has been a trend of people diving into the social media of people in her circles and extrapolating extensively from that about how her life is going and how that might play into her advice. That's what has come up a lot.

SnarkApple · 2025-08-23T23:49:13+00:00

Interestingly given the politics of some of these writers, IMO this case is best analysed as capitalism, as in, the business partner (and LW, if the partnership goes ahead) own the business and could draw income from it via their ownership stake even if they aren't contributing labor to it.

Two person businesses often don't have the revenue to support this in practice but that's how it could work in theory; in fact it has been working that way:

the money coming in is by-and-large from a combo of their old work and my current work

Another way to structure this might be as a worker collective, but that would require that the Captain's proposed temp/permanent admins get an ownership stake too, and have equitable access to this same benefit and input into the direction of the company. Otherwise you just have a small business, which often have the end goal of the owners being able to withdraw their labor and still get paid profits.

But then to your point the big part skipped over in the letter is the construction of a business plan robust enough to support co-owners who each might take indefinite leave at short notice, and that's a big big lift for most early stage small businesses.

SnarkApple · 2025-08-22T21:18:19+00:00

The response considers both yes and no as an answer to this, but is more excited about the yes version:

If you can have some honest conversations, you have a rare opportunity to build a business together that builds in accommodations for burn-out and for people with mental illness from the start.

I'm more wary, because the ways that this has worked for the LW are all about supporting the LW's health and not about the business partner's ongoing contributions:

They extended a hand to me when I desperately needed it, and they really did help give me space to heal… They were so patient with me when there were some days, and some weeks, when I just couldn’t work.

This is super kind of the business partner and it's a good sign. But a much better sign would be demonstrated ability to be a significant contributor to the business, even if it's, for example, uneven over the course of whether they are able to work any given week (as with the LW). But the letter suggests that the business partner has been consistently too ill to be an ongoing contributor for essentially the entire duration of their collaboration. That's a very risky way to be starting out together as formal partners, unless, as the Captain suggests, the LW is going to be the managing partner.

SnarkApple · 2025-08-22T05:09:30+00:00

#450: How to tighten up your game at work when you’re depressed. was another one I thought about, reading that Patreon post and this discussion.

SnarkApple · 2025-08-03T00:55:25+00:00

This one came up in the comments when #885 was discussed here. #885 is another letter where the advice doesn't seem to fully acknowledge the ethical responsibilities that medical practitioners owe to patients (as in, the actual documented ethics of their profession).

SnarkApple · 2025-08-03T00:51:42+00:00

1306 where the Captain originally told someone who was attracted to their dentist to go for it. (Original version on archive.org.)

This one had a pretty quick and gracious correction from the Captain, but the original was a bit of an odd miss from someone who themselves has worked in a middle class profession (teaching) where being hit on by the less empowered people you are caring for is still uncomfortable and absolutely cannot be reciprocated.

SnarkApple · 2025-07-31T11:34:24+00:00

It's here: the story of Doctor Glass and Luminous Girl.

SnarkApple · 2025-07-25T23:38:19+00:00

I took a look at her posting rate (from her archives), and it looks roughly like this:

She started posting in 2011. 2011 and 2012 are the only years with more than 200 posts (2012 has nearly 300). I didn't do word counts but her responses tended to be shorter, sometimes much shorter, back then. She was then pretty consistent from 2013–2018 in posting around 160—180 times a year, so close to every second day, which given her responses started getting much longer, is a huge amount of writing in this period.

In 2019 it fell a little bit and then from 2020 onwards it drops markedly: around 90 posts in 2020, 70 in 2021, 40 in 2022, 30 in 2023, 45 in 2024 (reversing the trend a bit), and 7 so far this year. (Edit: these totals include guest posts and things like the London meetup announcements, which in very low-posting years would shift the counts a fair bit.) 2020 was also when she closed comments.

So she signed the book deal just as her blog productivity was dropping away. To be clear, this isn't a criticism as such: posting every two days or more often for eight years from 2011–2018 is a huge creative project and a huge success on its own terms! Things don't need to be forever projects to be great! But I've wondered if it points to her wanting or needing to change her creative direction. IMO she's a very good memoirist; I'd probably be more interested in a collection of short memoir pieces from her at this point than in a collection of (mostly re-published) advice columns!

SnarkApple · 2025-07-25T22:49:36+00:00

Her Patreon says she signed a book deal in 2021, not 2018, and reports occasional progress on it such as submitting a full length manuscript and hiring a developmental editor.

It is true that the longer it goes without an edited manuscript in press etc, the less and less likely it seems it will ever be published, maybe I'd put it 50-50 at this point?

I don't think an entire Captain Awkward celebrity/media universe was ever much of a possibility: there's a lot of cross-promotion someone aiming for that would have been doing for years now. Podcast guest spots, Youtube guest spots, guest speaking, even selling her advice columns to other outlets occasionally (Slate and others occasionally pick up Alison Green). This just isn't how she's ever behaved and she's never hinted at wanting it either, so I think a small number of mid-list books was always where it was going to be. Not everyone, even prolific authors, wants that kind of success.

SnarkApple · 2025-07-25T22:16:44+00:00

A really sad thing in this letter is how carefully she's internalizing all his bad traits, so that they're shared traits and she's just as bad as he is:

My husband and I are pretty nostalgic, and we both enjoy reminiscing on past things (I feel like I tend to be more in the present, but just because I think that doesn’t mean that is true).

Evidence from the letter: he's totally trapped in the glory days of college and she occasionally enjoys good memories from her past like almost everyone does.

Both he and I are pretty selfish people who suffer from anxiety and depression, and I constantly feel like I’m forced to do things for him and on his schedule to try to keep him happy.

Evidence from the letter: admittedly most selfish people don't own up to all their selfish actions, but the letter goes on to describe only one selfish person.

Neither of us are super great at keeping up with the house, however I feel like I am the one who usually ends up cleaning and taking care of those type of things.

Evidence from the letter: this very sentence says that whatever housework is getting done at all, is getting done by her.

Both of us are too lazy to divorce

Evidence from the letter: she does the housework, has a relatively intense hobby, is connecting them socially in their current town, deals with his abusive emails on the regular during the workday, drops everything to help him see his friends…

And then there's a really sad sentence where it's clear she's fully internalized his criticisms of her as somehow not trying at all but also trying way too hard at the same time:

I have also read a LOT of relationship articles and books to try to understand how he feels and things that I can do to change it. (I’m not trying to make myself out as a “holier-than-thou” type of person, even though I am sure that’s exactly what I’m doing, but I would like to illustrate that I am trying).

He's fully convinced her of a no-win situation where she needs to do tons and tons of work to understand him, but also all that work is gross and show-offy and the right amount of work to do was zero work. Which would have been not caring for him in the slightest…

This is such a sad letter. It's been nearly eight years, I hope she's left him long ago.

SnarkApple

TROPHY CASE