Friends

I have a problem that I absolutely have no idea how to approach. Hopefully SIUD is the place to get some honest, third-party advice/opinions?

As we all know, when you're first meeting/dating/getting to know someone, you're much more polite and refined than you are in your normal state. You say your "thank you"s and your "please"s, you keep conversation away from religion or politics, and you try to keep cussing to a relative low. Or at least that's how I do my thing.

Anyway, once you get to know someone (either as a friend or a partner), you tend to relax more. You don't always have to be dressed to impress or acting perfectly civilized. Included in this, in my opinion, is dealing with bodily gases (specifically burping and farting).With most of my previous girlfriends, as well as many friends, we don't say "excuse me" after every time we burp, and we don't hiding or holding farts. I mean, we're not obnoxious about it, but come on! It's a blessing to have people in your life who don't make you feel embarrassed or ashamed about naturally bodily processes!

Regardless, my current girlfriend is not at all of that mindset. She is very strict about burping/farting. She sees both as impolite, and she and I actually had a small fight not too long ago because she felt I didn't say "excuse me" after enough of my burps. She said she was embarrassed that I sometimes burped with no regard to anyone else and that it made her feel ashamed to be around me. She asked me to stop, or at least say "excuse me" and try to stifle my burps.

I was a bit annoyed that she was so upset over such a small issue (or at least it was a small issue in my mind), but okay. It's her opinion and I can respect that. After all, she is a woman I truly love, and making this one small concession for our relationship (i.e. not burping/farting when she is around, or at least saying "excuse me" when I do) shouldn't be too much to make, right?

Wrong. She farts all the time, and it smells HORRIBLE. I mean, maybe we're all more sensitive to other people's gassy smells than our own, but I swear I had to leave the room twice when we watching a movie with friends and she kept tooting away. Almost all of her farts are S.B.D., and she is very discreet about them. I know this may sound weird, but I've been with her long enough to know when a fart is hers and when it is not. She acts differently, and she'll always try to cover it up by talking loudly to everyone else until it goes away. It's a pattern I didn't pick up on until years after dating her. It is strange how well you get to know someone once you are in a relationship with them long enough. Also, sometimes she'll fart when it's just the two of us, and she'll say "whoops!" and pretend like nothing happened.

This is driving me crazy! She gets on my case all the time about being "rude and disrespectful" to her and others with my habits, and she goes and does the same thing! And it's awful!

I have no idea how to broach this issue on her. I know I said earlier that I'm pretty comfortable with my body and it's natural processes, but I've never actually had a serious conversation with someone about their gas. How do I approach her and make my opinion know, and also call her out on her hypocrisy, without being overly blunt or hurtful?

Keep in mind, she is very sensitive about the subject, so being too direct may also make her insecure or cause her to shut down.

I am dating a girl, and I love her. She's everything I could ask for in a partner. However, there's one sticky situation: she is trying to start a career in creative writing, but her writing is really bad.

Granted, I'm no literary critic - or English major even - but I think her writing is awful. Am I obligated to pretend that I like it when I read her work? Should I try to dodge the issue with white lies? Should I try to break it to her that her writing is terrible?

Normally I'd just avoid the issue all together, but she is trying to start a career, and I'm worried she won't go anywhere. Plus, we're moving in together, and it'll be really hard paying the bills with a starving artist.

Hello all,

So I am ridiculously lucky and have an amazing, loving, caring girlfriend whom I adore. We've been together (living together for most of it) for 9 months now, which is her longest and closest relationship.

I am looking for a little advice on how to approach one of our minor issues. I was at a really rough time of my life this time last year when we met, and thus I've been a very needy girlfriend for pretty much all of our relationship. It's odd because it's a stark contrast to my personality in every other aspect of my life; I'm fiercely independent and stubborn about most things. She doesn't mind, and often tells me that it's endearing. She helps me get through normal days far above and beyond what is necessary. More often than not, she'll make and bring me breakfast as I'm getting ready in the morning, insist that she drive me to class instead of letting me walk when it's cold (incessantly, these days). I hate the cold and am scared to walk alone in the dark because we live in a high-crime area of a big city, so I really appreciate these things, and often do them for her as well. I make dinner most days, and drive her when she lets me.

The problem is, that I don't know that this is sustainable. A huge reason she does so much for me is because it's come up that my last boyfriend before her was extremely helpful to me, albeit in different ways. She knows that I feel like my relationship with him was a very solid one, and feels like she has to overcompensate to "keep" me. I love doing these things for her, but she can never bring herself to ask for something, and feels bad if I help her. It's very difficult for me to get her to accept anything from me. Her grades have dropped since we started dating, from a 4.0 to 3.6, and she hates it, but she still cuts study time to help me- cooking, cleaning, studying with me instead of her own stuff. I am perfectly capable of doing all these things by myself.

Right now, the discrepancy is on my mind because of Christmas presents. I have a very good paying full-time job. I also get money from my parents because I'm a full-time student and they want to pay my living expenses. For Christmas, we agreed to get one another one gift and a stocking with some extra little things. I got her one expensive gift, because I wanted to, can afford it, and know she'll love it, and filled her stocking with smaller gifts- chocolates, the like. But I just found out she got me several large gifts. She cannot afford it, and I know she's very tight for money right now. I don't care what she gets me for Christmas and am thrilled that she is just able to spend it with me and my family. She'll be broke throughout break because of this.


TL;DR- I don't know how to express to her that I'd rather her take care of herself than me. If it was just a caring nature, it wouldn't bother me, but it seems to be more that she feels she has to to meet some sort of standard set by my ex. She knows that overall, I feel my relationship with him had a ton of problems, me being mostly gay a minor one, and he and I haven't spoken in months, so he isn't a direct factor. I try to express my appreciation for her thoroughly every time, but I'm worried that that had made her feel more like she has to keep doing it.

How do I set my girlfriend and I up for a long-term successful relationship when she is sacrificing taking care of herself for my well-being, particularly when I really don't need it? Should I even bother talking to her about it seriously when it's not necessarily going to become a problem?

I'm so not sure what to think about this girl.

I'm 20 -- transferred to university where I met this 18 year-old girl. Now, I'm usually good at keeping any homo feelings for straight girls at bay, but this girl blows my mind. I've never interacted with such a differently wired human being before.

She seems to be completely uninfluenced by society. She just has the strangest rambling way of talking, seems to be completely unphased by modern style within the last 20 years, is reading like 5 books at any given time, takes conversations to completely aberrant places and is just generally so fascinating that I was instantly attracted to her. It also helps that she has a really nice body.

She compliments me, tells me my (insert attribute) is sexy. Lets me flirt with her but seems either flattered and reciprocal, unsure, or uncomfortable. I can't tell. It doesn't help that she hasn't had any sort of romantic interaction because of her extreme deviation from society's stupid definition of normalcy. I'm not sure if she's playing around or not. She's so ridiculously sarcastic I have to ask her what she is trying to say to me sometimes. She usually just giggles and veers the conversation elsewhere. I assume she's heterosexual; she's talked about being able to onjectively discern a woman's attractiveness; another time she became offended when I was taking to her about threesomes and assumed that in a hypothetical situation she'd want to be with two men instead of another woman.

The thing is that even if she was attracted to me and it was a FACT, I don't know that she would show it or even know how. This girl is just really really unpredictable.

man...