DEAR MISS MANNERS: How does one deal with oversharing from a friend?
I have a friend who turns almost every conversation into a chance to use me as a free therapist. She tells me, in great detail, about her very active dating life -- her feelings about each date, plus her tedious self-analysis of every doubt, feeling and changing mood. She asks me for my insight and advice about every trivial event in her life.
She rarely asks how I’m doing, and when she does, it’s obvious that my life bores her.
Is there a way to change this dynamic, or should I just ghost her? Can I end this friendship?
GENTLE READER: What friendship?
No one has discovered a pleasant way of breaking off a bond when one party does not suspect anything has gone wrong. Ghosting -- cutting things off without explanation -- is considered cowardly and cruel. But issuing a report card, with all the reasons that the once-liked person is no longer tolerable, is worse.
Forget the idea that such a critique will inspire them to reform and go on to have a happy life. If they try, what happens when they discover that the relationship was already beyond repair?
Thus the it’s-not-you-it’s-me approach, which is tactful, if worn. Miss Manners prefers a modified version of ghosting, which is drifting off -- just being less and less available. But she admits that while it sometimes has to be done, there is no truly charming way of doing it.
DEAR MISS MANNERS: I have seen it confirmed by multiple authorities lately that the not-bride just does not wear white to a wedding. So what should I have done when my sister showed up at my daughter’s wedding wearing a pure white dress of a lacelike material?
I tried to ignore it at the time, knowing the enormous scene my sister would make if I tried to throw her out. But all these years later, I still berate myself for having failed my daughter on her day.
GENTLE READER: Your conscience is out of whack. You should have harbored guilt if you did cause a scene at your daughter’s wedding, not if you politely refrained from doing so.
That you are still mad at your sister is a different issue. Miss Manners advises you to take comfort in knowing that no one mistook her for the bride, and some may have been amused at the attempt.
DEAR MISS MANNERS: Do rules of etiquette apply when no one else is present? To paraphrase the classic philosophical question: If a person burps loudly or chews with their mouth open in their home, and there is no one there to witness it, have they broken an etiquette standard?
GENTLE READER: No! You will be happy to hear that when you are home alone with the windows shaded, you may be as piggish as you like. Etiquette is a social code dealing with social interactions.
Miss Manners feels obliged to remind you that “no one else present” means that you do not have license to be piggish in front of your family.