Confused;

Get over it - or get over her. You don't get to insist that she do something she is very clearly uncomfortable doing "for you". You sure as hell don't get to dictate to her what she should and should not be comfortable doing. Human beings all have their own individual comfort levels. You either accept them or you have serious control issues you need to address (and I am usually the last person to charge control issues).

Spammed;

Reply all (to make sure everybody on the mailing list gets it). "Dear all... I make it a point to check facts before passing them on. Snopes.com is the reason you never get URGENT urban legends from me to pass on. Passing on bald-faced - and racist - lies about political candidates is just wrong... and contrary to the fair-minded American upbringing I got from my parents. Etc..."

Distressed;

Your husband should have grabbed his "friend" by the throat and backhanded him off the wall for talking to you that way. If you have a brother, uncle or father, one of them should backhand hubby off a wall for not doing so. Meanwhile, it is your damn house too. Next time it happens, tell the asshole friend to get the hell out of it (or you will have the police remove him) and if hubby doesn't like it, he is welcome to get the hell out too.

Virgin;

First, take a deep breath or two and try to relax. Believe it or not, there is no "secret game plan" necessary - in fact, you are far better off without one. If you just go with the flow and let the current take you where it will you will wind up exactly where you would have wound up anyway, with a whole lot less stress. Here's a "secret" for you. Most women will guide the relationship exactly where they want it to go. They do this even with men who naively believe that thay are in control (due to their "secret game plan"). Another "secret" is that what they find most attractive in men is confidence. It is very easy to be confident (and not just seem that way) when you know that everything is going to go where it needs to go without you having to put much thought or effort into it. So stop worrying - and, for cripes sake, stop trying so hard. You'll just screw everything up that way...

Good answers, Graylodge! Love your answer to #2. I bet bigoted Gramps carries more weight, just because he is the patriarch of the family. Either the entire extended family is brainwashed by him or they're a bit slow from the inbreeding.

Good ones - heeeeeyyy... aren't you... yeah you are!!! No, I'm not following you, (Really, I always visit Prudie - it's way too much fun not to.)

I especially agree with the snopes suggestion... I use it all the time.

I check out all of those emails at snopes.com that are "Can you believe . . . Outrageous!?!?", "If you care at all for . . . you will . . . " or "My friend knew someone that . . . ".

Some do turn out to be true but they are few and far between. Snopes is pretty good about giving an unbiased rundown of the facts and they readily tell you if they can't verify it true or false.

I've sent out those "reply all" emails when I get blatant crap and needless to say it didn't go over very well. The original sender feels embarassed and almost attacked because you are essentially calling them out for being an idiot. What I've been doing recently is replying back to the sender letting them know to check out snopes or letting them know what facts I'm aware of. There have been some honorable people that then send a retraction to their "all" but not always. I guess there's no harm in letting the others save face.

ElleBlue:

Good answers, Graylodge! Love your answer to #2. I bet bigoted Gramps carries more weight, just because he is the patriarch of the family. Either the entire extended family is brainwashed by him or they're a bit slow from the inbreeding.

Bigoted Gramps may carry more weight with some, but if he is going to use a computer and the net to put stuff out there he has the same risks and obligations everyone else has. Those who are unwilling to check the facts deserve to be made fools of. Those who do check the facts will quickly conclude that Obama's opposition, in the absense of any truth to attack him with, is willing to resort to stupid, vicious lies and appeals to ignorance and bigotry. The object here is not to convert those who refuse to even look at facts - they cannot be converted. The object is to wake up those who are simply being manipulated.

You hit the point home on #4... There is no game plan; you're better off just being yourself. Amen!

Wow, I can barely see your vicious fangs through the drool. You're chomping at the bit to show everyone what fools they are, aren't you?

Maybe your method will work and even feel good if some idiot who got your e mail by mistake keeps sending you that trash but you have to take into account the relationship you have with the sender. It might feel good to stick up for your mentor Obama and show all the unintelligent masses what sheep they are for believing the drivel. But is it worth it just to stick it to Gramps?

Danam;

You are probably right, but I have a low tolerance level for this kind of crap. I have a step-mother who thinks Dubya is the second coming of Christ and all Democrats are evil, stupid, degenerate people. She knows perfectly well that my Dad's ex-wife (my Mom) and all four of his children think Dubya is a sociopathic, mass-murderer moron and yet she insisted for years on emailing all of us regularly with her brand of "patriotic" garbage, including every hideous and blatant lie about Democratic candidates that made the rounds. I sent her polite refutations with several URLs to back up the fact that she was spreading disinformation, but she never replied to any of them and didn't slow down her campaign a bit. Then I replied to one of her missives with a "Reply All" email outlining a laundry list of provable lies and distortions and referring to several URLs for verifiable facts to back up my assertions.

I have not received a single email from her, other than holiday greetings, since then. I certainly don't believe that I've changed her outlook - or her methods - but at least she leaves me alone now.

If I had a nickel for everytime I replied to a forwarded email about some ficional event, person, or gift I can get for forwarding the email, with a snopes.com reference, I would be a thousandaire! Great responses!

You're 100% wrong regarding the response of the husband to the friend who's insulting the wife. Your reply is not too simplistic.. it's also ignorant.

Is the wife constantly insulting the best friend? How many other friends has the wife tried to remove from his life? How many female friends does the wife parade around who do nothing but tear down the husband?

Also, what is the style of humor used by the friend? If it's nothing out of his norm, ignoring is the only move.. everything else is pushing on a string.

Remember - a friend is just as much a reflection of a person as the person themselves. The subtext that's missing here is that the best friend has not changed one iota. She married the guy and is only now, two years later, shocked by the performance of the best friend? Um, no -- the only thing that's changed is that the wife is starting to realize that she was deliberately being ignorant in the past and has now selected tears for manipulation.

Both are "wrong," but that doesn't change anything. Both will, accordingly, need to learn how to deal with each other, because neither is going away.. and to naively suggest they should or could is simply oblivious.

califuberalles:

You hit the point home on #4... There is no game plan; you're better off just being yourself. Amen!

When I was a sophomore in college, I had the smoothest routine you have ever seen. I had the hair... I played a mean guitar... and I had girls like you wouldn't believe - including most of my sister's friends at one time or another.

Then one day, in a half-drunk and companionable haze my sister offered to tell me all the "sneaky female tricks" women used on men if I would tell her all the "slick routines" men ran on women. Fool that I was, I agreed. It was a very humbling experience.

I told her nothing she didn't already know - something she found both amusing and kind of pitiful - but she told me plenty. By the time she was done I realized I'd been played like a jukebox by just about every woman I though that I had played - I even now knew just exactly how they had done it. It was humiliating. I even stopped dating for a few months in despair.

When I returned to the world of dating, I had a radical new approach. I played no game at all. I simply paid attention to the woman who interested me, let her guide me where she wanted to go and, ocassionally, spoke up if I thought I might prefer that it go elsewhere - or differently. Much to my amazement, I found that my relationships with women came easier and earlier, all of a sudden, and they lasted longer and were both more intense and more satisfying. Having no game plan at all turned out to be the best game plan I ever found... and I can't recommend it enough.

It has the added bonus of being an honest and forthright approach to a relationship, which will turn out to be a real blessing if you find one who's "a keeper"...

the irony is . .. that someone who believes he needs a secret game plan, probably does. self fulfilling prophesy.

if you're so clueless at age 30 that you think the opposite sex is like some alien species to be stalked and tricked, then you have social maladjustment far beyond any appearance issues.

regard eveyone as fellow humans, and treat them as such.

no special tricks needed for opening a conversation - unless you're an idiot, in which case all the tricks in the book won't help

Bigbuck;

I seemed to have touched a nerve.

There was nothing in the LW's letter to Prudie that would suggest that the wife was "constantly insulting the best friend". Neither was there an indication that she "tried to remove from his life" any other friends, nor that paraded around her own friends "who do nothing but tear down the husband".

One thing that is abundantly clear, however, is that it is not, "only now, two years later, shocked by the performance of the best friend". She makes it very clear in her letter that she has been bothered by it from the start, that she has repeatedly brought it up to her husband (and been dismissed, out of hand, by him) and that when she attempted to deal with the "friend" herself, the husband got on her case about it.

You are free, of course, to read into the situation all sorts of things that there is not only no evidence for, but, indeed, not the slightest indication of. You are also free to disregard what she said altogether and assume that the exact opposite is actually the case. But to present the resulting argument as a realistic appraisal of the actual situation is a bit more than logically justifiable... and, in the end, there is one overarching fact that you - and her husband and his friend - need to acknowledge, if for no other reason than simply because it is a matter of law in all 50 states:

She lives there. It is her home. She has the right to throw out anyone except other permanent residents any time she likes, for any reason whatever. If you cannot accept that it is unreasonable to demand that she meekly submit to being routinely treated with disrespect, derision and scorn in her own home by visitors, you still have no choice but to accept that she cannot be legally forced to do so by her husband or anybody else. Should she choose to put a stop to it, the courts will back her up 100% - whether you think it amounts to "pushing on a string" or not.

I'll make it easy for you:

1. Friend is mean man. Say nasty things.

2. Wife feel bad.

3. Husband nicer to friend than wife.

4. Friend is a$$hole.

5. Husband is double a$$hole.

If you want clarification on any of this, keep an eye out for Aunt Messy later on.

Graylodge:

When I was a sophomore in college, I had the smoothest routine you have ever seen...

Hey, it sounds like you could write a pretty cool script from this experience. I say, "go for it"!!!