SMART PEOPLE ON BAD DAYS: OPHELIA

I love your column and I think you’re really very smart and funny in equal parts–so, since i’ve out talked this with my therapist–you’re my next hope.

My best friend has been unemployed for over a year, and she says she’s trying really hard to find a job. I want to believe her, but all I see is her sitting on the couch. I hear the job market is bad–worse than it’s ever been–but I see other people getting jobs. It’s starting to bother me when we go out at night, because I feel like I need to pay her way (Like I said, she’s my best friend, we’ve known each other for ten years).

Should I go easy on her? I want to be helpful and supportive, but I think she’s not trying hard enough. Does that make me an asshole for saying that? I want to be wrong, I want to say it’s the economy–but I can’t help feeling like she’s not actually applying for jobs. It’s impacting our friendship and I want to believe she’s trying hard to get a job–I just don’t see how she’s still not getting hired.

Dear Ophelia,

We’ve all heard that we can pick our friends, and we can pick our noses, but we can’t pick our friends’ noses. And while I think that after a certain age we are obligated to start making really lame jokes, I categorically disagree with this statement. First, if we are consenting adults, we can do whatever the fuck we want with each other’s orifices. Secondly, this “joke” implies that we are completely free to choose who we know, who we like, and whether we continue to care about friends from way back.

I call bullshit.

This is your best friend. Who you’ve known for ten years. You have obligations to her, and she to you. At this point, you may or may not like her, you may or may not appreciate her behavior, you may or may not want to be around her, but you’re probably stuck loving her. That’s the bad news.

But it’s also kinda good news. Because really, would you rather be the lonely sad-sack loser who’s not buying beers for your deadbeat best friend because you’re spending your Saturday nights watching free internet porn and wishing you had someone to talk to?

Here’s the better news: you are stuck loving this person and buying the bulk of the booze, but you get to choose how you will be helpful and supportive. Also good news: you seem to have a job. And a therapist. And some understanding of punctuation. You also have a best friend who I bet you like and trust most of the time.

So stop complaining!

I don’t think you’re an asshole. I just think you aren’t trying hard enough. No, wait. That’s what you think about your friend. How does it feel? Shitty, right? But I bet you have good reasons for feeling this way. It is really hard to watch a friend struggle. It’s exhausting and sad, and it’s frustrating. It is so frustrating because it’s not as much fun to hang out with someone who is struggling, and because it sucks to be the one who always has to pick up the tab, and especially because in situations like this there is nothing you can do to help. And feeling powerless is about the worst fucking thing we can feel. Sometimes, when we feel powerless to help a friend, we take it out on that friend because it’s easier to believe that if we’re not control, they are and they’re just failing, than it is to believe that we live in a capricious universe that has the potential to do harm to our loved ones.

You’re not an asshole, you’re just being a little assholish from time to time. Just like your friend is probably not lazy and dependent, she just sometimes acts that way.

So yeah, go easy on her. And go easy on yourself, too.

Here’s how you do it: First, change your behavior. Invite her out to do free stuff. Go to a reading, walk in the park (wow that’s nerdy), get free tickets to the zoo and the museums from your local library, have a potluck (mostly free), sit on her sag-ass couch with her making fun of reality TV. And while you’re doing all this stuff that you don’t have foot the bill for, DO. NOT. ASK. ABOUT. HER. JOB. SEARCH. If the news were anything other than dispiriting, demoralizing or self-incriminating, she’d let you know. And, since there’s nothing you can do about it, you (should) want to hear as little bad news as possible. If she insists on whining about unemployment, listen sympathetically and then change the subject as quickly as possible. But don’t try to be helpful. Unless you see a perfect job for her, or can write her a recommendation or something, you can’t be helpful. And unless she specifically asks for help, your helpfulness will be received as condescension and mistrust. When you spend time with your friend, do things that the two of you enjoy doing together and focus on the things you like about her.

Next: change your thinking. It should make you feel a bit better to know that if you feel guilty, frustrated, and shitty about this situation, I can guarantee you that your friend does too. First of all, she’s the one with no job. Secondly, she absolutely knows that you think she’s lolling about, accumulating bedsores and really high Tetris scores. If she’s looking as hard as she can for work, this makes her feel shitty because she knows you don’t trust her. If she really is super lazy, it makes her feel shitty because she probably hates herself a little and, much worse, she knows you’re right. When our best friend is right and we are wrong, the only worse feeling is helplessness (see above. Also: love you, Mandy!). It should also make you feel better to know that the economy really is the worst thing ever. I cannot point out often enough that the unemployment rate stands at around nine percent, and by some estimates, nearly a quarter of our population is now unemployed, underemployed, or out of the job market altogether. And an unconscionable number of us unemployed and chronically underemployed are young people. Better yet, this isn’t going to change any time soon. So whether your friend is doing her best or not may not even matter that much. She could pounding the pavement every day and applying for jobs all over the world to do things as various as nursing and fixing clown make-up and she might still not get a job for a long fucking time. So armed with all this new knowledge, you can think about the situation in a new way.

Tell yourself that you trust that your friend is either working as hard as she can to find a job, or that if you were in her position you would be behaving a lot like her (through some combination of dispair, boredom, humiliation, or hopelessness).

Tell yourself that you like your friend, and that she deserves your support. Tell yourself that you’re not an asshole. You are concerned about your friend, and that makes you understandably antsy.

Tell your friend that you love her. Buy her that beer once in a while. And I repeat: do not ask her about unemployment. And if she still doesn’t have a job next year, tell her to grow the fuck up, get off the couch, and go to a goddamned job fair.

And, because we all get a little co-dependent around people we desperately want to succeed when they seem to be failing, take a look at my Flowchart for Avoiding Co-Dependent Behaviors in Difficult Situations.

Send your questions to smartpeopleonbaddays (at) gmail.com!

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Photos courtesy of @alviseni and SOCIALisBETTER.