Updates: “Line in the Sand” Responds
It’s time again for “Dear Wendy Updates,” a feature where people I’ve given advice to in the past let us know whether they followed the advice and how they’re doing now. Today, we hear from “Line in the Sand” who decided on a date she wanted to be living with her boyfriend of six years and wondered whether she should tell him the date or keep it to herself. Keep reading to see where things stand now, over a year later.
What I continue to realize (and frankly, we both continue to realize) is that there are times when we just really need to talk it out. I feel like it’s often easier to avoid the difficult conversations, and that seems to be a common theme for a lot of letter writers – perhaps you should have “Talk it out Tuesdays” to respond to letters where the best advice is just to talk about the issue at hand. For the people we love and care about, we shouldn’t be afraid/worried to bring up the topics that are dwelling on our minds. Whether it’s a romantic relationship, friend relationship, work relationship or something else, often times talking about it is the best or only way to really resolve the issue.
Thank you, Wendy, for the advice and thank you, fellow readers, for always providing such interesting letters and comments!
Congratulations on your engagement and for good lessons learned.
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If you’re someone I’ve given advice to in the past, I’d love to hear from you, too. Email me at [email protected] with a link to the original post, and let me know whether you followed the advice and how you’re doing now.
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If you have a relationship/dating question I can help answer, you can send me your letters at [email protected].
LW, I’m with you! I struggled with talking to my husband about a few things over the years… Moving in, getting engaged, and most recently- having a baby. I felt super awkward and weird having all of those conversations! BUT- we’re married. We’re in this for the long haul, and we’ll never survive if we can’t talk about this stuff. It’s naive to think that those important talks aren’t going to be necessary in the future. Things are going to come up, and we’re going to have to be able to communicate, so we might as well practice having those talks!
Congrats on your engagement!!
Hey, is there an update about the other thing y’all need to talk through?
The cleaning stuff? I posted an update on Friday, I think.
If that wasn’t it, what was it? Cause I probably forgot! Oops!
No that was it. I’ll go look.
Lette writer here- well put, and i couldn’t agree more! often, it seems like the topics that can be the scariest to talk about are the ones that are most important. and not all of these need to be big “sit down, we need to talk” situations, but if it’s important enough that i’m thinking about it, then it might be important enough to mention.
Yay happy update! Communication is like 99.9% of the time the best option.
Also, why is it that updates are NEVER on letters I commented on??
I’d say 95% of the issues addressed on DW would be resolved if the couple would have effective communication. “Talk it Out Tuesdays” happen daily. 😉
I love the idea of “Talk it Out Tuesdays.” I get that the short answer of “just sit down and talk about it!” comes (pretty much) daily here. But sometimes Wendy or other people give examples of opening scripts for hard convos. Or other times folks here help us think about what is or is not a deal breaker before going into a conversation by asking a set of questions specific to the situation. Or these things remind us about what types of environments are the best for talking about difficult subjects.