keyblade

He’s calculating and intentional in what he does and how he shares He is a mirror curtsy of your own ambitious aims, you each having fully inspected all the careful, layered, valentine-coated details, as innocuously as a lad in February morning reception and with his matching mischievous manner.

Introverted familiarity and opportunity have encouraged him into Exposure. Why overly-familiar? Because it makes you nervous.
And while you are enjoying having the boss confide in you and you sense some vulnerability on his end, I think you are aware it will never go too far. The only problem is that your stern want for control while also basking in butterfly sensations feels problematic.

I concur with anonymousse. Its high time to replace overthinking with under-thinking by vacating to some place balmy and to let down your hair. Have some other lad of fifty curl your toes and shock your lips dizzy. The energy will shift, and you won’t care so much about his motives once the thrill is satisfied.

Tell him next time he inquiries about your safety, you appreciate the concern, but he doesn’t need to worry about it. If you are correct and he is thinking about you as much as you secretly hope, he’ll take it down a notch. My guess is there is no master strategy in his head. He hasn’t given you a reason to believe that, he just has known you a long time and maybe needs to work some shit out in his personal life and he’s using the letter writer as his own side story/support.

Sorry, I’ve never been more vulgar. I haven’t traveled much. What anonymousse said.

@dinoceros “Even if two people had differing ideas on what each person’s workload should be, I’d assume that most happy couples wouldn’t be so resentful to do a favor asked by their partner (especially if it’s a household task).”

“I’ve started telling him to do it himself when he wants something and I think that’s coming from resentment from him and his attitude when i ask a simple favor and I get a solid no from him.”

I think she wants for there to automatically be no disagreement when she asks because she is also score keeping. She is the one doing most of the adjusting so she thinks he should adjust for her and go out of his comfort zone to demonstrate he values her. She wants reciprocation.

I don’t know what to think about his refusal to offer her a reasonable explanation but perhaps his narrative doesn’t have anything to do with how much he values or doesn’t value her contributions. I didn’t get that it means he resents her. It’s just as telling that he hasn’t made an effort to hear her out as it is that she is assuming her hard “no’s” feel as cold and stingy as his hard “no’s” come across to her.

I agree they don’t sound particularly compatible.

Maybe he’s known for years you are attracted to him and had a fleeting thought that you would be a convenient distraction. Maybe something was slightly out of balance in his home life so he momentarily paid attention to you. He’s never actually flirted with you and I hate to burst your bubble but married people can be momentarily attracted to someone without it meaning much or anything about their spouse or decisions.

Maybe you can re-frame this internal narrative from being a built-up forbidden lust story to a stop embarrassing yourself in front of your married boss, story.

@Ron- Reminds me of this song https://youtu.be/wmUVy43tqw4 by the brilliant Rufus Wainwright, Sword of Damocles. Those who are covetous and jealous of power often don’t understand the cost that comes with responsibility. More is not always better.

We are all under that sword but I think the current republican party is feeling the thread sway.

I can appreciate Ron’s reply because I think it displays a good faith effort to contextualize his opinion.

With all due respect Les, I think many people would disagree that wearing a hairstyle is never cultural appropriation, which is may be why it is difficult to determine who was being the asshole in the scenario. I agree with the question “what if we loved black people as much as we love black culture”. Where it gets weird for me is when people make a fast assumption that someone who genuinely appreciates black culture (and is not just making money off of it) isn’t also somebody who genuinely cares about how black people feel or how they have historically been abused and mistreated by the dominate culture.

If my nine year old child wants to go as Black Panther for Halloween should he really be slapped with the label of being a racist asshole, even if the whole enterprise has nothing to do making real structural power shifts in America, (if this conversation can even be contained that way)?

As someone of a half-ethnicity, does it make me a thief to claim my own culture? As some self-selected and appointed members of that culture have claimed? And if we constantly excuse outright asshole behaviors based solely on looks, while calling out every perceived transgressor a racist asshole, doesn’t that leave the potential of false equivalency? (Not to mention people don’t always display a stereotyped “look” of their culture)

Do you genuinely believe Donald Trump is the same level of racist asshole as Elizabeth Warren, or is that stupid double talk (and no she should not have appropriated native American culture)? Is having a teepee-ish play area from etsy really being a racist asshole? Would it matter if you and your children weren’t white? I know people get gaslit on these things all the time and it is always in defense of the “norm” which is also predominately still benefiting from taking and abusing other people’s land and cultures. But even if the American cultural experience looks very different from different angles, isn’t some social cohesion required for any functionality or change?

I think it’s worth having the conversation and listening to multiple perspectives especially because there is also a generational and experience gap between people who most likely both would like to see real social change to the extent that it can ever be intentionally engineered.