Get Confident, Stupid!

This question came from Dear Margo. I’d love to get an email from somebody in internet land, hint, hint, nudge, nudge.

Usually I'm comfortable with my appearance and my accomplishments. I have a master's degree from an Ivy League university, a challenging job in a creative field and an above-average body, which I work out to maintain. Compared to my boyfriend's ex-girlfriend, however, I feel like a schlub.

He doesn't talk about her much, but I know she was a corporate lawyer with a high position and a salary to match. Plus, she modeled on the side. I've seen photos. She's gorgeous in ways that even plastic surgery couldn't make me.

My boyfriend was the one who ended their relationship, and I know that there are reasons for its dissolution, reasons that he's with me and not her, etc. (He says I'm funnier and more down-to-earth.) But I can't help but feel insecure.

How can I stop feeling like I'm in competition with someone who's no longer even in his life? -- LACKING CONFIDENCE

Dear Lacking,

It doesn’t matter how attractive/smart/successful a person is because there is always someone more attractive/successful/smart. Comparing yourself to someone else in only these categories is self defeating because there is more to you than looks/brains/career. The ex may have had horrendous gas, she may have been bossy, or a bore, or a hundred other things that your boyfriend is too big to talk about.

The point is he is with you now, but you already know that. What you need to learn is depending on your partner for self esteem is tiring and unattractive. Yes everyone has low moments when they need a pick me up, but you seem pretty fixated on the ex. If you are following your boyfriend around asking him who has the tighter pussy, he won’t be your boyfriend for long and it won’t have anything to do with his ex. He isn’t the one comparing you to his ex-girlfriend; you are, so cut it out.

Grudgey Grudge-pants

This tidbit came from Dear Abby.

My mother says I'm tearing our family apart. On Mother's Day, my 8-year-old daughter teased her 9-year-old cousin, asking who'd like her last bite of dessert. When he said he wanted it, she said, "Just kidding!" My nephew went running into the house wailing like he'd been hit.

I was in the middle of telling my daughter what she did was wrong and she should apologize, when I heard my brother, "Harry," ask my nephew why he was crying. My nephew said my daughter had teased him over the dessert, and Harry said, "Well, she's a little bitch!" I was horrified. My daughter and sister-in-law heard it, too.

When I went inside to talk to Harry, he told me he didn't mean it that way and that he could say anything in his house that he wants. My daughter and I left, and I haven't talked to him since.

He has apologized to my daughter with numerous justifications for what he said, but he hasn't apologized to me for what he called my daughter and the way he talked to me. We have had two family birthdays since then (including another at my brother's), and my daughter and I haven't attended either one. My mother is taking Harry's side, saying I'm too sensitive and the word isn't that bad. Am I wrong to think that calling an 8-year-old a "bitch" is horrible, degrading and uncalled for? -- SISTER OF A TRASH MOUTH

Sister:

Well we know where the little tyke got her bitchiness from. He apologized, it was just a joke, let it go.

Did You Know Gullible Isn't In The Dictionary?

This letter came from Dear Margo, formerly Dear Prudence, who is some relation to the person who currently writes Dear Abby.

I was actually surprised when my foot doctor offered me a job as his receptionist on my second office visit. I started working for this almost 70-year-old doctor about two months ago on a part-time basis.

Things were working out well at the beginning. I would only work twice a week, and he even offered to pay me in cash. In addition, the job is located pretty close to my school.

This all seemed too good to be true. (It was.) After the doctor returned from his one-week vacation, things started to change. One day, while I was putting files away in the back of his office, he got up from his chair and landed his old, married, saggy lips on my mouth and kissed me.

Besides being freaked out, embarrassed and humiliated, I stood there motionless. From that day on, I have allowed his kissing and fondling to continue because of plain fear: fear of him claiming me on his taxes as an employee and ruining my eligibility for my scholarship (it's only for unemployed students).

Most of all, I'm afraid of him. Now he keeps bringing up the subject of sex. I can plainly see what he expects of me next. Please advise me on what to do because this situation has stressed me out so much that it's ruining my health. -- FREAKED BY DR. JEKYLL AND HYDE

Dear Freak

Uh, shouldn’t you take at least a little responsibility for this one? He started getting a little creepy flirty and you ignored it hoping it would go away, then he planted his 70 year old married lips on you and you must have at very least kissed back. I can’t imagine you standing as still as a stone, lips and all and him continuing. And if standing still didn’t work wouldn’t you try to back away? Look, I realize your young and more than a little naive, but just because someone wants to kiss you don’t mean that you have to kiss them back. And it doesn’t mean that you have to act like you don’t want to vomit. Granted it is more mature and polite to say “I’m sorry if you misread signals, but I just don’t like you in that way” but if you lack the courage to be vocal then a retching noise, or a gentle push away can also be effective. Shouldn’t you already know this stuff? How fucking sheltered have you been? This is why parents should let their teenagers watch R rated movies and MTV.

Dr. Creepy isn’t really all that creepy. It does give me the crawlies to think of a 70 year old man slobbering all over a naïve 19 year old. But if he really wanted to be creepy he would have the pharmaceuticals to do it. He probably thinks you like him back. I think he is mentioning sex in an effort to titillate you, and doesn’t realize you want him about as much as you want hemorrhoids. I realize he is old enough to be your grandfather but he doesn’t see himself that way. He still sees himself as a sexual person and if a 19 year old wants to let him feel her up, then great, that’s probably half the reason he went to medical school to begin with.

You probably already knew some of this stuff, and what you didn’t know chalk it up to a lesson learned. You can quit, it really should be no problem. If this “affair” were made public he is going to look a lot worse than you. His reputation in the community and also his wife are enough for him to keep his mouth shut. People would be more inclined to believe your side of the story, and it would be an embarrassment for him to be rejected by you in such a way. Also, it is just as illegal for him to pay you under the table as it is for you to accept money under the table.

Learn to stick up for yourself, and when situations such as these arise they will be more black and white. In this situation, if you pushed him away at the beginning, you may have lost a job or, you may have been able to keep it. Either way, you also would have saved yourself over a month of anguish. If you weren’t working under the table, and he fired you for not making out with him you could have filed a sexual harassment suit. When you work under the table you give up things like that, but that’s another column.

P.S. You misused the Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde thing but I’m trying to let that go.