Dear Ms. Behavior: I’m not sure where to draw the line with my ex. Ronnie and I broke up several years ago, but we’ve remained friends. Ronnie is prone to depression and sometimes calls me when she’s drunk and despondent. It doesn’t bother me; I help her the same way I’d help any depressed friend. But it’s more difficult since I’ve gotten a new girlfriend. Tammy doesn’t want me to answer Ronnie’s late-night calls and would prefer that I stop rescuing her when she gets pulled over for drunk driving. (Her father is a retired cop, so she never goes to jail.)
Is Tammy being unreasonable by asking me to ignore Ronnie? Or am I wrong in trying to help her? Does having a new girlfriend really mean that I have to ignore the old one?
— Torn Between Past and Present
Dear Torn Between Past and Present:
It’s easy to conjure up the scenario: You and Tammy lying on the couch, cuddling in that hot way that lesbians cuddle. You feed each other ice cream, or perhaps massage each other’s toes. Suddenly the phone rings. Ring! Ring! Uh-oh, maybe it’s an emergency! You reach for the phone (dropping Tammy’s foot) and check your caller ID. You see that Ronnie is drunk dialing you … again. Your body releases a burst of adrenaline as you say, “Hello?” and you’re back to feeling alive! Ronnie spills the details of her daily crisis while your ice cream melts. Tammy watches you shift into caretaker mode as you deftly analyze Ronnie’s mood and try to soothe her. Can you really blame Tammy for being annoyed or even disgusted? How could she feel anything but short-changed?
Saving Ronnie is not healthy for you and it’s not healthy for your new relationship; worse, it doesn’t even help Ronnie to be “saved.” So, start screening her out. Don’t take her drunk calls, don’t solve her problems and let her call someone else for a ride. But be forewarned: You’ll soon have to figure out what to do with your sorry self when you no longer feel the rush of being a hero. You may be surprised at how lost you feel when you’re not “helping” anyone.
Dear Ms. Behavior:
My boyfriend Evan and I are about to have a baby with a surrogate. She’s not even born and nosy people already are asking, “Who is Olivia’s father?” When we explain that we’ll both be fathers, the next question is, “But who is her biological father?”
We feel we should educate people about the insensitivity of the question but, on the other hand, this is a private matter and we want to be treated equally, regardless of whose sperm happens to have fertilized the surrogate’s egg. (We’ve taken turns with the insemination each month, and know when the surrogate conceived, but don’t want to share this info with the world.) Of course, the answer may become obvious to everyone once the baby is born: Evan is dark and 6-foot-4 and I’m short and blond. But until then, how should we handle the rude questions?
— Papa and Dad
Dear Papa and Dad:
Having to repeatedly explain that you’re both daddies is tiresome, and you shouldn’t reward rude questions with answers anyway. It’s not your job to educate the public about the socio-political issues surrounding same-sex parenting. So, on the days you feel weary of it, you could try a variety of responses and see which works best: 1) “We’ve cloned a baby in the lab. She’s half him, half me. Don’t tell anyone.” 2) “We were drunk the night she was conceived, so we’re not sure.” 3) “If you’re asking which one of us beat off into the cup, we can only tell you that we take turns.” (If it’s an immediate family member asking the question, you may want to substitute a different word for “beat off.”)
Dear Ms. Behavior:
Your response to the person who asked about keeping an old partner on his health coverage through his employer, as well as considering putting a friend on the coverage by declaring him to be a domestic partner, was right-on, but stopped just short of all the consequences that would likely happen.
Not only “may” his keeping the former partner on his active coverage (as opposed to COBRA) be considered fraudulent, it “is” fraudulent. And if he added a friend by calling him the domestic partner solely to get benefits coverage, not only would the insurer terminate the coverage, his employer would likely terminate his employment for fraud as well.
I look forward to reading your column in each issue.
— David Meltzer, SPHR
Meryl Cohn is the author of “‘Do What I Say’: Ms. Behavior’s Guide to Gay and Lesbian Etiquette” (Houghton Mifflin). E-mail her at [email protected] or visitwww.msbehavior.com.