Dear Auntie Bua,

I need your help and I hope that you will reply. Let’s go straight to my problem, i.e. my childhood friend, who is also my closest and best friend, is getting closer day by day to my ex-girlfriend. My ex and I both hate each other now. My friend is honest with me and never hides anything from me. Now they both are almost committed. The problem is that I am pretty sure that this girl will not only ruin a decades-old friendship, but will also poison him against me. Even if this does not happen, our friendship will never remain the same.

I am not against their relationship but I just don’t want to lose my friend whom I used to share everything with and whom I need most at the moment.

P.S: I know my ex can never change.

Worried and lonely Friend

Dear Friend

A tricky situation, but, Auntie will say it to you at the outset, given the circumstances you’ve got to be the bigger person here.

You’ve got to take the highroad and be civil, no matter how ferocious the storm that is building up inside you. But that is not to say that you are not entitled to your feelings and your fears. And feelings have to be dealt with.

Scream out your anger in an empty house or yell into a pillow if it helps lighten the burden. Write out your feelings honestly on a piece of paper or in a diary and rip it up. There isn’t much you can do about the marriage that is about to take place and you certainly should not play a part in trying to end it. Your ex-girlfriend may or may not poison her husband and he may or may not buy it. Only time will tell the answers to this.

But really on the bright side, be glad someone else is marrying your ex and not you. You are dwelling too much on this situation and yes, you might drift  away from your best friend. It will hurt, but you need to find other outlets, new friends, a new hobby or a new sport. In short, a life apart from your best friend and your ex. This will distract you, build your confidence and bring you closer to who you are. You will need all this to garner enough strength to build up your new life and also, so that you are more comfortable in your skin in case the going gets tough.

On a cautionary note, if you find that your negative feelings persist for too long, try professional counselling.

Hi Auntie!

I’ve been reading the advice you give out to people for a long time, but never felt the need to ask you for advice myself. That is until now. My problem is a rather strange one. How can I get my mom from discussing my problems with other people? I think I need to explain a little bit, whenever I get into a sticky spot or something embarrassing happens to me or I get a disgusting health problem, my mom goes to whichever person she can find and gives them this long detailed account of my life. Her friends, relatives, the maid, even little kids that she teaches! She keeps them all updated on what I’m going through.

When I meet these people I worry whether they’ll pass references to some problem I had, or joke about something embarrassing I went through. I feel like I have no privacy. I’m not a very secretive person, but I just hate that when I meet these people the only thing going through my mind is that, I wonder if they heard of my latest meltdown or I bet they know I performed horribly in my exams. I talked to my mom about this and told her to stop, to which she replied she was too old to change herself and she couldn’t help it. I actually share pretty much everything with my mother, I don’t hold anything back so should I stop sharing my problems with her? Or do I need to just get used to this thing and ignore it? I love my mom to bits, but this little thing really gets on my nerves.

A Confused little girl

Dear Daughter,

You, little girl, need to sit your mom down and have a serious chat with her again. You have to tell her that her sharing your problems with the world is not just annoying you, but that, objectively speaking, it is wrong. An answer such as ‘I cannot change who I am at this age’, is not good enough in the face of the fact that her actions are affecting you psychologically. You need to be extremely serious when you tell her that you are saddened and upset by her beaming out embarrassing details about your life to the world.

She probably does not realise the repercussions of what she is doing and probably does not think much before blurting things out. Also some parents may use this as a tactic to control their children. It’s quite common for parents to point out and discuss their children’s shortcomings as a way to control them through publicly shaming them. Your mom probably does not belong to this category but you may know someone who is like that.

You still need to make sure that she realises that you are serious when you talk to her. Also start controlling the information that you give out to her. She will automatically sense that you are being cautious around her and that may help her rethink her actions.

You see while all parents have our best interests at heart, unfortunately some of them just don’t have a sense of how to go about dealing with their children. It’s true that parenthood does not come with a manual and many moms and dads, who find themselves saddled with this role, have yet to grow up and behave like adults themselves.

 Auntie will not reply privately to any query. Please send concise queries to auntieagni@gmail.com