Aoa problem solver ninja auntie!

My best and most understanding friend (who is already engaged to a really nice girl) just told me after the six years of friendship that he is in love with me and is aware of the fact that we can’t be together. He says he needs nothing from me, but some caring until I get married to some real compatible guy!

Problem is he is living abroad and texts me all day long telling me his routine and studies. I told him to talk to his fiancée instead, and he told me that he doesn’t feel any connection to her! I feel guilty because he should be sending all those texts to his fiancée and not me! I care for him, but I don’t love him at all!! I’m in touch with his fiancée as well and she is a really sweet simple gal with no hobbies other than watching TV. She wants to go ahead with the nikah while my friend has started feeling that he and I are soul mates, and says things like “Why can’t we be together?”, “Why me?”, “I’ll kill myself”, and “I’m nothing”.

All this time I have been telling him that it is a phase of life that will soon be over. I told him clearly I don’t love him and I don’t believe in his love and it is just an infatuation! But instead he told me that I too have feelings for him, but I’m hiding my feelings! That infuriated me so much that I told him that I'll never contact him again and I didn’t.

Now I miss him. Should I contact him or not! Will my contact make his life more miserable or can I make him understand that what he feels is just a passing attraction? I don’t want him to make comparisons between his fiancée and friend! He is my only friend and I really care for him. I don’t want him to ruin his life for no reason! He has made a simple friendship some real messy thing! I need him back as a friend again! Please help.

Regards, A friend loser!

Dear Wise,

From your letter it is obvious that you don’t really need any advice. All you need is a confirmation of what you already know: that you have to cut off all communication with your friend and stop being his confidant cum sounding board. You were treating him like a friend but he developed feelings for you. If he wanted to take it further with you, he would’ve told you and then promptly broken off his engagement. He didn’t do that and instead chose to confess his feelings to you while at the same continuing with his engagement. To any outsider, it seems like a case of having your cake and eating it too, where your friend is doing a good bit of cake-eating.

The key to cracking this one is to start thinking of your friend and his fiancée as a married couple. Yup consider them married, which really leaves no space for you.

 Dear Auntie,

I am a male adult, happily married with a relatively satisfactory job with a private company. My problem is that I stammer and while I am able to manage my stammering in 70-80 per cent situations, there are a few situation that still cause me embarrassment and are a source of impediment for me. One such embarrassing situation arises when I am in a company of more than two people especially those whom I do not know well. Then I mostly keep quiet or speak as little as possible, which causes uneasiness for me.

I would like your advice. Is it better to keep silent and let others speak their minds, or should I speak with a stutter? The stammer becomes worse as I feel under pressure once I start to stutter during a sentence. I am a bit perplexed as keeping quiet doesn’t make me feel comfortable and I want to get away from the place.

In order to control my stammering, I even took counselling lessons for more than a year, however it proved to be a temporary solution because as soon as I stopped taking those sessions, the stammering resumed with a vengeance. I am looking forward to your reply.

Confused

Dear Strong,

While it can’t be easy to live with a stammer, there are people who have lived fulfilled and successful lives despite it. You are also leading a successful life, being married and also working which will be considered successful by many.

You haven’t been going for any proper therapy, and now is the time to seek out someone who is qualified to help you. Fish around for a few recommendations before you decide upon a therapist. Effective therapy will help you speak more fluently and also help you learn more about yourself and the situations which trigger the stammering. It will also enable you to control how you feel about your stammering. Another thing you can do is to read up on stammering. The more you know about your problem, the better able you are to handle it and control the way it affects you.

Find someone, maybe your wife or a close friend or a relative with whom you can have a frank discussion about the issues you face with your stammering. It will take a load of your chest and make stammering much easier to live with. Also you should bring yourself to a place where you are able to talk about your stammering to people that you generally meet. If you simply tell people that you stammer and that they should be a little patient, you’ll be surprised at how many people will react without batting an eye. Being upfront about the problem will also make you look stronger.

So to answer your question about whether you should speak up or not, ideally you should allow yourself to stammer without thinking about what anyone else is thinking. But to get to that place you need to work on yourself. In case the dreaded happens and someone makes fun of you or tries to mimic you, you could confront them and ask how they would feel in your situation. And if you feel that is not an option, understand that the other person is a bully who has problems and probably leads a very sorry life.

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