Don't Blame Me! - Stressed Out Over Pride

Episode Date: May 22, 2023

This week Meghan and Melisa give advice on: Ex best friend and sister are now besties Friend's partner is comfortable around our friend group Trying to make everyone happy at Pride Fest Racist therapist Buy our merch: https://store.dftba.com/collections/don-t-blame-me Follow Us! @meghanrienks www.instagram.com/meghanrienks https://twitter.com/meghanrienks @sheisnotmelissa www.instagram.com/sheisnotmelissa https://twitter.com/sheisnotmelissa @by.meghan.and.melisa https://www.instagram.com/meghanandmelisa Affordable Therapy By State (Curated by Crissy Milazzo): www.tinyurl.com/y64kwdnf Need Advice? www.dontblameme.show Domestic Listeners Call: [phone] Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

hi everybody welcome back welcome greetings for the first time if you're brand new here this is another episode of don't blame me where we two wonderful genius smarty pants give you life-changing life-altering quantum leaping advice did you watch quantum leap back in the 90s no but i did audition for the reboot yeah that's like i will make references to tv shows and i'll be like oh did you watch that i go no i auditioned for the reboot i was obsessed with it as like a five-year-old okay yeah it seems cool there was this other show called morning edition where kyle chandler he would get tomorrow's paper that day so like he would get tomorrow's paper the next day so he then he would like go around and try to like cry and fight and fix things

so then it wouldn't make it to the actual paper now what about the lottery that was one of the rules he couldn't do it i fucking hate those like wait wait was it was it that or was it that he could i don't remember again i was like five but i think it was either he couldn't play or he could do it under a certain amount like it like let's say comes up with these rules you know if it was like the local lottery yeah he could do it at a low amount but you gotta think about it he can't ball out you know because every day he could be a new millionaire so he's gotta live in moderation oh i guess you're right so wait so his only power was he just got the newspaper a day early i if i found out that like that was my power i'd be like i mean it wasn't like an actual superpower

he just a cat would show up at his door and go and then the newspaper would be there see i would probably just ignore it if it was me i just be like but you i'm not messing with this shit no that's why i wasn't i wouldn't be chosen you wouldn't be chosen it's so funny i literally was like why does this name sound familiar months and i watched game night last this past weekend and he's in game night and i told months i was like i love you to death this needs to be the last time we watch this movie i it stresses me out it's like the perfect recipe of a movie that stresses me the fuck out doesn't stress me out as much as the hangover but it's pretty close i remember exactly where i was when i saw that movie for the first time and like it sits with

me the movie yes like it does it changes your psyche it does it's like interstellar but for your like what are your adrenals what are the things that like control like stress hormones yeah your cortisol it's so stressful it is it is where were you i mean i was in my apartment the upstairs one yeah and it was during the pandemic and i was just sitting there heart like what is going on i almost i saw it in theaters and i was like this is i thought i was coming in for a hee hee ha ha no no there's fabergé eggs fbi wanted like like undercover list and people just dying it's so fucking stressful Rachel McAdams is fantastic in it but like it is my worst nightmare like you're doing like a haha we love trivia night we love

like game night we're doing a fake murder mystery kind of thing and like psych turns out it's real but it is very good no it's really fucking good and that's why it stresses me out so much like I believe it I'm like this is painful um but I've decided that I think that has to be the last time i watched it how many times have you seen it twice but it's just i i just don't think i can do it again okay like i was like this is just it's hard but he was in it and i was like what else is he in and i looked up i was like he's in everything he's in a lot of things he's been a working actor for years he's funny though and he's funny and can do drama yeah i was gonna say he doesn't do as many comedy stuff but he is he's a funny guy oh maybe we'll forgive him for having

two first names well that's not his fault that's his parents fault well you know maybe not because a lot of actors it's they choose that is true that is true let's see yeah kyle martin chandler he could have been kyle martin his middle name is a last name i was gonna say all of his names are are firsty last names martin oh you're oh my god yeah oh so he was doomed from the start it is his parents fault definitely has not held him back though no not at all on this podcast we will be changing hearts minds lives souls and whatever else we can i was trying to think of what the diapers what the saying is from friday night lights it's like oh maz could eyes tight fist out something hearts lies this movie is like is camp like it's not just it's a tv show no no the

fact that they've expanded in like a movie into like a literal whole tv universe uh-huh it is like b jordan was in it can't be as a hell it's so fucking camp and they have these like impassioned football speeches when all the men are like shirtless in like the locker room and they're all like boys because they're in high school the actors are i mean are they they chill like kid child actors okay because to me i go in order to look believable to play football you got to be a little older have you seen high school boys who play football they are massive that's what i'm saying but like you know the idea of like actors you're gonna have to get you know it's not a not a huge crossover of actors who are also played football in high school like it's usually more

theater kids clear eyes full hearts can't lose i wasn't that off i would have been able to give you that in 0.5 seconds there anytime i like have like a random like combination of words he'll just like launch into like oh it sounds like the he's like something laughs like i don't want your and i'm like okay yeah but once again never seen movies or tv show it's just part of the zeitgeist i should watch it he'll love it that's like a guaranteed to make him cry movie that's like a mod it's like i just need to cry he'll just put on like that one speech from the movie and i'm like okay let's let's move through this anyways if you want to be on an upcoming episode we will take your call but we'll take your voicemail or your voice memo so if you are based in the united

states you can leave us a voicemail at 310-694-0976 international callers you can send us an audio message at meganpodcast at gmail.com so you have three minutes to get out everything you need to say and the best way to do that is to write down what you need our help with what you need our advice on put everything down it will be anonymous include your age don't include your like name or anything like that um and tell us the whole the whole shebang the whole story give us the references if you're like we've got all this beef me and this person and i can't even get into the history we need to get into like enough of the history so we can have a good a well-rounded character when i was in high school we had to give a get up and give speeches and communications

class they had to be three minutes long and that seemed like forever like it was a lot and so i feel like three minutes is easy it's it's easy when you write it down because you don't have the spaces to be like oh and then or you repeat or whatever like when you write it down and you read it i promise you have more than enough time and if you want to listen to some previous episodes to kind of get a sense of how the other calls sound, please do because we can only give you the best advice based on the information you give us. And if you don't

want us to infer the wrong thing, you got to give us that right thing so we don't have, you don't leave room for us to infer. Because we'll do it anyway. I will. Have to be Asian or have your parents permission. I think that's the whole shebang. Shall we get into

the episode? Let's do it! Hi And again, Melissa. So I'm just going to jump right in because it's kind of a lot. This story involves me, Sarah, 22-year-old she-her, my sister, Emma, 30-year-old she-her, and Ava, 22-year-old she-her. In 2019, I left home for my freshman year of college. I decided to use this time as an opportunity to stop being friends with my best friend since kindergarten. Her name is Ava. I made this decision because Ava and I had kind of a toxic friendship, and in our senior year, I kind of just became fed up with her behavior.

She had a tendency to make everything about herself and made me feel like the only reason I had friends was because of her and also somehow made all of my accomplishments about her. Our goals and our morals just didn't align anymore. I think we were just naturally growing apart at this time, and I used leaving for college as an opportunity to ghost her. Once I left for college, Ava started working with my sister, Emma. Because they started working together, they became very close and became best friends themselves. Some backstory on my sister and I's relationship is that she and I have a big age gap, so we've never really been that close. And as I got older, I felt like we were becoming better friends and

had more in common. I've always wanted to have a good relationship with my sister, but she's made that very difficult over the years because of her complex relationship with our mom. Ava and Emma's friendship was very hurtful to me because I kind of saw it as a betrayal for my sister. I would see them posting on social media or people from my high school would send repictures of them asking me why they were friends and telling me it was weird, I unfollowed Ava on all social media this time. I've tried to keep my feelings about the relationship to myself because I really don't want to make it about me and I feel as though if I tell my sister it bothers me, she'll just tell Ava. But it breaks my heart when I see them together because why can my sister have

such a great relationship with Ava but not with me? It's been multiple years now of their friendship and it just doesn't seem to be going anywhere. My question to you is, do you have any advice as to How to not let this bother me. I feel like it's hard to move forward with a relationship with my sister while she's friends with someone who I don't want in my life anymore. Do you think there's a way for me to have a relationship with my sister despite their friendship? I don't know.

Maybe I'm being crazy. This has just bothered me for way too long, and I had to call you. I love you guys. I've been listening to you since I was, like, 14, and I'm 22 now. So you guys are, like, my actual big sisters, and I love you. so i think that's all my time uh bye here's the thing they probably get along because you weren't close to either one of them and so there's probably the characteristics in them that you don't like yeah are probably characteristics that mesh well for them to

be friends yeah and you know if you're not did you tell your sister why you weren't going to be friends with ava anyways avery yeah did you tell your sister why you didn't want to be friends with ava anymore and explain like you were breaking you were ending the friendship like if they were just working together and ava and emma have no clue as to why you were actually ending the friendship then you know you weren't close to someone you spent a lot of time with them then like did you expect them to be enemies at work yeah or maybe just like not become friends it seems like they're super close now but like it's i don't think it's that weird that they're friends if you don't like either one of them yeah well no she likes her sister but they're just not close

and she wishes they were closer but i think you needed to convey you have to she likes her sister but they have issues because the sister is has their mom yeah and so like it just might be like y'all y'all just aren't compatible as friends but like you can be you can have a relationship with your sister that isn't like a close friendship yeah i think like i mean it really depends on like what the issues your sister has with your mom because you do have a big age gap so you probably got if that is also your sister's mom you were raised by different moms and so if if you really want to have a relationship with your sister and what's stopping and kind of getting in the way of that is your sister has a really strained relationship with your mom

like then you have to be like okay then do I what am I going to do about that like you can't ask someone who has a strange relationship with someone else to be like well i'm fine with them so i need you to like look like you have to have a conversation like you can't just have one person meet you where you are like you both have to compromise it's kind of the same thing it's like she has a strange relationship with her mom and you have a strange relationship with your friend that you had since kindergarten yeah so it kind of yeah no it's pretty parallel you're right like you just have to communicate and as a ghoster there is something there's something important when it comes to ghosting where if that if it's not an awkward ghost if it's like a i'm really

fucking done with you if it's a cutout ghost then it can't be a ghosting situation to the people who you're close to like they need to know why they need to know the reasoning like i've ghosted people and like Melissa knows and it's like you know it we both have like okay we we we get it it's not like oh I ghosted this person and then I've alluded from everybody else like nobody else like knows what happens because yeah then you don't really have it puts you in a position like this where it's like you can't control the the the narrative at this point like it feels a little odd and if if it is important to you that the people you're close with aren't friends with someone or don't associate with someone like that's totally fine but they need to know that

ahead of time and they can also still make their own choices and then from there it's not like well i forbid you from seeing them it's like okay well then my boundary is i'm not going to be friends with this person anymore so i don't think this is odd that it bothers you yeah i think it's totally normal yeah it bothers you it's two people who you feel let down by one in like a sister relationship one in a friendship and then you're seeing that they're getting along really well and it can feel really random but I think Melissa's right like if to the crux of it that they're just like very different people than you then what they're bonding over and what they really have in common is probably the traits that you don't like and or sometimes like this is this I know this isn't

like always a comforting feeling to some people but like someone can be like a horrible friend or a horrible partner and it's not because of who you are it's because of how the relationship is like you're not compatible so then they might not be a horrible friend to somebody else but that doesn't mean that you should change yourself to be like that other person it's it's like life telling you like oh you're not compatible don't change yourself so you are compatible with this person like this is this is the sign this is the omen like this is the indicator that this is not right and we shouldn't be molding ourselves to fit every relationship because every relationship will be will be different so there's a chance that she's a better friend to emma and emma is

a better like older sister figure to her and that it can feel like that has something to do with you but but it doesn't like and i do think that when people choose to be good people to a selective number of people i don't view that as like true goodness like as like oh i'm a really great person but I'm only going to be nice. I'm a really nice person, but I'm only going to be nice to these people. I'm like, okay, so that's like a selective thing that like there's either issues

that they also have on their side where it's a strained relationship, not just in your eyes, or they're not the people you want to be friends with or be close to. Yeah, I don't necessarily think it's, for me, it's not like them choosing to be nice or whatever.

It can just be like you said that you and me ava have different morals and values and maybe ava and emma have like similar morals and values so like for them it makes more sense for them to have a friendship where with you it doesn't yeah because like my thing is like if someone's like in the idea of like choosing to be nice when it's like not your character then it's like okay either they align in morals or one of them is pretending they don't and then i'm like okay like i don't view that as a positive trait even though on paper it might be like oh like we align now it goes but i know that's actually not the truth you haven't changed your mind or whatever it's like for me i would always rather

like someone be genuine whether that's i like who they are or i don't like who they are and so i think right now you're looking at this of they're getting along in spite of yeah and to you you're viewing this as a kind of like a universal act where it's like well i assume in the ways they've let me down they're not letting each other down but it's either they haven't set that expectation so they're not letting each other down in that instance or they're mutually letting each other down or they just it's social media and you're not like seeing all of those parts to it and I would without a doubt feel like betrayed in this sense but in order to I think truly get a grasp on this more,

I think you're romanticizing your sister. Like, I think you're having this, like, hands-off kind of view and relationship of, like, what you wanted your relationship to be and that she's the one

who's choosing not to do that. And if that's really the case, if, like, her beef with your mom and stuff, like, if that's, if she's the awful one in the situation, I don't think that you would want

to have a relationship with her. Like, I think you're yearning to have a relationship with her is because you do like her as a person and you're recognizing that the only real strain there is the relationship with your mom and that's not turning you against her. So I think you do know that there's like some merit there to it,

but you just might not be ready to figure out what the compromise is there and how you view your mom and how she views your mom and what the relationship is like moving forward. Because right now it's not moving forward because I don't think there's any sort of recognition and compromise. And it can be on both sides. Like that, you know, I've got people in my life where like, we have very different relationships

with certain people. And like, I draw a very hard boundary with it. And it's like, if you're not going to respect that boundary, I'm just, I'm going to, I'm going to dip out. But you have to communicate all of this because also like your sister didn't, did you, did your sister know that you're like, I really wanted to like get closer and have a better relationship with her. And then if she knew that and she knew that you had all of these issues with your friend then that's the problem yeah and i and i don't think that you did that because you're still like you're feeling hurt by it and it's a little bit easier for some for and i'm like this sometimes where it's like i don't want to ask for something or tell someone something because that can make

it feel like not as genuine or it can feel like forced or something like i want people to do something on their own accord but we're the center of our own universe everyone else is the center of their own universe. And so without knowing that we're hurting someone, I would if I'm going to be an asshole to someone, I would prefer to do it on purpose. I would prefer to like have someone know that I'm doing that. And I think highly of people who will tell me like, oh, that and I'm like, oh, fantastic. Yes, I didn't mean to do that. Now you've told me I can course correct or change that up or give me the opportunity to not disappoint you. And I think it'll continue to build resentment if you're not honest. Yes. With people in your life. I think you got to

communicate too i mean if you don't want to have a relationship with ava at all then like you don't have to do anything but with emma you need to because you want like you want things from her you don't want anything from ava so yeah just be truthful yeah and like people will disappoint you whether or not you give them the opportunity to or not and not giving them that opportunity doesn't prevent them from disappointing you and she disappointed you here and she didn't even know and i think this is we don't know if she doesn't did she say that she doesn't know why they're not friends that emma doesn't know why they're not friends anymore she said that i would assume so because if emma did know there would be some animosity towards emma

not just a continued longing for a relationship yeah so i just think if you communicate more it's definitely scary and it's hard but the answer at the end of the day will be the same whether or not you ask it at the start or you see the results of the aftermath all that you gain there is the time to process and prepare yourself for a potential hurt you know yeah as opposed to getting your hopes up and then having it kind of crumble like you got to get in the driver's seat of of this but yeah i i this would without a doubt like i'm coming at this from like a objective third party perspective without a doubt this would bother the shit out of me yeah i'm thinking about if my sisters befriended people that they knew i disliked i'd be so mad

so fucking mad no like i reposted something on my instagram story no i reposted on tiktok and you texted me and you were just like oh i've got beef with this person and i go i'm under posting it right i didn't even ask melissa like what happened i was immediately just petty beef like so petty here's the thing i don't care but you didn't care i don't care i'm like oh fucking dead to me like that's just that's just truly like this whole thing of like oh i'm just like unobjective then i'm like so how much stake do you put into your friendships and like the choosing the people you are friends with because i'm like no no you tell me we have to jump off this bridge i go i'm fucking there like i don't know i i but i i don't know that i don't think

everyone's like that with friends yeah everybody's not some people are able to navigate you know straddling the lines and things but i'm i'm all or nothing no me fucking too i there's only a couple things i throw on that note all right we're gonna take a break and we're back and it's time for the rest of the course hi my name is melissa i'm a 19 year old college freshman and i use she her pronoun This past Sunday was my 19th birthday, and I had a pun Saturday night and then a brunch picnic Sunday afternoon, both of which I had been planning for months. I have three roommates, and I invited the boyfriend, Nick, to him, of one of them, Jenny,

she, her. Jenny and Nick met through my girlfriend, Ellie, any pronouns, so I thought it was a good idea to invite him as he's close with one of my best friends and my girlfriend. Over the last few months, a lot of comments he has made has rubbed me the wrong way. He tends to epitomize himself as a straight white man in today's society. and he once talked about how he thinks it's annoying when people who are part of the LGBTQ plus community make the gay their whole personality, which I personally think is never okay on the streets of First News Day. For context, all of my roommates and I are firepans, which includes Jenny, who most of my friends that were at my party are part of the LGBTQ plus community.

About 30 minutes into my birthday party on Saturday night, he steps out to get some air for a reason I am not aware of, and then soon after, Jenny and him have been talking in the hallway for a while, and basically were in and out of my room all night and missed over half of my party. The next morning at brunch, where he had simply wanted to sit under a tree for half of it, I went to go back to our room, and then shortly afterwards, I got a text from Nick to give a chat with everyone that was at the brunch that he had some things he wanted to say to us. And then he proceeded to text the group chat four more paragraphs,

and I will leave you with some of the highlights. I think going forward, I'm going to be spending less time here. I keep trying to belong to this group, but I think I'm trying too hard. We're just very different people. I'm proud of the effort I made with all of you, especially because I'm proud to have become close with people I wouldn't have imagined speaking out a year ago. And what kills me is that all of us are coinciding with, insert my name here, this day. I still want to be friends with many of you. I need some time away to figure out how to be more comfortable with being myself around you all.

I have since learned that he has been uncomfortable with some of the jokes my roommates and I make towards each other as we often joke about sex, however, he has never brought this up to any of us directly, which could have prevented all of this from happening. I still don't totally understand what exactly we have done that has made him upset, but if he had told me and my roommates, we would have obviously changed our behavior around him. What I needed to find out is how do I approach interactions with him going forward, as I am still very upset about this whole thing.

Miss and Johnny have a dick appointment in our room later this week, and so I'm not sure if we're going to actually see him afterwards or what, because usually he stays longer afterwards to hang out. I also don't know if I should tell Johnny that this is bothering me, as she has not acknowledged any of it to me at the parties. But anyways, thank you for any help I can give me. Bye. My question is, and I'm not trying to be mean, but why are you putting so much effort into being friends with somebody

that doesn't want to be friends my question is so he's uncomfortable with the sexual jokes is it the sexual jokes that you and your girlfriend so he's just homophobic yes okay so that's like i think he says he's uncomfortable around all of you and you've said most of us aren't straight yes and the sexual jokes like so unless i missed that like were people who have previously slept with his girlfriend making sexual jokes about having slept with his girlfriend because to me that's the only that's the only reason yeah and like it's like and he's saying a year ago he wouldn't have been friends with y'all like the whole coded message is homophobic and i don't even think it's that coded no no but like in in the you the caller didn't explicitly

say he's homophobic but he's yeah i'm saying that the one way that i this wouldn't be homophobic to me as if people were making sexual jokes about how they had slept with his in front of him and that made him uncomfortable but his message is not that it's I'm homophobic and I thought I could handle it but I I can't and I should be getting a gold star because I'm doing you don't even know last year me like couldn't ever have done this like and this is just too much so point blank like you you treat him and you deal with him like you do any other homophobic bigot like and it seems if i didn't if i heard you correctly jenny is his girlfriend and jenny is one of your roommates and jenny hasn't spoken to you about this you have no relationship with

this man you have a relationship with jenny uh-huh and you only invited him because he's jenny's boyfriend yeah if jenny hasn't reached out to you to talk about this this i don't view is a friendship issue this i view as a roommate issue because having a roommate whose boyfriend is homophobic is very different than having a friend whose boyfriend is homophobic because one of them puts your like personal safety and comfortability uh that you don't opt in to your living situation like you have to leave your house as opposed to like a friendship where you're going to go hang out with someone this is not that so i think you i wouldn't even deal with him i would approach her in a roommate situation of like this makes me supremely uncomfortable yeah and then he

had like he had to announce his departure from half the friend so embarrassing where he could have just not said anything and ghosted away like we met you three times he wants you to know how he feels about the situation but you know he's a little bit good because he you know he's made an effort with half the people that he's okay with being friends with and i want y'all like to look at like which half he's picking oh wait which part did you mean he said that he's he said that like i i still want to be friends with some of you oh so the people who either in his mind or not visibly yeah or vocally yeah and he's also complained about being he's about like how hard it is to be a white man at this time and people who are lgbt part of the lgbtqa making

it their entire personality yeah dare i say you've made being a straight man of your entire personality yes a straight white man yeah entire personality so why are you trying so hard yeah obviously like i'm not one to be like oh women women need to be held accountable for the actions of men but in this instance i would take out the friendship you have with jenny and this is this is a roommate and this is like a this is a roommate issue like you have a the part the person that you are dating and who you're bringing over here has made it abundantly clear that like he's homophobic and that affects me to my core and he specifically singled out me and i think he specifically singled out you and your girlfriend right yeah you've specifically singled us out

And I don't think that you need to change your behavior based on if he's in the room or not. And also, he's a reflection of her. That's what I was going to say. So, like, the whole thing of, like, women shouldn't be responsible for that. I go, well, when you're choosing the men that you're surrounding yourself with and they're not hidden actions. that's like when someone is like saying something and making a statement like and you i think knowing something and letting a man letting letting standing by a man who's gonna be awful like that that is a that's a choice that is a choice predicting something in the future that

you don't know that's going to happen you're not not responsible for that but that truly does reflect on her and it doesn't even seem like she's even being good friend you said like for the party like she was like and they were like in and out of your room yeah which stay the fuck out of my room yeah if you're so uncomfortable about sexual jokes why are you in my room i fuck in that room oh not not not so uncomfortable there like this is just yeah he's not your problem he is a problem but he's not your problem exactly he's a problem he's not your problem she is a problem she is your problem and i don't know if she is a problem she will her response to this will tell you if she's a problem or not but you have three roommates so i would just say that like at that point like

you if you're not comfortable with this like i would just treat this this is a roommate issue and we need to figure out how we're going to do this so we all feel comfortable and safe here and the answer to that is not ever going to be someone who lives there and pays rent leaving the answer is going to be the person who pays rent there who's with someone who makes them uncomfortable you go to the uncomfortable you don't leave because you're uncomfortable i'm also thinking about this is the fact that it was at your birthday party and he wanted you to censor yourself at your birthday party and then you were saying that you would have done it if you would have known don't change who you are for other people's comfortability yeah especially

people you don't like don't respect and you don't know like it's not like a oh i would i i am inspired by this person and i think there's some merit to what they're saying it's no there there's not and he has a lot of fucking audacity to be invited to someone's birthday party as a fucking pity invite because of a roommate's partner making shitty fucking statements and then making the entire thing about him starting a goddamn fucking group chat after your birthday like this is an intention this is like so many of these like bigoted cis white men like the the desire is attention the desire is so badly fucking attention and this is what he wanted he wants attention he wants to be that he wants to be the ordeal to be the ordeal and then he wants people to conform

to who he is yeah or they want he wants people to fight him he wants he wants to be involved in all of this like him saying i'm removing myself from the situation that is someone exactly that is someone who wants to make he wants to make a splash he wants to make a hubbub he wants people to talk about him he wants there to be a confrontation like he wants he wants you to follow up on this like he wants to have given you homework and for you to improve he wants to kind of have those puppet strings there and you just ignore him like you he doesn't fucking exist to any of you she's the issue that it needs to be dealt with and her not saying anything or bringing it up like to me that's really not okay all right next call hey megan and melissa i am 22 and i use

she her pronouns i'm calling in for kind of a small issue but something i'd love advice about if you can it is almost pride month and as a hella proud gay slash queer ass bitch i am so excited to celebrate all months long. Pride month for me means Pride Fest slash Pride Weekend is coming up, which in my city is two days long. It's the parade and then the Pride Fair is what I would call it. For me, every year, this is like a full-blown holiday. It is one of the major highlights of my summer, and I just make it a priority to connect with old friends and catch up and just enjoy the summer day. Enjoy good-ass food, drink, just have a good time. But the reason why I'm calling is because last year I spread myself way too thin in terms of a pride group

per se so I what I did is I pretty much put every queer friend I have in a group chat and was like let's all hang out like let's do the day together um this was very exciting for me and very logistically though very stressful don't want to do it again this year it was so hard to do because it was just like hard to do what everyone wanted to do also every year there's always one or two people who like last minute join in and might not have a lot of queer friends but they don't know my friends and I'm like trying to introduce them to everyone and I'm like running around like a mother hen just wanting to make sure everyone is feeling included and having fun but then I'm stressed and I get caught up in like what everyone else wants to do and I don't know if I want I just

like don't want to do that this year you know so I'm trying to figure out how to provide or plan my group this year and i just want to see what you guys think how do i make sure that i can see different friends that day without committing to the whole day with all of these people i want to make sure i have a good time and not over commit like last year but also be flexible enough so that maybe if there's someone who has never been a pride but is interested in going this year can come and like feel safe enough to tag along should i take like two friends hang out with and then see others uh like sporadically throughout the day i have a friend that i like have gone every year with and i have like my two roommates which are my best friends

and then there's like my party friends my my high school friends like there's different layers and levels of friends yeah so confidence i'm definitely the person who like really struggles to plan my own birthday parties because there's all these people and i don't know how people interact and i'm talking really fast so i can get it all in which i'm probably gonna get roasted about i'm so sorry melissa um i did write things down i just lost the thought um so yeah i hope this hope hoping you have advice love you both so much have a great day you are stressing me the fuck out like daddy chill dead to me with love i don't think you're flexible you're not flexible at all you you're a person that likes to plan and if you don't want to plan this year all you have

to do is just say i'm going here and just go and don't feel like that you have to organize the whole thing like it's already an organized event you don't need to micro organize within your friend group just exist like just go just have fun also pride is like a month long and so if you don't if you don't see everybody at the at the fest that you were talking about throw a brunch later in the in the month like you can you you seem like you like to plan things even though it stresses you out like you can do other things that don't just fall on the fest like just go to the fest enjoy yourself don't try to overextend yourself just go to enjoy yourself calm down no that's a great call like you're a planner and if you can free ball it like melissa saying and

like just not plan totally do that if you need to have a plan then start like the day before two days before, throw a brunch, throw a dinner for everyone to come. And then at the end, throw another brunch or dinner or something like that. Create two events that aren't on the same day as the other event

because you're not able to throw it all in those days and you're not going to have fun. And I obviously can't compare to pride, but to give a only thing that I can think of in a fair kind of way of like putting pressure on one event, I grew up we had a festival in my home in my town and I remember in fucking middle school the idea of like planning like okay well I'm gonna see this friend here and this friend here and all this and

I go but I can also see this friend at school or like I can hang out with them and it would just be so much pressure that I would then be like okay well I'm going to go meet this person to do this thing here but like we're gonna get lunch but like I already was getting a snack with another person so that I'm not hungry and like I really wanted to go do like face painting and I didn't schedule something to do that and I thought I would do it my free time and I'm now kind of essentially taking meetings with friends as opposed to like doing the things at the event that I want to do and now I've made the event about a bunch of little mini events that I didn't need to to do I would suggest that like you don't have to do anything to go out of your way to make sure that

other people are going to feel included if you include people your job is done like you don't have to be like well how can i make sure that people know that if they're anyone new you tell your friends like hey you go with your roommate you go with two or three people and you guys have plans you know who else is going to be there and i would just have the people who you're close with have your locations on on your phone and so if it's like oh you're right by here like let me go like go with the flow with that time period and the time that you're there knowing that this will happen again next year it'll happen the year like again the year after and when you let people know that like oh if you have friends who like are coming who like don't have anyone like totally

tell feel free to tell them to come that's all you have to do to be including is just include someone yes like and pride itself this fest that you're going to is about inclusivity and strangers will be nice to everyone like it doesn't have to be like you taking care of everyone no there's no tasks oriented with including like all you have to do is be kind and include someone like you don't have to do that with gestures you just do that with being genuine yeah and this I think like you said this is like the peak of your summer and I think you need to extend this I think that this can be a really good fun two days but like there's a reason why it's pride month like you need to stretch maybe it's like a week this year maybe next year it'll be like more time than that

but instead of trying to shove everything into a one to two day span I think you need to spread it out for your own sanity because even if these are people you're seeing all the time but it feels different in the celebratory nature and like what you guys are all doing and just like the vibes that's completely legitimate so keep the vibes going and extend that

out over like a week I would say at least and I think the first time you do it and you realize like you're still gonna have a great time and you might not have seen someone who you wanted to see you can then make follow up plans and you know

not just gonna be gay for this month no i mean there's no there's the time is not running out like black history is not just a month for me like it's not just february i exist every every day of the year so yep men's rights month which is like november or something like that hell we know they're fucking they're wielding that shit for centuries centuries so i think that there's something to be said about like the jubilant nature of a community or whether it's like i mean you know target has their pride collection but like even like small businesses will have things where it feels like i'm not trying to diminish this and i think that but like christmas like when it's christmas time there's just a like there's it's a visual

representation it's in the air it's on the movies you're watching like it's on the content like all of this kind of stuff and I think that there's more opportunity for you to make it a whole fucking month long and then maybe you'll call next year and be like holy shit I started all these other things and now I'm even more stressed and we'll cross that bridge but it doesn't have to be a thing you know yeah just be hey we're all meeting here for dinner on June 28th yeah and if you're a planner like how did you spread yourself too thin like what was like the course correction. Because for me, I'm not a not planning kind of person. But every time I plan something and I'm like, oh, I spread myself too thin. I like will do a self inventory. And if it's like,

OK, if it was cooking related, like I made way too many things. There were things I didn't really care about that next time I'm going to offload that responsibility onto someone else. Because if it's something of like, you know, I wasn't regularly eating enough, like I didn't feel like I was really tired. Then it's like, OK, so we have to fix how can we make sure we're drinking water packing snacks taking a nap during the day like there's still ways to be true to your plan or nature self and not come out of like a weekend like absolutely wrecked right so figuring out what those the spots that you could use improvement on and do that i'm still frazzled i know but you have to say that you have the most infectious laugh like you put that in a like i it made me

smile great laugh great great laugh great energy great vibes all right we're gonna take another break and we're back let's listen to our last call Hello, Megan and Melissa. I go by Dave and pronouns and I am 25 years old. That's a lie. I'm turning 26 soon. This phone call is about my therapist. Let's just call her Barbara and she's her pronouns. I forgot what how she is. So I've been seeing Barbara for almost two years now. I've been seeing her for my trauma, my eating disorder, and the general depression, anxiety. I don't know if this is important, but I did find my therapist through psychology.com. But I don't know what the heck happened, like, in March.

It kind of went off with her, like, when she came back from her trip to Mexico for her anniversary. um she kind of said something that made me feel some type of way she literally was like I went to the land of your people and I'm like lady just because I'm Hispanic doesn't mean I'm from Mexico like literally there's other Latinos out there not from Mexico and then she literally had the audacity to be like are you sure I'm like yes I know what runs in my blood but she knows that I'm also struggling with an eating disorder she like once looked at my eyes and was like what happened And I'm like, you know what happened? I'm not eating, you bitch.

I did not call her a bitch, by the way. But I wish I did. But one thing that I wish I did call her a bitch, she, like, looked at me once, like, so my therapy sessions are usually right after work. Like, I clock at a 3, my sessions are at 3.30. And when I met up with her, she looked at me and was like, you look depressed. I'm like, uh, no. Tired from work?

yes but no and then she when I told her no she was like you don't need to lie this is therapy this is a safe space and I'm like I'm not lying Barbara and then she like looked at me and I was like I know what it is you're not wearing any makeup and I literally do not wear makeup to work or to therapy because I work in a manufacturing company so it's just gonna sweat it off so what's a boy and my makeup was expensive. So no, thank you. But I was like mad because I'm just like, did this actually really like made me feel ugly just now? Because no, that is not okay. I literally was like telling her, like, I literally got off work, Barbara. And she was like, did you do like three hours like your normal self? And I'm like, my normal self, like she

knows I have an eight hour shift Monday through Friday job. So I was like, what the hell? So like, How do I, like, tell my therapist, like, I don't know, I don't want to see her anymore? Do I just, like, not show up or what? Because my past therapy sessions, my first therapist, she ended up moving to the other side of the state. So she fired me. And the other one fired me because my depression gave her depression. So how do I, like, tell my therapist I don't want to see you anymore? I mean, I would.

She sounds awful. No, I would. I think she sounds awful. I would fully ghost her. i am curious though you said this is a pretty big shift from her like you've been seeing her for a while she went on this trip to mexico and like set made a racist comment yeah and like then started making comments about like your body and like how you look and like not even being correct about things of like oh your normal shift which is three hours and it's like no my normal

shift is eight hours because i would say if you've had a really wonderful relationship with her thus far and you have a desire to be like honest with her and be like i don't know what the hell happened i think you're without a doubt like i wouldn't i wouldn't swallow that if that's like what you want to do but if your instinct is to ghost like fucking ghost ghost like i had a therapist who wasn't even as bad nowhere near as bad as this but she just used she would like clam onto things that i wasn't what i was going to therapy for i fucking hate i hate i'm here to talk about this why are you talking about something that has nothing to do with this and she also would bring up like personal things that she thought i guess make us closer to each other and i was just

like just made me think less of you but i didn't say it to her but why are you telling me personal information about yourself it's no it's like some i love when our my old therapist like i loved when she would but she did it after a long while and in a way that was not more than a sentence or when she told me it was like based on how you've responded to things i've said this makes sense to me that you like i can tell you understand and now you've confirmed you like but you know i mean like you breadcrumb that you don't just be like well i get that because one time you're like yeah no but in order to go to therapy you have to pay for it or somebody your insurance has to pay for it you just don't go and then you don't pay for it just don't

re-up don't schedule a new appointment ghosting is perfectly fine in this situation you are the customer in this situation and your therapist is providing the service and you are no longer happy with this service so you will take your business elsewhere yeah i've ghosted many uh professional like what mental health professional doctor like whatever like I've just I've ghosted and there's also been times when like my instinct is like I've wanted to say like why and you just have to go with what you want to do like ghosting is not the more appropriate manner telling them having a formal email and explaining and like ripping them to shreds is not a more what was the word I used the first time they're both equally as valid things so like there's not

one way that's like more professional or more suitable or what you're supposed to do they're both equal equal options it just has to be whatever you want to do because if you want to chew her out in an email and tell her like this was incredibly all of that kind of stuff and you don't do that that's going to be kind of bubbling there for you yeah what's going to be cathartic yeah and if but if you if you want to ghost and then you reach out and then you're just like oh i'm really not like not to use the therapy term like emotionally dysregulated and like this is like heads like really sets me off and like now i'm super unchecked and like i'm really not feeling tight like i'm really struggling now then don't do that like you just have to go with whatever

your gut is there's no like way to go about this the only like actual things you have to do is if they're on auto payments and charges like making sure those things are being canceled but other than that like you just have to whatever's most cathartic yeah also if you never wear makeup to therapy no that's exactly what i was saying i was like are they followed yeah they're looking at you on social media or something that's weird yeah yeah very weird and if you have the capacity i would also report the fact that they're making racist comments but only if you have the capacity to do that because you know that's not your responsibility that's her responsibility to not do that all i could think of is that i don't watch the kardashians but the sound pops up all the time

when i say literally every day when we're in the land of your people this is not the land of our people this is glendale was that every time i go to glendale i say that to mods and he was like what the fuck is that from and i was like oh i have to show you and he was like wait this is like really funny i go no there's like some very funny moments on that show this isn't the land of our people this is glendale that was very orgasmic you seem very pleased with yourself anyways that is it for episode we hope you all enjoyed if you want to leave a review please do so you can review the specific episode on spotify you can review the whole show you can read the show on the podcast app apple podcasts we appreciate it you can join

our patreon and you can give us a call if you want to be on an upcoming episode and if you have been on a previous episode we gave you advice you want to give us an update send us an email meganpodcast.gmail.com you can send us an update we can yeah you don't if you're not available to jump on a call just send us an email yeah we'll read it we like it we can if i take my meds i can i can read if you'd like us to do a dramatic reading of it if you wrote it like in like screenplay or play format and then we could and then we could act it out i would also enjoy that we would love that if you tell me like okay carrier i think natalie portman meets martin short i'll be like oh okay how am i gonna tackle this it's a challenge it'll be fun let me know

um people do this it's just like oh god they really are on strike we're like anyway um anything else that's it follow us on social follow the show on social and um stay tuned and make sure you're subscribed to the show and the feed so you can see the rest of the episodes we release all week okay goodbye Don't Blame Me is a production by me, Megan Rinks. And me, Melissa D. Montz, plus Diamond Imprint Productions. Post-production sound and editing by Coco Lorenz. Production assistance by Melanie D. Watson.

And music by Giacomo Picasso and Ryan Hunter.