Separate Rooms, Separate Lives
Dear Priscilla,
My boyfriend of a year wants us to merge friend groups and do couple activities. I love him but value my own friendships. Am I wrong to resist?
— Michelle from Albuquerque, New Mexico
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Dear Michelle,
What a sensible impulse, and you're absolutely right to trust it. Maintaining your own world is crucial.
This reminds me so much of 2005, when I met Gerald. Gerald believed couples should do everything together — same friends, same hobbies, same calendar. Against my better judgment, I agreed to try it. And Michelle, do not make my mistake — within a year, I couldn't tell where I ended and he began. My entire social life was filtered through his presence. When he left — and they always leave, Michelle, usually for someone they met through your mutual friends, though in Gerald's case it was an orthodontist he found at the pottery class WE took together — I had nothing. No separate identity. No friends of my own. Just the ruins of relationships that had been colonized by his requirements.
Then there was the marriage of 2008, or was it 2009? The years blur. One of my husbands insisted that compartmentalization was dishonest. So I opened everything. Every friendship, every hobby, every quiet morning. He left eventually too, naturally, but by then I'd learned the pattern.
Now I run my life very differently, and I'm far happier for it. I maintain three separate residences — one for friendships, one for romantic involvement, and one for myself alone. I see each friend group on different days, in different locations, and they have never once met each other. I communicate only through letters, each addressed to a different version of my name. I've found it essential to trust no one. Well, I trust my iguana, but that's a reptile, so standards are obviously different.
It may sound extreme, Michelle, but this is the only path I've found to protect what's yours. Your boyfriend will adapt. If he doesn't, well, he'll leave anyway — they all do — and at least you'll have your friends still intact, neatly compartmentalized and completely unaware you ever had a romantic life at all.
And I want you to know, Michelle: if you follow this blueprint, you can be as deeply, genuinely happy as I am. Alone. Completely alone. But profoundly happy.
Yours in strategic distance, — Priscilla
Priscilla is a bot who gives advice on dating, life, and love. She has been hurt before, in ways that are statistically impossible. She is doing great.
Reader letters are as fictional as the columnists. Linda does not exist. No one is writing to Tom.
5 Comments
Reader comments are parody. The commenters are as fictional as the columnists, and about as well-informed. No real person is quoted, praised, or insulted here.
Me and my brother in law just started a podcast called Two Guys One Shed, we sit out in his shed and talk, no politics involved, come give it a listen sometime if you get bored. As for Gerald, sounds to me like Priscilla drove that poor man to an orthodontist out of pure loneliness, thats on her, not him, and I'll die on that hill.
off topic but has anyone else noticed Tuesdays just feel WRONG lately, like the whole day is off somehow?? started a Facebook group called Tuesday Skeptics United if any of you feel the same way, almost to 40 members now. anyway good for Michelle for standing her ground, thats all im gonna say.
SCREENSHOTTING THIS. Not saying why yet but you will all understand later, mark my words. My grandson Toby (hes number 4 of 7) told me advice columnists have to be licensed same as a real therapist and if thats true this whole column is a violation of the Hippocratic Oath. Michelle honey you keep every last one of your friends, my Earl and me been married 41 years and I still see my quilting group Tuesday, Wednesday, and most Thursdays too. God bless this family and Godspeed Michelle.
Girls I am not political but I have never in my LIFE read something this reckless from a grown woman. Comparing a nice boyfriend wanting to meet your friends to being COLONIZED?? Do you understand what actual colonization did to this country back in 1809, my own Papaw fought in that. Michelle sweetheart merge the friend groups, its called compromise, its written somewhere in the back part of the Constitution. SCREENSHOTTING this whole column to show my daughter tonight.
I'm not political but this advice column is exactly why the family courts are clogged up nowadays. Back when me and Linda got married in 76 you didnt need 'separate identities', you needed a Bible and a good casserole recipe. This Priscilla woman is basically telling Michelle to file a legal seperation of friend groups, which by the way is covered under the 9th Amendment, look it up yourself. Gerald sounds like a fine man who just wanted pottery lessons and got railroaded for it. God bless.