Despite our best efforts to dissuade you, many of you have still decided to write to us with your problems, complaints and crises of the moment. We don't have a trained therapist on staff, and this isn't "Dear F*ckin' Abbey", but we DO have Bonnie, who has graciously volunteered her time and heartless perspectives in order to minister to (or macerate) the misguided, with "Dear Fuckin' Bon..."

October 24, 2002

All right...I could use a good healthy slap in the face of Heartless Bitch wisdom, and you seem to be a good place to come for it.

My dilemma is this--and it is extremely lame. However, I'd still like your recommendation on the situation.

There is a young man I know, we shall call him C for the purposes of storytelling. C and I had been friends over the internet for about four years. Last fall, I ended up unexpectedly falling in love (read: I milked him and he milked me for all we were worth) with him as we talked more and more.

Seven months passed, and we had our first fight at that mark. Afterwards, I was summarily ditched and left to pick up the pieces. I read The Manipulator Files, the scales fell from my eyes, and I realized how I had been taken in and used. I admit responsibility for letting myself enter an unhealthy relationship.

I enjoy spending time with my friends in a certain chatroom. C also hangs out in this chatroom, and whenever I'm around he decides to be mean and turn everything I say into something it did not originally intend. His last statement went farther than the others, referring to me as 'idle entertainment'.

Is there any way to still spend time with my friends in the chat without this guy making things difficult? The ignore function is becoming quite tempting, as is abandoning the chat entirely, but I'm looking for a slightly less extremist solution.

Now rip straight to the heart and give me some of the hard-knocking advice you're known for. *grins* I'll appreciate it muchly.

Dear Chatty,
You were right, this is lame. Not just because of your chatroom difficulties, but because I can't tell what if anything the "relationship" was or meant to you. It's unclear if you two were ever together in any way in real life, or if you had this entire "fling" thing only over the internet. My guess is that it was only virtual because when you talk about the development of the "relationship" you say "as we talked more and more" rather than "when we got together... etc.". You say you simply "milked" each other, which suggests the entire thing was really just a game to both of you. That and if your entire "relationship" was talking over the internet, what is there to milk or be milked? Wasn't the point of the communication, "communication"? Were you not communicating? How old are you, and by the way, what the fuck?!

OK, leaving aside for the moment that you sound as manipulative as you say he is, use some common sense (please?) about the chatroom baloney. Why you and your friends haven't already just put him on ignore is missing common sense point one. Common sense point two is that if he's really pushing limits, you can report him to a moderator. This of course would only be effective if you're not stooping to his level and also making trouble in the room. If they see you as a contributor to the problem, they may ban both of you, or even just you. Finally, you're going to have to just let it go. Even if it was an actual (in person) relationship for you, it really doesn't sound like much more than "idle entertainment", and letting him distress you by saying so just gives him more of what he wants. (Attention, revenge, being a brat)

Bottom line; I recommend you DO more offline and not worry so much about "chatroom" dramas in the first place; Ignore him (and also, put him on "ignore"); and if you have a few chatroom friendships that do mean that much to you, change your handle and only let them know, by the time he figures it out he should have moved on anyway (and if not he looks as lame as he is). My guess is that you're quite young, and thus dating and "chatting" is not so much of an option in real life, but that guess is only because this seems like such a big lifetime deal to you, and if you're college age or older, this kind of stuff should be taking a backseat to your "real" life. If you're young, focus on school and friends in real life; if you're older, please get some other hobbies and some friends with whom you can spend some real time and learn to deal with real friendships.

Good luck,
bon