LITTLE ROCK — DEAR CAROLYN: Clearly you are big into using “like” instead of “love.” You make this substitution all the time. If you ever feel like expounding on it, I’d be curious.
- Anonymous
DEAR READER: Sure. Have you ever seen “Like never dies” on a movie poster? Heard a song called “Like is all you need”? Known anyone to hang on those three little words, “I like you”?
I think it’s safe to say that love is never in danger of being dismissed, discounted or taken for granted.
But like is routinely so. It’s the consolation prize.
Yet while like can endure without love ever having anything to do with it, love takes a beating when like isn’t there to support it. Consider what happens when you don’t like the way your beloved treats you or others - or when you don’t like what Beloved watches on TV or does for a living or uses to fill spare time; or what topics Beloved chooses to discuss, or how; or whom Beloved chooses to befriend or admire; or how much Beloved contributes to the household chores or coffers; or where Beloved pegs certain priorities.
It’s very difficult to sustain love under the pressure of daily exposure to behaviors or traits you don’t like.
Abstractions do have their place. Love in the abstract is what gets us up in the night when a child cries out, when we’re desperate for sleep. It’s what flies us cross-country to witness our close friend’s wedding, knowing full well that said friend will have about 3.7 quality minutes to spend with us amid various hosting obligations. It’s what moves us to account for someone else’s well-being even when that person isn’t present, and even when attending to their needs might force us to compromise our own.
But when it comes to sharing your day-to-day life without wanting to run screaming, a person’s expressions, body language, conversation topics, diversions, quirks, tics and attitude with you need to be pleasing on a purely functional level.
And so when it comes to people writing in about practical problems with people they love, that’s the first thing I urge them to consider: Do you like this person, fundamentally?
DEAR CAROLYN: My brother-in-law is a good man, but he monopolizes conversations with technical talk and endless detail of things that don’t interest anyone but him.
I have tried waiting for him to stop talking (does not work) and have resorted to just interrupting him and switching topics, which is rude. He is in his 70s. Suggestions?
- F.
DEAR READER: If he were 7 and not 70, then his difficulty with social cues would be identified and addressed in any halfway-decent elementary school.
In this case, you’re all the help he has. Good people don’t want to bore others, and the standard notions of “polite” and “rude” likely aren’t on his radar.
For these two reasons, it’s actually decent, not rude, to redirect the conversation as good-naturedly as you can, after he has made his initial point.
Chat online with Carolyn at 11 a.m. Central time each Friday at
. Write to Tell Me About It in care of The Washington Post, Style Plus, 1150 15th St. N.W., Washington, D.C. 20071; or e-mail
Style, Pages 27 on 07/27/2010