Mom now has to live with her choice

DEAR CAROLYN: Every so often, my mom calls me to complain about something my stepdad has done, and I don’t know how to handle it. She married him about five years ago, once my youngest sibling was out of the house, and all of us kids objected silently because he is such an obvious jerk and treats her like a servant. I also expressed concerns at the time but did not press it much, she’s an adult. But now I don’t know how I’m supposed to handle her complaining about a jerk acting like a jerk.

— Anonymous DEAR ANONYMOUS: You handle it the way you chose to from the start, by recognizing she is an adult who can manage her own life. Fortunately, you can do this in a more active, supportive — and pointed — way than just listening while she complains.

It’s also easy to adopt, since it consists entirely of responding to her complaints with sympathy plus a question: "Hmm, that doesn’t sound good — how do you feel about it?"

"He said that, really? What are you going to do?"

And, with care, since the tone needs to be loving, not shaming: "Why do you put up with this?"

It is hard to watch someone make choices you wouldn’t make, when they clearly aren’t happy with the results. It’s hard to resist the impulse to grab the reins. A carefully posed, leading question is one way to help someone that leaves the reins in the right person’s hands.

DEAR CAROLYN: My husband and I just returned from a short trip with close friends. The husbands grew up together. A couple of days after the trip, the husband sent a video of pictures from the trip that included the couple and my husband, but not me. I was pretty surprised, sad and hurt. I thought we all had a great time. My husband says I’m being too sensitive. Am I?

— Anonymous DEAR ANONYMOUS: I am very sensitive to accusations that people are being too sensitive. It is such an ... insensitive response to someone whose feelings are hurt. This is true even if he’s right that you’re overreacting, which he might be.

There are only two possibilities here, that the couple left you out by accident or on purpose. And if it was an accident — if you defied the odds and were never in front of the camera at the right time, or if none of the photos you were in came out well — then it’s reasonable both to feel disappointed about the video and to feel comfortable choosing not to read anything sinister into your omission.

But that’s for you to decide, not your husband, because they’re your feelings. And that’s why "You’re being too sensitive" is such a crappy response to someone’s pain. Plus, bystanders can judge facts only — and he doesn’t have a complete set of the ones governing the video fail, so his putting it all on you is unfounded. And mean.

A decent response, meanwhile, is available, always: "Yeah, wow, I’m sorry that happened."

You may have noticed this advice is focused on your husband, which is not how I work; you wrote to me, he didn’t. But he is the one who, when you complained of a relatively minor slight, piled on with a significant one — to be fair, one that’s all too common, since it’s practically a societal default to declare somebody "too" something and think that’s the end of it.

So he’s the one I advise you to approach, spelling out what you need and why a brushoff isn’t it. "Hey. This sucked. Your acknowledging that would help." That one gesture from him, I’m guessing, would buffer any disappointment in whatever happens from here.