My friend has gotten way too into plastic surgery, and I don’t know what to do about it.  Like she looks terrible and I feel like she desperately needs me to say something before she’s beyond repair.  How do I get her to stop?  What should I do?

I mean….nothing?

Look, you’re right.  Nothing you can say will fix anything, in all likelihood.  People who are addicted to plastic surgery have problems buried deep in their brains that you’re not equipped to dig up.  You’re not qualified.  You don’t have the proper shovels.

Pretty much anything you could say from, “Hey why did you think that would look good?” to “Darling, you’ve gone too far with the face carving,”  will in fact result in total disaster.   It will lead to nothing but more and more face injections until she looks like an early human Pixar character.

Anything else that isn’t “You look perfect now that you’ve done all of that,” is a hopeless, terrible thing to say, and probably stop that.

But even that sentiment probably won’t help either, so just maybe consider shutting the hell up.

Here’s the deal.  I think we all have a friend like you—the similarly aged parent to the 6-year-old us.  We all have a friend that thinks they know what’s best and loves to kind shove that onto us.

And look, your intentions may be great, but that’s not what a friend’s role is and stop it.

Stop being that friend.  It’s annoying, and belittling.   That’s not what friends are for.  A friend’s job is not to force your point of view onto her.  Your job is to provide advice if she asks for it, otherwise shut the fuck up, and to be a shoulder to cry on when she’s 44 and her face melts.

Your friend is (presumably) an adult.  Let her be an adult and fuck up her face.  Say that one line if you feel you need to say something, and then make your peace with it.  Let it go.  If she asks (genuinely asks, no compliment fishing horseshit), you can be honest with her.  But otherwise, sit back, chill out, and adjust mentally to the fact that you know how have a friend that looks like a terrible wax figure version of herself.

I understand you’re coming from a place of wanting to help, but there’s nothing you can do to help.  You could drug your friend, drag her to a plastic surgeon, and have the surgeon put everything back the way it was.

But your friend’s head would still be fucked up about the way she looks.  So love your friend, let her be, and be there for her when nobody is attracted to her because she looks like a clown that can’t move her face.  That is what friends are for.

A guy recently sexted me, and I’m feeling very conflicted about it.  On one hand, I felt totally offended and put off by it.  On the other hand I was, you know, impressed.  So here’s where I am: I’m repulsed and interested.  I don’t want to encourage the behavior, but I do want to hook up with him more now.  It’s really annoying.  What should I do?

This is a microcosm of a conundrum some modern females have.  How do I reject this shitty behavior that I’m hopelessly attracted to?  How do I tell this misogynist to fuck off while getting fucked by him?  How do I tell him it’s not cool to show people his unrequested dick while my mouth is around it?

Here’s what I’ll start off by saying: If you’re thinking “relationship” at all with this guy, probably don’t.   I don’t have the data in front of me, but I don’t believe many marriages have begun with a girl getting an unrequested picture of a guy’s dong, and thinking “I want to put a ring on that.”

Granted, I could be wrong about that.  Dick pics have only been around in their current form for like ten years.  Decades ago, you had to hire a photographer, find a time for them to come over, make sure your dick looked as presentable as possible and then go to the post office and buy stamps to make sure your dick pic made it to the girl of your desires, and I think most men figured that wasn’t worth it.

So maybe we don’t have enough data yet, and I’m wrong, and you should totally pursue this guy.  I’m thinking probably not though.

So assuming you want to hit it and quit it, but don’t want to encourage his behavior, where do you go from here?

I don’t think there’s a perfect compromise here, but I think I have the best solution for all involved.  I don’t usually like playing games, but I think this is a rare circumstance where the brutal honesty approach isn’t particularly beneficial.  After all, if you encourage the behavior, who knows how many girls will get unsolicited dick pics from this asshole because of your encouragement?

Here’s the best option, I think.  You let him know that was fucked up.  You push that narrative hard (stop looking for puns).  You stay stern until he apologizes, and make him promise not to do that again to anyone.   Make it seem like he just about lost you, but you’ll still hear him out because you’re awesome and forgiving.

You leave the door for him to talk to you just barely cracked open, and reply to one in every like five texts.  Stay angry.  Once he apologizes, you can maintain normal conversation.  Squeeze some extra kindness out of him for a bit.  Do this enough so that he thinks his kindness is the reason it finally happened when you guys bang.

If you can pull this off and he buys your act, everybody wins.  You both get the sex you’re looking for, and assuming nothing serious comes of it (seriously stop looking for puns) future women get a guy who thinks treating people well gets you laid, and not sending pictures of his gross veiny dong.

I feel like I can’t talk to people.  No I mean literally, I’m really bad at talking.  I ramble, I stumble over my words, and I feel like every time I try, I just get a room of confused, uncomfortable faces.  It makes me want to just never talk, but that doesn’t seem like a good solution.  Or is it?  Should I just stop talking?

This one hits home.  Look, in some ways I may be a great person to give you advice on this because I’ve been there my whole life.

On the other hand, I may not be the best person to give you advice, because I’ve been there my whole life…like including now.

Here’s the good news: You’re only making one really big mistake here as far as I can tell, and it’s this: quitting.

I do the same thing.  Knowing that I suck at communicating with my mouth, I’ve always subconsciously given up in even slightly uncomfortable social situations where I know that my speech won’t be as prepared or figured out, because at that point, I basically have dyslexia of the mouth.

This sometimes reaches the point where I avoid social situations entirely.  If I can’t avoid them, I keep a drink in front of me and sip it to avoid conversation.  Inevitably, this happens so much that I cease being a human and more so become a 6’ 3” pee machine.  It’s when my social anxiety kicks in that I become the most hydrated.  I’m sure you have your own way of avoidance.

Regardless, we’ve both got to stop this avoidance thing.  It’s a bitch move.

Forcing ourselves to talk in these situations will often suck.  You’ll have plenty of weird tangents you go on that get plenty of blank stares.  Trust me.  Most of my life—from communicating a basic idea at work, to telling a girl I love her—has been met with blank stares.

So I won’t sugar coat it.  This will make for some totally uncomfortable, boner-in-front-of-the-class type situations.  But the only way we’ll improve and get past this point in our lives is if we keep trying, keep focusing on putting our thoughts in a straight line and controlling the words as they leave our mouths.  Practice won’t make perfect, but it will at least make you feel able to communicate like a normal human being, and not like a socially awkward auctioneer.The alternative is this: We never improve, and never progress, and continue to become the least expressive mimes ever.

And that sucks, because there’s no reason we can’t improve on this.  There’s no reason why we can’t become more aware and in control of our speech if we really practice.  But we have to practice in reality, and we have to practice being on our feet in front of people and communicating, and we have to do this all the time.  If we do this mindfully, and we focus on how we can communicate better, we’re bound to suck less at it.

If not, we’ll just be silent until we’re dead.

And then we’ll be REALLY silent.  So get out there, open your mouth, and keep trying to not be so dead.   You can do this, marblemouth.

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