My Fiancee Is Empathetically Challenged

Advice King in the OSU O'Colly (reprinted from O'Colly website)

Dear Advice King,

I am living with my fiancée, to whom I’m engaged to be married next spring. She is a hairstylist who entered her profession right out of high school, whereas I am almost finished with my degree. As a senior getting ready to graduate, I am often stressed out about classes, projects and exams. My fiancée can’t relate to this and tells me I am “just overreacting.” How can I make her understand the challenges that college presents?

- Harried Hubby-to-Be

Dear Hubby,

For some people – commonly referred to as “hard-headed” – true knowledge can only be obtained through experience. Your fiancée hasn’t experienced college, and it sounds like that has prevented her from relating to your stress about the demands placed on you as a student.

Although you can’t fault her for her absence of experiential information, there’s actually a larger issue at play. Can you guess what it is?

Empathy is defined by Encarta Dictionary as, “the ability to identify with and understand somebody else’s feelings or difficulties.”

From your fiancée’s get-over-it-and-stop-whining attitude, it appears as though her empathy chip went missing when she came out of the factory.

It might not seem like a hugely important issue on the surface, but it does warrant some examination. Is it a deal-breaker? Probably not. Is it a red flag? You betcha’.

The real question here is this: Is your fiancée able and willing to take your difficulties seriously, whether they are real or imagined? Is she prepared to get on your team and support your feelings, even if she doesn’t think you should feel that way?

Reminder: She’s your fiancée. That means that you will be married with the implicit expectancy of staying that way forever.

I’d venture a guess that this isn’t an isolated incident; chronic dismissers of others’ feelings – or, “the empathetically challenged,” as I like to call them – can rarely just decide one day to start empathizing and then execute that decision immediately.

Don’t be fooled into thinking that once you graduate, this problem will disappear. This trait is highly likely to surface regularly as variations on the same thing. A close friend of mine is married to an empathy-deficient man, and they’ve been having different versions of the same fight for seven years.

As my friend and her husband have successfully worked on their marriage, so it will take effort from each of you: time, patience and honesty from you, and willingness, compassion and understanding from her. If you cannot give each other those things, you shouldn’t be together in the first place.

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Send Jess your question on twitter @advicefromjess or e-mail jess.king@okstate.edu.

Is That Really a Thing?!

For my very first "Is That Really a Thing?!" weekly segment, I wanted to to really start off with a bang. If you don't appreciate third-grade level humor, you might want to stop reading right now.

This is a product I just discovered via the magical portal known as the internet. It appears that "they" really have thought of everything, up to and including - yes, this is for real - flatulence absorbing pads. They are small pads of activated carbon, covered with soft fabric, that adhere to the inside of your undies. Where do I even begin?!

Let's start with the product name: Subtle Butt. I assume this is intended as a play on the word "scuttlebutt," but I really don't get it. I think that with a product like this, they should have gone all out with a giggle-inspiring name that simultaneously acknowledges the awkwardness and usefulness of the pads. I'm thinking of something like, "Toot Terminator," "Fart Annihilator," or perhaps something more catchy, yet subtle, such as, "Bombs Away."

Also, I'd really like to know who is actually purchasing this product. I have never seen it in stores and I don't know of one single person who would ever admit to using these Toot-sies. Would it be acceptable to give them as a gift to someone? What would you do if your mom included this as one of your stocking stuffers?

I would love to have been a fly on the wall at this product's first development meeting.

Person 1: "Okay guys, it's time to roll out a new product. Let's put our brains together... what is a need that our customers have that hasn't been addressed?"
Person 2: "What is that smell? Did someone have boiled eggs for breakfast?"
Persons 3, 4, and 5: "Awww man!" "That is wrong!" "You should have left the room!"
Person 1: "Oh my gosh. Oh. My. Gosh. This is it! This will be my masterpiece... I've got it! We shall create... a flatulence-absorbing pad. We really can change the world!"

It probably went nothing like that, but I just can't imagine being the guy who invented the Fart Pad. What would you even say? It could even result in a nickname that sticks until death. To preserve the integrity of this segment, I won't go into names that I would call someone who invented this product, but you get the idea.

So, is the Subtle Butt Flatulence-Absorbing Pad really a thing?

Amazingly, yes.

Feeding His Brain... Literally

One night last week, I was a couple of hours later than usual arriving home from work due to a meeting across town. It was at a restaurant, so I went ahead and ate there before I went home (what was I supposed to do, say "No" to pizza? Right...). When I finally did get home, I found that Wes had been waiting on me to eat dinner. Since he only had himself to worry about at that point, he decided to play around and cook something, "just to see if he could."

As he took his first few bites of the chicken and potato concoction he so adventurously created, he became shocked as he realized what had happened. "Oh my gosh... This tastes REALLY GOOD! I did it! I cooked something!"

For Wesley as a brain-injured person, this was a huge accomplishment. One of the most difficult challenges faced by many brain patients is the loss of their ability to complete process-oriented tasks. For example, when Wes was still in rehab during the early stages of his recovery, the instructions by his physical therapist to, "pick the book up off of the table, walk to the other table, and lay the book down," were pretty much just not gonna happen. The fact that he has evolved so far in his recovery that he can actually follow through with preparing the food, deciding which pan and method of cooking it to use, seasoning it, keeping track of how long it has been cooking, and stop cooking it when it is ready to eat is enough to bring a tear to my eye.

The outcome of Wes's initial experiment was his new passion for cooking. The next day, while I was at work, Wes had his mother take him to the store to buy ingredients for a recipe he had picked out. When I arrived home that evening, I opened the door to the smell of masala and fresh cilantro. Wesley was making Indian food - my favorite! When I looked at the recipe he was attempting, I was amazed by its length, involvement, and intricacy. That recipe had more ingredients than I've used in probably, oh I don't know, three years? He was visibly proud of himself, and with good reason. One year ago, he wouldn't have been able to even read a recipe, let alone know what the ingredients were and find them in a store.

When dinner was ready, he apprehensively brought me a plate with Eggplant Masala on it. "I hope you like it," he said.

I took the first bite and I. Was. Blown. Away. It was so incredibly flavorful and delicious, and my heart swelled with so much pride for how hard he had worked, that I nearly cried right there. I told him how much I loved it so many times and with such intensity that I'm sure he thought I was faking it after awhile; but, I was serious. It tasted like something I would have ordered at a restaurant.

The next night, Wes dared to make a complicated turkey burger recipe with even more ingredients than the night before. Once again, delicious. The night after that, chicken and potatoes with a special creamy masala sauce. I know it seems like we've been eating a lot of masala lately, but um, have you ever had it? It's kind of a big deal.

Each night for the last week, Wesley has made something out of the Indian food cookbook that my mother gave me for Christmas; and each night, I have been impressed again and again at Wes's accomplishments.

You see, this type of activity is EXTREMELY theraputic for a brain patient. In fact, at rehab they had a weekly program where they would pick a meal, shop for the ingredients, and prepare the meal with the therapists. And now he can do it all by himself. What's even more significant about this is that Wesley took the initiative and did this all on his own - no one taught him how, no one told him he should do it. Cooking forces you to think constantly and monitor changing and sometimes potentially dangerous conditions (usually, brain-injured individuals and ovens/stoves aren't a good combination); the analyzation and process-oriented thinking required exercise the left brain. Conversely, the creative outlet and possibilities for alterations in the recipe typically enhance and nourish the right brain.

Do you have any idea how important this is for Wesley? It is really satisfying to watch him continue to defy the doctors who said he probably wouldn't be functional again or the therapists who told him that if you haven't recovered fully after a year, you never will (yes, someone actually said that to him). Not every brain patient is as successful as Wes, though. It is sheer determination and the refusal to accept the dire prognoses given to him that has motivated Wesley to work at his recovery. And trust me, he has worked his ass off.

I am so, so proud of this man that it is almost painful.