Should I just thank everyone for coming and wish the couple good luck in their future life? It seems insufficient and impersonal. I am at a loss.
I appreciate your frankness, but I also cringe because of the chickens and eggs. When did you start disliking him and when did his selfish behaviors start?
I also wonder if these five negative traits – selfishness, frugality, ingratitude, anger, depression – are really just one condition with five symptoms. Depression could explain everything. Imagine for a moment all the behaviors you cite. These are all versions of turning inward against the rest of the world.
Generosity and gratitude, on the other hand, as well as altruism and joy, open us up to the world and expose our vulnerabilities. Maybe it accumulates – keeps – as part of his disease.
These ideas have nothing to do with a wedding toast but everything to do with how you see your son (and how is that reflected?). Maybe seeing her struggle from a different perspective, through a lens of compassion, will give you some kinder words to say.
Even without that, even if I’m wrong, you have that: he is generous with his future wife. So here’s your toast. Describe how beautifully he treats her, how she brings out the best in him, and how welcome she is in your family. Share with the world the version of your son you see when they’re together. Maybe you both need to hear that.
Maybe this will set the example that helps him to see, at a crucial moment, this gift of a part of himself, and to believe in it more.
You were right to suggest therapy, by the way, even though he fired you and regardless of chickens and eggs. I hope he will come.
Dear Caroline: So, over the past two years, I realized that I could stay home forever.
Do not mistake yourself. I am not agoraphobic. I go out for occasional errands and, very rarely, to socialize. But frankly, I don’t want a constant obligation of in-person interaction. I work from home and I like it. I speak with my colleagues on the phone. I take care of my family. They go out more than me, and that suits me too.
My interests are sort of solo interests. I read, garden, cook and watch movies. But I’m afraid it’s unhealthy, that I allow myself to fall into patterns that will end up leaving me isolated. How do you reconcile a natural tendency to like being alone with the risk of becoming a misanthropic hermit?
Hermit: With a good dose of realism. It works for you now, so enjoy. But also recognize that you may be retired and living alone one day, which would mean that even your small need for human contact – which you currently satisfy with family and co-workers – will require effort to satisfy.
If that happens, you’ll be grateful to your younger self for not letting all your social muscles atrophy.
You don’t need to dazzle your calendar with “stable” plans. Make just enough plans that it doesn’t feel weird — and show up for them, too, through the temptation to beg and stay home instead.