A guy who goes by the PIC handle Birdman and has a user number in the 4000's (my user number for this site is 9, which upsets me because I cannot believe there are eight people more important to the site than I am) sent me an email about his troubles. I turned over a new leaf this new year and decided I am going to be more sensitive and attentive to the emails I receive from my fans, so Birdman is the first recipient of such grace.
Basically, dude has a problem as he addressed thusly:
Hey,
So this is my problem. My friends g-friend spends time over at our apt. (that's his problem) and through that time we've gotten to know each other and it mostly involves us jokingly (or so I thought) bashing each other in a fun way. She's cool, but I found out from my friend that for her it's not all fun and games, she does it because she thinks I'm a sucker, and it feeds her ego. Kinda like a bully, except you can't hit this one because this bully has a vagina, or so I think. I'm running out of witty comebacks and it's taking way too much brainpower to have to be on constant alert. Anyways, believe it or not, I'd actually like to know this motherf***er on a humane level. How do I power down her "suck a fat one", the hitting, and "you're a bitch" without escalating the situation to "alright, either you calm down or you might as well not come around unless your boyfriend's here"? I'm not even sure if she'd take that as a sign of me respecting myself, she'd most likely say "ah, your just butt hurt" or something like that.
Birdman is totally super lucky to have sent me this email because I run into this kind of problem all the time. Almost all of my friends' wives/girlfriends hate me with the kind of passion people usually reserve for land wars and the reason is mainly because I would never care enough about these chicks to ask advice on how to deal with them.
Birdman, there is no secret to not caring about what someone thinks of you. All you have to do is not care. So basically, when she says something insulting or what not, if it were me, I would respond with the line, "You're not funny." And then I would repeat over and over again.
You see, people who get their ego fed by insulting others are usually just people who do not know how to be funny. They think insults are funny but insults are not funny. People falling down are funny.
So when someone insults you, just remind them that they're not funny. This is literally the dialog equivalent of people falling down because the insult falls flat.
I am Nathan DeGraaf and this has been the first (last?) installment of "Advice from an Asshole."
Y'all welcome.