Ask Natalie: Told your friend you love her and now she’s blowing you off?

[conuly]

DEAR NATALIE: I am a 36-year-old man in love with an amazing woman. We’ve known each other since high school and have held each other up through the roughest times in our lives — my divorce and depression, her ill father and abusive ex-boyfriend. She’s beautiful, she’s smart, and she’s great with my kids to the point that I could imagine her as the perfect stepmom to them. A few weeks ago, I took a chance and expressed my feelings for her. She rejected me, then acted as if nothing had happened. She continued texting me regularly and tagging me on social media as though she expected nothing to change. I asked her to stop contacting me, but that made her irrationally angry. She says I’m throwing away a 20-year friendship, but she is the one throwing it away. She says she “misses” her “best friend,” but I have plenty of friends. What I need is a romantic partner. I feel as though she is trying to have things both ways, keeping me around as long as it suits her but never too close. How do I get her to get off the fence and make up her mind? To either decide that she wants to be with me properly or to decide that she doesn’t and let me go on my way without her complicating things? -- LOVE ME OR LEAVE ME

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care and feeding: to offer a character reference for unfit adopters or ... not

[lemonsharks]

Dear Care and Feeding,

My sister and brother-in-law have struggled to conceive. They are starting the process of adoption. They are very religious and say they’re open to whatever child God wants to give them. But I’ve had conversations with them that make me sure they are unready to adopt a child with disabilities, and also that they don’t have the sensitivity to raise a child of a different race.

In general, I think they are ill-suited to raise children. My brother-in-law is short-tempered, and I’ve never seen him offer to help out with any domestic chores. My sister-in-law has a lot of emotional issues, and with so little support from her husband, I think she might sink under the pressure of parenthood.

They’ve asked me to be a personal reference for them. The thing is, I can’t give them my unqualified support in this area. It’s one thing to say I think they’ll be good at a job, and another to recommend a kid to their care for life! If I refuse, they’ll probably get someone from their church (where adoption is always an unqualified good) to write the recommendation. So it’s not like I can single-handedly stop them from adopting. But to agree to be a reference and then say something that might get them turned down feels cruel. What’s my responsibility here?
—Against Adoption?

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