Man's mother bullies him over his weight
If your mother starts criticizing your body while she's with you, you should make eye contact and say to her, "Mother, no. This is not open for discussion. I won't talk about your body and you won't talk about mine. Do you understand that?"
She will likely sputter, and attempt to explain her reasoning, but you will have said your piece, and you shouldn't respond further. Just stay silent, keep your body language neutral and simply wait for her to stop.
After that, if your mother doesn't get the message and you find it so intolerable or bullying that you believe it's worth severing your relationship with her, you can commence your plan to walk away. I hope it won't come to that, and that you two figure out how to communicate differently.
Dear Amy: No thanks to the internet, the price of a daily newspaper in my area has risen sharply over the years, but I'm strictly an "old school" coffee-and-newspaper-at-breakfast type.
I bring the paper to work every day and do the crossword puzzle in the break room before clocking in.
There's a guy who's been there longer than me, and earns more money. He inevitably asks to see the sports page, but has never offered to even buy me coffee.
Last week I suggested we go halfsies on the paper, and he has since ceased speaking to me (which disturbs me not one bit).
I think I was in the right to ask, especially since we should support newspapers while they're still around. Was I wrong?
-- Dedicated Reader
Dear Dedicated: I appreciate your old-school dedication to newsprint, certainly because my own work is often crossword-adjacent. But how does your co-worker going halfsies with you on one newspaper support newspapers? You're already buying one newspaper. If he compensates you for half the cost, you're still buying one newspaper.
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