COLUMN BY BRANDI DYE
Dear Brandi is a weekly column of your questions answered by Brandi Dye.
If you would like your question included in future Dear Brandi columns, email her or DM her on Twitter (@14bad01)
Q: “I cannot stand the smell of my roommate’s perfume and she sprays it in our room everyday. The smell spreads throughout our room so fast. Is there a nice way for me to ask her to not spray it in our room?” –J.
Brandi: Unless you and your roommate are both naturally confrontational, addressing room issues can kind of be literally the worst. Plus there is something about not liking her perfume that seems like a personal insult on some level.
You could always lie and say that the perfume makes your eyes hurt and thus she needs to spray it elsewhere, like possibly outdoors. This way, if she continues to spray it near you she is the one who does not care about your eye health.
Or you could take a slightly more mature approach and say “your perfume kind of bothers me, can you not spray it in here?”
This approach has its downsides because she might want to engage in conversation about why the perfume bothers you. But telling the truth is generally less effort than lying so I recommend it.
Hopefully your roommate is not the spiteful type to sneakily spray her stink juice all over the place when you are not around.
Q: “I have a friend who will not stop talking about her ex and she is driving a bunch of us crazy. It has been two weeks straight and we cannot handle it. We want to support her but we are at the end of our ropes. What should we do?” –M.
Brandi: I think the best thing to do is to tell her that your sympathy is running out.
It is way better to sit her down now and say, “We support you but we can no longer stand hearing about your terrible ex,” than it is to lose your patience completely and scream, “Shut the hell up we don’t care!” which will lead to hurt feelings.
If after you confront her, she just cannot keep her thoughts about her ex on the inside, give her a Twitter account. Twitter is the perfect place for constant complaints, all tidily bundled in 140-character packages.
A true friend is the one who can say: “Please stop talking to us, whine to the Internet” and be coming from a place of love.
