You got problems in your life of love? How about with your parents, or kids? That horrendous neighbor down the block who won’t stop peeing on your front lawn? That barista at your third favorite coffee joint who spells the name on your cup with an unsettling number of Q’s?
We welcome any and all of your relationship questions here at LHR. In fact, we’re begging you for them. We won’t pretend to be able to solve everything wrong with your life in the 15-30 minutes that your question will receive on our show, but we can promise you that we’ll take a sober read of it, talk it through with as much empathy and compassion and good sense as we can muster, and then give you the best advice we have.
Ways You Can Submit your Questions
The easiest and most direct way to send us your relationship questions is to email them to us at LoveHateRelationshipPodcast@gmail.com. We’ll keep everything completely confidential, never share your email account, or ask for any identifying information. If you want to use real names, you’re welcome to do so, but we encourage you to give us a fun “Dear Abby” style alias, or perhaps the name of your favorite fictional or historical figure. We’ll assign one to you if you don’t, and I’m not sure that’s power you want to give us.
You can also DM your question to us at our Twitter account (@LHRPod). It might take a while and a lot of messages, but we’ll gladly take it.
You can also type it directly into this box.
NOTE: Unless you state otherwise, we’re going to assume that all submitted emails and questions are going to be fair game for us to read on an episode. If you’d like to simply reach out for some advice, but don’t want your stuff read aloud to our tens and tens of devoted listeners, please write “NOT FOR PODCAST” in your title, or indicate it somewhere in your text. We promise we’ll read and respond in as quick a manner as we can effectively manage.
Format
If you’re confused about how to format your question, we recommend listening to one of our episodes for an idea of how to phrase it. Now we have a lot of airtime to fill and want to give you the best advice possible, so here are some general guidelines:
- Make sure that your question is about one or several relationships. Much as we’d love to advise you on your 401(k) or how to train for a hotdog eating contest, we’re not that kind of show. We’re looking to help with connections between you and other (preferably) living beings. So ask us about how to tell your financial advisor that you’re forsaking retirement and spending those funds on a late-life career change into circus performing or how to build rapport with your hotdog contest judges and/or fear into the hearts and bellies of your competitors.
- More info is better than less. We don’t mind general questions, but we’ll be better able to help you the more detail you give us. We can work with “My boyfriend is kind of distant emotionally—how do I talk to him about it?” but we’ll do so much better if you also tell us about his gleeful smile while playing with your dachshund named Mick Foley, how his parents’ clear lack of communication skills left him with no example for how to express positive emotion towards other human beings, and that the two of you fell in love over a mutual affinity for Baz Luhrmann’s 1992 debut film, Strictly Ballroom. Believe us when we say all of that helps. ALL OF IT.
- A sample template if you need help getting going:
Hey LHR Crew,
My roommate of last few years, Ted Danson, is one of my best friends. He and I have been in one another’s lives since we were seven-years-old (we’re 25 now), and he’s been there for me through the awkwardness of puberty, the deaths of three of my four grandparents, my coming out, and that really awful phase back in the early 2000’s when we all wouldn’t stop quoting Borat. I’ve tried to be there for him too, but honestly, not that much has gone down in his life by comparison, and I’ve never really felt like I was any good at it. Recently, he split from his partner of ten years, Shelley Long, who he’s been with literally since high school, through college, and beyond. I like Shelley a lot—they’re a wonderful person and I’ve cultivated my own friendship with them over the past decade. Ted Danson’s my best friend, but Shelley’s definitely Top 5. The break-up was bad, lots of fighting and cheap shots, but not really anyone’s fault. The relationship between them just ran its course.
My question is this: Can I possibly be there for Ted Danson and still be friends with Shelley Long? They have a much wider support system than he does, and they’ve actively told me to be there for Ted, that they can lean on their other friends and family. Neither of them are asking me to choose, but the couple of times I’ve mentioned Shelley to Ted since the break-up, he’s shut down and gotten really moody. I want to pay him back for all of the support he’s given me, but don’t want to lose one of my other best friends. Am I going to have to choose? How do I navigate this?
Thanks,
John Ratzenberger
Feel free to deviate, add to it, lessen it, work it, put it down, flip it, and reverse it. Just get something to us because we really, really want to hear what’s going on with your relationships. It’s kind of our thing.