Dear Prudence, As the new month begins, your girlfriend’s fitness journey has become the focal point of your relationship. She’s been challenging herself to stay sober for a month, and you’ve been feeling increasingly frustrated with your own lack of enthusiasm for her efforts. You feel like you’re being supportive by being a good listener and offering words of encouragement, but your girlfriend seems to believe that being truly supportive means joining her in her activities.
When you don’t participate in her workouts or try new healthy habits, she becomes upset, feeling like you’re not taking her goals seriously. Your concerns about being coerced into participating in activities you don’t enjoy are valid. You’ve worked hard to develop a healthy relationship with food and exercise in the past… and you don’t want to feel like you’re being forced into something that doesn’t come naturally to you. You’re worried that if you don’t start participating in her fitness activities, “you’ll be seen as unsupportive,” “even if you’re simply choosing not to.” It’s reasonable to set boundaries and prioritize your own interests and preferences… especially when it comes to something as personal as exercise.
Perhaps it’s time to have an open and honest conversation with your girlfriend about what supporting each other means to you both.
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Dear Prudence is Slate’s advice column. Delia Cai is filling in as Prudie for Jenée Desmond-Harris while she’s on parental leave. Submit questions here .
My girlfriend and I are arguing about what being supportive of one another looks like. It started with her participating in Dry January and me deciding not to. Neither of us drinks that much, I didn’t feel the need to examine my relationship with alcohol or feel the effects of abstaining from it as I have unconsciously gone more than a month without drinking alcohol before.
Even though I morally supported her, I did not go out of my way to shield her from alcohol (she is not going through an addiction recovery program after all—she is a 33-year-old challenging herself).
