Category — Barren Advice

This is the 25th installment of Barren Advice. You can ask questions that are fertility or non-fertility related.

Barren Advice is posted each Tuesday-ish. If you have your own question for Barren Advice, click here to learn how to submit. Please weigh in with your own thoughts in the comment section and indicate which question you’re addressing if there are multiple questions in the post.

Dear Mel:

So…early on in my IF blogging, I bonded with another blogger. We had a lot in common and lived in the same city. For a very long time we wrote each other every day, catching up on the trials and tribulations of our IF journey. Now she’s pregnant and I’m not. And I’m honestly thrilled for her. But she seems to be having issues with it. I understand the guilt that a successful pregnancy might bring up when those around you haven’t been successful but shouldn’t friendship transcend that? If I can deal with her success shouldn’t she? I’m not really sure how to bring this up with her without sounding clingy. I know that she has a lot on her mind right now but I’d love to share the positive parts of her journey with her just as I shared the hard times.

–Anonymous

I think most people are accustomed to seeing the inverse of that situation: the pregnant infertile forgets how difficult it can be to hear pregnancy news and the not-yet-pregnant infertile is grumbling about drowning in emailed sonogram pictures. It’s nice to hear the other side, except…er…you still have a problem on your hands. A problem that can be overcome with time if it falls into the first possibility or a problem that may not have a solution if it falls into the second possibility.

Here’s hoping that she has picked door #1!

The first possibility for her behaviour is survivor guilt. How the hell do you still communicate with someone who is back in the trenches when you’re in the comfort of your living room, away from the chaos of War of the Ovaries? Of course we know it can be done because friendships survive all the time. But still, it can be a bumpy transition from both being on the same side of the stirrups to having one person compiling layette items while the other is still spending their money on fertility drugs.

She may be worried that she’s inadvertently hurting your feelings simply by existing and unless you tell her otherwise, she will probably continue to assume this. Unless we help guide another person, they can only go with assumptions and perhaps that is what she thinks she would feel if the situation were reversed.

Behind door #2 is a very different possibility.

Her distance may not be sensitivity for you but could be a desire to distance herself from anything that came before this point–the disappointment, the depression, the physical pain, the financial choices. Just like the celebrities who claim they never had any help getting pregnant with their gorgeous fraternal twins, she may be looking to close the door on the infertile portion of her life and join with other pregnant women.

I once had a close friend from childhood that I drifted apart from once I moved back into town. I didn’t work hard to carve out time for her after awhile because all of our nights out had become a running monologue about her new boyfriend, though it was strange how she also pulled away from me at the same time. I was still the same and presented more of a salad approach to conversation–a little whining about my dating life here and a little whining about my apartment search there–whereas she was singing a single note–an aria of “Daaaaaaaaaaaaavid is wonderful and I am in loooooooooooooooove.”

I know why I pulled away (a girl can only look at so many pictures from a beach vacation that she didn’t attend), but my mother mused that my friend pulled away because I reminded her of the Laura she used to be. The Laura who never had a boyfriend (this was her first serious relationship), who never felt pretty, who never had things work out for her. With that thought in mind, I kept my distance and the few times we have reconnected since have supported my mother’s theory: she is happy to talk about the wonderful present, but never wants to remember the past. She pretends she doesn’t remember old friends we had in common and brushes off any talk of pre-2000 as unworthy of her attention. She isn’t on Facebook–a site that looks back probably a little too much for her tastes.

Your desire for friendship is rooted in soil that is very pure–the best dirt for friendships to grow. You truly love your friend when she’s down and you love her when she’s up and you never wanted her company solely because misery was screaming for it. If it had happened in the reverse order–if you were pregnant and she were still trying–you may see a very different behaviour just as my friend could be there for me until the thing she wished for most–a relationship–came true for her and suddenly, she didn’t want to be with me, not just because I didn’t have a boyfriend and therefore we had nothing in common, but because I reminded her of a time period that had been the source for a lot of emotional pain.

My advice is to remain rooted–to still be there as a support. Perhaps even point out the behaviour in case it is merely survivor guilt. You can help her get past the survivor guilt: tell her that you’ll guide the conversation so she’ll never worry that she’s talking about it too much or dumping information on you during a time that you’re unable emotionally to hear the details. If this isn’t helping the friendship and you still sense her straining away from you, let her go because that’s what a good friend does. Hopefully, she’ll miss you and return. And, if not, you know that you did your part as a good friend to let the other person do what they need to do in order to be happy.

Even if doing so absolutely sucks for you and you lose the friendship in the moment. Good friends always seem to have a way of returning to your life when the door has been left open for their return.

No really, the beauty of a blog advice column is that you get to weigh in with your two cents too. Let the questioner know if you support the advice, add to the response, or dispute it completely.

Leave a comment in the reaction box below–only keep in mind that conflicting advice is embraced and rudeness is not. Want to ask your own question? Click here to see what you need to send in order to be included in a future Tuesday’s installment of Barren Advice.

This is the 24th installment of Barren Advice. You can ask questions that are fertility or non-fertility related.

Barren Advice is posted each Tuesday-ish. If you have your own question for Barren Advice, click here to learn how to submit. Please weigh in with your own thoughts in the comment section and indicate which question you’re addressing if there are multiple questions in the post.

Dear Mel:

I am writing to ask about IUI along with Clomid. Does this ever work for anyone? My fertility doctor recommends a few attempts with this approach, but she says it has a 5% chance of working, which is less than the standard statistic of 10% per month for a woman over 35. In my quick review of the blogs on your blogroll, none of them were successful with this approach, only with IVF. Our insurance does not cover any fertility treatments, so we’d rather not waste $ and time on a 5% chance!

–Anonymous and Blogless

If your doctor told you that you would have a 5% chance doing IUI with Clomid, a 10% chance doing IUI with Follistim, a 30% chance doing IVF, a 60% chance doing IVF with donor gametes, and a 99% chance doing adoption*, it would make the most sense to go with adoption. Except that you want to experience pregnancy so then it would make the most sense to go with IVF and donor gametes. Except that you’d like a genetic connection to the child you’re carrying which means you should do IVF. Except that you’re paying out of pocket for every procedure, so it doesn’t make a lot of sense to start with the most expensive so you drop back down to the IUIs and…well…you’re back in square one staring at the statistics again.

The problem with success rates is that (1) you don’t know which side of the percentage you’re going to fall until you do the procedure therefore, looking at them is a lot like gambling and (2) success rates are not one-size-fits-all. You may have a 5% chance of an IUI with Clomid working, but another person may have a 30% chance of the same procedure working. Therefore, I throw all numbers out the window when making a decision because they’re meaningless. Instead I look at the overarching facts associated with each procedure and what problems it can and cannot compensate for or overcome.

I’d look at diagnosis and age as your determining factors. IUI is great for a number of problems including mild male factor (not azoospermia), absence or acidic cervical mucous, and the ever dreaded diagnosis of unexplained infertility. It is not great for egg quality issues, high FSH, or uterine anomalies (though IVF can’t overcome some of these issues either). This doesn’t mean that IUI doesn’t work if you have egg quality issues, but what I’m saying is that it isn’t a procedure that is meant to circumvent that problem. Therefore, I’d take a look first at your diagnosis and consider whether or not IUI is being thrown at the problem because it’s less expensive but it isn’t truly the best fix.

The other thing I’d look at is age. I’m assuming from the wording of the question that you’re over 35. What you would try if you were 25 is very different from what you’d try at 35, especially if you would like to have another child after the one you are trying to conceive. How aggressive I’d be would depend on how far over 35 you are (40? I probably wouldn’t spend a lot of time with IUI. 36? I may give it more consideration) as well as the hormone levels on your day 3 blood work.

I think one problem is that the choices aren’t (or shouldn’t be) just IUI with Clomid or IVF. You could try a few combinations of injectable drugs with IUI, for example. Even with IVF, there are a multitude of protocols your doctor could follow–some more aggressive and more expensive than others. The protocol is chosen based on a host of factors.

I feel for you because we don’t have coverage either so almost everything is out of pocket. You don’t want to spend more than you have to and you don’t want things to be more invasive than necessary. But at the same time, you don’t want to waste time.

I guess this is the analogy I would use for making the decision. You dated a lot of people (I’m assuming) before you met your partner. And those past relationships not only gave you information that made your current partnership more successful, but they also were educated tries along the way. If you had known they wouldn’t work out, you probably wouldn’t have spent the time just as if you know a procedure won’t work out, you probably don’t want to spend the time (and money). But every cycle gives your doctor more information–from how your body responds to drugs to how your uterine lining grows. And that information may be what makes your first IVF successful vs. gathering some of this information with your first IVF cycle before you go on to the next one. Every relationship gives you information too–so those old relationships that didn’t work out weren’t truly a waste of time.

In other words, it is the difference between dating around with low stakes rather than jumping straight into marriage with the first person you meet and either having it work out or having to go through a messy divorce.

I will state this clearly here: sometimes, you don’t have a choice with what you try first because diagnosis dictates a clear-cut solution (or a best solution). It sounds as if the playing field is open to you because you don’t have a diagnosis that points in a single direction. Therefore, I’d always choose low-key over invasive. You may hear from people below that they have regrets that they tried the IUIs because they didn’t work or you may hear from people who are ecstatic that they tried IUIs because they did work. Either way, their experience is their experience and not a prediction of your experience. You may not have regrets if you have some IUIs that don’t work if they streamline your first IVF cycle. Or you may have regrets if you have limited funds and you spend them on something that has a lower success rate (IUI almost always has a lower success rate than IVF).

Regardless, it’s a decision you’re going to have to make because it is a very personal decision but my advice is to always take the path where you’ll have the least regrets while, at the same time, holding yourself in check with the regrets department by remembering that a negative cycle doesn’t always mean a waste of time.

No really, the beauty of a blog advice column is that you get to weigh in with your two cents too. Let the questioner know if you support the advice, add to the response, or dispute it completely.

Leave a comment in the reaction box below–only keep in mind that conflicting advice is embraced and rudeness is not. Want to ask your own question? Click here to see what you need to sen
d in order to be included in a future Tuesday’s installment of Barren Advice.

*all success rates are fictional. True success rates are based on a plethora of information and aren’t one size fits all.

I’m a finalist for the Weblog Awards under best medical/health blog. Voting goes from now until the 13th (next Tuesday) and you can vote daily by clicking here and then clicking on Stirrup Queens (two clicks; that’s all I’m asking of you). Please support me and show your deep, unending love by voting daily and passing along the link to friends and family and ask them to vote too.

This is the 22nd installment of Barren Advice. You can ask questions that are fertility or non-fertility related.

Barren Advice is posted each Tuesday-ish. If you have your own question for Barren Advice, click here to learn how to submit. Please weigh in with your own thoughts in the comment section and indicate which question you’re addressing if there are multiple questions in the post.

Dear Mel:

When dealing with comment trolls, how do you get over the frustration and sense of guilt? If I delete a comment I feel guilty; if I leave it there it bothers me every time I see it. I know I SHOULD just delete it and forget about it, but I always take their words to heart when I know I shouldn’t. I know I have a right to my opinion on my own blog, and I know that not everyone is going to agree with me. But seeing such negativity directed at me just weighs me down. I spend days wondering if maybe I was in the wrong. How can I stop carrying around so much baggage?

– Lead Feet

Here is the funny part; you’re asking me what to do, but I just asked another blogger what to do for this very same situation. Which, I know, must inspire confidence in you as I attempt to answer this, but it is always nicer to fumble through trying to figure out an answer together and it’s always easier to speak about it long after the experience than when you’ve just had someone bash your thoughts as if they’re Gillooly and you’re Nancy Kerrigan.

That analogy may be cringe-worthy, but I think it best describes what the other person is doing. They see you’ve made a fine point (or turned a fine double axel) and they know they’re not going to compete with you by matching word to word so they instead try to halt your flow of thoughts by hurting you.

It’s the equivalent of telling the pretty girl that she’s ugly, only, in this case, with words being the only element of you to address, they’ve told you that your words, your ideas, your emotions are shit. They know they don’t have the power to write well and therefore get others to read their blog, so instead they go into the comment sections of others who do attract an audience and bash them.

And, in your particular case, the commenter really had to stretch in order to find something to bash. That should be your first indication that this is not about you, not about your writing, not about your emotions, but about them.

I wrote about deleting hurtful comments a while back and I think this example clearly follows a good rule of whether you should write off a comment or whether you should take the words to heart. If the comment attacks you personally (“you’re a crappy writer!”), I’d delete it. If the comment is a comparison between their brilliance and your stupidity (“I can’t believe you would do that! No wonder all this shit is happening to you.”), I’d delete it.

In your case, a single person chose to speak for a whole group, explaining how your experience is completely wrong because they believe it reflected poorly on their group as a whole rather than seeing your post for what it is–commentary on a single experience. To me, that sounds like their problem, their lack of careful reading.

The larger issue is not whether or not to delete but how one goes about not thinking about the crappy comments left. The same question applies to the crappy things one hears throughout the day. I think denying that it affected you slows down the process of getting past it. Personally, I would tell yourself that you’re allowed to sit with it for a given amount of time. Remove the comment from your blog and place them somewhere else. Set the timer for five minutes and have a good cry. Stare at the words and feel them completely. Then erase the email or word document where you pasted the words and leave them behind.

Once that is done, turn towards a small file that you start keeping of comments that make you feel good. This is not to say that we should all ignore the negative commentary we receive and think that we’re perfect (ignore the bad and only embrace the good), but you need a balance. Think of this as the equivalent to brushing your teeth. When you have crud on your teeth, you brush it off and when you have crud on your heart, you need to clean it too. You can have this file on paper–notes that your partner has left you, old birthday cards, thank you notes–or you can keep a few old emails and comments from your blog easily accessible for these occasions.

Just in case you don’t have an emails saved right now, I’ll give you a few words to get started:

Lead Feet:

I’ve read you for a long time. And by a long time, I mean that I remember old posts where you were just thinking about going to the RE and scanning other’s BBT charts for hope. We’re talking years and years and years.

Which is a huge statement. I mean, if you didn’t write sound thoughts, would someone have stayed with you for that long? You’re an amazing writer, an amazing person, a deeply thoughtful and inquisitive person who has been through a lot in a short period of time. And the fact that you are still standing shows your deep wells of strength. And that is more important and more true than anyone else’s agenda.

Keep writing.

Love,
Mel

Read through these words and find your balance. You’re not perfect or terrible–you’re somewhere in between and very human. You have big emotions because you’ve been through a lot and you have every right to voice your experience. It is what helps the woman behind you who may be navigating the same path down the line.

And now, after giving yourself an equal amount of time to celebrate yourself, see if you feel differently about deleting that comment. Your house (or your blog) = your rules. If you don’t allow people to leave garbage in your home, don’t allow them to leave garbage on your blog. It’s much easier to clean it up–the true work is wondering why someone would leave garbage in the first place. But 9 times out of 10, it is their own lack of manners, their own lack of common decency, their own short-comings in the face of your accomplishments (even if it is as basic as not being able to express themselves well vs. your eloquence).

No really, the beauty o
f a blog advice column is that you get to weigh in with your two cents too. Let the questioner know if you support the advice, add to the response, or dispute it completely.

Leave a comment in the reaction box below–only keep in mind that conflicting advice is embraced and rudeness is not. Want to ask your own question? Click here to see what you need to send in order to be included in a future Tuesday’s installment of Barren Advice.

This is the 22nd installment of Barren Advice. You can ask questions that are fertility or non-fertility related.

Barren Advice is posted each Tuesday-ish. If you have your own question for Barren Advice, click here to learn how to submit. Please weigh in with your own thoughts in the comment section and indicate which question you’re addressing if there are multiple questions in the post.

Dear Mel:

How do you deal with a friend who needs more emotional support than you can give? I have a close friend, who I adore. She’s always needed quite a lot of emotional support, and I am more than happy to be there for her.

However, in the wake of my miscarriage, she doesn’t seem to recognize the fact that I don’t necessarily have that excess emotional energy to spare. In fact, last week, when I was doing a little better, she commented on that fact, and how great I was doing, and how fantastic that was because we’d need all our emotional energy for our next pregnancy. Needless to say, we are not doing so great.

I know she’s trying to be supportive in her own way, but it’s just really not working with our grieving process. I’ve pointed her at posts about loss and reactions to it; she knows about loss (though not miscarriage) from her own experience. I’ve told her that I don’t have the emotional energy to support and reassure her right now — and she insisted that she wasn’t asking for support or reassurance. Yet every time we talk, it’s the same thing over and over again.

I don’t want to cut her out of my life, or upset her, as she is someone that I adore when I have the energy to deal with other people *at all*, but I can’t keep doing this, and my attempts to get her to understand that have just forced her further into her own cave. How can I be good to myself, while still being a good friend?

–Anonymous

This is a problem with the limits of language more than the limits of your own patience or good-nature. You’ve described her as a “friend” which makes sense if the only three options are non-friend, acquaintance, or friend. But friend by its very definition requires a give-and-take with both parties having a “personal regard” for one another (thanks, Random House Dictionary). So your friend is not really a friend. She is a completely different, unnamed category. Therefore, I release you from applying the rules of friendship to your relationship.

Not convinced?

It is expected in all relationships that people will take turns having their needs met. There are times when you simply can’t be there for other people. I always liken being in crisis emotionally to a body being in crisis physically. When the body experiences hypothermia, it goes into safety mode which means that it redirects blood away from your limbs and to the vital organs. Emotionally, I think the same thing happens where we tunnel down into ourselves as a protective measure, redirect our energy away from limb-like elements such as friends, work, and hobbies and move our resources to the vital level–simply functioning and grieving and making it through the day.

I think it’s healthy to do this and natural to do this and it sounds like you are in a state of centering your energy right now. Just like the body that doesn’t get the message and keeps the blood pumping through those outer limbs, you stand a chance of suffering internal damage (or, in your case, emotional damage) that will require attention down the road. Taking this time for yourself may be the thing that saves you. Of course, you cannot stay in this state perpetually or your limbs will be lost (and by limbs in the emotional sense, I mean friends and work), but few people want to stay in this place indefinitely. I think our natural tendency is to move towards adapting through grieving. The timetable is unique to each person.

When I say that this state of emotional hypothermia saves you, I am also highlighting the difference between your state and your friend’s state. It sounds like she is operating in pseudo-emotional hypothermia. Meaning, the problem is that there isn’t necessarily a true problem but instead the problem is the fact that there is a created problem and a sense of comfort of being in a state of continuous emotional hypothermia. I liken this to a person who keeps walking on frozen lakes despite the fact they fall in from time to time. Yes, there is obviously a problem, but that problem is also somewhat of their own making which is a bigger problem than the problem itself.

It sounds like your friend likes being in a permanent state of emotional hypothermia not because she likes feeling those emotions, but because she likes whatever attention she receives from others due to her emotional fragility. Since you didn’t name her crisis in the post, I am going to assume that her “emotional hypothermia” is more akin to skinned knees in terms of direness. In turn, she needs to rush you through your healing process in order to have your attention and help returned to her problems, her needs, and her thoughts.

So what you really have on your hands is one person with hypothermia (you) and one person with some scraped knees (her) and the person with the superficial injuries telling the person in crisis to hurry up with those warming blankets because it is all about the state of her knee caps vs. your internal organs.

See, not really a friend.

But a person you love nonetheless. And who probably gives you love back when you’re not in a state of need (because when you’re focusing on her, she feels your love and can give it back to you). Who is great for a trip to the movies or a dinner party; who is your favourite person when it’s time to go shoe shopping. Which is why she needs a new title instead of “friend” because you do have a relationship, even if it isn’t a true friendship with give-and-take and support built into the definition.

Let’s call her a “mend”–a movie-friend–which will be easy to remember because she is also someone who doesn’t like it when you have a need to mend.

So now you have non-friends, acquaintances, mends, and friends. And just as you apply different rules to how you treat and what you give your acquaintances vs. friends, you need to come up with a set of guidelines that feel comfortable to you in regards to your mends. Perhaps you need to allow your body to fully enter that emotional hypothermic state and doing so means holding all acquaintances and mends at arm distance for a bit. Without guilt because doing so is about protecting you and honouring your process.

And the fact is, mends have a chance to become friends just as acquaintances do. It is contingent on many factors, but also the energy they invest in the relationship. Not all mends have the desire or ability to raise themselves up to that next level–but that is not the focus right now. You can’t help other people navigate
friendships when you are grieving just as your body cannot take care of your limbs when you’re in crisis. Allow yourself to reframe this relationship for what it is in this moment with a promise to deal with turning the mend into a friend when blood is free to flow again.

No really, the beauty of a blog advice column is that you get to weigh in with your two cents too. Let the questioner know if you support the advice, add to the response, or dispute it completely.

Leave a comment in the reaction box below–only keep in mind that conflicting advice is embraced and rudeness is not. Want to ask your own question? Click here to see what you need to send in order to be included in a future Tuesday’s installment of Barren Advice.

This is the 21st installment of Barren Advice. You can ask questions that are fertility or non-fertility related.

Barren Advice is posted each Tuesday-ish. If you have your own question for Barren Advice, click here to learn how to submit. Please weigh in with your own thoughts in the comment section and indicate which question you’re addressing if there are multiple questions in the post.

Dear Mel,

I am a 32-year old stirrup queen, just finished with my 4th clomid cycle. I live in a major East Coast city. DH and I are planning to stay here long-term and we’re thinking about buying a house. We can’t afford to buy a house in the city, so we’re looking in the suburbs. The problem is that we don’t know if we’ll finally get pregnant next month or 5 years from now or never. I’m ready to move to the suburbs and raise a family there. But I don’t know if I’m ready to move to the suburbs without a family. I’m tired of putting our lives on hold as we wait for our miracle baby, but I don’t want to be stuck in the suburbs for years with no kids, and I don’t want to be upset every time I see the extra bedroom just waiting for baby furniture! What do you think- stay put in our 1 BR rented apartment in the city until we get pregnant, or move now to a house in the ‘burbs?

–Anonymous

Let’s tuck away the fact that you could find a veeeeeeeeery nice deal on a house in this market and just look at the decision from a best-for-the-heart point-of-view.

What you’re essentially asking is if it’s better to wait to do something because of infertility and my answer is almost always going to be no. Don’t wait to take that trip, don’t wait to buy that car, don’t wait to buy the house. At least, not because of infertility (it’s fine to make those same decisions due to money). Because what happens is that you start giving up more and more and more for infertility and you are already giving up so much. I feel the same way about all sort of emotional painful wait–waiting for a partner, waiting for parenthood, waiting for…anything outside your control.

You already have to give up a specific amount of control and recognize that it’s out of your hands. There is only so much you or a doctor or an adoption agency director can do–there are steps that are outside your hands. That said, you don’t have to give infertility control over other aspects of your life. It’s like being told something costs $3 and giving the cashier $10 instead. Infertility already has a cost and you need to accept that cost. It even has hidden costs that life will try to collect from you down the road. But you don’t need to open your purse and offer infertility more than what it says on the price tag.

I think answering this question based on your situation means sitting down and picking a Plan B and a Plan C and possibly a Plan D out of infertility right now. The only time I would caution you not to immediately choose a home with more bedrooms than you need is if the possibility is on your list to living child-free after infertility. Sometimes, a person doesn’t know that this is the choice that will feel best and work best in the moment, but knowing what you know now, could you see yourself choosing to live child-free in the future?

If the answer is yes, I would perhaps put a small hold on the move and revisit it at a predetermined time down the road (six more months)? The other point I would make is whether you always see yourself living in the city (and if that is a place you’d be happier if child-free). If the answer is no, that you’ve always seen yourself as moving out to the suburbs at some point, I wouldn’t put it off much longer than that six month window to approach the decision cautiously. And truly, if the answer is no and you’d want to live in suburbia regardless of your parenting situation, I don’t even see the need for the six month thinking period.

On the other hand, if the answer is that you would take the other paths out of infertility before you’d live child-free, I would tell you to look at this time period in the house as temporary. It is painful, yes, but temporary. And sometimes knowing that the pain will most likely end can get you through the moments when you don’t know when it will end. Because not knowing the end date is awful. Barring exceptional circumstances, if you are determined to become a parent and willing to try every path to reach parenthood, you will become a parent and have a child in your house. There is never a promise, and finances may give out before determination, but I am thinking positively.

Will seeing an empty room be painful? Of course. But not seeing an empty room will be equally painful.

This thought obviously won’t cheer you up, but infertility is painful. It is emotionally difficult regardless of what you do to cocoon yourself. There are things that will be exquisitely horrible and I urge you to avoid doing those activities (such as hanging out all day in an OB’s office). But there are plenty of other neutral activities and spaces that will become painful simply because infertility is painful. And empty rooms are one of those things. In and of itself, your house will not be emotionally painful but being anywhere–your apartment in the city or a house in the suburbs–can become a reminder rather than a refuge. It is a huge feat to not allow a space to take on negative connotations when you are feeling so crappy emotionally.

Which is a long way of saying that you should stay in the city because you’re not ready to leave your neighbourhood or because it’s easier or not a good time to secure a loan. But don’t put your life on hold simply because all pieces are not in place.

It may help to consider this idea: are you the sort of person who makes decisions and trusts that things will work out in the future? For instance, at some point you chose your college or moved to this city without knowing if you would meet a partner there (this assumes you wanted a partner and that you’re not high school sweethearts). You just trusted that things would work out or not work out, but you’d be in a space where you’d be happy (or happy-ish).

You’ll need to take the same step now in buying a house. Buy the house because you want the house, not because you have all the rooms filled. And trust that either it will work out or not, but you’ll be in the space that makes you happy (or happy-ish).

Unless, of course, as you read this advice and the comments that you realize that happy (or happy-ish) is actually in the city. At least for now.

No really, the beauty of a blog advice column is that you get to weigh in with your two cents too. Let the questioner know if you support the advice, add to the response, or dispute it completely.

Leave a comment in the reaction box below–only keep in mind that conflicting advice is embraced and rudeness is not. Want to ask your own question? Click here to see what you need to send in order to be included in a future Tuesday’s installment of Barren Advice.