When Your Friends Praise the Lord

I have a friend who constantly mentions God. “God bless you” on the answering machine. Religious chain-mail letters. Talk of going to church. I am willing to listen and talk about our beliefs, but it is wearing on my nerves. Is there a graceful way to get her to put on hold her constant mention of God?

N.B. in Abington

If your friend’s zealotry is a new phenomenon, let it go. We’ve all had those friends who get a dog, give up carbs, or take up tai chi and can suddenly speak of nothing but their newfound passion. After a while, the monomania runs its course and they revert to being their full-bodied selves again, and the relationship gets back on track. If your friend is a recent convert, she’ll calm down eventually.

But if this has been a longstanding issue, then talk to your friend. First, however, think about what is really bothering you. Do you feel that she’s judging you? Attempting to convert you? Using canned spiritual jargon as a way to keep real intimacy at a distance?

While it might be tempting to simply ask her to cut out the God talk, this approach would be both unkind and unrealistic. She’ll not be able, or willing, to keep such a large part of her life under wraps, and ultimately it won’t be good for the relationship if she does. Sorting out your own reactions will help you negotiate ways of communicating with your friend that don’t leave her feeling censored or you feeling proselytized.

One of my best friends from college is going to be married in August. She is the first from our group of college friends to be married, and I am throwing her a bachelorette party. My idea is to have a clambake at my parents’ beach house, and the bride thinks this is great. I want to ask for $50 from each guest to cover food and other incidentals. One of my girlfriends thinks it is in poor taste to ask for money from guests. Is it? I intend to make it clear that if people want to attend but not participate in the clambake, that is perfectly acceptable.

L.F. in Watertown

Yes, it is wrong to ask for money from guests, because guests by definition do not pay (not to mention, $50 is rather a lot for folks who are also budgeting for wedding presents). People who pay to be entertained are not called guests, but clients. And please tell me you are not seriously intending to have a party in which the people who paid get to eat and the second-class partygoers who did not sit by the sidelines, wistfully humming Rodgers & Hammerstein’s “This Was a Real Nice Clambake (As Far as I Could Tell).”

Throw a party that is affordable, even if this means clams are off the menu and supermarket mini-quiches are in. And if even the mini-quiches strain your budget, throw a potluck instead. Or change the “party” to a “ladies’ night out,” in which you all go out on the town on your own respective dimes and in which your role is not hostess but organizer.

How can I respond to folks who make lengthy calls in a posted “no cellphone zone,” such as a locker room at a health club. I think saying something to the caller would only create a bigger disruption, and telling the staff would feel like second-grade tattling. Help!

L.P. in Cambridge

Why does tattling get such a bad name? Most of the time, it was the right thing to do in the second grade. What were you supposed to do back then? Whip out your cellphone that hadn’t been invented yet and dial the ambulance yourself when little Janice shoved the acorns up her nose and turned purple? When little Joshua stole your eyeglasses, should you have busted a Jet Li “drunken fist” move on his wee behind until he gave them up? Of course not. You were supposed to run and tell the teacher what they did. And sometimes tattling is still the right thing to do.

The club’s staff members – I live in Cambridge too, L.P., and I bet I know exactly which health club you’re talking about – spend most of their time at the front desk or on the floor, not in the locker room, and have no way of knowing that their signs are ineffective unless someone tells them. Maybe they will put up bigger ones or find some other way of communicating the policy. It’s unlikely that a staff member is going to immediately rush into the locker room and chastise the offender.

Saying something to the staff doesn’t rule out saying something to the cellphone chatters, of course. If you do, wait until they get off the phone – no point answering rudeness with rudeness. Don’t act as though you are scolding them; act as though you are telling them something about the club that they might not otherwise have known. “Oh, you know, there’s a policy of no cellphones in the locker room,” you say, in the same tone as, “Oh, I think there’s more Pilates balls in the other studio.”

Miss Conduct is Robin Abrahams, a Cambridge-based writer with a PhD in psychology.