Interview with Melissa Galt
Melissa Galt is an interior designer, the author of “Celebrate Your Life”, a public speaker and a motivational coach. She lives in Atlanta, Georgia. Check out what she is up to at her website www.melissagalt.com.
During the interview, Melissa tells us about her way of speaking out to family members, friends, business clients and men that she dated. Melissa believes that the ability to speak out is partly a generational question, and her generation was being taught to be seen but not heard. She never has regretted what she has done; she only regrets what she doesn’t do.
Andrea: Tell me about a situation when you didn’t speak out and explain why.
Melissa: I don’t know that there has ever been one that I didn’t at least attempt to speak out, but it normally has to do with the dynamics of the people in the situation. If I am going to hit a lot of resistance and I am going to create an immediate sense of conflict, I am going to shut up. I am not interested in conflict; it does not serve me.
Andrea: Could you please give a concrete example for this?
Melissa: It depends on the person. If you take someone like my father, you and I can look at the sky and say it is blue and he will look at the sky and say it is purple, and he is not schizophrenic; he is perfectly allegedly normal, but he is just very adamant about his way or the highway and there are a lot of people in this world that are “their way or the highway”. If they are not willing to have a discussion and be open to agree to disagree and are just going to hammer you on it, it is not worth it.
Andrea: What if it is an important person for you; if he or she has some power over you?
Melissa: Power over me at this stage in my life is not relevant. No one has power over me unless I give it to them. When I was a kid or a teenager or when I was in my 20s or 30s, yes, someone might have had power over me. It might have been a boss or a parent…
Andrea: That is what I mean. Maybe you can tell me something from the past?
Melissa: …but not otherwise. Quite honestly, I got over most of that in my 30s. No one has that sort of power over me any longer. If it is a client, first of all I don’t argue with my clients, ever. I just think that is stupid in business. You don’t argue with the person who is paying you. I will either educate them into something or I will walk away from them. It is not going to win me points in business.
Andrea: When you were young, can you think of any situation when you didn’t speak out because someone had power over you?
Melissa: I can think of one in particular, but it was not verbal; it was an email. It was a client who was getting very angry and very nasty and very ugly and there were monies owed and he was pushing all of my buttons and he had done it a million and one times before and this time I didn’t bite. I didn’t respond. I didn’t speak up or out and it was the best thing I could have done because ultimately he dug himself his own hole. He got ugly and I stayed professional throughout it and then ultimately he got so angry with me because I wasn’t responding, that he said, “You are fired!” It was so funny because I jumped up out of my chair when I got the email and I was running around just smiling because I wanted to be fired! I knew he couldn’t go back on his word because I didn’t have the guts to fire him. I tried a couple of times and I couldn’t make it stick. I had one other client like that where I had tried to fire her but when she would come to me and say, “Oh you don’t want to work with me!” I would back down every time and say, “Oh no; that is not it!” But that was it. So I had to make them be the bad guy because I don’t like to be the bad guy. For me to say to someone “I don’t want to work with you,” I would never do that. I would say, “I am too busy…” I would say, “I charge too much…” I would say, “I am not a good fit for you.” I would never make it about them. It would have to be about me.
Andrea: So you would do it in a polite way?
Melissa: Yes; extremely. Usually, I have been run over a few times in the process.
Andrea: You mentioned that you made the transition in your 30s from being a person who had some other people above them who had power over you and then you made the transition?
Melissa: It wasn’t necessarily a transition as much as it was just a different choice. When I grew into my 30s, my life expanded exponentially. My mother passed when I was 24 years old and it took me about 5-10 years to truly internalize the amazing and vast lessons from that incident; from her passing. She passed very suddenly.
Andrea: What lessons did you learn through that incident?
Melissa: My mother was an extremely dominant person in my life. I lived my life to please my mother, and when you do that, you do not stand up for yourself particularly well because you are busy trying to please everybody around you. I still try to please everybody around me, but I do it differently now than I used to do it. I learned that life is incredibly fragile, perishable and unpredictable. In order to really benefit from the journey that we are on, because it is not about the destination; we all have the same destination and we all get the big dirt nap. It is just a matter of when we get it and none of us know. The key is to embrace every day, and if you are not surrounding yourself with people and experiences that you enjoy, then you need to make new choices. That was very apparent to me, and I have gotten even faster in the last 3-4 years. If I start having a discussion with someone and I don’t feel that it is going in a positive direction, I may be unable to say anything at the time, but the moment I step off the phone or the moment I leave their company, I make it a point never to go back into that again.
This happens frequently with online dating. I am single. I have never married and I don’t have children, so I am online dating, and there is nothing more irritating to me than to lose 30-45 minutes of my life energy with some ding-a-ling on the phone or in person because I am not willing to say, “You know what? I am not enjoying this. You are not a fit. I would like to step out of it.” Instead, I usually wait until they run out of things to say, then I just sort of disappear.
Andrea: You don’t say anything; you just disappear?
Melissa: Yes; because I don’t want to be rude. I don’t want to say, “Look; I don’t like you. I don’t want to spend time with you,” which is exactly what is running through my head. But I am too polite. I was raised with manners and I don’t know how to be rude on that level. I can be rude by accident sometimes; I have done it and friends will tell me about it, but they know it is by accident. They know it is not intentional and not malicious; I am not a malicious individual. That becomes very difficult because there are those personalities that I attract that will hammer me on certain points and all I want to say is, “You know what? We are just not of a like mind on that. We don’t need to discuss this; we are not going to agree on it. I don’t want to continue this discussion.” I have an ability to say that. I don’t know where the ability comes from, but it is definitely an ability. It is far less apparent in business than it is in my personal life. I can say whatever I need to say to family. I can say whatever I need to say to my friends. But in the arena of dating when I don’t know someone well, it is extremely difficult for me to be as direct as I would like to be because I don’t want to be rude. I don’t want to offend them, and in the process, I get offended.
Andrea: You get offended?
Melissa: I am offended because they just keep going and I am wasting my time and my energy and my attention; all of it. That offends me.
Andrea: So they don’t realize very small hints or clues that you don’t want…?
Melissa: They are clueless.
Andrea: So they just continue and you don’t know how to end it?
Melissa: Right. I can be polite about it. There was an instance the other night. I talked to a total stranger and it caught me off guard and I answered the phone and from the word “go”, he was extremely negative and I said, “You sound very angry.” He said, “I am angry at myself. I should have called you sooner…” etc., etc. I said, “No; it is no big deal. It sounds like you got a lot on your plate. I wish you a happy holiday…” and I kept trying to get off the phone. 45 minutes later I was still there. I finally hung up on him. I have never done that in my entire life, and I finally just put the phone down and looked at it for about 20 seconds and pushed the close button. He wouldn’t shut up, he wouldn’t let me off the phone, and I could not bring myself to say, “I don’t want to continue this discussion. I don’t want to speak with you again; I am hanging up now.” That is what I needed to do, but I didn’t get to do it, so instead I just hung up.
Andrea: I think it is also impolite of the other person to not let you go if he knows that you don’t want to talk to him anymore and he is still talking and trying to keep you on the phone, then this is quite impolite; don’t you think so?
Melissa: Yes, but I never came out and said, “Excuse me. I don’t want to continue this discussion.” That would have actually been the better thing to do rather than just hang up on him. Of course the irony in this is that he emailed me! Here I hung up on him; very specific and said, “I guess you didn’t want to say good-bye,” or whatever it was he said, and I let it go. I didn’t respond.
This seems to be a challenge, particularly with gentlemen; I can’t even call him a gentleman because I don’t think a gentleman would do that… It is a definite challenge with them; there is no question. It can be a challenge the same with a woman who has that type of energy and will not allow you to have a discussion or have a dialogue, but instead wants to hammer you with a particular point, or simply wants to vent. In his case, he wanted to vent about a lot of different things. I didn’t know him. I didn’t care about him. I didn’t want to participate in that.
Andrea: Did you show it somehow during the phone call that you didn’t want to participate in this?
Melissa: Yes. I would divert and say, “It sounds like you just have a lot on your plate right now and we can talk another time. I wish you the very best. I tried two or three times to get off, but I was not strong enough in my voice, which is very rare for me, to do it effectively.
Andrea: I can’t believe that because your voice is really strong.
Melissa: Yes. And I am a professional speaker. I am a motivational speaker. People see me in front of an audience and they are blown away, and they can’t imagine me ever not saying something. When it comes to personal male/female relationships, I have a very difficult time. There is a dynamic there that started when I was a kid; it has probably a lot to do with my father because I grew up with… He was gone most of the time. My mother was a single working parent and they split when I was very young. We saw him a couple of times a year, but my father had what I call, “The ugly voice.” I have never, ever forgotten it. I have not seen or spoken to him in over 20 years. The family does not speak to him. No one ever speaks to him. His side or our side; it doesn’t matter. He never hit or struck us, but you wished that he would have because his voice would rise when he got angry to the point where he would shout you down. So it didn’t matter if you kept confronting; he would just keep shouting until it got louder and louder and louder and you finally got quiet. It was the sort of thing where you kept expecting him to hit you and he didn’t, and the fear of not being hit was worse than if we had been hit. I don’t know if that makes any sense to you or not.
Andrea: He didn’t hit you but you were afraid that he would?
Melissa: No. It’s just when somebody gets mad, if their voice keeps climbing, if their voice keeps getting louder, it is like you are walking on glass and you are waiting to break through. You want something to happen, and in his case nothing ever happened and he just got the ugly voice and it just got louder and louder and louder until finally it was so scary you would just shut up and disappear.
Andrea: That is exactly what you are still doing; just disappearing.
Melissa: Yes; the disappearing is the only way out. It is not like that person is not ever going to calm down to a point where you can talk to them; they are not. So you usually just try to slink out of the room and then hope the instance goes away. It does not ever get resolved. Since I grew up with that, my feeling is that I am extremely sensitive to vocal tones and when somebody starts speaking loudly or starts swearing or cursing, I take tremendous offense to it and I just want to leave. I don’t want to be there. I don’t want to confront them on it because they might get even angrier and they might become violent.
Andrea: Yes; you never know how the reaction will be later. Some people get louder and louder and finally they become violent and you cannot predict it in advance. Please tell me about a situation when you spoke out although it was difficult for you, and explain how you found the courage to do it.
Melissa: Again; I either make the decision at the front end to speak out or to not. It is not something that I gain the courage to do.
Andrea: For example in your father’s case, when he became louder and louder, then it would be difficult to say something.
Melissa: No; I would never. It is not worth it. The other reason I can say that is because we sat down, the two of us with a 3rd party who was supposed to be a counselor at one point, and she immediately started by lying to him about how I felt. It was as if she had not heard me. It was as if my voice was discounted. My voice did not matter. It didn’t count. That kept me silent completely. If I am discounted, I will not speak up at all because I know that my voice doesn’t count; it does not matter.
Andrea: Maybe it does matter and maybe they just tell you that it doesn’t matter.
Melissa: No; in that case it would not have because it was weighted in his favor. This was somebody who had asked me point blank, “Do you love your father?” And I said to her, “No I do not.” When he came in the room and sat down, she said to him, “Your daughter loves you.” So she completely didn’t hear the exact words I said, and my voice had been discounted. So in a case like that, there is no way that I am going to say anything. I just sat there and cried for 2 hours and it was miserable. If I am not going to be heard, I am going to disappear. I am not going to fight it. It is not worth it to me. It is not. It really, really is not. There are those people in this world that want to hear me and they invite that and there are those that don’t, and he doesn’t invite anyone, so it then becomes a non-issue.
Now in the case of personal relationships other than that, other than my father, it depends on the person and their level of damage. If it is someone who I think I can have a conversation with, then I will do so. But I will do it in a calm manner and I will try not to let things sit and simmer and I will not blindside them the way I have been blindsided by people. There are those individuals that are as afraid of conflict as I am, so what they do is they wait until I am at a weaker place, and then they hit me with a conflict and I won’t respond at that point because I am not at my usual strength.
I am an early morning person, but I am not social before about 9:00am, but by the same token I usually crash by 10 or 11:00 p.m. at night. If you have something to say to me and you hit me after 10:00 p.m., you are not going to get a response because I am tired and I don’t have the strength at that point to respond. If someone wants to make sure that I am not going to respond, that is the way to do it. It is very manipulative and I have only come across it in two or three relationships, but I have come across it. It is somebody who doesn’t want me to respond. Is this helpful?
Andrea: Yes; it is very insightful.
I talked to a very nice lady last week and she was married and she told me that her husband often feels offended when she speaks out so she has decided to stay quiet and calm even though she would like to say something, just in order to keep the relationship with him. Do you think that it is OK to do that in order to have a long-term relationship?
Melissa: No, no, no; absolutely not, because there is a wonderful, wonderful expression that is extremely true, and the expression is: “If you cannot say “No” within the relationship, you must say “No” to the relationship.” That is extremely true. I am not suggesting that there are not times where you might want to disagree but you say, “You know it is OK. I can let him slide on that.” That is different. But if repeatedly in a relationship you put yourself second, you do not speak up and stand up for yourself, that relationship is unhealthy and should end. I feel very strongly about that, because I have been in those kinds of relationships, mainly when the other person would not speak up because they were too intimidated. It was a disaster; an absolute disaster. I am not a mind reader. If you need something from me, please ask me. I am more than happy to give you anything I can to support you, but if I don’t know, I can’t give it.
Andrea: That is why it is so important to speak out. If you don’t speak out, the other person cannot hear you.
Melissa: Right. The other person cannot hear you if they don’t know. When I say, they were too intimidated; I didn’t create that. That is something that they brought to the relationship in the sense that they were not as strong of a person as I was. I am a very, very direct, open person and anybody who is not direct and open is not a good fit for me because it is means that they are secretive and manipulative and I don’t tolerate either one well. I really don’t. But ultimately I think that the woman and her husband will wind up extremely unhappy, and I hate to say that, but I have found in my own experience that when you cannot say “No” to someone in the relationship, ultimately you have to say “No” to the relationship.
Andrea: Yes; I think there is some wise truth in it.
Melissa: Yes; there is a lot of truth in it, and it is very sad because I would imagine that it is probably extremely difficult for her to say that she had something to say to her husband and it could be because he is very strong or he is very special and it could be a lot of different factors. It boils down to self worth on her part. It is not about him; it is about her and that is the challenge. The person who cannot speak out; it is not as much about other people as it is about them. I don’t ever blame anyone else, aside from the times I have been blindsided. That has upset me. But most of the time if I didn’t speak out it was because I didn’t feel worthy, I didn’t feel like I mattered, I was discounted or I discounted myself… It is my responsibility and not anyone else’s.
Andrea: So why did you discount yourself?
Melissa: The reason is lack of self worth; feeling not worthy at the time.
Andrea: Could it be caused just by having a bad day?
Melissa: It happens. It could just be history with that individual. Generally, I will not put myself in those positions anymore. But when I was growing up, I didn’t always have that choice. My mother was a people pleaser, and so I became a people pleaser. I realized after she died that I was living the life she wanted for me not the life that I wanted for me. The life she wanted for me was not bad; not bad at all, but it was not what I wanted. Her dying was very freeing because it meant that I only had to please me and I didn’t have to please her anymore and that made an enormous difference for me. She was a very dominant person and she was an enormous personality; she was a celebrity and all of those made it difficult sometimes.
Andrea: I checked out your website and I saw that your great-grandfather was very famous, too?
Melissa: Yes; my great-grandfather. I grew up as the daughter of somebody and the great-granddaughter and the god-daughter of somebody and so at what point did I get to be Melissa Galt? That took a lot of years, and I think that is one of the most difficult things. That part when you are in your 20’s and you are sort of sorting out “Who am I? Who do I want to be? What does that look like? What does that sound like?” A lot of that is formed by the time you are 6 years old from your parents. It goes back a lot of years.
My younger sister converted to Catholicism to become a Roman Catholic. She left the church in Vatican City three years ago and she moved to Seattle. In those three years, she has not once contacted my older sister. She has not had one conversation with her because she does not want to deal with her. I don’t deal with her either, but I have my own reasons and I know exactly what they are and I have a number of people who said you are smart. But my younger sister has her own set of challenges. Everyone has their own reasons. She grew up as not only the daughter of someone, but also as the sister of someone, because I was a straight “A” student and people would say, “Well, why aren’t you like Melissa?” Looking how people grew up and who they are compared to and people who you were expected to be like, makes a really big difference in how much they are able to speak up and speak out.
Andrea: Have you ever suffered from bad consequences when you spoke out?
Melissa: I do get a lot of fun when I go to things that have to do with my great grandfather, like if I am touring one of his homes or if I am on a bus trip with a bunch of tourists. I am the great-granddaughter of him, and they all think he is just the greatest thing since sliced bread, and I am like, “You know what? The man put on his pants one leg at a time and he was an incredible misogynist. While he was an architectural genius, he was in many ways an engineering disaster, and they are all shocked that I would dare say anything remotely negative about my great-grandfather because he is so famous. It is almost because of that, that I am willing to speak out. It is also because I never met him. I was born after he died and he called interior designers, “Inferior Desecrators”. I am an interior designer. I imagine that he and I would have had some very spirited discussions about it and if we could have had discussions, maybe I would have been too proud and may not have spoken out. I don’t know and I will never know because he is not around anymore. It’s interesting to think about this because since he is not around, I can say whatever I want. If he was around would I still say whatever I want? I don’t know. That is a very good question.
Andrea: You should do the same as you do now, but you don’t know if you would.
Melissa: Yes; I don’t know if I would. Now, I can tell you that on my mother’s side, until I was 22 years old; two years before she died, I didn’t think my mother was that wonderful, but something clicked when I was 22. I couldn’t even begin to tell you what it was. When she passed, I had gotten past most of the anger and resentment that I carried with me the vast majority of my upbringing.
Andrea: Why were you angry with her?
Melissa: Because she was gone all the time. Because her career was always first and we were last. She was never there for us, and when she was there, she stole the show. Can you imagine that I went through 4 years of college and I didn’t allow my mother to come visit until graduation, and at graduation I had friends coming up to me saying, “Why didn’t you tell us who your mother was?” I looked at them dumbfounded and I said, “Why does it matter? Who is your mother?” I was brought up in that shadow. I went back to school at age 30 for a second degree, and when I went to design school, all of a sudden my great-grandfather was showing up in my textbook. I didn’t know he was famous. I didn’t know he was a big deal. I was raised very, very grounded. I didn’t have any idea that he was probably America’s most famous architect. I had no clue. That is good. That is very good that I didn’t know that. So what happened was at the point when I found out, I didn’t tell anyone because I had finally gotten to be Melissa Galt and not somebody’s daughter and not somebody’s great-granddaughter, and I kept it really quiet, until my family started telling me that I needed to use it.
Then I started pulling it out of the closet just a little bit. I still don’t use it a lot, because it is actually not all that useful. It can be a really double-edged sword because people have expectations of how I was raised and expectations about how I will be. I taught for over a decade at a couple of the universities in Atlanta. I taught a couple of the evening adult programs in decorating and I had 30% of people in my class who took the class not because of the content, and not because of me, but because of who I was related to. I know this because they would come up and tell me and say, “But you are so down to earth. You are so normal.” I thought it was hysterical. I don’t know what they thought I was going to be like, but apparently I was not supposed to be down to earth and I wasn’t supposed to be normal. I guess they thought that I had grown up among stars and celebrities in Beverly Hills and had a limo and a pool in the back and we didn’t have any of that. It makes for a lot of expectations. Finding one’s own voice is sometimes the most difficult thing to do but it is vital. It is vital if you ever want to step into yourself, and I have worked long and hard at it.
Andrea: Do you speak out when you eye witness abusive situations, for example, on the street?
Melissa: If I witness something, would I call the police? Yes.
Andrea: If you saw parents treating their child badly? Would you say something to them?
Melissa: Oh yes. I would. I definitely would, and I think because when I was in my 30s, I was in a couple of dangerous situations and nobody spoke out on my behalf. I know how dangerous that is, so I definitely would.
Andrea: What would you do exactly?
Melissa: If it was a life-threatening situation, I would go to the authorities without hesitation. In my case, I was in a relationship with somebody that I had to verify with the FBI, and when my contact with the FBI came back and said, “We cannot confirm or deny; do not pursue.” It was dangerous enough that I put everything on a disk and I sent it to a friend of mine and said “Keep this on hand so if anything happens to me, turn it over to the police.” I had to stand up for myself in that instance because nobody else would stand up for me.
Andrea: You did it very well.
Melissa: It worked out well. As far as I know, that person is still around and I have never heard from him since. I am very happy with that, but he did show up in a friend of mine’s life, which was kind of strange. There are dangerous people out there and if I think someone is dangerous, I generally speak up because it is stupid not to. Now it has cost me friends on one occasion.
Andrea: Based on what you have learned and experienced, what advice would you give to people who want to learn to stand up for themselves?
Melissa: The only person you are hurting by not standing up for yourself is you. So you have to find your own voice and you have to find that place where you can stand up for yourself. If you don’t, you are robbing the world of who you really are.
Andrea: You said it very beautifully.
Do you regret today that you spoke out in a specific situation when you were younger?
Melissa: Never. I never have regretted what I have done. I only regret what I don’t do.
Andrea: What haven’t you done that you should have?
Melissa: There are countless times when I should have spoken up when I didn’t. I have been in relationships too long that should have ended way before they did because I didn’t speak up. I tolerated that behavior and I wasn’t willing to stand up for myself. Because I was willing to tolerate being miserable; that’s crazy. I am far less likely to tolerate it now, but I was living with a level of acceptance on that front. I don’t have that acceptance anymore.
Andrea: I wonder where that comes from, because many women have that same problem.
Melissa: I don’t know. I know partly where mine came from. But I grew up in a generation that was taught to be seen and not heard. We were taught to respect our elders, we were taught to say “please” and “thank you” and we were taught to say “Yes sir” and “no ma’am.” I still agree with all of those, except of the being seen and not heard. I do not agree with that. I think that when it is phrased that way and when young girls particularly are taught that, it sets them up for potentially a lifetime of not speaking up. That can be really, really dangerous.
Now the world revolves around kids and when I grew up, it didn’t. When I grew up, I was kind of at the beginning of a latchkey generation where you had two parents working. In my case, my father was just gone and my mother was working all the time. We kind of took care of ourselves, but my mother’s life and career were first and we were not. What I hear from my friends is that half the time they are doing their children’s homework for them and they are taking their child hither, thither, yon and beyond and they don’t really have a life beyond their child’s schedule and that is foreign to me. What would be interesting is doing your study in another 20 years and seeing if the same proportion of people is not able to speak up or seeing if anything has changed.
Andrea: That is a good idea.
Melissa: If you did this study 20 years ago, there would be even more people that didn’t speak up. Pre women’s lib, the women said nothing. I am on the fence about the women’s lib thing. I am not a women’s libber. I want my chair pulled out and my door opened and I want all of those niceties. I want equal pay for equal work, but that is where I want the equality to end. I am a little unusual, but I am also 47 and that makes a difference. I think a lot of it is generational.
Andrea: Do you think this will improve in the future or do you think it will shoot back to what happened 20 years ago?
Melissa: I think it is going to continue to improve, but I think the challenge is in teaching people how to speak up in an effective manner that is not abrasive or abusive. I think the fact that people speak up is wonderful, but I think that there can be an awful lot of challenges around that speaking up because I think it can be done poorly. When it is done poorly, it is almost as bad as if it had not happened at all.
Andrea: You can convey almost everything in a way that other people don’t feel they are being accused or offended.
Melissa: In this day and age, that is pretty rare. If you just look at the behavior that is going on in American politics, it is mortifying. It is absolutely embarrassing beyond words. The stupidity, the crassness, the rudeness, the inconsiderateness, the thoughtlessness; all of it is absolutely astounding to me. A lot of that won’t get better because it is encouraged by technology. The advent of email has torn harder at the social fabric than any other means of communication, and text is a very close second to that. I don’t text. I think it is a waste of time. You cannot pick up a phone and call me? Let’s just wait and you can text me when you are in a meeting? If you are in a meeting, you need to focus on the meeting. If you are in front of someone else, you need to focus on that person. You don’t need to be texting me. I have a big challenge with that, and the challenge is that we used to only be able to call or write a letter, and that required a lot more effort and thought. Email and text are so fast that people are not thinking before they are putting words down and hitting the “send” button. That is not going to change. That is just going to get faster.
Andrea: Technology has a great influence on speaking out in different ways.
Melissa: I don’t think relationships have the depth that they used to. I think the challenge with technology is that it has enabled you to contact or touch so many more people, that you don’t actually dive deeply with anyone, and I think that is kind of tragic.
Andrea: Don’t you think that the advantage is that you can now have friends everywhere in the world and stay in contact with them?
Melissa: I think the definition of friends has changed, because a friend used to be someone who I knew well; I knew their parents, I knew their family and I visited them; I knew that person and not someone I emailed a few times or someone I met on Twitter or not someone I texted.
Andrea: It could be somebody you got to know when you stayed abroad for some time and then you can stay in contact with this person by email and Skype.
Melissa: That is very different. That is not what is happening. What is happening is that people are collecting shallow, short-term relationships and considering them replacements for the more significant relationships we used to have.
Andrea: Everybody has the choice how to use technology and electronics.
Melissa, thank you so much for this interesting and insightful interview!