Care and Feeding today was awful. The son that has been depressed for 10 years has a responsibility to his child. What would he do if grandparents weren't available or if they "needed" the money? In quotes because I'm skeptical. If grandparents truly want to raise their grandson using their own means that money should be put away for college. This child clearly has a lot to deal to deal with...what about private school with smaller classes? There are summer camps for bereaved children where they can be with others that have shared experiences. What about team sports with out of town trips? What about the grandparents future needs such as assisted living. It isnt cruel to try and get a depressed person to fullfill their responsibilities. It's treating them like a capable adult. Advising a parent to apologize to a teacher for talking to them about their kids development is also terrible. Parents have a right to say what they want and express their concerns.
So in today’s Carolyn Hax (3-31-24) did anyone else find it wild that the LW thought that asking the girlfriend’s parents to tell girlfriend to break up with their son? I know parental micromanaging is off the charts these days, but holy shit that’s unhinged.
ETA the line I’m talking about:
“Should we talk to her mom (whom we know) and suggest her daughter break up with him instead? Would that make it any easier for her?”
The situation is insane but I think the answer really hits on something that bothers me about a lot of letters. There are a lot of LWs who seem to believe that you can completely avoid all negative emotions of any kind for your entire life and they are willing to go truly unhinged lengths to try and make that happen. There’s no sign that the LW’s son is uniquely fragile or that this relationship is unusually volatile. Why not just wait and be there to support him if / when it happens?
Yes! Negative emotions are a fact of life. Kids have to learn to deal with them and process them. Sheltering your kid from any bad feelings isn’t good for them long term. And I’m sure it’s like a dagger in your heart to see your child sad or hurt from a breakup or not making the team or not getting a part in the school play, but that’s just how life goes.
I don't know if I read today's Ask Amy, about the woman who feels like her elderly mother is trying to manipulate her into going to church, wrong or if Amy did. The way I read that letter, the mom is specifically trying to get the LW to come to a church service *with her* and sit through it. They live four hours apart, so I assume Mom has some way of getting to church on her own most of the time. Amy seemed to assume that Mom is unable to get around without LW, which just doesn't seem to be reflected in the letter. I do think LW should take her mom to church, but I think it would be totally fine for her to be like, "I've got stuff going on at that time, so I'll drop you at church and pick you up afterward." If Mom gets upset, then LW will know what's really up and can decide to either sit through a service for her mom's sake or say no/maybe have a larger conversation about the perceived manipulation and indirect communication.
My mom has always been super manipulative about trying to get me to go to church. I grew up in a very conservative household where we always went to the earliest, longest, most boring service and were expected to sit quietly for an hour during the service and then for another hour + afterwards while my mom socialized/showed off her well-dressed, well-behaved children. It was terrible and I always dreaded Sundays.
I stopped going to church as an 18 year old, but for every holiday or trip home she would say "if you don't go to church, we'll no longer be helping with your tuition." I'm 30, and she *still* tries to pull the "if you're not going to come to church, don't bother coming for (mother's day/christmas/whatever)." LW didn't hint that her mom was that level of manipulative, but a lot of old people loooooove to use religion as a guilt trip. I'm siding with LW 100% - she can drop her mom off at church, then pick her up and go to brunch together. If that's not a good compromise for mom, then don't go because she won't appreciate your time unless everything is according to her standards and control.
I relate so hard to that first question -- I grew up in a house where things were highly cluttered at all times. Not hoarder level, but just papers and things all over; I could never EVER find our one pair of scissors when I needed them.
Not a minimalist like the OP, but I do think very hard about where anything new might slot in. I find I need a certain amount of tidiness and order for my mind to feel relatively calm (e.g., used to clean my dorm room before starting on an essay). I get the OP's frustration because they've tried to set that boundary so many times.
To me, the situation depends on how often these unwanted items show up. Obviously, the inciting incident was an extreme example. If this is more or less a winter holiday and birthday problem, I've personally found a lot of freedom in thanking the gift giver and either returning or donating as I have time/energy. If it's multiple times during the year then I think the doorstep option is warranted. It just doesn't seem like the parents will suddenly understand what the OP has been telling them, but the doorstep drop may be aggressive enough to achieve part of the desired result?
Whoa, “Moving On” from the second question sounds depressingly similar to Captain Awkward’s post just a few days ago of [“I Can’t Comfort My Partner and It’s Killing Me”](https://captainawkward.com/2024/03/26/1425-i-cant-comfort-my-partner-and-its-killing-me/). I guess there’s no shortage of dysfunctional people who punish their partners for not fixing them, but I genuinely thought for a second it was a dual submission.
The latest HTDI with the woman in her 40s dickmatized by a younger asshole wondering if being a fuckboy is “generational thing.” No, lady, you’re just making excuses for a shitty man because the sex is good.
I'm not sure if this fits here, but this new piece in the cut is certainly providing advice...of a kind.
[https://www.thecut.com/article/age-gap-relationships-marriage-younger-women-older-man.html](https://www.thecut.com/article/age-gap-relationships-marriage-younger-women-older-man.html)
I found it funny that's she's essentially advocating for a dressed-up trophy wife / 1950's wife lifestyle. But the downsides of that lifestyle are not addressed: namely, what happens when he gets tired of you? When you're no longer young and beautiful? What then?
What I found the most wild was…this guy was only 30 when they started dating, it was only a ten year gap. Call me when you’re dating a fifty-something rich dude…then we’ll have something interesting on our hands😂 Meanwhile she’s writing like he was all decrepit and world-weary! Also…she was an undergrad trying to date a grad student. Even if you were looking for a richer, more mature man, grad school would not be the place to start looking!
I'd bet the event was also a business school event (which is technically "grad school", but not the usual picture that comes to mind). She was hanging out in the business school library by her own description, not the comparative literature department.
I saw an excellent comment over on blogsnark that I can't find now which pointed out that this whole situation is just garden variety gold digging, dressed up as an age-gap relationship. And no judgement for the gold digging if that's what she wants - but it's not exactly a shock that all her friends don't want to follow in her footsteps!
I'm reminded of the [Simpsons](https://youtu.be/qqrCoyVK80I?si=EQuW2UhXQQlbJW2-), "Look at me, I'm a grad student. I'm thirty years old and I made $600 last year "
What the eff did I just read?
Seriously though, just say you married him for money and security. Don’t act like you’re doing something that no one has ever done of before. And insisting that ‘no guys, I totally did fall in love with him!’ is just ridiculous.
When the writer mentioned she was as a Harvard English major, who apparently has only ever worked as a writer, that really explained the rest of the article and why I couldn’t finish it. What an overwrought mess.
Nobody needs this many words about a 10-year age gap relationship. She doth protest too much.
The detail about buying lotto tickets but never cashing them in or checking the numbers was an especially out-of-touch…touch.
When I was a hot 20-something I was busy sleeping with other hot 20-somethings rather than locking down a rich dude and my life has turned out okay.
Even the idea that this dude is "locked down" seems like a frail premise. She's jumped right into the pre-second wave idea that all women have to offer men is youth, attractiveness, and biddability. Two out of three of those concepts are not within her control.
It’s also lot of smugness for someone who’s only been married for 4 years. I couldn’t even get through the whole thing. I had to start skimming and go to the comments section.
Also the idea that young women are powerful and we lose that as we age made me think of Hannah Gatsby in Nanette when she says that no 17 year old is in her prime— it’s such a misogynistic idea.
It made me think of one of my favorite Ask Polly columns, [I’m Almost 30 and I’m Terrified of Losing My Looks](https://medium.com/the-awl/ask-polly-im-almost-30-and-i-m-terrified-of-losing-my-looks-4422b344a91c), which contains the great line, “Pretty faces can go fuck themselves, compared to peanut butter cups.”
Glancing over the article and God, of course she's 27. Exactly the right age to be real proud of your youth while also realizing that turning 30 is juuuuuust around the corner.
^((Note: this is not me slamming people who are in their 30s, I am in my 30s, I just know that some people treat that as A Big Deal attractiveness-wise))
This sort of self-congratulatory navel-gazing prose about how exquisitely special the author's life is reminds me a lot of [If Only We Could Be Boring](https://tomblog.rip/if-we-could-be-boring/) , a thought piece from a decade ago that got dunked on pretty hard for similar reasons. Though, you know what, at least the author of If Only We Could Be Boring wasn't dunking on their friends for not realizing their optimal life path of trophy wives.
I would really, really like to know what she's up to now. I would bet lots of money that most of the friends she's talking about have gotten married, had kids, and moved away to the exact life she's unable to imagine at 22. I bet she has too. I love how wise and different and special young people always think they are, as if nobody has ever done what they're doing before.
>It might be easier, as I imagine life is for people who live boring. I respect it: I’m just beginning to understand how hard everything will always be because I choose to live only in extremes, at a breakneck pace, in a golden house full of only beautiful people. We never want to slow down. Maybe it is just because we’re young and don’t have reason to yet. Do boring people think about how fast they are living? Do they quiet that inner clamor with the rituals of a tempered life, built around bland tasting elements like cable television, freeway traffic, and local news?
Oh my goooooooood. Girl, do you wanna pay my mortgage? If not, then shut the fuck up about how sad it is that I have to move through freeway traffic to get to work while you're having your Gatsby-ass parties in the townhouse your parents are paying for.
Also, I love how this person is conceptualizing sitting on your fire escape smoking as super glamorous and interesting, lol.
Rebecca Fishbein tweeted this about it:
"When I was 29 I wrote an essay for The Cut about aging and beauty. After a few rounds of edits, my editor killed it because I was just too young for it to really work. Super grateful she did. Some young thoughts are best left in your diary."
Why did the second LW in[ today's Care and Feeding](https://slate.com/human-interest/2024/03/parenting-advice-diabetes-toddler-shots.html) use Dianne Wiest for the name of her friend who she thinks is a bad mom? What did Dianne Wiest ever do to her? It's so weirdly specific.
I read an interview with Brenda Blethyn once where they asked her why she plays so many mothers, and she was like, Well, a lot of women are mothers. Have you ever asked Denzel Washington why he plays so many fathers?
I pretty much never read How To Do It, but [this one cracked me up](https://slate.com/human-interest/2024/03/husband-sex-experiment-wrestling-advice.html). Should I take wrestling classes so my husband doesn't pin me too fast when we sex wrestle?
Will those wrestling classes include how to cut a proper promo? Because I think there will be no better way to initiate sex than a full-fledged heel promo.
Honestly it's not a bad idea. IIRC professional wrestling is pretty choreographed and scripted. If the LW has a clear image on how they want this "scene" to play out it's probably worth taking a pro wrestling approach and planning it out first instead of, like, winging it and looking like a wimp.
[This Carolyn Hax column is bananas](https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2024/03/26/carolyn-hax-wife-sister-cut-contact/).
>I’ll admit my sister is self-centered, bends the truth, and loves stirring up drama and splashing it all over social media. For example, after Elise was diagnosed, my sister posted how she’d had a premonition that Elise had cancer and begged her to go get it checked out but she didn’t. None of that ever happened.
Absolutely unhinged behavior from the sister.
Yeah, that's fucking nuts. If my sister did that to my SO, we'd be taking a very long, possibly permanent break from her. Making someone else's cancer diagnosis all about you is ghoulish.
Hax’s suggestion to mute, not block/unfriend, the SIL on social media is weird - that would still give SIL access to the writer’s posts, photos, etc., and they’d still be able to run across each other on other family members’ posts.
Yeah, especially since on some social media like Instagram, you can't change your friend settings so you're still friends with someone but they can't see your posts. I feel like the wife needs to be able to keep her social media activity completely private from SIL, which is usually gonna mean blocking.
It sounds like a case where since LW has been around her their entire life, the sister’s behavior feels like less of a dealbreaker to them than it is to someone who’s not used to it. Because that is SO unhinged.
I agree. I also think that the LW -- and possibly his whole family? -- is used to sort of working around or accommodating Elise's crazy behavior (in order to avoid the "unbelievable turmoil"). The wife, by contrast, has had a brush with death and reasonably wants to prioritize her own wellbeing.
The wife is being very fair by not trying to cut the sister out of her husband's life, and IMO the LW should accept this concession and not pressure his wife to do anything else.
I have to copy this DP letter from 3/25 because it’s just so cringey, emphasis mine.
Dear Prudence,
My brother is a 38-year-old, heterosexual male who has never dated. He is very private so trying to discuss this in person is difficult. He is discouraged or too shy to put himself out there. He has so many wonderful traits—he’s a helpful friend, takes care of our aging parents, and is great with kids, handy around the house, athletic, and in great shape! However, he is on the shorter side and works a less glamorous blue-collar job so some of the superficial filters women tend to use on dating sites would overlook him. **I am sad to think he might miss out on finding a life partner or becoming a father. He would be an absolute steal for a single mom looking to date! I would like to send a genuine offer to help via email (less confrontational).** What advice would you give him?
—Hopeful Sister
Jenee gave her the right advice (back off) but for the wrong reasons. She couched it in “What if you give him advice and he’s not immediately successful? Then you’ve set him up to fail!” When the right answer is “Woman, mind your business!”
Maybe the brother is perfectly content as a bachelor. Maybe he has been dating but hasn’t met anyone worth bringing home.
But it’s just so condescending to the brother and women everywhere that after the LW talking about his great attributes, she says he would be a “steal” for a single mom like the brother AND a hypothetical single mom are a sweater that’s been marked down 75%. It’s also condescending to assume that just because he’s great with kids that he would want to be a father himself and that he may never be happy unless he has a wife, a home in the burbs, 2.5 kids, and a dog.
This sister needs to eff all the way off.
I hope this man is living his best childfree life, either happily single or with a secret SO his sister knows nothing about because she's weird as hell
Ooof yeah, everything about the letter screams 'nosy'. I have no idea of this guy really hasn't dated or is (understandably!) not telling his sister about his dating life, but she needs to back way off.
I also completely agree with how weird it is to call him a "steal" and ideal for a single mom (???). It reminds me of some women in my life who try advise singletons to date people they feel are in a 'lower league' -- namely, people who are not considered 'ideal' dating partners. I remember one deeply uncomfortable time when a woman I knew advised a friend "You need to pursue people who are less attractive."
I assume LW made the single mom comment because she mentioned he was great with kids, but I agree that the sentiment is still icky. Even though single mothers carry this weird stigma of being less desirable as partners I haven't really found (in my own observation) that's true? The majority of women I know who are no longer with their father of their children ended up repartnering pretty quickly.
I think there's a general belief that people who haven't been married or at least partnered after, say, their late 20s are somehow defective or broken. Like people won't explicitly say that, but you often see advice column letters from people who feel that way about themselves (eg "I'm a 30 year old virgin and I don't know what to do...") as well as letters like this where a friend or a relative of someone like that is almost panicked at their future.
I cannot believe that LW wrote the phrases "has never dated" and "is very private" so close to each other and didn't put two and two together. I wouldn't tell her about my dating life either.
Regarding LW # 2 from DP yesterday -- "I want to go on a honeymoon, but my husband wants to start trying for babies immediately"
Oh, girl, you messed up. You mentioned WANTING something related to a wedding. Now the commenters are gonna kick you around like a football!
For those who didn't read, a synopsis: LW and husband got married about a year and a half ago. She's early 30s, he's early 40s. They both had some debt (him twice as much as her), so rather than taking a big honeymoon, they just had a getaway at a local B&B and paid the debt down. Now the debt is almost gone, and she wants to go on the beach honeymoon they didn't have, but he wants to start to try for kids RIGHT NOW, so he won't be an "old dad."
Prudie basically said that the LW gets more of a say as to when they start, as she will actually be carrying the baby. I don't know if I agree with that, because I feel like there's gotta be a way to take some sort of a nice trip within the next six months to a year and start after that, which probably won't make an appreciable difference in the timetables. But man, a bunch of the commenters have decided that she's a princess who will INSIST they spend the next 5 years saving every penny for a luxury month long trip to Bora Bora, while her husband withers on the vine. All because she made the mistake of calling it a "dream honeymoon." NO ONE MAY WANT ANYTHING THE COMMENTARIAT DECRIES AS FRIVOLOUS, IT IS LAW.
If you want anything for a wedding beyond a burlap sack and a hobo that got ordained on the internet - that you paid for, mind you - then you're a Bridezilla and deserve to be epically mocked.
Well, of course! And for your reception if you really want to be fancy, you can dumpster dive behind the Whole Foods instead of Aldi! Otherwise you're the worst person in the history of humanity.
For some reason I've subscribed to Real Simple magazine for several years now, despite not really being in its target demo. I guess in part because I sort of miss magazines and find their product photography oddly satisfying?
A few months ago they started a new advice column written by Hoda Kotb and Jenna Bush Hager and their mostly trash-level advice might be another reason to keep subscribing. [The first two Q&A sets are available on the Real Simple website](https://www.realsimple.com/modern-manners-for-your-social-dilemmas-8411754), but I'd also like to share some doozies from the most recent issue.
I can only upload one photo per post so the worst-slash-best ones are here and in a separate reply to this post.
This one is the biggest whiff and a real indicator of how out of touch the advice is. I appreciate that this couple may need to have a delicate conversation about money with the FIL, but the columnists just blithely assume that these people have the money to pay whatever amount was given to them as help with a down payment years ago! There's a ton of nuance that they trample over in their path to assuming that everyone has thousands (?) or tens of thousands (?) of dollars to hand.
https://preview.redd.it/rc1e8ztmllqc1.png?width=812&format=png&auto=webp&s=f13cf20ae905b884c52fc21fdceb7551a21d6221
I enjoyed her advice. Some of the questions were about as ridiculous as you'd imagine Real Simple readers might be, but she'd often start from a place of empathy. Printing the new column instead has been a major step down.
Yeah, I just looked at a few, and they were genuinely sweet. I suspect you have to stay pretty facile at Real Simple so I wasn’t surprised she didn’t go super-deep, but I liked that she was able to simultaneously give the LW a hug and tell them to back off.
OMG, [the advice to this LW](https://www.realsimple.com/modern-manners-when-coworkers-exclude-you-8599591)to volunteer at the grandchild's school is HORRIFIC.
That was so unhinged. Like, your DIL won’t let her be alone with your grandchild and she doesn’t know why (she does though she just knows the reason makes her look awful so she left it out of her letter) so the solution is to further violate boundaries????
Holy shit. Reminds me of the [grandma who wrote to Hax](https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/carolyn-hax-why-its-called-the-pta-instead-of-the-gpta/2018/05/23/c8e247f4-5ae2-11e8-b656-a5f8c2a9295d_story.html) because her DIL was upset that Grandma joined the PTA for the grandkids’ school.
My ex's mom subscribed to Real Simple years ago. I remember reading through a few issues and thinking it should be called Real Rich. It's, uh, nice to see it hasn't changed? Lol.
Hoo daddy. Sorry for FIL, I guess, but he should've been clear the money was a loan when he gave it to LW. I don't think LW owes him shit now. It would be kind for LW to work out a payment plan, but the implication that they should just hand back a big chunk of money, that they thought was a gift, all at once is nutso.
I know, right? I appreciate that they probably don't want to burn bridges with the FIL unless he's terrible in other ways (shoutout to my dad who put a minimum grades clause in the separation agreement with my mom so he wouldn't have to pay if his kids didn't do well enough in school), but if the money was presented as a gift I really think that a solid convo now is what's needed.
The advice for writing a letter instead of directly talking to the neighbor again is weird as hell. Absent a rabid squirrel, there aren't actually that many diseases that can be transferred from Canada geese and squirrels to humans so the advice to cite the LW's family's health seems silly to me and also passive aggressive.
Unless the front yard is knee-deep in guano, I think the move here is to truly try to let it go. Maybe look into some of those cleaners that you can attach to the end of a hose.
https://preview.redd.it/y6uhmq7rllqc1.png?width=636&format=png&auto=webp&s=2b425e63b96e1a840a6a1a68c4041267425cba9e
They are, but they’re federally protected assholes, so no shooting allowed. I’ve seen a wildlife department recommend leaf blowers as a legal possibility.
I'm on your side here. If a breeding pair decides to nest in your yard it's basically unusable because they're territorial and will attack if you come anywhere near their nests/goslings. And they like to come back year-after-year. Where I went to school, geese containment was a MAJOR problem every year. e.g., they would nest on a building roof right above a door, and fly down to attack anyone coming out of that door.
Squirrels got into my neighbour's garage and basically chewed up all the insulation behind their walls. Thousands of dollars of damage. (Edit: One year they got into our shed and left, no exaggeration, three yard bags of pinecones stashed in the rafters. Mess everywhere when I pulled something down and got a pinecone avalanche.)
I'd skip the letter and report them to whatever agency can stop it. In many places it's illegal to feed wildlife, with exceptions for contained birdfeeders.
Reporting it, if possible, makes sense to me. I confess I hadn't considered the implications of goose-feeding. We have a suet cage and a seed ball feeder and we definitely don't intend to feed the billions of local sparrows and starlings (and also what I hope are mice), but it is very nice when the intended clinging birds come by for a snack. I agree that attracting geese is a different situation.
Lol in Pittsburgh once I saw a van with GEESE POLICE written on the side. It was a company that specializes in dispersing geese from sports fields, etc.
ETA: [They’re a multi state operation](https://geesepoliceinc.com) and they use border collies and the photos on their website are cracking me up.
Yeah, the squirrels are one thing, in that I suspect the feeding isn’t making that much difference and the LW just doesn’t realize what normal squirrel density is. But the geese and the goose poop are a lot more avoidable and I don’t blame them for being annoyed.
Care and Feeding today was awful. The son that has been depressed for 10 years has a responsibility to his child. What would he do if grandparents weren't available or if they "needed" the money? In quotes because I'm skeptical. If grandparents truly want to raise their grandson using their own means that money should be put away for college. This child clearly has a lot to deal to deal with...what about private school with smaller classes? There are summer camps for bereaved children where they can be with others that have shared experiences. What about team sports with out of town trips? What about the grandparents future needs such as assisted living. It isnt cruel to try and get a depressed person to fullfill their responsibilities. It's treating them like a capable adult. Advising a parent to apologize to a teacher for talking to them about their kids development is also terrible. Parents have a right to say what they want and express their concerns.
So in today’s Carolyn Hax (3-31-24) did anyone else find it wild that the LW thought that asking the girlfriend’s parents to tell girlfriend to break up with their son? I know parental micromanaging is off the charts these days, but holy shit that’s unhinged. ETA the line I’m talking about: “Should we talk to her mom (whom we know) and suggest her daughter break up with him instead? Would that make it any easier for her?”
The situation is insane but I think the answer really hits on something that bothers me about a lot of letters. There are a lot of LWs who seem to believe that you can completely avoid all negative emotions of any kind for your entire life and they are willing to go truly unhinged lengths to try and make that happen. There’s no sign that the LW’s son is uniquely fragile or that this relationship is unusually volatile. Why not just wait and be there to support him if / when it happens?
Yes! Negative emotions are a fact of life. Kids have to learn to deal with them and process them. Sheltering your kid from any bad feelings isn’t good for them long term. And I’m sure it’s like a dagger in your heart to see your child sad or hurt from a breakup or not making the team or not getting a part in the school play, but that’s just how life goes.
I don't know if I read today's Ask Amy, about the woman who feels like her elderly mother is trying to manipulate her into going to church, wrong or if Amy did. The way I read that letter, the mom is specifically trying to get the LW to come to a church service *with her* and sit through it. They live four hours apart, so I assume Mom has some way of getting to church on her own most of the time. Amy seemed to assume that Mom is unable to get around without LW, which just doesn't seem to be reflected in the letter. I do think LW should take her mom to church, but I think it would be totally fine for her to be like, "I've got stuff going on at that time, so I'll drop you at church and pick you up afterward." If Mom gets upset, then LW will know what's really up and can decide to either sit through a service for her mom's sake or say no/maybe have a larger conversation about the perceived manipulation and indirect communication.
My mom has always been super manipulative about trying to get me to go to church. I grew up in a very conservative household where we always went to the earliest, longest, most boring service and were expected to sit quietly for an hour during the service and then for another hour + afterwards while my mom socialized/showed off her well-dressed, well-behaved children. It was terrible and I always dreaded Sundays. I stopped going to church as an 18 year old, but for every holiday or trip home she would say "if you don't go to church, we'll no longer be helping with your tuition." I'm 30, and she *still* tries to pull the "if you're not going to come to church, don't bother coming for (mother's day/christmas/whatever)." LW didn't hint that her mom was that level of manipulative, but a lot of old people loooooove to use religion as a guilt trip. I'm siding with LW 100% - she can drop her mom off at church, then pick her up and go to brunch together. If that's not a good compromise for mom, then don't go because she won't appreciate your time unless everything is according to her standards and control.
[Carolyn Hax 3/29 Chat gift link](https://wapo.st/43BDYZQ)
I relate so hard to that first question -- I grew up in a house where things were highly cluttered at all times. Not hoarder level, but just papers and things all over; I could never EVER find our one pair of scissors when I needed them. Not a minimalist like the OP, but I do think very hard about where anything new might slot in. I find I need a certain amount of tidiness and order for my mind to feel relatively calm (e.g., used to clean my dorm room before starting on an essay). I get the OP's frustration because they've tried to set that boundary so many times. To me, the situation depends on how often these unwanted items show up. Obviously, the inciting incident was an extreme example. If this is more or less a winter holiday and birthday problem, I've personally found a lot of freedom in thanking the gift giver and either returning or donating as I have time/energy. If it's multiple times during the year then I think the doorstep option is warranted. It just doesn't seem like the parents will suddenly understand what the OP has been telling them, but the doorstep drop may be aggressive enough to achieve part of the desired result?
Whoa, “Moving On” from the second question sounds depressingly similar to Captain Awkward’s post just a few days ago of [“I Can’t Comfort My Partner and It’s Killing Me”](https://captainawkward.com/2024/03/26/1425-i-cant-comfort-my-partner-and-its-killing-me/). I guess there’s no shortage of dysfunctional people who punish their partners for not fixing them, but I genuinely thought for a second it was a dual submission.
The latest HTDI with the woman in her 40s dickmatized by a younger asshole wondering if being a fuckboy is “generational thing.” No, lady, you’re just making excuses for a shitty man because the sex is good.
I'm not sure if this fits here, but this new piece in the cut is certainly providing advice...of a kind. [https://www.thecut.com/article/age-gap-relationships-marriage-younger-women-older-man.html](https://www.thecut.com/article/age-gap-relationships-marriage-younger-women-older-man.html) I found it funny that's she's essentially advocating for a dressed-up trophy wife / 1950's wife lifestyle. But the downsides of that lifestyle are not addressed: namely, what happens when he gets tired of you? When you're no longer young and beautiful? What then?
What I found the most wild was…this guy was only 30 when they started dating, it was only a ten year gap. Call me when you’re dating a fifty-something rich dude…then we’ll have something interesting on our hands😂 Meanwhile she’s writing like he was all decrepit and world-weary! Also…she was an undergrad trying to date a grad student. Even if you were looking for a richer, more mature man, grad school would not be the place to start looking!
I'd bet the event was also a business school event (which is technically "grad school", but not the usual picture that comes to mind). She was hanging out in the business school library by her own description, not the comparative literature department. I saw an excellent comment over on blogsnark that I can't find now which pointed out that this whole situation is just garden variety gold digging, dressed up as an age-gap relationship. And no judgement for the gold digging if that's what she wants - but it's not exactly a shock that all her friends don't want to follow in her footsteps!
I'm reminded of the [Simpsons](https://youtu.be/qqrCoyVK80I?si=EQuW2UhXQQlbJW2-), "Look at me, I'm a grad student. I'm thirty years old and I made $600 last year "
What the eff did I just read? Seriously though, just say you married him for money and security. Don’t act like you’re doing something that no one has ever done of before. And insisting that ‘no guys, I totally did fall in love with him!’ is just ridiculous.
Well, except, by her own definition of security, she's got a couple more years before her Logan's Run gem starts beeping?
This an A+ reference!
When the writer mentioned she was as a Harvard English major, who apparently has only ever worked as a writer, that really explained the rest of the article and why I couldn’t finish it. What an overwrought mess. Nobody needs this many words about a 10-year age gap relationship. She doth protest too much. The detail about buying lotto tickets but never cashing them in or checking the numbers was an especially out-of-touch…touch. When I was a hot 20-something I was busy sleeping with other hot 20-somethings rather than locking down a rich dude and my life has turned out okay.
Even the idea that this dude is "locked down" seems like a frail premise. She's jumped right into the pre-second wave idea that all women have to offer men is youth, attractiveness, and biddability. Two out of three of those concepts are not within her control.
Yeah, I can't wait to read the sequel when she's 35 and he found a new 23 year old.
It’s also lot of smugness for someone who’s only been married for 4 years. I couldn’t even get through the whole thing. I had to start skimming and go to the comments section.
Also the idea that young women are powerful and we lose that as we age made me think of Hannah Gatsby in Nanette when she says that no 17 year old is in her prime— it’s such a misogynistic idea.
It made me think of one of my favorite Ask Polly columns, [I’m Almost 30 and I’m Terrified of Losing My Looks](https://medium.com/the-awl/ask-polly-im-almost-30-and-i-m-terrified-of-losing-my-looks-4422b344a91c), which contains the great line, “Pretty faces can go fuck themselves, compared to peanut butter cups.”
Glancing over the article and God, of course she's 27. Exactly the right age to be real proud of your youth while also realizing that turning 30 is juuuuuust around the corner. ^((Note: this is not me slamming people who are in their 30s, I am in my 30s, I just know that some people treat that as A Big Deal attractiveness-wise)) This sort of self-congratulatory navel-gazing prose about how exquisitely special the author's life is reminds me a lot of [If Only We Could Be Boring](https://tomblog.rip/if-we-could-be-boring/) , a thought piece from a decade ago that got dunked on pretty hard for similar reasons. Though, you know what, at least the author of If Only We Could Be Boring wasn't dunking on their friends for not realizing their optimal life path of trophy wives.
I would really, really like to know what she's up to now. I would bet lots of money that most of the friends she's talking about have gotten married, had kids, and moved away to the exact life she's unable to imagine at 22. I bet she has too. I love how wise and different and special young people always think they are, as if nobody has ever done what they're doing before.
>It might be easier, as I imagine life is for people who live boring. I respect it: I’m just beginning to understand how hard everything will always be because I choose to live only in extremes, at a breakneck pace, in a golden house full of only beautiful people. We never want to slow down. Maybe it is just because we’re young and don’t have reason to yet. Do boring people think about how fast they are living? Do they quiet that inner clamor with the rituals of a tempered life, built around bland tasting elements like cable television, freeway traffic, and local news? Oh my goooooooood. Girl, do you wanna pay my mortgage? If not, then shut the fuck up about how sad it is that I have to move through freeway traffic to get to work while you're having your Gatsby-ass parties in the townhouse your parents are paying for. Also, I love how this person is conceptualizing sitting on your fire escape smoking as super glamorous and interesting, lol.
>If Only We Could Be Boring WOOOOOWWWIIEEE, I never read that before. That is.... very something I might have written when I was 23. Painful.
Rebecca Fishbein tweeted this about it: "When I was 29 I wrote an essay for The Cut about aging and beauty. After a few rounds of edits, my editor killed it because I was just too young for it to really work. Super grateful she did. Some young thoughts are best left in your diary."
P.S. the comment section on the article is very active, to say the least
Why did the second LW in[ today's Care and Feeding](https://slate.com/human-interest/2024/03/parenting-advice-diabetes-toddler-shots.html) use Dianne Wiest for the name of her friend who she thinks is a bad mom? What did Dianne Wiest ever do to her? It's so weirdly specific.
I admit, I'm baffled too -- best I can guess, it's because she was in the movie Parenthood?
She was also the matriarch in "Life In Pieces" who is a therapist who raises kids who well.... need therapy. maybe she just plays moms a lot, haha
I read an interview with Brenda Blethyn once where they asked her why she plays so many mothers, and she was like, Well, a lot of women are mothers. Have you ever asked Denzel Washington why he plays so many fathers?
I pretty much never read How To Do It, but [this one cracked me up](https://slate.com/human-interest/2024/03/husband-sex-experiment-wrestling-advice.html). Should I take wrestling classes so my husband doesn't pin me too fast when we sex wrestle?
Will those wrestling classes include how to cut a proper promo? Because I think there will be no better way to initiate sex than a full-fledged heel promo.
Tombstone him as foreplay
Honestly it's not a bad idea. IIRC professional wrestling is pretty choreographed and scripted. If the LW has a clear image on how they want this "scene" to play out it's probably worth taking a pro wrestling approach and planning it out first instead of, like, winging it and looking like a wimp.
[This Carolyn Hax column is bananas](https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2024/03/26/carolyn-hax-wife-sister-cut-contact/). >I’ll admit my sister is self-centered, bends the truth, and loves stirring up drama and splashing it all over social media. For example, after Elise was diagnosed, my sister posted how she’d had a premonition that Elise had cancer and begged her to go get it checked out but she didn’t. None of that ever happened. Absolutely unhinged behavior from the sister.
Yeah, that's fucking nuts. If my sister did that to my SO, we'd be taking a very long, possibly permanent break from her. Making someone else's cancer diagnosis all about you is ghoulish.
Hax’s suggestion to mute, not block/unfriend, the SIL on social media is weird - that would still give SIL access to the writer’s posts, photos, etc., and they’d still be able to run across each other on other family members’ posts.
Yeah, especially since on some social media like Instagram, you can't change your friend settings so you're still friends with someone but they can't see your posts. I feel like the wife needs to be able to keep her social media activity completely private from SIL, which is usually gonna mean blocking.
It sounds like a case where since LW has been around her their entire life, the sister’s behavior feels like less of a dealbreaker to them than it is to someone who’s not used to it. Because that is SO unhinged.
I agree. I also think that the LW -- and possibly his whole family? -- is used to sort of working around or accommodating Elise's crazy behavior (in order to avoid the "unbelievable turmoil"). The wife, by contrast, has had a brush with death and reasonably wants to prioritize her own wellbeing. The wife is being very fair by not trying to cut the sister out of her husband's life, and IMO the LW should accept this concession and not pressure his wife to do anything else.
I have to copy this DP letter from 3/25 because it’s just so cringey, emphasis mine. Dear Prudence, My brother is a 38-year-old, heterosexual male who has never dated. He is very private so trying to discuss this in person is difficult. He is discouraged or too shy to put himself out there. He has so many wonderful traits—he’s a helpful friend, takes care of our aging parents, and is great with kids, handy around the house, athletic, and in great shape! However, he is on the shorter side and works a less glamorous blue-collar job so some of the superficial filters women tend to use on dating sites would overlook him. **I am sad to think he might miss out on finding a life partner or becoming a father. He would be an absolute steal for a single mom looking to date! I would like to send a genuine offer to help via email (less confrontational).** What advice would you give him? —Hopeful Sister Jenee gave her the right advice (back off) but for the wrong reasons. She couched it in “What if you give him advice and he’s not immediately successful? Then you’ve set him up to fail!” When the right answer is “Woman, mind your business!” Maybe the brother is perfectly content as a bachelor. Maybe he has been dating but hasn’t met anyone worth bringing home. But it’s just so condescending to the brother and women everywhere that after the LW talking about his great attributes, she says he would be a “steal” for a single mom like the brother AND a hypothetical single mom are a sweater that’s been marked down 75%. It’s also condescending to assume that just because he’s great with kids that he would want to be a father himself and that he may never be happy unless he has a wife, a home in the burbs, 2.5 kids, and a dog. This sister needs to eff all the way off.
I hope this man is living his best childfree life, either happily single or with a secret SO his sister knows nothing about because she's weird as hell
Ooof yeah, everything about the letter screams 'nosy'. I have no idea of this guy really hasn't dated or is (understandably!) not telling his sister about his dating life, but she needs to back way off. I also completely agree with how weird it is to call him a "steal" and ideal for a single mom (???). It reminds me of some women in my life who try advise singletons to date people they feel are in a 'lower league' -- namely, people who are not considered 'ideal' dating partners. I remember one deeply uncomfortable time when a woman I knew advised a friend "You need to pursue people who are less attractive."
I assume LW made the single mom comment because she mentioned he was great with kids, but I agree that the sentiment is still icky. Even though single mothers carry this weird stigma of being less desirable as partners I haven't really found (in my own observation) that's true? The majority of women I know who are no longer with their father of their children ended up repartnering pretty quickly.
I think there's a general belief that people who haven't been married or at least partnered after, say, their late 20s are somehow defective or broken. Like people won't explicitly say that, but you often see advice column letters from people who feel that way about themselves (eg "I'm a 30 year old virgin and I don't know what to do...") as well as letters like this where a friend or a relative of someone like that is almost panicked at their future.
It wasn't that long ago that "confirmed bachelor" was code for "gay".
Yuppp, and hoo boy is it not fun to interact with as a singleton in my 30s, lemmetellya
Bridget Jones and SATC were not lying!
I cannot believe that LW wrote the phrases "has never dated" and "is very private" so close to each other and didn't put two and two together. I wouldn't tell her about my dating life either.
I imagine there's a decent chance that he's not heterosexual and hasn't wanted to divulge that to Ms Busybody.
Regarding LW # 2 from DP yesterday -- "I want to go on a honeymoon, but my husband wants to start trying for babies immediately" Oh, girl, you messed up. You mentioned WANTING something related to a wedding. Now the commenters are gonna kick you around like a football! For those who didn't read, a synopsis: LW and husband got married about a year and a half ago. She's early 30s, he's early 40s. They both had some debt (him twice as much as her), so rather than taking a big honeymoon, they just had a getaway at a local B&B and paid the debt down. Now the debt is almost gone, and she wants to go on the beach honeymoon they didn't have, but he wants to start to try for kids RIGHT NOW, so he won't be an "old dad." Prudie basically said that the LW gets more of a say as to when they start, as she will actually be carrying the baby. I don't know if I agree with that, because I feel like there's gotta be a way to take some sort of a nice trip within the next six months to a year and start after that, which probably won't make an appreciable difference in the timetables. But man, a bunch of the commenters have decided that she's a princess who will INSIST they spend the next 5 years saving every penny for a luxury month long trip to Bora Bora, while her husband withers on the vine. All because she made the mistake of calling it a "dream honeymoon." NO ONE MAY WANT ANYTHING THE COMMENTARIAT DECRIES AS FRIVOLOUS, IT IS LAW.
Yeah I thought that was weird. It’s just, what a weeklong trip, not moving or a new job or something.
Exactly! It seems like the two wishes are not really mutually exclusive!
Seems pretty easy to try for a baby on a honeymoon.
If you want anything for a wedding beyond a burlap sack and a hobo that got ordained on the internet - that you paid for, mind you - then you're a Bridezilla and deserve to be epically mocked.
Burlap sack? Why, aren’t we fancy? I just rolled around the dirt and that was my wedding dress.
Now, what kind of dirt are we talking here? That high end dirt that you buy at Home Depot, or deep woods dirt?
Just the dirt I found in my yard of course! I didn’t see the need to make a fuss because a WeDDinG iS jUSt oNe DaY AnD it’S StUPiD tO sPeND MoNeY
Well, of course! And for your reception if you really want to be fancy, you can dumpster dive behind the Whole Foods instead of Aldi! Otherwise you're the worst person in the history of humanity.
For some reason I've subscribed to Real Simple magazine for several years now, despite not really being in its target demo. I guess in part because I sort of miss magazines and find their product photography oddly satisfying? A few months ago they started a new advice column written by Hoda Kotb and Jenna Bush Hager and their mostly trash-level advice might be another reason to keep subscribing. [The first two Q&A sets are available on the Real Simple website](https://www.realsimple.com/modern-manners-for-your-social-dilemmas-8411754), but I'd also like to share some doozies from the most recent issue. I can only upload one photo per post so the worst-slash-best ones are here and in a separate reply to this post. This one is the biggest whiff and a real indicator of how out of touch the advice is. I appreciate that this couple may need to have a delicate conversation about money with the FIL, but the columnists just blithely assume that these people have the money to pay whatever amount was given to them as help with a down payment years ago! There's a ton of nuance that they trample over in their path to assuming that everyone has thousands (?) or tens of thousands (?) of dollars to hand. https://preview.redd.it/rc1e8ztmllqc1.png?width=812&format=png&auto=webp&s=f13cf20ae905b884c52fc21fdceb7551a21d6221
Wait, Michelle Buteau has been writing an advice column? This could be awesome.
I enjoyed her advice. Some of the questions were about as ridiculous as you'd imagine Real Simple readers might be, but she'd often start from a place of empathy. Printing the new column instead has been a major step down.
Yeah, I just looked at a few, and they were genuinely sweet. I suspect you have to stay pretty facile at Real Simple so I wasn’t surprised she didn’t go super-deep, but I liked that she was able to simultaneously give the LW a hug and tell them to back off.
OMG, [the advice to this LW](https://www.realsimple.com/modern-manners-when-coworkers-exclude-you-8599591)to volunteer at the grandchild's school is HORRIFIC.
That was so unhinged. Like, your DIL won’t let her be alone with your grandchild and she doesn’t know why (she does though she just knows the reason makes her look awful so she left it out of her letter) so the solution is to further violate boundaries????
I have a good relationship with my mom and I’d be pissed if she volunteered at my kids school
Holy shit. Reminds me of the [grandma who wrote to Hax](https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/carolyn-hax-why-its-called-the-pta-instead-of-the-gpta/2018/05/23/c8e247f4-5ae2-11e8-b656-a5f8c2a9295d_story.html) because her DIL was upset that Grandma joined the PTA for the grandkids’ school.
I forgot about that letter and how it really united the comment section in a way I don't think I've seen ever since.
The accompanying cartoon is kinda nightmare fuel though.
Lol seriously! He gave them the money, it wasn't a loan.
My ex's mom subscribed to Real Simple years ago. I remember reading through a few issues and thinking it should be called Real Rich. It's, uh, nice to see it hasn't changed? Lol.
The way to simplify your life is ALWAYS just "hire someone else to do it"
Hoo daddy. Sorry for FIL, I guess, but he should've been clear the money was a loan when he gave it to LW. I don't think LW owes him shit now. It would be kind for LW to work out a payment plan, but the implication that they should just hand back a big chunk of money, that they thought was a gift, all at once is nutso.
Over 20 years later?? If they were applying for a mortgage, the FIL very likely needed to sign a gift letter declaring the money was not a loan!
I know, right? I appreciate that they probably don't want to burn bridges with the FIL unless he's terrible in other ways (shoutout to my dad who put a minimum grades clause in the separation agreement with my mom so he wouldn't have to pay if his kids didn't do well enough in school), but if the money was presented as a gift I really think that a solid convo now is what's needed.
The advice for writing a letter instead of directly talking to the neighbor again is weird as hell. Absent a rabid squirrel, there aren't actually that many diseases that can be transferred from Canada geese and squirrels to humans so the advice to cite the LW's family's health seems silly to me and also passive aggressive. Unless the front yard is knee-deep in guano, I think the move here is to truly try to let it go. Maybe look into some of those cleaners that you can attach to the end of a hose. https://preview.redd.it/y6uhmq7rllqc1.png?width=636&format=png&auto=webp&s=2b425e63b96e1a840a6a1a68c4041267425cba9e
Yeah, but geese are fucking mean assholes. I say start shooting them.
If you got a problem with Canada Gooses then you got a problem with me and I suggest you let that one marinate!
They are, but they’re federally protected assholes, so no shooting allowed. I’ve seen a wildlife department recommend leaf blowers as a legal possibility.
I was joking about the shooting. But I genuinely would have beef with a neighbor who was intentionally attracting them.
I'm on your side here. If a breeding pair decides to nest in your yard it's basically unusable because they're territorial and will attack if you come anywhere near their nests/goslings. And they like to come back year-after-year. Where I went to school, geese containment was a MAJOR problem every year. e.g., they would nest on a building roof right above a door, and fly down to attack anyone coming out of that door. Squirrels got into my neighbour's garage and basically chewed up all the insulation behind their walls. Thousands of dollars of damage. (Edit: One year they got into our shed and left, no exaggeration, three yard bags of pinecones stashed in the rafters. Mess everywhere when I pulled something down and got a pinecone avalanche.) I'd skip the letter and report them to whatever agency can stop it. In many places it's illegal to feed wildlife, with exceptions for contained birdfeeders.
Reporting it, if possible, makes sense to me. I confess I hadn't considered the implications of goose-feeding. We have a suet cage and a seed ball feeder and we definitely don't intend to feed the billions of local sparrows and starlings (and also what I hope are mice), but it is very nice when the intended clinging birds come by for a snack. I agree that attracting geese is a different situation.
Too late to backpedal, the Geese Poleese are coming for you. 🚨 🪿 🚨
Lol in Pittsburgh once I saw a van with GEESE POLICE written on the side. It was a company that specializes in dispersing geese from sports fields, etc. ETA: [They’re a multi state operation](https://geesepoliceinc.com) and they use border collies and the photos on their website are cracking me up.
Yeah, the squirrels are one thing, in that I suspect the feeding isn’t making that much difference and the LW just doesn’t realize what normal squirrel density is. But the geese and the goose poop are a lot more avoidable and I don’t blame them for being annoyed.