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Oct 14, 2024

Dear Prudence: My boyfriend knows I want to get married. He just “pranked” me with a jewelry box.

Dear Prudence is Slate’s advice column. Submit questions here. Dear Prudence, I’ve reached an impasse with my boyfriend of 2.5 years. We’re both in our mid-30s, we moved in together a little over a

Dear Prudence is Slate’s advice column. Submit questions here.

Dear Prudence,

I’ve reached an impasse with my boyfriend of 2.5 years. We’re both in our mid-30s, we moved in together a little over a year ago, and in the past year, he’s initiated several conversations about starting a family. I entertain these discussions, but I told him that I will not think of having a baby unless marriage is on the table. He said he wants to be a dad, I said I would feel more secure about family planning if he proposed. He has only said “That’s good to know.”

Yesterday he pulled a prank on me by holding out a velvet box … which was empty, and came with some jewelry he bought online. It felt mean-spirited, given past conversations. So I asked: What’s actually keeping him from proposing to me?

He not only dismissed marriage as a formality, but cited his father (who is very unhappily married). He also raised a number of factors, including how much I work and socialize, as well as his anxieties about an ex who cheated on him. I felt physically ill. We share a home, we vacation, we go out 2-to-3 times a week. I know that he’s just not ready to get married, and the rest is projection. But I can’t even look at him right now. Where do we go from here?

—Dissed and Dismissed

Dear Dissed,

I wonder, have the issues your boyfriend raised after the Fake Proposal fiasco been raised before? Was it a genuine attempt to express himself and explain his ambivalence toward marriage, or was it a way to deflect blame for his own bad joke? It could have been a bit of both, I suppose, but the fact that it made you feel ill might be all the response you need. A man who will mock you with your dreams for the future is not a man you want. That’s not a man who can love you well. That’s a man who finds you useful until he finds what he’s really looking for. Ask yourself this: Why would he want to have a child with a woman who wants to be married, but he doesn’t want to marry her? Why would your desires mean so little to someone who loves you? If his father is unhappily married now, then his father was surely unhappily married when the two of you met, which tells me that he already suspected that he did not want to get married. You deserve a level of care and transparency from the future father of your child that I’m not sure is available to you here.

I can imagine how heartbreaking it is to feel as though your time has been wasted by someone you love, and I am truly sorry for your sadness. At the very least, you deserved the same honesty and candor you offered when you let him know what you wanted from a life the two of you designed and built together.

From here, whomever it comes from, I hope you demand a love that loves you back, and loves you well.

Dear Prudence,

My wife and I are in our sixties and can’t afford to retire. Both of her sisters married rich, and my wife drives herself into a tizzy any time we are around them. She spends money we can’t afford to keep up appearances and refuses to ask her sisters for simple help like us staying with them rather than getting a hotel room. We just “can’t” ask to have an air mattress put up in the dining room or living room corner because that is where everyone is being entertained! My wife has been diagnosed with cancer again. She has lost a lot of weight and missed many days of work. My truck is on its last legs, and we can’t afford to fix the AC. We are more in the red than the black.

Her father turns 100 in a few months, and there is a grand party planned. My wife insists she needs new clothes, her hair done, money for airfare, a hotel, and Ubers so she can attend. It is more than my paycheck. A friend is driving to the area two weeks before and offered to take my wife and let her stay with his sister for free. My wife doesn’t want to do this. Yet she “needs” to be at the party. We had a huge fight. I told her it wasn’t about seeing her father but pathetically trying to keep up with her sisters and that is pointless. They spend every summer in Europe and own several houses and have boats. We will never keep up. She cried and cried. I feel like a monster, but they are cutting overtime at work and our bills are piling up. Our kids have their own worries and struggles. We can’t ask them for help, and my wife will not ask her sisters. What do we do here?

—Not the Joneses

Dear Not the Joneses,

I understand it may not be your wife’s preference to be honest with her family about your financial situation, but it sounds like you’re at a crisis point. And needing help, especially in the midst of a cancer diagnosis, is not only nothing to be embarrassed about, it’s terribly common. I’m not reading anywhere in your letter that her wealthy family members are particularly judgmental, stingy, or otherwise unpleasant. If that’s true, . I suspect her sisters would be happy to help their sister—at the very least to attend this sort of special milestone event for their father, if not more generally. Apologize for calling her “pathetic”—that was cruel; family and relative wealth are tough to navigate—but gently encourage her to see the facts for what they are, and to ask for help if she really wants to go. She doesn’t need to go into great, historical detail about your struggles if she doesn’t want to; you could just be in a “tight spot” right now. However, if she simply can’t face the thought of an honest conversation, she’ll have to stay home.

Dear Prudence,

My friend is finally divorcing her verbally and physically abusive husband after multiple years of this behavior. She also has taken the steps to report his domestic abuse to the police with my help. However, I am not sure how to advise on reporting his behavior to his place of work. He is a doctor at a prominent East Coast hospital, and I personally feel it’s super gross that an abuser works in a job where he’s expected to take care of people. While I think it is the “right thing to do,” I’m not sure the institution would take any steps even if she reported her abusive husband, since most work places prioritize preserving their reputation over anything else. I also fear that if my friend’s husband got word that she reported him, he’d take his anger out on her. Should I really encourage her to report him to the hospital if it could risk her safety and wellbeing again?

—Anxious Advocate

Dear Anxious,

Unless you, or she, have evidence that he is also abusive at work, reporting him to his job risks too much, and, as you say, will probably not go anywhere. I know that may not feel great, but the primary goal for your friend is safety and space to heal. Whatever brings more of that into her life at this juncture is the right thing to do.

Submit your questions anonymously here. (Questions may be edited for publication.) And for questions on parenting, kids, or family life, try Care and Feeding!

Dear Prudence,

A woman I am friendly with is in a relationship with a guy who’s very possessive.I have hung out with her a few times, and we have a few mutual friends and are in the same community. I met her current boyfriend once, about a year or two before they met, in a group hang out. I remember thinking he was kind of odd and unfriendly, but really don’t know him well.

At some point, he relocated to the city she has been living in the whole time; they met through an app and have been together since November. I remember her talking about the relationship in January saying that he wanted to spend all free time together and didn’t like when she did things with other people. Red flag, obviously. We talked about her communicating with him to find balance.

Now it’s August, and a mutual friend expressed concern because he hasn’t spent time with her because “her boyfriend is possessive”—her words. I’m acquainted with some people he used to know when I had met him (before he moved), and that entire friend group doesn’t speak to him anymore. I had heard he was banned from his gym because he mistreated his ex-girlfriend there—I don’t know the details but it sure sounds bad.

I don’t know what to do. I’m not really close with her and the things I have heard about him are second-hand, but I have gotten bad vibes from him. I also know, vaguely, he hasn’t always been a great person. Part of me feels like I should do something or check in on her, but then I can’t tell if it’s really my place to say anything. Should I mind my own business? Should I reach out? Maybe it isn’t that bad? It seems like it could be a delicate situation, and I don’t know if it’s my place to reach out/check in/offer support or not.

—Help a Sister Out or Mind My Own Business?

Dear Help a Sister,

This is tricky because, as you admit, you’re not close friends with this person, nor does it sound like you live in the same place—even if someone should intervene in this situation, you’re not really in a great position to do it. But still, why not just check in and see how she’s doing? If it becomes relevant to your conversation—and you have to think her current relationship would—you can mention to her what you’ve noticed or heard about her significant other, and see how she reacts. She may be able to hear you, but remain unconvinced that there’s an issue or anything she should do about it. Can you be her friend while she continues to date someone who makes you wonder if she’s unsafe? That might be a hard pill to swallow, but everyone I’ve ever known who came out of a long bout of social isolation, whatever the reason, needed a friendly face on the other side. That could be you.

She might also get defensive and ask you to back off. If that’s her request, I would do so, but it wouldn’t be inappropriate to add that you would be happy to hear from her again if she changes her mind—though only if that’s how you really feel.

It’s truly unsettling to watch anybody, but especially a friend, choose to partner with someone who you don’t believe is good for them. But matters of the heart are delicate, and at the end of the day, you just want your friend to be safe. Until you have some indication that your involvement would be necessary or urgent beyond an initial conversation—which again, seems unlikely given your proximity—I think there’s only so much you can do here.

Dear Prudence,

More than 12 years ago, I briefly dated a woman who was a mess in many ways. Any relationship with her would have been a disaster. Yet our sexual chemistry was off the charts, and I still think about what might have been and remember our encounters. Is there some way to get her out of my head? We are not in contact, so this is all in my head.

—The Hot Movies Play Over and Over

Dear Hot Movies,

Cherish the memory. Don’t feel guilty about wanting her. But leave that woman alone.

Last year, I lent my brother an expensive piece of photography equipment. After a few months, his wife sold it on eBay; I didn’t find out about it until I asked for it back for a project. He apologized and said it was an accident (she thought the equipment was his). He offered to buy a replacement, but I said there was no need. Fast forward a year later, my brother asked me to borrow another piece of equipment…