Help! The Woman Who Destroyed My Marriage Now Gets to Help Raise My Kid.
Dear Prudence is Slate’s advice column. Submit questions here.
Dear Prudence,
How do I deal with the fact that the woman who destroyed my marriage is moving in with my ex-husband and will help to raise my 10-year-old kid half of the time?
—She’s Gonna Wreck It
Dear Wreck It,
Before you deal with it, really embrace that this situation feels awful and unfair. Note that I didn’t say it definitely is awful and unfair, but it absolutely feels that way. Cry about it, journal, rant and rave to your friends (and hopefully a great therapist), wish her the worst in your head, and let yourself have a moment or several moments of intensely (but secretly) hoping that your child hates her and makes her miserable.
Then do whatever you can to force yourself to change the way you’re looking at this. Not because this woman deserves your forgiveness, but because she (along with your husband) already destroyed your marriage, and she shouldn’t get to destroy the rest of your life, too. Some thoughts that might resonate with you are:
Sometimes even Prudence needs a little help. This week’s tricky situation is below. Submit your comments about how to approach the situation here to Jenée, and then look back for the final answer here on Friday.
Maybe the answer here is that I should mind my business, but I have what feels like a real moral dilemma: One of my relatives is hoarding animals and illegally breeding dogs. Without even touching whether breeding in itself is wrong, this specific person is not a good caretaker of animals. There are now seven adult dogs, 14 puppies, and several cats living in her small backyard and she can’t seem to go more than three or four months without getting a new animal. She also had rabbits and chickens at some point, but the dogs killed them.
She has confirmed that none of the animals has ever been to the vet, and she feeds them cheap food just dumped into a pile in the backyard. She doesn’t walk them or provide enrichment activities, they all just live in the backyard and never leave. Two of her dogs are a breed that are supposed to be groomed regularly but they haven’t been groomed in over five years. I’m sick to think that she’s continuously bringing more animals into this situation.
A neighbor called animal control to come investigate the situation, and my relative claimed that animal control said they don’t have too many animals and that they all seem well taken care of. (Our city has a limit on no more than four dogs per household, so I’m not sure what happened there.) She was issued a citation for having unregistered pets and was warned not to breed them. Well, now she has two litters, with another on the way that she’s selling on Facebook.
I’ve wondered if I should give animal control a call to report the breeding. She has a Facebook page for her new breeding business, so there’s no question about whether it was a mistake or not. I know I can’t control the outcome of what happens when the authorities get involved, but it’s not that I want to see her getting punished—I just want her to stop getting and creating new animals that she can barely care for. Her family doesn’t make a lot of money, but she does have a wealthy dad who bails her out of true emergencies, so if she does lose her “investment” dogs they’re going to be OK. She has a pattern of lying and shutting people out when they try to confront her about basically anything, so I’ve held my tongue for now. We do live in an area where a lot of people think of animals as property, so feeding them and not chaining them up all day is the bare minimum of care as far as the rest of our family thinks. What do you think?
—TOO Many Dogs
Dear Prudence,
I love my sister but over the past few years, she has grown morbidly obese. She can barely walk and needs to sit down every few moments. She isn’t even 40 yet and she moves like our late grandmother. My cousin and I had plans this summer to go to New York City and sightsee, which involves several walking tours. My sister wants to join us and foolishly thinks that she will be able to keep up. The last time I visited her, we took her dog on a walk to the park. We didn’t even make it before my sister got fatigued. I had to turn around and get the car to get her home. I am not mentioning her weight to her. It wouldn’t do any good but hurt her feelings. I don’t want to exclude my sister but I am not shelling out thousands of dollars for a trip to be stuck in a hotel room with her. How do I have this conversation with her?
—Walk Around
Dear Walk Around,
Do a little mental exercise for me: Imagine that your sister had a chronic illness that left her with little energy, a physical disability that she’d lived with since birth, or a recent injury that limited her ability to walk. Would you be so quick to decide you wouldn’t waste your money traveling with her? Or might you get creative about looking for accommodations (a scooter? A segue tour? Do they still have those?), and compromise (a shorter walking tour? A tour that passes a coffee shop where she could hang out while you walk the last 20 blocks? A plan for the two of you to do low-key things together and then split off so you can be active and she can see a show?). I’m getting the feeling from your letter that you want to draw a hard line here because you believe her weight represents a character flaw for which she deserves to suffer the consequences. I simply don’t agree (you can Google things like “body positivity,” “health at every side,” and “why diets don’t work” to get a feel for why) and I don’t think it’s good for your relationship with her—or kind, or fair—to think that way.
If you can muster some compassion for her, and think about this trip in terms of your values (which I’m hoping you place connecting with a loved one and not doing anything to increase her suffering over walking through multiple New York City neighborhoods), I’m confident that you can figure out a way to make this experience work for both of you.
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,
My boyfriend is about to propose, but I don’t think I want to marry him. He’s a super sweet guy, and very loving, but something about being with him just leaves me feeling an emptiness inside. Recently, I got very depressed and was in a dark place. I asked him to take charge a bit more with our relationship, mostly by making plans to get out of the house and trying to help me get out of my head. Instead, he ended up getting into his own head and getting depressed, leaving me to care not only for myself but also for him.
We made it out the other side, but now I feel uneasy because it could happen again, and I don’t know if I could handle that, especially since he’s brought up having kids. I want kids, but what if I get into that dark place again? I don’t feel like I could trust him to take charge, leaving me to care for myself, him, and any kids we have. And that’s on top of some other issues I have with his personality; nothing huge, but enough to make me concerned about the long-term effects/progression. The problem with calling it off is he and my family love us, his friends think we’re great together, and the social backlash of my suddenly calling things off, especially with the proposal around the corner, is going to be huge. I have no clue how I’d handle that… If we stay together, I know it’d be a comfortable life, I’d be well taken care of and loved, but I wouldn’t really be happy. So, what do you suggest I do?
—Happiness or Comfort?
Dear Happiness or Comfort,
Here’s a rule that applies when you’re trying on clothes and when you’re deciding whether you should marry someone: Maybe means no. That’s right, unless the feeling you’re having is, “Absolutely yes. I wonder if they will scan these jeans while they’re on my body and let me wear them out of the store” or in this case, “Absolutely yes. I am so excited to spend my life with this person,” you have to pass. And I actually think you’re clearer than “maybe” about this situation. You said it yourself: “I don’t think I want to marry him,” and your reasons, while not necessary to justify this, make all the sense in the world.
I understand your anxiety about the backlash you might face if you break up, but I did notice that all of the negative consequences had to do with other people’s belief in your relationship. Not your boyfriend’s and not yours. Do these feelings even really matter? Arguably, you wouldn’t even have to deal with his family and his friends after the split. This might be a moment for a big sweep of unfriending on social media and maybe even a period of time without any of the apps on your phone. That alone will protect you from the vast majority of negative comments, weird messages, or passive-aggressive posts that might follow your decision.
Remember that none of these people who believe so strongly in your relationship are going to be there to fix things for you if you’re married, depressed, and feeling an intensified version of that emptiness you mentioned. They won’t be experiencing it with you, and they won’t care about your unhappiness any more than they do right now. So you can only give their opinions so much weight.
I guarantee that a person with whom you lack chemistry and compatibility is not your only or last potential path to being comfortable and taken care of in life. You can have that, and happiness, and legitimate excitement about your partner. But not if you continue to make other people’s feelings more important than your own.
Dear Prudence,
A widowed friend we didn’t know all that well recently died, leaving behind a mentally ill daughter, Jenny. We knew Jenny had serious problems, but it was none of our business. We assumed that our friend, a wealthy financial advisor, was planning for Jenny’s future. Jenny has been diagnosed, we learned later, with multiple disorders, including paranoid schizophrenia. After the funeral, we also learned that the estate was bankrupt and Jenny’s nearest relative wanted nothing to do with her distant cousin. We took in her cat, which was supposed to be temporary. She claimed she’d take the cat back in two weeks when she got settled. She asked to sleep on our sofa, but we said no. Jenny is now homeless and enraged. Furious messages accuse us of defaming her, stealing the cat, and influencing her late father to disinherit her. We are shocked that Jenny’s parents would leave their ill daughter penniless.
She called late at night, leaving vicious, rambling texts and voicemails, and refused to stop even when we threatened to block her. Before blocking her, I told her she had six weeks to retrieve her cat before we took her to a local rescue. The cat is beautiful and now living with a foster family that already wants to adopt her. Our question is: What’s the right thing to do with the cat? Jenny appears to be refusing her medication and we think she won’t be able to care for herself, let alone a pet. I expect her to become a ward of the state. But I don’t know that. I told her I’d hold the cat until she found housing, not give it away. Maybe I don’t have a right to decide whether Jenny is “competent.”
—Ethically Confused Animal Lover
Dear Ethically Confused Animal Lover,
Jenny’s mental health struggle and the fact that she has so little support after her parent’s death is absolutely tragic, and it’s understandable that you don’t want to do anything to increase her suffering or add to the unfairness in her life. But, stop being so hard on yourself. You don’t need a degree in psychiatry to make an educated guess that she is not “competent” and is pretty far away from finding a stable place to live and becoming a person who can give an animal a good home. You told her you’d pet sit for two weeks and already extended that timeline. You did the right thing.
Her crisis is obviously much bigger and deeper than the issue of where the cat lives, so if you were closer to her, or if she didn’t already see you as an enemy, I’d suggest trying to offer her a different kind of support, by connecting her with community resources or even just checking in regularly so she knows she’s not alone. But given how much tension and mistrust there is between you, I don’t think that’s realistic. I know it’s dissatisfying, but the one thing you had the power to do was to get the cat into a place where it could have a good life, and you did that. Say the serenity prayer a few times; stay open to the possibility of reconnecting with Jenny when she’s medicated, stable, and not leaving you vicious voicemails; and forgive yourself.
My wife grew up eating far healthier than I did—vegetarian, no sweets, the whole nine yards. All the food she cooks is basically just stews of mushy vegetables with some sort of liquid. I hate it.
