You have been going on monthlong cruises with your least favorite friend every fall for the last eighteen years – but this is the year your mother has decided to stop paying for it. Which of her cousins should you disinvite to your wedding?
Your husband is wonderful, but…
Your Peeping-Tom neighbor has taken to murdering your dog on your front lawn every morning before work, and you want to know if it’s reasonable for you to warn his babysitter that he makes your grand-nephews uncomfortable.
Your already-rich brother just won the lottery, but he’s still not willing to pay for your sexually aggressive intern, who doesn’t know how to dress for the office.
Your boyfriend is wonderful, but…
Someone held your baby, or didn’t hold your baby, or wouldn’t hold your baby, or something.
You read your wife’s email and found out she can only orgasm with you when you’re on vacation.
Your stepmother has keys to your apartment and regularly lets herself in to use your bathroom, but she’s not willing to pay for your college tuition unless you end things with your racist sugar daddy.
You’re thinking about moving across the country for an old professor of yours whose twin brother you slept with the night before you started a new job as his assistant, and you’re not sure whether or not you should get both armrests on your six-hour flight.
Your in-laws have put tracking software on your work computer to find out if you’re going to be spending as much time at their house over Thanksgiving as you are at your own parents’.
Your cat went outside.
Tags: dear prudence, emily yoffe you don’t know everything about me, no of course i’m not going to get into her weird rape essays this is a light-hearted joke about advice columns
Your cat is wonderful, but…
That “cat-owners-who-are-also-swingers” sex club sounded like a great way to get to know the neighbors, but…
If I never say or post this joke again or even willingly admit that I’ve ever heard it, I must deliver it one more time: That reminds me of a book I read, “Never Squat Naked Around Your Cat” by Claude Balls.
…OK, it’s a guy joke. Still.
My ex-girlfriend’s cat liked to hang out in the tub. One day when I was standing up to change my tampon, the cat jumped out of the tub, batted the gross tampon out of my hands and proceeded to chase it all around the bathroom! After this incident, the cat followed me into the bathroom every single time, as it was convinced that peeing sometimes creates toys.
best story ever
80
My husband’s variation: “A Tiger’s Revenge,” by Claude Balls. Turns the nine-year-old into a puddle of hysterics every time. Boys…
I guess I’m about to write a Prudie letter then, since one of my cats, whom we were just praising last night for being such a good cat, ran into our bedroom as soon as we opened the door this morning and peed in a laundry basket full of clean clothes.
…… she’s secretly poisoning you.
Usually they just try to trip you on the stairs, this is some next-level cat plotting.
Oh my god I could write a hundred ends to this sentence.
You’re dating your own twin and things seemed great at first, but…
Oh, man, I read that one.
Please someone link this…..
I think it’s this: http://www.slate.com/articles/life/dear_prudence/…
(aaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh)
wooooaaaahh
gay incest twins!
Also, the follow up
You’re welcome and I’m sorry?
They seemed nice! (Especially compared to some of the really awful people who write in). I hope things worked out for them.
NONONONONONO
Twincest.
Your twin is great, but…
You’re planning a wedding, and Miss Manners and Emily Post just don’t quite address the high-level chess-like machinations of snubbing and manipulation you need to incorporate into your invitations.
Mr. and Mrs. Mark Franklin Jones
begrudgingly with
Mr. Anders Smith and Ms. Laura Martin
request the pleasure of your company (and only yours)
at the marriage of their future providers of grandchildren
Mary Ann Jones
and
River Worff Smith-Martin
on July 17, 2000-never
at 6:30 pm
in the garden of the No-vegans or Weirdos Country Club.
In lieu of gifts, please send bitcoins.
“P.S. Please tell Janet we’re incorporating the food she’s allergic to into literally every dish we serve; she’s totally welcome to come though!!!”
Surely the racist sugar daddy can pay for college?
And a new lock?
Your husband and/or mother-in-law are getting away with way too much.
Does any advice column get as many ridic questions as Dear Prudence? Captain Awkward comes close sometimes.
My favorite/least favorite Captain Awkward is the one that’s like “my boyfriend is wonderful but…he regularly locks himself in the bathroom for hours at a time and won’t come out no matter what I say and sometimes I’m forced to pee in the sink while crying.”
“my boyfriend is wonderful but…I’ve decided to write about this one teeny problem to an advice blogger who regularly encourages Just Breaking Up. No reason!”
I think a good rule of thumb is that if you’re considering writing to an advice columnist about your significant other you might as well just break up with them anyway.
mmmmhm. and I might be snarky about it here in this thread, but bless the Captain for helping me realize that!
I once drafted an advice column letter asking what I should do about a friendship that I was expending too much emotional energy on. When I was done, I read it, deleted it, and ended the friendship.
Same.
I use this SO MUCH.
“If I was trying to sum up this situation to an advice columnist, what information would be necessary to understand the situation? What specific questions would I be asking? What would I ‘conveniently’ not add about my own behavior? What answer am I really looking for?”
YES! For me, writing down all the fucked-up shit that had built up so slowly over so many years made me look at it all in one place and I was like “wait, what? how on earth did it get this BAD????” Plus, writing it down in sentences forces you to sort of look at it logically, which is why I’m finding journalling SO helpful.
All sorts of stuff was going poorly in relationships for me last year, and between a partner being Affected By Substances and a Metamour being Very Mentally Ill and me Wanting To Be Cool With It………..(obviously each of us had situations that were much more complicated than that, but, we’ll go with that for the moment), none of us was a particularly reliable narrator of what was going on. Trying to write things so a third party would have any idea what was going on didn’t *just* make me be fair to the other people involved, it also made me be fair to *myself*, and have to listen to myself about what was TERRIBLE.
For me, also, there’s something about writing it down and getting it out of my head and onto a screen or journal that makes it feel more real or something, which also helps cut down on second-guessing myself and telling myself everything is fine. If that makes sense…?
It very much makes sense.
I’m more likely to second guess myself in a HEALTHY way (Ie- “I just wrote that I need X in order to Y. Do I really need X, or would Z work instead?”) rather than a way that undermines myself (“You must be overreacting! It can’t be that bad, right?).
When I write things down (especially when aimed at an uninvolved party), I also am better able to separate “these are the things that are happening” from “this is how I’m feeling about the things that are happening”. Both are important, of course, but it’s helpful to be able to say “this fact pattern is the sort of thing that’s not healthy regardless of how anyone feels about it or whether it’s the most pressing concern”. Otherwise I tend to get stuck in emotion loops where the most important thing is the thing that’s hurting me the most right that second– and that’s often not the best way to approach an issue.
My favorite Savage Love questions are the ones where I start muttering DTMFA in the first paragraph and Dan’s answer is something like “all of my regular readers are shouting DTMFA right now.”
Once I was reading a Savage Love letter and thinking “well this is easy, this guy is just an asshole.” The letter ended with “What is my problem, Dan?”. Dan replied “Your problem is that you’re an asshole.”
That one haunts me. I wonder about her, the way I wonder about old college hall mates whose names I can’t quite remember. Amy? Amber? I hope she’s ok now.
“One of my friends is basically a sex criminal. May I please not hang out with him?”
any time anyone asks a question there about their Friend Group I always want to refer them to this:
http://www.theawl.com/2014/02/ask-polly-my-terrif…
that one was so ridiculous and also completely ridiculous.
was there ever a follow-up to it?
I think the LW popped up briefly in the comments to a recent letter, and mentioned that the dude in question was now an ex-boyfriend.
But I may have that LW confused with the one whose boyfriend wouldn’t let them sleep.
I’m pretty sure that was the LW whose boyfriend thought leaving broken glass on the kitchen floor was a grand political statement.
srsly, CA letter writers’ boyfriends are a large portion of why I’m a misandrist.
Bleeding feet? That’s what THEY want you to think! Wake up, sheeple!
Yeah, some “counterculture” dudes would jump off a bridge if the government told them jumping off bridges is bad.
Wait, is that how we can get rid of them? Quick, to the misandrist conspiracy-cave!
No, that’s a third dude.
Yeah, that was no sleep girl, no pee girl still hasn’t showed 🙁
I don’t remember the no sleeping one!
She was the one who had repeatedly told her boyfriend not to call her before a certain o’clock in the morning, but he continued to do it because he’d “rather have her awake and grumpy and talking to him than asleep.” Apparently she was “adorable when she’s grumpy.”
…the comment section was a veritable Greek chorus of DTMFA, iirc.
Why is your sound on? My sound is off when I sleep. I don’t understand people who are awakened by texts/calls. Even if you have an alarm on your phone, the sound on that is a separate setting!
It changed my life when I discovered the nighttime or Do Not Disturb setting or whatever it’s called. I was always afraid to turn off my phone at night because WHAT IF THERE’S AN EMERGENCY AND MY MOM NEEDS TO CALL ME. (Anxiety much?) But now I can set it so that calls from specific people come through and everyone else is muted. It’s glorious.
(I try not to think about the fact that an emergency call from a police/hospital number would also be muted under this system.)
I had to lay some very firm boundaries with someone (who I don’t particularly like) because I DO have to keep my ringer on at night and they had a tendency to send mass texts at 2 AM. I’m a landlord and there have been a couple of 3 AM “um, so there’s water leaking through the bathroom ceiling” or “someone just threw a rock through our back door window and it’s January” or similar incidents, and my insurance sure as hell isn’t gonna help me if I don’t do whatever I can to mitigate the damage ASAP.
wait this wasn’t the one where the LW was also like “and ps i can’t orgasm during regular sex with him so i like to pop into the bathroom afterwards so as not to embarrass him while i get myself off” or are there just way too many weird bathroom shenanigans getting sent to advice columns
“We both have to get ourselves off after sex and we’re building another bathroom so that we don’t have to take turns. Do I get to pick the color of the tile because I suggested it first?”
THAT LETTER HAUNTS ME TO THIS VERY DAY!!!!!
I was just about to mention that letter!! Ugggghhhh…
#1 on my list of internet things I need closure on.
I have never, ever wanted follow up to an advice column as badly as I wanted follow up to that one. I NEED TO KNOW that the guy got dumped. I think about it all the time.
I’ll nominate the gawdawful “Ethicist” column from the NY Times Sunday magazine. You know, if you’re uncomfortable enough about your actions (or lack thereof) in some personal situation that you need to ask if you’re behaving ethically, you’re probably not.
The “Ethicist” once said that it is TOTALLY RIDICULOUS for college classes to have a policy forbidding turning in the same essay for multiple classes, and everyone should just go ahead and do it anyway. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/02/magazine/can-i-…
It was last week’s column that made me lose it altogether. Headline: “Should I help a classmate who sexually harassed my friend get a job?” Easy answer: NO. You are a shitty friend if you’re even thinking of helping the classmate. And NYT, hire a better headline editor, that phrasing is awkward. NEXT.
The ethicists’ (there’s a panel now) answer: dithering about how college-aged people can do bad things and still be fine and hardworking people later (if you read the letter, it was harassment AND ATTEMPTED SEXUAL ASSAULT) and they talk about competing ethical obligations to a friend, the harasser (sorry, ‘classmate’) and the employer!!! Oh, and they take a shot at the writer for not getting the authorities involved at the time and not hearing the harasser’s side of the story. Then they go off on a tangent about how unfair the alumni referral network is because of all the people it excludes!!!!
Has the Ethicist changed in the last few years? I remember it being pretty thoughtful and tackling some legit ethical questions when I used to read it in college (but I was also super naive in college, so maybe it was just me).
Yes- the column used to just have one author, but now they have a panel of 3-4 people who can’t give anything resembling an actual answer to any question.
Yes, there’s a panel of three now. I think the Times is patting itself on the back that the current three are a (white) woman and two men of color so they can check off their “diversity in hiring” box. Damn shame that they offer such tortured reasoning and “advice”. The original Ethicist shot more from the hip and wasn’t above telling someone “you’re an idiot.”
Ahhhhh thank you. Yeah I really liked the original one!
I think I remember that guy having a regular gig on NPR, and he never failed to impress me with his tact in approaching the situation and his answer when I’d be yelling ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME at the radio.
Aww, you saw Tony’s sad sad lament — the married 47-year-old dude who is Just So Put Out that “younger women don’t look at him anymore” — in the NYT last week, did you?
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/12/style/when-a-so…
/so much no
Oh yes, Social Qs! There was a great one last week (if real) that was basically, “my dog got loose and broke a neighbor’s statuary; isn’t it really their fault for letting their cat sit on their porch?”
Wat.
Next week’s headline – Warning for Epidemic of Contagion: Neighbors’ Narcissim Extended to Pets
/i can’t
That was the best! Who writes these???
“I was in a deli, and a man may have cut in front of me in line. When asked if he had, I said: “I don’t argue over such things. He can go ahead.” The man replied: “You don’t argue over such things? That’s why you’re fat.” I said, “You’ll end up in a courtroom.” He replied: “Good! I’m a lawyer.” I said, “Well, I am a judge.” The conversation devolved until he accused me of racism. Apparently, he was Hispanic; I hadn’t noticed. But when did it become O.K. to pick on someone’s physical imperfections but not sexual orientation or race?” http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/06/fashion/no-judg…
I love Ask a Manager but she gets some crazy questions from people clearly in denial – either about how completely horrible their job / manager is or how crazy their own behavior is. (The Duck Club / fuck club question managed to hit both sides of denial in one question).
Oh my god the duck club question. “I know I can’t tell them not to fuck on the couch in the copy room because they were on break and therefore not on the clock” ARE YOU LISTENING TO YOURSELF RIGHT NOW?
My absolute favorite one is the one where the boss thought he was a Mayan shaman (no offense to the mayan shamans among Toasties) and was trying to involve their employees in rituals.
I’m addicted to advice columns because of bonkers letters. What was so sad about that letter was that it came in January and I realized “Welp, nothing else this year will top this one.”
The one where the boss was stealing people’s lunches and they all ended up getting locking boxes to protect their lunches in and they gave the boss one filled with toy food?
what
I think AAM ended up saying that she believed the Duck Club entry to be a fake – at least, that’s what I want to believe. Ask A Manager is one of my favorite advice blogs, ever, in no small part because of the absolutely insane questions she gets sometimes.
Yeah, after the follow-up, I fully believe the Duck Club was a fake.
oh man or the guy who racked up $20,000 in personal debt on a *corporate credit card*, and was STILL digging the hole deeper and deeper by paying off a couple thousand dollars each month but then spending MORE than he’d paid off buying his girlfriend shit? That was wild.
That HAUNTED me!
You’re concerned about your aunt who had two drinks last weekend and never wrote a thank-you card for your wedding gift.
Prudie: “Two drinks!? Your aunt is an alcoholic.”
You have it on good authority that one of your old high-school friends who spent thousands of dollars to fly around the world to be your aunt’s bridesmaid only gave her a card, not a gift. Should you confront your friend about her stinginess this weekend at the beach resort or wait until next month at the lodge, for your aunt and uncle’s 1-year anniversary gala? Technically she has a year after the wedding to send a gift, you know.
You want permission to do this really dumb thing you know is wrong, but that you really want to do anyway.
Oho, you want http://thatbadadvice.tumblr.com/ !
Thank you for saying it so I didn’t have to!
I forgot about this tumblr! I used to check it all the time, it’s so delightful. Must catch up on what I’ve missed.
The tags on this could not be more perfect.
“Someone held your baby, or didn’t hold your baby, or wouldn’t hold your baby, or something.”
And you’re FURIOUS about it.
The baby, on the other hand, is fine.
You casually waved a sandwich at a coworker and now his wife is slowly poisoning him out of jealousy but denies it because she says his food allergies are a state of mind.
Aha, I see you’re a regular…
(I’ve added “sandwich waving” to my everyday lexicon as an expression of displeasure and dismissal).
I am so glad I am reading this today–I had forgotten sandwich waving. No one will get it at work, but as it is my last week here, I simply MUST sandwich wave before I leave this place.
That last tag tho. So true.
The Dear Prudie columns make for the best ThatBadAdvice posts. #circleoflife
I was just going to say I’d love to see the Bad Adviser tackle any/all of these questions.
Omg YES.
ALSO since her terrible rape comments I cannot stand the look on Yoffe’s face. Just visceral ugh.
Her and fucking goddamn Dan Savage and his heinous rape apology and transphobia, ARGH.
Dan Savage makes me throw up in my mouth.
You recently got stuck paying for Jen’s appetizer and Tom’s portion of the tip at a restaurant, and you’ve decided to address the issue by writing to Prudie and linking to her response on Facebook where you know they’ll see it.
” linking to her response on Facebook where you know they’ll see it.”
The sad par, imo, is that’s probably true.
I LOVE ADVICE COLUMNS MORE THAN ANYTHING IN THE WORLD
perpetual shoutout to the Bad Advisor: http://thatbadadvice.tumblr.com/
You beat me to reccing That Bad Advisor! She’s the only advice column you need. GO LEARN TO PAINT OR SOME SHIT.
You are by all accounts a terrible person that makes flagrantly bad decisions but you can prove them all wrong if just one person with the professional authority will grant you total validation.
Only orgasming on vacation seems the least complicated and easiest to solve.
Go on vacation forever, never come back?
Dear Prudence,
My cat went outside last week, and I was wondering if you’ve seen her. She’s a five-year-old Persian. Her name is Tammy. What should I do?
Catless And Terrified
You have been in a romantic/sexual relationship with your own twin brother for several years and are starting to suspect this might be a less than ideal situation.
The realization is sparked by a conflict over your recently deceased stepmother’s will.
Wasn’t this a real letter? Didn’t she basically tell them it’s been long enough now that they should probably continue as is and just let all their friends and family assume they’re a pair of confirmed sibling bachelors for the rest of their lives?
(I hope to God I’m not imagining all of this, but I’m not going to Google that on my work computer to find out.)
Yes! What got me about that letter is this: in a later piece, Dear Prudie addressed the question of whether she suspected any of her letters of being fake. Obviously, the twincest letter is a popular suspect. But she said she had googled the letter-writer’s name and found evidence that he did live with a member of the same sex with the same last name.
Being in a twincestuous relationship is one thing – but using your real name when writing to an Internet advice columnist about it? THat is where I draw the line.
Ha, well, clearly it sounded implausible enough that my first impulse was to assume it was made up for humorous hyperbole, despite actively remembering reading the letter. Although I can’t remember what their actual crisis was. I feel like it sort of sounded like, “We’ve been in this unusual situation for quite some time and are pretty content with it; how about we keep up with things as they are because they seem to be working for us?”
Although I’m not sure I want my advice columnist looking up where I live and who with, just to see whether I exist. (I also can’t imagine giving my real full name to Prudence, so. There’s that, too.)
IIRC, they were sick of their parents trying to set them up blind dates so they could finally “find love.”
Oh, right! Well, that maybe explains why I forgot the actual reason they wrote in . . . Once you take out all the details, “My parents keep asking me when I’ll meet a nice man and settle down” is a pretty boring advice column letter.
The thing that kills me about the twincest letter is that it is like the ONLY time Prudie has ever responded in an utterly sex-positive, you-do-you, consensual-adults-be-consensual-adulting way to ANYONE. God forbid a woman have more than one glass of wine a year, but twincest, whatcha gonna do?
Whoa, you know, now that I think of it, you’re right. Well, that’s disappointing, but somehow not surprising, considering the fact that whenever someone asks her for sex-related advice (in any capacity), I instinctively brace myself for a terrible answer.
Does anyone else remember the letter from the woman who wanted to know whether she could come out to her friends and family as bisexual, even though she was happily married to her husband? And Prudence said something along the lines of, “If you suddenly learned you were into BDSM, you wouldn’t feel the need to share the details of your sex life with everyone. Since you’re married to a man and this isn’t going to change anything that they need to know about, you should probably keep it to yourself, because coming out would be unnecessary and embarrassing for them.”
So . . . yeah. I feel like the twins letter was a weird anomaly in her track record.
There was a real twincest letter, but neither was starting to suspect it might not be a good idea. The question was whether or not to tell their family.
Did it involve arranging for your husband’s death, then the deaths of all his bastard children? I’m pretty sure that that won’t end well for anyone.
This is also a sign you are the heroine of a V.C. Andrews novel.
Your husband invited an attractive, down-on-her-luck member of the church at which he is a pastor to live with you. She’s been there for several months and shows no signs of leaving, so should you confront your brother about doing cocaine in the bathroom during your family’s Halloween party when he was supposed to be helping your daughter with her costume?
OMG both of those letters were absolutely bananas.
You want to confirm whether it’s okay to re-gift your recently deceased wife’s gently used vibrator to your new girlfriend – she can’t afford any of her own since her stepfather disinherited her for requesting gluten-free side dishes at Thanksgiving.
I was mostly holding it together through these comments, but “gently used” got me. Bravo!
ever so tenderly… ever so lovingly… ever so gently…
oh my gosh, that’s a real one, though! ahhhhhh
It was a JOPEN, okay, they’re expensive! It would be wasteful to throw it away!
LINK. LIIIIIINK!!!
Your husband is wonderful, but sometimes he makes an annoying whistling sound while he’s installing tracking software on your phone. Also he is a man-shaped pillar of rotting compost with swastika-print batik fabric instead of skin.
Dear Prudie was my favorite thing until Emily Yoffe decided she needed to Expose the Truth about campus anti-rape campaigns. (Spoiler alert: The ones we should be worried about are our poor, poor innocent sons and how victimized they are by university bureaucracies!)
And now I can’t with her. Just…not gonna give her the pageviews. But god, I miss her advice-seekers.
Ugh. I’d forgotten about that. Thanks (?) for the reminder.
Yeah, I read Prudie for YEARS and just stopped after that article. Also, we’re all alcoholics!
Yeah, that and the insistence that any drinking equals alcoholism, and just her general shittiness got to be too much for me. The only advice columnist I read regularly these days is Carolyn Hax.
I didn’t know about this rape stuff! Fuck that, no way am I reading her stupid shitty column again. It doesn’t surprise me that she’s written something like that because Jesus Christ she lives in a parallel universe where human behaviour and the appropriate responses to it are different to ours, but holy fuck.
You said terrible things last night after drinking blackberry schnapps and think you’re clearly an alcoholic.
(Prudie: Of COURSE you’re an alcoholic.)
Prudie’s answer to #1: DTMFA.
Her answer to #2: DTMFA.
Her answer to #3: DTMFA.
(repeat chorus)
what about today’s I-hate-my-coworker Dear Prudie letter that reads, “The worker is a know-it-all and buttinsky.” !!!!
We got that AND a cruise ship dilemma! Prudie bingo!
I had never seen the word buttinsky written out before that column, and I just about lost it. Gonna have to bring it into my regular vocabulary–it’s so evocative.
This is why I never describe my husband as wonderful. When people ask I go, “Eh, he’s okay.”
“Well, I like him” is also acceptable.
“I hold him in fairly high regard.”
“I esteem him” works too.
“Yeah, I think I’ll keep him around for awhile” is my go-to response.
“He’s fine, IF YOU LIKE THAT SORT OF THING”.
You hate poor children, and would like Prudence to validate this.
Oh, that letter was the BEST(/WORST).
Oh lordy, was that the one about the Halloween candy…?
Yup
‘Tis the season!
I literally cannot start my Thursdays without reading Dear Prudence. This fills me with intense joy.
I love Captain Awkward, but I feel like most of the writers would do well with a slap upside the head and an order to grow the fuck up post-haste.
Thank God. I also love Captain Awkward but I have that same reaction sometimes too.
dead on, love it
I am ded. Trying not to crack up at my desk.
I really want to stop reading Prudence — her stances on alcohol and rape in particular are so awful. But I just can’t. Mondays and Tuesdays, I gotta read her live chats, Thursdays her column. I especially love it when she and Dan Savage respond to one another’s questions.
They instituted a paywall for non-American readers and you know what, I am not going to pay for Prudie. I had to cut myself off.
Sadly the incognito window trick works so I have not worked my way away from reading Prudie.
I wrote a strongly worded letter to editor of Slate about the paywall. The gist was that it would have been nice to get some notice that it was going to be insituted, and that it didn’t seem to make sense for UK readers anyway as all the adverts were also relevant to us. No answer.
mallory, i was having a terrible day, on the internet and in life, and this saved me. i don’t have any jokes to offer, just my heartfelt thanks.
“I am best friends with my ex-boyfriend, who is also my boss, but he has an ugly child, whom I hate. Can I tell him to leave the kid at home when he comes to my destination vow-renewal ceremony, even though my other guests are bringing kids? It’s just that I don’t want all of my photos to be ruined, I’m sure he’ll understand.”
“Can I require my father-in-law, who was severely scarred while saving puppies from a burning house, to babysit the ugly child?”
That particular letter still haunts me.
Does anyone else remember the lady who suspected her mother-in-law was poisoning her but her husband didn’t believe her? So Prudie told her to surreptitiously switch her food with her husband’s one night when they dined with the in-laws. And she wrote back to Prudie saying she did and her husband got super sick and then got MAD at her because she had proved that his mother was trying to poison her?
I think about that so often, you guys. Even more often than I think about the gay incest twins.
Yes. That one haunts me.
WHAT?!
YES, that was so horrifying. Especially the part where she said her husband gave her a **look**, and she realized that he knew the whole time.
Signs that you’re about to write a Dear Prudence letter while also being inside a Shirley Jackson novel.
I am in a fetal position now.
Yes! Oh my gosh! How did her life get to that point, I wonder?!
I literally want to know all about how those divorce proceedings went down. I have so many questions!!
MISSED THIS WHAT
http://www.slate.com/articles/life/dear_prudence/…
And the follow-up!
http://www.slate.com/articles/life/dear_prudence/…
wowwwwww
Oh my GOD. I don’t know how I missed this, but OH MY GOD.
Yikes, thanks for the links. That reads like something straight out of a Roald Dahl short story.
Has she sold the rights to Investigation Discovery yet?
I look forward to this next installment of “Deadly Women”.
Yes. Both of these. I always wistfully hope twincest guys are living happily in their nice loft somewhere. But mother-in-law poisoner (and evil husband!) takes the cake by far. NOTHING will ever top that and why isn’t it a movie yet?
It should definitely be a Lifetime movie at the very least!
Also, the twincest guys are living happily, apparently! There was a link to a follow-up with them in the thread about them on here.
I never read that, but I DID read the one with the woman who was so desperate for grandchildren that she poked holes in her son’s condoms. Spoiler: it worked.
wait wait please elaborate
Show of hands, who here is a regular Prudie commenter whom I might know…?
(I was a regular there for several years, but defected entirely to the Toast after Slate’s redesign and subsequent technical difficulties).
I have tried to comment at Slate once or twice but their comment section design is is the most confusing thing I have ever seen. Why?
It’s truly awful. Even before the redesign, it was a nightmare.
Also, Slate likes to ban people from commenting for no particular reason (e.g., being slightly off-topic or making too many jokes. Which is, of course, one of the best parts of the Toast).
You build nests out of towels.
So, I haven’t actually looked at the real DP for a while, and thought I’d see just what the status quo is:
I don’t know what my disturbed friend will do if we go on this cruise she planned.
Prudie advises a student who feels pressure to take scholarship money from a Confederate organization.
Prudie advises a parent whose son’s name has an unfortunate meaning in their new country’s language.
My nephew walked in on me peeing. Now his mother has started telling people I’m “pervy.”
Prudie advises a woman whose husband put their dying pet rat in the freezer.
And so on. On the other hand, there’s this bit of self awareness, from the beginning of an answer: “I missed the part of your letter where you say your girlfriend is ‘wonderful, but …’ From your description there’s no wonderful, just but.”
You went to the office bathroom and your supervisor may have heard you poop so you poisoned the coffee supply. Should you tell your SIL she’s not really gluten intolerant?
I have IBS and the thought of that office poop busybody haunts me to this day.
You were right to poison them all. But are you an alcoholic? DTMF to be sure.
I love the gay incest twins! I’m gonna google mother in law poisoner right now.
Oh…crap. I know exactly who the first letter writer is talking about today. Like, exactly who. Like, we’re friends although yes, she is incredibly unstable lately, which has been really sad and hard to watch. Oh… crap. I need a paper bag to breathe into. Oh all deities that do or do not exist, please do not let her see that letter.
It does have a LOT of identifying features.
Dear Prudie,
A few years ago, my wife left town with the kids this summer while I stayed home to meet some pressing work deadlines. I’m not proud of this, but I wound up falling into an affair with a neighbor. Her husband somehow found out and demanded that I pay him off or he would tell my wife, so I paid him. Last week, some rivals at work confronted me with the receipts of those payments – I have no idea how they got them – and accused me of misappropriating company funds. I confessed the affair to them and proved that I had done nothing illegal. Still, I fear that they’ll leak the information. I’m a pretty good writer, so my gut is to get ahead of this by explaining everything in written form, perhaps in the form of a published pamphlet of some sort. This is totally sane and won’t ruin my family’s life, right?
Next time consider a threesome with your sister-in-law instead. In any case, you’re doomed at that company and you’re never gonna be president.
WIN.
SO MUCH WIN to deitybox and jillheather.
Do Cary Tennis next!
It has been well over 20 years – let me spell that, OVER TWENTY YEARS – but I still occasionally think about this letter to Ann Landers: “My 11 year old daughter is having sex with her 19 year old boyfriend. I don’t like it but I don’t want to say anything because she and I are really good friends and I don’t want to spoil our good relationship.”
mallory what the hell kind of shitpost generator do you have access to? (this is not a shitpost in fact it is a very good post but you cannot be telling me that this is what dear prudence actually is)
Totally addicted to Dear Prudie, mostly because I enjoy a) gawking at the ridiculous, mind-boggling scenarios people describe and b) engaging in downward social comparison (i.e., even when things get tough, I don’t have to deal with MILs poisoning me or a “husband” who takes off for six weeks and offers no explanation upon his return). Most depressing DP microgenres IMO: difficult MILs (especially how they relate to one’s children and/or husband) and marriages clearly on the brink of collapse :/ If I never marry, those letters will be like 70% responsible.
I loved that disappearing husband letter? WHY HAVE YOU NOT LEFT HIM YET?????
Right?! Still dying to know where he was and what he was doing. Sounds like a serious existential crisis that he totally mishandled.
I didn’t even know I needed this until you wrote it. Invite Prudie to come to the toast! I love her, even though I disagree with her frequently and her letter writers are often completely incapable of managing the simplest aspects of their boring lives.
Glad this was an article and not a video with no transcript by the way.
You did something while you were drunk and want to just get shamed to hell for it. Prudence has very low tolerance for drunken shenanigans compared to other advice columnists.
You did something while you were drunk and want to just get shamed to hell for it. Prudence has very low tolerance for drunken shenanigans compared to other advice columnists.
Me 3! Like, I love the CA advice column so much that I joined forums too. But there were a few letters recently where, between the letter writers themselves and the commenters, I was like, "oh god, I have to close this tab because otherwise, the urge to slap some people silly is way too strong. People just need to chill the eff out sometimes."
Yikes, thanks for the links. That reads like something straight out of a Roald Dahl short story.
OMG. What did I just read?
There were some really over extended metaphors about being part of a herd, and somehow it all made sense.
Did this happened at the Dear Coquette blog? I missed it and am still wondering what was going on.