Agony Aunt

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Dear Prudence,

I’m in a group chat with some friends where we share cat memes, talk about our workdays and relationships, make plans, etc. We all live in the same area and see each other frequently. In this group are “Samantha” and “Patricia,” who are friendly but not close. I used to be extremely close with Patricia, but we’ve drifted apart in the last couple of years.

Last week, Samantha, a teacher, shared a funny story that included a screenshot from her text conversation with a parent. The student’s first name was visible, but all other identifying information was blacked out. Patricia voiced concern about her sharing this information about the child. Their exchange was very tense. No one else felt Samantha had done anything wrong. Samantha acknowledged she should have edited out the kid’s name and Patricia seemed pacified. Apparently not, though, as Patricia went to Samantha’s principal and shared the screenshot with the principal, saying she was concerned for the student due to Samantha’s indiscretion.

The principal said the screenshots were likely harmless, but a formal complaint was made and had to be dealt with seriously, resulting in an official reprimand to Samantha, a human resources investigation, and a warning that her contract would likely not be renewed. It’s been over a week since this happened, and the gal pals are still incensed and afraid of Patricia’s wrath. They feel Patricia’s actions were self-righteous and overstepping at best (kind of par for the course for her personality), and cruel and vindictive at worst. As the previously closest one to Patricia, I’m the only one still talking to her at all and she very much sees herself as the victim in this situation. She thought she was doing the right thing and now feels she is being treated unfairly. How do I deal with Patricia? I’m about to have my first kid. She has not been there for me lately, and I’m floored she’s behaving this way. She has put me in the middle before with her choices and I have too much of my own stuff going on to deal with this again.

—Not Here for the Martyrdom

Dear Martyrdom,

Regarding the screenshots of the conversation between Samantha and the parent, I find it troubling that Patricia would go to such great lengths to either prove her point or to outright embarrass Samantha. If the screenshots were truly as innocuous as you suggest (and it sounds like they were), a concerned friend would maybe raise the issues of privacy (ideally one-on-one, and certainly not openly in a group chat). A good friend would not escalate the issue without a private conversation held in good faith. That’s kind of the whole point of friendship; you believe in the best of each other, even when there’s a chance that someone’s made a mistake.

But Patricia’s behavior proves that she has little consideration for a friend’s feelings (or employment!) over her own sense of righteousness. Perhaps you happen to have a knack for handling her rigidness, you two share certain values, or maybe you simply haven’t been subjected to her judgment yourself. But I would be very, very careful around this person. If she can behave this way toward Samantha, she will very likely not think twice about doing the same to you, should you act in a way that displeases her. My advice: Be grateful that she’s been a bit distant and hasn’t showed up for you. I’d keep it that way. With a baby on the way, you have a perfect excuse for staying out of the loop on both the inter-group dynamics and Patricia’s particular antics.

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Dear Prudence,

When I was growing up, my mother was the breadwinner while my father stayed home with us. It was always assumed that I, too, would be a “girlboss.” But I’ve had awful anxiety my whole life, and the idea of working outside the home overwhelmed me. It’s been a long journey for me to accept that I don’t need to earn money to be worthy.

I’m now a stay-at-home mom to two little boys, and we have a darling angel joining us this summer! My mother has been a tremendous help through my first trimester, and I feel truly blessed getting to see how happy and well-adjusted my boys are and thinking about how well-adjusted my daughter will be. Here’s where the problem comes in. I’ve seen how well-adjusted my kids are, and I know a HUGE part of that is my steady presence in the home. I’ve also been reading tons of parenting books about the importance of a healthy attachment in a child’s first three years to guarantee a healthy bond with the mother and emotional self-regulation. The more that I see the benefits of this in my own toddlers, the angrier I am with my mother.

I’ve struggled with anxiety my whole life. I blamed it on unpopularity in grade school and a heavy course load in college. Since becoming a SAHM, I’ve noticed that my anxiety is as crazy as ever even on “easy” days. Meanwhile, my tots are anxiety-free. I’ve realized that my years of anxiety attacks and lying awake at night is because I didn’t have that secure attachment with my mother in my early years. Now, I have a great bond with my mother as an adult! We talk every day, and I absolutely could not have gotten through the first trimester of any of my pregnancies without her, much less the postpartum months. But I’m still resentful that my mother didn’t make me more of a priority so that I could be well-adjusted.

I don’t know how to bring this up with her. We’ve talked before about the fact that she should have spent more time with me when I was a kid. I know that she was raised in a very careerist world. She sees my staying home with my kids as a “choice” and has a very “you do you” attitude about it, but that’s not enough. She doesn’t understand that by making her work a higher priority than me, she set me up for a lifetime of anxiety and attachment issues. Should I bring this up with her at all, or should I accept my mother’s limitations?

—First Generation SAHM

Dear First Generation SAHM,

It’s normal to feel resentment toward a parent about the choices they made that affected your well-being, especially when those effects are so clearly felt as an adult. Now that you’re a mother yourself, I can imagine that it’s galling to consider what your own childhood could have been like if your needs had been better met. I do think there’s a time and place in the future for you and your mother to have productive, compassionate conversations about how you feel about your childhood and the way she raised you.

But I think you first need to examine and work through your anger and resentment with a professional—ideally, a licensed therapist who can help you vent, rage, and grieve to your heart’s content. Therapy can also help you manage your anxiety generally, too. If talking to a therapist is out of the question for now, I think you need some form of a supportive outlet, such as a friend who also has similar mommy issues or even an online support group of fellow young mothers. You need some space to dig through the years of emotions and memories that have curdled into this resentment on your own first before you are ready to discuss it with your mother. Give yourself a lot of time to do this; no one in the history of the earth has ever fixed their mother-daughter relationship overnight.

You’ll know that you’re ready to talk to your mom once you’ve arrived at a place where you can feel a little compassion and empathy for the way she made a tough choice to balance her own needs with that of her children’s. No woman ever gets it perfectly right; when you’re able to feel more accepting of your mother’s choices, it’ll be a good time to open the conversation.

—Delia

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Dear Prudence,

My husband and I could use some serious help regarding a situation in our neighborhood that we feel has gotten out of control. We are proud homeowners in a cul-de-sac we’ve grown very fond of. The neighborhood is a mix of long-time owners and renters, and several months ago a young woman I’ll call “Kelsey” moved into one of the houses in our cul-de-sac that was available for rent, with her two pitbulls. I love dogs and have a rescue pit mix myself, so my husband and I struck up a conversation with her one day while she was walking the dogs to welcome her to the neighborhood. She seemed friendly and told me how excited she was to be living there—she said she was evicted from her previous apartment because of her dogs and had been living in her car on and off and was ready to “get her life together.”

She started doing some yard work for our elderly neighbors, and when I suggested to my husband that we could use some help with our yard as well, he broached concerns he had about her—namely that he suspected that she had a history of using drugs and believed she might still be using based off of her appearance, mannerisms, and desire for cash-in-hand work. At first, I thought he was being too harsh on her, but he has far more experience with this than I do—his cousin is a recovered drug addict, and he has volunteered at a methadone clinic.

Recently, our neighbor “Barry” (who is a friend of my husband’s and comes over regularly) showed us some distressing ring camera footage. A package of his was stolen off their front porch late at night, clearly by Kelsey! He considered calling the police but opted to go to her house the next day to confront her directly. She immediately denied it and grew flustered and agitated before changing her story and telling him she thought it was hers before giving it back to him—and it had already been opened! Barry agrees with my husband that she is most likely using and told her that he would call the police if it happened again; and lo and behold, it happened again about a week later, this time to his roommate.

Barry was ready to call the police, but his roommate “Aaron” was adamantly opposed to that—he said that she’s had a hard life compared to the both of them, and that if she was caught with any drugs and potentially arrested it would only send her back into a cycle of homelessness and addiction. He suggested that they just get their packages delivered elsewhere, which we all think is absolute nonsense. When Barry pushed back and said he was going to call the police regardless, Aaron told him that he was so opposed to that he would try to get him evicted, which he could most likely do because his dad is the owner of the house in which Barry rents a room!

My husband, Barry, and I are all extremely distressed by this—Barry loves his living arrangement, but we are all increasingly concerned about Kelsey’s presence in the neighborhood if there are no consequences for her unacceptable behavior. I am also concerned for our elderly neighbors who she has been helping—she has started helping them with house cleaning and I’m worried that she might be stealing from them. I told Barry that we would be happy to report her ourselves and make it abundantly clear to Aaron that we did it and that Barry wasn’t involved, but he is worried that Aaron won’t care and would try to get him evicted anyways since he knows that we are friends with him. What on earth can we do about this? We’re worried about her actions escalating, and Barry feels held hostage. Please help!

—Cul-de-sac Conundrum

Dear Cul-de-sac Conundrum,

Well, Barry definitely needs to get out of that living situation. If his roommate, AKA his landlord’s son, is threatening him with eviction in order to get him to act a certain way, that’s an issue that has nothing to do with Kelsey. As Barry’s neighbor, I think you can communicate your concern for his toxic roommate relationship, but otherwise, there’s nothing else you can do to involve yourself in that particular dynamic.

One can relate to Barry’s wish for Kelsey to face some kind of formal consequences for stealing the packages, but I personally don’t think involving the police will be helpful for anyone in this situation. Whatever your own views on policing might be, it’s safe to say that calling the cops on a neighbor will only escalate tensions for the entire neighborhood, to put it mildly.

As for the issue of Kelsey, it may be helpful for you to build out whatever existing relationship you have with those elderly neighbors. Give them a drop-in and say hi a few times, and see if you can get a sense for how they feel about Kelsey’s help. I don’t think it’s crossing the line if you share with them what happened with Kelsey and the other house’s packages, and you can express concern that Kelsey might not be the most reliable source of help. But otherwise, if your suspicions about her substance abuse remain strictly suspicions, it would be unfair to spread what might be an unjustifiable rumor. The goal here is not to try to sniff out whether Kelsey is abusing drugs or stealing from more people, but more so to make yourself clearly available as a friendly neighbor and a potential source of help should anyone in the neighborhood need it.

Turns out maybe not.

Dear Prudence,

My wife and I both had kids rather young so when we met, they were well into middle school. I got the snip right after my daughter was born and was upfront about not wanting more children. My wife was OK with this until around our second year of marriage. Then she became obsessed with having a baby that was “ours.”

It nearly broke our marriage. I thought we had hit the lottery because our kids all got along and we had a successful blended family. I basically told my wife she had to choose what kind of life she wanted: what we had versus what she dreamed up. We went to therapy and we worked through it—or so I thought.

We recently went through a crisis where one of our kids had an unplanned pregnancy and they chose to end it. We are lucky to live in a blue state but the situation was fraught. My wife’s reaction blindsided me. She was so angry and felt she had been “cheated again” because we would’ve raised the baby if they kept it. Luckily, she didn’t say this around our kids, but her reaction makes me think our marriage is not salvageable. She told me she regrets not pushing for another child and that I forced her to give up her dream. She didn’t want to be a single mom again. She later apologized but is the damage done? We are both pushing 50 and I thought we were happy. Is counseling even possible at this point? I feel like I am living with a stranger ever since she confessed.

—No Baby

Dear No Baby,

Sure, your wife may have been dishonest with you about her enduring desire to have kids—despite working through this years ago—but it’s also possible that the ordeal with the abortion triggered her former desires in a way that surprised everyone, including herself. Just because she’s made peace with your shared decision to not have a baby doesn’t mean that she can’t still mourn a version of a life that she once wanted.

I don’t think there’s an easy way to tell at this point which scenario applies here. I think it would be a good idea to revisit counseling, since that seemed helpful in giving you both some additional support when you were making the decision to not have a child the first time around. Your wife might simply need a space where her feelings of regret and grief feel validated, and you both might find it helpful to “review,” so to speak, the original decision and how its impacted your lives. I’m not suggesting you both revisit the decision itself, but just because it was made years ago doesn’t mean you can’t still talk about how it’s affected both of you. In fact, it’s probably healthier to look back at something so big with the perspective you’ve gained since.

Q. Not my type: My older co-worker has a “puppy crush” on me. This is encouraged by our office matriarchs. The sexual desire on my part is nil. I don’t want to hurt him, but I spent most of high school and college dating one guy. I usually use the “I have a boyfriend” line to ward off unwanted advances, but we broke up over the pandemic. I don’t want to hurt my co-worker. He is generally a good guy, but the older ladies in the office are all invested in us like we’re in a Hallmark movie. It is creepy. I have turned him down twice, and they tell him “third time is the charm” and try to cheer him on and wear me down.

In an attempt to dampen this, I told one lady that he wasn’t my type. She then interrogated me. I admitted stupidly I didn’t find him attractive, and she called me “selfish and shallow.” Now they have all piled on me about how “looks aren’t everything.” He is 29 to my 21. I need this job. I have loans. I don’t know how to deal with this short of screaming in the middle of the office “I DON’T WANT TO SLEEP WITH HIM.” I know this is stupid, but I feel like I am being hunted. Can you help me not blow this up in my face? He is generally a good guy, but every time I let him down gently, these ladies take it like a challenge.
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A: Oh my God, this might be the most dysfunctional workplace I’ve come across yet—and that’s saying something for this column. I am so, so sorry you have been put in this absolutely untenable and horrifying position. Please don’t blame yourself for “stupidly” admitting you weren’t attracted to your co-worker, because you are being sexually harassed by every other member of your office. This older man who’s trying to force you to accept his advances by sending in female colleagues to wear you down is not a “good guy”; he is a creep of the first order and should be fired yesterday. This is shocking, horrifying, and likely actionable.

Please consult an employment lawyer before doing anything like going to HR or reporting this to management, because an office atmosphere this toxic—there, I said it! Finally an opportunity to call something toxic and really mean it, from the back of my teeth—won’t start and end with a few bad apples. This culture of harassment and violation may very well go all to the top. You will likely have to go to HR at some point, because the company will have to know about this issue in order to be legally responsible (which you really, really need the company to be!). Document everything to the best of your ability—the date, the approximate time, and what happened, like, “Thursday, Oct. 22, Camille told me I was selfish and shallow for refusing to sleep with Bruce, spent the rest of the afternoon trying to convince me to give into his sexual harassment”; this will be useful to bring to your lawyer as you figure out next steps. You are being harassed on a truly terrifying, monumental scale, and you deserve so much more than just “not blow[ing] this up.” In the meantime, tell all of your colleagues who are on the same reporting level as you to never mention this to you again, that the subject is closed, and you do not welcome any further comments or questions on that front.

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Dear Prudence,

I am the president of a local community organization founded originally by immigrants of a certain ethnic group (think: the Something-American Society). I have been involved with the organization for many years and it is a central component of my social life. We host a number of events annually that draw people from all backgrounds and bring a lot of joy to the community. While there is not an explicit rule that members of the board of directors are from this ethnic background, currently everyone (myself included) is fully or partially of that descent. Or so I thought.

My elderly father, curious to learn more about our ancestry, recently purchased a popular DNA testing kit. I didn’t think that anything would come as a surprise since for my entire life my family has passed down recipes and heirlooms from the aforementioned ethnic group, so I was shocked to receive a phone call from him that we are actually from a different background entirely. Complicating matters, these two groups have a longstanding history of animosity toward each other, with members of their U.S. diaspora having wildly different experiences in regard to treatment and discrimination. Not only has my identity been shaken, as this element of it was very personally significant to me, but I am torn as to how to approach it in regard to the position I hold in this local organization.

Nothing about me or my ability to lead and participate in the group has changed, but I worry that not disclosing this discovery is dishonest. If I do disclose, however, I worry that my standing in the group could be, at worst, compromised, or, at best, confusing to others who may be interested in convening with those who share a similar background. I have not shared this with anyone yet other than my husband, because while there are individuals in this organization I have known for years and do trust, our town is relatively small and gossip is inevitable. Do I have an ethical obligation to disclose these findings? I want to handle this with integrity, but this group means a lot to me, and the thought of my relationship to it changing because of this is painful. How should I proceed?

—Problematic President

Dear President,

What a shock! I think you should choose one or two especially trusted members of this organization—ideally who also hold leadership roles—and disclose your discovery to them in private. This is a delicate matter, and not something that will be well-served to be litigated out in a public arena immediately. It’s definitely the ethical choice to disclose, but I also think that keeping this under wraps will be personally torturous for you (and will impede your own journey toward processing the news). Your sense of self has been shattered—it’s not the time to keep secrets.

Talk with these trusted colleagues and take their guidance on how to approach your role with the organization moving forward (or communicating the discovery to a wider audience). Then I would recommend that you find a therapist—ideally someone with experience with patients working through their racial and ethnic identity—to figure out how to reassemble your sense of self. This is a life-changing paradigm shift, and even if you’re no longer to serve in this organization in the exact same professional capacity, I have faith that the personal relationships you’ve cultivated with your colleagues can still be a source of support as you embark down this unfamiliar road. It’s a chance for them to walk the walk about supporting people from all backgrounds and the wider world; maybe you’re no longer part of the “tribe,” but you are still a part of the community.

I would also encourage you to spend some time researching your family tree on your own, if it’s possible. This DNA test has raised major questions about your lineage, but it can’t tell you the whole story, and I think more information will help you rebuild a new sense of identity. It seems odd that your family would pass down recipes or heirlooms with absolutely no direct association with the ethnic group in question; perhaps there are cultural similarities or even more nuanced ties between both groups that can give you a clearer understanding of what it means to be who you are.