Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily.
Dear Prudence is Slate’s advice column. Submit questions here.
Dear Prudence,
At the beginning of this year, I broke up with my ex. Since we lived together and I didn’t have a job, I was homeless for nearly three months until I managed to find an apartment and a job. Still, I hoped to maintain at least a cordial relationship with him, if not a friendship.
After about six months, he revealed to me that he wanted to get back together. When I told him I wasn’t interested, he became vengeful and angry, and things have spiraled way out of hand.
He dumped my stuff out of our apartment while I was camping, and I needed to get a friend to go pick it up. Now, he is trying to get me to send him $5,000 for unpaid rent and a $1400 payment he made on one of my cards when we first moved in together. My family and friends have had to block him because he harasses them as a proxy to get money out of me. He makes plenty of money and can comfortably afford to pay his rent and bills by himself; I do not and have never made anything close to what he does, and I am in considerable credit card debt that I am only just now starting to be able to relieve.
I have put herculean effort into being cordial and kind in the face of his rude behavior. The worst thing I’ve said post-breakup is a snide remark telling him that I won’t talk to him if he won’t be polite, and suggesting he talk to a therapist if he’s feeling frustrated rather than take it out on me and my family and friends. I don’t even bad-mouth him to people. Obviously I’m feeling hurt too, but I’m trying to be the bigger person here. I’m really struggling to find a kind way to explain that I will not be sending him any money, and I don’t want to give him any more attention.
—Up to Here
Dear Up to Here,
Don’t worry about finding a kind way to explain yourself. You don’t have to be kind, and you don’t have to explain another thing. I’m far less worried about your communication with him than I am about your safety, because the furniture dumping and harassment of your family and friends suggest a level of vitriol that I’m afraid could escalate. Your priority should be to ensure that he can no longer contact or find you. And remind yourself that even if you were to find the perfect words to explain your stance to him, he would not accept it because he doesn’t want to understand you, he only wants to control and scare you.
Get advice—submit a question!
Please keep questions short (<150 words), and don’t submit the same question to multiple columns. We are unable to edit or remove questions after publication. Use pseudonyms to maintain anonymity. Your submission may be used in other Slate advice columns and may be edited for publication.
Dear Prudence,
I am biracial but don’t identify that way. My dad cheated on my mom and left us when I was 2. His family treated my mom awfully for being white and not converting. I met my grandmother once when I was 16 and left after she called me a slur. My stepfather is the one who raised me and taught me how to be a man. He officially adopted me when I turned 18. My background is not a source of culture or connection or angst for me. My biological father was basically a sperm donor. He went on to have many other kids that I don’t care to meet.
My fiancée, “Jane,” is in the opposite situation. She was an international adoption and raised in a very white and conservative household. Her relationship with her parents is strained, especially since she has traveled twice looking for information about her biological family.
I support Jane fully in this. We both are learning how to speak her native language and cook their food. We even attend an immigrant church. My problem is Jane keeps pushing her issues with her parents and lack of information on her biological family on me. She keeps circling back to how I “rejected” my heritage and need to reach out to my paternal family and give them a second chance. I kept telling her to drop it, and the last time I exploded because she brought up our potential children being cheated of their heritage by my “fake” father. I took my stepfather’s name when he adopted me. I told her that maybe we should put our engagement on hold until she got therapy and got her shit in order. She cried and went to stay with a friend for a few days.
I apologized for losing my temper but the issue still remains. The sticking factor is Jane is all rainbows and sunshine when she discusses the wedding plans with my sister and parents. They all adore Jane and I don’t want to taint that with this trash issue. I love Jane and get where she is coming from, but that isn’t a place I am at.
—Worried in Washington
Dear Worried,
It’s a good idea to put your engagement on hold whenever you have even the slightest idea that it might be a good idea to put your engagement on hold. Unless you’re waiting for marriage to have sex or someone needs health insurance, you’re not missing out on anything by simply being in a relationship, continuing to talk through your issues, and waiting to feel settled and peaceful before you make things official.
I would say that even if you and Jane were at odds over an extremely petty issue.
But a conflict that goes to the core of your identity and your relationship with your family is especially serious and threatens to take a real toll on your marriage if it’s not resolved. It will only intensify if you have children and have to agree on what to tell them about their heritage and how to answer any questions they have about their family. So yes, go ahead and hit the brakes.
One thing that might get you two closer to finding common ground here would be to separate out the two issues: Your feelings about your heritage and your feelings about the people in your paternal family. It makes all the sense in the world to me that you’d want nothing to do with your deadbeat father and cruel grandmother, but it’s a pretty big leap from that to rejecting the entire culture. And to acknowledge that you are something other than just white doesn’t diminish your stepfather’s important role in your life. The statement “I’m biracial but don’t identify that way” reveals a level of internal conflict that I think you’d be much happier if you could resolve. “I’m biracial but I wasn’t raised with a strong connection to my Black/ Vietnamese/ Guatemalan/ Native American culture, so it’s not central to my life at this point” feels more reasonable. It would be great if you could get some help processing the pain around the challenging parts of your history so that you can think and talk about the situation with some nuance instead of just aggressive rejection.
I can see why Jane worries about your current outlook. But I can really see why the way she’s handling it is upsetting to you. She’s refusing to accept your stance and pushing you to connect with people who have harmed you, and the way she insulted your stepfather as “fake” is right on the line of being unforgivable. You really don’t want to be with someone who is so focused on turning you into the person she wishes you would be that she’s willing to hurt the person you actually are. With the engagement on hold, you should explain this to her and assess whether she’s willing and able to accept that your experience is different from hers and that what works for her won’t work for you. If the answer is no, walk away, because this deficit on her part could ruin your marriage in ways that have nothing to do with racial identity.
Want more Prudie? Slate Plus members get an additional column each week. Sign up for Slate Plus now.
Dear Prudence,
A good friend is going to marry a guy who is a complete asshole. It’s not just me who thinks so; our entire friend group cannot fucking stand him. Are we allowed to say something to her before it’s too late?
—Trying to Save You the Trouble of Divorce
Dear Save the Trouble,
You can’t go to your friend and say “We all think Kyle is an asshole. Don’t marry him!” His bad personality is really not your business, and filing a complaint with her is very, very unlikely to change her plans to spend her life with him. However, can you identify anything about the effect of the asshole behavior on her that you could gently address? Something like “Zoe, you’ve been in tears over fights with Kyle at our last three brunches. We’re all worried about you and really think you deserve to be treated better,” or “When Kyle was cussing out another passenger and got our whole group kicked off the flight to Mexico that was really rough and I know it probably took the worst toll on you. How are you feeling about things with him?” If she gives you any opening at all whatsoever, assure her that if she needs time to rethink the marriage or wants to back out, you’ll all rally around her. And if she insists that she’s going to move forward, you’ll be there anyway and won’t bother her about it. Because she doesn’t need any extra assholes in her life.
Classic Prudie
Last Saturday was my wedding and it was everything I could have wished for, until the reception. One of my co-workers, “Kim,” started saying I was pregnant because I wasn’t drinking. I kept telling Kim I just don’t drink, something everyone knows. She even teases me about it every week when everyone at the office goes to happy hour at a local pub. I asked her to stop, but she didn’t. By the end of the night, I had guests coming up to congratulate me and my confused husband on our upcoming baby.