Dear Prudence is Slate’s advice column. Submit questions here.
Dear Prudence,
I was emotionally abused by my mom growing up. She was a failed novelist but found some notoriety by writing a mommy blog back in the day. My entire life from the time I was a toddler until a teenager out of the house was fodder for her adoring fans, and I was completely exposed and didn’t have any privacy. It was a life of humiliation when I got to middle school because despite the fake name, people knew who my mom was. Try sitting next to the boy you have a crush on and knowing that when you got your first period was published online. I developed an eating disorder when I was in high school, and my mom decided she was going to be a crusader for the cause. She ate up the attention and never gave a thought to what it cost me. No matter how I begged, she needed to share her “truth.”
I went to college on the opposite coast and never have been home. I rarely call and only respond to texts now and again. My mother will not hear about the hurt she caused me, and my father just enables her. Only now, my mother has a cancer diagnosis and is begging me to reconcile, and she is back at blogging about her cancer journey. I know she will not respect any request for her to leave me out of it, but the thought of potentially losing my mother makes me sick. What do I do here?
—Not Another Blog
Dear Not Another,
I believe there’s a way for you to partially reconcile with your mom that will satisfy her without forcing you to move past the negative experiences you had as a result of her using you as fodder to chase fame and attention. It sounds like she made some really selfish choices with her blog but were there any good parts of your childhood? Is there anything she did that you think was well-intended even though it was ultimately harmful to you? If the answer is no, it’s okay! Especially because she isn’t open to apologizing. But even if you can say something as limited as “Thank you for bringing me into the world, making me the center of your life, and trying to spread awareness about the things I struggled with. We’ll probably never agree on the tactics you used but I do know that you loved me, and I hate that you’re suffering now and the thought of losing you makes me sick.”
Too much? I’ll edit it: “Thank you for bringing me into the world. You’re my mom and the thought of losing you makes me sick.” You have the rest of your life and all of the therapy sessions it contains to process how she harmed you, but the time for a conversation that could bring you some peace and closure is limited.
And the blogosphere isn’t what it used to be. So if she posts about your exchange, who cares?
Dear Prudence,
Last summer, my wife’s sister and her husband bought their “dream” vacation condo with a private dock on a lake near where we live. They also bought a boat that they asked if they could store in a building at our acreage over the winter (we didn’t charge them storage), and I also had to use my pickup to get their boat/trailer from the lake, to my acreage, and back this spring. Apparently for free because they never even offered to take us out for dinner for doing this. The trailer is sitting at my place right now. They live about three hours away and visit every few weeks.
Last week, some of my grandkids were visiting and wanted to go fishing. I texted my brother-in-law and asked if we could fish off their dock. He responded back with a somewhat generic/standardized text saying that “we have had a lot of inquiries about using the condo when they are not there, and unfortunately we bought the condo for our use, not as a vacation retreat for other people. If you would like to use a condo on a lake, I would suggest to do like we did and buy one or rent one.”
So, do I text my BIL now, or this fall when he asks about me getting and storing his boat and trailer at my place, and say “Sorry, we purchased our acreage for the storage of our items and not for storage of other people’s stuff. My pickup was purchased for towing of items I need towed, not for other people’s trailers. I would suggest that if you need something stored it is to buy or rent your own storage unit and a pickup to pull your trailer.”? Needless to say, I am a little put off by what I did for him for free, and I can’t even use his dock to take my grandkids fishing.
Dear Tired,
Holding onto the (admittedly, clever) response that mirrors your BILs all summer isn’t a good idea. Your resentment and bitterness will continue to build and will probably come out in other way, about other issues. So I’m going to suggest something radical, which is to be honest with him about how you feel. Something like this:
Can I talk to you about something? I was a little put off that you wouldn’t allow me to bring the kids to your dock for fishing. I was happy to use the truck to tow your boat and store it for you, and I know we didn’t talk about an exchange of any kind, but I think I hoped that because we’re family you’d be similarly generous with your property. Maybe there is something I’m not aware of about the volume of requests you’ve received or concerns about liability, so I wanted to get your perspective.
Maybe he’ll say “Oh, so sorry, we were so overwhelmed by people asking to condo that we decided to send the same response to everyone and I wasn’t thinking about all you’ve done for me and that you just wanted to use the dock.” Or maybe he’ll say “I don’t have to justify my decision to you!” in which case you should absolutely refuse to take the boat again.
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Dear Prudence,
My father died a little less than a month ago. I loved him, but we had a difficult relationship, at least from my end; he never really absorbed that his actions had an effect on his family members, and I never really told him because I don’t enjoy being shouted at. The issue I’m having is that my mother’s grief is giving me more, well, grief than my own. I am mid-20s now and she lost her own father at around the same time. Because of this, she keeps trying to connect with me over this shared experience of “tragedy.” I’m trying to be understanding, but I’m at the end of my rope.
My father was the “fun dad” when I was little and continued to be extremely generous as I grew up, but he had a bad temper and often picked fights with my mother in front of me, (verbally) took out his anger on us, etc. It wasn’t often enough to constitute abuse, but it did have a negative effect on our family life. The past few weeks I’ve been surrounded by people who won’t stop talking about how great he was, how dedicated he was to his family, etc. Hearing it from my mother is the most painful of all, because she was there with me and she knows his behavior wasn’t OK. Prudie, please tell me how to (respectfully) shut her down. Advice regarding fortifying my mental health against the onslaught of people who won’t shut up about how amazing he was would also be greatly appreciated.
—Complicated Grief
Dear Complicated Grief,
I think this calls for a little bit of redirection. You don’t have to say “Mom, I don’t share your grief. Dad was borderline abusive, and we had a difficult relationship so it’s hard for me to talk about how great he was.” That would be honest, and fair, but maybe a little harsher than you want to be with someone who just lost her husband and father. So use her bids for closeness as opportunities to ask questions and learn about her life—something many people intend to do with their parents but never quite get around to. In this emotional moment, you have a chance to find out a little bit more about who your parents were outside of being your parents. Every “Isn’t it sad,” or “I miss him so much, don’t you?” or “This is just such an awful time for us” should be met with a question.
“What would you say was the happiest time you had with Dad?”“Tell me again exactly how you and Dad met?”“Did he remind you of your own father in any way?”“What was he like when I was a baby?”“What were some of the things you and Dad talked about when no one else was around?”“What was it like being married to someone with his personality?”“What do you think he would have wanted me to know that he never said?”“How do you think Dad’s childhood shaped who he was as a man?”
My hope is that you’ll come away with a deeper understanding of your mother, your father, and why he behaved the way he did and why she tolerated it. This isn’t meant to lead to forgiveness, but it might give you a fuller picture of what you endured growing up and help you begin to heal from it. If you have to talk about your dad nonstop, you may as well do it in a way that might benefit you.
Classic Prudie
I recently met a guy on Tinder, where I usually don’t have much luck because I’m not conventionally attractive and I want to date, not just hook up. But after talking to this guy for a few days, I think we seem practically perfect for each other! Same hobbies, similar taste in music, kink-compatible, he’s funny and self-aware, and I think he’s hot as hell. But in the middle of a conversation he dropped that he’s poly. I don’t usually date poly people because I know I’m “needy” emotionally and also not great at sex, so they’d have more reason to focus on another partner. But I don’t know how to figure out whether I should give it a try just to be with someone I seem so compatible with, or whether I’m just kicking future problems down the road?