Care and Feeding
Catch up on our many advice columns from the past week.
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Slate publishes a lot of advice each week, so we’re pulling together a selection of our favorites. Here are a few of the most compelling questions from the week and links to hours of advice reading. This week: gifts gone wrong, teaching consent, and open relationships.
Dear Prudence
Quitting Quilts: I learned to quilt from my aunt, and I treasure every moment we had together doing it. My adult stepdaughter has always been very distant despite all of my efforts, so when she announced her pregnancy, I thought a baby quilt would be the perfect gift and I even contacted her mother-in-law to see if she had any old clothes from her son. Sadly, there had been a fire at her childhood home and it burned to the ground. My husband and his then-wife had to replace everything. I did include what I thought was her favorite animal since she has dozens of them as decor. I gave it to her at the baby shower and explained the meaning behind the work. Everyone there loved it and told me how thoughtful it was.
Well, a few weeks later, my stepdaughter sent me an email lambasting me for quilting. I went “behind her back” by contacting her mother-in-law, I had no sense of boundaries because I should have asked her if she even wanted a quilt from me, and I obviously don’t know her at all if I thought the animal I put on the quilt was her favorite. I was very hurt and apologized to her for the sake of my husband and asked for the quilt back. I ended up donating it to a church raffle. Then the worst happened: The baby was stillborn. My stepdaughter asked for the quilt back so the baby could be buried with it. When I told her it was gone, she exploded. It was so bad, I didn’t attend the funeral out of fear of provoking a scene.
This was several years ago. I have genuinely tried to move on and just leave the relationship alone. Only she is pregnant again and I am getting pressure from my husband to make her another quilt. The thought turns my stomach. I have never done anything to earn her ire, other than marry her father after her mother died. And they had been divorced for a long time. It took me a good long while to even quilt again. What do I do?
Care and Feeding
Nasty Boys: As a mom of two sons, we’ve been working on consent since they were old enough to shy away from smooches and hugs at daycare. Now at 3 and 4, we’ve run into some issues when it comes to brushing our teeth, washing our hair, etc. My 4-year-old has recently started the whole “I don’t want to, it’s my body,” (his younger brother mimics him about 98 percent of the time) which I can appreciate when it comes to not hugging Great Aunt Millie but when he comes in coated in mud and dirt and won’t wash his hair? Now we have a problem. I’m trying to empower my boys to make their own choices (haircuts, clothes, etc.) but most days they come in from playing outside looking like Pigpen and I’m pretty sure if I send my kids to daycare smelling like yesterday’s socks, someone’s gonna call CPS. How can we manage the fine line between physical autonomy and decent hygiene?
How to Do It
Conflicted Fiancé: My fiancé and I have been together for six years. Our relationship has had its ups and downs, like any relationship does (though this year in particular included a lot of downs). One area we have never been able to get in sync on is sex. This has included extended dry spells, me not initiating, her and I both admitting at various points to having had better sex lives with our exes, her having a fibroid tumor that caused a low sex drive for years (at one point I asked if she might be asexual), and me not being understanding about her previous history with a sexual assault.
During a recent fight, she told me that I had stopped making her feel wanted and desired, and that I hadn’t been there for her in that way. I agreed. I hadn’t. This also coincided with her telling me that she had gotten her sex drive back as well. She told me that someone else had been making her feel desired and wanted, and she started to develop a connection and attraction to this person. I felt betrayed and blindsided. I knew and understood that I wasn’t making her feel wanted, but I wasn’t prepared for this news. She then said that she wanted to have sex with other people because, if she did that, she could have a better sex life with me and be more open about her needs and desires.
This does not make any sense to me, and it feels like she is reverse engineering a way to cheat on me with this person. Is this something that I should let happen or am I being manipulated? Is this something that happens when other couples are in a sexual rut?
Pay Dirt
We Can’t Even Use the Living Room: My husband and I inherited his grandmother’s house last year. She was elderly but healthy and the life of the party, and we kind of all thought she’d live forever. She took a sudden fall and passed way soon after. She had more assets than anyone knew and left money to his parents and the other grandkids in addition to leaving us her house. She was detailed and hilarious about leaving specific keepsakes and heirlooms to relatives. The house is a godsend: We could never afford to buy, and we have a child and are trying for another. Unfortunately, it has unexpected strings.
Everyone got the things they were left in the will, and we encouraged the family to take other things they wanted that weren’t listed. She had a lot of stuff, and her family didn’t want all of it. We don’t want it either! Everyone lives locally, so when we put up a giant 1990s dining table on a Buy Nothing group, or rented a dumpster to tear out the 1980s carpets covering beautiful wood floors, the entire family got upset about how we were dishonoring Grandma. The house has many wonderful memories, but we can’t freeze it in time.
I want my husband to handle it because it’s his family, but he’s just ignoring it and hoping it stops. It seems like the person who gets most upset is his sister, and then she riles up her parents and the other grandkids. At a recent family gathering, there were a lot of nasty comments and I was shocked. I reiterated that people were welcome to take stuff if they didn’t want it donated, but his sister especially wants the house to stay in a time capsule. We want to participate in our town’s big Halloween yard sale because our kid is starting to crawl and things aren’t toddler-proof. I’m worried it will send his sister off the handle, but I don’t know what to do.
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