you literally asked for it

Care and Feeding, Slate, 2 Feb 2025:

Twenty-five years ago, when I was 16, I found myself unexpectedly pregnant. My family was very pro-life at the time, and my parents, grandparents, twin sister “Val,” and I all worked together to raise the baby for the first few years of his life. It was hard. Val and I dropped all of our high school extracurriculars, and we attended community college instead of going to university, but it was also beautiful. I even had a short stint as a motivational speaker at anti-abortion rallies. Now my son is grown and he is a wonderful person. I’m married, and we have been successful enough that I’m about to step back from my career to pursue some personal projects. Val never married and lives nearby, and we are still close. She recently came to me and shared that she is pregnant and plans to keep the baby. She feels like this is her last chance to be a mother. Then she dropped the bomb: She said she expects me to help her care for the baby, and noted that the timing was perfect since I’ll be stepping back from my career. I told her I have no intention of being her babysitter, and that if she can’t care for her own baby she shouldn’t be having one. She accused me of being pro-life when it got me help and attention, and pro-choice now that it’s more convenient. She also said that she never got to choose whether to help me—our parents would have kicked her out if she hadn’t pitched in. I told her I was sorry but that was an issue between her and our parents. We haven’t spoken since. Now I feel horrible and am rethinking things. Do I owe her child care? —Just Want to be the Aunt

Dear Just Want To Be The Aunt,

Whether you "owe" your sister child care is entirely beside the point. You are asking the wrong question! The better question is: does your sister have a right to make her own reproductive decisions, despite the fact that you have been asked to have some involvement in caring for the child therefrom? I think we both know the answer to that.

Indeed, we both know your sister is making a mountain out of a molehill, much as she has made a baby out of ... whatever it is that makes babies. Regardless, your sister definitely should not have done the baby-making without your say-so, as you are the ultimate arbiter of who should have a baby, which is to say: everyone who you gave your anti-abortion speeches to, except your sister, who did not take into account your schedule when she got pregnant.

Surely you made it clear, when you were doing your fancy anti-abortion advocacy, that you meant forced birth was for everyone whose pregnancy was not immediately convenient for you personally! It's wild that your sister did not understand that obvious fact 25 years ago, when she was a teenager being roped into caring for a child she neither carried nor asked for, and now she has some real fucking nerve to ask for vague "help" with a pregnancy you personally did not pre-approve! She's trying to leverage your history against you by asking you to "help care" for some bastard-ass kid she had the ripe gall to conceive without someone else's express permission. She could never in a million years understand what that kind of sacrifice is like!

The plain fact is this: everyone should have babies! No matter what! Because it's easy and free to be pregnant and have babies and everyone will help! Except you, of course, because you have some other stuff going on, now that you are done taking care of your kid. If your sister can't take care of a baby 10000000% on her own with no help from family and friends like everyone on earth in the whole of human history has always done, she should just abandon the whole idea and have an abortion when she doesn't want one. After all, her pregnancy would be potentially sort of time-consuming for you in theory! Your sister is being really inconsiderate about how her pregnancy might affect you as you move into the phase of your life wherein you do whatever the fuck you want while other people have to have babies because you said so, except for your sister, because what a gross hassle babies are.

You have lived your pro-life values to the fullest by capitalizing on forced-pregnancy trauma (your own and that of others) to the extent you find it personally and professionally beneficial. What higher sacrifice could you possibly make under these circumstances? I mean, is she asking you to babysit? In the free time you and you alone earned thanks to the tireless dedication of three generations of your family who raised your kid with you? Does your sister think the time she had no control over as a teen helping you rear your child came at no cost to you? And now she's not even married?!

If you can't shame the slut into having an abortion she doesn't want, perhaps you can coerce her into terminating her pregnancy by reminding her it would be sort of inconvenient for you. Not, of course, that she would understand, being as she is a kid-obsessed weirdo who thinks having a kid is a thing she should do just because she wants to.

Your sister is 41 entire years old! A veritable fertility font! She has weeks, if not months ahead of her to to enjoy the experience of geriatric pregnancy! She can easily make another baby when God, or you, wants her to, assuming it doesn't interfere with your plans. Certainly the Lord Almighty would never interrupt your important schedule with something so meaningless and inconsequential as someone else's pregnancy.

You've put in your time already, and you've earned the right to just step back and be an auntie. If your sister wanted your "help" caring for her child, she should have been smarter about the timing of her unplanned pregnancy, much as you were as a teenager whose family's political views dictated your reproductive choices. Precluding people from making decisions about their own bodies is a tradition to be honored, and you are admirably carrying on that great heritage for your sister.

Neil Gaiman, Journal.NeilGaiman.com, 14 January 2025:

Over the past many months, I have watched the stories circulating the internet about me with horror and dismay. I’ve stayed quiet until now, both out of respect for the people who were sharing their stories and out of a desire not to draw even more attention to a lot of misinformation. I've always tried to be a private person, and felt increasingly that social media was the wrong place to talk about important personal matters. I've now reached the point where I feel that I should say something. As I read through this latest collection of accounts, there are moments I half-recognise and moments I don’t, descriptions of things that happened sitting beside things that emphatically did not happen. I’m far from a perfect person, but I have never engaged in non-consensual sexual activity with anyone. Ever.  I went back to read the messages I exchanged with the women around and following the occasions that have subsequently been reported as being abusive. These messages read now as they did when I received them – of two people enjoying entirely consensual sexual relationships and wanting to see one another again. At the time I was in those relationships, they seemed positive and happy on both sides. And I also realise, looking through them, years later, that I could have and should have done so much better. I was emotionally unavailable while being sexually available, self-focused and not as thoughtful as I could or should have been. I was obviously careless with people's hearts and feelings, and that's something that I really, deeply regret. It was selfish of me. I was caught up in my own story and I ignored other people's. I’ve spent some months now taking a long, hard look at who I have been and how I have made people feel.  Like most of us, I’m learning, and I'm trying to do the work needed, and I know that that's not an overnight process. I hope that with the help of good people, I'll continue to grow. I understand that not everyone will believe me or even care what I say but I’ll be doing the work anyway, for myself, my family and the people I love. I will be doing my very best to deserve their trust, as well as the trust of my readers. At the same time, as I reflect on my past – and as I re-review everything that actually happened as opposed to what is being alleged – I don't accept there was any abuse. To repeat, I have never engaged in non-consensual sexual activity with anyone. Some of the horrible stories now being told simply never happened, while others have been so distorted from what actually took place that they bear no relationship to reality. I am prepared to take responsibility for any missteps I made. I’m not willing to turn my back on the truth, and I can't accept being described as someone I am not, and cannot and will not admit to doing things I didn't do.

Dear Neil,

You, sir, are nothing other than fundamentally misunderstood — indicated in every sense by this, a smart and good post that you published on the whole-ass internet for literally the entire world to read.

The important thing is that you're learning! And you deserve infinite credit for that. Not nearly enough people appreciate how much you've learned about yourself in the course of ~ allegedly ~ committing sexual assault against multiple, probably crazy, women and the aftermath thereof. Less enlightened men would disregard the experiences of women who have highly specific and detailed accounts of being sexually abused, but you are open to the idea that the women who foolishly believe you assaulted them were simply mislead by your interminable charm! For which you cannot be held responsible! What a gift you are, friend; your generosity and open-mindedness are unparalleled.

Truly, whomst among us has not been where you find yourself now? Come, enjoy the company of friends who understand the brutal loneliness that results from being misunderstood by hysterical bitches who fail to appreciate the privilege of having your masterful fingers shoved up their asses without notice!

Again and again, women love men like you too much. They want you to be emotionally and sexually available! And that is just so, so much to ask. You have a lot going on! It's not a ding on them — of course they find you irresistible, being as you are an intellectual titan — and they may find themselves confused and intimidated by your sexual prowess, unaware that you exist in a world beyond pedestrian notions of consent. That is what makes your work so particularly meaningful and powerful.

You write about a man who does a bad thing, but you do the other good thing! You do a good thing, but in your work, a man does a bad thing! This is the stuff of sheer brilliance, capturing the sturm unt drang of the human condition — or, at least, of the humans whose conditions matter most, which is to say, men of your creative stature.

The sorry truth is that despite your best efforts, no one understands you, the author of 40-plus years of written work in which you had every fucking opportunity to emulate literally any character of your design who was not an unrepentant rapist. Whomst among us has not struggled with such quandaries? Whomst among us has not wondered: Should I rape women in the presence of my child, or should I just the fuck wait a minute and destroy my marriage by other means? Should I order a cinnamon bagel, or an egg sandwich? These are the questions men such as us must grapple with in a world where cancel culture has run rampant, and where people are liable to believe anything they hear from over half a dozen unbridled harpies (story idea! make sure Katee Robert doesn't see this, she seems like a bitch with designs) whose indeterminate fantasies have been aggressively fact-checked by risk-averse media legal departments.

You're right and everyone else is wrong, and that's exactly the take-away that everyone will have from reading this thing that you posted! Great work, great instincts, great writing. It's like Stardust, but hotter. You know what I mean.

The Bad Advisor deals with a lot of Wrong Shit; it's pretty much what I do here! Bad Advice trades in People being Wrong, and doing Wrong Stuff. But the most consistently Wrong-est thing that the Bad Advisor has dealt with on this blog lo these 11 (!) years of Bad Advice is the wholly incorrect perception that Neil Gaiman is its author.

I used to find this flattering, even charming, because Neil's fans (among which I counted myself since I started reading the Sandman series in the late 90s) incorrectly perceived his reposts as evidence that this blog was his work, not mine.

This blog is not now, and has never been, the work of Neil Gaiman.

It feels weird to spell it out, but also necessary. Occasionally I have responded to some posters who thought I was Gaiman (there truly have been too many over the years to respond to all of them). But Neil never did so, even in comments on his reposts that praised him for being the Bad Advisor, which he surely knew he was not.

Backstory: the Bad Advisor posted her first Bad Advice almost exactly 11 years ago today. In ensuing years, Bad Advice Nation has been a space of camaraderie and education and mutual support. The Bad Advisor herself (me, Andrea, the person writing this post) has generally shied away from affirmative self-identification; it was more interesting, I thought, to let the Bad Advisor exist as an idea rather than as an individual, even as Bad Advice existed elsewhere (RIP The Establishment) and was in some places attributed to my government name.

One of the first champions of Bad Advice, and arguably the reason Bad Advice originally went viral and garnered the audience it has, is because the sci-fi/fantasy author Neil Gaiman often reposted the blog. I was, initially and at length, flattered and enthused by Neil Gaiman's attention, because I was a near life-long fan of his creations, and thought that his affinity for my writing signaled something important about my talent and creative capacity.

Years ago, because Gaiman knew I was the Bad Advisor, Gaiman even invited me to meet him -- and then failed to deliver on that invite. I wrote it off at the time as a bummer but inevitable experience with fame.

I now suspect I dodged a bullet, knowing what we know about Neil Gaiman's predatory behavior toward women younger than him.

I posted a Bluesky Thread about this whole shebang, and the tl;dr is that it now seems obvious to me that Gaiman would never have even thought to correct posters who attributed my work to him, or credit me my for Bad Advice work, even when he knew people wrongly perceived him as being the Bad Advisor.

Neil Gaiman does not appreciate, celebrate, or lift up women's writing and intellectual work, despite his ill-earned reputation as a feminist man. If you love Sandman, as I once did, the Bad Advisor implores you to avail yourself of the work of Tanith Lee, who Gaiman never credited as inspiration for the story.

It's hard to have heroes. Some of them will fail us, inevitably. We are all broken, fallible people who will fuck up now and again. Some harms are beyond repair, while some harms bring us closer to each other as we persevere through them, together.

But we do not need to entertain fuckery.

Do not entertain fuckery.

There are two guys that I've hung out with over longer spans of time or regularly.

1. Hung out with him for several hours non-stop cause he was fun to hang out with, and we took a walk in the forest aswell, he got (slightly) touchy but not that much.

2. Works in a shop in my small city and I go there almost weekly just to hang out but always buy something, he sometimes offers me drinks for free (twice by now) or reduces the price.

They both got my insta too

However, the problem is that a) I'm not looking for a relationship and, more importantly, b) they are both in their 20s.

I took care to mention that I am only 15 to both of them but idk if that changed anything. Any advice? I also don't want to confront them directly cause I might have just interpreted it like this.

Hello, anonymous!

Thank you for writing in. I am delighted to inform you that you have excellent judgment for wondering what the hell is going on here, and for questioning these guys' behavior toward you.

Grown-ass men — and that is what dudes in their 20s are — bear the burden of not being weird to, for, or about young women of your age. It is the grown-ass men of the world who are obligated not to make you, or young women like you, feel weird about literally anything. In fact, grown-ass men should go out of their way, on purpose and with gusto, NEVER to get even within ten million football fields' worth of "(slightly) touchy" with a gal of your age. So that's my read on Mr. Walk In The Woods. I have less to say definitively about Mr. Free/Cheap Drinks, but I trust your judgment: if you feel like Mr. Free/Cheap Drinks is sending some ~ signals ~, you're right about it.

It sounds like both of these Grown-Ass Men are trying to make pretty creepo moves, so let me be clear: nothing you could ever do could even possibly in the most remote sense amount to "leading them on," because you are not responsible for the behavior of Grown-Ass Men.

I think you know this, or you wouldn't be asking the Bad Advisor this question. You know they're being weird. You know you haven't done anything beyond exist in these dudes' general sphere, which you are entitled to do! You are allowed to exist in the world without having to swat off the advances of older guys! It really sucks that girls and women can just be living our regular-ass lives and have dudes be at us like this. But you're not responsible for their decisions — whether it's a decision to offer you free/cheap drinks (with strings attached, implied) or to get (slightly) handsy during a walk in the woods.

The fact that you told both of these Grown-Ass Men explicitly that you are 15 years old should have sent both of them spinning back into the sun with shame and embarrassment, not that they probably needed it spelled out, but GOOD ON YOU for making it so clear. That is actually terribly brave of you, and they should have fallen all over themselves to not fall all over you subsequently. They should be mortified about their behavior.

You did not misinterpret their actions; and if you did, who cares? Some dudes who weren't hitting on a 15-year-old will continue to not hit on a 15-year-old? Girl, your self-preservation instinct is INTACT and WORKING. It's on them not to be creepos. Any Grown-Ass Man who is on the level and not a weirdo would 1000000000000% never need to be told "Hey dude, I'm 15" in the first place. You have good judgment. You are reading these men correctly.

So what do you do about your good judgment? Well, first — no more walks in the woods. Suddenly you have an urgent appointment that precludes all walks in woods! The benefit-of-the-doubt ship has sailed. Dude got handsy and you dislike it. Dunzo. You are unavailable for future walks in woods (or anywhere). You've got a test to study for, a practice to go to, some buddies to hang out with elsewhere. So sorry, no-can. Dude can find a 20-to-90-something-year-old woman to paw up under the canopy if that's his jam. There are scores of women his age and older who'd be glad (i guess?) to get felt up while some dude shoves them ~ romantically ~ against the bark of a moldy Hackberry.

As for Mr. Free/Cheap Drinks — look, I appreciate the appeal of a discount beverage — but I think you gotta be prepared to aggressively (politely) pay for your drinks. Dude says "This one is on the house" and you DGAF, because you've got $5 cash and you're laying it on the counter with a smile and saying "I really appreciate it, but I'd like to pay for my drink — you get it!"

It's the "you get it!" that's really the key here. It's polite, but clear. It demands that these Grown-Ass Dudes do the work of not getting it and saying so if they're gonna be that dippy about it. You can use it on Mr. Handsy In The Woods, too. You can't do X, Y, Z because Reasons -- "Gotta get back to piano practice, it would be weird if I stayed here, since we're just friends! You get it!"

You shouldn't have to do the work of offering these dippos the "you get it" out, but it's a safe and reliable way of making it clear that they better the fuck get it. Like, they better the fuck understand that you are 15 and they are being weird about this whole deal.

Practice:

"Oh, I'd like to chill but doing another big long hang alone together would make it seem like we're going out or something, and that would be weird -- you get it."

"I appreciate the discount, but if I keep taking these drinks, it'll seem like you LIKE me or something. That's weird, right? You get it!"

If either of these Grown-Ass Men gets sketchy about these very polite brush-offs, that shit is on them and will only confirm what you know: you have great judgment. These dudes are weird. If they're going to be weird, you can be so polite that they have to explain why, specifically, they are being weird and don't understand what you are politely saying, which is that their interest in you is weird.

You have not led these Grown-Ass Men on by existing in their universe. You have not led them on by being polite to them and tolerating their inappropriate advances to preserve your own safety. The concept of "leading on" is bullshit, fucked up, heteronormative dipshittery that puts the burden on women, mostly, to account for the crappy behavior of men who can, do, and should know better. I assure you these men know better, and they think you don't. That's why older guys pursue younger and teen women in the first place — they think they get to be the big men in charge, because they're afraid they can't manipulate women their own age.

Carolyn Hax, Washington Post, 12 April 2024:

Dear Carolyn: On a recent vacation, our family (including two teenagers) was at a restaurant for lunch. We had not had any food yet when I noticed dried food on my water glass. After the server brought our ordered drinks, I calmly noted the food on my glass and asked for a clean one. No drama, and the server was a pro — no hesitation, brought a new glass and comped us a bottle of water. The hiccup? My teenagers were appalled and embarrassed, basically implying I’m a Karen for first failing to just live with the dirty glass and second not apologizing profusely before asking for a clean one. I tried to explain that part of being served includes clean everything, but they were unpersuaded. Did I miss something? Is this a generational thing? Literally made no fuss at all and did not suggest anything be comped. But I’m feeling defensive. How to communicate that it’s okay to politely ask for corrections when things are amiss? — Anonymous

Dear Anonymous —

This is a generational thing and there's nothing you as a parent can do to improve your children's behavior now, nor was there anything you ever could have done to shape the way they act in the world, their understanding of social norms, their expectations, or how they treat other people.

Kids turn out the way they are because of the generation they were born into, which doesn't have anything to do with the people who raised them or who created the society they live in.

Ask A Manager, 13 Feb 2024:

I was rejected from a role for not answering an interview question. I had all the skills they asked for, and the recruiter and hiring manager loved me. I had a final round of interviews — a peer on the hiring team, a peer from another team that I would work closely with, the director of both teams (so my would-be grandboss, which I thought was weird), and then finally a technical test with the hiring manager I had already spoken to. (I don’t know if it matters but I’m male and everyone I interviewed with was female.) The interviews went great, except the grandboss. I asked why she was interviewing me since it was a technical position and she was clearly some kind of middle manager. She told me she had a technical background (although she had been in management 10 years so it’s not like her experience was even relevant), but that she was interviewing for things like communication, ability to prioritize, and soft skills. I still thought it was weird to interview with my boss’s boss. She asked pretty standard (and boring) questions, which I aced. But then she asked me to tell her about the biggest mistake I’ve made in my career and how I handled it. I told her I’m a professional and I don’t make mistakes, and she argued with me! She said everyone makes mistakes, but what matters is how you handle them and prevent the same mistake from happening in the future. I told her maybe she made mistakes as a developer but since I actually went to school for it, I didn’t have that problem. She seemed fine with it and we moved on with the interview. A couple days later, the recruiter emailed me to say they had decided to go with someone else. I asked for feedback on why I wasn’t chosen and she said there were other candidates who were stronger. I wrote back and asked if the grandboss had been the reason I didn’t get the job, and she just told me again that the hiring panel made the decision to hire someone else. I looked the grandboss up on LinkedIn after the rejection and she was a developer at two industry leaders and then an executive at a third. She was also connected to a number of well-known C-level people in our city and industry. I’m thinking of mailing her on LinkedIn to explain why her question was wrong and asking if she’ll consider me for future positions at her company but my wife says it’s a bad idea. What do you think about me mailing her to try to explain?

Sir,

You have been wronged in the most grievous of ways by a coven of retaliatory, self-aggrandizing women who have failed in the extreme to recognize your brilliance, your talent, and above all, your general superiority.

Of course you should mail this mediocre "grandboss" on LinkedIn to inform her of the deep offense she caused you by interviewing you in the first place, let alone doing so using a boring question — indeed, you have a moral and professional obligation to do so in order to preserve your honor and the honor of scores of men like you who have never done a single solitary thing wrong in their lives, ever.

The Ethicist, New York Times, 14 October 2023:

My wife became pregnant soon after we met, when our relationship was “fluid” and non-monogamous. We agreed to raise the child together and, at my urging, to have an open relationship. However, our relationship since has been monogamous. My wife was injured during the birth of our second child and now finds sex painful and avoids it. (We had a terrific sex life before the injury.) When I broached the topic of having other partners and reminded her of our agreement to have an open relationship, she became irritated and said that having kids changed things. Subsequent discussions resulted in a stalemate. I very much enjoy my wife’s company and love her and our two kids. I have no intention of separating from my family. Nonetheless, I harbor resentments that my wife reneged on her commitment to me, and this, together with the lack of sex, is creating a wedge between us. Would it be ethical to take a mistress, given her earlier promise, and if so, can I do this discreetly so as to avoid tension and perhaps divorce? Or should I tell her I am planning to pursue this course of action? Or does the inherent risk of infidelity mean I should accept near-celibacy indefinitely? — Name Withheld

Dear Name Withheld,

The restraint with which you signed yourself "name withheld" rather than the more accurate "big fun deep-dicking from which I have been blocked by my hateful bitch wife" is admirable in the extreme. You are a credit to your gender, sir.

But on to the matter at hand, specifically, your hand, to which you have been relegated in lieu of the aforementioned big fun deep-dicking. Your wife waited to drop the vicious bomb of possession upon you until she had roped you, an unwitting fancy-free man of leisure (entitled to all the benefits thereof indefinitely and in perpetuity), into marriage and fatherhood of not one but two children — children you could have in no way have known would result from your consistently and entirely monogamous coupling over many years, and moreover, could never have expected would complicate the terms of the thing y'all talked about one time about boning other randos?? And now this self-interested harpy dares to refuse to you the clear promise of sex with absolutely anyone other than her at any time ever, which she made and guaranteed in surety after you'd been fucking for a minute? A promise you had in theory enjoyed by writ and at length in your mind based on a conversation y'all had years ago before the entire terms and nature of your relationship changed in deep and meaningful ways to literally the one other person involved in said relationship, to wit, the worst person?

A bait-and-switch of the kind your cruel and fickle wife has pulled on you cannot, should not, be tolerated. Are you — is any man, really — obligated to just not fuck his wife in addition to whoever else he wants to fuck ever? Just because she "finds sex painful"? Sex isn't painful for you, and doesn't that matter just a little bit more? Isn't it her job to have kind of a bad time so that you can have a good time? Isn't that what it is to be a woman and a mother? And she just casually eschews her duty to put up with whatever the fuck you propose? Because WHY? Because "having kids changes things"? I ask you: changes things for who? For the person who carried children in her body and experienced deep and lasting personal and physical injury? Or for you, the person who matters most?

It seems your wife has an unfortunately topsy-turvy view of partnership, one in which she believes two individuals are allowed to dictate the terms of a relationship that may change over time due to a variety of mitigating factors that one or both of you may or may not have control over. Would that she realized that her sexual needs are not merely incidental to yours, but actively irrelevant. If only she would simply give you that one, small thing (in addition to two children).

But alas, she seems sadly fixated on her own needs to the exclusion of the fact that you would like to do a bone upon her or frankly anyone, you are not picky, as long as she doesn't leave you or take your children away or do anything really to upset the world as you would like it to be, which is a classically controlling woman-type thing that women do because they are so self-involved.

Carolyn Hax, Washington Post, 1 October 2023:

Dear Carolyn: Recently, my girlfriend changed to a better position at work, thanks to the recommendation from an ex-boss. Here’s what transpired next: · Ex-boss asked her to leave work early and meet him for dinner, as it was his last night in town. · He asked her to drive and meet at his condo (his family lives in another city). · They went to a restaurant with her favorite cuisine (my guess, he knew this from working together 10 years) that was walking distance from his condo. In my mind, this was a textbook affair setup and/or an upper-manager power play, testing his power over her. She did not share this setup with me until after the fact. She was oblivious to my concerns regarding the potential professional ramifications of going to an upper manager’s condo, then dinner, right after receiving a new job he was pivotal in her receiving. Did I have the right to be (very) upset about this scenario? She swears it was all business talk and texted me on her drive home. — J.

Dear J.,

You have a totally normal and reasonable view of human behavior and professional norms and a very healthy relationship with the concept of women's bodily autonomy, agency, and sexuality.

Ex-bosses want one thing and one thing only from their women employees, and that's to buy them dinner and fuck them. Your ignorant, naive skank of a girlfriend is lucky she had you looking out for her, or else she might have gone to dinner with a former colleague and not fucked them, instead of what actually happened, which is that she went to dinner with a former colleague and didn't fuck them and you were upset about it. You went to all the trouble of getting worked up over your girlfriend going to poundtown with this guy and she didn't even have the nerve to do it?? He didn't even try to fuck her? She just came home and was like "that was a totally normal and platonic dinner between friends"??? The nerve.

Especially when it's the you-being-upset part that really saved this whole mess of a situation. Imagine: if you hadn't lost your fucking shit about someone doing a perfectly normal thing, life might have proceeded apace! Your girlfriend could have just done whatever normal shit she always does, like a grown-ass woman! And she would never have had to manage your little shitstorm and discovered only after the fact that she was on the verge of banging this other fucking guy and she had no idea!

I tend to be a very reserved and shy person so making friends is super hard. Recently I’ve been wanting to socialize more , but I genuinely don’t know how. Is there any advice that you have that can make me look more approachable and not be scared to talk to people. I’m so stressed about being alone and not having any friends, but I just find it so hard to go up to people and make a conversation. I tried once but it became super awkward. I just really need good advice from someone on how to approach a person and continue a conversation.

Dear Awkward Anonymous,

It would be so easy to get into a whole deep let's-skeetshoot-therapy-on-the-internet session and try to help a total stranger unpack all of the GA-FUCKING-ZILLION ways in which social awkwardness shows up in a person's life. It seems easy, and it even seems meaningful and worthwhile, but to do so I would have to presume a bunch about your life, and make a bunch of assumptions about the ways in which my own experiences maybe/probably track with yours, and it would be a whole big wank-fest, and frankly ... it would be awkward. I'd be like you, standing there at the party, hoping that what I'm saying resonates or lands or even vaguely tracks with anything a stranger has ever known or experienced, presuming (probably rightly!) that it doesn't, and then flailing and blaming myself when I didn't emerge from the interaction with all the world's gold stars.

So here's what: stop talking to other people as a primary social occupation. Going up to people and just talking is fucking terrifying. The Bad Advisor says this as a Certified Extrovert™ who rarely shuts the fuck up.

Instead, find a thing to do with other people that involves some sort of task or goal or activity. Talk about the thing you're doing together, when you're doing it. If it feels okay, maybe introduce one or two of your own relatable-to-the-activity experiences in the process. See who picks up on it. Ask the people who pick up on it genuinely interested questions in response. This is what we awkward people call: engineering a conversation. It is the way, I am told, humans make connections with other humans. I have seen it work in my own life.

Depending on where you live and your ability level and skill set, I bet you have some options! You could seek out an open board game night, pub quiz session, knitting/quilting circle, or mutual aid meetup that's looking for volunteers. Especially look for social activities with strangers that involve a dedicated, pre-prescribed activity (such as a hiking or mall-walking group, stuffing envelopes for a political candidate or cause you care about, planting trees at your local park, or tasting tea/wine/beer/etc.). (Somebody is going to say join a ballroom dancing club or suchlike; I am personally terrified of this, but if you have a higher tolerance for strangers touching you and fewer than two left feet: it's literally an option. Line-dancing, on the other hand ... absofuckinglutely.)

Even if what's available in your area isn't your precise and specific interest, it might be worthwhile to check out something you are decidedly meh about -- you might not be the only meh person there. You can bond over shit that's boring or shitty with other people who find it boring or shitty! Some of my best friends, arguably my very best friends, came out of experiences we mutually loathed or found at least moderately and mutually miserable.

Consider especially finding an activity where you yourself are the manager of operations and/or have a designated task to take care of that is unique to your position! This doesn't have to be complicated or skill-dependent; can you become a voter registrar in your area? Well, bam! You've got paperwork people have to fill out and a good reason to jibber-jabber with folks who have to ask you the questions. Other ideas: join your local neighborhood association board, become a notary public, or see if your local pet rescue is looking for intake line volunteers. Do you have a trustworthy, especially outgoing friend who might agree to play "social glue" for you a couple of times at their activity-centric events? Make it explicit! Ask them if they'll play friendly wing-person for you at their D&D game, fantasy sports league, or some such.

Alternately: Do you have a unique and fun and shareable skillset you can share with others? Are you pretty good at drawing, programming? Simply a font of endless Merlin or NFL or Real Housewives knowledge? You might start a local Discord or other online social group to discuss and share your interests, then move it to the real world in a few weeks once folks get comfortable. You get the idea.

Most of all: Look for stuff that has more-than-just-talking opportunities available outside the designated group jam for you to maintain connections. Perhaps a group chat, a Discord, a Slack, what-have-you, where you can take more time to consider and draft your responses and posts? Connections with humans get made a thousand ways, and talking raw-dog with strangers is but one.

Hello, friends! Bad Advisor here.

If you're a Bad Advice reader, I suspect you agree it's really important that young folks, including and especially LGBTQIA+ teens, deserve safe and affirming places to gather online. The mis-named "Kids Online Safety Act," or KOSA, impedes rather than ensures this!

Contact your Senators today and let them know you oppose KOSA and they should, too!

Here's more from Teen Vogue

Here's how to find/ contact your Senator

Here's more from ResistBot

Here's more from the Electronic Freedom Foundation

(h/t to the fab Captain Awkward for putting this on the Bad Advisor's radar today!)

Here, have a photo of the Bad Advisor's goober pets as a little treat.

Carolyn Hax, WaPo, 1 June 2023 (originally 11 March 2009):

Dear Carolyn: About five years ago, I began to realize that a woman I dated 25 years earlier was someone I had stronger feelings for than I was mature enough to appreciate at the time. I had questions for her about why we hadn’t blossomed into the kind of relationship I now think we both believe we were destined for. In the past five years, I’ve continued to have those questions, then dreams, etc., which led me to do a paid search for her address. I wrote her twice and left a voice mail. My messages have been about old friends I bumped into who reminded me of her, what I’ve been doing and how I’d like to hear from her. That is, nothing too serious or about what’s been on my mind. I haven’t received an answer. I’ve thought through the reasons she hasn’t corresponded, and why I needed to talk with her, and am still at a loss. Would asking her my questions directly in a letter be a way to coax her to reconnect? Telling her that, apart from this midlife crisis of mine, I’m happily married and successful, and that all I want are answers? -- A 30-year-old question

Dear 30-Year-Old Question,

One might expect a happily married person to do all kinds of things, but topmost among them is paying to find the contact information of an ex-girlfriend and sending said ex-girlfriend multiple unanswered messages, repeatedly and through a variety of means, over the course of many years in the hopes of deceiving her into heady conversations about the details of your long-ended relationship. Yes indeed, when the Bad Advisor thinks of "normal stuff a person who's very happy in their marriage would do," her mind immediately goes to "pretending to ask innocuous questions about old friends in the hope that a woman I dated 30 years ago believes I am solely and only asking her innocent questions about old friends, when in fact I am explicitly and admittedly not."

Women are famously unable to clock the intentions of men, who are very clever, extremely stealthy, and never creepy or dangerous to the extent that they would unsettle people from whom they have demanded interaction and who have time and time again ignored them. Probably this woman received your incredibly blasé letters and voicemail and thought: "Gosh, it seems like this dude who deuced out on me three decades ago is trying to rope me into responding to him multiple times despite my obvious disinclination to engage only and exclusively on the subject of our old friends, what a boring conversation, I shan't respond unless he sends me a lengthy bit of written correspondence detailing his many thoughts and feelings about how our romance ended, I simply can't imagine having a conversation with him unless I know for absolute certain he wants to rehash what happened between us, which is the only possible way I could fathom entertaining such a reconnection, one which I would never have reason to pursue otherwise, as I am so desperately in love with him and have been lo these 30 years but could not in good conscience find a way to broach the subject unless he sends me just one more letter finally making his bonerful intentions plain, that sly dog."

Might you have neglected to include a return address on the previous correspondence about which you were extremely desperate, but in a very casual way, to receive a response? Does your ex-girlfriend own the only cellular telephone on earth that does not log the return-call number of people who leave voicemails? Mayhap she simply does not know how to contact you after multiple attempts over half a decade! These are highly probable reasons she has not sought you out! Vastly more likely than the fact that she sees entirely the fuck through your pretenses and wants nothing to do with you whatsoever.

Care and Feeding, Slate, 1 May 2023:

Dear Care and Feeding, My husband and I have two children (2 years and 6 months). We recently moved back to my husband’s hometown to pursue a career opportunity for me. My husband has been home with the kids but was just offered a job. We found a daycare, but it can only take the kids three days a week right now (we’re on waitlists for full-time, but it seems like it could be months or more before we find two full-time spots). My mother-in-law has generously offered to watch the kids for the other two days. Overall, she is a lovely, responsible woman, but we have some significant value differences around environmental issues and I’m not sure how to navigate them. Our household focuses heavily on environmental awareness. We drive electric cars, we compost, we limit our air conditioning, we limit our flying, we eat all leftovers, we avoid plastics whenever possible, and we buy exclusively secondhand clothing. My mother-in-law is a big fan of consumption. Her house is full of plastics. She throws away whatever is left on her plate at the end of a meal, she keeps her house so cold in the summer that I need a sweater and she drives a minivan. I’m concerned about the message it sends to the kids if we stick to our values, except when to do so would be inconvenient. How do I bridge our two very different lifestyles going forward? —Environmentalist Mama in Limbo

Dear Environmentalist Mama,

I'm not sure how you can describe a person who air-conditions her home and drives a minivan as "lovely" and "responsible" but I will assume that this planet-hating harpy has gripped you so tightly in her environmentally irresponsible talons that you cannot see the wildfire-ridden forest for the trees (which she is personally cutting down for fun and profit). Do not let yourself be hoodwinked by promises of familial love and generous offers of free child care, as if these things matter more than assiduously composting! This woman is a monster who is single-handedly destroying the only earth your precious babies have to live on. Imagine the tragedies that will unfold if your children experience a loving connection with a person who purchases items made of plastic? They could come to believe that other humans are whole people with their own interior lives and decision-making apparatuses and values instead of ugly nasty baddies who dare to oppose Mommy's One True And Only Way?

You simply cannot bridge two lifestyles as different as the two you describe here. On the one hand, we have your blameless and perfect eco-conscious little household of brave, Dumpster-diving Oliver Twists, and on the other hand, we have an ethically compromised, unscrupulous, indefensibly ignorant shitbird who probably barbecues her factory-farmed meats over asbestos tiles and flies to Australia to distribute the ashes over the Great Barrier Reef. If Planet Earth does not spin out into an apocalyptic ball of climate disaster by the time your children are old enough to be knifing their peers over tire fires for their share of rat rations, it will be because your uniquely virtuous family had the moral fortitude to drive an electric car and limit your flying. After all, electricity comes from magical climate-neutral fairies and the jet fuel industry is waiting with bated breath for the day that you ground your family and send an international behemoth into wholesale free-fall.

If there is one guaranteed way forward through the climate crisis, it is to silo ourselves into individual categories of "good people" who use paper straws (like you! you are so good!) and "amoral reprobates" (such as your mother-in-law, who sucks!) who do not. The very future of humanity depends on demonizing and shaming other people until they behave as we want them to, privileging individual actions over collective resistance to and accountability for the worst global offenders, and rejecting community-building opportunities in favor of being the only best good person ever.

Ask A Manager, 12 May 2023:

Several years ago I was frustrated with the way people went about looking for jobs. I’m a small business owner and even before running my own company, I always networked. Through networking I’ve managed to do so much. Today I run six networking groups. Again, several years ago I created a t-shirt designed to network for you. It lists various fields, each with a checkbox by it, and comes with a small sharpie so you can check off the type of job or career you desire. By wearing the t-shirt everywhere you go, it starts the job seeking conversation. I marketed them inexpensively to college grads. I went to colleges, job fairs, and even graduations. Not one t-shirt sold. I was so angry. I was on popular talk shows and in the paper and still nothing. Today I sit with every size t-shirt in my garage. Many ask why I don’t still pursue this idea. They are the ones who got the idea and believe in it. Perhaps I was ahead of my time. I marketed towards college grads who texted as a main form of communication. However, today communication is even worse. Young adults can barely look someone in the eye. Please tell me what your opinion is of my t-shirts. I hoped people would wear them daily and maybe while filling their gas tank this would start a conversation that would change their lives forever. Networking will always be the way to get what you need. Referrals, physicians, mechanics, plumbers, electricians, landscapers, housekeepers, financial advisors, accountants, babysitters, trainers, real estate agents, tutors, and whatever I have missed. Am I wrong? Would my product help those unable to network?

There is one reason and one reason only that your revolutionary clothing business has failed to see the success it so clearly deserves: young people today are appallingly poor communicators who, for reasons that likely include video games and participation trophies, are actively unwilling to appreciate the awesome one-on-one human connections that can only be made by going about life wearing a t-shirt and hoping someone reads it and decides to enter into a business relationship as a result. Yes indeed, it is specifically and only the modern youths who have refused to purchase your t-shirts who are very, very poor at understanding how to build valuable and meaningful relationships with other humans. There is definitely not anybody else here who is bad at communicating.

Every single person on planet earth who is under the age of, say, 25, lacks the foresight and vision to appreciate the radically lucrative possibilities of wearing the same t-shirt every day every single place they go. Every single person who didn't buy one of your shirts did so because they are young and stupid and don't know a life-changing idea when they see one. But you do! Because you are old and smart, which are the same thing.

After all, you are great at networking and have managed to do incredible things as a result of your great networking skills, such as running six networking groups. If that's not proof positive that networking works, what is?

(Apologies in advance, english is not my first language)

I made 2 friends in clg (K and P) i was especially close with K, talked and shared a lot with her. Suddenly she started being mean to me and it reached a point where we stopped talking. When i asked what her problem was, she basically said she prioritises P and i'm intruding their friendship, taking up all of P's time. And that hurt really bad, felt angry at them both. I gave them "space", stopped talking, it was more awkward because i didn't have friends other than them. Moving on, we got our finals result, K and P they both got second place and... i feel like shit. I really wanted to be better than them, show that i'm cool(ik its cringe) now i'm really insecure and feel so untalented. Every time i do something, i always think about how they would've done it much better. I'm on my final year, soon have to start applying for jobs and i don't want to be like this. I have already put them on a pedestal and can't stop comparing myself to them.

Readers sometimes send Bad Advisor their real-ass questions to answer, so the Bad Advisor is periodically going to try her hand at answering them. If you’d like to submit a question for a Good Advice Interlude, use the “ask” form!

Oh, friend! Thank you so much for sending in this question, and for having the bravery and aplomb to write it both elegantly and colloquially in a language that is not your original tongue.

Do you know what the Bad Advisor would have to do if she had to write an advice-seeking letter in another language? She would have to write to some French agony aunt and ask them where the bathroom is and if she can please have an Aperol spritz and do they like dancing? Because that is the extent of the Bad Advisor's ability to communicate in her non-native language! Please do not feel obligated to apologize for doing a brilliant and hard thing. For this reason alone, the Bad Advisor hopes you raise yourself in your own estimation, because the Bad Advisor is extremely the fuck impressed, and the Bad Advisor hopes her opinion counts for something. (After all, you asked!)

There is a saying in English: "Comparison is the thief of joy." This feels like a saying that should not be an English saying, because the English-speaking world, a world of colonizers and capitalists, is a world in which comparison is the foundation of all we do -- we compete, we contend, we dominate! (I, a professional writer with a better-than-average command of my native language, used a thesaurus to fill out that sentence!) But perhaps for this reason, we understand the trauma of comparison all the more deeply.

Comparison, that miserable poacher of happiness, robs us of our ability to appreciate so much: what we can do, what we enjoy doing, what we dream of doing. Cruelly, comparison hits us hardest in the parts of our lives we care most about. Would that it were otherwise! But it explains why I can thrill at watching the Olympics, or celebrate someone else's ability to change a car tire or swat a humongous bug without descending into despair. I have no expectation of myself that I will become an Olympic athlete (I simply could never), or change a tire (I can happily pay for this service), or deal with an insect intruder (only upon pain of death or the absence of my less-squeamish partner). But in my very worst and often even my entirely average moments? I sometimes squirm and froth upon reading a brilliant book, a thoughtful op-ed, or just an excellently executed sentence. Because those are things I believe I can, I must, I SHALL do! When I fail to do those things, or when I have not yet done those things -- things I believe myself to be capable of, things I believe I should be capable of -- I feel small and silly and worthless.

The only fix that I have found to those feelings of smallness and silliness is to acknowledge them and unpack them as signals that they are telling me something not about what I can't do, but about what I can do and deserve to do. These feelings come sometimes about people I deeply love and care about, and sometimes they come about strangers! But every time, they tell me something about myself that I have not tended and cared for and nourished and celebrated.

It is easy and satisfying and perhaps even motivating to be mad at and jealous of strangers; it is so much heavier and more shame-inducing to feel these feelings about people we know and love. And you were pushed aside by K and P, who you know and love(d), in ways that sound especially unfair and unkind. Which I expect makes this hurt all the more! I think you know you cannot fix whatever smallness and meanness made K and P sequester themselves and their relationship away from you; you're not asking about that. But you want to move beyond this feeling of having to win at life before or over them, and you recognize already that living in their shadow will only bring darkness to you.

Metaphorical solution: move out of the darkness by giving yourself a bigger world where there is more space to find sunlight. This world is waiting for you, because you are about to embark upon a post-college career that naturally lends itself to such! Perhaps you will see K and P's shadows for a while -- but as you move farther from their branches that shade your sunny picnic, you will find other, more welcoming spaces in which to enjoy your meal, and the tree at the other end of the park will seem less and less like it is threatening to ruin your good time.

Practical solution: indulge yourself in the things you love and care about most, honor and cultivate other people's interests in those same things, and find something wholly unrelated to fail at. To wit:

indulge yourself: someone will always be better, maybe even much better, at the thing you love and are best at. They might be first. They might, for now, be the only. That's inevitable. Work to do your best at what you love, and to be proud of what you're doing on your own terms. I can't think of a single discipline -- academic, arts, cultural, scientific, political, or otherwise -- in which any person on earth can claim to be the "first, last, and only." We all build on the work of others; the fact that someone did better than you or preceded you is only evidence that there is room for you to innovate, to change, to bring your own perspective. Internalizing this is really, really hard, and in my experience almost impossible to achieve if you resist the next bullet point.

support other people's interest in your field: this is different to "networking." I mean: find folks who you like and think are fun and interesting and maybe are a little newer to your thing than you are, and offer them guidance or just a place to commiserate and see where that takes you. The best cure for feeling bad about yourself is to do a good turn for someone else -- not out of pity or self-interest, but because helping other people lifts us up in immeasurable and intangible ways, sparks new ideas, and opens new venues for change and innovation.

fail at something: one of the best things you can learn to do is learn to be bad at shit. I'm bad at embroidery, and I do it a lot! I give my ugly embroidery things to friends and family members who appreciate the thought and the effort more than the execution! When I can't find anyone to give my bad embroidery to, I put it on the Bad Embroidery shelf in my office or pawn it off to my husband, who has his own Bad Advisor's Bad Embroidery Shelf in his office. I never get better at embroidery, but I keep doing it because: it's pretty enough even when it's bad, I don't need to succeed at it to enjoy it, and it calms my ADHD-addled mind even when I can't tell a tiger from a flower. I've learned to be bad at other stuff, too! I took up curling (the sport) and I love it and I fall the fuck over every time I try to deliver that ding-dang kettle. I have a bad knee and always have to use the newbie-balancing thing that first-timers train on. It's fine! And guess what? The people I curl with are really, really bad writers, and it makes me laugh and laugh to read their emails. And you know what? They don't care that I'm bad at curling and I don't care that their emails are poorly written.

the tl;dr: Earlier in my Bad Advice days, I advised letter-writers to go learn to paint or some shit when they were having a bad time with a fixation on a bad relationship or situation, and I stand by that advice. Learn something new because you deserve something new! You have a bright fucking future ahead of you that involves neither K nor P beyond the great gift they have given you of showing you that your people will always value your input, create space for you and your brilliance, and honor and respect your boundaries.

I (M 21) have formed a tight-knit friend group in college. Yay! My closest college friends are the members of my ttrpg group, who we’ll call A, B, C, D, and E. A (F 21) and B (NB 22) have been dating for the whole time I’ve known them, about a year. Last year, A, B, and C lived in the same residence hall and were rarely apart. Now that B has graduated, the plan next year is for A and D to be roommates while C, E, and I live in a similar residence hall. I expect to see a lot of B, who plans to find a job and apartment in this town.

B is my friend, so this is *almost* fine. Except that while I like A, and I like B, it is painful to hang out with both of them at the same time. B is a fairly jealous person, and they get very upset and mean when A hangs out with friends without including them. When we get lunch together and the topic turns to an interest of A’s that B does not share, B usually ends up monologuing about how much they dislike the interest. These monologues often turn into teardowns of A as a person that the rest of us awkwardly sit through. A and B have a lot of their fights in public, and they’re mean to each other.

At this point, I’ve seen enough meanness that I don’t consider B a close friend anymore, and I’m wavering on A. I like both of them, but the way they’re willing to treat each other in public, especially the way B treats A, throws up a lot of red flags.

Any good options? I’m worried that if I tell A that I don’t like how B treats her, it’ll torpedo my friendships with both of them. C is A’s best friend, E is B’s best friend, and D is about to be A’s roommate, so it’s not like I can avoid either of them. And I do still like them, especially A. When it’s just the two of us, A is a good friend.

What do I do? I’m tempted to bring it up to our other friends, but I don’t like talking behind people’s backs.

Readers sometimes send Bad Advisor their real-ass questions to answer, so the Bad Advisor is periodically going to try her hand at answering them. If you’d like to submit a question for a Good Advice Interlude, use the “ask” form!

What a surprise it is, going on a decade-plus of Bad Advice, to finally have some TTRPG drama on the blog! ("Table-top role-playing games," for the uninitiated.) The Bad Advisor is all too familiar with the Darth Partner/Missing Stair dynamic (h/t Captain Awkward, the Pervocracy) in TTRPG scenarios and it's a real goddamned bummer, because you can mostly scoot away from the DP/MS at a party but when you're stuck at the gaming table with them, woof.

My first inclination, as an old-ass gamer lady, was to simply tell you that B will probably just move the fuck on from your group now that they're graduated and doing non-college things, but that doesn't help you in the moment, and they might not, and frankly DP/MS folks will show up for your entire fucking life if you're a game-type person in many and various modes, and it's good to figure out how you're going to handle them now and get some practice in with not tolerating nonsense in your circle. I'm gonna use some elaborate/belabored RPG metaphors in this response and want to emphasize that it doesn't mean your life is a game! (I also believe TTRPG life is real life, because it's my real life, too!) But you've given me a delightful tableau within which to work.

Your instincts for not just straight-up shit-talking and gossiping about A and B's deal are correct! You will never be able to keep those conversations totally private (nothing that starts in the TTRPG side-chat ever stays in the TTRPG side-chat), and for both A and B, it will suck to inevitably find out that their buds were engaged in such conversations. Is it possible you could safely feel out the other members of the group on the A/B relationship dynamic, as a fact-finding, temperature-taking mission? MAYBE. But it's a very risky maybe IMO, and if you don't love the dynamic, I don't necessarily think you need side-chat validation on this point. You have information the other players may or may not have; you are entitled to act upon it. I think we dispense with C, D, and E. You aren't them, and you can't control what they do or say or feel, and they aren't asking me for advice. But you can model behavior and steer your party!

So. What are you gonna do?

You start by describing B as a friend, but waffle on that some -- you've become less close because you dislike B's treatment of/behavior around A, which is fair! You're allowed to decide, with new information about how B behaves in particular situations, that you don't really like parts of a person, or maybe even that person at all! You don't have to set the whole motherfucker on fire to make your feelings known in a thoughtful, polite, and even kind way; if somebody else (B) blows that shit up, it's on them! They are a whole other person who will act a way in a game/life that you cannot control; the only thing you need to feel good about at the end of your turn is that you did something that was true to you/your character. Because for real, if there's one thing I know about people, it's that telling people to do a thing because you want them to do a thing (such as: "Y'all are miserable and you should split up!") will almost always result in the told-parties doubling down on the opposite of what the telling-party wants them to do. (This is what I do to torture my folks when I am the dungeon-master, because it is what people do!)

Assuming we're talking about garden variety shitty relationship behavior (which is what I think you've described here) and not full-scale abuse in public, I think you have a number of options depending on the situation. I don't mean to suggest that you should accommodate bad behavior; you already know that feels crappy and sows discord and confusion because you're doing it, now, by trying to side-step around the ick. You gotta choose your move depending on where you are on the board.

The next time A and B get into it in front of everybody (during a game, or at the bar, or the coffee shop, or the student union, or wherever), you pretend-roll a charisma check and imagine you got a 15+ and they rolled a combined 3 (because they have??? nobody likes this!!!!), and you say something to this effect: "Hey, A and B? These vibes are not great, can we table this tiff until later?" Repeat as needed! Passive voice/vague antecedents are great in these kinds of situations: "Can folks not get into this right now?"/"Moving on! Let's focus on XYZ!"/"Feels like we're getting off track — can we do ABC instead?"/"Wow! That's kind of awkward and private! Let's not do that here!" If it helps, imagine B is the obnoxious NPC you need to get the bare minimum of compliance out of to continue the game of not blowing up the entire situation. You already have a good bead on what people do when they feel attacked, because you're literally playing games wherein that make-believe happens! People fight back and get defensive! It's a bad scene!

Other people's bad relationships are theirs to solve, so you can treat interactions regarding those relationships as open-ended puzzle games that are not for you to finish. You are the Oracle, not the puzzlemaster. If you get A or B on their own in a safe space where you're not rushed to get somewhere or hungry or otherwise pissy or wanting, why not ask: How does it feel when A/B does that? What would you like to see happen instead when Bad interaction happens? What might you do about that irritating/annoying/weird thing A/B does? Despite what I said in the prior bullet points, your friends are not NPCs, and of course you know this or you wouldn't be asking — they are the main characters in their own lives, and you can neither save nor sink them.

It might be that A and B stay in this weird bad relationship! If it continues to cause bad vibes at the game nights/within your circle, I think you're well within your rights to say, either to one or both of them if they haven't gotten previous messages: "Hey, I like you both, I want to keep doing XYZ fun things with y'all, but this dynamic is actually really, legitimately killing the vibe, because I don't get to see the fun part where y'all make up and feel good about everything, I only see the bad arguing parts and it's just a real downer!" Don't let them off the hook about this! Stand your ground when they come back with "Oh, we're just joking" or "Ah, well, that's just how we are." Okay, they're joking and that's how they are, but it SUCKS TO BE AROUND and if it's not a big deal, they can cut that shit out!

The whole deal blows, and you're in a sorry position to have to navigate it. It just absolutely is a shit situation to have a friend-group whose dynamic is messed up in this way. But you're asking because your interest is in maintaining a collective good-feeling, and I can promise you that skipping the missing stair of A and B's bad vibes (and maybe specifically B's behavior) will absolutely in the long-term result in the precise kind of bad-feeling you're trying to avoid by skating past it today. Resentment, distrust, annoyance, back-channeling — all of the things we build and do to avoid being emotionally honest with people who care about because we think it'll hurt less in the moment, or get better later, or just change, somehow — are also 10000000% guaranteed ways to push us farther apart from the people we love, rather than keep us close and friendly.

Dear Abby, 26 April 2023:

DEAR ABBY: I consider myself a modest woman in today's world. I have a new granddaughter that my daughter-in-law nurses anywhere, at any time, regardless of who she is around. I told my son she should cover herself in restaurants and other public places. I get embarrassed when she just pulls out a breast for anyone to see. She's European, and I understand it is more common there, but not so much in America. Am I overreacting? -- LOOKING AWAY IN CALIFORNIA

Dear Looking Away,

OH NO, A TITTY

sorry no yeah you're super old fashioned by thinking that feeding babies the way humans have fed babies since time immemorial is super sexy and hot and just bonkers inappropriate to do literally anywhere besides in a big dark shame hole under the ground where no one who's ever seen or heard of a titty could ever experience the knowledge of a titty existing lest they have knowledge of a titty existing

Pay Dirt, Slate, 17 April 2023:

Dear Pay Dirt, My longterm girlfriend and I disagree about whether a $30,000 inheritance left to her by her great-aunt should be “her” money or “our” money. She wants to spend a large part (almost a third!) of it on expensive supplies for her hobby. I think that we should save most of it and use some of it on a vacation since we both find traveling extremely romantic. My argument is: 1) I don’t care about her hobby, but we’ll both enjoy a trip abroad; 2) we’ve lived on only my (admittedly low, since it’s academia) income for over a decade, so according to her own rule about entitlement to “her” windfall, shouldn’t she technically have been entitled to none of my wages all these years? Her argument is: 1) she had to put aside her hobby for many years to raise our children (it’s not a safe art form for young kids to be around) and yearns to return to it; 2) she paid entirely in cash for our $950k house at the beginning of our partnership (though my income pays the property taxes and maintenance costs), therefore she alleges that we haven’t actually been living on solely my income because I’ve been saving on rent all these years. I feel resentful of the double standard about control over finances and hurt that she would rather prioritize her own joy over our shared joy. She feels impatient to reconnect with her hobby and hurt that her contributions to our lifestyle are unseen. How do we reconcile our different viewpoints? How should the money be allocated? Is there something that we’re missing? —I’m About to Glass(Blow) a Fuse

Dear About to (Glass)Blow a Fuse,

I hope you don't mind that I corrected your very clever parenthetical sign-off! You're understandably dealing with a lot of hurt right now at the hands of the cruel and self-absorbed girlfriend who bought you a million-dollar home and abandoned her beloved hobby to raise your children, so I totally get why a brilliant, overworked, and under-appreciated academic genius such as yourself would fuck up something so incredibly simple and obvious, you poor thing. Really speaks to the distress you're in as the victim of this woman's sordid scheme to steal every ounce of joy from your life by experiencing some of her own after decades of managing your household for you for free.

Great relationships are built on the exactly equal division of all resources, and it sounds like your girlfriend has trouble grasping this because she seems to believe that the home you live in and the time she has invested raising your children for you have value, when of course they do not. The only thing that has value in this world is cash money, which is why we call it money. If parenting were valuable, you'd be able to trade it on the stock market! And what was your girlfriend going to do, not live in a house? These are things she'd have done with her life anyway, and they don't get to count toward her contribution to the household just because she did them for and with you instead of expressly and specifically pursuing her art. Whereas who knows what you could have done with your life if you hadn't been locked into a free house and a partner dedicating herself full-time to keeping your children alive for you?

Now, after all these years of being nothing but a worthless freeloader whom you support out of the generous goodness of your kind heart, your girlfriend has finally acquired something of value, and she wants to keep an entire third of it for herself? To do something that doesn't directly benefit, enrich, or entertain you personally? That's not equity, and it's certainly no way to repay you for periodically writing checks to the plumber. Isn't it about time you finally got something out of all of this for your trouble?

What benefit is there for you in having a partner who enjoys the sweet satisfaction of creative fulfillment after years of yearning to express herself? What kind of weirdo wants their girlfriend to have her own interests? And what kind of ungrateful hussy doesn't jump to spend thousands of her own money on a romantic vacation with someone who actively resents even entertaining the possibility of the idea of her doing something that makes her artistic spirit sing?