Help! Am I responsible for teaching my children how to act in public??????

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.

Take heart: you're one of many millions of parents of Gen Z-ers whose offspring are just really into drinking out of dirty glasses. We'll never know why. It's one of the great mysteries of our time, but the good news is that this isn't your problem. There's absolutely no way to teach this particular generation of young people how to order food at restaurants, and even if there were, it wouldn't be on you as their parent to do it. Kids these days just love filthy dishware.

Help! I'm a Perfect Genius, but This Potential Employer Asked Me a Boring Interview Question!

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.

But I beg you to consider doing more. A single, private message to one incompetent bitch may not convey to the necessary parties the depth and breadth of the situation. Many, many people have important lessons to learn from your experience, and I encourage you to share it widely. Consider making a public LinkedIn post, and ensure that it is shareable across platforms. Depending on your financial resources, a billboard with your name, professional headshot, and contact information could go a long way toward ensuring that everyone in your industry who needs to know just how you handled the way these women treated you, does know about it. I hope that in your continuing job search, you are able to connect with potential employers who have a much better grasp of all you bring to the table.

Help! I Am Entitled To Do A Bone!

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.

Obviously you're really grappling with the profound ethical implications of lying to your wife about taking a mistress, and you're trying to find literally any other solution to just finding a girlfriend and fucking the shit out of her and hoping your wife doesn't find out. That's clearly the very last thing you want. But since you've shown such magnanimous restraint in not doing so, you probably should just do it and see what happens, it'll probably all be totally fine! And if it isn't, eh, idk? Were you supposed to just survive on beejays and handies forever? You tried your very best not to! And that's what will matter most to your children in the end.

Help! My Ignorant, Naive Girlfriend Who Can Be Convinced to Have Sex With Literally Anyone in Exchange For a Sushi Roll Is Conspiring with Her Nefariously Evil Ex-Boss Who Didn't Put Any Moves On Her to Not Cheat On Me With Him!

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!

Where would your girlfriend's sexual purity and obligatory fidelity be without you, its devoted keeper? Probably giving out handies in exchange for rainbow rolls in her boss's condo parking lot! You should tell many of your colleagues about how you handled this whole ordeal so that they know just what level you're on when it comes to your professional expertise.

Dear Advisor,

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.

It takes a true social unicorn to be simply good at talking and only talking to other people. There are some of these one-horned wonders out there, to be sure — but let me assure you that the vast majority of folks want to be accepted and seen just as much as you do, and they're staring at the ceiling at night thinking just as much (more, probably) about all the weird, wonky shit they themselves threw at you than they are anything you ever said to them.

Programming Note: USians, urge your Senators to vote no on KOSA!

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.

Help! The Woman I Have Been Stalking for Years Is Disinclined to Engage With Me

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.

If you wish to receive a concrete answer about the status of your relationships, your best hope is to CC your spouse on any future correspondence. I think you can expect a prompt response.

Help! My Mother-In-Law Buys A New Outfit Every Time She Pours Jet Fuel on Chilean Sea Bass and Throws Their Carcasses, Flaming, Into the Rainforests from the Open Belly of Her Private Plane

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.

Build no bridge with this woman! She would probably just drive over it with her minivan, and then the blood of billions will be on your hands.

Help! The Ungrateful Youths of Today Don't Appreciate the Value of Anything, and by 'Anything' I Mean the Worthless Shit I Am Trying to Sell Them

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?

The only way to know for sure whether your shirts will help poor communicators understand exactly how bad they are at connecting with others may be to try your product out for yourself.

Dear advisor,

(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.

You can do this, because you already want to. Good luck and let us know how it goes!

Dear Advisor,

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.

Your people will always be your people. You have a wonderful and beloved friend group, and you will lose and add members of your party throughout your life, but you will never lose any people who were supposed to be your people if you commit to being kindly forthright while modeling your needs, boundaries, and appreciations for them. This isn't a skill you pick up once and do automatically forever; it takes work and commitment throughout your life and it's fucking annoying and awkward and so, so worth it.

Help! A Titty!

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

at least this shameless hussy didn't give entire birth to your personal baby and have the gall to feed it formula amirite

Help! My Girlfriend Bought Me A Million Dollar House And Raised My Kids And All I Got Was This Million Dollar House And Someone To Raise My Kids, When Is It Finally Going To Be My Turn To Get A Break??????

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?

The balance sheet of this relationship is indeed all out of whack, and it's too bad that it's taken this long for your girlfriend to see just how uneven your bargain has been. If we're going to get technical about what has "value" in a relationship — and it does seem like your girlfriend is an inveterate bean-counter in the worst way around this stuff — the best way to reconcile your mutual account, as it were, is to present your girlfriend with an itemized bill for all the services you have provided her over the years, such as allowing her to buy you a home, permitting her to forego a wage-earning career, and gifting her with the opportunity to abandon her favorite hobby. That should pretty swiftly put everything you're "missing" in stark relief, and solve the question of how she should allocate her money in the future.

Help! My Girlfriend Is Being Super Weird About Various Members of My Family Bursting In When We're Fucking And Calling Her Names

How To Do It, Slate, 29 March 2023:

I’m from a big, tight-knit family where everyone is in each other’s business. Even though I live alone, my parents, siblings, cousins, etc. have keys to my apartment, and sometimes drop by. About a month ago, my new girlfriend “Becca” and I were having sex on the kitchen floor when my mom walked in unexpectedly. My mom was shocked and called her a rude name in surprise, and Becca pretty much ran for the shower and left me to deal with things. The conversation was awkward, but things only got more awkward when they left. Becca now is weird about sex at my apartment at all, and if I initiate she will insist it has to be in the bedroom with the door locked. I tried to talk to her about calming down on this since awkward moments happen to everyone. I even told her how my dad walked in on me with an ex a couple of years ago, but she only got more upset and said I needed to start deadbolting the apartment when she was over if I was going to share my keys. My family has come over multiple times when we’re just watching TV or making dinner when they should have been fine to come in but are locked out and teased me about the deadbolts. Becca has told me she’ll walk away if she doesn’t feel like there’s enough privacy. I feel like I’m caught in the middle between two pushy sides. How do I get them to leave me alone? I’m 35! — Stuck in the Middle

Dear Stuck in the Middle,

Oh buddy, you really are in a pickle here! Sit down kiddo, and let's talk through this to see if we can't find a solution! Someday you'll be all grows up, and you'll need to be able to tackle life's frownies all by yourself as a big boy.

It can be really hard when our mommies and our girlfriends are in conflict with each other, and of course it's even harder when there's no real "right" or "wrong" on either side! Of course your girlfriend can't be expected to understand the special bond you have with family members for whom the experience of regularly barging into your home to find you banging women in every room and at every hour of the day has not inspired them to call ahead! And course your mommy wants to be able get a big ole' eyeful of her widdle wuvbug going to poundtown at any time of day or night no matter what!

Sometimes it can help to try to see things through another person's perspective, but it seems like somebody really important is being left out here: your siblings and cousins! Have you asked them about the terrible impact of finding a deadbolt where they're used to finding a welcome mat? What might happen to them if they have to knock before entering your home? Will it be possible to repair the damage done to these important co-generational relationships if the people in your familial peer group must wait ten, twenty, maybe as long as thirty seconds longer than usual to get inside your house so that your girlfriend has a few fleeting moments to cover up her bare cooter?

Every family is different, but you should think seriously about whether you have a future with Becca and her understandable — if bizarre — obsession with knowing who is inside her house, and when, and where. If you were to cohabitate or get married, would Becca take it upon herself to use the deadbolt when you are not home, denying her in-laws beautiful bonding opportunities such as catching her while she's the shower, or taking a big shit, or just living her life without the constant anxiety that someone else is going to demand her time and attention? Imagine your relationship progresses, and in your golden years, you are faced with this quandary once again, but in the other direction. Will you be able to respect a pushy, boundaries-challenged wife who doesn't walk in on her children fucking all the time like a normal parent?

I think you can explain to Becca that until you're ready to start making your own way in the world, you and your family and your package are a package deal. It will be hard, but not every relationship works out. I'm sure there's a woman out there who's just right for you! In fact, she may be coming over shortly to drop off a casserole and your new inhaler.

Help! I Can't Think of Any Ways to Test Out This Condom!

How To Do It, Slate, 14 February 2023:

Dear How to Do it, My partner (cis male) was on the Walgreens website and was VERY excited about the pickup feature. Lo and behold, even condoms can be ordered at the drive-thru! The problem lies in that he might be a little too excited about this newfound convenience. He clicked into the condom category and was overwhelmed by the options! “Do I get the ultra-sensitive? What about the ribbed? Hmm, maybe it’s time I try the extra thick with the glow-in-the-dark lubricant!” I’m at my wit’s end! I don’t know how to advise him. I don’t know what’s good for a peen. Is this a normal question? Am I supposed to have an answer? Is ribbed better than ultra-sensitive? Are ribbed and ultra-sensitive the same thing? I hate to feel like a prude, but I think I’m out of my depth here. —To Rib or Not to Rib

There's only one way to find out which kinds of condoms feel good on your body during sex: ask a stranger on the internet. Thank goodness you didn't try some other pointless, boring way of determining which condoms bring y'all the most pleasure!

Help! My Investment Advice Is Not Being Taken

Social Q's, New York Times, 1 February 2023:

I was advising my adult daughter on a great investment in a field we know well. I even offered financial assistance, but she told me she was afraid to proceed. So I shared a very personal story: When her father and I were engaged, he was offered a similar opportunity. I begged him to postpone our wedding and use the money to make the investment. But he didn’t; he was afraid, too. I told her that marrying her father, instead of making the investment, had been a poor financial decision I’ve regretted ever since. I urged her not to make the same mistake. She then forwarded our entire text exchange to my husband (her father)! It didn’t cause any trouble between us. But she didn’t know that it wouldn’t. How do I deal with such a betrayal? I will never trust her again. — MOTHER

Dear Mother,

On the scale of human betrayal, it is hard not to situate what your daughter did to you as one of the more egregious crimes that humans have yet committed against each other lo these 230,000 or so years. The Bad Advisor doesn't pretend to say that humans aren't capable of coming up with something worse than asking a man about some shit he was already well aware of, but it's hard to imagine what that might be, and the Bad Advisor daren't speculate for fear of what nightmares await.

You ask an age-old question: Who dares snitch to Daddy? Where does a child, who is an adult and allowed to do whatever the fuck she wants, get off doing whatever the fuck she wants, up to and including telling her dad that her mother said a thing that both of y'all already had a conversation about decades ago? A thing which your husband is by his own admission not at all concerned about? The gall boggles the mind.

You could have been in big trouble with a man who openly gives no fucks about a thing he was already well aware of! What if your daughter had exposed you as a person who had feelings about an investment decision you expressly and specifically told your husband you had feelings about and with regard to which he gives not the barest shit today, nor gave the barest shit about ages ago? The consequences of your daughter telling a man a thing he already knew are nigh life-or-death, and she wholly disregarded them.

But what if your husband, who has known since the dawn of your marriage that you disagree about investment opportunities because you told him so, didn't know that thirty years ago -- when you specifically said that you wanted him to invest money in Dot Com Stocks Dot Co Dot Crypto instead of paying for a nice reception at the VFW hall and he said "Nah fuck it let's buy a huge fucking cake instead" and then y'all literally did that -- that you were actually specifically saying that you would rather him spend money on Dot Com Stocks Dot Co Dot Crypto, and he said no let's not do that let's do the wedding instead, which is what happened? Imagine the horror that might have ensued if your disruptive daughter, who refuses to take your investment advice, had disclosed to this man a thing that would not have surprised him in the least because he actively participated in it?

Well, you needn't imagine the horror. It happened: your daughter told your husband a thing he already knew, and here you are bearing the brunt of the consequences: deep betrayal by a woman who not only is obligated to listen to and take your financial advice, but who dares communicate with someone else who decided not to take your financial advice about their shared hobby: not taking your financial advice.

So: we know what betrayal looks like. We know of the Trojan Horse. We know of Benedict Arnold. We know of Brutus stabbing Caesar. These stories have shaped Western history, and given us a means of understanding ourselves and others. But do we know of the daughter who expressed vague trepidation at her mother's investment counsel? We do not, and the whole of humanity is the worse for it. On behalf of the world, we thank you for sharing your awful tale so that others may learn from it.

How does a mother deal with such a betrayal? A mother can do what only a mother can do: invest deeply in crypto, and let the ~ gains ~ speak for themselves.

Hi! Maybe this is a case for good advice but how do I send in an ask that's longer than 500 characters?

Thanks a whole lot for asking this question — the Bad Advisor had not realized that there are actually a couple of different ways to submit questions on Tumblr! (Or maybe on 'new' Tumblr? Or is this old Tumblr? Who knows, Tumblr is not the social media platform about which the Bad Advisor is most knowledgable, but here we are.)

ANYWAY. This "ask" form will allow folks to submit questions of longer than 500 characters, whereas this ask form seems to limit characters. The "submit" form also allows for longer content, though folks should know that the Bad Advisor prefers the "submit" function to be used for links to folks seeking bad advice elsewhere on the internet (i.e., "Can you believe this asshole in Miss Manners today?").

Cheers, y'all! Keep the asks coming.