Dear Prudence is Slate’s advice column. Submit questions here.
Dear Prudence,
I am a first-year college student who lives in a dorm. I’ve mostly been enjoying my time in the dorm; I’ve met a few new people in my hall who I consider friends. However, I’ve also been having issues with neighbors; specifically the boys, “Eric” and “Sean” who live in the room below me. Eric and Sean love video games. They seem to play them literally 24/7. Normally, this wouldn’t be a problem, but they also make very loud noises while playing. They scream and make cackle-like laughs and often bring friends over to have full-scale gaming parties. I happen to be very sensitive to sound, but I know I live in a dorm and that dorms are loud, so while it’s annoying, I usually just let them be.
However, last night I heard something that made me wonder if it might be time to stop letting them be. Eric and Sean were engaging in their usual loud gaming ways when I heard one of them (I’m not sure who) say what sounded quite a lot like the n-word. Both Eric and Sean are white. I’m sure they used it to get a rise out of others, as I unfortunately grew up with a lot of non-Black kids who used the n-word for this reason. That, of course, doesn’t mean that it’s right. Sean and Eric shouldn’t be using that word, and it made me very uncomfortable to hear them use it (I am also white).
My questions concern how I should proceed (this was also why I didn’t report it when it happened—I wasn’t quite sure what I should do). I am hesitant to speak to my RA about it, as she is Black, and I worry that my expressing these concerns might harm her mental well-being more than anything. She also has no jurisdiction over the floor below ours, so I’m not sure she would even be able to really address the issue. I don’t know who the RA for the floor below me is, so that is probably out of the question. That leaves our dorm’s community director, who probably would be able to take action against these boys for their atrocious behavior. However, I also wonder if I should just leave it alone. I’m not 100 percent sure that they did use the n-word, as it sounded a lot like it, but also felt like the pronunciation was “off” somehow, to the point where it’s possible that it may have instead been a word or combination of words in another language. Additionally, it was a private conversation that I overheard, so that may also be inappropriate to report based on the fact that I technically shouldn’t have heard them (even though the walls are pretty thin in this dorm).
To me, none of that should matter—using a racial slur is wrong no matter where you use it, and any time you hear it, it should be reported. I also figure that it’s better to accidentally report something that one thinks is offensive but isn’t than give a racist the benefit of the doubt. But I have no evidence (recording someone without their consent is illegal where I go to school, and I’d rather not go to an authority figure with illegally-collected evidence). That being said, do you think I should go to my RA, or would it be best to go to the community director? Do you think I should report Eric and Sean even without evidence?
— Eavesdropper with Ethics
Dear Eavesdropper,
I can’t wait until 3 years from now when you graduate and are a real adult out in the world. We need more people like you! You care about doing the right thing (putting an end to these guys screaming the n-word, if that is in fact what it is), but you’re also weighing all the potential complications: Burdening the Black RA, violating the law, reporting something that turns out not to be what you think it was. I just want to affirm that your realizing this is even a dilemma shows how thoughtful you are.
On a practical level: Keep listening. If you get to a place where you’re more than 85 percent sure that what you’re hearing is a racial slur, slide an anonymous note under the door. “We have thin walls, and I believe I’ve heard you yelling a racial slur from another part of the building. If I’m wrong, I apologize. If I’m correct, please stop.” If you still hear it after that, go to the community director along and explain everything you’ve told me here, including that you could possibly be wrong.
Dear Prudence,
I’m still pretty close with my first ever boyfriend. We dated at around age 13, then got together again at 18, ending when I left the country. We maintained contact through friendly-yet-distant letters every couple of months. At this time, I begin having more relationships with women and presenting more masculine. After university, I moved back home and we kept being friends, meeting occasionally to go to a museum or restaurant and catch up, swap books, etc. It’s been a really pleasant and stable friendship, but in the last few months I’ve found myself developing feelings for him again. I like the person he has become, I like how our tastes and ideas mix, and I find myself wishing we could do more things together. He hasn’t indicated interest in dating me, and I haven’t even indicated much interest in men! We don’t talk about our past, or what feelings we have about each other beyond being pleased to have such a good relationship.
It seems like what I’m experiencing right now is just an infatuation, but it’s getting in the way of my having real romances right now—it’s hard for people you see constantly to compare with some guy you see occasionally only for good times, even before factoring in our history. I wish I could talk to him about this to give him a chance to react, or help choose what to do about it, but he has a girlfriend he seems serious about! It’d be a huge overstep, and unkind to her, even if it’s only to confirm he isn’t interested. All in all, I’m a bit frightened and confused. I don’t know whether to distance myself immediately (I don’t want to!) or write some sort of letter or call for a special meeting or what.
— Oh No, Am I Microdosing?
Dear Microdosing,
No letter! No special meeting! No “We need to talk”! No 3-paragraph text message! Don’t do it.
I know that when you have a bunch of intense feelings swirling around it’s tempting—and not inherently bad or unhealthy—to want to dump them somewhere.
But in your situation, it would not make things better and would almost certainly make things worse. Here’s why:
1. Your gut feeling is telling you this is just infatuation, and gut feelings are almost always right. So you most likely don’t want an actual relationship with him.
2. He is serious about his current girlfriend.
3. If you were to share your feelings, it would make you feel like you were being unkind to his current girlfriend, which is a bad way to feel.
4. If you were to share your feelings and he didn’t return them, you’d also feel bad about that.
5. If you were to share your feelings and learn that he was interested, go back to #1.
Again, you’re not wrong for having these feelings. I believe crushes can give us important information that is often something other than “This is who I should be with.” In this case, you say you like the person he has become. So maybe you would like to see more of those qualities in yourself. Maybe you would like to see those qualities in the next person you date. Maybe you’re more interested in men than you thought you were. Maybe you want your next relationship to be extremely calm and peaceful, like the one you have with your ex. Think about it. But also, protect the beautiful, enjoyable, drama-free friendship you have by not talking about how you are (temporarily!) feeling. At least not to him.
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Dear Prudence,
I (she/her) am a college student, and I live with my best friend. I realized that I was in love with her about a year ago, but she has had a long-term, long-distance girlfriend since high school. I have met her girlfriend a few times and she is lovely. They seem to have a really wonderful relationship despite it being (very) long-distance. Because of her being in a relationship, I have waited for my feelings to pass, but they have only grown stronger with time. I love being her friend, and I would never want to jeopardize our friendship, especially given the fact that we already live together. My question: iIs it more unethical to keep this secret from my best friend, or to tell her, possibly making her uncomfortable and unfairly giving her my feelings to deal with?
There is also the factor that female friendship is sometimes physically intimate, and she and I have grown very close. There are times when it feels like maybe something is about to happen, and then we both stop and laugh it off with vague comments like “It’s getting late!” “We should go to bed!” But maybe I’m just delusional? Most people we know think that she and I are a couple when they meet us, and we have to correct them.
Ahhh, what does it all mean??
— Trapped in Love and a Lease
Dear Trapped,
See the response above. I have a very similar reaction to your letter. Except I’d make an addition about the physical intimacy: Imagine that a person you were friends with had a crush on you and hadn’t told you about it. What kind of physical contact would feel creepy to you in that situation, in a way it wouldn’t if you two were purely platonic friends? Whatever it is, don’t do it with your roommate.
Dear Prudence,
First, I wanted to give a little background on what happened. My husband and I have been together for two years, and before we started dating, he dated a girl for seven years. Within that time, he had become really close with her friends. When we started dating, he was still very close to her group of friends, which is just fine for me. I did very well in befriending them, and I’ve become very close to a lot of them. It was always inevitable that she and I would be in the same place together, and I had no issues with it.
The other night, we had plans to go to one of his friends’ birthday parties, and we knew she would be there. All day, my husband said that if I felt uncomfortable, we would leave immediately. No questions asked. He said that it’s me and him and that’s all that matters. I really appreciated his approach because I truly don’t do well in awkward situations as it is.
Well, we are there for about 2.5 hours. She’s been there as well and it was getting progressively more awkward because all of the people gravitated towards her, and it was just my husband and me standing near each other. After a while, I told him I felt uncomfortable and I was ready to go home. At which point he said that I “half-assed” this, that I should just “get it over with” and say “hi” to her, that he thought that I would be the bigger person, that he thought I would be stronger in this situation, that if we left it would look like she “won” … and then got visibly angry with me because I wanted to leave.
Eventually he storms out, and we walk to the car. I’ve begun crying and started defending myself saying that made me feel safe by giving me an out if I felt uncomfortable. He then yelled at me really loudly and got out of the car and slammed the door. He went back to the party without me while I drove home.
I have yet to hear an apology from him. What upsets me the most is that he’s told me that the opinions of those friends matter a lot to him. And it’s important to him for them to see us in a good light. He chose their opinions over how I felt in that moment. Keep in mind that we have nothing to prove with these friends, we have been around them for years, they were all at our wedding. The drama was only because his ex was there. He told me that if I went up and said “hi” to her, it would make things less awkward for the whole group. And it was my job to do that for everyone else. He obviously went back to the party and told people what had just happened because people started texting me asking if I was okay and asked what was going on.
Since talking to him, he has only gotten angry with me because I raised my voice and was angry at him while in the car … all while defending myself because my husband just made me feel so terrible and inferior to this group of people.
Please help. All I feel is resentment and anger towards my husband. Obviously I love him very much. But this is not how I imagined my husband treating me at all.
— Disrespected
Dear Disrespected,
What a jerk! This isn’t even about how you maneuvered the party, and who said hi first, or how your husband prioritizes how he looks to other people over how you feel. He is treating you horribly—damn near abusively, I would argue—and it’s not your fault. It’s one thing to have an angry outburst, but it’s another thing entirely to humiliate your spouse by broadcasting your fight to others, and then to get mad at your spouse for having feelings. And stay mad! The nerve!
The resentment and anger you feel toward him is 100 percent appropriate and healthy.
Don’t try to get rid of it. Use it as motivation to stand up for yourself. I want you to take a moment and think about whether this is an isolated incident. If it is: He’s acting out because something is going on between him and his ex, and you shouldn’t stick around long enough to discover all the details. If it’s not: He has a track record of being a bad person. Start to think about what it would feel like to end this relationship.
Dear Prudence Uncensored
“Not only did he break his initial promise and publicly embarrass her in front of their friends, now he’s got the nerve to be mad at her for pointing that out and responding accordingly!”
Jenée Desmond-Harris and friends discuss a letter in this week’s Dear Prudence Uncensored—only for Slate Plus members.
Dear Prudence,
I have a kind of an embarrassing, low-stakes question. I’ve been sick for about a week, with a virus affecting my entire body, especially my nose, mouth, eyes, and skin. I’m hoping that next week I’ll be able to go back to school and start living my life. The thing is, I’m self-conscious about how I look. The skin on my face is flaky and dry, my eyes are bloodshot, and my lips are chapped to hell. I also have a hair-pulling disorder that got a little worse as I laid in bed and around the house for days on end.
I’m embarrassed to go back to school like this, and I don’t have a supportive relationship with my mom to ask for hygiene advice. I already feel like crap, and now every time I look in the mirror I see a haggard, picked-at face. How do I pull myself together after a week in the dumps?
— Pulled Out of the Gutter
Dear Pulled Out,
YouTube and TikTok. The internet is your friend. Whatever your concern, there is an influencer or beauty expert out there with an answer, and 500 comments under their post that will confirm whether the answer is a good one. But if you don’t have it in you to do the research: Eyedrops, Aquaphor (all over your face and lips at night), a cute hat, and a mask (if anyone asks, you still feel sick and don’t want to spread the virus) should get you through the first week.
Good luck and I hope you feel better soon!
Give Prudie a Hand in “We’re Prudence”
Sometimes even Prudence needs a little help. This week’s tricky situation is below. Join the conversation about it on Twitter with Jenée @jdesmondharris, and then look back for the final answer here on Friday.
Dear Prudence,
Recently, I had a situation where I felt really uncomfortable, and I’m wondering if I should do something. I had a coworker some years back I’ll call “Bill” who I got to be pretty good friends with, until he left that job because he couldn’t stop fighting with the supervisors. Bill got back in touch, and I told him I was still working there and a supervisor myself. He saw on my Facebook that I’m not married anymore and he asked if I was seeing anyone and I said no, I’m not.
He invited me to a barbecue and, since I didn’t have anywhere else to go, I said yes.
Bill and his wife live in a rundown rental house and are obviously not doing well at all. I met their daughter “Bertha” who is 28 and still lives at home. Bill and I got to talking privately and he told me he’s worried about Bertha. As a kid she cried every day at school and pretended to be sick all the time to get out of going. Like her mom she wouldn’t learn to drive and has never learned. After she graduated high school she hasn’t been able to stick with a job for more than a couple months, and hasn’t had a job since before COVID. She has no friends and she’s never had a boyfriend. He’s afraid of what’s going to happen to her when he’s gone. Bill told me he was diagnosed with cancer and hasn’t yet told his wife and daughter. He doesn’t think he’ll be able to beat it because he has no insurance, no money, and both his parents died of cancer around his age. His wife weighs about 500 pounds and is probably not long for this world either. He has no savings and nothing to leave them but a world of debts, even his car is not paid off.
Bill then started talking about what a good cook and housekeeper Bertha is, the fact she’s a virgin, how she’d make a great wife, she just can’t deal with the outside world and needs someone to take care of her. I was shocked when I realized he was basically begging me, a man roughly his own age to be his son-in-law. I said I was flattered but I just started seeing someone online. This was untrue, but I didn’t want to tell him I don’t find Bertha attractive at all. But she seemed like a sweet girl and I can’t stop thinking about how if her dad is basically pimping her out to guys old enough to be her dad, she might end up in a really bad situation and not have the wherewithal to deal with it. Should I do anything, and if so, what?
— Concerned in Carolina
Dear Prudence,
I am 18 and I work in a grocery store. I live with my grandma. She is very religious and all about “charity starts at home.” She makes me look out for breaks at work. Like marked down meats or toilet paper. Then I have to buy it and deliver it to the less fortunate members of her church (she does pay me back).
This wouldn’t be so bad, except the majority of the people are jerks. I either get morons who think I am trying to poison them with bad food or complainers who try to treat me like a bad delivery driver (they wanted wings, not drumsticks!) I had one lady actually curse me out because the free pizzas I gave her were cheese and not meat. I don’t know how they act so surprised because the church phone tree tells them what to expect.
I get yelled at at work by customers. My grandma tells me that I can’t expect these people to be grateful, and God will bless me in my own life. I am tired of doing this. I don’t want to quit my job, but that is the only way out I see. How do I get through to my grandma?
— No More Charity
Dear No More Charity,
The pandemic left us with a great solution for when we don’t want to breathe each other’s air, but it’s also useful for when we want to avoid interacting: Porch drop-off. Tell your grandma you’re a little busier these days and are getting slowed down by the verbal assaults at many of the homes you visit, so you prayed about it and you’re just going to be leaving bags and ringing doorbells from now on.
Classic Prudie
A few weeks ago, I discovered my wife cheated on me. (I won’t say how I found out, but you’d tell me I shouldn’t have done it. I had a suspicion, and I confirmed it.) The weird thing is, now that I know, I’m not sure how to bring it up, or if I should. I know through the same means I discovered the affair that it’s over, and she feels guilty about it. I noticed an uptick in our sex life around the time I now know her affair ended, and it doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. I keep waiting to snap and tell her, but even when we got drunk together one night, it just wasn’t front of mind. I told my best friend, and he said he’d have totally lost it, but I’ve “always been weird about this kind of stuff.” I’d honestly rather just forget it, let my wife work through her guilt on her own, and hopefully learn her lesson. Is that possible if I say nothing?
