There are too many excellent advice columns to keep up with, so we're committed to bringing you links to the best advice column questions and answers every week. Here's a roundup of the most interesting, thought-provoking and surprising questions that our favorite columnists addressed in recent days.

How Can I Prevent My Girlfriend from Throwing A Party Themed Around The Murder That Took Place In My House Before I Bought It?

I live in a murder house. Obviously it wasn’t what I dreamed of for my future home, but it was a good price for what I got and I’m not a superstitious man. I’ve been here for five years now and have had no sign of ghosts. My dog sometimes stares at nothing, but he’s old and was never that bright. The problem is that I just found out that my girlfriend is planning to have a Halloween party at the house themed around the murder. She’s sold tickets to her friends — apparently, she plans to set up a seance.

I’ve tried to talk to her about this and she says that she doesn’t know why I care when I don’t believe in ghosts (she does), and I won’t even be there anyhow since I’ll be away for work. I think she wasn’t even planning on telling me about it. This is in such bad taste that I don’t understand how she can’t see it. No one will be happy about this. People on my street remember the woman who used to live in the house, her family still lives in town. I strongly suspect my girlfriend is going be the villain of the week on social media if this goes ahead. Also, while I don’t believe in spirits, it was a real person who died. They don’t deserve their death to become a sideshow.

How do I stop it though? I’ve told her “no” already, but one of her friends let slip that it’s still supposed to be going ahead. She seems hell-bent on doing this and I worry even breaking up with her won’t put her off pushing ahead with the party. I can’t call the police and ask them to watch my house in case there’s a party and most of my friends are her friends too so I don’t know if I could trust them to house-sit. At this point, I’ve asked my boss if there’s any way someone else could take over the on-site inspection for the company that week just so I can be at home to fend off any partygoers. If that isn’t possible, though, I’m not sure what I can do to stop her. That sounds ridiculous, I know, but I’d really expected “no” to work. (I haven’t broken up with her yet, I do plan to. Although she might beat me to the punch, at this point I’m half-convinced she only dated me so she could throw this party.)

[Slate]

Ashley C. ford advises the letter writer to take back his girlfriend’s keys and change the locks. “I don’t think this is an issue for the police, but it is certainly the right time to tell all of your friends that not only do you not want this party, you don’t want them to attend if she attempts to throw it behind your back,” she writes. Read the rest of her answer.

What Should I Say After My Employee’s Boyfriend Asked for My Permission To Propose To Her?

The boyfriend of one of my reports recently contacted me because he said he had something important to discuss. He said he was planning on proposing to my report and wanted to get my permission before he did. I had no idea why he would ask me, and he explained that his girlfriend was raised by her mother after her father divorced her when she was pregnant and her mother only had help from her unmarried sisters and widowed mother and said I’m the closest thing she has to a father figure. My report and I have a manager/employee relationship but that’s as far as it goes. We aren’t involved in each other’s personal lives (to the point where I didn’t even know she was raised only by her mother with no involvement from her father), I can’t recall a time when we have spoken outside of work, and we have never been alone in the same room outside of the building we work in.

I certainly care about my report as much as I do everyone I work with but I have no feeling beyond that. I know she has lived with her boyfriend for a while and she has brought him to company picnics and Christmas parties before. He even showed me texts where they discussed getting married in the future and she mentions me being like a father to her and saying my blessing would be great. But to me it feels awkward and weird since I hardly know either one of them. My report has never told me she considers me like a father or attempted to have a relationship with me besides a professional manager/employee one. I want to gently let them down. How should I handle this without making the situation even more awkward than it already is? Especially since the proposal is meant to be a surprise and I don’t want to ruin it.

[Ask A Manager]

“This is super weird,” replies Alison Green. “Tell him that you think your employee is great but as her boss it’s not your place to get involved, although you wish them both much happiness.” That’s the entirety of her answer, but read the rest of her column.

Is It Reasonable To Expect My Sister To Pay Me $3,000 Because Our Grandmother Helped Her Pay for IVf?

In her will, my grandmother divided her estate equally among my mother and her four adult grandchildren. But there was a separate bequest of $13,000 to my mother — before the calculation of anyone else’s share — to help my younger sister with her I.V.f. treatments. This means that most of us are about $3,000 worse off because of this bequest that none of us knew about. Is it reasonable to expect my sister to reimburse us for this sweetheart deal that we were not a part of? When I asked my mother and sister gently for an explanation, I got the runaround and felt that I was attacked for being confrontational. They think I should be more sensitive to my sister’s fertility issues. But I can’t help feeling ripped off!

[The New York Times]

Philip Galanes sympathizes with the letter writer’s hurt feelings but affirms the grandmother’s right to help the letter writer’s sister with IVf. “We are not entitled to receive a penny from our parents or grandparents when they die,” he writes. “No one stole $3,000 from you because it was never yours to steal.” Read the rest of his answer.

What Should I Have Said When A Cashier Congratulated Me for Buying A Pregnancy Test?

I need help in knowing how I should have responded to a cashier that I believe overstepped. I am currently about 15 months postpartum with my second child and I’m fortunate to still be breastfeeding. Breastfeeding plays a role in how/when a menstrual cycle comes back. My husband and I are not looking to have a third child, as such, we use protection. However, my cycle still isn’t regular, and I was concerned something failed as I was about eight days late. I stopped to pick up a pregnancy test to confirm the negative.

At checkout, the cashier congratulated me. I bit back my initial “colorful” response; I was honest and told her that I am hoping it’s negative as I’m not ready to have my third C-section at age 42.

She then said that I should enjoy any life I create, and any baby is a blessing. I just nodded, paid and left. While I don’t disagree, I would have been happy if it was positive, but also a little flustered because it means we 100 percent need a bigger house in a place where housing is still stupid high. I really felt like she was being intrusive and nosy. What would have been the proper response in this situation without being rude?

[Tribune Content Agency]

R. Eric Thomas points out that congratulating someone for buying a pregnancy test demonstrates a misunderstanding of how pregnancy tests work. “You responded in a way that was generous and probably kept you from being baited into further conversation about her inner world,” he writes. “Nosy is as nosy does.” Read the rest of his answer.

Should I Be Worried About My Son’s Budding Interest In Military Strategy?

I’m a single mother with a 16-year-old son, “Mark.” Mark’s generally a well-behaved kid, and gets good grades. So I try not to get too caught up in his business, especially since a lot of it just seems to be guy stuff that’s incomprehensible to me.

His latest obsession is the military. Some of his friends have veterans or active service members in their families, so I guess that’s how he got interested. I remember from my teenage years that there were boys who had similar obsessions. But where most of them focused on things like cool vehicles or explosions, Mark’s taken his math interests and started applying it to things his friends talk about in ways that weird me out.

So for instance, his latest school paper was supposed to be analyzing something going on in the news. I was looking it over and it’s about the war in Ukraine. That’s current, fair enough. But it’s not about what I would consider a normal sub-topic, about the horror of the war or whether government’s like Putin’s are more aggressive. This is a big analysis of open source pictures of destroyed Russian vehicles, looking at what gets destroyed over time, to come to the conclusion that Russia’s only replacing about a third of its losses with newly built stuff and the rest with very old vehicles out of storage. More pictures of Russian storage yards, some assumptions about how many vehicles from the 1960s need to be cannibalized to make one working vehicle, and an estimation that the Russians will run out at the current rate sometime in the summer of 2026.

It’s not written in normal English either. I had to ask him to translate parts of it, like what “operational tempo” meant and why it’s a good thing that the Russian one is apparently unsustainable. And this is just the latest example, he’s been doing this more and more over the past several months. It doesn’t track as normal, although I’ll admit I’m not the greatest expert on what teenage boys think. Is this something I have to worry about? And if so, what do I do?

[Slate]

Jamilah Lemieux rules that there’s no reason for concern. “I’d be concerned if your son was idolizing dictators or if he was cheering Russia’s campaign against Ukraine,” she writes. “Instead, it sounds like he has a nerdy fascination with war vehicles.” Read the rest of her answer.

Should I End A 30-Year friendship Because My friend Gave Away furniture I Expressed Interest In Buying 2 Years Ago?

I've had a friend for over 30 years whom I've always helped out. I provided him with work when he needed money, loaned him money, and supported him through his divorce and various other issues over the years. I was always happy to do so and never expected anything in return.

A couple of years ago, he was selling some furniture that I was interested in buying. I offered to purchase the pieces I wanted, but he insisted on selling everything as a set, which I understood. Recently, I asked him about the furniture again, and to my surprise, he told me he had given it away to his neighbors — people he's only known for a few years. I was shocked but didn't say anything at the time because I didn't want to overreact. What puzzled me even more was that he needed money, and the amount I would have paid him could have helped him out, yet he chose to give it away for nothing.

A mutual friend of ours was also shocked when he heard what happened. When he asked our friend about it, he simply said he gave the furniture away without any explanation. Even when our mutual friend mentioned that I was disappointed about not being able to buy the pieces, our friend offered no response and just changed the subject.

Is it time to move on from this friendship?

[Creators]

Annie Lane suggests a conversation in lieu of ending the friendship. “There might be more to the story; perhaps the neighbor was going through a tough time and needed the furniture,” she writes. “You'll never know the real reason unless you ask.” Read the rest of her answer.

Read last week's column here.