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What Should I Do After Learning That My Husband Lied To Me About Having A Job For More Than A Year, And Other Advice Column Questions
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.
What Should I Do After Learning That My Husband Lied To Me About Having A Job For More Than A Year?
My husband and I have been married 10 years and in a relationship for 20. I just found out that for more than a year he has been lying about working. He pretended he had a part-time contracting job and has been using our savings to pass as income from this fictional job.
Over the past year, we made a lot of financial decisions based on the assumption that he was employed, which has left us in a tight situation. He initially denied it when I confronted him and even provided fake documents about his "job" before finally coming clean. I'm feeling many emotions because of this betrayal, and I am unsure about how to proceed. Can you guide me?
Abigail Van Buren urges the letter writer to enter marriage counseling. “What was he doing when he was supposedly working?” she writes. “His (and your) problems may go beyond the financial bind you are now in.” Read the rest of her answer.
Am I Wrong To Consider Divorcing My Husband Because He Tried To Change Our Son’s Name While I Was Getting An Emergency C-Section?
A few months ago, I needed to have an emergency C-section a month before my due date. Thankfully I came through it safely, and have a wonderful little son. There is just one problem. When my husband “Wade” and I were in the process of choosing a name, Wade really liked a particular one, but I told him it was out of the question because it was the same name of the boy who bullied me relentlessly from elementary through middle school (let’s call him “Benny”). Wade said he understood, we chose another name we both liked together, and I didn’t think of it again. But then my husband did something while I was being closed up in surgery that still has me feeling hurt and betrayed.
When the nurse brought the baby into my hospital room, she said, “here’s ‘Benny.” I thought I was hearing things. I asked her to repeat herself. The name she gave was the one I thought I heard: the name of my childhood bully, Benny. I turned to my smiling husband and demanded to know what was going on. He told me that he had named our baby while I was still in surgery. I felt as if the floor had dropped out from beneath me and asked the nurse to take the baby out of the room.
Once they were gone, I told Wade either the name would be changed or I was going to divorce him. He tried to cajole me into leaving the name as it was, but backed down when I threatened to call my sister’s husband — who is a family law attorney — then and there to put the divorce in motion.
We changed the name to the one we had agreed upon and returned home. Wade has apologized, although I suspect he’s holding some resentment. I have tried to move on from this, but the sense of how he violated my trust still stings and I am considering getting a divorce anyway. Are my feelings justified, or am I being vindictive?
Greg Lavallee validates the letter writer’s feelings about her husband. “He really screwed up,” he writes. “If the two of you want to keep your marriage intact, he is going to need to figure out how to respect you and to understand what a cowardly act this was.” Read the rest of his answer.
How Should My Wife And I Handle Being Blamed For ‘Hijacking’ My Sister’s Wedding Because Everyone Was Gossiping About Us?
This past summer, my youngest sister, “Elena,” got married, which meant the extended family was in from out of town. To reduce the burden on the bride and groom, my wife and I volunteered to host a few informal get-togethers at our house. This is where things went sideways.
Immediately after lunch the day of the rehearsal dinner, my mom came storming into the kitchen, yelling. She’d gone into our bedroom to use our en-suite bathroom, and spotted my wife’s prenatal vitamins on the vanity as well as a pack of ovulation tests. She was very upset that we hadn’t told her we were trying for a baby! And she thinks my wife and I are “too old” to have a child (late 30s/early 40s) and that it’s “irresponsible” of us to subject ourselves and our future child to all of the issues that come with advanced parental age. She said all this in front of everyone. The news spread quickly, and it became the hot gossip at the rehearsal dinner.
Months later, Elena and her husband are still livid that we “hijacked [their] wedding with [our] baby news,” and our extended family has sided with them. We were selfish, everybody believes, to have “blindsided” the family with this information at Elena’s wedding and even more selfish to consider having a baby at our age. My wife and I contend that my mother is in the wrong because she violated our privacy (twice!), by invading our private space and then by telling others what she saw in there, but my family won’t stop complaining that we “selfishly stole Elena’s thunder.” Now my wife is pregnant, and we’re honestly unsure how to share this news. We don’t want our kid to grow up as “the baby that ruined Aunt Elena’s wedding.”
Michelle Herman advises the letter writer to share their baby news however they want and set firm boundaries if anyone says anything negative. “Your mother’s behavior was inexcusable,” she writes. “Of course you didn’t hijack anything; of course you weren’t/aren’t being selfish.” Read the rest of her answer.
How Should I Respond When My Family Repeatedly Comments On How Much Better My Infant Son Looks Than His Sister?
When I visited my family with my newborn son, they could not stop talking about how handsome he was — and how much cuter he was compared to his sister (my first child, who is 3 years old).
On that afternoon alone, I must have heard the words, “He looks much better than his sister” at least 15 times from my mom and my sisters. I was hurt and shocked they would say such negative things about a child, but I was just grateful my daughter was not with me. However, I doubt her presence would have stopped them.
Miss Manners, how was I supposed to respond to their negative comments? How do I prevent it from happening again, especially when my daughter is with me?
Judith Martin, Nicholas Ivor Martin and Jacobina Martin, the writers behind the Miss Manners persona, encourage the letter writer to advocate for their daughter indirectly. “Grasp your new infant warmly, look deep into his eyes, and, with an appropriately silly expression, say, ‘They don’t mean it! Your sister was a beautiful baby, too! Yes she was! Yes she was!’” they write. Read the rest of their answer.
How Can I Get My Colleague To Stop Crying, Oversharing And Blaming Her Coworker Because She Got A Haircut She Regrets?
I’m a manager in an Human Resources department for a large company. Back in December a new employee started in our office. “Nina” wears her hair in a pixie cut. Another employee, “Mika,” got obessed with Nina’s hair. She talked about how great it was all the time. Mika’s hair was a single length and almost down to her stomach. Nina was flattered and she showed Mika several photos of herself with the cut, which she has had for three years. She was honest about the maintenance and what goes into having the cut. Mika decided to get it and even went to Nina’s salon to get it done.
However, Mika hates the cut on herself. She has cried over it while at work and this makes everyone uncomfortable. She said she has spent hundreds on vitamins to make her hair grow faster, and she is also getting into more personal territory because she has been telling everyone about how her husband is upset that she spent the money they were saving for a vacation on an expensive wig without telling him. Mika says her husband supported whatever she wants to do with her hair and it’s not about her hair but about her spending the money without telling him. Several of her colleagues have told me Mika’s random crying and oversharing of her marital issues are making them uncomfortable. Nina has said she was flattered at first but has become annoyed and uncomfortable with Mika because Mika still likes Nina’s hair but cries about it on herself. This is Nina’s first job after college and her second job ever. I see why she is uncomfortable because while Mika is not her boss, she is not her peer and is senior to her. Nina says Mika blames her for talking her into getting the cut (even though Nina did no such thing) and then will cry and apologize to her for being harsh.
I really want to be understanding to Mika, but this situation is becoming untenable. No one wants to be around Mika and I am fairly certain Nina is job hunting. How can I gently speak to Mika about not crying every day or oversharing her marital issues with her colleagues, especially Nina?
Alison Green offers the letter writer a script for telling Mika to stop talking about her haircut at the office. “I know you’re unhappy with your haircut, and I’m sympathetic,” she recommends saying. “However, at this point continuing to talk about it in the office is becoming disruptive, and I’m sure you can understand it’s making things particularly uncomfortable for Nina.” Read the rest of her answer.
Should I Voice My Concerns After My 7-Year-Old Son’s Teacher Incorporated A Beloved Class Joke Into A Writing Assignment?
I had a parent-teacher conference for my 7-year-old son “Rick.” Everything’s fine with his personal academic progress. But while I was there, I noticed a bunch of writing assignments in his classroom, all about what they thought about going to [Our town name] Elementary “Skool.” I asked the teacher about it, and apparently, it’s a bubbled-up joke-slash-meme. She wasn’t sure how it started, but for a few weeks now, pretty much the entire class has been deliberately misspelling “school” and thinking it’s the funniest thing ever. She decided to roll with it, and allowed them to use the “alternate spelling” on the writing assignment.
I suppose it’s not particularly harmful, but I was left vaguely uneasy about the whole situation. Maybe I’m just a fossil, but none of my teachers would have ever allowed something like this at that age, and I find the notion of teachers bending to the whim of a class full of second graders to be a rather bad idea. Should I voice my concerns here, or just keep them to myself?
“This second-grade teacher stumbled upon a way to get a whole class even a little bit excited about a writing assignment?” writes Dan Kois. “She sounds amazing. Don’t you dare get her in trouble.” That’s the entirety of his answer, but read the rest of his column.
