Slate publishes a lot of advice each week, so we’re pulling together a selection of our favorites. Here are a few of the most compelling questions from the week and links to hours of advice reading. This week: relationship troubles, parenting in a new town, and child care gone wrong.
Dear Prudence
Love or in Love?: I’m 25, my boyfriend is 27, and we’ve been together for about a year and a half. We’ve had some ups and downs, but I know that I love him and he loves me. Though we’ve said “I love you” to each other, we have never said that we were in love. So, the other night, I brought it up and asked him if he was in love with me. He responded that he loves me and thinks that our love has grown deeper throughout our relationship, but that he thinks that being “in love” is just the feeling of butterflies at the beginning of a relationship and doesn’t really mean anything. He was honest, but at the same time, it felt as if he sort of dodged my question.
I think of loving someone and being in love as the opposite of what he does—that you love someone at the beginning of a relationship, but you grow to be in love as time passes. I’m left feeling hurt and dissatisfied by his response. When I think about the future of our relationship, like imagining us saying our wedding vows one day, it’s important to me that we feel that we’re in love. I’m sure he could tell I was hurt when he said it, and yet, he didn’t do much to reassure me. The conversation ended there, and we went to bed. Could this really just be a difference of semantics, or could it be an indication that he doesn’t feel as deeply about me as I do about him? If it were the other way around, I absolutely would have affirmed something that I knew was important to him. How should I follow up on this conversation?
Care and Feeding
Is It Me? Am I the Problem?: I’m a sole parent (mother), and I recently moved from a big city to a small town with my two elementary school–age kids. My kids could not be more different from each other, but socially, I’m seeing the same pattern with both of them. They mention a child at school whom they are getting on well with. I get in touch with the child’s mom to ask if they want to come over sometime. (Our house is just down the block from school, and I work from home, so we’re easy to schedule.) Lots of wrangling follows about the other family’s busy schedules and their sports calendars and so forth, things get attenuated, and often the play date never happens. (This has been the pattern with my older kid, who is the more socially adept of the two.) Or the child comes over once, everything seems to go really well, but then the parent ices me out, or I offer to host again and the parent objects “Oh, but we need to reciprocate first!,” and they never do.
This has made for incredibly awkward situations at pickup and drop-off and school events; some of these moms just won’t talk to me anymore or make eye contact. The effect seems to be spreading too. Our neighbors, initially welcoming, have begun to give off an air of disdain or even dismay whenever we interact. I’m a fairly shy person and can safely say that I don’t push this stuff too hard. I know you can’t force people to like you or want to spend time with you. And certainly, I don’t expect everyone to welcome a new family with open arms when they’ve got their own routines and social circles established. On the other hand, I’ve never had much trouble making friends or finding my spot in a new place, my kids genuinely seem to be friends with these other children, and I’m starting to feel confused and—I’m embarrassed to admit—kind of paranoid. Are these just the growing pains of being new in a small town?
How to Do It
Wanted and Rejected: How do I live in a sexless relationship? My man would rather jerk off several times a day than have sex with me. I want sex, and I love and desire him. If we have sex once a month, it’s a miracle, and he only does it to shut me up or because he needs 10 seconds of human touch that porn and masturbating can’t give him. Then it’s back to acting as though I don’t exist.
I’ve tried talking about how it hurts me and it hurts us. I’ve even tried writing him letters. He doesn’t care how it affects me or our relationship. He won’t even try to stop, and he can’t see that it’s a problem. I can understand doing it once a week, but he does it several times a day. I am very sexual and I have done anything he has ever wanted or desired without question. Yet he would rather fantasize about other people and self-pleasure over being with me. He does it while I’m in bed next to him. He even goes to another room while I’m right there, wanting and available. There is nothing wrong with his equipment, by the way—it works just fine.
I’m tired of living like this. I want intimacy with the person I love. Instead, I feel like we are just roommates.
Pay Dirt
Child Care: My husband travels for work so I am often alone with our two small children. We have a guest room and are located a bike ride away from two different colleges. Rented rooms here average at least $800. We had success asking students from families we know if they wanted to stay with us in exchange for 10 hours of child care and their own groceries. We ask that they have no overnight guests and maintain reasonable hours. It worked beautifully until “Mia,” a cousin who commutes two hours away to attend class here.
It seemed to work out at first. She would stay with us during the week and go home on the weekends rather than adding miles to her car. It worked for a week. Then Mia became rude and unreliable. She would be late or not inform me of her changes in plans (my coursework is flexible but if you say you are available from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m., you need to be back at 2 p.m.). She made excuses and acted like she was doing me a huge favor. She crossed the line when she brought back a drunk stranger for sex and he “accidentally” went into my daughter’s room. I have never been so frightened in my life. I called the cops and Mia and her mystery man spent the night in jail but no charges were pressed.
Mia no longer lives here. We changed the locks. My in-laws are all up in arms over my “overreaction.” My husband is with me in kicking Mia out and telling his relatives to stuff it but thinks Mia was just one bad apple and argues that our other tenants worked out pretty well. He thinks we should keep renting the room out. I don’t want to. We vetted people that we knew and this still managed to happen. We are fighting about this because my coursework means we need to pay for daycare or a babysitter. Help, what do we do?
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