Dear Prudence is online weekly to chat live with readers. Here’s an edited transcript of this week’s chat. (R. Eric Thomas is filling in as Prudie for Jenée Desmond-Harris while she’s on parental leave.)
R. Eric Thomas: Hi everyone! I wish to congratulate those of you with dogs on getting through the semi-annual Fireworks Freakout. We’re in the clear until New Year’s. What’s on your minds this week?
Q. I’m Not King Midas: I am engaged to somebody I thought would be a wonderful forever partner. They are witty, good looking, dress well and have a “career” working at a not-for-profit related to animal rights. Life could not be better, right? Well, no. Recently I happened to be in the bathroom working on maintaining my beard when they ran in to use the toilet. I didn’t want to see that! What’s worse, when they went to wipe (after peeing?), they pulled out a 5-foot length of toilet paper, folded it over a bunch of times, wiped one time and flushed it away. This sparked a conversation about wastefulness, because I cannot afford to marry somebody who acts like they live on a golden barge as the queen of the Nile. I carefully explained how one square of toilet paper is fine for wiping, showed them how you can take that same square, wipe once, then fold it and wipe again, then fold it one last time—that’s THREE wipes/square of toilet paper.
They said I was being unreasonable! I believe in compromise so I bought them their own one ply toilet paper, they can use it all they want, but still they waste my more expensive name brand toilet paper. I suspect this habit stems from their practice of stealing toilet paper from work, so they have no idea about how to be a bit thrifty. How can I get them to come around? I cannot have a life of this. What if their relatives come by and are just as wasteful?
A. You should drop this and let your partner do whatever they want to do in the bathroom. You put “career” in quotation marks so my suspicion is that you either don’t take their work seriously or you make more than them and feel an additional financial burden. If the latter is the case, you should have a budget conversation prior to getting engaged where you both share your financial philosophies and try to work through any differences in the ways you relate to money. This isn’t about TP. Even with inflation, the price difference between a store brand one-ply and a name brand ultra-soft is not going to send you into ruin. So make a budget for house supplies that you can both agree to and stop trying to control your partner’s wiping.
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Q. Desk Necked: My husband and I are both extremely lucky to be able to work remotely indefinitely, and even more fortunate that we each have a dedicated office space in our home. Despite these advantages, he has been driving me absolutely crazy for the past two years with the way he spreads his workday across our house. He takes meetings while making lunch in the kitchen, lying down in our bedroom, or hanging out in the living room. I get it—it’s the big advantage of working from home! But his presence everywhere makes me feel stuck in my own little space with permanent desk neck from trying to stay out of his way. If I bring it up I think he’ll overcorrect by making a set schedule where we’re each allowed to be out of our spaces, or something equally regimented. Or is that the right solution?
A. Try going to your husband with a solution already in mind that isn’t so regimented. In the same way that some people don’t bring their phones or TVs into their bedrooms, you might want to suggest that you declare some spaces in your house work-free zones. When you talk to him, think through your reasons for not wanting him to work wherever he wants. Do you feel like you can’t take a meeting in the kitchen while he’s there? Or do you just not want anyone meeting in the kitchen? Either is fine, but it will help you to communicate what you want and why you want it if you’ve already done the processing on your own. Maybe the kitchen is your “break room” space–no meetings, no calls, no laptops. Maybe it’s all of one floor. See what benefit he’s getting from working all over and work on a compromise from there.
Q. Stuck in Pandemic Limbo: My sister lives within a day’s driving distance and has a relatively new baby (6 months). She wants us to visit her, but is still very cautious about COVID and she is not comfortable seeing us unless we wear a mask (N95 or KN95) while indoors or within several feet of her baby outdoors, even though her baby would be vaccinated by the time of the visit. She would have us stay separately and visit during the day, due to her COVID concerns. I have school-age kids who would love to see their cousin, but I feel like it’s hard to interact with their cousin when the main concern is about COVID risk (“put your mask back on,” “don’t eat near the baby”) and not about the relationship. I wear a mask all day at work, our kids wore them all school year, and we still wear them indoors in public places, plus we are all vaccinated/ boosted, so we are highly in favor of COVID public health precautions. But it doesn’t feel good to me for COVID risk to indefinitely define our family’s close relationships, and I find my sister’s level of illness-wariness exhausting. Should we go on this trip?
A. I think you should cut your sister some slack here. It doesn’t sound like these precautions are indefinite. She has a 6-month-old and is probably trying to control as much as she can in an uncontrollable phase of life. If you find your sister’s wariness exhausting, skip the trip. Like many new parents, she will probably feel differently in a year. But I doubt that school-age children are going to have a harder time relating to a baby with masks versus without masks, especially if they’re still wearing them in other places. So, it sounds like this is just about your sister’s boundaries. If the boundaries don’t make you feel good, wait until they change.
Q. Forever Alone: I’m buying my ticket for my best friend’s birthday getaway but I’m having second (third?) thoughts about going on this trip. I knew this from the beginning, but I will be the only single person on this trip. While my friend assures me that it should be fine, it’s a big enough group, etc., part of me wants to back out because do I really want to spend a vacation feeling more alone than I already do being surrounded by couples? But how do I say no when things have already started to be paid for (and this isn’t the first birthday trip I’ve said no to)?
A. If this is an experience you’re sure is going to make you feel uncomfortable, it’s best to back out as soon as possible. Your best friend wants you around and wants to celebrate with you, but if you’re not going to be in a place, emotionally, to fully enjoy yourself, you owe it to yourself to opt out. I’m curious, however, if you’ve had other experiences with this group or other groups of couples that compounded your feeling of being alone. If not, you may want to go just to test your feelings. It may turn out that the trip doesn’t feel like a bunch of pairs and one singleton, but rather different groups hanging out, sharing common interests. You also might want to think about inviting a friend to go with you as a plus-one. There are a lot of advantages to vacationing on your own–your own bed, command over your schedule, etc.–but if they’re not going to bring you joy, then bring someone else platonically and see if that changes things.
Q. Trying to Be Accommodating: My husband and I do not have children, but we are friends with many couples who do, and we enjoy spending time with them and their kids. One particular couple used to do a hiking weekend with us every year before they had children. Once the kids came along, they wanted to continue this tradition and bring the kids. Prudence, I love spending time with our friends’ children, but this trip is not a kid-friendly experience. Last year, their kids, ages 2 and 4, cried almost the entire time as they were dragged through the heat on rough terrain for 8 hours where their parents expected them to walk most of it, and I didn’t blame them for hating it. It ultimately wasn’t fun for anyone. I do not want to go on this trip this year, and I’d like to find a way to be honest about why, without having them think we don’t want to spend time with their kids. I tried suggesting to them that we do a different, shorter day trip on some easier trails nearby because the kids would enjoy that more. They replied by saying they wish to teach their kids “stamina” and that we can “give them breaks and they’ll be fine.” I disagree and think the trip will be a disaster again, and the 3-hour drive to get there isn’t really worth it. Is there any other polite way of eliminating this trip, at least until the kids are a bit older?
A. Other folks may disagree, but the idea of taking a 2- and 4-year-old on an 8-hour hike over rough terrain sounds just awful to me, and I struggle to understand, developmentally, how this is going to benefit the kids. But to each their own! Since your friends aren’t amenable to doing a more reasonable trip, you can either cancel for your own reasons (you just don’t feel like it, your plans changed, etc) or you can tell him that their kids’ displeasure changed the trip for you. Obviously, Door No. 2 is a bit of a nuclear option. But I’m suggesting it because it’s the truth and it doesn’t fault the kids. When the four of you would do this trip prior to the kids, you were all adults capable of tending to your own needs. Turning the trip into a teachable moment about stamina makes you a part of a lesson you didn’t sign up for. It’s not about not wanting to be around the kids, it’s about not wanting to be part of the kids’ endurance trial. Do I think this option is going to go over well? Frankly, no, I do not. But you’ve already tried to offer compromises and to express your reservations. At this point, either being honest with your friends or backing out and sorting it all out later in life might be the best paths forward.
Q. Re: I’m Not King Midas: If King Midas doesn’t want to see his partner use the toilet, and they feel entirely comfortable using it in front of him, then it sounds like they have bigger fish to fry. Also, it sounds like perhaps the partner has different anatomy from Midas–there are many people for whom it is absolutely necessary to wipe after peeing and I’m surprised that he didn’t know this. It seems to me that the partner should run away as fast as they can. However, the overall hyperbole of this question (really, 5 feet of toilet paper? and using one square 3 times for #2?) make it hard to take seriously.
A. Yeah, I think after they settle this TP imbroglio, this couple is still going to need to work through other issues. I hope that the LW can work on their maturity and respect his fiancée’s autonomy and job.
Q. Re: I’m Not King Midas: “I carefully explained how one square of toilet paper is fine for wiping, showed them how you can take that same square, wipe once, then fold it and wipe again, then fold it one last time—that’s THREE wipes/square of toilet paper.” If you’re lecturing a significant other on toilet paper usage, your problem is not toilet paper.
A. Hello! Yes, this says it exactly. There’s some control stuff here that I think LW needs to work on. Let people pee in peace!
Q. Re: I’m Not King Midas: Eric completely missed this, but if your fiancée is a woman, then, yes, she needs to wipe after peeing. There’s a lot more to wipe off. And one square is not enough, although she could probably go much easier on the 5-foot amount. And, by the way, one-ply just means people are going to use twice as much.
A. I felt it was obvious that the fiancée’s toilet paper usage was justified, whether for physiological reasons or just because that’s how they roll. I do wish I had made a point that one-ply is the devil’s paper—but I don’t want Big TP coming after me.
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Classic Prudie
My wife and I have been happily married for more than a decade. We saw a therapist together for a couple of years; my wife wasn’t interested in sex, and I was. We got much better at it. Then, a column of yours from a year or so ago got us even further ahead: You advised a woman to schedule a weekly sex date with her husband and hoped both of them came to look forward to it. We did that, and it’s been working well. Except my wife prefers to be drunk to do the deed. She barely drinks at all otherwise…
