Help! I Stepped Up for My Pregnant Friend After Her Boyfriend Left Her. Now I Have to Share Some Bad News.

Dear Prudence Photo illustration by Slate. Images by Prostock-Studio/iStock/Getty Images Plus and Vdant/iStock/Getty Images Plus. Our advice columnists have heard it all over the years—so we’re diving into the Dear Prudence archives to share classic letters with our readers. Submit your own questions to Prudie here. Dear Prudence, When my best friend fell pregnant unexpectedly, her boyfriend confessed he was actually married. He initially said he would get a divorce, but then announced during her second trimester that he’d only stay with her if she gave the baby up for adoption. Needless to say, she dumped him and is preparing for single motherhood. I have attended antenatal appointments with her and have been helping her prepare for the baby’s arrival, and generally doing most things a father would be doing. She asked me to be with her during the birth, and of course I happily said I would. Due to some previously unforeseen risks, however, she is now getting induced four weeks before the actual due date. And that’s a problem. The problem is, it is on a date where my husband and I are meant to be in Thailand. We booked the cheapest tickets and accommodation online last year so nothing is refundable. We can’t even get more leave after this until next year and it’s been incredibly difficult to arrange leave from work at the same time. I would like to go because it’s a significant trip for me and my husband—the first proper break we have since we got married—and a chance to get away from the drama we’ve been experiencing in our own families. I’m scared of breaking the news to my friend, who might feel hurt and angry. Am I a terrible person for wanting to go on this vacation? —Missing Out of My Goddaughter’s Birth Dear Missing Out, As your friend is experiencing, life presents us with many unexpected twists and turns. One of them is that her drama-filled pregnancy is ending a month early, and unfortunately you can’t be there for the birth. Your friend is going to need a big support network to help her care for her child, so it can’t just consist of you. I hope she has a family member or other close friend who can step up and attend the birth with her. You should not put off this trip. As much as you want to help your friend, it’s important for her to recognize you are not a surrogate father. As for the actual father, I hope your friend hired an attorney so that child support payments will be starting a month earlier than expected. —Emily Yoffe From: Help! A Woman Insulted Me for Adopting—Only My Daughter Isn’t Adopted, She’s Mixed-Race. (April 30th, 2012). Please keep questions short (<150 words), and don‘t submit the same question to multiple columns. We are unable to edit or remove questions after publication. Use pseudonyms to maintain anonymity. Your submission may be used in other Slate advice columns and may be edited for publication. Dear Prudence, Recently I took my 19-year-old niece for our first trip to New York City. One night a man approached us on the street, and when we said we were from Los Angeles he said he wanted to move there to get into the porn industry. I thought it was strange but shrugged it off. I figured he approached us for the most obvious reason: My niece is 6 foot 2 inches and beautiful. She seemed paranoid about it, and later she confessed that she had made a porn film that was available on a popular porn site. When she left the hotel room to smoke, I checked the site and my heart sank when I saw her having sex with a porn actor. She told me a former friend was using social media to bully her about this. She has long been written off as a tattooed, weed-smoking, wild child. But entering the porn scene is taking things to another level. I don’t want to be the only person who knows her secret. It’s a heavy burden and I’m angry that she put it on me. But if I tell her mother or the rest of the family, it’s just going to lead to strife. —She’s Not Ready for Her Close-Up Dear Not,You are the one adult to whom this wild child feels she can unburden herself about the debut (and let’s hope finale) of her new career. So instead of being angry about the burden she’s put on you, step up and help your niece. She has made a terrible decision that she now sees exposes her to the fantasies of creeps and the venom of former friends. She is young and gorgeous, but unless she extricates herself from this ugly industry, in a few years she’ll be another used-up female who’s got a lot of degrading and indelible images of herself floating around. I spoke to Chris Hoofnagle of the UC-Berkeley School of Law to see if your niece, especially since she is still a teenager, has any legal remedy for getting the video off the porn site. He said that since she doesn’t own the copyright, and if she was not a minor when she filmed it, she has virtually no recourse. As for the nasty friend, assuming the social medium used to spread the news is Facebook, your niece should report this to them—they have an anti-bullying policy—with the hope of getting the offending comments taken down. She should also block the former friend and up her privacy settings to the max. Let’s hope your niece used a pseudonym for her theatrical adventure. If not, information-security expert Andrea M. Matwyshyn of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania says your niece might consider changing all or part of her name so that search engines don’t forever link her with it. I’m sure your niece has heard a million lectures from disappointed adults. But maybe if you take her hand and tell her how concerned you are, she will listen this time. If you think informing your sister will result only in recrimination and further alienation, reassure your niece that you’ve decided that for now you will keep her confidence. Say that you think that awful New York stranger was a version of the Ghost of Christmas Future, and it’s time for her to make sure a miserable future doesn’t come to pass. Perhaps your statuesque niece has what it takes to be in front of the camera in less scandalous circumstances. If not, tell her you want to help her turn her focus on schooling or the kind of work that won’t leave her terrified that every stranger who gives her a second look knows about her secret life. —E.Y. From: Help! My 19-Year-Old Niece Has Made a Porno. Should I Tell Her Mother? (May 3rd, 2012). Dear Prudence, My new wife, “Brenda,” and I are supposed to be on our honeymoon but instead, she is sharing her bed with someone else. I know it sounds ridiculous, but should I be worried? She is extremely close to her best friend, “Sadie”—they were young women together in the city. Their friendship involves sleepovers, and sometimes Brenda would spend the night with Sadie instead of me. Some of my friends, including females, said they think Brenda and Sadie are lesbians. I asked Brenda once if they did anything sexual during these sleepovers and Brenda laughed it off and told me they just watched movies and drank wine. Sadie had a long-distance boyfriend who she was very much in love with (and who I suspected was married man). The day after our wedding Sadie’s boyfriend died. Instead of leaving for Hawaii with me, Brenda ran to Sadie’s side. I’m not sure how long she intends to stay. Do women really do this? Should I be glad that my new wife is so loyal to her best friend, or should I be thinking about contacting a divorce lawyer? —Alone in the Marriage Bed Dear Alone,There you were, about to board the plane, expecting in a few hours you would be draped with leis and heading to the hotel to get laid. Now it sounds as if you should be watching The Descendants and comforting yourself that George Clooney’s character is having a worse time being in Hawaii than you are not being there. The issue is not whether “women” don’t go on their honeymoons because a friend has an emergency, but that Brenda didn’t go on hers with you. You say your friends have suggested Brenda and Sadie are lovers. Maybe your pals collectively have salacious minds, or perhaps they just have good gaydar. After all, you had enough unease about Brenda and Sadie’s sleeping arrangements to put the question directly to your beloved. You got an answer, but it sounds as if you weren’t entirely convinced. It’s also odd that either you didn’t feel comfortable enough to bring up your suspicions about Sadie’s relationship, or that Brenda didn’t trust you enough to confirm that Sadie’s boyfriend was mostly absent because it’s hard to slip away from one’s wife. But now that you’ve found out how easy it was for your wife to slip away from you, you appear to have lost all ability to have a conversation with her. It’s not unreasonable that Brenda postponed her honeymoon because of Sadie’s loss. Before your bride crawled into the bed of her friend, obviously you two should have discussed delaying your departure for, say, a week, then agreed to check in with each other daily about how things were looking. (It would also make sense for Sadie to get a fold-out couch.) You are indicating that you and Brenda are so incommunicado that it’s made you ready to hum Aloha ‘Oe while on hold with the divorce lawyer. But before blowing up your marriage like Kīlauea, it would be a good idea to take care of the basics first. In your case that would mean seeing if your new wife will return your call and tell you what’s up. —E.Y. From: Help! My Wife Ditched Our Honeymoon To Be With Her Best Friend. (April 26th, 2012). Classic Prudie My childhood best friend “John” moved in with me (Nick he/him) and my girlfriend “Meg” after getting evicted. We were always close before, but living with him has been a whole new experience. Never miss new Slate Advice columns Get the latest from Prudie and our columnists in your inbox each weekday, plus special bonus letters on Saturdays. Advice Dating and Relationships Family