My Brother Is Having an Affair. I’ve Gotten Perhaps … Too Involved.

Dear Prudence Maybe I can get away with it. Photo illustration by Slate. Photo by Mariia Vitkovska/Getty Images Plus and OlekStock/Getty Images Plus. Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily. Dear Prudence is Slate’s advice column. For this edition, Tony Ho Tran, a Slate senior editor, will be filling in as Prudie. Submit questions here. (It’s anonymous!) Dear Prudence, My brother “Walter” finally came to his senses about what an awful person his wife “Desiree” is and started seeing another woman on the side. He can’t leave Desiree for financial reasons right now, so I’ve been letting him use the vacation condo my wife and I own so he can see his S.O. in peace. The thing is, I haven’t told my wife about it. Walter is working on getting a love nest of his own, so they shouldn’t need to use it much longer. My question is: Do I tell my wife about our little arrangement after Walter is done with the place, or not at all? —Helping Him Out Dear Helping, Tell your wife—now. And stop letting Walter use the condo unless he explicitly agrees to it. Also, deep clean the condo. The condo belongs to her too. You don’t get to secretly turn a jointly-owned property into your brother’s “love nest.” Doing so turns your wife into an unwitting accomplice in a marital affair. Whether or not Desiree is awful is beside the point. Walter is responsible for how he handles his marriage—not you. Perhaps, more importantly: This is the kind of messy, reality-TV-grade gossip that makes relationships better. I know my girlfriend and I would never shut up about this. It would dominate our car rides and breakfast conversations for the rest of our lives. We would be like the couple in The Notebook, holding hands on our deathbed, before turning over and whispering, “God, remember when Walter cheated on Desiree? That was wild.” Why deprive yourself of such relationship-nourishing gossip? Seriously, though, your loyalty to your brother does not outrank your obligation to your wife. You need to tell her the whole story, apologize for not telling her in the first place, and accept that she might be very, very angry at you. 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, I have a chronic illness, and as part of my treatment, a nurse comes to my home every few weeks for two eight-hour-a-day infusions. I was assigned a new nurse a few months back, and we became fast friends. She recently reached out to me with some truly horrible news. Despite being active and fit, she is now fighting her own medical battle that may affect her work, and she wanted me to understand her situation. I was touched that she felt she could reach out and share that information, and we texted back and forth about her situation. In one text, she made it clear that she’s religious and, as I was once extremely religious myself, I replied with several sections of scripture that I found comforting early on during my own illness (I did make that distinction, but it was admittedly subtle and I didn’t tell her that I was no longer religious, as it seemed irrelevant). However, she has since begun sharing daily links to morning prayers that she finds encouraging. I have absolutely no problem receiving the links, and I am very happy she’s finding so much comfort in her chosen faith, but I don’t know what the best response is. I feel that being honest and telling her that I’m no longer religious would be awkward, at best. But I also don’t wish to reply to the content and lead her to believe I’m active in the faith. Is it acceptable to give these links an occasional heart or thumbs up and let her draw her own conclusions? She is dealing with so much right now, and I want to be a comfort first and foremost. Also, do you have any advice on what I should have done initially? Faith was a big part of my journey, and I think it helps a lot of people. She was obviously looking to scripture for comfort, so I wanted to help, but maybe I should have left that for active believers… —Thou Shalt Not Lie (she/her) Dear Thou Shalt Not Lie, You’re a good friend. You didn’t lie. And you didn’t do anything wrong by comforting her in a language you knew she’d understand. I used to have a friend named Fred. He was an 80-something-year-old Texan I met after profiling him for a story about his days as a bullfighter on the Mexican border. Fred was a devout Catholic: went to church every Sunday, prayed a rosary every day, and even had a shrine to the Virgin Mary on his ranch on the exact spot he claimed she had appeared to him. Every time we talked on the phone or in person, he always signed off the same way: “God love ya, kid.” My own relationship to religion has waxed and waned plenty of times throughout the years, oscillating like a fan between “militant atheist” and “Googling seminary school applications.” But, even in times when I felt like my faith was at its lowest ebb, I was still able to connect with those who believed. Fred was no different. I never mentioned my doubting Thomas tendencies to Fred. But when his wife died suddenly, I requested an intention at Mass at my local church in Chicago. I’d call and pray with him over the phone because even though the words I spoke bore little meaning to me, I knew they meant the world to my friend. Later, when Fred ended up in the hospital himself, I flew down to visit him. When we said goodbye, we told each other what we had said so many times before: God love ya. None of that required me to misrepresent exactly what I believed at any given moment. It only required me to understand what mattered to someone I cared about. That’s what you did here. You reached into your own history and offered her something that once comforted you, and is comforting her now. Former believers aren’t forbidden from quoting scripture. Nor are they forbidden from keeping parts of their former faith in their life even if their relationship to that faith has changed. As for the daily prayer links: Yes, an occasional heart or thumbs-up emoji is perfectly acceptable. It’s not a sworn blood oath before the gods. It simply means, “I see you, and I’m thinking of you.” You certainly don’t have to respond to every link. (My girlfriend, who constantly asks me, “Have you seen that Reel I sent you?”, certainly knows this.) I also don’t think that honesty will be nearly as awkward as you fear. If you really want to clear the air, you can say, “I’m so glad that these prayers are comforting. I’m not religious anymore, but my faith was an important part of my own experience, so I understand why they mean so much to you.” Make it simple, honest, and tender. If she asks if you still practice, be honest. Tell her you were once religious, and aren’t anymore—but it was still a big part in shaping who you are today. You get to choose the parts of your faith you want to carry forward: kindness, selflessness, and the capacity to help the people you love. It doesn’t matter whether the way you practice is sharing the occasional scripture reading, a heart emoji, or hearing their voice on the other end of the phone. God love ya, kid. Prudie Wants to Hear From You! Readers often have great suggestions for our letter writers, occasionally disagree with a point Prudie makes, or simply want to provide some additional advice. Each week, Prudie will be replying to some of these comments and suggestions from readers, which will be featured on the site on Fridays for Slate Plus members. Write to us! Or submit a question here. Dear Prudence, I’m 30 years old, and have never been in a serious relationship (let alone a “situationship” that has lasted more than two months). And I feel totally and utterly stuck. I don’t need to get into the nitty-gritty of my childhood trauma—I’ve done extensive therapy and feel like I’ve overcome it. The issue now is not that I’m overly protective of my heart; it’s that I’m stuck in a loop. The older I get, the more I don’t want to waste time. I hope the next person I date will be my last. But I also just need experience. The more I go through the dating process, the more I also become aware of how difficult it is to meet someone who is in the same place as you in life (emotionally, spiritually, and physically), let alone who you feel some form of connection with. I’m exhausted from searching and am forgetting the joy of just getting to know another person because I’m stuck being in the getting-to-know-you phase or “script.” Ultimately, I’ve forgotten how to feel. I’ve forgotten the excitement of a crush—the feeling of butterflies when you think of someone. I miss flirting, wanting someone who actually wants me back, and the comfort of knowing you both are committed to each other. Date two or three seems to be where I get stuck. I’ve reached such a sunken hole of wanting something so desperately that it’s consumed me. The loneliness has become so unbearable, but that very feeling prevents me from the very thing I want. I find myself asking questions like: What makes a person continue to choose another person over and over? What makes them choose a person at all? The last thing I’ll mention is that I’m rarely meeting people I’m genuinely excited about. It’s not that I expect movie-level chemistry or the perfect man. I just miss feeling drawn to someone. I can’t remember the last time I left a date replaying the conversation in my head or hoping they’d text me. At this point, I don’t know if it’s because my standards are unrealistic, dating apps have numbed me, or I simply haven’t yet crossed paths with someone who truly lights me up. Help! —Forever Single (she/her) Dear Forever, 30 years old is young—or, at least, that’s what I tell myself. You still have a lot of time to meet people, date, and find love. But I totally get why it doesn’t feel that way when every disappointing date feels like more evidence you’re falling behind. The main feeling I got from your letter is simple: You’re exhausted. You say you’ve forgotten how to feel, but I think it’s the opposite. You want a relationship so badly that every date becomes a possible answer to the question, “Is this the person who finally chooses me?” That’s an enormous amount of pressure to place on yourself, the other person, and the waiter bringing over your drinks. The thing is: I get it. A few years ago, I left a 10-year relationship with a person I thought I’d spend the rest of my life with. The stakes of some dates felt more like a game of Russian roulette than drinks at an overpriced cocktail bar. But when you’re analyzing every date through a matrix of emotional, spiritual, and physical compatibility with a potential life partner, it’s nearly impossible to find the butterflies. So take a break. You’re wearing yourself out by running on a hamster wheel of dating apps and questions like “So what do you do for work?” It’s not helping and is causing you to put up a lot more resistance to connecting with other people than you realize. So it’s time to get off the hamster wheel. Delete your apps. Give yourself a month or two in which you are not swiping, evaluating, or wondering whether each person you meet could be the person. Spend that time with friends, pursue things that make you feel interesting and alive, and put yourself in recurring social situations where you can know people gradually rather than interview them over cocktails. When you return to dating, you don’t need to know by date three whether someone can meet you emotionally, spiritually, and physically for the next 50 years. Look instead for curiosity, ease, kindness, attraction—and whatever else makes you want to learn one more thing about them. Lastly, experience is grossly overrated when it comes to dating. You aren’t getting your pilot’s license. The person who chooses you won’t be doing so because you’ve perfected the art of asking “So what do you do for work?” They’ll choose you because they want all of you, and you’ll choose them for the same reasons. Don’t date expecting fireworks. Just whether you’d want to get another cup of coffee with them. —Tony Classic Prudie My fiancée “Isla” and I have been together for four years and engaged for almost a year. Our wedding date is set for July 2023. We’re both highly strange, sensitive, particular people who seemed to have found our perfect counterparts in each other. We have the same political opinions, food preferences, and tastes in media—we even share the same uncommon kink. We never went into great detail about our past relationships, which is how we both seemed to prefer it. Recently, however, Isla got on my computer and found the (non-pornographic) pictures I’ve kept of my previous girlfriends. She became upset because of what they all had in common. 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 Dear Prudence Family