My Daughter Swears There Are “No Good Men Left” to Date. I Know What Her Real Problem Is.

Dear Prudence Advice by Enter your email to receive alerts for this author. Sign in or create an account to better manage your email preferences. Unsubscribe from email alerts Are you sure you want to unsubscribe from email alerts for Jenée Desmond-Harris? Sept 14, 20266:00 AM Photo illustration by Slate. Photo by MangoStar_Studio/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, I love my daughter but she has the worst taste in men. Put her in a room with 10 good men and one creep, she will run right up to the creep and let him ruin her life. I’ve watched her get her heart broken again and again: It hurt when she was in high school, but as an adult, it is not just her heart getting broken—it’s her car, apartment, finances, and career. In college, her boyfriend smashed up her car after she let him drive it. He did it again after we replaced it and made her promise not to let anyone drive it. She still stayed with him. She has let one leech after another live off her until her bank account is empty. She has quit jobs to follow a boyfriend of a few months across the country only to break up before her bags are unpacked. She has moved home five times since she graduated college because her love life ruined her actual one. My husband and I help her get on her feet, try to get her in therapy, and wait for the next one. My husband says we are lucky our daughter hasn’t gotten pregnant yet and gotten permanently tied to one of these jerks. My daughter is nearing 30. She thinks she is just unlucky and bemoans there are no good men left. I told her she needs to look at the common denominator in all her relationships—herself. That started a serious fight. My daughter was currently living with her sister and working with the man her sister was dating. My daughter was cheating with this guy. When her sister discovered it, she threw my daughter out on her ear. My daughter then lost her job. She wants to come home again. We told her no. Our family has imploded over this. My daughter has called us both crying—she made a mistake and is currently living in her car. We sent her money, but where does it end? —Heartbroken Mom Dear Heartbroken, You’re obviously entitled to tell your daughter she can’t live with you, and I can understand why you’d be upset with her for cheating with her sister’s boyfriend. But why are you so mad at her for her history of choosing crappy boyfriends? Nothing she’s done has harmed you, and cutting her off is not going to help her make better choices. I encourage you and your husband to sit down and talk about your goals for your relationship with her (not for her relationships with men) and whether you think punishing her for her bad romantic choices by letting her live in her car will get you there. I don’t think it will. I don’t know all the details, so disregard this if it doesn’t feel like a fit, but would it be worth reflecting on what her relationship with you and her father was like growing up? Is there anything there that might represent the beginning of a pattern where she seeks love from people who don’t respect her and treat her poorly? Did she go through anything especially difficult that harmed her self-esteem? If there’s anything you need to apologize for or heal from as a family, now is the time. —Jenée Desmond-Harris From: Help! I’m Being Shamed for Not Being an “Activist” on Social Media. (August 12th, 2021). 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, My sister is not a good person: a woman in her 40s with older children she neglects; in and out of jail, probation violations and a drug addiction; stolen things to sell for drugs (her children’s belongings, my deceased grandmother’s jewelry, my pain meds from when I had a C-section); manipulates, lies, and ignores us until she needs money. She only ever contacts me to ask me for money. Always. Never anything else. But my parents love her all the same, and let her live in an apartment my father owns even though she doesn’t pay rent on time or any of the bills, and it falls on my parents to keep it up. They always get her out of trouble no matter the cost, and I did too at one point, until I stopped letting her take advantage of me and stopped returning her phone calls. My parents have gotten ill because they worry for her, and she has damaged her already weak immune system with drugs so much that now she’s hospitalized and she may not make it. My parents are beside themselves but … I feel indifferent. I only care about their health if she does pass. My father suffered a mild stroke from the stress at one point in time. My mother has become depressed since my sister was admitted. My mother wants me to reconcile, but I just can’t. I distanced myself from my sister a long time ago and prepared myself for the inevitable. The logical answer is if she’s going to pass, what harm is there to tell her I love her? But … I can’t even bring myself to pick up the phone to call. Do I fake it for my parents sake? And if she doesn’t pass—I don’t want to give her the impression I want her in my life again. — Not My Sister’s Keeper Dear Not My Sister’s Keeper, Everything you’ve described sounds like a direct consequence of her drug addiction. Can you separate who she is from what the drugs made her do? Maybe reading up on the impact of drug abuse and the stories of people who have struggled with it might help you see that what she’s done to you is not personal and not what she would have done if she were sober.That doesn’t mean you’d ever be obligated to put up with it, of course. But she can’t really harm you now. Picture the person she was before she ever used drugs, and if you love that person, go and tell her. —J.D.H. From: Help! My Daughter Is Marrying a White Man Against My Wishes. (August 14th, 2021). Dear Prudence, I am 45, male, and a social progressive. My dad, 78, is a conservative, and becomes more and more conservative as he ages, going further down the rabbit hole of conspiracy theories and white nationalism pushed on right-wing websites and cable “news” networks. My dad is a good man (really) and I dearly love him. However, as he gets closer to dying (which I hope is a loooong way off), he seems increasingly determined to “convert” me over to his way of thinking and looking at the world, maybe as a way to ensure his legacy(?) lives on after he’s gone. I’ve never unloaded on my dad over his quite frankly racist attitudes. But the other day I did. I just snapped. I’m mad, his feelings are hurt, we’re not speaking, and so forth. I’m not going to change, nor is my dad, and that’s OK. But this is not how I want to exist with my dad in the final years of his life.’ —What to Do Dear What to Do, I’m sure he wants you in his life too. A lot of people choose to maintain relationships with their families by not talking about “politics” (a category of topics that for some reason has been expanded to include any and all bigotry). You can let him know that this is the requirement for spending time with you, and that you will cut him off again if you hear another racist word out of his mouth. There are a LOT of other things to talk about. If he’s indeed a “good man” (your term for a racist, not mine) who loves you, this shouldn’t be too much to ask. —J.D.H. From: Help! My Friend’s Husband Started Texting Me on the Side About Their Marital Issues.(August 17th, 2021). Classic Prudie My wife of 20 years has informed me she’s not so interested in sex any more (maybe quarterly?) and that perhaps I should get a girlfriend on the side. Only this would have to be super discreet, no sleepovers, no hosting, and none of our friends or family or kids can ever find out. We live in a small town so it looks like any girlfriend will probably have to be long distance. Does that sound reasonable? 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