My Girlfriend’s “Quirk” Is Costing Us Groceries and Leaving the House a Mess. I’m Not Sure I Can Live Like This.

Dear Prudence It’s driving me mad. 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 07, 20266:00 AM Photo illustration by Slate. Photo by Deagreez/iStock/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. Submit questions here. Dear Prudence, I love my girlfriend. She’s a really good person, and we get along really well. The only thing we disagree about is that she’s kind of a careless person. She leaves the bread bag or the cereal box open on the counter and the milk out overnight. She did this the other week, and the whole carton spoiled in the heat. She doesn’t close cabinets or drawers. She throws trash at the trash can and doesn’t check if it actually went in. The other day she took the laundry off the line and just dropped the clothespins on the ground instead of putting them in the bag. When it rained, all the pins got gunked up with mud. We’ve talked about this many times, and she will try to be more careful for a few days, but she always goes back to her old ways eventually. I know relationships are about “taking the rough with the smooth” (yes, that’s a line from “Bluey,” I have nieces and nephews), and I don’t want to blow up our relationship over little things like this, but it’s starting to drive me mad! Is there anything I can do? —Don’t Cry Over Spoiled Milk Dear Don’t Cry Over Spoiled Milk, Has your girlfriend ever come across the adult ADHD content that is ubiquitous online these days and perhaps found it felt incredibly familiar? I obviously can’t diagnose her, but her forgetfulness and difficulty with staying on task (i.e., leaving the clothespins behind) sound familiar to me. If you think she’d be receptive to the suggestion, try sending her something breezy and funny to start, like this, and asking whether she thinks it might be worth looking into. However, even if she’s diagnosed and medicated, she’s not going to turn into a completely different person (take it from me, a person who believes my ADHD is well treated but still rarely closes a cabinet). So the question you should ask yourself is whether you truly can “take the rough with the smooth.” It’s one thing to believe that “Bluey” has a point, and it’s another thing entirely to feel it and not become filled with rage every time you walk into a room wondering whether there was a home invasion, only to find out that she simply got distracted in the middle of a task and dropped everything on the floor. A mental trick that might help would be to remind yourself of the relatively harmless but “rough” things she puts up with from you, which might temper your annoyance with some gratitude and put the open cereal box into perspective. But ultimately, something that drives you crazy daily isn’t a little thing, and if you stay together long-term, you will inevitably have to weather life’s big things like financial challenges, illnesses, and the loss of loved ones. It’s OK to decide you don’t want a partner whose daily habits drain the energy you could be using for the more serious stuff. 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, relatives “Ana” and “Brad” asked another relative, “June,” to house-sit and look after their dog while they were on vacation. While they were travelling, I visited June for a few hours. While we were hanging out, we realized we hadn’t heard from the dog in a while and that he wasn’t in the house or the yard. Eventually, we found out there was a hole in the backyard fence and the dog had gotten out. When we found him, he had gotten into littered food and was acting sick, so we immediately took him to the vet. The dog wound up being fine, but June had been panicking when we left because she didn’t bring her purse along, so I paid the dog’s vet bill. My problem is: Ana and Brad are back home, and neither they nor June will pay me back for the vet bill. From June’s side of things, it wasn’t her dog; she didn’t know about the hole in the fence and could not have foreseen the dog escaping. From Ana and Brad’s side of things, June was responsible for keeping an eye on the dog and allowed this to happen. (Ana and Brad also apparently did not know about the fence.) Both sides are telling me the other should pay me back, and neither will do so. Personally, I think Ana and Brad should pay me back (especially since June doesn’t have much money), but I’m admittedly annoyed at everyone involved. (June, for her part, will not stop guilt-tripping me because “at least you had the money in the first place to spend.”) What do I do here? —At Least the Dog Is Cute Dear At Least the Dog Is Cute, You’re absolutely right that Ana and Brad should reimburse you. The question is: How close are you to both of them, and would it be worth it to get really adversarial and threaten the relationship in the process by pursuing the money aggressively? There’s a reason people commonly say you shouldn’t lend family and friends money you’re not prepared to lose. But you can recover at least some of it by doing things like giving them re-gifted holiday and birthday presents, and not offering to take them out to meals you might have normally paid for over the next year. Ultimately, though, this is just going to be one of those expensive life lessons. You paid the vet, and in return (in addition to the good karma that comes with making sure the dog was cared for) you got new insight into how unreasonable, irresponsible, and/or cheap these three people are, and you can use that to guide how you interact with them (or don’t) going forward. 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, This situation might have come up before, but if not: Do family members have any obligation to inform someone dating their loved one—in a heterosexual couple—that this person is bisexual (they had a previous same-gender romantic partner that their new opposite gender romantic partner does not know about) or perhaps is still in the closet? The new relationship is serious, and they might get married. What’s the expected role of the family in that situation? —How Much Should We Really Warn? Dear How Much, No obligation. No expected role. Nothing. None. If your family member is anything short of a murderer (and even then, if they’re out of prison, they deserve a fresh start), it is never your business to warn their partner about anything at all. Classic Prudie My daughter is getting married in six weeks. My husband and I are paying for everything. Since the happy couple are both professionals, they have many personal and work friends they want to invite. The venue holds 200 people, so my daughter, the groom’s mother, and I agreed six months ago upon the following division of guests: 50 each for the MIL and me, and 100 for the bride and groom. When we recently started addressing invitations, MIL reported that she had sent out “save the date” cards to 120 people! Advice Dating and Relationships Dear Prudence