I think my sister-in-law is trying to secretly poison me.

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.

Thanks! Your question has been submitted.

Dear Prudence,

My husband hates hearing stories for a second time. I’ll come home from work and tell him about something that happened, and then a week later I’ll tell the same story at dinner with friends. Everyone else enjoyed the story (several people were crying, they were laughing so hard), but he tried to change the subject and hurry me along the whole time. Then when we got home, he complained about having had to listen to it again. Isn’t hearing the same stories just something that comes with being married? For what it’s worth, he has spent the last month complaining about the same issue at work, so it’s not like I don’t hear repeated content on a regular basis, too. Please tell me who is being unreasonable here.

—Legitimately Good at Telling Stories, I Promise

Dear Telling Stories,

As someone who loves to tell the same stories over and over again to a new audience (apologies to my friends, family, and Slate colleagues!), I feel you! A good story is a good story, and deserves to be shared far and wide. This is your husband’s problem—not yours. Perhaps the next time this happens at a dinner party he can excuse himself to the bathroom, put himself to use clearing plates or refilling wine or water for the table, or, you know, politely tune-out, which is what married people have done in this situation for centuries. Keep talking; we love to hear it.

Get Even More Advice From the Dear Prudence Podcast

Dear Prudence,

I’m a 31-year-old married bi ciswoman living in the Northeast, and I need help with work-life balance. My entire career has been working in outdoor education, initially leading extended backcountry trips and nature-based programs for teens and young adults. For the past five years, I’ve been on the admin side of things, and in my current position for the past three. While my role is office-based, I still have overnight on-call responsibilities where I stay on-site at least once a week in the spring, summer, and fall seasons. My work weeks regularly exceed 40 hours, especially during the summer. The work is intense and sometimes emotionally draining, but I also find it really fulfilling and love the community at my workplace. My spouse has a consistent 9-to-5 and is incredibly supportive and flexible with my erratic schedule.

Then this past weekend, I visited a college friend who is due to have her first child at the end of October, the first one of my friends to become a parent. She and I are very different people in so many ways, but have a deep love and respect for each other’s life choices and had really interesting conversations about hopes and fears about both of our careers and her upcoming major life transition. Driving home after that weekend, I started thinking more about parenthood. I have never felt an intrinsic desire to become pregnant or become a parent, and my spouse shares my ambivalence. We’ve gone on so many adventures where we have literally said to each other, “We couldn’t have done this with a kid!” But I am wondering now if I have ever truly given myself permission to explore my true feelings about parenthood because my life has never been structured to support it—it just seemed like a logistical impossibility.

I realized that whether or not I decide to have a child, I want a life that reasonably has the space to support one if I choose to; and if I choose not to, the space to fully enjoy that freedom.
Furthermore, living as if we are preparing to become parents—actually making wills, being more intentional and proactive with financial planning, and prioritizing the house projects we’ve been putting off–—would also set us up well to enjoy childfree life. I brought all this to my spouse, who was in full support of this mission and a little excited to seriously consider what it would look like if our family included a baby. He says he still doesn’t feel a strong internal desire to be a parent but would be honored to parent with me. So my next step is figuring out how to reformat my life such that a baby could even be a possibility.

My question is: How do I do that? Do I bring all this to my supervisor (who is also a friend—I know, everything is enmeshed) and lay out my thinking and see if what I’m asking for is feasible within my current role? Should I start looking for another job? Given my skill set and the area I live in, that would probably mean higher education, which I’m not not interested in, but those jobs are few and far between and pretty competitive. Do both? Another option I haven’t thought of? Is this whole project just a new, more baroque way to delay actually grappling with my decision to be a parent or not?

—Is There More to Life Than Work?

Dear More to Life,

1. Help! My Wife Just Told Me I’d Always Be “Second Place” to Her First Love. He’s Long Dead.

2. I Think My Sister Is Trying to Exploit Her Kids for Domestic Labor

3. My Mother-in-Law Has a Very Weird Belief About Our Daughter’s “Purpose”

4. This Content is Available for Slate Plus members only

   We Just Caught My 7-Year-Old in a Series of Ridiculous Lies. I’m Extremely Concerned.

Ok, first of all, slow down. Like, WAY down. It’s great that you are considering becoming a parent, but you haven’t even gotten past that step—and I don’t think that reorganizing everything for a possibility of a desire is the best way to approach this. First, decide with your partner, over many discussions and a leisurely amount of time, if you want to seriously try to get pregnant. Neither one of you seem that certain about wanting a kid, and it sounds like you are fairly young (I am basing this on the fact that you only have one friend with a baby at this point). Get firmly on the same page before you go any further. You are thinking way too many steps ahead in a process that is filled with uncertainty, and no matter what happens, you have to be 100 percent invested and in agreement.

If you decide to proceed, then go ahead and try. But it may take a while to get pregnant. You could miscarry. You could face fertility issues. I’m not saying this to be a downer, but to be realistic. Trying to plot out a career path for an imaginary baby you don’t even know you want, or can have, is truly putting the cart before the horse. There is no need to “reformat” your life at this point.

On some of your other points: Yes, do get wills! Yes, do meet with a financial planner. No, do not talk to your supervisor at this point. But do maybe talk to a therapist about this desire to map out life so far in advance. One thing I can promise you is that, if you do end up having a child, all the planning in the world won’t prevent your world from turning upside down on occasion—in the best ways and in many challenging ones. That is one thing you can count on.

Catch up on this week’s Prudie.

More Advice From Slate

A cousin of mine recently died abruptly at the age of 40. We were only a few years apart in age, and although we weren’t close, we grew up in the same small town and had a few friends in common as kids. Her immediate family did not share the cause of death publicly and only shared with my family that she had become abruptly ill before she died. It’s not inconceivable that she may have overdosed on drugs either accidentally or on purpose. In the often small-minded community that we are from, either could be cause for scorn, so I don’t blame the family for being tight-lipped about it. However, it’s really hard to find closure without knowing what happened, and having been “protected” from family truths as a child, I am sensitive about the possibility of finding out from the rumor mill instead.

No Byline Policy

Editorial Guidelines

Corrections Policy

Source