Dear Prudence is Slate’s advice column. Delia Cai is filling in as Prudie for Jenée Desmond-Harris while she’s on parental leave. Submit questions here.

Dear Prudence,

I spent Thanksgiving at my boyfriend’s parents’ house, where I met his family for the first time since we’ve been dating for four months. I took part in a thing his sisters and female cousins have done for the past several years, where we weighed ourselves before and after dinner to see who ate the most. We also took pictures of our tummies. To everyone’s surprise I won, and got to wear a crown one of them made of glittery fake drumsticks. I had a great time and the whole thing helped me feel really comfortable with his family. They definitely thought I was cooler than my boyfriend’s brother’s new girlfriend, who didn’t participate.

But when I told my friends about it, a couple of them said it sounded perverted, like something some people have a fetish for! I would feel very betrayed if this was true. Not knowing, I don’t know how to feel. I’m especially worried about all those photos floating around out there on various people’s phones. The most revealing ones of me have my top rolled up, still covering my bra, and my jeans undone, but no underwear or anything showing. But even that’s not particularly flattering. The supposed reason for this tradition being limited to young women is because the guys would win too easily. Should I say anything to my boyfriend or anyone else? What about next year?

—Stuffed & Stewing

Dear Stewing,

Hmm. I’m not personally getting a pervert or fetish vibe from this. The weigh-a-thon sounds like a silly family tradition—albeit one that could potentially be problematic if, say, a participant has a complicated relationship with being weighed or otherwise evaluated on their food intake. But that doesn’t sound like it was an issue for you.

If you’re uncomfortable with the idea of having photos of yourself saved on your boyfriend’s family members’ phones, it’s reasonable to ask your boyfriend to request their deletion. Next year, you could make it clear that you prefer not to be photographed while partaking in the tradition. (If either of those requests are met with resistance, then you might have a problem.) But from my point of view, I think your friends are being judgmental. Families all have their own set of norms and traditions around bodies and food; in many Asian families, for example, it’s normal to make a show out of how much you’ve eaten as a sign of respect to your host. Ask your boyfriend to contextualize the tradition so you can better understand his family, but trust your intuition if you genuinely don’t believe there was anything weird afoot.

Dear Prudence,

My girlfriend has a friend, “Mason,” who has zero filter. The most random crap will come out of his mouth, and then he acts like a kicked puppy for the rest of the day if you respond like a normal human being and don’t think it is funny. I am not sorry. If the first thing out your mouth to “good morning” is “I am pregnant and want to kill myself,” there are some wires crossed. I don’t know if Mason is on the spectrum or just trying to be edgy, but Mason crossed a serious line when my cousin came to visit.

Her boyfriend committed suicide last year and she was the one that found the body. She has had it really rough and frequently has violent nightmares. I told Mason to lay off my cousin and warned him about the situation. And what is the first phrase out of Mason when my cousin comes down for dinner? “Hi, I want to kill myself by sticking a gun in my mouth.” My cousin starts to scream and cry, Mason is babbling even more bullshit, my girlfriend is making excuses, and I tell Mason to get the hell out or he really would wish he was dead.

Now my girlfriend and I are fighting because I overreacted in her opinion, and I don’t think she is reacting enough. Mason is able to keep a job and obviously can keep his mouth shut with his bosses and dealing with the public. It was a shitty move intended to cause a bad reaction from my cousin, and she doesn’t deserve to deal with that after everything has been through. I don’t want Mason in our apartment anymore and if he tries this shit again, we are going to have more than words. My girlfriend claims I am being unfair and she and Mason have been friends since high school, I don’t get to make her choose. I love her, but this is unacceptable. So what now?

—No Filter

Dear No Filter,

Whether it was intentional or not, Mason deeply upset your cousin, and you’re right to be offended by his behavior. It sounds like you’re boiling this situation down to two options: Either you have to put up with Mason for the rest of your relationship, or you have to break off the relationship because your girlfriend doesn’t want to “choose.” But there’s a third option, which is to simply decouple this part of your social lives.

If your girlfriend chooses to maintain a friendship with someone who isn’t to your taste, that’s her prerogative. But there’s no law that says you’re required to hang out with this person or invite them into your home. Plenty of people have that one friend (or two, or three…) whom their partners actively dislike, so they keep that part of their circles separate. Tell your girlfriend that you respect her decision to stay friends with Mason, but that you’re no longer able to socialize with him for the time being—nor do you plan on introducing anyone you care about to him. You may have to negotiate the point on Mason’s ability to be in your shared apartment—perhaps you’d at least like a head’s up when he’s coming over, so that you can leave. But if your girlfriend is insistent that you must be besties with her bestie, that’s a different issue. The agreement here should be that no one gets to dictate friendship choices; you can’t forbid her from hanging out with Mason, but she can’t force you to do so, either.

Dear Prudence,

I have been volunteering for a charity for over a decade. I work there three times a week and often take over positions well above my pay grade (as I am not getting paid at all), including coordinating with insurance after a fire broke out and the director was on pregnancy leave. A paid position got opened and I applied for the job.
Instead, the charity went to a kid with no experience who was so wet behind the ears they dripped. The reason I was given for the decision against me was that I was over qualified and didn’t really “need” the job because of my personal wealth.

The added insult to injury is this kid is clueless and constantly needs hand holding. Our Thanksgiving turkey drive was so chaotic and uncoordinated, I actually had to leave my dinner early because I was fielding so many calls from other volunteers. I basically spent my Thanksgiving fixing the mess and not one person thanked me. They just consoled the kid and told them to call me if they needed help to learn the ropes! This just sticks in my craw. I feel so ignored and underappreciated after all my years of service to this organization, and I’m thinking I should leave. Is it even worth talking to the higher-ups? We aren’t friends but have been working together for years. I love the cause, but there are plenty other ones in the area.

—No Thank You

Dear No Thank You,

I’m curious about what motivated you to apply for that job. It doesn’t sound like you need or want a paycheck so much as a formal recognition of the work you’ve been doing for this charity. So I don’t think your issue is with this new hire (though their ineptitude does sound frustrating!); I think you simply desire some (well-deserved) acknowledgment of both your dedication and your seniority.

Talk to the higher-ups about whether there’s a way to formalize your role with the charity, perhaps through an unpaid “promotion” to a heftier “job” title that is tied to clear responsibilities and power. Tell them that it’s important for you to feel like part of the team after you’ve spent the last decade working together, particularly when you are called upon so often in emergencies and have been designated a de facto deputy to the new person. If they’re unable to meet your needs, either for recognition or compensation, you may need to take a step back from your volunteer duties or leave altogether. Otherwise, your resentment will only grow, which I can’t imagine will help the cause.

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Dear Prudence,

I’m in my 30s and am in a loving queer marriage. We’ve talked about children for a long time, and after much thought, have decided that adoption is the way for us. We’re both trans masculine, and for gender reasons, the prospect of getting pregnant is upsetting (I’ve worked for years trying to overcome this, to no avail), surrogacy is complex and expensive, and honestly, neither of us cares about genetics. We’re both really excited about the prospect of adoption!

The issue? My parents, especially my mom, are really upset with this decision. The context is that my younger sister was adopted (from Russia, during the 90s, as a 4-year-old). She had a lot of understandable emotional issues growing up, struggled with substance abuse, and still does. As a married, stable professional, I am definitely the more “successful” child, a dynamic I’ve always hated and tried to push back on. But my parents seem convinced that bio kid equals successful, and adoption equals disaster. Despite the fact that I’m going in a lot more informed than they were in the ‘90s (when they seemed to expect that she would just integrate seamlessly into a happy American family), every conversation ends up getting so upsetting. I don’t need my parents sign off on this, but it breaks my heart to think that they might not be as present as grandparents, or that I’m denying them an experience (we’re a small family with no cousins or other babies in the family, I doubt my sister will ever have kids, etc).

As we move forward in this process of beginning a family, I feel like I can’t share exciting details with them, and that breaks my heart too, because we’re usually really close. Do you have a script or suggestions that could help me convey this to them?

—Baby Blues

Dear Baby Blues,

Let me first say: Congratulations on taking the first step toward growing your family! That’s a big deal, and it makes me sad that your parents can’t fully appreciate how exciting this decision must have been.

As for a script for dealing with your parents, I think you already have all the elements you need in this letter. Reiterate how happy you and your partner are to begin this journey, and tell them that you are going to proceed with the adoption decision with or without your parents’ approval. It’s up to them if they would like to be involved grandparents. Phrase it in terms of respect and autonomy: I respect your choice to be as involved as you’d like to be, but I also ask that you respect our choice to grow our family the way we want.

I think you can also play to their personal insecurities here—they’ve clearly got mixed feelings about their own track record as parents—and remind your parents that they raised you to be a smart, resourceful, and considerate person who feels equipped to take on the challenges of childrearing and adulthood. Your sister’s story certainly sounds complicated by comparison, but I’m not sure it’s your necessarily your job to convince your parents to stop quietly comparing. They did the best they could for both of you, and now you are simply now asking them for a little trust as you make some moves they might not personally agree with.

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Dear Prudence,

My husband and I have a deal when it comes to some chores—I absolutely loathe doing laundry, so he agreed to be in charge of it since there are other things I have complete ownership of like grocery shopping, scheduling and prepping for the cleaner, and refilling our dog’s prescriptions.

I don’t think he’s consciously choosing the path of “weaponized incompetence,” but I’m getting pretty frustrated by how he’s handling laundry, in particular my undies drawer. In my top drawer I have subdividers for socks, bras, regular underwear, and period underwear, all labeled. Lately, he’s not only skipped the sorting, but has been dumping every small textile in the house in there! I’ve found cloth napkins, dog bandanas, scarves, tank tops, robe ties. and even a steam mop pad in my underwear drawer…

Maybe it’s that I can’t get past the (incorrect) idea that he’s doing something nice “for me” by doing my laundry in the first place, maybe it’s that I’m so annoyed that it’s going to come out very snippy—but I can’t figure out how to address this. We’re not really a hyper organized household, but when I go grocery shopping I don’t shove pasta, glass cleaner, Tylenol, cat food, and paper towels in the spice cabinet and call it a day!

As kind and reasonable as he usually is, my husband’s knee jerk reaction to criticism is not great. I feel like I need to plan a discussion and not just make an offhand comment, or he’s going to boycott doing laundry for a while. I know this makes him sound ridiculous, but please trust that he’s an otherwise good partner! What should I say?

—Baffled in Boise

Dear Baffled,

Frame this laundry discussion as a matter of personal preference (“Can I show you how I like to have these little things sorted?”) and happiness (“It makes my mornings so much easier when I don’t have to dig around the drawer for the right pair of socks”). The general vibe you want to go for is basically, “Can I explain to you what a meaningful favor this action is for me?”

That said, I think you may need to lower your expectations a tiny bit. If you were saying that your husband keeps throwing all the whites and darks into the machine together, that’s one thing. But I genuinely think that expecting your husband to discern between period underwear and normal underwear is beyond the scope of Laundry 101. Offer to clarify some of the bigger differences here (bra vs. mop pad, for example), but chalk the finer confusions up to legitimate male befuddlement.

—Delia

Classic Prudie

A friend who vacations often discovered free wheelchair rides throughout the airport, making her first in line from ticket counters, security/TSA, to departure/arrival gates, to baggage claim, and first boarding with first access to onboard storage. Recently, her partner, who was running behind with the luggage, realized he too could get a chair and that the attendant must also haul the luggage. Put some meds in checked luggage, mark it “medical supplies,” and it’s free.

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