Dear Prudence: My brother sabotaged my becoming a foster parent.

Dec 22, 2023

Dear Prudence is Slate’s advice column. Submit questions here.

Dear Prudence,

I became a foster parent two years ago and adopted my first placement in December. I am in my forties with one older brother who lives out of state. Our parents live thirty minutes away from my daughter and me.

My brother and I never got along well and unfortunately our relationship deteriorated as we grew older. From the start of my foster parent training, my 49-year-old brother expressed his disapproval, stating that I should get a dog or find a husband instead of fostering. I ignored his unsolicited advice and lived my best life. Prior to my daughter’s adoption, I discovered that my brother had created fictitious names and bashed my parenting abilities and lifestyle choices on several foster parent social media groups. While he never referred to me by name on the forums, a friend and I were able to find out that he was behind these aliases. My brother is not and never was a foster or adoptive parent. He denies involvement in the aliases, which were humiliating to me and put a somewhat damper on adoption day.

Despite all this, my parents continue to “push” a sibling relationship. My mother dismisses my brother’s actions as “silliness” and my father says we should “wipe the slate clean.” My brother continues to deny what he did. I can accept the fact that my brother has never been in my corner and is not trustworthy, but my strained relationship with him has put a wedge between my parents and me. They simply cannot seem to understand that the relationship (or lack thereof) I have with my brother is separate from the relationship I have with them.

I’m finding it increasingly hard to communicate with my parents and make happy memories with them because of their persistence with this. I have no problem with my parents being close to their son, but I don’t feel comfortable communicating with him beyond cordial pleasantries.

—No Brotherly Love

Dear Brotherly Love,

It’s natural that your parents want their children to be close, and that they see the best in their son and minimize his flaws—flaws which, to be clear, are huge and very creepy. But that’s not your problem. After all, you have your own child to raise! Tell your mom and dad you’ve become frustrated with the way they’re dismissing your concerns about your brother’s behavior and you’re going to step back for a month so that you can have some time to decompress and avoid saying anything in anger. This break will serve a couple of purposes: It will show them you’re serious, and it will give you a chance to think about what a relationship with them that does not involve your brother will look like. At the end of the month, you can approach them and let them know what you’ve decided and ask whether they can agree to it. Their dynamic has changed now: Instead of you begging them to leave you alone about wiping the slate clean with their weird son, they will have to assure you that they will do better if they want to reestablish regular contact. If they won’t, you’ll really need to think seriously about how much of a role you want them to play in your and your child’s lives.

“We’re really going to be challenged to live out our progressive values here.”

Jenée Desmond-Harris and Joel Anderson discuss a letter in this week’s Dear Prudence Uncensored—only for Slate Plus members.

Dear Prudence,

Every year, my husband goes to an industry convention for a few days in Vegas. I’m not a fan of Vegas (I don’t like gambling, and I get nose bleeds if I’m in the hotels for too long), so I don’t go along. No big deal—I can stay home and have a fun week myself! However…

Before we met, he was friends with a cam girl. They were pretty close and even went on a vacation together with her mom. I wasn’t bothered by this for the first 12 years we have been together until I learned that despite several years of intimacy issues where he was rejecting any initiation by me, he was subscribed to her OnlyFans account. I was incredibly hurt.

She lives in Vegas and he has visited her (and her husband and her dog) on these trips before. I even met her once on a different trip (and knowing what I know now maybe explains why she was so cold to me). We’ve talked about the situation a few times and the intimacy issue has been mostly resolved. Still, I’m feeling uncomfortable with him going on this trip. He says he isn’t subscribed anymore and I believe him … mostly.

Having friends is great, subscribing to your friend’s OF while married is maybe not great. He hasn’t said he’s going to see her there and I haven’t asked, but I’m feeling worse about it each day. Do I say something and potentially make him feel like I don’t trust him at all, or is there a way I can reframe this so I don’t feel so bad?

—What Happens in Vegas

Dear Vegas,

Things aren’t going well between you and your husband, and the problem is much bigger than a trip to Vegas and an OnlyFans account. It’s a bad sign that you are looking for a way to reframe something that is clearly upsetting to you as not upsetting. It makes me think your husband has you exactly where he wants you: Questioning yourself, prioritizing his feelings about whether you trust him, and afraid to make waves by admitting that you don’t believe what he says.That’s exactly what he needs if he wants to get away with doing whatever he wants, in Vegas, online, and everywhere else. I have to tell you my gut feeling: His indiscretions are worse than the evidence you have and go deeper than this one subscription. There are two options here: 1) Convince yourself that you don’t care, either by using distractions, having your own little secrets and questionable friends, or detaching emotionally; or 2) Think about the kind of relationship you actually want—someone who would tell you the truth, someone who would care about your feelings, someone who would prioritize your comfort, someone who would intentionally rebuild trust with you, someone who would make you comfortable sharing your questions and insecurities—and hold him to that standard, with the awareness that that might mean the end of the relationship. I recommend option two!

Dear Prudence,

I am struggling to get my partner to hold up his end of cleaning our apartment. I (F27) do almost all of the housework. My partner (M27), on the other hand, does not proactively do our chores, he waits to be instructed to do so. Part of it stems from the fact that I think we have different definitions of clean, but I also think he grew up in a household where a lot of the chores were done for him. We have been together for eight years and I love him more than anything in this world. In every other area of life, he is a full-blown feminist, but he cannot seem to grasp the concept of how much mental energy I expend not just doing all of the chores regularly, but also serving as director of the house and asking him to take the trash out, unload the dishes, vacuum, etc. We are getting married next spring, and I do not want this to turn into a marriage where one partner is constantly nagging the other. I really believe he wants to do better, but I am just struggling to figure out how to get through to him.

—Tired of Cleaning

Dear Tired of Cleaning,

Ideally, you would not need to push your partner to “grasp the concept” that doing everything takes energy, and you wouldn’t need to “get through to him” in order for him to pull his weight at home. Two things give me a little bit of hope though. 1) You are both pretty young, so probably not totally set in your ways, and 2) We have more tools than in the past to deal with the pretty common issue you’re facing. In particular there’s a game called “Fair Play,” which my colleague Paola wrote about here, which is meant to help couples distribute household tasks in a balanced way. Try it out. Maybe you’ll find out that he actually is doing a lot that’s invisible to you. More likely, he’ll be shocked to learn how much you’re handling. And if he cares, which I hope he does, he’ll make some adjustments.

But please, do it now. Make this a priority over all other wedding planning tasks. Let me be very clear: Marriage won’t change anything! The life you’re living now is exactly the same life as the one you’ll live when you get back from your honeymoon. And it would not be at all unusual if that life involved you, the wife in a heterosexual partnership, feeling frustrated, overworked, and underappreciated because your spouse cannot seem to understand that you did not sign up to be his domestic manager or supervisor. Figure out what you’re dealing with on his end (childhood expectations of mom? definitions of clean? lack of skills or structure? true laziness?) and work together to fix it before you say “I do.”

Submit your questions anonymously here. (Questions may be edited for publication.) And for questions on parenting, kids, or family life, try Care and Feeding!

Dear Prudence,

I hate to use the expression “triggered,” but lately I’ve been noticing a physical reaction to anyone screaming/banging. I’ve always been very sensitive to criticism or perceived criticism. When I (41 F) was growing up, my parents would semi-regularly scream at each other during arguments. It was scary and I hated it. When I was a teenager, my mom and I went through a rough patch where she would periodically scream at me about my messy room, bad influences from friends, etc. Those episodes always ended in tears with me feeling guilty like I had done something wrong. I thought that I had come to terms with that since then, and have a good relationship with my mom now.

However, my normally very laid-back and patient, loving husband and I recently got into an argument where he did not yell at me per se, but became exasperated and raised his voice. I immediately burst into tears and started shaking. It happened again when we had a discussion that got loud. Sometimes my 6-year-old bangs on our table in excitement and a shiver runs through me. My dad used to bang on the table in anger. I’m finding these occurrences happening more lately, since my 6-year-old is a normal noisy kid. My husband does not scream at me and generally, I live a happy home life, but I can’t help but feel like something is wrong with me. Should I try to talk to a therapist? It seems like maybe there’s unresolved trauma in my past, but I don’t know if I’m making too big a deal out of it.

—Silence Please

Dear Silence Please,

Yes, talking to a therapist would be a great idea. “It seems like maybe there’s unresolved trauma in my past” is reason enough, and there is no such thing—I repeat no such thing—as making too big a deal out of anything that involves your ability to feel happy and peaceful in your daily life. Congratulate yourself on not continuing the screaming-in-front-of-children tradition, and get the help you deserve. Not because something is wrong with you, but because there’s a better life on the other side of this sensitivity. And in the meantime, you may not be able to control your kid’s age-appropriate outbursts, but be sure your husband really understands how triggering raised voices are for you—it sounds like he’d be glad to be extra cautious while you figure this out.

So, I just left the Dollar Store, where I purchased several items—then subsequently left without paying for an entire bag of stuff! I didn’t realize my error until I got home. I’m not sure what to do now. My first thought was to go right back, apologize, and pay for the items. But I’m nervous (paranoid?) that I might get in trouble.