Dear Prudence

Cut It Out

Prudie advises a letter writer whose husband unforgivably spent their vacation mowing the lawn.

Daniel Mallory Ortberg, aka Dear Prudence, is online weekly to chat live with readers. An edited transcript of the chat is below. (Sign up below to get Dear Prudence delivered to your inbox each week. Read Prudie’s Slate columns here. Send questions to Prudence at prudence@slate.com.)

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Daniel Mallory Ortberg: Morning, everyone! Hope you’re all well-rested, lustrous-eyed, and surrounded by smoke detectors in good working condition. Let’s chat!

Q. We’re both frustrated: My husband and I have been married for just over a year. He is a hard worker and keeps busy doing little chores all the time. We’ve been running into a frequent problem lately, and it happened again this weekend. We were at a family vacation house, and the lawn needed to be mowed. It is a normal-size yard—kind of big, but not a field or anything. It took him five hours to mow. FIVE HOURS. He was on a riding lawn mower and went over it a zillion times. I swear—he’d go out with a pair of scissors to make sure it was perfect if that weren’t a crazy-person thing to do. I weeded the flowerbeds, but around hour three I started losing my patience. We were on vacation. I thought that the mowing wouldn’t take all morning (and some of the afternoon); he didn’t care if it did. He thinks I’m a jerk for complaining about him helping. I think he’s a jerk for unilaterally deciding to use up five hours of our weekend without talking to me about it. So, where do we go from here? We’re still frustrated with how it went down.

A: I’m not quite sure how best to approach this issue. As best as I can tell, your husband is not deliberately trying to irritate you with these projects. Mowing for hours, depending on yard size, can certainly fall within the spectrum of eccentric-but-not-medicalized human behavior. I hope, by the way, you will consider dialing back your use of expressions like “crazy-person things,” which are remarkably unhelpful in resolving disputes. The immediate issue is what you and your husband consider relaxing. He likes to landscape; you do not. If he seems content to meticulously attend to the yard in the morning, maybe you could find something you enjoy doing equally well (as an alternative to losing your patience). There’s no reason you have to sputter and fume just because your husband spends a few hours doing something you don’t consider enjoyable. He’s not making you watch him mow the lawn, and it doesn’t sound like he ignored you the entire weekend in favor of mulch. If the rest of your weekend was otherwise spent pleasantly in one another’s company, I think I have to declare you the jerk for expecting your husband to spend all of his free time entertaining you.

Regardless of whether it was selfish of your husband to spend five hours on the lawn, I’m concerned that your response to frustration is to sit and stew and stare out the window and work yourself into a lather. If you find yourself flying off the handle, a better choice would be to take a walk, or write down some of your thoughts, or take a series of deep, relaxing breaths. Your husband did not murder anyone, did not spend your entire savings account, did not do anything that would merit the absolute loss of calm you experienced. I’m starting to wonder if he wanted to spend so much time in the yard to avoid your bad temper.

Q. Prof’s porn profile: I’m a youngish female grad student. I did a web search for my adviser’s name, hoping to browse through what he’s published in the past. I did find several articles, a dissertation, etc., but I also seem to have stumbled upon his Pornhub profile. If I could go back in time, I would have ignored the result and pretended I never saw it, but in the moment I clicked on it and was shocked at how much information there was. It’s obviously him—his profile name is his first two initials plus his last name (same as what he uses for publishing, which is why it turned up in the results), it’s an uncommon last name, and it even lists his age and our city. It also showed his “recently watched” videos, his “favorite” list, and his “achievements” (don’t ask). I find it extremely unlikely that he is aware of this; my guess is that he didn’t realize the profile would be public when he created it.

On the one hand, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with having and using a Pornhub account. On the other, anyone (other students, his wife, his kids) could just as easily find this (without even trying!), which I would find mortifying. If it were me, I would want to know so that I could take it down, but I just don’t see any appropriate way I can bring this up with him. I’m kind of hoping you’ll tell me that it is none of my business, that it’s not a big deal, that it’s possible he is aware of it, and that I’m not obligated to somehow alert him so that he can change his settings.

A: You’re not obligated to do anything. Your instinct is right: There is no way the two of you could continue to have a friendly, comfortable working relationship after you told him you found his Pornhub account. It’s not that this isn’t a big deal—it’s bad etiquette and more than a little embarrassing—but it doesn’t fall into the scope of your duties as his graduate assistant. If it’s that easy to find, I’m sure eventually someone who isn’t his subordinate will find a way to let him know he’s not being as discreet as he thinks.

Q. Cheating in an open relationship?: My husband is active duty, deployed military, and we have not lived together for some time. We’ve had issues in our marriage that we committed to working on together when he returns this fall. While apart, we have stayed in constant daily contact until recently. I sensed my husband was forming an attachment to someone else, which he admitted when I asked him about it. I told him that as long as this new thing did not interfere with our relationship, I was OK opening our marriage. He responded that I didn’t have anything to worry about. Only one week later, he blew me off during our regular time to talk. I asked—he did not offer—and he confirmed that he was not there because he had started a physical relationship with this other person. Not only that, but they had made plans for the remainder of her time there and travel plans to meet for a week in June.

I was devastated, and it felt like he cheated on me. When I brought up my feelings of discomfort, he insisted he had nothing to apologize for and accused me of trying to renegotiate our open relationship—trying to put him back in a cage. He assured me that I am still the primary relationship and that he will be coming home to work on “us,” but he’s also indicated that he wants to keep this other person in his life. He’s assured me she is not a threat, but all of his actions are telling me otherwise. While I’m not opposed to an open marriage in principle, I don’t feel like I can trust him when it comes to her because he has not been honest with me. He hasn’t lied when I asked, but I feel like he has lied by omission, and in some ways this is worse because of the trust I showed him. Is it possible to cheat in an open relationship? Am I lying to myself that we still have a marriage to salvage?

A: Yes, it’s possible to cheat in an open relationship. Moreover, there’s nothing wrong with renegotiating the conditions of an open relationship. Renegotiating is not the same thing as “caging,” and your husband is being petulant, dishonest, and manipulative. It sounds like when the two of you opened your relationship, you did not set specific terms, and he’s taken that latitude as an excuse to pursue someone in a way that bothers you and has taken precedence over your faltering marriage. It’s certainly possible to salvage your relationship, but in order for you two to make progress, your husband has to stop looking for excuses to justify why he didn’t do anything wrong and accept that you both have the right to set limits and make requests and experience pain and jealousy in your marriage, whether it’s open or closed. An open relationship doesn’t mean “everything I do with other people is fine and never to be questioned.”

Q. Now or (maybe) later: I’ve been dating a guy for a bit more than two months. We get along great and have talked about becoming monogamous and being excited about building a relationship, but we’ve been taking it slowly and haven’t made any commitments or decided to be monogamous. Last week, I was on a business trip and saw my ex. The meeting was incredibly reassuring and confirmed for me that I no longer love him, even though I care for and support him. This ex is going through an extremely difficult time in his life, including serious health problems, and I did tell him that he should call if he ever needs to talk or would benefit from my perspective. Do I tell the current guy? On the one hand, I don’t see any reason to make him anxious or jealous. The ex lives in a different city and has a support system—I doubt I will remain involved in his life. But I did offer to keep the line of communication open. What if he calls—or something worse happens to him—and it then looks like I have been hiding my limited but standing connection to him?

A: I don’t think it’s especially unusual to be in occasional, friendly contact with an ex. There’s no obligation to disclose that you had a pleasant lunch with someone you used to date to someone you’ve only been seeing for a few months. If you’d like to mention it, by all means do so; but don’t bring it up as a confession or as some light transgression you “owe” him the truth about. Just tell him you had a nice lunch with your ex-boyfriend, and then ask him how his week was while you were out of town.

Q. Re: lawn mower wife: Prudie, something is wrong with that husband! Our 1/4-acre lawn takes 15 minutes to mow w/ a riding lawn mower. Five hours? Come on! Either he enjoys doing whatever he wants regardless of time frames or doesn’t care about his wife or has some kind of OCD. This has been happening repeatedly per the writer. Counseling seems at least something that could happen.

A: It’s certainly possible that some sort of anxiety or compulsive thinking/behavior is at play here, but it’s also equally possible that the LW’s husband is simply a meticulous, attentive gardener. He was not gardening to the point of exhaustion or pain, and she mentions no other distressing behaviors; based on what she said about her response, I’m still inclined to think he spent so much time in the yard to get away from her, not because he has untreated obsessive-compulsive disorder. But it is a possibility worth considering, however briefly, and I hope the LW will take it into consideration and treat her husband with a bit more compassion.

Q. Inappropriately evangelical co-worker: My fiancé and I are an interfaith couple—he’s Catholic, and I’m Jewish. A new woman recently started working at his office and quickly latched onto the fact that I am Jewish and he is not. She belongs to a different sect of Judaism than I do and is eager for us to attend her synagogue. However, she has begun making comments to my fiancé along the lines of how her synagogue has an excellent conversion program and he will “never truly understand me unless he’s also Jewish.” We’ve discussed religion numerous times in our relationship and we’re comfortable with not sharing each other’s beliefs as a matter of familial tradition, and I find this to be completely inappropriate behavior (especially because Judaism is non-evangelical). He’s already politely turned her down, to no avail—do I need to involve myself, MOTT to MOTT?

A: You do need to involve yourself! Go to bat for your future husband, and for everyone at your office who would prefer not to be asked to change religions every time they get up to use the printer.

Q. Wedding #hashtags: I am in my late 20s, and many of my friends are getting engaged and married. One “trend” that makes me CRINGE every time is the “wedding hashtag” phenomenon (i.e., “MeetTheSmiths” or “BetterOffBaileys”). Do you have an opinion on this matter? Even when it’s a close friend, I find myself having a very difficult time not wanting to smack myself in the forehead whenever I open up Facebook.

A: My opinion is this: Cringe at home and in silence. There is no way to tell someone you find their wedding-themed hashtag in poor taste without seeming churlish and petty. This is not a problem that holds you back in daily life; hold a hashtag-free wedding of your own someday and mute the rest.

Q. Technophobe parents: Like most people my age (late 20s), I communicate primarily over email, text, and Facebook. Unfortunately, my retired parents—particularly my mom, who is most involved in her children’s lives—don’t use any of these things. They don’t use cellphones, my dad rarely checks or responds to his personal email account, and my mom seems uninterested in using the house’s one computer. Instead, my mom calls me multiple times a day, peppering me with questions about my daily life until I’m exasperated and force an end to the conversation.

I love my mom for the wonderful, smart, funny person she is, but I’ve come to dread these daily conversations and the people we become during them. I’m jealous of friends with tech-savvy parents who are comfortable texting news links and photos back and forth—I would love to get some of those classic “mom texts”! My mom is upset about my reluctance to talk to her and about my monosyllabic responses to her questions, and she maintains that she and my dad have the right to lead unplugged lives. Is there any solution?

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