Dear Prudence: liberating lessons from Slate.com's beloved advice column by Daniel M. Lavery

Author:Daniel M. Lavery
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: SEL031000, SOC022000, PSY000000, HUM000000, SEL040000, FAM000000, PSY017000, SEL044000
Publisher: Scribe Publications
Published: 2023-05-02T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seven

Going from All the Way Right to Only Half Right

Letters with an unpleasant theme: Realizing you might have to apologize to someone who still hasn’t apologized for hurting you yet. Taking the ball and running too far with it. Acknowledging that even though you were justified at first, you may still have taken things too far and need to walk something back.

I want to be right all of the time; in my natural condition and given the option, I would choose the warm satisfaction of self-righteousness over happiness ninety-nine times out of a hundred. I recognize this impulse is at best maladaptive and have the necessary system of pulleys and emotional riggings in place to counter it, but I feel a keen sense of loss whenever I come across a letter where someone has blundered their way from being entirely, unequivocally right to merely half right or, worse, in a position where they have to apologize to someone they dislike. It is my hope that I can help as many people as possible avoid such a situation; for the rest, I advise facing it squarely and getting it over with.

Dear Prudence,

I’m a freshman in college, and I have a close friend who is very religious. (I am not.) We talk about boys and such, and she has made several references to what is unambiguously vaginal sex (which she’s had with one person). Apart from that, she’s given head to (and gotten head from) many guys. So I was pretty surprised when we were talking and she referred to herself as both celibate and a virgin! She is not! This isn’t something I really care about (I think people should have sex with whomever they want, whenever they want, without judgment), but she is factually wrong to think that she is a virgin. Should I correct her on it?

—It’s Not Important How Wrong You Are

If you truly don’t care about it, let your actions follow your feelings and do nothing.

•••

It can be quite tempting to hurt someone one is angry with—often for excellent reasons—under the guise of sudden “concern” that was nowhere to be found before getting angry. But there are equally excellent reasons not to mislabel anger as something else, not to gussy up a resentful motivation in a shiny coat, and to be honest with oneself about one’s desires.

Dear Prudence,

A dozen years ago, I met a man through my work. He was older, married, and had a young child. Nevertheless, I fell hopelessly in love with him. We had a brief but intense affair but lost touch after I moved to a satellite office. Over the years, we reconnected a few times at company meetings, and the affair was always hot and heavy, followed by total radio silence once he was back home with the wife. For nearly a decade, I believed this man was the love of my life and that he would finally realize this and we would live happily ever after. When I finally woke

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