Someone writes in to Prudie about learning that the One That Got Away considers her The One That Got Away:
Aside from a fun weeklong fling over a decade ago, we’ve always kept it platonic, mostly because one of us was always dating someone in the couple of times a year we’d see each other. Flash forward to this year when I told him my boyfriend and I were getting married. He seemed shocked, but happy for me, came out to help me prepare for the big day and was an all-around champ. After the wedding I talked to my new mother-in-law and was shocked to find out that he referred to me as “the one who got away” in his own life
Prudie responds:
I don’t find it a charming plot twist that your friend confesses to your new mother-in-law (!) that you’re the one who got away. Instead it is rude and passive-aggressive. Yes, it’s possible he blurted this out to your mother-in-law after too much to drink, and by way of praising your charms. But it doesn’t have that feel, does it? Presumably, he thought she would pass on this tidbit, thus putting a pall over your honeymoon. That’s not something a friend does. There’s a reason your dreams of this guy never became reality. As he’s demonstrated, in reality he sounds kind of manipulative
I was initially set to agree with her, when I read the title and before I got to the specifics of his little confession. There was a scene in Friends where Rachel is flying across the Atlantic to tell Ross that she loves him before he gets married. She’s telling the story to a random guy (played by the guy who plays House) who, at the end, tells her that she is an utterly terrible person. She manipulated him and then, when he finally found happiness with someone else, wanted to re-insert herself into his happy life. It would be remarkably irresponsible or selfish of him to do any of these things.
But here’s the thing… this guy didn’t actually make a play. He didn’t say “I object!” at the wedding. He made a comment to the mother of the groom. A comment which actually strikes me as being something along the lines of “Your son got a real winner here” rather than an actual profession of love. Or it may have been a “Jesucristo I screwed up” and failing to keep it inside. It may have been a passive-aggressive way of making a declaration, but it would have been a particularly incompetent way of doing so. The odds of the mother-in-law relaying the message are somewhere below 100%.
My advice would have been along the lines of “Lady, he may or may not have really meant what he said. If he did mean it, there is a good chance it was a passing thought. You don’t want to step on that ice.”
Um… people write to a stranger on the internet to ask major life advice about complicated s**t going on in their lives? That’s a thing?Report
You’ve never heard of Ann Landers?
Talking about Prudie columns used to be a pretty regular thing at HC until my former coblogger and I parted ways.Report
To be honest, I always assumed Ann Landers made up letters and then replied to them.
But more to the point…
Learning that there is some modern electronic version of Ann Landers is like being told that gynecologists still call up the husbands of their patients to let them know the results of checkups rather than just telling their patients. Of course you know that it used to happen all the time — it’s just bloody hard to fathom that it still does.Report
I’m really surprised that you’re not familiar with Prudie (Emily Yoffe). She’s been a staple on Slate for years, and became popular enough that Washington Post started running it. Apart from being Prudie, she made some news by outing a priest and politician (Robert Drinan) that molested her, and earned the ire of feminists with her views of college and drinking and rape.Report
You know of course that now I have to write a Dear Prudence post…Report
Man, wait until I tell you about these two doctors, named Drew and Phil…Report
@tod-kelly
How do you feel about the stuff people write or call into Dan Savage about then?
A sample:
http://www.thestranger.com/columns/savage-love/2015/05/06/22169700/savage-loveReport
That was my first thought on this subthread, too. “Tod, you’ve never heard of Dan Savage? The man who redefined Santorum?”Report
@kolohe
Maybe it is a Seattle v. Portland issue. The Stranger does not exist in Portland 😉Report
Portland’s equivalent alt-weekly, the Portland Mercury, looks like it has the syndication rights.Report
Stop ruining my jokes….
🙂Report
Seriously, my first encounter with Dan Savage was driving through Columbia, Mo. going through the radio stations, looking for something to listen to, when the radio came to Dan Savage. I listened for a few minutes before I picked up my jaw; but the only reason I kept listening was I thought that I had come across a public access station, and should probably call the authorities to notify them about some psycho.
I haven’t listened to him since.Report
You sure you aren’t thinking of Michael Savage?Report
Right you are.
You must have heard him too . . .
Did you call 9-1-1 to report him?Report
I’ll give you a present. Whenever people like me start making fun of Florida, you can inform them that Michael Savage lives in the Bay Area.Report
@tod-kelly — I prefer Captain Awkward, cuz she’s a nerd like me. But yeah, people write in with their problems and she gives them advice on how to deal with it. Her advice is good, even if rather predictable most of the time.
But on the other hand, it’s predictable cuz I’ve read enough of it and it’s stuff a lot of women have a problem figuring out on their own.
People really do get into tricky social situations, and often they know what they want, but they need someone to lay it all out for them. Often these people are young and from very messy families, and thus they’ve learned some pretty dysfunctional bullshit. Many are neuro-diverse or otherwise not socially adept. Having a neutral voice break it down is a huge plus. Keep in mind, some people do not have good life skills for various reasons, often arising from the fact they come from terrible families and have bad models.
In any event, I’ve never felt the need to write into one of the sites. On the other hand, when my g/f was struggling with an abusive roommate, the advice I gave her was basically textbook Captain Awkward.
Some of it she even followed.Report
I’m surprised this particular column didn’t make it onto your radar:http://www.slate.com/articles/life/dear_prudence/2012/08/dear_prudie_my_daughter_s_playgroup_expects_me_to_bring_organic_snacks_but_i_can_t_afford_it_.html
It is a question supposedly from a mother whose kid belongs to an exclusive play group and was worried because she was being pressured to bring expensive organic snacks that she couldn’t quite afford.
If there was ever a candidate for a made up letter, this is it.Report
You’re thinking of Penthouse.Report
A lot of times people know the answer but reaffirmed by a source without any emotional investment in them. Other times people want advice from a seemingly neutral source. Advice columnists are cheaper than therapists.Report
I guess it’s an internet advice columnists job to over-interpret these things. Otherwise, in the vast majority of cases, with the little information we have, always from one perspective, there wouldn’t be much to go on.Report
Moreover, if you’re offering advice to the public (the individual behind the letter has, by the time you’ve responded, undoubtedly got plenty of personalized advice from friends, relatives, etc) you’d want to go generic.
A response of “Look, probably just him saying ‘Let me compliment the bride in a stereotypical guy way by indicating leaving her was a horrible thing, ergo she is awesome” is pretty bland and most people would get that anyways. So you’d generalize and push the situation out further — what about stalker ex’s and the ones that can’t let go? THERE’s a bigger problem, and people can simplify downwards….
So I’ve always assumed advice columnists go for an extreme interpretation so people see the bad case, the difficult situation, rather than the relatively harmless.Report
My first thought, which is equally ignorant of the facts of course, was that her writing the letter in the first place probably says more about her feelings for him than his making what might have been an offhand remark says about his feelings for her.Report
1. His name is Hugh Laurie.
2. Dear Prudence/Emily Yoffee seems to get universally attacked by the left and the right. A lot of my friends seem to hate on her for being the world’s worst advice columnist.
3. I always wonder which letters are real things and which are made up by pranksters trying to get the most outlandish “problems/situations” in. This one seems like a perfectly real scenario if one that is a bit too Hollywood seeming.Report
I really should have remembered that. I pseudonymed people on Hit Coffee based on his name. Drew a blank.
I actually like her quite a bit. But nobody’s perfect, and it’s more interesting to talk about her when she’s wrong than when she’s right.Report
I’m with Will on Prudie; hers is the only advice column I read regularly.Report
I used to read Miss Manners (is she still around?) because I loved her combination of sensible advice (e.g. do not behave as if everyone you work with were a close personal friend) and Emily Post turned up to 11 (of course he didn’t call again after you showed yourself to be a loose woman by wearing the wrong color gloves.)Report
Dear Sugar is an Internet Columnist who is more popular among the hipster-literary set but it ended three years ago:
http://therumpus.net/sections/dear-sugar/
There was a big to do when Cheryl Strayed was revealed to be the columnist.Report
I’m always wary of people saying “Wow, person X (who you are hearing about what they said 2nd-hand from person Y) is being SOoooo manipulative, don’t trust them.” If anything, strikes me that person Y is being manipulative.
Though I agree that both those people probably just have brain-to-mouth-no-filter syndrome. Particular as I myself have to fight the symptoms of this syndrome.Report
Saying it to the mother-in-law is strange because I doubt he has a relationship with her. So unless it was said in a gracious, flattering, “Your son found a great woman,” kind of way, I’d say it is odd. But that is about as far as I’d go.
I wonder why the MIL decided to share this?Report
unless it was said in a gracious, flattering, “Your son found a great woman,”
But this is the most normal explanation. I think the idea that it is a passive-aggressive come-on is wildly silly.Report
I think the idea that it is a passive-aggressive come-on is wildly silly.
Depending completely on what stage of dress/undress in which the comment was offered.Report
A friend of mine and I used to read Prudence regularly. We came up with the theory that she isn’t so much answering the particular questions as setting up rules for the general audience. For example, if I recall correctly, she’s very critical of people who make drunken mistakes. She’s not being unsympathetic to the writer so much as she’s trying to communicate to the reader that this kind of thing is avoidable. That’s what this response feels like. She saying: guys, don’t do this, because it’s a jerk move.Report
Really? With all the stuff in the world to dicscuss, this is what folks come up with?Report
Will, why are you trolling old Slate articles from 5 months ago? 🙂Report
@damon
Probably bc it is easier to discuss fluff that address the more difficult issues of the day.Report
That’s Ordinary Times for ya. We just don’t talk about the issues of the day around here.Report
How is this post or the one about mother goose more relevant than the controversy over the TPP, north korea claiming to have tested a SLBM or the recent court rejection of illinois plan to fix its pension issues?Report
I wasn’t aware it had to be.Report
If the blog doesn’t talk about the issues you want them to cover, you can always start your own.Report
@notme
If you want to talk about those things here, write a post and submit it to @tod-kellyReport
Or Arod passing Willie Mays.Report
If he didn’t know the mother, that is a really weird/unconsidered thing to say to her of all people. But I think it says more about Prudie to assume it’s manipulative and not just weird, or said out of a certain shock of realizing your chances with her are over that you didn’t see coming (most likely scenario in my view). Why would it be so important *now* for her to hear that she was the one that got away – and why enlist the mother in law? DM her. Whatever. That just doesn’t make a lot of sense as a theory to me.Report
First, I’d guess the guy was paying a compliment in the, “you’re son’s found a great partner” mold. If he had other designs on this woman, I doubt he’d have gone to the wedding.
Second, I think the real manipulator here is the MIL (and maybe with good reason?) because all we know of what old boyfriend said/thought came second hand via MIL. Maybe she sensed new daughter-in-law wasn’t as committed as seemed appropriate considering the man being married was MIL’s son. So she juices up a compliment as a test to see if it sends the new daughter-in-law into a tail spin. And it did.
That’s the manipulative behavior here.
I hope this couple moves far, far away from his family.Report
This is a really good point. Maybe the old boyfriend deserves some criticism, but the preponderance should fall on the MIL (who should probably be more concerned about protecting her daughter and the new marriage).Report
Hell, we don’t know in what context she told her daughter, either. Maybe she intended it playfully as well. Maybe she knows the guy well.
Based on the information we have, the only person whom we know to have behaved strangely is the bride, who wrote a letter to an advice columnist in 2015. Everything else said in this thread is speculation out of near complete ignorance, and baseless judgement.Report