Help! My Boyfriend and I Can’t Get Married Yet. But I Don’t Want to Tell Anyone the Reason Why.
Dear Prudence is Slate’s advice column. Submit questions here. (It’s anonymous!)
Dear Prudence,
My boyfriend of four years and I love each other very much, but are not in a position to get married. Even though we’ve both talked about how much we want to, the reason we can’t is embarrassing. Both of our extended families are badgering us about it and I don’t know what to say. Even my close family is starting to be pushy, and I don’t know how to respond because I do really wish we could!
We live together in my home, and split bills 70 me/30 him. I have some limited student loan debt that I’m paying off, and a chronic illness that limits how much I’m physically able to work, so I’m very careful with saving my money for emergencies. My boyfriend has big student loan debt as well as tax arrears, credit card debt, and medical debt, all from a big manic episode at 23 that snowballed. He’s on medication now, and has a payment plan and system for all his debts as he slowly chips away at them but they’re big! Consulting with two different attorneys, we learned that the risk to me if he loses his job and can’t pay, or dies, or we get divorced, or in some other way we’re married and he stops paying these debts, is huge. In addition, my income will make him ineligible for a lot of the income-driven repayment options he’s using right now. Either way, marriage is not a smart plan for us right now, but we’re staying together. How do I respond when people push me about it?
—Making It Work
Dear Making It Work,
You were really smart to think everything through this way. I don’t think many people do the same before tying the knot. But if avoiding responsibility for your boyfriend’s debt is truly the only thing keeping you from walking down the aisle, what about a commitment ceremony that is exactly like the wedding you would like to have (whether that involves 300 people or just the two of you under a tree with an officiant) except you don’t sign anything? You can still call it a wedding. Or you could word the invitations slightly differently, like, “Join us as we celebrate our union.”
Either way, appropriate responses to people who are badgering you are, “It seems like a waste of money to us,” “We don’t need a piece of paper to define our commitment,” “We have financial goals we want to meet first,” or “We’re happy as we are, and it’s getting pretty annoying to have to defend it.”
Dear Prudence,
When I’ve given my kids the option to stay home rather than attend camps, they spend most, if not all, their time on their computers playing games or watching YouTube and TikTok. To my older son’s credit, he will take some time to cook and my younger son does try to sneak in books past bedtime. My younger son also says he’d do more biking but he can’t while I work because I can’t go with him. They have suggested that I should allow them to do absolutely nothing for the summer and just veg out because I work from home.
They also pointed out that they are straight-A students who have a busy extracurricular schedule during the year. My older one added that it would be his last free summer before high school. Study after study shows that kids often fall behind during the summer academically because they aren’t engaged mentally. As a result, I encourage them to find camps that interest them. Most of the time though, they don’t make an effort to search so I end up researching all the options and highlighting the ones available. I let them choose. Still, they want a summer where they can do absolutely nothing. I already know it’ll involve me prodding them to do something other than play on their iPad (because they manage to find ways to get around screentime limits). Should I let them enjoy, “Summertime, when the living is easy…” or be saved by a camp bell?
—Camp Mom
Dear Camp Mom,
Your kids make a strong case for a break. You should consider it—with some limits. How about a new family rule that if you have great grades and haven’t developed a reputation for getting in trouble or annoying everyone when left to your own devices, you can take off the summer before high school? This would mean your older son gets a pass to be a couch potato, but the younger one needs to put in a few more years before he earns his vegging out privileges. This is a reasonable compromise. Kids are so busy these days, and high school is so demanding. I like the idea of offering them time to reset before embarking on four long years of classes, activities, and stress over college admission. Plus, I’m interested in what your older son might do if he does get bored. An iPad isn’t just a portal to YouTube. He might start composing music, making movies, or meeting a long-distance best friend in some community related to an obscure hobby.
I admit it’s my elder millennial nostalgia kicking in here, but I have really fond memories of the summer weeks when my friends and I didn’t have a lot to do. And I want that for your son! Maybe he’ll meet up with other kids who are between camps and aimlessly wander the streets of your town, stopping at a 7-11 to get a Slurpee or take public transportation to the beach and freak out about missing the last bus home. Maybe he’ll go see if his classmate who works at the movie theater will let him in for free. Maybe he’ll embark on a huge project to collage the walls of his bedroom with magazine cutouts. (Do kids still read magazines? I have a feeling the answer is no.) But you get the idea—he might do something creative. We used to physically stalk the homes of our crushes, and I’m guessing social media means that kind of questionable behavior won’t be necessary, but I do feel that there’s something to be said for just being a teen hanging out with your buddies, trying to fill a day.
Of course, the line between “filling a day” and “getting into trouble” is a very fine one. But you could add some rules and regulations to make you feel better about his lack of structure. For example, you can require that he answers whenever you FaceTime him. Or he’ll need to be in charge of lawn care or making dinner for the family twice a week. You could ask him to call his grandparents regularly, since he won’t have the normal, “I’m so busy” excuse. Or you could insist that one day (or even half-day!) a week be spent volunteering. And of course, let him know that the agreement is subject to renegotiation. If he’s not holding up his end of the deal, leaves dirty dishes all over the house, or bugs you because it turns out he has no idea what to do with all the free time, or is seen smoking outside the local pizza place, he should know that you’re going to place him in whatever undesirable boring camp has a last-minute spot open.
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Dear Prudence,
My wife and I are traveling to southern Europe with our six-month-old in a few months for a family wedding. I’ve requested that we use a car seat for the planes, trains, and automobiles that we’re taking to get to the wedding. My wife, my in-laws, and my wife’s friends all think I’m overreacting (including friends and family who have traveled or will be traveling with infants). My wife reasons that from a legal standpoint, we don’t need a car seat (public transit and taxis are not required to use them) and that we can just hold the baby on our lap. I’ll admit that I’m more anxious than her when it comes to safety (I work in health care), but somehow I doubt the Federal Aviation Administration and National Transportation Safety Board recommend car seats on planes “to sell more seats.”
—My Lap Is Not a Harness
Dear Harness,
When it comes to taking care of a baby, the person who is more cautious about safety should almost always win. Your goal should not be to justify your desire to use a car seat according to laws and regulations, but to ask for your family’s understanding, explaining that it will be impossible for you to enjoy the festivities if you’re stressed about your child’s safety. They don’t have to agree with you to honor that request.
Since my daughter married “Chris,” she has turned into a different person. It started on her wedding day, when she got drunk and screamed at me for “always putting her down” after I made a (not insulting!) comment about her non-traditional dress. That was four years ago, and things have gotten worse since then.
