Help! The Scent of My Laundry Soap Is Tearing My Family Apart.

Dear Prudence is Slate’s advice column. Submit questions here. (It’s anonymous!)

Dear Prudence,

My son and his wife are upset with me for the scent my laundry soap leaves behind when I visit their house and/or hold my granddaughter. They’ve mentioned it before to me, that it’s strong and to not use so much, to which I’ve replied it’s very concentrated and I only use a tiny bit. I use Zum, it’s a clean, non-toxic laundry soap made with essential oils. I also use the bar soap in the shower. Everyone else around me, including strangers, have gone out of their way to tell me how great it smells and ask me what it is. People have stopped in front of my house just to smell the air when I’m doing laundry. It’s clearly a matter of like/dislike.

I recently babysat my granddaughter in my son’s home while they were working from home. My daughter-in-law’s mother usually watches her two days a week there, but she is away on vacation. I was the fill-in. My son messaged me two days after I was there that his couch still smelled like me and he made it clear he was unhappy about it and that I was being stubborn and inconsiderate for still using this soap that they’ve told me before they didn’t like. I offered to use a different laundry soap on an outfit to wear to his house the following week when I babysit, but he replied “I don’t think it works that way, LOL. You can’t just use a different detergent that doesn’t leave an odor that hits you in the face when you walk in the door of someone’s house.” My son was very confrontational in his message. He said when I sit on his furniture it leaves a smell for days.

I offered a solution of keeping separate clothes and yet he mocked me. I said I’m not sure what you really expect me to do then? He ended our conversation by telling me that he didn’t need me to babysit the following week.

I am so hurt now that they’re going to keep me from my granddaughter to force me to change my products. I use this soap because it has no harsh chemicals, and I learned about using safer products when my sister had breast cancer and we attended a seminar about household products and chemicals. I do think they’re having unrealistic expectations and are being disrespectful to me in their ask.

I could clearly switch to laundry detergent to appease them, but at this point I don’t think the punishment fits the crime. Am I wrong? Is it because I’m the paternal grandmother? I know we usually are the punching bag but this just seems silly to me. I don’t know, I’m at a loss here and not sure what to do.

—Heartbroken Grandma

Dear Heartbroken,

People get to be unfair, inconsistent, super sensitive and annoying in their own homes (and do indeed sometimes have intense reactions to specific scents). It’s one of the tough facts of life! You’ve laid out a great case for why you shouldn’t have to change your hygiene products, but I’m not a judge and I don’t have the power to issue a ruling on this matter. Your son and daughter-in-law make the rules for the space they live in. What they say goes. The choice here is between Zum and your grandchild, and I think we both know what you’ll pick.

Got a question about kids, parenting, or family life? Submit it to Care and Feeding!

Dear Prudence,

I’ve handled the legal side of this problem, but I don’t know how to handle the emotional side. I ended my otherwise great marriage to my husband “Mark” of five years last October, because he wouldn’t protect our two toddlers. He left our kids unsupervised multiple times over the years with a convicted child abuser on his side of the family and lied about it. The kids were unharmed, but so many things could have happened. He lied through his teeth about doing it, and when I found out he tried to convince me to stay claiming he “knew” they’d be safe because they were too young to be at risk with his relative. Then he felt so guilty in the divorce that he gave me every single thing I asked for, from custody to asset division. The custody and parenting plan lays out clear protections for our kids, and they’re working. I keep my contact with Mark to the bare minimum legally required by the parenting plan and otherwise have cut him out of my life completely.

I’m grateful that the kids are safe, but I still can’t move past trying to find red flags that would have warned me about this earlier in the relationship. It hurts so much that I’m still in love with someone that would put our vulnerable kids at risk, and feels so out of character for him. I thought knowing he was so dangerous to our kids, and cutting him out cold would get me past him, but I intrusively think about happy moments and the way he loved me, our dreams, our plans, our sex life, and our jokes all the time when I’m trying to move on with my life. He’s not a good man, and I feel so guilty about this, and like I can’t tell anyone because it would be a betrayal to my kids. I’m lucky to have lots of safe, high-quality childcare from my sister and parents, and they’ve all been encouraging me to try dating again. My friend also encourages me to get back out there and carefully vet a guy, either that or in my mom’s words “find someone casual for fun while we take the kids for a weekend a month,” but I can’t figure out how to get over Mark. How do I move past this and try to meet someone else? I miss him so much and I shouldn’t.

—I Want to Want Someone Else

Dear Want to Want,

Time. Time. Time. Time and therapy. You shouldn’t be expected to get back out there right now. You haven’t fully processed what happened with Mark, the way he disappointed you, or the fact that he put your children at risk. A professional will help you do that, and also serve as someone who you can talk to openly about this awful secret. That alone will be a huge relief. Keep the pressure to date in perspective. Your sister and friends are just talking. They’re saying the things you say to someone who’s recently divorced. People want to see you happy and they believe a new relationship will get you there, at least in a superficial way. But what you actually need to be happy is to give yourself the time you need to agonize over what you’ve been through and make sense of it. They don’t have to understand this as long as you do. You’ll know you’re ready to meet someone else when you wake up one day and realize you’re interested in someone, or you feel like going on a date. Until then, tell the “get back out there” cheerleaders that the best way they can support you is by having some empathy and what you’re going through. As part of this conversation, tell them everything. Your fear that you’ll betray your kids by telling the truth is misplaced. In fact, the first step in moving on from Mark might be refusing to protect his reputation by keeping his secret.

Dear Prudence,

I’m sorry I can’t keep this short. Break-ups are bad, but best friend break-ups are the worst, and the fact is, there’s not really a defining moment on where mine went wrong, and it’s been a rollercoaster of ups and downs since. I’m usually really good at boxing things up and moving forward with my life, but this is the one situation where I am unsuccessful. I’ve blamed myself for years, and I take responsibility for my wrongdoings, but can’t deny that it wasn’t entirely my fault, unlike him. I’m young, really young, so 12 years of being in each other’s lives is a milestone for us and as much as I try, it doesn’t seem to be ending, and I’m really struggling to move forward because every step I take feels like he’s pulling me three steps back.

It started off simple: childhood best friend. We practically grew up together. We went to the same school, were in the same grades and classes, had younger siblings the same age. His parents worked far away, so the kids would get dropped off at ours, two hours before school and be picked up from ours two hours after school, and even occasionally staying over with us one-week-at-a-time if the parents went away on holiday. We spent five full week-days together and full weekends together, as our siblings played sports together, and we went to the same church. It was essentially Stockholm Syndrome. We obviously became inseparable.

Until high-school where we were finally split up. Our lives changed in such a flash and we grew apart so quickly. It was probably the most heart-breaking thing in my life by that point. He very quickly became too cool for me and has blatantly said as much on multiple occasions over the past few years. But here’s where it gets confusing: Why would I be hung up on a guy who I had nothing in common with anymore and treated me so bad? Our families and siblings were still friends, and we still went to the same church, so he was unavoidable. I was mostly polite and sometimes moody ,so I can understand that at times I was very much unapproachable. But at this point, I think it was warranted. But even after treating me like absolute horse-poo, he quite often did a complete 180 and was the nicest person acting like my best friend, getting cozy and even asking me out a few times. At first, I accepted the rowdy early-teen years and forgave him, because being a teenager is never easy, but at the times our friendship had somewhat mended it would just blow up in our faces yet again.

Now our high-school years are over, and every time I think I’ve finally seen the last of him, he’ll show up in my life again and it’s still a gamble as to whether I’ll either get the overly-sweet or very pissy version of him. He came to a surprise party when I came home from a 5-week-holiday with my family and gave me the biggest hug and told me he’d missed me; two-weeks later, he half ignored me at our mutual friends get-together; and then, another few weeks later he practically squeezed-me-to-death goodbye at a friend’s birthday and told me he loved me. He was tipsy so I’ll blame it on that and by the look on his face he was just as shocked as I was.

I’ve tried putting pettiness aside. If we have to be in each other’s lives, I’m trying to at least be civil, we have so much history together. But every time I try, he just pushes against it and when I’ve had enough he couldn’t be more ignorant. I want to move forward and away.
But everything I try seems to fail.

—Worried

Dear Worried,

Think of this guy as two different people. The child who was your best friend, and the teen/young adult who was and is, to use your term, a f-boy. Mourn the end of your relationship with the kid so you can see the grown-up more clearly as someone who doesn’t treat you well and is honestly pretty weird.

We could analyze him all day. Maybe he’s confused, maybe he has self-esteem issues, maybe he has mood swings, maybe he’s drunk a lot. The possibilities are endless. But what we know for sure is that he’s showing none of the qualities that would make him a good person to date, even if he had the clarity and courage to actually ask you out. Once you decide that, his inconsistent actions won’t have such a strong effect on you. He’ll just be a person in your circle who cycles between being overly sweet and pissy. A mercurial acquaintance.

You say you want to be civil to him and that’s fine, but I’m often suspicious that people use civility as an excuse to keep jerks around. Civility doesn’t require making him a main character in your life. It doesn’t require anticipating what kind of mood he’ll be in, studying his behaviors, or trying to get inside his head and figure him out. You’ve cared about him for a long time, and I know you can’t just turn that off. So fake it until you make it. When you attend a gathering where you know you might see him, try to find another focus (taking the best possible photos of the person celebrating their birthday, controlling the playlist, or maybe even flirting with someone else who you might be a little bit interested in). Just keep yourself busy and keep your mind occupied. If he blurts out that he loves you again, say “I don’t see you that way. Anyway, you’re drunk” and walk away. He doesn’t decide whether you move forward, you do.

Catch up on this week’s Prudie.

My good friend has been eating my food, drinking my booze, and smoking my girlfriend’s weed on a nightly basis without a hint of potential reciprocation. Most nights he comes over, and is welcomed, a couple drinks in on an empty stomach. From there, he will treat himself to weed and more drinks. Mechanically, around 7:30 he will suggest, “What say we make some dinner? I have no food at my house.” I, also needing to eat, feel I have no choice but to oblige—I’d feel like a bad host denying a good friend a simple bowl of pasta. I enjoy his company, even as frequent as it is, and he is very helpful in the cooking and cleaning process. But, as a college student, I don’t feel that I have the financial ability to sponsor the basic needs of another human being and, above all else, it would be nice to be invited for dinner and a beer at his apartment—just once.