Help! I Seem to Have Broken a Cardinal Rule of Going Home to Visit Your Family.

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

Dear Prudence,

My older sister got pregnant (twice) and dropped out of school. She lives with our parents and works part-time at a fast food joint. I go to college about two hours away. I love my family but I hate visiting. The house is always a mess and I am stuck on the sofa because the kids have my room. Either the kids are screaming their heads off, my parents are fighting about bills, or my sister is complaining about how hard her life is. I juggle school, a full-time job, and my scholarship. I don’t even have time to socialize when I am there, which makes my weekends so precious.

I still have a lot of friends in town and prefer to stay and see them rather than deal with the chaos at home. My family finds this offensive. My mother claims it hurts her heart that I don’t want to “spend time” with them. And my sister makes snide remarks about me being a shitty aunt and not loving her kids. The minute I enter the door, my mother is banging at me to help clean up, my sister is shoving her kids at me so she can go out, and my dad locks himself in the garage to tinker. They don’t even ask me how school is going. I would just not tell them when I am visiting, but most of my friends either live at home or are family friends. The last time that my family found out I visited without telling them, I got the mother of all guilt trips. I love my family, but visiting them isn’t worth the gas every weekend. Help!

—Visiting Woes

Dear Visiting Woes,

I’m sure this varies based on geographic region, culture, and particular family expectations, but it is very normal to go to college and just stay there until the holidays and then again until the summer. In fact, doing so is a great experience that allows you to create an identity separate from the one you had when you were in high school and living at home, and to get input from a different group of people about how you want to live and be treated. I can see spending the majority of weekends in the dorms or campus being especially beneficial for someone like you, who comes from an emotionally volatile family. Because of the various issues they’re dealing with, your relatives don’t have what it takes to respect you as the young adult you are.

The default expectation, going forward, should be that you stay on campus. ”I’m juggling school, a full-time job, and my scholarship” is a simple excuse that will carry you through until you graduate. When you do want to go home, be intentional about it and let your family know what they can anticipate. “I’ll be coming by on Sunday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. for my niece’s birthday party,” or “Mom, do you want to meet me for lunch on Saturday so we can catch up?” or “I’d love to come babysit for the evening and watch the kids hunt for Easter eggs in the morning, and then I’ll be taking off.” They may very well find it offensive that you don’t want to show up regularly to throw yourself into the chaos and be taken advantage of, but they’ll soon learn what they can expect from you—and hopefully, you can plan your time with them so that you actually enjoy some of it. With consistency, you’ll change your identity in the family from “little sister who gets pushed around” to “aunt who has her own life and pops in and out on her terms.” Also, listen to this carefully: When you graduate and get your own place, be absolutely certain that none of them have a key and that any visits or babysitting stints have a very clear end date.

Sometimes even Prudence needs a little help. This week’s tricky situation is below. Submit your comments about how to approach the situation here to Jenée, and then look back for the final answer here on Friday.

Dear Prudence,

My boyfriend is a regular weed smoker. Before we got in a relationship I told him that he smoked too much weed and that I didn’t like that. He was smoking every single day before we were together because he was in an abusive relationship and that was his way of coping and escaping. For a few weeks, he abstained from it, until we went on a trip and he wanted to enjoy us being out and in nature. I said yes and I even smoked with him as a way of bonding. From there, he slowly started to use it again, not daily but still frequently. I’m a man who grew up with bad behaviors regarding substances and abuse. His smoking habit really triggers me. I feel like I can’t be as intimate with him now as before because of it—although he’s more affectionate and loving when he smokes since he’s not anxious anymore and he’s not thinking about his past relationships.

I try my best to not smoke weed because I’m a doctor and I need to keep my mind sharp and always ready. I feel really scared that this is going to be our downfall. He’s the sweetest man I’ve been with. I don’t want him to get numb and slowly just start to smoke every day again. I even came up with the idea that maybe every weekend we could do something like he can smoke and I can use CBD but he took it as an excuse to smoke every day of the weekend. One day, he even smoked three joints with his ex-roomie. I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to lose him. I’m scared that if I ask him to try and quit, he will react badly and decide to end the relationship. Please help!

—Too Triggered

Dear Too Triggered,

I love that you brought this up before you got into a relationship. That was smart! If someone does something you find totally unacceptable, you have to address that before you become a couple. But you didn’t take the conversation quite far enough. Did your boyfriend say he was going to be drug-free forever? Did you two talk about what would happen if he couldn’t abstain? It doesn’t sound like it. I get it—you were both in the honeymoon phase and wanted things to work. But here we are. And they’re not.

Serious question: What is the point of being in a relationship with the sweetest man you’ve ever been with if the dominant feelings you’re having are “scared” and “triggered”? He may be very sweet—I believe that he is—but this can’t be the way you want to feel.

I don’t think either of you is wrong here. Weed is legal in many places (I assume, where you live) and obviously, hating weed is legal too. You and your boyfriend both seem to be fragile people who are doing your best to cope despite the impact abuse has had on you—for him, it happened during his last relationship, and for you, it happened during your childhood. And you both seem desperate. He’s desperate to dull his thoughts and ease his anxiety, while you’re desperate to hold onto the version of him you imagine you’ll get if he puts the weed down. That’s not a good foundation from which to negotiate or compromise. I have to be honest that I don’t see a way forward here. You should tell him how awful you’re feeling and how disappointed you are that he couldn’t continue to abstain. You love him and it’s worth the tiny possibility that he’ll commit to staying sober in order to keep you. But realistically, he’ll probably try to throw out another bargain like he’ll only smoke at home, or he’ll switch to THC seltzer, or he’ll only do it every other day (unless of course he’s particularly stressed or it’s a holiday). Don’t fall for it. There’s another person out there for you, who makes you feel just as safe, happy, and relaxed as your current boyfriend feels when he’s high.

Submit your questions anonymously here. (Questions may be edited for publication.) 

Dear Prudence,

I like socks with pictures on them, (I have souvenir socks from trips, for example) and I was given a pair of red socks with pictures of Chinese restaurant items: take-out boxes, chopsticks, the words “Enjoy” and “Thank you” in mock Chinese printing, like they have at Chinese restaurants. I am not Chinese. I am Jewish, and I got these for Chanukah because Jews eat Chinese food on Christmas. Is it insensitive for me to wear them? I’m feeling uncomfortable about wearing them because I don’t want to offend anyone. Do I need to relegate them to weekends at home with slippers on?

—Not My New Year

Dear Not My New Year,

This isn’t the kind of cultural appropriation that any serious person is worried about. If you want a permission slip to wear the take-out boxes and chopsticks, print out this response and carry it with you to show it to the zero people who are going to see your footwear and go, “Wait a minute, what do you know about the over 45,000 Chinese restaurants in America?”

That said, as a general rule, if a pair of socks is stressing you out, don’t wear them. Some words to live by: If your enjoyment of something is overwhelmed by self-consciousness and angst about offending someone with the thing, make your life easier and skip it.

My husband, “David,” is amazing 85 percent of the time. He also loves to prank me. When we started dating, the pranks were small, like hiding my keys or startling me. But over the years they’ve grown meaner and scarier. I hate being pranked and have begged him to stop, but he seems unable to understand why they upset me so much.