Help! My Wife’s Disgusting Digestive Issues Are Her Own Fault, and It’s Ruining Our Marriage.

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Dear Prudence,

My wife and I are almost 30: We’ve been friends since we were about 12, a couple since 18, and married since 22. Neither of us has ever dated anyone else, but now I’m thinking it might be that time.

My wife had her gallbladder removed four years ago. Her doctor gave her a long list of foods to avoid which she has completely ignored. She continues to consume large amounts of dairy … a big glass of full-fat milk at breakfast and another with dinner, butter and cheese on everything, ice cream almost daily … as well as greasy pizza and fast food, fried food, red meat, and baked goods. She has always been prone to digestive issues but now has extremely foul, explosive diarrhea about five or six times a day. We live in a small apartment where I can’t avoid hearing and smelling it, even if she has time to close the bathroom door, which she doesn’t always. Our bathroom is permanently nasty and it’s not me. She laughs at and insults me for being grossed out. She has messed herself at work and instead of being mortified tells everyone about it like it’s a joke. The end result is a total loss of any desire I might still have had for sexual relations with her. We have not had sex in almost two years and she seems completely fine with that.

For the longest time she just got mad any time I’d suggest her diet may be causing her issues. Just now she finally blew up at me, and said that she knows it is, she just loves food too much to change her habits and isn’t ever going to. I am staggered, disgusted, and baffled. I just can’t fathom how anyone would knowingly choose to live like this. Would I be justified in leaving someone who has no regard for her health and deliberately makes herself repulsive?

—Done-a-rhea

Dear Done,

This isn’t just about all the poop, though that would be enough for me. In fact, I don’t think you would care as much about the poop if it was something she couldn’t help, struggled with, or only rarely occurred. The issue here is the clear disregard for her partner’s experience of their shared space or intimate contact. I’m not sure why your partner is satisfied to live in a way that must be physically painful and is obviously repulsive, but that’s her choice. Now you have a choice to make, and it isn’t about whether or not you can live with the smell, it’s about whether or not you can live with someone who doesn’t care that you have to live the smell. You don’t need me or anyone else to justify your leaving. You can leave because you want to go.

Dear Prudence,

About three years ago, my partner and I bought a house, and we really love our street. We lucked out with the best kind of neighbors. Every single person on our small block is kind, quiet, and normal. We all check on each other’s pets and packages and stop and chat in the street, but aren’t in each other’s business too much. On one hand, I feel so grateful to have landed in such a sweet little area.

On the other hand, the neighbors we share a backyard fence with on the west side are SO noisy. They are always working on construction projects and start hammering and angle grinding at like 8 a.m. several days a week. Their dog stands outside and barks incessantly, and the owner’s way of addressing it is occasionally screaming “SHUT THE FUCK UP” to the dog. In our first year here, my husband went over to explain that we have to medicate our dog for fireworks and asked if they could limit their (illegal) fireworks to at least just the week of the 4th rather than off and on throughout the whole summer. He was drunkenly cursed out. The other two neighbors on that side (kitty corner to our backyard) also have extremely loud barking dogs that sometimes fight at the fence.

We both work from home and are at our wits end with the noise—between the construction, shouting, barking, and fireworks it feels like any time of day there is sharp, loud and jarring noise coming in through our backyard. I can’t and don’t want to wear my Air Pods 18 hours a day! We live in a dry climate and leaving the windows open is our main source of cooling. I don’t love the idea of getting law enforcement involved, but the dog seems genuinely distressed and neglected, and our area is extremely prone to wildfires—so I’ve submitted photo and video evidence to animal control and the fireworks hotline multiple times without much luck. Animal control has dropped off warnings, but they said to progress the case I have to agree to be a “named witness” in court.

I want to live in this house for a long time and while I’m scared of taking my neighbor who already doesn’t have much respect for other people to court, I think I’m ready. Do you have any recommendations for how to protect myself and keep this process as civil as possible?

—Dog Days Are Over

Dear Dog Days,

I’m sorry that your home has become a paradise in the front and a problem in the back, but I’m not sure how much good going to court will do for you. It might be satisfying to see a civil judgment (possibly!) granted against your neighbors, but I don’t think it will diminish their disregard for you or the rest of your block.

Lodging legal complaints is certainly your right, and I don’t think most people would blame you for it, but it may not be the right choice to encourage more peace and quiet. Even if your neighbors are found liable for the noise levels or animal neglect, they won’t be made to leave their home. In that event, your only recourse would be continuously notifying the city of violations that will be noted, but most likely, remain unresolved.

My recommendation to you is to control what you can. If you’re not going to leave your home, and you truly don’t believe another attempt at talking this out would be useful (perhaps not in the middle of a fireworks party where drinking is probably happening?), how can you make it more comfortable for you in the meantime? What options do you have to block the noise and other interference from your neighbors? For instance, sound-proofing the office? Reconsidering the open windows? No house or home is perfect, but if the place you live is worth waiting out the nightmare banging behind the fence, do what you can in the meantime to make it bearable.

Dear Prudence,

I live on the same property with my in-laws, and so my three boys (4, 8, 9) are often over at their grandparents’ home for visits. My mother-in-law loves to play servant, and she recently told me how much she loves to serve my children. She told me that yesterday they were all sitting in the living room watching TV and ordering her around and how much she loved to “be of service” (cringe). This is something that we do not do in our own home. We want to have self-sufficient kids that respect boundaries and take care of themselves to a degree. If my kids didn’t see them every day and practice this dance with grandmother all the time, I wouldn’t really care, but because they are always over there, I am worried about this dynamic. I have noticed that my children have recently been making demands that they are fully capable of doing themselves. How can I approach this in a respectful way to her? I don’t want to hurt her feelings. I know how much she loves to serve, but I find this dynamic toxic in the long run.

—Grandma Liked to Play Servant

Dear Grandma,

Grandparents have a long, long history of spoiling their grandchildren, and the parents of said children have a long history of finding that indulgence irritating, and in some cases, actively harmful. I don’t think your mother-n-law is engaging in conduct with your children that would be considered harmful, or even toxic, but I understand your discomfort with what looks to you like someone teaching your kids to become demanding assholes.

So how about this. What if you spoke to your mother-in-law about adding context to the Grandma Game your kids play at her house? There can be clear rules and boundaries about what’s appropriate to do and say while playing with Grandma, versus how they should be expected to behave when they’re not playing the game. If your concern is the rules of Grandma’s house bleeding into how they interact in The Real World, take heart that no one else in the world is Grandma, and they should quickly learn to adapt to that fact.

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Dear Prudence,

My girlfriend has been complaining a lot about how she feels left out of various groups. She feels she’s too sensitive and emotional for her stoic family, that her friend group is closer to each other than to her, and that her coworkers like each other more than her and are intentionally excluding her. Our queer relationship has made things rocky with her family, but I don’t think the things with her friends or coworkers is based in reality. She has a close group she sees on a weekly basis that bring her food and flowers when things are hard with her family or at work. Her coworkers have invited the two of us to their weddings, birthday parties, and barbecues.

Regardless of how I perceive things, I feel for her that she’s experiencing loneliness, and I’ve tried to be soft and sweet around how those emotions are difficult. However, I’m starting to have less patience for her sour attitude (she was recently crabby the whole time on a trip with her friends because of these issues) and the endless conversations on these matters. I also find it unattractive because it comes across to me as being irritated and hard on other people when they haven’t done anything wrong. What should I do?

—Fatigued on Feelings

Dear Fatigued,

It sounds to me like your girlfriend is consistently down on herself in a way that makes it almost impossible to be consistently kind to others. That’s something she has to work on if she wants to be able to clearly see the love she has in her life—this could be a sign of depression (you should encourage her to be evaluated) or it could just be a quirk of personality. Either way, you can’t make her see it. I know you wish you could hand her your eyeballs, with your brain still attached, and let her watch the way you see her, and to see the care available to her. You feel you know how much this would change her perspective on herself, and her life; maybe it would, but you’ll never know because it’s an impossible task. A fantastical wish.

What it will take for your girlfriend to exit the rut she’s in is for her to discover mostly on her own. You can hold her hand while she walks that path, but you can’t show her the way. Are you content to be a hand-holder, and a witness to every obstacle she faces and stumbles over as she makes an attempt to gain clarity on her flaws? As she commits to learn how to manage them, and attempts to behave accordingly?

If that’s the commitment you want to make, then make it to yourself and find your own path beside hers. If that’s too much, or just not what you want, then tell her where you are emotionally, give her a chance to do better, but be honest with yourself about whether or not that’s happening in a way that works for you.

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Dear Prudence,

My ex-husband and I married very young. He was 19 and I was 18. For us it was practical, since we grew up in a very strict religious environment. He was gay and needed to hide it, and I just wanted to get out. We both knew this going in, so we never had romantic or sexual expectations. Marriage let me go to college without my dad’s permission and with better funding. It let us leave our parents’ households, and eventually leave the church. It definitely wasn’t smooth sailing, but it saved us both. We divorced quietly when I was 22. He and his husband and I are very close friends, more like siblings than my actual brothers are to me. I was the person of honor in his real wedding to his husband last year.

I’m 30 now, and the men I date seem to take my divorce as if it’s shameful, or there’s something wrong with me. Or they act like it’s fine, but then are jealous and angry when they realize my gay best friend is my ex-husband. I don’t know when to disclose this information, or how to frame it. I don’t want to lie, but I can’t really explain these circumstances without doing a deep dive into my bad childhood. When do I break this information? It’s odd to me that this is a hang up for men because my interim serious relationship between the divorce and the present was much more important and shaped me romantically in a way the marriage never could have!

—When to Tell?

Dear When to Tell,

I’d like to flip the idea that your past is keeping good men away, and suggest that revealing your past is keeping the men away who would have been wrong for you. Having a gay ex-husband / best friend is about as non-intimidating as it gets in regard to past relationships, and what you did for your friend (and for yourself) was laudable, so a man who can’t handle that bit of information was always going to try to hold you back. It may not be first-date material, but don’t fret about sharing this aspect of your history early in the game.

Dear Prudence,

I have severe asthma. I follow my doctors’ rules. I carry my inhaler everywhere. Lots of triggers are unavoidable, like weather or pollen. But cigarette smoke is different. I work in a suburban office building with many different businesses that share one parking lot. There’s no other parking. The building has rules that give smokers a location by the loading docks. It’s not really enforced because the building is owned by a big corporate entity, not the businesses inside.

This was fine until this month when cold weather started. No one smokes indoors but suddenly lots of people smoke just outside the door. They also smoke in the parking lot among the cars. I have had an asthma attack every day since this started, and been to the hospital twice. Today, someone was smoking next to my car when I got off work and I had to drive home with all the windows down. I can ask individual people to stop. But it doesn’t help because it’s a whole crowd of strangers. None of these people work at my company either. How do I tackle this?

—Asthmatic and Tired

Dear Asthmatic,

You have to ask your company to encourage the facility’s owners to enforce the established rules around smoking, or provide you some other accommodation. I have to assume they’d be more than willing to do so, but it might help to have a note from a medical professional confirming your asthma diagnosis, and documentation from your multiple hospitalizations. Chances are that if you’re suffering, you’re not the only one, and even if that isn’t the case, changes should be made to keep you safe and healthy on the job. Best of luck!

Classic Prudie

I hate my bathing suit! I’m a 46-year-old cis male, and these baggy trunks we’re expected to wear are the worst. Out of the water they are wet and clingy. In the water, they flap around and get full of air pockets. I’d like to switch to a speedo (name brand or otherwise) or a tight-fitting square-cut brief type of suit. My question is: Will wearing a tight-fitting suit be seen as creepy or aggressively sexual?