Emily Yoffe
Photograph by Teresa Castracane.
Emily Yoffe, aka Dear Prudence, is on Washingtonpost.com weekly to chat live with readers. An edited?transcript of the chat is below. (Sign up here?to get Dear Prudence delivered to your inbox each week. Read Prudie?s?Slate columns?here. Send questions to Prudence at prudence@slate.com.)
Q. Relationships: I'm dating a wonderful man whom I love very much. Our relationship is loving, fun, comfortable, and full of trust, and we've started discussing marriage. I was very happy in the relationship until about six months ago, when we befriended another couple, Jen and Mark. Like us, they are in their late 20s and have been together for four years or so. But their relationship is like a fairytale romance. They gaze adoringly into each other's eyes and it's as if no one else in the world exists. From what Jen's told me, their sex life is incredible. They finish each other's sentences. The connection between them is almost tangible. I've never seen a couple like them ... it's like something out of a movie. I love my boyfriend immensely, but when I'm around Jen and Mark, our relationship seems inadequate by comparison. Should I endure the pain of breaking up with my boyfriend in order to seek out my own Prince Charming, or learn to appriciate what I already have?
A: I'm struck that to you Jen and Mark sound like a fairy tale because to me they sound like kind of a nightmare. If my husband were finishing all my sentences I'd be saying a lot, "Do you mind if I complete my own though?" And if he were staring at my face all the time, I'd assume he was trying to signal me that I have spinach in my teeth. You are young, but surely you recognize that Jen and Mark are outliers. Their behavior is what you see when people first fall in love, the kind of goofy madness depicted in Shakespeare's romantic comedies. Fortunately for people's ability to get their work done, and not to have their friends rolling their eyes at their mind meld, this kind of singular focus tends to wear off. That doesn't mean people can't remain madly in love for years and decades. It doesn't mean a sexual connection has to wane. But recognizing there are very few Jens and Marks does mean that you don't have to engage in your own insanity by dumping a wonderful man who makes you happy in order to search for some romance novel fantasy of a guy who will think of nothing but you. Surely if you found one after a while his behavior would prompt you to say, "Can you get a hobby that doesn't involve gazing at me?"
Q. Should I Tell My Daughter I'm Her Real Father?: I had a fling with an acquaintance many years ago. She became pregnant, didn't tell me, and I only recently found out I have an 8-year-old daughter. Her mother is married and my daughter thinks he is her biological father. I can't begin to describe how angry and devastated I am for missing out on my own child's entire life to date. I want to get to know her and establish a father-daughter relationship over time, but my family seems to think this would be cruel and traumatic. They all say that the little girl is happy with the only father she knows, and it would be selfish of me to disturb that knowledge. I've been doing some research and I can definitely pursue my paternal rights for visitation. The mother knows this as well, and has begged me not to. I want to do what's best for my daughter but I also want that to be having me in her life. Is it wrong to now step in and claim my role as a father?
A: I appreciate this letter because I have so often heard from the people on the other side of the equation. That is, from women who have had affairs and have children fathered by men other than the person they're married to, men who have been held out as the biological father. Yours is the strongest possible argument for why keeping the secret is so potentially dangerous. How much better it would be for a child to know from her earliest years about her origins so that a stranger bearing DNA doesn't unexpectedly show up and blow up her world. I think you should have another private conversation with the mother, and maybe even father (although it's not clear here whether he knows he's not the father) which you try to make as absolutely nonthreatening as possible. Ask her, or them, to try to understand this from your perspective?you have a child who you want to know. You can say that while you do have legal recourse to be part of her life, of course it would be best for everyone if your daughter was told the truth freely and you have not made any decision about pursuing legal action. Then let her and her husband think about it. If they refuse, then frankly, although I am generally in favor of the truth, I'm going to have to agree with your family and say that at least for now, you should back off. You know your arrival, particularly announced on legal letterhead is going to be traumatic for a child who is happy and probably doesn't want to get to know you. Sometimes there are situations with no perfect resolution that inevitably cause pain, and this is one.
Q. Breast-feeding Becoming an Issue: My husband and I had a little girl three months ago. She's the sweetest baby ever and we are both crazy in love with her. I am currently breast-feeding, and as you can imagine my life is consumed with either feeding her or pumping so I can have enough milk for when I go to work. The problem is that my husband has a hard time disassociating my breasts from their current job (making milk), so our sex life has been rather absent lately. When I brought this up a few weeks ago he admitted that he has a hard time getting turned on because my breasts are constantly in his face feeding the baby, therefore he has a hard time associating them as a sexual object. This same issue happened when I had my son five years ago?we hardly had sex during the time I was breast-feeding, but then it was back to normal once I stopped. I personally don't see why it's such an issue and want us to be intimate. With my son I stopped breast-feeding at 7 months and one of the main reasons was because of our lacking sex life. I don't want to stop that early with my daughter so I feel he should get over this strange feeling he has. Do you have any advice in this area?
A: It's really too bad your husband can't embrace life in all its messy mammalian abundance. At least he is able to articulate his reason to you, and you know from experience that fortunately this is a self-limiting quirk on his part. Another aspect of this is that once your baby starts on solid food at about 6 months, even if you continue breast-feeding that will naturally tail off, so the lactation won't be so much in your husband's face. I am not defending your husband or his behavior! But even if I suggested therapy, by the time you finished exploring all the issues raised you might be concluding the breast-feeding anyway, and the return of your sex life would be seen as a therapeutic success. You and your husband can talk about this issue, which is great. So your husband should be able to hear from you that while you understand his feelings, you have feelings, too, and not being a sexual person until you wean is frustrating for you. Ask him to loosen up his hand-off policy?kissing and cuddling should be pleasant for both of you and might lead to more intimacy. Try to have a sense of humor about this with each other?you don't want this to lead to even greater distance just as you expanded your family.
Source: http://feeds.slate.com/click.phdo?i=48b65ebb826f13f58a531ff1392e3bb5
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