Advice Columns

I'm thinking that part of my discomfort with the use of the word "wife" in a common-law relationship is because of this one guy I know - he's common-law, but he doesn't seem to like his partner very much. He's always rolling his eyes about her and saying how stupid she is. So, him saying "My wife is so stupid" really makes me grit my teeth, but more for the "stupid" part than the "wife" part, probably.

(Did that make any sense at all? I haven't had much coffee today yet.)

In other words, if a couple is common-law and love each other and are committed to each other - yup, "wife" and "husband" make perfect sense, even if they aren't married. In this guy's case, though, I dunno.

Well...I mean...there are lots of bad husbands who treat their wives like that and got the piece of paper? I mean I get what you mean, but I mean...it sounds like they are for all intents and purposes married in their mind its just not a good marriage? Like you said, focus on the stupid not that he calls her wife. Its not like it would be any better if he called her partner or girlfriend.

Like, they probably do feel married, he is just an ass. I have several friends that are common law (generational, I guess), and most of them just don't feel any need to have a marriage ceremony.

Well...I mean...there are lots of bad husbands who treat their wives like that and got the piece of paper? I mean I get what you mean, but I mean...it sounds like they are for all intents and purposes married in their mind its just not a good marriage? Like you said, focus on the stupid not that he calls her wife. Its not like it would be any better if he called her partner or girlfriend.

Yeah, I wouldn't say that common-law vs. legally married has any bearing on how people treat each other. I unfortunately know plenty of people who have nothing good to say about the people they chose to marry.

As for what people choose to refer to their spouse/partner as, that falls firmly in the category of their business and their choice, IMO. It's like a woman taking or not taking her husband's name, which is another thing that people inexplicably choose to fixate on and judge.

http://www.uexpress.com/dearabby/2014/6/15/obvious-tattoos-keep-friend-out-of

: I have an attractive friend who was bypassed for a front-office promotion. "Miranda" is pleasant, clean, efficient, energetic and had the same qualifications as the individual who was promoted. A management team member confided that the reason for Miranda's lack of advancement "might" be due to the numerous tattoos -- difficult to cover -- on her arms and wrists, which the manager said isn't the image the business wants to convey.

Is this discrimination? I think it's unfair because Miranda is a good worker. She keeps asking me if I have any ideas why she was bypassed. Should I tell her? I don't want to violate the manager's faith in my confidentiality, even though I will be retiring soon.

Abby's advice is to tell the friend, but I'm not sure I agree. I wonder why it didn't occur to Abby that the manager in question might have been lying in the first place, or at the very least, projecting? I had a nasty coworker once tell me I had to stop doing something because our boss didn't want me to do it anymore. When I asked my boss why she hadn't just told me, my boss had no idea what I was talking about - my coworker had made it up because she didn't like me. I wouldn't take office gossip seriously.

I have to say though, that is the risk of tattoos you can't conceal. I have nothing against them in theory, but people really should consider what they're doing.

I have to say though, that is the risk of tattoos you can't conceal. I have nothing against them in theory, but people really should consider what they're doing.

Yep. I know someone who wasn't hired full time (from temp) in part because she didn't dress professionally for a receptionist position, including showing pretty intense cleavage on several occasions. Sadly, someone did have a talk with that person and it didn't make a significant difference.

I suspect many workplaces consider hand tattoos unprofessional, or at least unsuitable for the public face of a company, especially if they are "numerous." I think it's important that someone tell her, although it really should be her supervisor and not a random coworker. The coworker might also want to try to confirm that the tats were really at least part of the reason she wasn't given the promotion. Someone should have helped her think about it *before* she got the tats, of course, but she does have the option of finding a business that doesn't mind tattoos, covering them somehow, resigning herself to not being in the front office of the company, or getting the tats removed (not a great option perhaps, but an option). But she won't know that she should do any of that if no one tells her what the issue is.

I think the coworker should say something, but she probably knows already.  I would want to know.  My mom and I argue a lot over the appropriateness of tattoos, and while I think they're fine and you can't judge someone just on that, people my mom's age still do a lot of the hiring and promoting.  She works at a community college in the South, and has lots of stories about her students not being able to get jobs because of visible tattoos.  I work at a university where you have a lot of higher "class" people with tattoos, and most of the musicians/restaurant workers have them everywhere, but I know that my town is the island of granola in the sea of grits.  And even here, a person I know in an academic department with a lower leg tattoo, an arm tattoo, and a tattoo above one of her breasts had a parent came up to her at graduation and told her that she can't believe the University lets her teach with her visible tattoos.

They're accepted a lot more than they used to be, I think, but yeah - there still seems to be a certain stigma associated with people who have tattoos. Personally, I think they're cool. My daughters both want to get one (or more), and I'm fine with it, but I haven't told my 81-year-old mother because I know she'd freak.

I know a lot of highly educated people with tattoos. But they're all in places that can be covered - arms, legs, feet. And this is also something that depends a lot on context. If a person already has a lot of status in their job, and does not depend on what 'random public' thinks about their skin, they're fine. If not...

Well, today's Dear Abby is...different.

DEAR ABBY: When my friend Fran and I get together with our kids, they often play games on her cellphone until the battery dies. If she tries to take the phone from her 6-year-old to make a call or recharge the phone, he starts yelling at her, pushes her, pulls her skirt and hits her. Her reaction is to hug him and start praying for the devil to get out of his body in Jesus' name as he continues to hit her.

Are time-outs and taking a toy away if a kid can't play nicely not a thing anymore? Instead of acknowledging her kid's disappointment and teaching him to handle it in a functional way this lady jumps straight to exorcisms? Huh.

Well, obviously, if a young child is stubborn and tantrum-y, it means that the Devil has taken him over. It can't mean that he's acting like a fairly typical six-year-old. *eyeroll*

If I even *thought* of hitting my mother at the age of six, I would have been toast.

If I were her friend, I'd be concerned about her mental health. Her actions seem very 'off' to me.

If Fran is like that now, she's going to need more than prayers in ten years time when the kid is an unruly teen.

The Glen wrote:If I were her friend, I'd be concerned about her mental health. Her actions seem very 'off' to me.

That was my thought too. I think having a bratty kid might actually be the least of the woman's problems. :(

I love the absurdity of the third letter--become a long-haul trucker or get my tattoo removed? How did this person conclude those were their only two options?

I'm not sure which of the first two letters is sadder. Though I'm disappointed in Prudie for not sending LW1 to a therapist first.

Yesterday's Bad Advisor response to an Ask Amy letter is a work of art.

When we were dating, my wife was the sweetest woman in the world. She didn’t make a move without asking me.

Oh lord... You know it's not gonna get any better after that.

I've never claimed to be a terrible socially adept person, but it seems to me that the woman in the last letter is being WAY too hard on herself. Her response to the woman's compliment seemed totally normal to me, and I'm surprised Carolyn didn't tell her so.

It seemed like a normal answer to me too, for a total stranger just passing on the street. If the LW were at a baby event like library story time, or sitting next to the lady in a coffee shop instead of passing on the sidewalk, then saying some more would be appropriate: complimenting the other lady's kid in turn and possibly striking up a conversation. But if you don't want to chat or only have seconds to respond, saying a simple thank you to a sincere compliment is never a faux pas, IMO.

I've often found Dear Prudie to be wrong-headed, but today IMO she was blood-curdlingly so. A man wrote that his wife was upset because she found out that a man who had killed her mother by setting her house on fire (a house she herself was in at the time) and had got off on a light sentence due to his plea that he thought the house was empty at the time and the fact that he had mental health issues had apparently cleaned up his addiction problems and gotten married and gotten a job as a teacher. The letter writer acknowledges that the man must have concealed his past, but expressed his concern that his wife wanted to expose the man's past. He felt that the man had cleaned up his life and did not deserve to have it ruined. Prudie backed him up to the full, saying the wife should get therapy to soothe her desire for vengeance.

It's not that I don't think therapy is a good idea - it is, obviously. But IMO, it's not a question of simple revenge...if this guy got a job as a teacher on the strength of concealing his past felony (as well as being acquitted for the attempted murder of a child), then maybe his reform is not as complete as the writer suggests and MAYBE he shouldn't be actually be teaching. IMO, Prudie wouldn't be quite so patronizing if she found this guy was teaching HER children.
http://www.slate.com/articles/life/dear_prudence/2014/12/dear_prudence_i_promised_my_daughter_not_to_tell_about_her_predatory_dance.html#comments

I have mixed feelings. On one hand, if he truly cleaned up his life and is trying to be a better person, then he deserves that chance. On the other hand, he's in a position where he's working with children, and I don't think that's a good mix with someone who has a history of control issues that included being willing to kill his wife's child. I'm not sure a newspaper expose is necessary, but perhaps the school should be made aware of the situation. (Although I would do this really, really carefully, because if she's right in thinking he may not have changed, who knows what he'd do if he figured it out - and if she was able to learn he was a teacher, he might be able to learn who ratted him out to the school. Maybe even go through a lawyer?) I do wonder why on earth the school wouldn't have found his record, though.

The letter mentions his young age at the time of the crime so it's entirely possible that the conviction was sealed because he was a juvenile.

The guidance counselor at the middle school one town over did time for armed bank robbery. The school district felt he had turned his life around in prison and by all accounts he's very good at his job. That might well be the case here. Most (all?) schools now require staff (and volunteers) to pass a criminal record check and are starting to require staff be fingerprinted, so I'd think it's unlikely that his record - unless he was a juvenile - is unknown to them.
If what she's really wanting is to trumpet this information to the world at large then I think Prudie's right. It's not going to help her in any way.

On the other hand, he's in a position where he's working with children, and I don't think that's a good mix with someone who has a history of control issues that included being willing to kill his wife's child.

Did I miss something, it says when he was young he set a fire that killed his then girlfriends mother, nothing about killing a child or control issues, other than lack of control by starting a fire.