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Dear Prudence is Slate’s advice column. For this edition, Leah Prinzivalli, a Slate features editor, will be filling in as Prudie. Submit questions here. (It’s anonymous!) Dear Prudence, I have been with my husband for almost 14 years. We have been married for four years and have lived together since around 2013. He’s great and I love him so much. When we were young, poor, and renting, my husband was always a slob; he never picked up after himself, left his dirty and clean clothes together in a mountain on his side of the bed, would rather die than wash a dish, etc. His car was putrid. As a medium clean person (but not a neat freak), I was annoyed by the clutter and grossness, but learned to live with it since no amount of begging ever changed it; I still do essentially 100 percent of all daily cleaning/tidying tasks except for his laundry. Ever since we bought our house and got a new shiny car, he’s become fussy in a way that I find off-putting. He frets and fusses over microscopic dings in the bumper; can’t get over the latest landscaper screwup; rushes to put a pad under the paper I’m writing on at our ancient, already scratched up table; leaps up and scolds me if I scoot a chair a few centimeters rather than pick it up. If any possessions are remotely marred or imperfect, it seems to really stress him out. But that doesn’t stop him from continuing to be the same slob he always was in his own way. The pile of mixed laundry still mars our bedroom floor, he leaves candy wrappers and crumbs on the coffee table during late-night snacking, and the car is still full of snack crumbs, crumpled papers, and old gym shoes. His own home office, which I don’t clean, always looks like a tornado hit it. I feel like I can’t criticize him for being more cautious about things, but it seems like the only thing he cares about is not physically damaging property, not keeping the daily environment we live in clean and tidy. He gets defensive and pouts if I ever bring these things up to him, but it really gets me down, especially because I feel like he’s constantly policing my behavior around our shared possessions. What would be a productive way for me to think about this, and do you have any suggestions for me? —Mess in Texas Dear Mess, New house! New car! It sounds like you’ve recently made some pretty exciting, major, and expensive life changes. I’m not surprised that your husband is finding himself with a frustrating—for him, too, I bet—new little voice in the back of his mind telling him to freak out if there’s a ding on the new bumper or a scratch on the new floor. You know how some people keep the plastic film over the screen on a new phone for a strangely long time? It sounds like your husband is having an exponential version of that instinct. I’m hopeful that as you both get a little more used to your house, and the car gets a little less shiny, this behavior will naturally recede. I can see how this combination of overindexing in one area while letting another totally slide would boggle the mind. But I think you need to separate them into two different issues, to be addressed at different times. Let’s deal with the less entrenched pattern first. Have you approached your husband with genuine curiosity about these new anxieties? When things are calm (not immediately after he’s yelled at you for scooting your chair back), gently ask him what’s going through his mind in those moments. Is it rooted in financial anxiety and wanting to be sure you get the most out of your investment? Is this a life milestone he’s been working towards and dreaming of for a long time, and now that it’s here, it has to be perfect? I find I get much angrier, much faster if I can’t make sense of my partner’s choices. I think helping him identify the root of this behavior will help you find some empathy when he’s venting about the grass being cut a centimeter too low, and give him some space to talk about whatever feelings are coming out in these moments. I can’t tell if you’re distressed by having done 100 percent of the housework for a decade, or if the issue is more that this new behavior feels hypocritical in the face of that fact. (Which would drive me nuts—one of the hardest parts of being in a relationship is dealing with another human’s paradoxes.) Either way, I wouldn’t blame you if you want to restructure this pretty unfair arrangement. I hate to tell someone who has long shouldered a burden to wait a little longer, but I think you have to hang on until your husband is over this new-investment hump. Once he lets you put a glass on your ancient table without a coaster, you’ll know it’s time to bring up the chore split. Dear Prudence, I’m feeling torn. My husband and I left Los Angeles for my hometown earlier this year, and I miss everyone and everything. The original plan was to move for six months and see how we felt, but my husband made it clear he wasn’t interested in moving back after the six months. When I try to express how our new life makes me feel, he talks about how he only stayed in LA as long as he did for me, and that makes me feel worse. I visit LA for a weekend now and then, but it barely scratches the itch. I feel more at home when I get there than I do when I return home, but he feels like home, too. The problem is, I love him, and I don’t hate our new life, but I worry I’ll always have this nagging feeling that I should be somewhere else. —Algernon Dear Algernon, Give it six more months, and if you have no pressing reason to be visiting LA so regularly, try to stick closer to your hometown. I’m taking a weekend trip “now and then” to mean that you’ve been there at least twice in half a year, all while trying to adjust to a new home. That’s too much! It’s like a breakup—you need at least an initial period of going no-contact if you’re ever going to get over someone. Have your LA friends come out to you instead, and use their visits as an excuse to explore your hometown with fresh eyes. Think about all the reasons you moved back in the first place, and make sure you’re experiencing them. If you wanted to escape car culture, go for those walks. If you craved being closer to family, prioritize spending that time with them. Take whatever elements of your new life you “don’t hate” and double down. Since (I’m guessing) your husband didn’t grow up in the same town as you, it might be easier for him to see the upsides than you. I know if I moved from Brooklyn back to my suburban hometown, the joy of more family time, more space, and affordable-ish housing would also be layered with some complicated memories. It’s not your husband who’s finding himself once again in the parking lot where you once hit a car when you were learning to drive, the restaurant where a high school friend who passed away used to work, or the scene of a truly brutal teenage screaming match with your mom. It might take you a bit longer to peel back all the layers of feelings you have about your new-old home—and shake off some of those ghosts. So give yourself some more time to sink into this life, and give yourself a real chance to do so by staying put for a bit. We Want to Hear Your Petty Work Drama! Laura Helmuth and Doree Shafrir want to help you navigate your social dynamics at work. Does your colleague constantly bug you after hours? Has an ill-advised work romance gone awry? Ask us your question here! Dear Prudence, How can I balance looking for the “spark” and giving someone (and let’s be honest: me) enough time to open up? I tend to want to decide on someone right away, even though realistically, I know I can’t know everything about someone so soon. I know it takes time to understand if someone is right, but time is money, and I’m a busy woman! —Sparkless Dear Sparkless, You give it two dates. My real answer is one date, but sometimes a logical, results-driven brain needs a bit more evidence to catch up to your gut. Here’s a reminder that I’ve needed many times over the years during my many stints of singledom: You know what a good date feels like. It’s easy to forget that feeling even exists when you’re in the midst of a long slog of boring but polite conversations. I understand the impulse—especially if “time is money” is one of your mantras—to want to keep tending to a nonexistent fire for the sake of just checking off “find partner” on a long to-do list and moving on to your next chore. But in my experience, you do feel a spark right away, even if the spark is a tiny ember. You can’t be on the same wavelength in terms of humor, lifestyle, values, and goals in two hours over two drinks. That’s what you give yourself and the other person some time to build together. But you should still feel something after two drinks! The question to ask yourself at the end of every date isn’t, “What’s my decision on this person?” It’s too much pressure, and if you’ve put in all this effort into dating and found someone who has their shit remotely together and seems friendly and normal, it’s too tempting to just let yourself keep spending time with someone who doesn’t excite you. Your new question is: Am I curious about this person? If yes, proceed. If not, that’s OK. Your next good date is out there. —Leah Classic Prudie I’m a man in my 30s and have been married to my wife for six years. During that time, we have had a very painful journey in trying to have a child. Our first daughter was stillborn and our second lived for only six hours before also passing away. My wife then had a miscarriage during the third pregnancy. She decided she wanted to stop trying to have a biological child and explore other options someday. This was last year, and since then she’s developed a bizarre habit that worries me…
