Care and Feeding is Slate’s parenting advice column. Have a question for Care and Feeding? Submit it here.
Dear Care and Feeding,
My boyfriend from high school and I never had closure after we broke up. We broke up right after his brother molested me and he “caught” us. Afterwards I froze. My then-boyfriend wouldn’t talk to me for four years, until out of the blue he messaged me on Facebook and told me he forgave my “cheating.” I told him the truth, and he regretted not hearing me out and I regretted not speaking up.
Now 20 years have passed since we dated, and I’ve seen him in person for the first time. We hit it off like no time had gone by. The problem is that now I have three kids and am married (not happily). We both want closure. What do we do and how do we go about it? I have no desire to cheat, but I do want closure as I have been carrying this baggage for so long.
—Seeking Closure in Canada
Dear Seeking,
Let’s start here: “Closure” is not what is achieved by sleeping with your high school boyfriend (or making out with him, for that matter). “Closure”—if such a thing exists (I have my doubts, but that’s another subject)—is what happens after you both talk frankly and openly about what happened and how you felt, and you both come to accept that what happened, happened and is over and done with.
But you’ve been doing that for—if my math is right—the last 16 years. Or you did that, 16 years ago, when he first reached out via Facebook, and since then you’ve been talking/messaging/whatever else you’ve done that didn’t include meeting in person, moving on from that first conversation in which you straightened things out. Or (I can’t tell from your letter) you had that clarifying exchange 16 years ago, you both expressed regrets, and then you didn’t communicate again until recently, when you saw each other IRL and that old attraction rebloomed. That happens when unhappily married people (at least one of you fits that bill) meet up with their high school sweethearts. What you’re hankering for—and what he is apparently hankering for too—is not closure.
If you want to blow up your marriage, I’m not here to stop you. If you want to finish what you started as a teenager (perhaps that is what you mean when you invoke the word “closure”—but what you’re talking about is opening something up, not closing it), I’m not here to tell you not to. But call a spade a spade. It’s cheating if you don’t tell your husband. And whether you tell him or not, you’re playing with fire. Is that what you want to do? Again: I’m not here to keep you away from fire. I’d just advise you to walk into it, if you do, knowing that burns will ensue.
Dear Care and Feeding,
My wife “Desiree’s” brother, “Todd,” has celiac disease. Whenever it’s our year to host Thanksgiving or Christmas (like it will be this year), she has to bust her ass making special gluten-free food for him in addition to making the regular stuff for the rest of the family. I don’t think it’s fair that Desiree should be made to put in the extra work, and I’ve told her that. She insists that she doesn’t mind doing it, that she doesn’t want Todd to have to worry about being careful of what he eats while he’s at our place. Personally, I think Todd should bring his own food rather than expecting the world to work around his problem. It’s not unreasonable to ask for a little personal responsibility so that we as hosts aren’t inconvenienced, is it?
—Tiptoeing Around the Bubble Boy
Dear Tiptoe,
In what way are you, “as host,” being inconvenienced? Your wife is behaving in a loving and generous way toward her bother. Does that inconvenience (or irk) you? Desiree doesn’t mind doing this; only you mind that she is. Or what you mind is that her brother is getting “special treatment” from her, which makes you jealous. Or what you mind is—in general—anyone who has a “problem” (an illness, a disability , or anything else that makes them vulnerable) being treated kindly by others. Todd has to worry about his safety around food pretty much anywhere he goes—celiac is not just a preference. Thank goodness he doesn’t have to when he’s visiting his sister.
If I were you, I’d watch it. Your attitude toward Todd (your attitude, period) may eventually lead to your wife’s getting fed up with you. Pull yourself together, dude. Your wife is great. Instead of giving her a hard time about it, try being grateful that you’re married to someone who cares so much about the people she loves. You’re probably a beneficiary of that. But why should you be the only beneficiary?
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Dear Care and Feeding,
I was adopted at birth. My parents never hid this from me. I can’t even remember specifically being told, or when I found out—it’s just always been a fact of my life. Sometimes, when people find out I’m adopted (it comes up more than one would think), they ask if I’ve ever considered trying to find my biological parents. Then, when I say no, they’re flabbergasted. But I just don’t feel the need to. My parents are the two people who have raised me from birth; my family is everyone I grew up with. None of them have ever treated me differently than they treat one another because I don’t share a genetic connection with them.
I have no ill will towards my bio parents—I have no idea what their circumstances were—but I just don’t feel some great pull to know them. People seem to expect me to, just because they’re the ones who are responsible for my existence. One person even tried to push me to admit that I must be harboring a subconscious sense of abandonment that I’m too afraid to confront! While I’m certainly not going to pretend I couldn’t use therapy (who couldn’t?), I can say with 100 percent confidence that any problems I have are not related to that. (Of course, my mental health issues could be in part due to genes, but the circumstances of my upbringing have nothing to do with these issues.) She kept making sarcastic comments like, “Oh, sure, your parents/childhood were perfect, how nice!” Um, no, my parents aren’t perfect, and while I had a good childhood, it wasn’t some idyllic fantasy. There are, in fact, several things I wish had been different.
However, not once have I ever wondered if life would have been better with my bio parents. I have no problem talking about the fact that I’m adopted, but I get very annoyed when people get so hung up on my lack of interest in the people who brought me into the world. How do I get them to understand?
—I Make No Apologies
Dear No Apologies,
Why is it necessary for them to understand? I get that it’s annoying to have people questioning something you feel solid about, but unless the people giving you a hard time about the way you feel about your first set of parents are people you’re close to (and why would you be close to anyone who treated you this way?), the thing to do is close the subject. You can do this in any number of ways: changing the subject, forcefully; saying, in a neutral tone, “You know, this isn’t something I enjoy talking about,” and then changing the subject; or ending the conversation altogether. If you know in advance someone is going to challenge you on this (if, for example, you’re spending time again with that sarcastic person), don’t bring it up at all—and shut them down if they do (“So, to get back to the matter of your biological parents…”). If you’ve had this experience so often, you now figure that virtually everyone will want to go down this path, then just don’t talk about adoption—yours or anyone else’s—at all. Just because it “comes up” doesn’t mean you have to engage with it.
Besides, the more energetically you argue with people about this, the weirder it will be for you if, somewhere down the line, you change your mind. None of this—your current stance, any future curiosity or desire you may feel, any negotiation you may have to make between the two ways of feeling and thinking about this—is anybody’s business but your own. If you are undisturbed by questions about the folks to whom you’re genetically connected, that’s all that matters. Don’t take others’ ideas about the “right” way to be an adoptee to heart.
—Michelle
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