Live Q&As

So Mom, after repeatedly and voluntarily exposing herself to you, now threatens to ruin you as a way, I suppose, of showing solidarity with her cuckolded husband.  As you've learned, it's a very poor career move to have a year's worth of private parent-teacher conference at your place.  I think you need to discuss your situation with a representative from your teacher's union (if you belong to one) or a lawyer, or both.  Before you do anything you need to find out if your affair with a parent is a firing offense. Only once you understand your legal situation should you act. If it's safe for you to tell the principal, that certainly would disarm the threat these parents now hold over you.  I always wondered how middle school teachers do their jobs  -- kids that age are such an irrational mess of raging hormones.  But I guess some people just never outgrow that stage. I'm feeling so sorry for the daughters. As if being a middle school student isn't hard enough, those girls now have to endure a confusing and  highly emotional daily grilling from Mom and Dad about the behavior of Mr. Chips.

Based on this letter it sounds to me as if you and your ex were well matched.  You may not be a horrible person, but you certainly are a deluded and oblivious one. You say you hesitate to "rush into anything" with Darlene, but you've already rushed into Darlene.  It's a little late, but better than never that you are considering the idiocy of getting more seriously involved with your "horrible" ex's estranged sister.  Of course you're all single adults and entitled to do what you like, but I hope you don't need your family members to alert you to the potential pitfalls of marrying you're ex's sister. You need to start thinking about why you find yourself drawn to the wrong woman over and over again.

You start by not saying, "Hi, Mrs. Miller, do you want me to supervise the Pin the Tail on the Donkey game for the kids, and do you mind if I have take some soda from the fridge?" I'm a little confused by your timeline. You say you started dating "a little bit" and now you're in love.  I hope that means you've dated more than a little bit. In addition, it sounds as if the Miller children are still young. I think that parents should be conservative about when they introduce their children to their new love interest.  It seems to me that a birthday party simply isn't the event for Meghan the babysitter to morph into Meghan, Daddy's girlfriend.  If your relationship with Mr. Miller, I mean Tom, is serious and you both feel it's time you were reintroduced to the  kids, that means the four of you should spend a quiet afternoon together. Hanging around with Tom's ex is not a good start. You can easily bow out of the birthday party and explain you don't want to cause tension or be the center of attention.  But if you go, the way you establish yourself as an adult is to act and feel like one.

In the Bible a lot of people hooked up with siblings, but that seemed to be explained by the fact that there weren't that many people to choose from.  My inbox certainly is indicating that  keeping it in the family is a hot, new trend. I wrote not long ago that people are entitled to their sexual pasts without having to spill all to their current loves. I made an exception for material facts such as one's STD status, or having slept with your boyfriend's brother.  You slept with your fiance's brother, even though your story comes with a tragic ending.  You're right that the fact that up to now no one has said anything might mean that it will never come out. But whenever you two are around people who knew you back when, you will live in fear that someone will make a crack about your having a thing for the men of your husband's family.  Tell you fiance.  This will be emotionally complicated news, but he's entitled to know.

You're not obligated to give anyone a ride to work.  The friend you were doing a favor for, however, was not wrong about texting while driving. Just take a look at the literature about the mayhem that can happen in a few seconds of removing your concentration from the road and instead being mentally and physically engaged elsewhere. I assume your friend did not know about your personal tragedy.  So just be direct with her. Tell her that her comment about drunk driving was deeply upsetting to you and why.  Don't demand an apology, just see if one is forthcoming and how you feel if you get one.  And please, when you're driving turn off your phone. You may think you're that  specially skilled driver who can text and drive, but consider how you'd feel if you were the cause of someone else's tragedy.

Your boyfriend can't be much of a boyfriend if he's never been to your place and doesn't know that you prefer a monkish (presumably except for having sex with him) existence.   It only makes sense that when going away you empty your fridge, and it's a nice gesture to find a loved one has gotten you some food. It's not such a nice gesture to get a note implying you're mentally unbalanced, the way you live is disturbed, and your boyfriend was reduced to tears to find out about the real you.  That said, explain to your boyfriend you appreciate his desire to help you, but your ascetic lifestyle suits you and the suits now in your closet and the other items don't. Say you hope he kept the receipts because you just can't live in your tiny studio with all this clutter. If he doesn't understand your objections, maybe as a further act of decluttering, you need to get rid of him.

I'm no investment advisor but I have to disagree with one of the assumptions behind your financial dealings.  The death of any given member of your group is not an "unlikely" event, it is a certainty.  All of you have entered into a contract, before any decisons are made about changing the rules of that contract, all of you should talk to a lawyer.  Perhaps, with everyone's agreement, it would be possible to dissolve the fund, give their contribution plus interest, then you are all free to do with the money whatever you wish.  It is lovely to want to support a friend experiencing a terrible time; but it is foolish to eliminate your own financial cushion in case misfortune visits you.

It's a good thing for both of you that he ran out of that family's sisters!

You're right that I misread "a little bit" and that they have been dating for a while. But the LW says nothing about having reestablished a relationship with the kids as their Dad's girlfriend and not the babysitter. If she has been spending a lot of time with them, then going to the party is fine and she just has to be gracious and confident. If she hasn't spent a lot of time with the kids, this should not be her debut.

Your husband must have been spending so much time poring over other people's books that he's neglected to read about the prospects for new law school graduates. I'll sum up:  not good. Sure some of the 40,000 lawyers being churned out each year are finding decent jobs, but overwhelming numbers are not.  I agree with you that having pursued a demanding, expensive educational path, now is not the time for your husband to drop a lucrative career.  It especially is not the time to take on enormous debt and reduce your income.  You are both CPAs so it seems that the best way to approach this is with some spreadsheets doing cost benefit analyses, looking at the data on the prospects for new law school graduates, and crunching the numbers on what it would mean to have your husband out of the workforce for three years.  This doesn't mean he can never pursue his dream, but it seems to make a lot more sense to defer it until the economy is more welcoming and your finances more robust.

You, and many other readers, are absolutely right that the distracted drivers are deluding themselves and causing mayhem and sorrow.  I hope I made that clear.  I do think it's fair for the LW to explain to her friend what the drunk driver remark meant to her personally. I'm sure the friend wouldn't have mentioned it so casually had she known the family history. But I hope the LW takes the responses here very seriously and realizes she's setting herself up to be the cause of someone else's loss.

Okay, here I go practicing medicine (actually going to medical school would have been such a drag). You are  a 45 year old woman who is in the very early stages of pregnancy.  A late in life pregnancy is a high-risk one,   your fetus is a higher-risk for birth defects, and you are more likely than a younger woman to have a  miscarriage. Before you do anything else, see your gynecologist and discuss all these issues.  Both you and your husband are in shock, and you are facing a difficult dilemma.  But while you are reeling  is not a good time to make life altering decisions. Yes, you don't have all the time in the world, but you do have some.  I think you've covered all the options here, but what you haven't taken into account is how you both might feel in a few weeks when you've had more time to contemplate the implications of each course of action. And it could be that a neutral party can help you and your husband explore what this amazing turn of events would mean for the rest of your lives.

This is true, and I didn't suggest it because it will still cost a lot of money and if I had two very young children to care for I wouldn't be thrilled if all my husband's free time was taken up with classes and studying.  There is no reason his dream can't  wait until the children are in school, he's more established in his career, and (let's hope!) the economy is better.

I've got one word for your girlfriend: electrolysis. A few sessions with the needle will leave your girlfriend's chest hair free.  Yeah, it hurts, but it's no worse than a bikini wax and it's permanent!  The issue is convincing her.  I think it's great you're into her arm and leg hair, but she should be able to accept that the primate look on her chest (I advise you not to use that phrase) is not standard.  I understand that she's touchy about this, but if you handle it lightly, you might get her to come around.  Emphasize you find her greatly sexy and you love that she's a natural woman. Say that this is a little thing that's distracting to you, and because she could take care of it pretty easily, you'd consider it a loving gesture on her part. 

Your boyfriend wants custody? Perhaps this is a new  penal rehabilitation program I haven't heard about: Raise your baby in your cell.  If you have no one and are a young, single mother with a child, you need to start working on a support system. First of all, contact the nearest public defender's office about getting representation. It sounds like it could be a good thing that your son's grandparents have shown up. The baby's father should be paying support, and since his income is probably low at the moment, possibly his parents will step up financially. It might also be beneficial for the grandparents to give you some relief in caring for your son -- no not to take custody from you, but to help care for the baby from time to time. (Although on the evidence you provide, they perhaps have done a less than stellar job raising their own son.) Also, check into the programs and services available for mothers in your situation. You may be eligible for subsidized day care, for food and housing support. You should get to know other young mothers with whom you can swap babysitting and support. Also speak to your college's guidance office -- they may have advice on getting you help so that you can stay in school.

As you confirm, miscarriage is a high risk in this situation. So is genetic defect, although it is not a certainty. Some people are pointing out it's ambiguous as to whether the father actually knows the LW is pregnant. If we know and he doesn't, that needs to be rectified pronto.

How nice of you to "encourage" your fiancée to review this contract with a lawyer. I assume if you're someone with enough assets to need the protection of a prenup, you're also sophisticated enough to know that no one should sign a contract that that without their own legal represenative reviewing it for them.  But it sounds as if you're not a sophisticated enough partner to recognize sarcasm and dripping resentment when you hear it.  It may be that you built a thriving business prior to meeting your beloved, or you are a member of a wealthy family and a prenup is simply a sensible business decision. It could be that you just have a nice condo, a better car, and more in the bank that the woman you propose to spend your life with, so you want to make sure that if you decide to trade her in, she doesn't get your Lexus. In any case, you two should not go through with the wedding until you resolve the issues your assets have raised.

It's distressing but not surprising to hear this. Thanks for the update from "out there."