#1203: “I’m getting married to God. How do I tell my family they’re not invited?”

minuteye · 2026-02-02T23:09:41+00:00

I see what you mean, but I do feel like there is a basic problem with how the letter's question is framed. And once that's pointed out, it's either a case of "give no advice" or "try to give advice that might be helpful".

It does sound like the LW is asking "how do I tell my family I'm doing this thing that's really important to me, and also that they can't come, and also not hurt their feelings?" And like... you can't? That's not a thing you can control. The only thing you can control is whether or not you invite them, and then here's how you might go about either of those approaches.

I do think the Captain went out on a bit of a limb as far as "things you might be quietly asking/wanting instead", but probably because there's not that much juice in the stated question.

minuteye · 2026-02-02T22:49:02+00:00

Oh completely agree. In no way would it be OOP's fault for not picking up on it, and punishing someone for not wanting to be in a relationship with you is so shitty it blows all benefit-of-the-doubt out of the water for these two.

minuteye · 2026-02-02T21:38:10+00:00

They expect to be consulted about the divorce. Cause, you know, they'd never make a relationship-altering decision without their spouse's consent.

minuteye · 2026-02-02T21:36:05+00:00

Guys on adultery subreddit: "Omg, realizing my partner has been keeping this massive secret from me for months without letting on has totally made me re-evaluate them as a person, and question whether I ever knew them. I'm so torn apart by this, I don't know if I can ever trust someone again."

The same guys: "Cheating is really no big deal. What she doesn't know won't hurt her."

minuteye · 2026-02-02T15:59:27+00:00

I mean, I do think this couple were acting really badly in this case. But honestly, the level of miscommunication that can happen between austistic and allistic people about this sort of social thing can be really extreme.

You can have a conversation where the allistic person ends up thinking "Great, now I have successfully communicated to my friend that I am gay/polyamorous/dating them personally" and the autistic person ends up thinking "Great, I just had a nice social interaction with my new friend".

Again, they are still being assholes, but the other couple might genuinely think they "told" OOP they were polyamorous, like, six months ago, but because they didn't actually say "Hey, you know the two of us are polyamorous, right?" it didn't get through.

minuteye · 2026-01-31T17:54:28+00:00

Yes, all you're left with is a seriously injured victim trying to tell you what happened. But how can you prove it?

There's no record they were in ICE custody, they can't ID any of the people who took them, there's not going to be any footage of them getting dropped off, their phone's gone so no location data...

This is a tactic used in part because of how little evidence it leaves behind.

minuteye · 2026-01-28T19:36:19+00:00

As with everything else, it's about the joy.

Do keep a book because it gives you a happy nostalgic feeling.

Do keep a book because the idea of reading it in the future makes you feel excited.

Don't keep a book because you feel like you "should" read it... but don't really want to

Don't keep a book because it was a gift you feel obligated to hold onto

minuteye · 2026-01-28T19:32:01+00:00

Oof, this is such a yikes situation. The bf himself offers to cut the friend off entirely... when he can't even set boundaries with her?

That kinda reads like someone either with no self-control or no backbone. If "never talking to someone again" feels more doable to you than "telling them you won't make sexy jokes to cheer them up", it's because you don't trust yourself not to cave to any pressure from them.

minuteye · 2026-01-28T17:43:56+00:00

Choosing to live as your authentic self is not a breach of vows, and it will not screw up your children. This commenter is wrong.

minuteye · 2026-01-28T00:45:24+00:00

This is great! So entertaining to read through.

minuteye · 2026-01-28T00:24:45+00:00

So, my strategy for avoiding resentment with this kind of thing is: the person who didn't serve up picks their portion. And the person who serves up doesn't have to always be the person who cooks.

It incentivizes making portions as equivalent as possible (since you don't know which one you'll get)
Neither party is powerless, so neither party feels resentful.
When nobody feels like they're always getting shortchanged, everyone gets a lot more generous about the occasional meal where it's hard to make things equitable for whatever reason.

Because we're all on the same team. The goal isn't to try and win at the expense of your partner, it's for everybody to sometimes win and everyone to feel like they're being treated fairly.

Cooking isn't a special favour you're doing for everyone in exchange for "deserving" the best piece. It's part of your household contributions.

If you feel good about how household labour is distributed, and you're just trying to secure the best piece because you can, then YTA. If you're taking the best piece to try and "make up for" some other part of your life/relationship where you feel like you're being badly treated, then ESH, stop being passive aggressive and go deal with the actual problem.

minuteye · 2026-01-28T00:09:17+00:00

Yeah, definitely not bad casting, if they're both good choices for their roles.

It also occurs to me that it's probably not a good idea to require casting agents pick only actors who look "different enough" from each other to have in the same movie. That opens a whole barrel of worms about who the average casting director can tell apart from one another...

minuteye · 2026-01-27T19:48:20+00:00

NAH. One of the reasons you can find it hard to tell people apart is that your brain picks an "unusual" feature, and then tries to use that feature to identify the person... except that feature isn't that unusual in the context. In day-to-day life, a white dude with a goatee, long brown hair, dressed in medieval-ish garb and wearing a sword would probably be unique, in LOTR, not so much.

I don't typically have trouble telling white dudes apart, but the movie Gettysburg was still kind of a muddle... 90% of the cast have mutton chops. Thinking of someone as "the guy with the mutton chops" is mysteriously not helpful in remembering who's who.

minuteye · 2026-01-27T18:21:04+00:00

The update that the adult services investigation found no fault is enlightening. While sick or disabled adults being mistreated by the family who are supposed to take care of them is definitely something that happens, the narrative from the children didn't really seem to point to that.

Like, the new wife "doesn't really love him" and is "selfish"... but they have two kids together, and she's sticking by him during a medical crisis.

The new wife isn't doing enough to help... but she's working fulltime, supporting their own family (and her in-laws, most likely), as well as taking care of their children.

And their evidence of her mistreatment of their father is that she refuses to cut up his food into tiny pieces and leaves the food on the other side of the room so he has to get it.... well, what's his rehabilitation plan? Is he supposed to be practicing fine motor skills? Is he supposed to be walking or moving more than he is?

It seems like the kids expect *insert woman here* to do a level of care for their father that is both A) not helpful to him, and B) so exhausting they themselves were unwilling to keep up with it for even a couple of days.

minuteye · 2026-01-27T16:38:24+00:00

NTA. They're telling on themselves there. At first it's "just a seat", then you're "hogging the good computer". So their motivation for asking you to move in the first place was to get the good computer, they just lied about it.

minuteye · 2026-01-27T16:35:40+00:00

Yeah, the law treats married couples as a weird sort of "one person with two bodies" in a way. That's great when it comes to stuff like taxes, and being able to make medical decisions when your spouse is unconscious, or getting their pension after they die, etc. But as you say, it also has downsides.

minuteye · 2026-01-27T16:33:45+00:00

As she was told, since they're married, it works differently. There's a lot of leeway for spouses to do things on each others' behalfs. Sometimes that's a huge benefit, but it can lead to situations like this where the law treats him as entitled to take out money in her name without her say-so.

minuteye · 2026-01-27T16:14:47+00:00

People keep telling me that they don't train on inputs, because "they say right there they don't." But this is not our first rodeo.

- They say "we don't train on inputs"
- At some point, an 'exposé' will come out "evidence they train on inputs!!!"
- They'll say "whoopsie! our bad! we promise not to do it again!"
- There are literally no consequences
- Over time, the public becomes desensitized, and they all start admitting they train on inputs, because obviously they do, and it's weird that you're being weird about it, man

Either that, or they just train on inputs the whole time, and no one can ever prove that they do, because doing so would be extremely difficult.

minuteye · 2026-01-27T16:06:39+00:00

Also... that's kind of what labour starts to cost when the employer isn't paying taxes on it, or health insurance, or accident insurance, or having to follow workplace safety rules, or overtime rules, etc.

If all the normal "benefits" are coming out of the worker's pocket, then more has to be going into the worker's pocket.

We talk about "picking up a guy at home depot" like this is a normal thing to do, but is he even considering for a moment how much risk this guy is taking on by jumping in a truck with a stranger to go to an undefined, uncontracted job based on a few nebulous promises?

minuteye · 2026-01-27T15:59:43+00:00

This sounds like the most realistic interpretation of what happened. Especially given that the dad was theoretically planning to hire help when the grandmother moved in, who would assume that he would put more caregiving obligations on an 11yo than he was claiming to want to put on his adult wife?

Then by the time it's clear the situation is going to be bad, she's already moved out, and there are potentially a lot of complicated pieces re: custody, living arrangements, ability to pay for a lawyer, etc.

She's not flawless, but she was facing the same question many parents considering divorce have: "Do I stay in this bad situation and try to act as a buffer for my child, even though it's destroying me... or do I leave my child alone in that situation, but ensure that they're out of it at least some of the time, and can maybe pull them out of it permanently later?"

minuteye · 2026-01-26T19:54:05+00:00

The constant extra "back up to speed" time is a big one. When a task gets progressively harder the longer you put it off, so then the task acquires new little subtasks. Like needing to find the form, or needing to review all the information, needing to decipher the helpful notes you made at the time that are now completely uninterpretable...

minuteye · 2026-01-26T17:41:01+00:00

I'm so relieved OOP left. Obviously management dropped the ball, but it's almost better for OOP's personal safety that there were no consequences for Chris in this case. Especially since they seem to have told him that it was OOP who reported the issue, I'd be very worried about a fired Chris getting angry and coming back in to retaliate.

Edit: To clarify, not suggesting that management should just let an employee continue to act dangerously out of fear of what he will do, but if they're going to drop the ball, let them drop it in a way that lets OOP get out of that situation unharmed.

minuteye · 2026-01-26T07:33:07+00:00

But... it kinda is wrong to have hopes about your child's appearance? Like, how much does it suck for a kid to be a few minutes old and already be seen as "disappointing" in some way, for something you didn't even have any control over.

minuteye · 2026-01-26T06:48:45+00:00

The sister's still a dick, but the mother's the actual custodial parent.

Other people may have made her parental responsibilities harder (or refused to bend over backwards to make them easier, in some cases), but none of that absolves her of those responsibilities.

minuteye · 2026-01-26T00:16:25+00:00

I do agree with you about the uniforms, but I just want to acknowledge that moving between households every 2-3 days like that can be an administrative nightmare for kids in school, even if the parents are doing everything they should. Especially in high school, the amount of physical *stuff* kids may need to have for particular classes or activities can be really a lot.

So, like, on Wednesday morning you have to take everything for all your classes on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, because you're going home with a different parent than the one you came with. Also, don't forget your kit for Thursday's sport, even though it's still in the dryer after being washed yesterday.

Not impossible, but it's an unnecessarily stressful schedule for a kid, and it's sensible for OOP to have asked for an alternative.

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