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When an answer is so bad that your sister posts on her Facebook page how bad it is, you know you’ve given a wrong answer. If you do have her, you’ve gotten married and changed your name, you might not recognize her, she’s a professional, etc.” I said: “Look you probably won’t have her. She was freaking out about the surgery, etc, and asked me if she should do something or not.
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and she found out that person was a nurse at the hospital. Someone (I think in middle school or high school) had tormented her as a girl. One time – this is kind of complicated to explain – this middle-aged woman wrote in who was going for surgery. Three in the morning is when I think about all these things. But call me at 3 in the morning and I’ll be able to answer that question much better.
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I have this wonderful capacity just to walk away from my mistakes and not dwell on them. Is there any advice you regret having given? But I thought I had an important point to make. The reaction was an absolute explosion, explosion, explosion. I said: ‘The people who love and know you best think you would be wonderful parents and would love being parents, so maybe you should rethink it.’ But I also said that when you have a life milestone happen, it’s good to step back and reassess the things you thought you knew about yourself. Both sets of parents, however, were like: ‘We’re going to be grandparents!’ My answer was about what to say when people are intrusive about your reproductive choices. She and her husband-to-be were successful people, very much in love, but they did not want to have children. She was in her early 30s and she was getting married. One of the most famous was early on when this young woman wrote in. Which of your columns have received the most negative reactions from your readers? The beauty of this form, and what I think draws people to it, is that it boils everything down. It isn’t like therapy or talking to a friend who understands the complexities of a situation. It is me writing the column, but let me just say that the form itself demands a different way of looking at problems. I’m not suffering from some division of personality. How different are you from Prudie, the persona you’ve developed for these columns? Because of Dear Prudence, I did a lot more stepping away, and sort of decided, “OK, this thing isn’t worth fighting over.” I’d like to think it’s less that “Oh, gee, I was born to be Prudie because people always came to me”, and more because of the experience of doing the column. But over the years this column really changed me … I think my daughter would probably say she’s lucky I took it on. I have people close to me who ask my advice just as I ask theirs. Well, there’s me – and then there’s Prudie. Have you always been the person friends and family go to for advice? Though she’ll pass the crown to Mallory Ortberg, the co-founder of literary and pop culture blog The Toast, Yoffe will keep that Prudie-ish mentality she’s honed over the years.īefore she leaves, we asked Dear Prudence to reflect on her experience as the internet’s virtual bartender. She’s told homosexual, incestuous twins who are in love to speak with a criminal defense attorney, a cheating husband to stay silent and a one percenter who doesn’t want poor kids trick-or-treating in his neighborhood to “stop being callous and miserly and go to Costco, you cheapskate.” In addition to her weekly column, she has also doled out wisdom in live chats and videos.īut at the end of this week, the 60-year-old Maryland resident will leave her advice throne to become a contributing editor for the Atlantic.