What Household Chore Causes the Most Conflict in Your Relationship?

Over the past few months, I’ve been working on cleaning up the archives of Dear Wendy, deleting and making private a lot of stuff that no longer needs to be read or discovered in Google searches. Last week, I re-published one of my favorite kinds of posts that I recently re-discovered that starts as a question and leads to lots of interesting little personal stories. Many of you seem to enjoy those kinds of posts, too, so I’ll be re-publishing more on a regular basis. I found this one this morning as I was, ironically, thinking about what to cook for dinner tonight and what I need to go pick up at…

What Secrets Have You Kept From A Significant Other?

I get a lot of emails from people who feel burdened by a secret they’re keeping from a significant other. Often these secrets are about cheating, but not always. Sometimes they’re about applying for jobs in other cities or having been married before or having an STI. There have even been a few people who had secret children they hadn’t told their partners about. In my own social circle, I have a few friends who keep pretty innocuous secrets from their spouses, like taking secret days off from work to have a whole “me day” without feeling guilty about it (these are moms, obviously, who play hooky while their spouses are at…

How Did You Decide Whether to Have Another Baby?

A couple weeks ago, I opened up my IG stories to quick advice questions anyone might have (saved to a highlight reel here). The most common question was: “How did you know if you wanted a second baby?” I gave a brief answer in my stories, but I thought I’d open the topic here, too, for anyone else contemplating this question or able to share a personal experience. Much like deciding whether or when to have a baby in the first place, I think a lot of the decision process comes down to listening to your heart, considering your family dynamic and whether you think a baby will add or detract from…

What Are You Reading This Winter?

You may have heard that there was a big snowstorm in the Northeast over the weekend – I think our final tally here in Brooklyn was about 10 inches, but don’t quote me on that. We told the kids when they went to bed Friday night – oh, who am I kidding? Jackson hasn’t gone to bed before me in years, so we told the kids before I went to sleep – that when they woke up Saturday morning there’d be tons of snow on the ground, and there was. Joanie wanted to immediately bundle up and go sledding (it was still snowing, with 30 MPH winds, and a “feel like” temp…

Topic of the Day: Do You Say ‘Partner’ to Refer to Your Significant Other?

In the comments of this post the other day, someone pointed out that I referred to the LW’s significant other as her “boyfriend” when she had referred to him in her letter as her “partner.” The commenter said: Wendy, he is not her ‘boyfriend’, he is her partner. Why do you always respond to people who reference their partners by referring to the partners as boyfriends/girlfriends? The term ‘boyfriend’ (or ‘girlfriend’) is dismissive and disrespectful when used in reference to adults, as it implies that the relationship is immature and invalid only because it is not bound by traditional marriage. This man is not a boy, nor is he a friend; he…

Topic of the Day: Who Pays For Your Dates?

Last week, a (male) LW wrote in complaining about how a woman he’d been out with seven times or so had only paid for about 10% of their dates. This, he noted, was not uncommon in his and his friends’ dating experience. He wrote: “This isn’t the first woman that I’ve had to spend money on. There’ve been others, of course. I’ve heard complaints from friends and other men about women NOT offering to pay. And you know what? I’m tired of it. Men are tired of it.” He went on to say that women have credit cards, educations, and good jobs, and he doesn’t understand where they get this old-fashioned idea…

Topic of the Day: Have you Ever Said You Aren’t “Ready” For a Relationship?

New readers, welcome to Dear Wendy, a relationship advice blog. Read some of the most popular Dear Wendy posts here. If you don’t find the info you need in this column, please visit the Dear Wendy archives or the forums (you can even start your own thread), do a search in the search bar, or submit a question for advice at wendy(AT)dearwendy.com. Have you ever told someone who was romantically interested in you that you “weren’t ready for a relationship”? (I have). What did/does that mean for you? Is it just an excuse to get out of seeing someone you aren’t into? Is it simply easier to say than “You’re not doing…

End of content

End of content