Help! I Can’t Get Married for a Very Good Reason. My Boyfriend’s Parents Hold It Against Me.

Dear Prudence is Slate’s advice column. Submit questions here.

My late husband and I got married very young. Sadly, he died two years into our marriage. Because of his career and cause of death, I get to keep his health benefits as a widow. This has been a silver lining—I had cancer and now have chronic immune system problems. His health benefits let me keep my head above water. Even when I couldn’t work and had to move in with my family, I could at least keep getting treatment. I’m in remission, but am still at high risk.

In 2021, I met “Manuel,” who was a widower. We now have a blended family with two wonderful tweens from his first marriage. But his extended family (his parents, his siblings) won’t stop picking at us about marriage. They’ve even told the kids, “If [letter writer] was really going to stay, she’d marry your dad.” Frankly, we wish we could get married! But we can’t afford to marry and lose my health care. We’ve talked it over in depth. I work part-time to work around my chronic illness, and my job doesn’t offer insurance. On his insurance, the healthcare costs would destroy us if I got cancer again. Even my regular medications would be spendy. How do we shut this down with family, but most importantly, how do I reassure our kids that I’m not going anywhere (unless cancer takes me out)? Marriage isn’t in the cards unless universal health care suddenly appears.

—Unmarried But Still Permanent

Have you ever seen one of those social media posts about friend groups who host unconventional parties where everyone projects a slide deck they made onto a big screen? In one of them, everyone takes a turn to explain what they actually do for a living (because how many of us really understand how our loved ones fill their work days?). In another, they displayed Facebook posts from the early 2000s, and everyone in attendance had to guess who wrote them. I think you could do something similar: a family gathering featuring a presentation. Invite everyone to gather around the living room and say you have something to share:

Slide one: Why aren’t we married?

Slide two: Many people have raised questions. (Share screenshots of text messages, along with photos of the family members who sent them.)

Slide three: We have answers.

Slide four: Diane has a chronic immune condition. [Brief explanation of the symptoms and how there might be a recurrence], and this means going to the doctor a lot.Diane currently has health benefits.Doctor’s visits: Affordable!Prescriptions: Affordable!

Slide five: If Diane gets married, she loses health benefits.

Slide six: If Diane loses health benefits, healthcare costs would destroy us financially.Monthly Premium: A LOT!Doctor’s Visits: A LOT!Prescriptions: A LOT!

Slide seven: We could get married, but we would be broke.Marriage equals financial ruin for our family.

Slide eight: Would anyone in this room like to offer [astronomical amount of money] to allow us to get married without being broke?We will break for five minutes to allow you to talk among yourselves

Slide 10: Since no one in this family has agreed to cover the increased costs of health care if we get married, we will remain in love, committed, and unmarried.The issue is closed.

Slide 11:This is your last chance to ask questions.

Slide 12: From this point forward, anyone who expresses concern about why we are not married will receive a copy of this presentation as a response.

Get advice from Prudie—submit a question!

Please keep questions short (<150 words), and don‘t submit the same question to multiple columns. We are unable to edit or remove questions after publication. Use pseudonyms to maintain anonymity. Your submission may be used in other Slate advice columns and may be edited for publication.

Thanks! Your question has been submitted.

I have hit a limit with my sister. Our mom and stepdad live with me because they couldn’t afford to survive on one salary after he was seriously injured. I have a two-bedroom house and had to give up the dining room so we could put a bed there, where my stepfather could maneuver his wheelchair.

Meanwhile, my sister keeps trying to dump her four children on us. She claims she can’t afford daycare, but neither she nor her husband tries working opposite shifts despite having that option. I come home to chaos. Our mother is exhausted and can’t keep up with the kids. Half the time, the place is trashed, and we have no food because the groceries don’t cover four additional mouths.

We are in a constant cycle where we fight, she browbeats our mother over her constant “emergencies,” and then the kids come over. I am ready to threaten to sell my house and move away, and let my sister deal with our parents. Help!

I don’t know that you need to sell your house or move, but the obvious solution is for your parents to move themselves and their free daycare center to your sister’s dining room.

You could approach this the passive-aggressive way (“I know you really need Mom for daycare, and I can do better than that. She can be your live-in nanny. Why don’t you talk to her about her and Stepdad moving in?”) Or you can talk to your mom directly about it: “This really isn’t working for me. I’m not comfortable having my house trashed by four children every day, and it’s not what I signed up for. I understand that they need care and that Mom, you are doing your best to provide it. The best solution I see is for you two to live together.”

If, and only if, your emotions and home one day recover, it would be nice to offer to watch a couple of the kids once in a while. You might even enjoy them when they’ve actually been invited.

Prudie Wants to Hear From You!

Readers often have great suggestions for our letter writers, occasionally disagree with a point Prudie makes, or simply want to provide some additional advice. Each week, Prudie will be replying to some of these comments and suggestions from readers, which will be featured on the site on Fridays for Slate Plus members. Write to us!

I have a friend of 40-plus years that I am having a hard time understanding. We were roommates in the ’70s. Then we met our wives and each of us had a child. My son was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease when he was 14 and sadly succumbed to it at age 28. At the time, he was living in a city 15 minutes away from my friend.

His illness required frequent hospitalizations, and my friend never came to see him—not once. Near the end of my son’s life, my wife and I were taking turns staying in the hospital with him or a hotel close by.  Again, my friend never visited. At my son’s memorial service, I didn’t see him and his wife, and I asked him about that in a phone call a few days after the service. He said he was there, but when asked why he didn’t bother to say anything to my wife or me, he said they had to leave.

I wrote him a letter expressing my anger that he never once extended himself during that time, and never came to the hospital. He said he was “following my lead.” I told him I had no idea what that meant, and he didn’t bother to explain. Our relationship now consists of occasional text messages about music or some innocuous item. My wife says the friendship is dead, and I should just let it go.

Let him go, or just accept the friendship for what it is. He’s a person you’ve known for 40 years and care about, who’s not great at showing up for others. He may have something going on in his life that prevents him from showing up, or it might just be his personality. Who knows? You can’t get into his mind.

But he occasionally has a good playlist to share. That’s OK. No rule says every friend has to be a great friend, or even that every friend needs to meet a lot of your needs. If he’s not regularly hurting your feelings or disappointing you, there’s no harm in staying in touch. But if it’s hurting you to have him around because it serves as a constant reminder of all the ways he fell short when you needed him most, you can walk away.

My sister has suffered a lot in life, including the loss of her first two children. But she basically suffocated her daughter, “Kira.” Kira was chaperoned everywhere, had a 9 p.m. curfew well into college, and was expected to call her mother every day. Predictably, Kira chose to get her masters at a school on the opposite coast and hasn’t visited home since. Kira went overseas for a conference and ended up falling in love with a native. She planned to immigrate there. Kira didn’t tell her mother for six months and pretended to still be in the States. She did accidentally tell me and begged me to keep her confidence…