I Was So Happy to Hear My Daughter Was Dating Again. Until I Met Her New Boyfriend.

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

Dear Prudence,

My daughter, “Jackie,” has been lost since her husband died. So we were all happy when she started dating again. Until we met “Dave.”

Dave has the personality of a wart on the back side of a toad, the taste buds of a toddler, and the manners of a mangy dog. He is unfriendly and refuses to make any small talk. He eats fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and pizza. He will not even eat Chinese or Mexican food. He has no friends and no social life beyond sitting in front of the TV. And worse, Dave is dragging my vibrant daughter into the same hell.

Jackie has started skipping out on her hobby groups and on seeing old friends and even us because Dave can’t be alone. Then there was the recent incident. My stepdaughter is 18 and taking a gap year to figure out what she really wants to do after she got a community college degree through her high school. She has always been fascinated with architecture and home building. Dave works as a general contractor, so at dinner, she kept trying to engage Dave about his job, like how he deals with drainage when we live in a floodplain, or some of his best/worst stories from work.

Dave mumbled and pushed his food around until he got up and said he didn’t come to be “interrogated,” and said Jackie could get an Uber because of her drinking and took her car home. The four of us were sharing a bottle of wine. Where do we go from here?

—Scared

Dear Scared,

I’m convinced that I wouldn’t like Dave any more than you would, nor would I be thrilled if someone I loved chose to date him. But perspective is important. He is a boring, picky eater with crappy social skills and a prickly personality, not, say, a cult leader. To understand the full picture, I’d need to know more about Jackie isolating herself from friends and family, because if he’s pushing for her to do that, it’s obviously a legitimate concern and a sign of abuse. But from what you’ve shared, I don’t think your view that he’s “dragging her into the same hell” is quite supported by the evidence.

Sure, she’s skipping hobby groups and not seeing friends as much, but her husband died! She may be in a version of hell without any assistance. Even if it’s been years, I’d fully expect her to grieve and live a life that looks very different for a long time, and it’s possible that the phase she’s in explains why she’s with a guy who’s a dud. Maybe she feels awful these days and has chosen someone who matches her vibe. Maybe she wants companionship but would feel disloyal to her late husband if she became really infatuated with a partner, so she latched onto someone who she isn’t actually wild about. Maybe her confidence is low as she gets back into the dating scene, and she feels she has to take what she can get. None of these are good scenarios, but they aren’t emergencies either. And I seriously doubt her relationship with Dave is going to stand the test of time.

It also seems possible to me that she’s picked up on your “wart on a toad” assessment of him that hasn’t exactly made her feel comfortable bringing him around the family. So do the best you can to try to tolerate him, remaining vigilant for signs of control and abuse, but otherwise redirecting any thoughts about his shortcomings back to what you actually care about: Jackie and her well-being.

Dear Prudence,

This is theoretical, but under what circumstances should I share with my sisters that my aunt almost joined a cult in the 80s? My mom shared this with me when I asked if she thought my aunt was particularly vulnerable to conspiracy theories. Mom said my sisters “probably don’t know,” so it’s not a well-established family story. It’s not a funny story; it was scary for my mom to realize what was going on. My mom treated it a bit like a family secret, but was pretty willing to talk about it. But like, it’s kind of crazy, and I want to share. I want to know what my brother-in-law, who grew up in Cult City, knows about them. I can live without knowing. I can tell people who will never meet my aunt instead of my sisters. Everyone involved is still alive, including the cult leader, who still does culty things (like getting charged with sex crimes and having a FAQ on his website that says it’s not a cult).

—It Wasn’t That Surprising

Dear It Wasn’t That Surprising,

Ask your aunt! With your mom’s permission, explain that you’re curious about her experience, ask her some questions, and then say, “This is such an interesting family story and could help everyone in the next generation avoid a similar situation. Is it OK if I tell my sisters?” If your mother isn’t comfortable with you letting on that you’re aware of the almost-cult incident, that’s your sign that story isn’t yours to share.

If you still can’t resist chatting about the cult leader’s behavior, do it with friends who are equally interested in true crime-type topics; everything on the website is publicly available information that you’re free to analyze together—no references to family lore required.

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Dear Prudence,

I’m a woman who lives in a large city. How can I best deal with men who expose themselves in public? I’ve seen this happen a few times.

—I Don’t Want to See It

Dear I Don’t Want to See It,

I’m really sorry this has happened to you. I want to be clear that this is not just an off-putting, gross part of urban living. It’s actually considered a form of sexual violence.

“When we are thinking about sexual violence broadly, that’s a term for a wide range of harmful acts that violate someone’s autonomy and safety,” Megan Cutter, chief of victim services at RAINN, a national anti-sexual violence organization based in Washington, said in a WUFT article that addresses this topic. “Indecent exposure fits right into that violation.”

Some of the advice in that piece, sourced from Cutter as well as law enforcement officials and psychiatrists, includes the following steps: Get to a safe place, call 911 if the incident is happening in real time, pay attention to identifying details that could help police identify the perpetrator, document the incident by taking photos or video if it’s safe to do so, and seek support afterward.

That last part is what I want to emphasize here, since this has happened to you on multiple occasions and I can only imagine that this experience, combined with the knowledge that you may encounter indecent exposure again someday, must be taking a real toll. “It can still really activate someone’s trauma response and also be something that in the long term impacts their mental health and their well-being,” Cutter told WUFT. I hope you already know this, but she really emphasized that being victimized in this way is never your fault. You might find that talking this through with friends and family, or seeking additional support (your job might have an employee assistance program that provides free, short-term counseling), could provide a lot of relief.

Classic Prudie

My husband and I have been together for about seven years. In that time we (thankfully!) have never had any big arguments or disagreements. We’re both pretty independent people who enjoy living their own lives while still being able to come home to a loving home. Neither of us has ever really had any issues with each other’s friends, and over time our friend groups have seemingly meshed into a shared conglomerate. The issue is, an old friend of my husband’s has reentered the picture and she is really throwing a wrench in things.