Dear Prudence advises Seattleites: Use your words

There’s something about advice columns: That little taste of socially-accepted voyeurism into other people’s problems.

Daniel Mallory Ortberg, the “Dear Prudence” advice columnist for Slate, said perennial favorites include questions around dating and “should I keep talking to my mother who is a jerk to me?”

Ortberg, who is based in the Bay Area, dropped by our studio to talk with host Bill Radke about commonly asked questions and some quandaries submitted by listeners in our notorious Seattle-freeze city.

How do I get what I want without telling anybody?

I think the type of person who’s going to write to an advice columnist already is predisposed towards hoping they don’t have to use their words.

A lot of times, especially with dating, especially on a first or second date, there can be a sense of, ‘I can just power through this and then go home and never see you again. So if you say something that hurts my feelings, or feels off or I don’t like – I might not tell you in the moment and I will just quietly and internally write you off and wait to pay the check and go home where I can be around people who already know me, pull up my Netflix queue, do things that feel familiar.’

The majority of people I hear from have trouble finding their voice, saying no when they’re not comfortable with something, figuring out whether or not it’s OK for someone else to walk all over them.

I’m not attracted to this person, will that grow in time?

If the kind of dating you are looking for is one that would hopefully involve a sex life together, sexual attraction is a pretty important component. And it’s kind of hard to plan for, it’s kind of hard to force

I don’t mean to suggest that if someone doesn’t immediately sweep you off your feet you should kick them into the sea, but I do often hear from people who say, ‘if someone looks like a good person, and I don’t really feel a connection, have I done something wrong?’

There are lots of wonderful people in the world that I don’t date. Dating isn’t something you win by virtue of being a good person. Sometimes someone’s great and you just don’t feel it, and that’s totally, totally fine.

The trick is, how do I give an appropriate weight to something like in-person chemistry so that it’s not the only thing I’m looking for, but I also don’t pretend it doesn’t matter.

What are the ethics of “ghosting”?

Especially with dating apps, a lot of times people are juggling multiple apps, they’re talking to a lot of people. If you have not yet met in person, and for whatever reason – something big comes up in your personal life, they say something that just doesn’t work for you, you decide they live too far away – I think the politest thing is to just stop talking.

When the investment is very, very low, taking the trouble to type out, ‘by the way, I don’t think it’s going to work between the two of us, here’s your formal rejection,’ is too much. If you’ve been on two, three, four dates and you’ve gotten a little further down the line and you’ve changed your mind, then I think it’s nice to call. If you go out with someone once and you never hear from them again, you figure it out. It’s a little like rubbing salt in the wound to be like, ‘by the way, obviously I didn’t call you.’

I once heard from someone who had been ghosted after a two-year relationship, and just to be very, very clear: That’s horrible!

Will an open relationship solve all my problems?

No! Not usually. Not unless you have an incredibly specific problem, which is I have all these calendars and I would love to fill them more.

I can I start one without telling my partner first?

You need to talk to your partner first. Usually if it’s like, ‘I cheated on my partner, and they’re really mad, is now a good time to ask for an open relationship?’ – the answer is no.

Now is the time to take your lumps. You did a jerky thing.

Any advice you regret?

Certainly. I am just one person, giving my particular read on a paragraph’s worth of somebody else’s problem. And I have to hope and trust that they will take my opinion as one of many, and not like a deciding, descending from the heavens, Judge Judy this is right and this is wrong.

Produced for the web by Kara McDermott.