Help! My Wife Wants to Raise Our Kids to Be Nudists.

My wife of more than 10 years has always been a bit of a nudist. Nothing public, but around the house and our pool and out in the boat she likes to be in the buff. Our son is now 6 years old and my daughter is 3. My children are being raised in the nude, the same way my wife was raised. They get home from school and their clothes come off. I come home at night to two naked kids and a naked wife. Now that our children are getting older, I think it might be time that everyone starts covering up a bit more. My wife disagrees and does not want to change. Are we doing damage to our kids here?

I wonder if the mail carrier, just as a courtesy mind you, instead of pushing the mail through the slot, always makes sure to hand it to the lady of the house. You say your wife is a “bit of a nudist.” But from your description, I take this to mean that she reluctantly puts on clothes only when not doing so would get her arrested. I once hung out at a nudist colony for a Slate article, where I discovered I am most emphatically a “textilist.” After spending the day with a couple hundred naked people, I came to the conclusion that no one should take off their clothes, ever. (I also learned that gravity is a force that all must reckon with.) Your wife is a second-generation nudist and she is trying to turn her kids into a third. But it’s unfair to impose this on them. For one thing, if the clothes come off when the kids come home, that means no other playmates are allowed over. I learned at the colony that children raised to let it all hang out start wanting to cover it up once puberty hits. Surely, once your son refuses to let his naked mother wrestle him out of his clothes, he will also start wishing every time he looked at his mother he didn’t have a daily reminder of whence he came. I think a clothing-optional option is only fair for your children, as long as it is truly an option. But good luck convincing your wife that you’d like her to spend more money on her wardrobe. 

One of my oldest friends, “John,” is getting married soon, and I’m returning to my hometown to act as a bridesmaid. My mother asked me where the wedding was being held, and I thought nothing of it until she told me that she plans on driving to the church, 40 minutes away from her home, to stand outside and possibly “find a seat in the back” to watch the wedding! I told her kindly but firmly that it was a private event and that she hadn’t been invited. She insisted that churches are public spaces, and since she wasn’t costing them any money, she was allowed to be there. If she were friendly with John’s family it might be different, but she hardly knows them. In the decade since I’ve moved away, she has only seen or spoken to John once.

What makes it worse is that over the years, almost without fail, she’s insulted John’s family whenever I’ve brought him up. She’ll gossip about how “obesity runs in his family,” and will make disparaging remarks about their appearances. She’s always been obsessed with looks, equating weight with worth, and the last thing I want on the happiest day of my friend’s life is to have this smug near-stranger silently judging him and his loved ones. How do I put a stop to this nonsense and get her to stay at home?

I’m worried that your mother’s plans don’t involve “silently” judging John and his family at all. Her proposed course of action is so aggressive, and so outside of the bounds of reasonable behavior, that I think there’s every likelihood she’ll attempt to audibly belittle the groom and his family. Since she hasn’t listened to your objections, you need to take further action in order to prevent one of your oldest friends from suffering public embarrassment on his wedding day. “Mom, you know perfectly well that people send wedding invitations because weddings are private events, even if they’re held in a church. You haven’t been invited to this one, you barely know the people involved, and whenever their names have come up in the past, you’ve said cruel things about their appearances. There is no reason for you to be at this wedding, and your proposed course of action is rude and inappropriate. If you insist on crashing the ceremony, I’m going to have to alert John and his family beforehand so they’re forewarned and don’t let you into the building. Please don’t make this harder than it has to be.”If your mother doesn’t listen to this (although I hope she does), then I think you’re going to have to speak to John. The odds that she’ll do something even more disruptive than sitting through a wedding to which she’s not invited are high enough that it’s a necessary evil. You don’t have to go into detail about the nature of your mother’s hateful comments about his family, of course, but you can tell him about her plans, that you’ve done all you can to dissuade her, that you’re embarrassed and sorry to have to share this with him, but that he should coordinate with either his wedding planner or the church staff in developing a plan of action for making sure uninvited guests don’t disrupt the ceremony. I met my fiancé at a house party. I was there with my best friend, who happens to be gorgeous. He began talking to us and kept talking to me after my best friend left. We made plans to hang out later, and over the next three months our friendship evolved into a wonderful relationship. Recently my fiancé and his good friend had a falling out, and in an act of spite his friend forwarded me a series of emails from around the time we first met. By reading them I learned that, initially, my fiancé only spent time with me because he wanted to have a shot with my best friend. He called me plain, repetitive, and mildly annoying. I know those aren’t harsh criticisms, and that they come from the first few days of our friendship. But I’m still upset, because those are my worst fears about myself, and it hurts to know that the person I’m marrying thought those things about me too. My fiancé couldn’t be more apologetic, and he’s been very sweet and reassuring to me since I received the emails. (He didn’t say those things out of hand, they were answers when his friend asked him about me.) I know he loves me so much. I still can’t put those emails out of my mind, though—what can I do to get back to being a happy bride-to-be?