Help! My Husband Loves to Wallow in Sickness … and Leave Me to Handle Everything Alone.

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

Dear Prudence,

My partner is upset with me because, they say, I show no sympathy to them when they are sick. This is not true! When they first pop a fever, I make store runs for ginger ale or Gatorade or cough drops; I order their favorite matzo soup. But my sympathy ends quickly because my partner refuses to treat their symptoms. Advil? Nope. Pepto? Nope. The doctor? Forget about it. A few weeks ago, we both came down with the same nasty sinus infection, but I started Tylenol and a prescription nasal spray, and stayed well enough to take care of the house and kids. My partner refused all of those things and remained in bed for six straight days. Which is fine behavior if you’re single. But I feel like when you have little kids, you’re responsible for doing what you can to remain upright, and I have very little patience for someone who is essentially choosing to stay sick. Am I being too harsh?

—In Sickness and in … More Sickness

Dear Sickness,

You are not being too harsh at all, your partner is being ridiculous. But strategically, I don’t think withholding sympathy and patience is going to be the best tactic to get what you want—which is, of course, to share responsibilities with an adult who takes some medicine and gets their shit together.

Try this: Sandwich your clear explanation about part of being a good partner is doing what it takes to feel better between expressions of sympathy and understanding.

“I am so sorry you’re feeling sick. Isn’t it just the worst when all your energy is zapped and you can barely even sit up in bed because it makes you queasy? I hate this for you. Here’s some medicine. I hope you take it because you know you deserve to feel better. But I need you to take it so you are able to walk the dog and do daycare drop off by tomorrow. If you’re bedridden, I’ll have to do everything and that’s really, really hard on me. For now, I know you need to rest up. Here’s some soup.”

I wonder if your partner’s enthusiasm for being sick and shut-in the minute they have a medical excuse reflects a sense that opportunities for rest, self-care, and relaxation are missing in their life. You mentioned multiple kids, so this wouldn’t be unusual. And I’m sure these things are lacking for you, too. If you don’t already do this, maybe you could proactively build in time for each of you to just, well, lie down. Without having a virus. Could you take alternate Saturday mornings to stay in bed? Could you afford for each of you to spend one night at a hotel each quarter? I’m just thinking that if there are paths to relaxation other than “I refuse to take Tylenol,” it might make your partner less likely to milk catching a cold for everything it’s worth.

“Hold on, Ms. Bay Area Woo-Woo Non-Traditional Approach to Western Medicine!”

Jenée Desmond-Harris and Joel Anderson discuss a letter in this week’s Dear Prudence Uncensored—only for Slate Plus members.

Dear Prudence,

How do you know if you’re getting love-bombed? This guy and I met several months ago, but I was in a relationship. We started dating six weeks ago. He just told me he loved me. He’s also been doing nice things, like getting me flowers often and then he got me a diamond necklace the night he told me he loved me. I’m not a very romantic person, and none of this screams over the top to me, I just am a little freaked out. Most of my relationships have been pretty bad. In addition, I’ve lost a lot of closeness with all of my local friends who have settled down and have started having kids. I barely see them and we rarely go out. I’ve mostly started going out with my boyfriend’s friends, so I don’t really have anybody to talk to or see how he acts. I’m not sure if this is normal and I’ve just never had a very good boyfriend, or if this is actual love-bombing. The thing that really got me started thinking about if this relationship is problematic was he started talking about paying for us to go on a trip to Europe in December. He thinks it’s magical and I would absolutely love it (I love Christmas). He hasn’t pushed it, just mentioned it. What do you think?

—The Bomb.com

Dear Bomb.com,

My general rule about people who are worried about being love-bombed is: If this question is even on your mind, you’re being love-bombed. Of course, I can’t say 100 percent for sure, and you don’t need to run for your life or anything. But instincts are powerful things, and if a part of you is saying “This feels over the top,” you have to listen to yourself. There’s a place for intense enthusiasm and grand gestures early in relationships, but in a healthy situation you would be saying “We are so into each other. Things are moving fast but it feels great,” not “I’m just a little freaked out.” Give it a little more time, and spend the next few weeks paying less attention to what he’s doing and what it might mean, and more attention to how you’re feeling about it—and in the relationship overall.

Dear Prudence,

“The Silver Key,” a short story by H.P. Lovecraft, starts with the line: “When Randolph Carter was thirty he lost the key to the gate of dreams.” The next sentence continues to explain how “as middle age hardened upon him” he felt his ability to dream was “slipping away little by little, until at last he was cut off altogether.” It’s a quote that is increasingly resonating with me as the responsibilities of adulthood and the demands of work and family close around me. Each day is dictated by conditions out of my control, and I feel disconnected, like a machine on autopilot. I would say I was depressed but there is no strong emotion, just deep anhedonia. In the Lovecraft story, Carter finally escaped into fantasy, but that really isn’t an option for me. Is this really just a consequence of aging? Is it common for people to feel like cogs in a machine at this stage in life? Are we truly, to paraphrase Thoreau, doomed to live “lives of quiet desperation”?

—Searching

Dear Searching,

I don’t think there has to be a strong emotion for depression to be an issue. I’m not going to attempt to diagnose you from behind this screen, but definitely raise that with someone who would know better. With that, you might finally get at the root of these feelings.

But to answer the other questions, yes, the way you are feeling is common. Based on my inbox, very common. But no, it doesn’t mean you’re doomed to feel disconnected and quietly desperate forever. The evidence for that is that many people—including, I guarantee, many people in circumstances much more depressing than yours—manage to find joy and meaning in life. In my experience, the feelings that those who feel life is really worth living tend to tap into are 1) gratitude and 2) purpose. I know it sounds like I just walked over to the self-help section of the bookstore and wrote down the first two words I saw, I know. But these words have become clichés for a reason. For many, they’re really important pieces of feeling good about being alive.

When it comes to gratitude, your cog-in-a-machine life, with its safety, decent health, and freedom is the wildest dream of countless people in the world. Seriously, millions and millions of humans would feel like they hit the lottery if their biggest issue was “feeling disconnected.” I get that it doesn’t help to know that. It’s like being a child who’s pressured to eat breakfast by a parent who’s saying, “There are starving children who would love these eggs!” But there are well-tested ways to really begin to feel gratitude. There are people who have been thinking about this for a long time, so there are many tools out there, from different kinds of meditation or prayer, to simply writing down things you’re grateful for, that can help you to tap into actually feeling it.

When it comes to finding purpose, could you think of one person or group of people who you might be able to help? Or one thing about the world that really bothers you or strikes you as unjust that you might work to help fix? It will be difficult to continue feeling like your life is meaningless if you have a concrete thing you do every week, or even every day, that reminds you that it isn’t.

I have a friend living with me temporarily due to losing both their job and apartment. They found another job but still need to save up to get into another apartment. I am on a strict calorie-counting diet, and they know this. Yet they continue buying soda, cookies, cupcakes, chocolates, multiple containers of ice cream, bags of chips, boxes of sugary cereal, etc.—filling up my fridge and kitchen with this stuff that presents constant temptation. It also bothers me that they’re spending twice as much on groceries as I do, when they should be saving up to get their own place and give me my space and privacy back.