Dear Prudence: Take My Advice

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Dear Prudence Take My Advice Dear Prudence shares reader responses and lessons learned from your letters in 2011. By Emily Yoffe Posted Tuesday, Dec 27, 2011, at 12:14 PM ET Get Dear Prudence delivered to your inbox each week; click here to sign up. Please send your questions for publication to prudence@slate.com. (Questions may be edited.) Like you, I want to know what happens after I answer letters from readers. Do the writers follow my advice or ignore it? Do things work out or go south? I don't track people down after I answer their questions, but occasionally people do get back to me (which I encourage!). In this end-of-year column, I'll share their responses as well as highlight some of the most illuminating follow-up letters I received during 2011. In March, I published a letter from a young woman, involved with a loving boyfriend, who cheated on him with her abusive ex-boyfriend because she was looking for comfort when her grandfather died while her boyfriend was out of town. (No, it doesn't make any more sense in the retelling than it did in the original.) The woman had accidentally left a pair of diamond earrings behind at the ex's, and now he was saying he would return them only in exchange for more sex. She was chastising herself, and I piled on regarding her lack of loyalty and impulse control. I said her boyfriend deserved to know what she did, and she should tell him before the manipulative ex decided to. As for the earrings, let a lawyer send the ex a letter about theft. She took my advice and even thanked me ... To continue reading, click here. Join the Fray: our reader discussion forum What did you think of this article? POST A MESSAGE | READ MESSAGES Also In Slate Fifteen Years Ago, Ron Paul Wasn't Claiming Somebody Else Wrote His Newsletters The Iron Lady Isn't Just a Terrible Movie About Thatcher—It's Terribly Sexist The Weirdos Who Collect Serial-Killer Memorabilia	Advertisement
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