Dear Prudence is Slate’s advice column. Ashley C. Ford is filling in as Prudie for Jenée Desmond-Harris while she’s on parental leave. Submit questions here.

Dear Prudence, 

My friend has suffered a personality transplant. We’re in our mid-30s and I think she’s having an early mid-life crisis. She has become obsessed with tradwife content and complains about her job and social life, saying she wishes it was the 1950s when women could stay at home and be wives and mothers. Wishing to achieve that lifestyle, she has decided to get married but has had no luck finding the man of her dreams, which is a cross between a cowboy and a millionaire. In a desperate attempt to meet someone with traditional values, and thinking that the problem is the fact that we live in a large West Coast city, she believes that what she needs to do is relocate to a different state like Montana.

I’m afraid that if she uses her savings to go on a hunt for this unattainable cowboy millionaire, she is going to not only torpedo her career but might eventually end up in debt. I’ve told her tradwives are content creators and it’s all for show, but she won’t listen. I want to stage an intervention with her sister. She’s very close to her sister and I think she may be the one who might be able to get through to her. Do you think this is wise? I don’t want her to hate me, but I’m worried.

—Living in Fantasy Land

Dear Fantasy Land,

We’ve heard so much over the last few years about men being red-pilled (even more so during these last few weeks), but I don’t think we’ve paid enough attention to the women being led to their own version of regressive ideals propped up by anxiety about the quality of their livelihoods. It sounds like your friend found herself sucked into that particular world of mythmaking. I’m sure it’s been disconcerting for you to watch it happen up close and in real-time. However, this is the kind of thing people fall into and resist all attempts to be pulled out of. I’m not saying your friend couldn’t use an intervention, but I think you should prepare yourself for the very real possibility that, even with her sister’s assistance, she may already be too far gone into her Billionaire Cowboy dream. Will you be able to handle that?

Before you go the intervention route, have a candid conversation with your friend about why she feels so attached to this dream, and where she hopes it all leads. In my experience, people who lean into these ideas are not just looking for a husband or a lifestyle, they’re looking for a specific feeling to either experience for the first time or recapture for themselves. Maybe she’s looking to feel cared for, protected, and undeniably loved. Maybe she feels like fantasy is her best option. Talking to your friend about her choices will help you figure out what she ultimately wants, which might help you suggest other ways she might find what she’s looking for out of life.

Dear Prudence, 

Me and my boyfriend were dating for a while. Then he started speaking to me dryly, so I checked on him and it turned out he was cheating on me. We broke up and did not have any contact with each other for a while. Until he hit me up asking how I was and telling him he missed me. I still had feelings for him so we got back together, but then after a few months, he cheated on me again. What does this mean and what should I do in this situation?

—Fake Relationship

Dear Fake Relationship, 

It means that no matter how much you love him, or how many times you forgive him, he will cheat on you. You should stop giving him the opportunity to do so.

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Dear Prudence, 

I’m a man in my 30s who is struggling with a really bad crush on a female co-worker. Although I’ve had plenty of co-worker crushes in the past, this is different. I’m not sleeping well, I’m anxious, and I’m having a difficult time keeping these feelings out of my mind. I spend the “free” moments of my work day either hiding out so that I don’t run into them or inventing excuses to go and talk to them (then chickening out). I haven’t felt like this since I met my spouse, who I’m currently married to.

I have no intention of cheating on my partner, and I really don’t get the sense that this other person shares my feelings. Even if they did, I would know better than to do anything about it. I’m not going to throw my life away for a colleague I have no future with. I hope to ride this out for a while and wait for it to dissipate, as I assume it will. But I wonder if the intensity of my feelings has to do with the pressure I feel to keep them secret. My spouse is insecure about her appearance and a little jealous—not intensely, but she gets a little paranoid about, say, the women I’m friends with at work (the crush is one of them). When I’ve had crushes in the past, it’s been easy to keep them to myself because the attraction doesn’t really occur to me until I’m sharing space with this person during the work day. By the time I’ve clocked out, I’ve already forgotten about them. But because this current crush is so psychologically present for me, I’m desperate to talk about it, especially with the person I’m closest to. I feel like I can’t because I’m worried about hurting her feelings.

I know that this crush will pass, that it’s not my fault that I caught feelings for someone, nor is it a betrayal to simply “have feelings.” But I also doubt it will be the last time it happens to me, and I want to find a way to discuss this with her that will be honest, non-threatening, and hopefully non-combative. I’m not looking to open the relationship up. If we could have a conversation in which I admit to these unexpected feelings, and if we could both laugh at what a ridiculous state I am in, I could hold these feelings a little more lightly and let go of them more easily. I worry if I keep bottling them up, I’m going to feel even more crazy and possibly resentful of the fact that I can’t talk about something that’s causing me significant discomfort. How do I approach this conversation? Should I have it all? Is there anything I should avoid saying? Anything I should definitely say? Help!

—I’ve Got It Bad, And It’s Really Bad

Dear Really Bad,

You don’t need to tell your wife about your crush, you need to make some new friends. There’s nothing odd about having a crush, some of us are more prone to them than others. As long as no lines are crossed, it’s harmless. Where the harm comes in is when you act on inappropriate feelings, commit infidelity, or make someone uncomfortable by sharing the crush, especially in the workplace. While your wife doesn’t work with you, it’s clear to me that you would be causing her undue distress by attempting to discuss this crush with her. (She’s already expressed jealousy about the specific person you can’t get out of your mind!) Despite your explanation, I’m having a hard time understanding why you would even consider this. Because she’s close to you and you have no one else to talk with about it? That reasoning just doesn’t pass the bar. If you really believe the only relief you’ll feel will come from sharing your feelings about this all-consuming crush, then you should talk to someone who’s more your friend than your wife’s and leave her out of it.

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Dear Prudence, 

I have been married for 10 years. When I married my husband, I knew he was not an extrovert, nor a person who could work a room. He had no close friends. I always thought he was misunderstood or worked too hard to have time for excess because he loved me dearly and well when we were dating. He is now a loyal hardworking professional man with a good job in the financial sector, and whose baseline actions indicate that he loves his family. He doesn’t cheat, and he comes home and spends time with the kids. But over time, the reason for his isolation has become evident.

His communication style under stress is curt, unfeeling, and dictatorial to all those around him—usually me, our parents, and our children. He stonewalls me when things overwhelm him. This has put our marriage under strain. When an argument arises, usually it’s due to his overly negative reaction to a basic life occurrence that wouldn’t sway another person. For example, if a friend of mine comes by our home with less than 24 hours’ notice, he gets upset and storms around the house. Once he dropped some papers, and blamed me for the item on the floor he tripped over. (It was a Hot Wheel.) If he can’t find something, it’s because I misplaced it. If I’m washing dishes in a space he thinks he needs to be in, I’m the one in the way even if I was there first. I try to discuss these moods with him and understand why he feels so strongly about these minor things but he shuts me down.

When he asks me to do something, it’s usually in the form of an order. When I ask why he speaks that way when he could just as easily ask nicely, he says he shouldn’t have to sugarcoat his words at home. I’m pragmatic and usually shrug things off pretty easily, but these little moments have added up over time to build significant resentment. I can’t live this way my whole life. I feel like a second-class citizen in my own home. I stay for the kids and moral reasons. I am financially stable so that is not stopping me. I also don’t want my children to treat their spouses this way in the future, but my son is watching his every move and has started speaking like him. The answer is probably counseling, but good resources aren’t readily available in our area and I doubt he will agree to go. Am I seeing things as worse than they are?

—Second-Class Citizen

Dear Second-Class Citizen,

You’re not making things out to be worse than they are, you are living under emotional dominance. Your husband is likely a person who processes all his difficult emotions as anger because he doesn’t consider anger an emotion. However, you and his loved ones are obviously well aware that it is. When someone refuses to seek counseling for an emotional problem, they’ll often defend their behavior to a serious degree.

Though you’ve lived with this behavior for a long time, it seems you’ve realized that “dealing” with someone else’s smoldering anger becomes unbearable. It’s time for your husband to understand just how unbearable it’s become. When he’s not in a “mood,” approach him and let him know that this issue can’t stand. Put him in charge of figuring out how to address it, since your suggestions have been met with a wall. Let him know that this isn’t just something you don’t want to live with, it’s something you won’t live with anymore.

—Ashley

Classic Prudie

My husband used to work for a major theme park. As a perk, we could get guests into the park for free. It was a bit of a family tradition that I would take the kids of the family for an outing or two while their parents got a little time for themselves. The rules were simple: They had to be potty trained and only family. I wasn’t taking time off to take everyone on earth for a free vacation. At the end of my husband working there, my brother had been dating “Sara” for a few months. Sara was a single mom of two and I had never met her or her kids at that point. My brother wanted to bring Sara and the kids down for a visit with all the bells and whistles. I declined.