I just ran into the man who broke into my house … at kindergarten pickup.

Dear Prudence,

I need advice on how to deal with a friend I honestly don’t like. We’ll call him Elliot. He has lied and been mean to my friends multiple times, and just recently told a very private secret to someone. He tells me to “shut the fuck up” over text A LOT when I contradict him. Elliot wears skirts and dresses, and I have no problem with this. He is not a girl. I have no problem with this. He is Asian. I have no problem with this. I have no problems with any of this! But when I argue that the things he’s doing to me and my friends aren’t right, he breaks down and says that he “doesn’t know what to do with his life” or something like that. I really don’t want to be his therapist for him. The other thing he does is to say he “didn’t ask for it,” or he gets defensive and swears. I don’t want to completely break ties because of proximity to him every day, so what should I do?

—I Can’t Deal Anymore

Dear Can’t Deal,

Hmm. It doesn’t sound like Elliot is acting like a friend at all, which makes me wonder why you’re putting yourself in a position to even “be his therapist” in the first place. I’m guessing he’s part of a friend group, so he comes with the whole package. If that’s the case, you may need to start negotiating a new relationship with the group at large, which will probably involve cultivating the individual friendships one-on-one instead of defaulting to the group hang.

That said, I’m going to be honest—it does sound like there is a tiny whiff of judgment coming from you re: Elliot. It may not be actually about his race or his personal style, but there’s clearly something about the way he does his thing that you don’t agree with. Or you just don’t like him. Which is fine! You are absolutely allowed to not like someone! But it’s one thing to dislike a person and distance yourself from them; it’s another, slightly masochistic matter entirely to keep putting yourself in his orbit to squabble and exude this judgment, which I’m sure he picks up on. Tolerating someone in the friend group doesn’t automatically give you the right to comment on their choices (and Elliot is in the right when he says he didn’t ask for being who he is). So consider yourself off the hook!

Dear Prudence,

My family is very Catholic. I accept that, everyone has a right to religious beliefs, and I believe in God as well. However, my dad recently said that he doesn’t believe in climate change, evolution, or vaccines. Oh, boy. I just stayed silent, but it’s getting worse. He’s started his way down a flat earth rabbit hole. He’s dragging my mom and sister down with him, and whenever I oppose him, I’ve been “brainwashed.” I’m liberal, admittedly, but I respect their right to different beliefs, and I normally keep my mouth shut unless there’s a blatant misquotation or something wildly wrong. What do I even do here? I can’t spend the rest of my life hearing that the all-loving God hates all my friends, that the very real climate crisis isn’t happening, that a scientific process isn’t real, and that the vaccine that saved my life is evil. Any opposition is met with resistance and anger, and I don’t know how long I can stay silent for.
What can I do besides sit there smiling placidly and dying inside?

—Modern Day Problems Require Modern Day Solutions

Dear Modern Day,

There’s such a funny flip that happens when you become an adult and realize you probably very likely absolutely know better than your family, no? We feel such a parental responsibility to them, and under the very real threat of the climate disaster or, like, our next pandemic, there is such an urgency to set them straight—and to do it quickly! I feel for you. It’s unnerving to experience this role reversal; just because you’re a grown-up now, too, doesn’t mean that you don’t secretly still want to feel like you can depend on your parents and sister. You want to be able to trust their judgment, and that’s not happening. As a result, you’ve now given yourself this sense of impossible responsibility for everyone’s well-being, and it’s freaking you out.

The counterintuitive thing to do here is to start building (or rebuilding) that trust. Offer to take hot-button issues off the table completely, and spend a few family interactions focusing as much as possible on the most anodyne subjects possible. The goal is to simply spend time together and find areas of agreement and connection (even if it comes down to playing hours of UNO in silence). You have to imagine your family members’ belief systems as a life raft that they’re clinging to out of a deep-rooted fear; no amount of rational debate is ever going to convince them to pry their fingers off and risk floating in nothingness. You are going to have to let them clutch at this life raft while you swim out and patiently tread water next to them for a while. Your dad especially is going to need to feel like you respect the fears he has that are implicit to his beliefs about vaccines, the universe, etc., and that he’s allowed to express those fears, however distastefully, before he can begin to think about loosening his grip.

Ideally, once you’ve built a new level of rapport with each other, you and your dad might get to a point where you can discuss and even joke about the different things you believe in—and maybe even one of you will get curious about the other’s point of view, and then you can start an actual conversation.

That will not happen overnight, but it also does not require you to always be around smiling silently whenever he goes off on a rant. Decide on your own limits for entertaining his spiel—maybe one lunch per quarter, tops, where you let him say whatever he wants? Or proposing a blanket no-politics rule at the holiday dinner table?—and stick to them firmly yet politely. Tell him you guys don’t have to agree on everything, but that you still want to spend time together.
(Expert mode: Tell him earnestly that you’re glad he raised a child who can think for themselves…) When you inevitably get heated, just Imagine your father clinging to that life raft. Once you make it clear you don’t consider his beliefs to be a personal threat, he may start doing the same.

—Delia

Catch up on this week’s Prudie.

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