Queer Advice #64: rapid fire edition š„
looking through your wife's phone, an embarrassing co-worker, a date who tips less than 10%, how to forgive your ex and yourself
Itās Sunday and Iām back with a new queer advice column. This time, Iām answering FOUR QUESTIONS. Can you handle it??
If youāre new to TV Dinner, this is a recurring feature where I answer love and relationship questions from the gays. Some past editions include a missive from a MILF lover and āI'm a 33-year-old dirty slut who loves to be alone and go to bed at 10 pm.ā Also, "The affair was spectacular, as affairs generally are, but it destroyed my marriage and broke my wife's heart." You can read my entire back catalog of advice columns and tv recaps here.
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My wife and I have been married for 4 years and it has been great but also rocky at times. I will admit I can be insecure and shouldnāt have done this but I did, I peeped through her phone. I had suspicions and now I donāt know how to bring it up without saying āhey I went through your phoneā because I know Iām in the wrong and itāll get turned back on me which is somewhat fair. Anyway, she has a friend she casually dated and then remained friends with but she will call him baby or my love a lot. He has also responded to selfies she sends with fire emojis or heart eyes and tells her she is gorgeous. He has a girlfriend currently but I know things are rocky between them as well. I donāt know if Iām being insecure because sheās talking to an ex this way or what. I donāt feel right telling her she canāt be his friend (especially without mentioning what I saw as the reason) because I donāt think itās necessarily right to ask her to give up friends for my insecurities, but itās creating resentment and I donāt know what to do. I donāt think itās appropriate for a married woman to call another person names they call their spouse. What do I do?
Katie, 31
āPeeping throughā someoneās phone is the opposite of communication because itās one-sided and almost certainly guarantees that anything you learn will result in more conflict and more misunderstanding. So while I agree that itās weird for your wife to send her ex selfies and refer to him as āmy loveā--and that it would be unfair to ask her to give up a friend based on some ambiguous information you discovered while dancing with the devil reading through her DMs--the bigger issue is that youāre both keeping secrets from each other and your relationship lacks a baseline of trust and respect. You need to talk to your wife directly, and you need a major overhaul in the form of couples therapy or a breakup.
I am a trans guy who works at a public school. This is my first year at this school. There are a handful of openly queer teachers, more than at any other school Iāve worked at, which is cool. Iām not out as trans but everyone at school was very supportive and sweet when my husband and I got married recently. One of my coworkers, weāll call him Daniel (36), is a white cis gay man who does drag shows on the weekend. My first week at school, when no one else was around, he definitely clocked me by asking, āWere you ever teacher of the year? I saw someone with the same last name as you but a different (traditionally female) first name?ā He has been subtle about it (mostly). There was one time at lunch when someone said, āI donāt know anyone whoās changed their first nameā and he loudly exclaimed, āWell you must not know any trans people!ā and then he tried to catch my eye. I was not into that, but otherwise he is fine. We are friendly but not necessarily friends. My issue with Daniel is that he almost always uses a black accent and AAVE. A lot of queer lingo was invented by black people, but this is different than him having some queer lingo in his lexicon. When heās trying to be especially dramatic he goes even harder than usual on the AAVE and it is so uncomfortable to witness. I feel like as a white latinx person, I have a responsibility to talk with him about this, but I also have no idea if there is a way to do this that wonāt make our working relationship strained and awkward. I also donāt want to rat on him to administration.
Max, 29
First off, congratulations on winning teacher of the year! Queer teachers show up and make the world a better place every single day, so thank you.