LoveMyPeppermill
We turn each other's cranks
One of the most legendary letters to Slate's Dear Prudence column -- and the one that won by a mile when readers were asked which letters they wanted follow-ups for -- was from one of a pair of twin brothers (not identical, apparently) who had started having sex in high school and, in their late 30s, had been living together as a romantic couple for years. One of them, not the letter writer, wanted to tell the entire family that they were a couple; the letter writer didn't want to and was asking Prudence to adjudicate.
Emily Yoffe, the Prudence who answered that letter, was measured and understanding and not judgmental. (She might have been more judgmental if they'd been an opposite-sex couple who might reproduce, but they weren't, so she wasn't.) She ruled that the two of them could make clear to the family that they were committed to each other long-term but the family didn't need to know how they did or didn't relate to each other physically inside their own home.
In the follow-up, the letter writer said that they'd followed that advice. (He also said that he hadn't told his brother that he'd written Dear Prudence, and the brother choked on his breakfast cereal when he read the column.) He said that, at their family's urging (especially Mom's), they had tried dating others, both men and women, but never found anyone they wanted to be with more than each other. Mom in particular worried that they'd "grow old and die alone," and they convinced her that they wouldn't be alone because they had each other.
Emily Yoffe, the Prudence who answered that letter, was measured and understanding and not judgmental. (She might have been more judgmental if they'd been an opposite-sex couple who might reproduce, but they weren't, so she wasn't.) She ruled that the two of them could make clear to the family that they were committed to each other long-term but the family didn't need to know how they did or didn't relate to each other physically inside their own home.
In the follow-up, the letter writer said that they'd followed that advice. (He also said that he hadn't told his brother that he'd written Dear Prudence, and the brother choked on his breakfast cereal when he read the column.) He said that, at their family's urging (especially Mom's), they had tried dating others, both men and women, but never found anyone they wanted to be with more than each other. Mom in particular worried that they'd "grow old and die alone," and they convinced her that they wouldn't be alone because they had each other.
