Honesty Is the Worst Policy

I offer this letter in evidence. I offer it as a symptom of a culture that is in very serious trouble. As we will see, Carolyn Hax understands perfectly well that wife Becky violated the most basic rules of ethics and etiquette. And she sees that all the king’s horses and all the king’s men might not be able to put this one back together again.

As often happens in today’s advice columns, the gender of one or the other participants is left ambiguous. In this case we do not really know the letter writer’s sex. He or she is married to Becky, and we might normally assume that he or she is a he, but the temperament, the sensibility and the prose style suggests that he could well be a she. If that is the case, then perhaps more is at issue than the egregious breach of decorum.

Anyway, here is the letter:

“Becky" and I stayed with my brother, "Dan," and his wife, "Mae." Becky and I are recently married and this was her first stay at my brother's place.

Later she texted Mae a thank-you along with some helpful hints about some slight hosting deficiencies — nothing too bad, just that the guest room mattress needs to be replaced, the drain in the bathtub is slow and that a lot of people can't eat carb-heavy meals first thing in the morning. Becky would sincerely welcome it if someone did this for her and thought she was doing Mae a favor.

Mae is livid and has banned us from visiting. I wish Becky had checked with me before sending the text, but Mae is really overreacting. We were really good guests — we only stayed three days, took everyone out to meals, did all the cleanup after a big meal and always cleaned up after ourselves, so this was a minor annoyance at best.

I said so to Dan when I was explaining that Becky meant no harm, and now he's mad at me, too. My mom lives with my brother and has asked me to mend fences so Becky and I are welcome to stay there again. Where do I start fixing this mess?

— Banned

Good manners requires Hax to say a few words about how Mae might be overreacting. But, clearly Becky has no manners and no sense of decorum. You do not include a critique of your hostess while writing a thank you note. Texting makes it more impersonal, and thus, worse.

Strangely, Banned does not understand what the problem is. She (assuming that Banned is a she) does not really think that Becky did anything wrong. 

Anyway, Hax is not very hopeful. Neither am I. In her words:

I don’t know how else to say this to you. Becky just drove a spike into the hull of your relationship with your family, and you and she both need to admit that out loud to your whole family and then start bailing as fast as you can.

Evidently, Becky has overdosed on critical theory. She believes that she is simply being honest. She is following rules that our therapy culture has enshrined as the path to mental health. And she thinks that she is being helpful. Nothing is quite as bad as making a fetish of honesty. And using it as an excuse to trash another person’s hospitality.

Surely, Becky counts as an uncouth clod. Surely, she should have asked her husband or wife whether the text was appropriate before sending it. But, then again, this cannot possibly be the first time that Becky has shown her abysmally weak character. If such is the case, how did it happen that Banned married her in the first place?

A complete trainwreck….