ByElizabeth Hours Updated
Comments 440 Comments

Tuesday’s Workwear Report: Arlington Dress

Our daily workwear reports suggest one piece of work-appropriate attire in a range of prices.

I love jersey dresses because they’re easy to wear and easy to care for. This one has the added benefit of some beautiful structural details at the waist. I also like the V-neck, which is flattering without dipping too low.

I would keep this dress in my closet for busy, stressful days when I need to look pulled-together but don’t have the brain space to put together a real outfit.

The dress is $265 and available in UK sizes 6–20. It also comes in black. Arlington Dress 

Karen Kane has a more affordable option in regular and plus sizes, which is on sale at Nordstrom for $86.40–$124.

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440 Comments

    1. I love the style of this dress, but agreed that unless the jersey on the upper parts is VERY flexible I will have neck/shoulder/back pain.

    2. If that is a real comment, I own this dress and it’s very forgiving in the midsection. Not at all tight.

      1. The poor grammar makes me think this is a troll comment too, but I also own the Arlington, and it’s super flattering and comfortable, even on my rock climber/swimmer shoulders. The fabric is substantial, but plenty of stretch. I also own the Karen Kane dress that I think Elizabeth is trying to link to in two colors, and it too is in my “too lazy to put together actual suiting but still want to look decent today” rotation.

      2. Love this dress. Beautiful. The Karen Kane (link broken the one I think you are referring to) is not a good substitute, at least to me. But nice pick.

      3. Thanks for the advice on this dress. It’s gorgeous and I’m very tempted. I work from home, and don’t anticipate having occasion to wear it until December or January. Any thoughts on if it’s likely to go on sale?

      4. This dress is seriously tempting me. How does the sizing run? Has it held up well for you?

        1. Similar to Reiss, if you know your size in that brand. I’ve only had it for a few months, and only worn it a few times (and haven’t had it cleaned yet) as it’s too. darn. hot. for anything with sleeves right now, but I love it and have gotten complements every time.

        2. This (The Fold London) is one of my all-time favorite brands. I’ve only been watching this year but it seems that their standard jersey dresses (and suiting) like the Arlington don’t go on sale, or perhaps go on sale less frequently. They have a size chart and I’ve found their dresses true to size. I’m guessing they’re pretty focused on this as a company because they were founded in the Internet era and as far as I know only have a brick-and-mortar shop in London. The quality is excellent.

  2. Dear JCrew – everything I ordered 2 days ago at 30% off is now an additional 15% off. It hasn’t even shipped yet. Why you won’t honor the price adjustment is bewildering, because I just had to place a duplicate order to get the benefit of the discount… meaning you incur 2x the (free to me) shipping costs, 2x the overhead associated with assembling the order and the overhead for processing the other return, there is 2x the environmental impact, AND there is annoyance to me of having to deal with the return. Which I take to the nearby store to avoid the return shipping fee, but which I typically don’t actually shop at because it has nowhere near the online selection.

    All of which could have been avoided with a one time credit over a 2 minute phone call. #firstworldproblems, I know, but still!

    2. How much money did the extra 15% save you? The answer is probably that most people won’t go to all the trouble of cancelling/returning/reordering the same stuff to save even $10-15, but they might, as you say, make a 2-minute phone call.

      1. About $50, as my order was a bit over $300. For example, the Going Out Blazer went from $117 to $99 when the extra discount was applied.

        I also tried to have the original order cancelled but it was too late to do so, per the rep.

    5. I had the same situation with Eddie Bauer (recent purchase, not even received yet, went on sale, free shipping). Asked them via chat if they would give a discount or should I reorder and return the expensive one. Did an online chat and got my $20 credit in less than 10 minutes. I love businesses that treat people rationally.

      1. I should have added the caveat that I had other things to return to them so it wouldn’t be an extra trip so no real cost to me.

    6. Literally just happened to me. I haven’t shopped there in a while due to the well known decline in quality and general lack of styles that fit my real life, but wanted to give them another chance. Not impressed.

        1. Kinda makes me miss 3llen, who was at least sometimes entertaining. This is just banal.

          1. Ellen’s still around! She’s just stranded in m0d for hours and hours every day.

          2. +1 I miss Ellen. She was at least funny! This person’s fetish with button down shirts is unsettling.

          3. I saw a thread recently on the AITA reddit sub where a dude claiming to be newly promoted manager wanted to redo the dress code to force women to “dress professionally,” and he insisted that they wear button down shirts and slacks/skirts. He took a scorched earth approach to silk blouses and insisted that the only way for women to dress professionally was button down shirts. It was insane. Made me wonder if it was the same person…

          4. That AITA was so frustrating! I thought he was more of a red pill/MGTOW woman hater. If I have to wear a button front shirt so do the females!

      1. I may be missing context but is it possible Anon’s question about the button down shirt is sincere? Buttondowns aren’t my favorite but I’m not understanding the snark and eyerolls.

  4. Business major / MBA graduates — can I ask for your take on building a MBA coursework out of MOOCs? The linked article is my starting point. Feedback on things you would leave out or add in (or other thoughts) appreciated!

    I do understand that the bigger benefit of MBAs is the B-school experience and alumni network and career opportunities — for context, I’m trying to gain a basic understanding of corporate matters as a law student with no business or econ or quantitative background and headed to M&A, due diligence and corporate law (so I don’t want to spend $$$$$ getting up to speed on business concepts). TIA!

    https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-make-a-mooc-mba-using-free-courses-from-top-10-business-schools-545113e506d9/amp/

    1. No advice but I wanted to say thanks for posting the article. Very interesting.

    2. Back up here. What year of law school are you in? When you say that you are “headed to M&A, due diligence and corporate law,” do you mean that you are a rising 3L/just started 3L year and have a job offer in hand from a law firm, or is this all speculative?

      You should receive all the training you need in a law firm or corporate setting; focusing on your law school classes, with a focus on corporate law, tax law, accounting and corporate finance, mergers and acquisitions, etc., should be more than sufficient. If you are going into an area that for some reason wants a JD/MBA, then you should have enrolled in a dual JD/MBA program to begin with.

      If you truly feel that some “business” courses (aimed at MBA types) would be helpful, do not take marketing, entrepreneurship, managing talent, recruiting, etc., courses – take finance and accounting courses. And do NOT let them intrude on your law school grades, writing for a Journal or Law Review, or job hunt.

      1. As a practicing corporate lawyer, knowing some basic background knowledge of how businesses run, tax, and accounting is invaluable to success, so I wholeheartedly disagree that you will learn that stuff at a law firm – they won’t teach you anything in that respect. And to be honest, if you have a high GPA and want to preserve it, I wouldn’t take difficult tax law courses if you aren’t going to be a tax lawyer. Taking a free course at your leisure here and there as relevant to your actual practice is all you need. Do not “recreate” an MBA out of free courses, it’s unnecessary.

        1. You also need to back up. The larger questions is where the OP is in law school. If she’s just starting her 1L year, or even her 2L year, she needs to calm down and focus on school, law review, grades, and interviews (as applicable). She may find that she doesn’t even want to do corporate law.

          If she’s a rising 3L with a corporate law job offer in hand, then she can (per my last paragraph) take relevant MOOC courses, but would be wasting her time doing the entire MBA suite.

      2. Thanks for the concern, I have an offer and know where I am going (firm, team). Firm mentors (junior associates) have advised it would be useful to get a grasp of basic business concepts in addition to legal concepts while I have the time, especially since I have no background whatsoever in business.

        1. Can you take some courses at your university’s business school for law school credit? Or does your law school have accounting and corporate finance for lawyers? I imagine you’ll learn a lot from a good MOOC, but might as well learn what you need from your coursework if possible. It’s not like you’re going to learn a ton of necessary stuff in a full schedule of 3L law classes this year.

        2. Yes, this. I do M&A and had an undergrad in English lit with no business knowledge whatsoever. I took a class that was with the accounting department (I was allowed up to 2 non-law classes) that taught me how to read a financial statement and a few other useful things, and obviously took a number of business-related law classes. The rest I just picked up as I was working. I wouldn’t worry about this too much – as a young lawyer you may find yourself Googling a few basic concepts but you will understand it all soon enough. Take a MOOC if it makes you feel better but don’t feel like you need to spend a lot of money on this.

        3. I would look at some free online resources and then from there move on to looking for coursework. If your focus is going to be finance / M&A related check out macabacus – they will step you through some of the key corporate finance concepts. I’d also try to look into some sort of an accounting course. These will probably be the most helpful. To be honest, the MBA coursework is an overly simplified version of what is actually done. It is probably useful for an MBA student with no exposure to corporate finance but is likely to be minimally helpful to someone intending to work in M&A. I think you might have better luck with self study.

    3. This looks like an interesting program/approach to give you background in the business side of things, but I wouldn’t tout it as a DIY MBA. Just do it because it’s helpful to you.

    4. I’ve taught graduate-level business/finance classes and I think it’s a good idea but can’t imagine that you’d have time to do any more than 2-3 of these before starting at a new job. Especially if you’re going into BigLaw, given the time demands. Plus, while marketing and leading teams/organizational management are interesting, they may not be useful on a day to day basis. I’d suggest getting a copy (Kindle or paper) of The Portable MBA and then read The Portable MBA in Finance/Accounting and Portable MBA in Entrepreneurship and maybe the Marketing one if you have time. I haven’t much recent experience with M&A but the book Investment Banking by Rosenbaum and Pearl is used by MBA schools. Or find out what text some of those M&A classes use and read the text book.

  5. The link to the lower-cost Karen Kane option takes me to the Nordy’s home page, not the dress.

    3. If you search Karen Kane on the website it’s the cascade faux wrap dress – lowest price is black. It comes in navy and red as well.

  6. My manager does not think that I am able to manage a more experienced employee. I am the head of the department, albeit new to managing a large team. We have a job opening on my team that an experienced (7-10 years more experienced than I am) candidate has applied for. It would be a great hire, except my manager thinks that we should split the team into two business units and have the new hire take one, and I the other due to their level of experience. I would like to make the argument that leadership is not solely on years of experience but also about who can lead, mentor, and make decisions for the department. No other department at our company has dual management. Should I move forward with this charge? And how have you handled managing more experienced reports?

    1. Askamanager.org is full of truly amazing resources and scripts.
      Do you know if your manager has discussed this with the potential new hire at all? The potential new hire technically applied for a job that does NOT involve managing people, correct? Maybe they don’t enjoy managing people and don’t have any interest in doing so. Plenty of very intelligent, skilled people with years of experience decide they’d rather focus on their work than on managing.
      Also, just because someone has more years of experience doesn’t mean they’re great at seeing the big picture, prioritizing, interfacing with external partners, etc. I default so some of my direct reports in matters where they’re the Subject Matter Expert, for example, but at the end of the day I still set priorities etc.

    2. Soooo…this is probably not about the fact that the potential new hire is more experienced than you, but about something else. What that “something else” could be, I can only speculate. You say it is a “large” team – how many people is that? If it’s more than 20, it is to your advantage for the team to be split as a team of 20+ direct reports is going to be tough to manage over the long term. It may be that upper management feels the team is too large and they intended to split it before now, but now a candidate has emerged that makes that more doable than it was before.
      Speaking solely from my experience: usually there is no problem with a younger person managing a more experienced person; everyone is just expected to work it out. And there’s a lot of administrative rigamarole involved with splitting a team into two with two different managers, so we’d never do it because “well, this person is more experienced and we don’t want them to feel inadequate being managed by a less-experienced person.” Maybe there are tactical advantages to be gained. Maybe they want to elevate this person into management and this is the best, most strategic way to do it. Maybe the team is genuinely too large and they want to ease the burden on you. Maybe they need to split the team to take advantage of new business opportunities coming down the road that you aren’t aware of. I just don’t think this is about this candidate being more experienced than you, so before you take an advocacy position, do some sleuthing and backchanneling and see what intel you can gather.

      1. Appreciate the thoughts. I should have clarified that the “large team” is in fact a team of <10. We are relatively small organization and our departments are around the 5-10 member size, and each has one department head. I agree that some sleuthing needs to happen before a more formal conversation can take place. From what I can glean from the recruiter it seems the candidate wants to come in at the same title as I am at, so perhaps that is throwing a wrench into things since the original posting is for a title lower. But we have other teams where members of the same title report into each other (I find this odd but suppose there is precedence) though there is one clear department head. My manager also has made indirect comments about this before (how I may not be able to manage someone with more experience) which gives me pause as the team has been doing well and feedback from management has reflected this.

        1. This is odd indeed. Are you in a very technical role? What are “years of experience” likely to gain one in your field? If it’s something like accounting where direct reports need fairly constant feedback from a superior on decisions they cannot or are not allowed to make themselves, I can kind of understand where your manager is coming from. In this case an experienced employee in a lower role may consistently overstep their role’s allowed authority even if making the correct decision which is not good for anyone. But most business departments do not operate like this.

          1. There are certain technicalities to the business but only up to a certain point. Once you know the regulations and technical foundations of the work, you’re pretty much set. Growth comes from more creative ideation (within the boundaries of said regulations), excellent execution, and developing strong client service engagement/relationships. I am fairly young for my title/level and to be leading a department but have been proving myself by turning around client relationships and improving the quality of work from the team. It’s not the first time in my career that someone higher up has made comments based on my age, but it is the first where I feel that I am being actively stymied from my goals and responsibilities because of it. I may also have a sensitivity bias based on those experiences, so in the meantime, will do some internal digging and see if there are other factors in the mix.

  7. Is there such a thing?

    I can’t wear jumpsuits b/c I am such a high-waisted pear that the pants never fit right. If I had two pieces, I could buy the pants in the right size and alter and then get the right top.

    I like the concept, but it isn’t really workable for me without looking like I’m wearing a sack with legs.

    2. Anna from the blog See (Anna) Jane has an outfit that I thought looked chic and sounds like it might get you close to the jumpsuit look with two pieces. I’ll post the link below (to avoid this comment going into mod), but in the meantime, if you google “Real Outfit Recap July 27, 2018 seeannajane” it should be the first result.

    3. I recently bought a coordinating silk top and pants at Theory can can be worn as a “jumpsuit” or as separates.

    4. I recently got some suiting pants and a peplum top from Banana in the same color/fabric, and wear them together all the time, for a jumpsuit effect. I love the look. Don’t think Banana is still making tops in suiting fabric, though… which is too bad–I loved those.

  8. My friend is a stay-at-home mother of four, and her husband killed himself last week. They had life insurance, but they’re ineligible since it was a suicide.

    My heart breaks for her, but I’m also so, so angry at him for being so selfish. I’m struggling with being polite when people hush over what a great guy he was. (How great was he? He abandoned his daughters and left the mother unable to support them). Obviously I would never say anything and I just smile and nod, but it’s like nails on a chalkboard.

    I’m going to talk about this with my therapist, and of course donated money to a GoFundMe to help my friend. But any other ideas on how to be supportive?

    1. Help her figure out Social Security survivors benefits and work on your judgment of the husband. You might not be planning to say anything, but going off the vehemence of what you wrote here, she’ll be able to tell anyway. It’s not up to you to feel that it was selfish.

      1. I think that this is wear you help-in-complain-out, so she should do all of her venting here. And I get her feelings — way to through a whole family under the bus.

        But when her friend is around, no doubt friend is going through this all a million times and then having to actually live it. So silent, helpful friends are the best. Not a friend who will verbally pile on.

      2. She can absolutely feel that it was selfish. It’s not up to you to tell her feelings are illegitimate.

        1. Yeah, I hate the idea that we can no longer say suicide is selfish. It IS selfish, especially in a situation like this where you have minor children who depend on you financially. You can recognize that people who commit suicide are obviously struggling and have sympathy for them, while also being angry at them for being so selfish. It’s possible to feel two things at once.

          1. She can say it here, but I think there was a concern that if she’s saying here she might also say it to the family, or to the wrong person who will relay it back to the family, or that her feelings will come through in ways she doesn’t realize despite her best efforts to hide. But I agree, her anger towards him is totally valid and she should have an outlet for it, let’s let her do it here.

          2. I totally agree it’s not something to say to the family! I was responding to all the pushback to OP expressing her honest feelings here.

          3. Totally agree with this. And the “it’s not up to you to feel that it is selfish” is so LOL to me. Then who is it up to? People are allowed to have feelings and opinions on bad things that happen in the lives of people they love. I guarantee people judge you ALL the time. The key marker of being an adult is not expressing those feelings at the wrong time to the wrong people (if at all) – not being “oh life is okey dokey” internally like a dolt.

          4. I am always struck by the fact that society is perfectly fine calling childless people by choice selfish, but now that’s taboo for suicide…..

          6. Wow I worded that badly (multitasking.) I don’t think it’s ok to call child free people selfish. I think it’s a good thing not to have kids if you don’t want them.

            I don’t think saying you hate kids is ok but that’s a different topic.

          7. Anon at 12:58, I agree that being childfree by choice is not selfish but saying you hate kids is very off-putting (also a mom, fwiw). But i think the larger point was that people are called selfish here and/or by society all the time for all kinds of things…for not wanting kids, for not giving guests +1s at their wedding, for wanting their co-workers to not wear perfume they’re allergic to, for cheating on their spouse, for wanting their parents to spend more time with the grandkids, etc. (I found all these examples by searching this site for the word selfish, btw.) But somehow saying suicide is a selfish decision is not ok, just because the person who made that decision may have been suffering from a mental illness?

          8. Someone below said the wife was the selfish one because she quit her job. So apparently it’s cool to blame a SAHM for leaving the workforce (even though we have no idea what if any mental illnesses she may have suffered from too) but not the person who actually made the decision to abandon the family who financially depended on him. Cool beans.

        2. The father must have been seriously in need of counseling that he never got. It is tragic, and I hope the wife/widow can find another man to fill the void in her and her kid’s lives. I really am sad for her too. FOOEY on men that commit suicide when they have a wife and kids to support. Does anyone know WHY he killed himself? Was there any fighting going on that caused this?

      3. +1. Your anger will be a burden to her in this situation. You need to not express it to her – not explicitly, not implicitly. She needs to be free to feel her own feelings, whether they are anger, love, loss, happiness, whatever. Do what you need to do to process your emotions away from her, and if you have personal experience with suicide, be VERY attuned to whether you are projecting your own experiences onto hers. And if you do have personal experience with suicide, make sure you have support to deal with your own feelings.

        In terms of supporting her, providing childcare so she can deal with painful and difficult logistics (like the funeral) or alternatively, accompanying her to deal with those logistics so she doesn’t have to go alone can really help.

    2. I hear you — I know someone who killed himself after his wife died of cancer. He left young kids with no one to care for them (a pair of grandparents stepped up, but they were not without their own health and housing challenges and had to leave their “55 or better” house to a pricey one near the kids’ school). I had no words. None at all. Your life is bad? Go and make it a million times worse for your kids.

      2. Sadly, though, this is the mindset that leads to murder suicides. They are so suicidal but see how it will leave their kids worse off so they take the kids with them.

    3. Oh my god. Your poor friend and those poor kids. I totally get your anger.

      I would make it a point to offer practical help – babysitting, taking kids out for outings all together or separately (I’m sure they will all want and need individual attention from mom and from others), bringing over meals. And do it not just the first few months, but keep doing it. I got a ton of support right after my divorce (not nearly as tragic!) but much less so as the months passed. But I needed the support almost as much 6 months out as I did a month out.

    4. Ouch. All the feelings!
      In my family’s experience, if the life insurance policy was in place for more than one year, a suicide does not stop the benefit.

      2. That really depends on the policy. It’s not unusually for a life insurance policy to exclude suicide

        1. I’m wondering if he knew that might be the case, or whether he was in too much pain to consider double checking, or if the possibility didn’t even cross his mind.

          1. If somebody is in enough pain and turmoil to commit suicide, I wouldn’t be surprised if checking their life insurance policy wasn’t on their to do list.

          2. … when I was considering it, even idly, I checked my policy. It was one year. Thankfully, it was new insurance so I had to wait, and by the time one year rolled around, I wasn’t thinking of it any more. (I’m fine now.)

      3. Was going to post this. My friend’s brother committed suicide and the life insurance policy still paid out as he had had it more than 2 years.

      4. Also it is not uncommon for insurance of any type to just deny it outright in bad faith, until you fight them. They shouldn’t but it happens all the time.

    5. This is more a point about empathy but I would suspect that he wasn’t in his right mind when he did this. Maybe try to keep that in mind when you talk to your friend.

    6. IIRC, there is often a 2-year exclusion for suicide. You might volunteer to go through and read the fine print. I have insurance from work that I think I need to die and insurance that I purchase that has a suicide exclusion (it may be time-limited though). And some where there is double-indemnity if I die in an accident. I wouldn’t assume unless someone has checked everything carefully.

      And his 401K, etc. will be there no matter what.

    7. Yes stop talking like this immediately. Suicide isn’t selfish it is a tragic consequence of mental illness which is a disease. Adjust your thinking it is wrong and cruel

        1. People who commit suicide are mentally ill. I’m shocked that I have to point this out. He wasn’t selfish he was sick.

          1. People who have cancer don’t just go down with the ship (and if they try, we see them as needing mental help and get it for them). Somehow we let neglecting your mental health to the point where it has dire consequences like this just be OK and something where the rest of us can’t form an opinion? I don’t think so.

            If he were an alcoholic or a drug addict, people would judge. This is no different. He might have been sick, but sick isn’t the same as helpless.

          2. Exactly. Drug addicts are seriously ill too and we wouldn’t hesitate to call someone who overdosed and left his wife and kids behind selfish. I don’t understand why suicide is different. The person is ill, fine, but still behaving selfishly.

          3. You choose to start using drugs. You do not choose to be depressed. (Mine is a result of years of physical and psychological abuse at the hands of my family.)

          4. Many drug addicts are offered drugs or alcohol for the first time by family members as minor children or grow up seeing their parents do drugs. I don’t know that we can hold minors accountable for their “choice” to start using.

          5. We do let people with cancer go down with the ship if it’s terminal and they are tired of fighting. Depression is an illness too. And drug addicts and alcoholics are ill too. Maybe try NOT judging people who are sick.

          6. Of course he was mentally ill, but I have to wonder how a man with a wife and children who depend on him could neglect his mental health so badly. We have doctors for this, we have medication. This community urges people to go to therapy for all sorts of reasons far short of wanting to commit suicide, so it’s shocking that now people are saying “oh well, nothing could be done and we mustn’t speak ill of him, that’s just what happens when depression gets bad.”

          7. We let people with cancer die gracefully when medical professionals unanimously agree that their disease is terminal in the very near future. No competent doctor will tell you a depressed person has a terminal illness. It’s an offensive and totally off-base analogy.

          8. “Of course he was mentally ill, but I have to wonder how a man with a wife and children who depend on him could neglect his mental health so badly. We have doctors for this, we have medication. This community urges people to go to therapy for all sorts of reasons far short of wanting to commit suicide, so it’s shocking that now people are saying ‘oh well, nothing could be done and we mustn’t speak ill of him, that’s just what happens when depression gets bad.'”

            Mmmhmm. And just yesterday we had a thread analyzing exactly how much of a burden we should permit people with suffering with depression to place on us. Spoiler alert: that answer was “not much.” Also, not sure if you have any experience with mental illness, but one of its key features is that it impedes your perception of reality and makes caring for yourself difficult.

          9. I’m sure that this man was mentally ill, but not everyone who commits suicide is mentally ill or is committing suicide because of mental illness.

            As for mental illness, the available treatments do not work for everyone. Some common medications are capable of increasing the risk of suicide (and not only by increasing initiative as they start help–they can also just make things worse instead of better for some people). Some meds have not been shown to reliably outperform placebo in the majority of patients. So it’s mostly luck whether a given med works for any given person. The whole field of psychology is facing a replication crisis, a statistical significance crisis, and as well as legal scandals involving pharmaceutical research and advertising. There are also currently several severe drug shortages (including medications for major depression and schizophrenia, some of which are not safe to stop abruptly). It seems incredibly harsh to judge a mentally ill person for not recovering given the state of the research, treatments, access, and production in mental healthcare.

          10. Anon at 12:20 – thank you for saying this. A colleague’s son committed suicide when he was switched from one depression med to another and had a bad reaction to the new medication. Given how many women on this board take antidepressants or other mental-health medications, I would think there would be A. more awareness that medication changes or even skipped doses can lead to suicidal ideation and B. more empathy that without knowing what was going on with the husband, we can’t possibly judge his decision as “selfish.”

          1. You are wrong and cruel. I know you feel intellectual with your pompous “both can be true” line but it’s incredibly harmful to people who struggle with mental illness. If you feel more and more defensive about that, take a minute to consider why you are so intent on ignoring the pain many of us are telling you that you are causing. Why are you choosing causing pain over compassion?

      3. Why? When suicide has consequences like this for a family, it is not just some other equally valid lifestyle choice. If you are physically sick, get help. If you have mental struggles and people depend on you for a roof over their heads, it is your duty to get help, too. Grownups have duties and responsibilities to themselves and to others.

        1. Omfg, like it’s that easy to just get help? This isn’t just like scheduling an appointment to get your flu shot. Not being able to do things like find a provider who’s in-network for your insurance is one of the symptoms of depression. And that’s assuming that you a) have health insurance, b) with in-network providers, c) who actually have an opening for an appointment sometime in the next year. Or, that you can afford to private pay for mental health treatment and that again, providers have an opening for an appointment sometime in the near future. There’s a HUGE shortage of mental health providers in the US.

          1. “Not being able to do things like find a provider who’s in-network for your insurance is one of the symptoms of depression.”

            This. Yes. Thank you for saying it.

          2. I waited for 6 months to see one of the few available in-network psychiatrists without truly horrible reviews. I kept seeing my very shady and problematic one in between. It was so, so hard, when I would call a place and they would say “we aren’t taking new patients” or “we can’t see you until December” and I would hang up and sob. When someone close to me is looking for help, I always offer to make the initial calls for them, because it was so hard for me.

      4. It’s both. They’re not mutually exclusive. It’s a tragic consequence of mental illness. It’s also incredibly selfish to abandon five people who completely depend on you. It’s both.

        3. So you would also argue that someone dying of cancer when they have five kids depending on them is selfish too? If not, then you are stigmatizing mental illness.

          1. Someone who had non-terminal cancer and refused any treatment for it, and then eventually died, yes that’s selfish. Depression isn’t a terminal illness unless you don’t treat it.

          3. IIRC, Steve Jobs didn’t leave his family penniless. [And the daughter situation was just — him being an awful person? Or is the internet now somehow a judgment-free zone?]

          4. Sure would, if they didn’t take the medicine or do the chemo or otherwise intervene. The two are not interchangeable because with cancer, one doesn’t pull one’s own trigger. Your argument is that a suicide can’t be attributed to the person because their mental illness renders them not responsible for their actions. But despite that mental illness, they are still making a choice– even when they objectively know that they have, in this case, a stay at home wife and four children. It’s an objective fact that they depended on him. It’s selfish, even though he is mentally ill. It’s not cancer. The comparison is apples to oranges.

          5. Depression can be terminal even if you DO treat it. There was nothing in OP’s post to suggest it wasn’t treated. You all have some serious stigma and judgment against mentally ill people – unusual for a community that likes to play the woke af game at any opportunity.

          6. Sure, if they refused treatment for that cancer, that would be selfish. Or if they had type 2 diabetes and decided you know what, I can afford the insulin but I just don’t wanna, I hate needles, that would be selfish. If someone let their binge eating disorder take its course and they ate themselves into a morbidly obese, bedridden state and could no longer work, forcing their partner to become both a breadwinner and a caretaker, that would be selfish.

            But it should also be said that when someone is depressed, they might lose sight of the fact that people depend on them, or they might resent that dependence and feel stuck.

          7. Find me a doctor who will point to a depressed person and say their illness is “terminal.” There isn’t one, because it’s not considered a terminal disease. I have no stigma against mental illness – it is absolutely a disease. But it is not a terminal disease. Words have meanings.

          8. In the same way that people seek treatment for their cancer and still die, people in treatment for their depression still die by suicide. In general, NIH says the success rate of antidepressants in treating depression is about 60%. There’s some evidence that certain types of therapy are effective in reducing suicide. Treatment is helpful and we should encourage it and make it available and try to make sure people have the ongoing support they need. That said, we have a good understanding of things that we can do at the societal level to reduce death by suicide (not specifically describing methods in news coverage, for example), but on the individual level it is very hard to know what will be effective. It’s simply not the case that if someone just gets into treatment, they won’t die from their depression.

            Signed,
            Used to work in suicide prevention

          9. Just as a reminder, members of this community have struggled with intense depression, suicidal thoughts, and some may even be survivors of suicide attempts. Can we be constructive and not judgy little Bs, please?

          10. I actually know of a friend of a friend who has treatable lymphoma that is refusing to treat it (and it will be terminal) and who has minor kids. His wife is beside herself because she can’t get him to have treatment or see a counselor. He really intends to die – says it’s hopeless. Amazing choice.

          11. In case it wasn’t clear, I thought Steve Jobs was selfish/foolish for not treating his cancer with conventional medicine. It was one of the highly curable forms of pancreatic cancer (less common than the really bad one.) Leaving young children behind, whether they’re provided for financially or not, is selfish. Being fatherless is not a good way to grow up.

        4. Logically, yes, I agree.

          I guess I just don’t see the point in labeling something like this selfish. What does it accomplish?

          1. It is good that there is an anti-suicide social stigma. It prevents more suicides.

        1. Talking about suicide as selfish counteracts the suicide-as-glam aura that things like “13 reasons why” bring out.

          [Or Romeo and Juliet: I’ll show those parents who meddle in my love life.]

          It’s a spash of cold water where it seems to be needed.

          1. You clearly do not understand mental illness. Can you at least shut up and not expose your hateful ignorance?

          2. IIRC, when 13 Reasons Why came out, there was a lot of concern that it would glamorize suicide. And how do you counteract that if not to show how suicide hurts people? That a seat at the table will always be empty? That your mother will always remember your birthday?

            A colleague’s child blew his brains out in her house when she was home. She heard the gunshot. She had to walk into the door to his room before a very young sibling got into it first. Someone had to clean up his brains that were all over the room. She couldn’t afford to move. She has to live in that house.

            If depression lies, we’d all better be recounting our truths. These truths are awful and permanent.

          4. I think the concern here is for the family left behind. Why does it all have to be about depressed people? I cannot imagine being in the situation of these women who get left with young kids or a disabled spouse or brains to clean up. My sympathies lie with them.

            You can put your energy behind depressed people. I empathize with the families left behind. We don’t have to support everything equally.

          5. Spoken like someone who has never been the one who had to clean up the brains. If you had been through the trauma of cleaning up skull and tissue and brain matter (like I have), you might be focused on something different than whether or not the act is selfish or selfless.

          6. “You can put your energy behind depressed people. I empathize with the families left behind.”

            Oh, okay. You some how think that you can solve the problem by stigmatizing and refusing to support depressed people. I get it. F those “depressed people,” amirite? They don’t deserve compassion, in your world, just scorn. By berating the person suffering from mental illness, you’re likely to help them overcome it! (/sarcasm, if that wasn’t clear). Pro-tip, you single-minded sociopath— by “putting your energy behind” the person actually at risk of suicide, you are more likely to reduce the risk.

            “If depression lies, we’d all better be recounting our truths. These truths are awful and permanent.”

            I get that you think this statement makes you sound wise and philosophical, but it’s actually nonsensical.

            “And how do you counteract that if not to show how suicide hurts people?”

            Help people at risk to see that there’s a hope and a way forward that doesn’t involve suicide. I dunno, lady, most practitioners aren’t devising mental health care strategies based on concerns about a Netflix show.

    8. Tell her what you’re willing to do. Don’t ask ‘what can I do’. Give her guardrails and let her just say yes or no.

      Are you willing to take a kid or two or four for an afternoon at the museum or the park? Give a date.
      Are you willing to bring over dinner? “Hey, I’m planning on dropping off dinner on Thursday at 5:30. Does that work?”
      Are you willing to just be there for her? “Let’s meet up for a walk/cup of tea/workout class/dinner/a movie.” Bonus points if you can also organize childcare if needed.
      Really though, give discrete tasks and a date. “Mow the lawn on Sunday for you/sit with the girls so you can have some alone time.”

      Give her guardrails. Tell her what you want to do. If you don’t feel comfortable doing anything, a gift card to a takeout restaurant might be good along with a heartfelt ‘thinking of you’ card.

      2. Do this, but also be mindful of your phrasing. Don’t imply that she “should” go to exercise class with you – it might be enough “exercise” to get out of bed that day. I’ve found that well-meaning friends can sometimes imply that the grieving party should be getting out and practicing self-care or whatever (“c’mon, it’ll do you good”) instead of just listening.

    9. From my own experience as a survivor- do not, do not, do not, tell your friend your opinion. So many people will, and at best it’s…pointless and demands energy. Your opinion changes nothing whatsoever about her situation.

      She needs all of the same help she would otherwise. Help making funeral arrangements, perhaps especially when dealing with judgemental family. Basic logistics like a meal. If you aren’t able to process suicide, you might not be the best person to offer childcare, but maybe you could help with pick-ups, etc.

    10. It’s so messed up and wrong that life insurance won’t cover suicide. That should be illegal.

      1. No — if you were Jeffrey Epstein, should you be able to buy life insurance on Thursday and then kill yourself over the weekend and expect to pay? That is crazy. He was redoing his estate planning the week before he died, not, I bet, to fund payouts to the women he hurt.

        1. Obviously you can have exclusions for that type of thing and investigate fraud. Why are you guys always so much more likely to side with big business no matter what? Suicide in someone with a history of depression should absolutely be covered under life insurance.

          1. Because people who are depressed and suicidal will buy policies, kill themselves, and the “big businesses” will just pass the costs along to people like me – married breadwinner women with a kid on the way, who bought life insurance long before getting pregnant, and desperately want to know that her husband and baby will be taken care of if she’s hit by lightning or gets cancer.

            I’m not sure how I am “big business,” because I’m just someone who wants affordable life insurance.

          2. It absolutely should be excluded b/c insurance is for the UNEXPECTED. Things that happen to you. Not things within your control. I can’t burn down my house and collect the insurance. If I have T2 diabetes, I am COMPLETELY uninsurable except at a very high cost. Maybe that could apply to suicide — long exclusion period (2 years and perhaps reduced benefits). And make sure that the beneficiary / policy owner knows that.

            It’s not siding with big business. We all pool our risks of the unexpected when we buy life insurance. If insurance companies were made to pay claims they had not undertaken (it’s a contract — this is in no way a surprise unless you didn’t read it), then they might not be solvent and around when it is time to pay my claim. Should they rest of us take the risk? Eventually, the actuaries model for what they bargain for and the $ will run out at some point. Should my rate go up? Someone else’s legitimate claim go unpaid or partially paid?

            IIRC many group life policies are small but have no exclusions. Many policies won’t cover you if you are in the military, ride a motorcycle, or fly a private plane (or in one). Risk matters.

          3. Agree with the other person who responded to you. There is not some “big business” that can absorb unlimited costs. Insurance companies base their rates on the claims they pay out, which means that if you want them to cover suicide, everyone’s premiums are going to go up. They can’t cover suicide, at least without a significant waiting period, because of the moral hazard – someone buying a policy because they know they are going to kill themselves. It’s akin to buying homeowners or property insurance after you know you’re directly in the path of a hurricane. Insurance only works if it is covering things that are unpredictable and unknowable.

          4. lol wut does big business mean? If insurance has to pay out more, the people who purchase insurance will just have to pay more in premiums. That’s economics. The “big business” will ensure they make a profit no matter what.

          6. The rates everyone pays for insurance = expected payouts + administrative overhead + a certain profit margin. If the expected payouts go up, rates go up.

          7. If the insurance company isn’t making $, it’s not going to be an insurance company much longer. State insurance regulators will make sure they they are acting in a way that will keep them solvent enough to pay claims (and paying when you’re not obligated to is a way to go into receivership).

            Ask me how I know . . . not all insurance companies survive. Not sure we want to encourage more of the same.

      2. Insurance covers the unexpected and that which can’t really be planned for. The one- or two-year exclusions are the best way to handle this, IMHO.

        1. (To be perfectly clear, people who have killed themselves for insurance money were not depressed or mentally ill, they were financially desperate and willing to give their life to improve their family’s circumstances.)

      5. It’s pretty obvious why life insurance doesn’t cover it…anyone who has any kind of financial troubles could increase their family’s financial security by getting a large life insurance policy and killing themselves. You really don’t understand why society doesn’t think encouraging this is a good thing?

        1. Because suicide is a valid lifestyle choice. And if you can make the insurance company pay, a perfectly rational one. Perhaps even laudable.

          1. I agree it’s a lot less selfish if you’re setting your family up financially before you go. But the costs will just be passed onto everybody else who buys insurance. Do you want to pay 10x what you currently pay for life insurance? I don’t understand the comments that this is siding with big business, I think it’s actually siding with all the people who want life insurance and couldn’t afford it if suicides had to be paid out.

          2. Whoa. No it’s not a perfectly valid lifestyle choice. The husband made a lifestyle choice when he had kids. The kids should come before all else, which means being alive to care for them. You can get out of here with your ooh I might win the high school debate argument.

          4. I think that this was meant sarcastically, but I read UK news and they cover suicides from . . . maybe the Netherlands where they are literally covered as choices that people get to make (and no mention of any protests / anguished spouses – children – parents). I know that this was originally supposed to be for terminally ill people with a short timeline left to live, but it seems that it has trended away from this. Maybe just there where it seems to be a lot more common, but it is a thing.

      6. It depends on the policy and the exclusion periods, as well as the state where you live. My husband’s friend recently committed suicide and his kids would have received the payout, but he’d let the policy lapse so they are SOL.

    11. It’s easy for people who are mentally healthy to see suicide as “selfish.” For people who are suicidal, that only compounds their suffering: the lie depression tells is that everyone else is better off without them, and they are worthless and useless. For your current situation and for interacting with people in the future, you should speak to your therapist about how this type of deep depression affects people.

      1. Nope, leaving an unemployed wife and four minor children with no means to support themselves is selfish, full stop. I recognize that he had mental illness and his depression lied to him, and he wouldn’t have made this decision if he weren’t ill. It’s still an objectively selfish decision.

        1. Oh my word, you are one nasty, self-absorbed piece of work.

          That part about talking to a professional about why people struggle with suicidal thoughts and depression? Take it. It won’t make you less of an awful human being, but it might make you park your mouth in the “off” position, where it belongs.

          1. The issue in this thread is that some are equating mental illness to suicide. There’s a line between the two. Mental illness is not selfish. Suicide is. Mental illness is not a choice. Suicide is. Mental illness should not be stigmatized. Suicide should be stigmatized– in order to show others it is never the right choice.

          2. Actual mental health professionals will tell you that severely depressed people think they are doing everyone around them a favour. Your self-righteous prissing about doesn’t make anyone less suicidal; it just makes them feel even worse about themselves.

          1. If it’s stage 1 skin cancer and they refuse to have it cut off and it metastasizes and kills them, yep absolutely selfish.

          2. Are they going to hospice / palliative care? B/c you do that when a doctor says you have something like <= 6 months to live and nothing more could be done (b/c at that point, everything else has been done and hasn't worked).

            I don't see that as akin to suicide at all. It is just accepting the inevitable. And I don't think that suicide is an inevitable part of depression, etc. In fact, the opposite.

        3. You’re not a nasty, self-absorbed piece of work. Anon @10:17am is a self righteous hypocrite.

        4. My grandfather committed suicide a number of years ago. Very different situation (he had been diagnosed with ALS and did not want to hang on through the disease degrading every aspect of his quality of life). We heard a lot about how “selfish” he was, etc. We had a neighbor come visit who was a therapist and she told us something that was really helpful: that in the mind of the suicidal person, all they can focus on is how much better off everyone will be without them. They look at it as, I am such a mess, once I am gone my family will be free of me and be able to live better lives. There is something that goes on in their heads that convinces them that the pain of loss everyone around them will go through pales in comparison to how much better off people will be once they’re gone. It is not logical to us, but it makes perfect sense to them. Otherwise the suicidal person would not kill themselves, because basically no one wants to put their loved ones through intense pain without thinking that it’s the best thing for them. So, Anon at 10:13, while this seems incomprehensibly selfish to you, there was some kind of logic or reasoning that made sense to the man who committed suicide and left his family behind. Think about how mentally altered and in pain you would have to be to get to that place, and maybe have some empathy. Someday something like this could happen to you.

          1. Your grandfather’s situation is completely different for so many reasons, it’s totally silly to even compare them.

          2. Yeah, it’s not though. It’s only completely different if you’re stigmatizing under-treated mental illness.

          3. Anon at 10:54 – it’s possible you’re not a bad person but that comment was the comment of a bad person. Calling someone talking about the loss of their loved one “silly” is pretty callous and insensitive. Be ashamed of yourself.

          5. It is though, for obvious reasons: 1) an actual terminal illness that is going to take his life soon anyway, 2) age and a commensurately lower life expectancy, even absent a terminal diagnosis, and 3) the fact that he presumably doesn’t have minor children or financial dependents. All of these factors make the decision substantially less selfish.
            I wasn’t mocking the loss of her relative, I called the analogy silly, because it is. She chose to bring it up and compare it to this situation and should be prepared for people to tell her it’s a bad analogy.

          6. Anon at 12:27 – thanks for confirming you are, in fact, a bad person. I feel sorry for you.

          7. Why? Because I don’t think the suicide of an elderly grandfather is equivalent to the suicide of a young person supporting a family? Obviously, the loss of a family member is always very sad for their loved ones and no one said otherwise, but it doesn’t make much sense to me to just say death is death and it’s all the same. Some deaths are more tragic than others, and it doesn’t seem unreasonable to say that age and future life expectancy are factors.
            Don’t feel sorry for me, I’m a very happy person with a great family :)

          8. So the violent suicide of an elderly person is just not as tragic as the violent suicide of a young person because the elderly person is close to dying anyway? That’s…really insensitive.

          9. “Don’t feel sorry for me, I’m a very happy person with a great family :)”
            I feel sorry for you because you’re clueless and insensitive, and my life experience has been that clueless, insensitive people get their cluelessness and insensitivity knocked out of them by a major tragic life event that seems specifically designed to teach them a lesson in empathy. You’re a happy person with a great family NOW. If you don’t figure some things out about life, I wouldn’t count on that persisting. Karma is real and it will come for you too. The pampered, privileged existence you’ve lived to this point isn’t going to last much longer.

          10. Wow. You’re wishing my loved ones ill because I said a 90 year old dying is less tragic than a young person dying? Such a kind person you are!

            This should go without saying, but you don’t know me or my life. While I’m very lucky that my immediate family members are happy and healthy and that’s not something I will ever take for granted, I’ve had plenty of loss and tragedy in my life, including a good friend who is currently losing her toddler to terminal cancer. You want to talk about tragedy? Childhood cancer is a f-cking tragedy. It’s something that happens TO you, you get no choice in the matter. The same can be said about depression and other mental illness. But suicide is a choice. So forgive me if I can’t muster as much sympathy for a man who chose to end his life and abandon his spouse and young children as I can for a 3 year old who has bravely fought through three rounds of chemo and a bone marrow transplant. Sorry not sorry.

        5. Maybe it was selfish for the wife to not have a way to support herself if she had a depressed husband.

          1. Only on this s!te do people blame a stay at home mother raising four young children for her husband’s suicide. You women are awful.

          2. Oh you can eff right off with this sexist garbage. Her family’s choice for her to raise their four children and manage their home is not, in any context, selfish. It’s a shame there are people like you who actually exist, have these thoughts, and then even articulate them.

            To further criticize your asinine stance, you’re saying that if she knew he was depressed (a big assumption in itself), she should have found “a way to support herself” rather than, say, help her husband seek treatment? (Neither of which are solely her responsibility, by the way, but since you’re slinging sexism here, let’s just put both family income and family health squarely on mom’s shoulders.)

          1. Presumably it was a joint decision. I agree with you that it’s not the wisest move (for precisely these reasons) but lets not act like the wife did this unilaterally and against the husband’s wishes. 99% of the women I know who stay home made that decision with strong support or even pressure from their husbands.

    12. Honestly I think at this point logistical support is probably what’s most needed, at least in the short-term. It is tough for people to even think of what they need when they’re going through something like this, so here are some concrete suggestions I can think of as a mother:
      -If school hasn’t started, say “I can either handle shopping for school supplies for you this weekend, or watch the kids if you want to do it yourself to get out of the house for a bit. Which would you prefer?” I think offering a specific service/choice is more helpful than “what can I do?”
      -Ubereats gift cards
      -It sounds like she will need to enter the workforce for the first time ever or the first time in a long time. WHEN THE TIME COMES, offer resume help, offer to take her shopping for an interview outfit she feels great in, offer to do practice interviews with her.
      -I don’t know old the kids are, but finding childcare for 4 kids is going to be a lot. If she starts talking about finding a job/entering the workforce, maybe saying “Would you like me to do some preliminary research on preschool/daycare options in the area to save you a step?” That research would include reviewing inspection reports from the state licensing agency, calling to see if they have openings for the age groups, etc. to help narrow down her list.
      -A Shipt membership for the year (it’s around $99 for the year and will be a world of help to someone whose new reality is being unable to go to the store without arranging for a sitter or taking 4 kids with her)
      -Down the road, she may have to list her house. Offer to help clean it or gift her a gift card to a cleaning service (I can’t imagine having to keep a house clean enough to show with 4 kids and no help).

    13. OP, I can relate. My close colleague’s husband attempted suicide earlier this year, and ended up surviving with severe brain injury. I’m even more angry on her behalf, honestly, because she now has to care for him for the rest of his life. I have a really hard time when people say how “lucky” they are, or that it was a “miracle” he survived. I keep thinking how heartless he was to do this to his family, and how they might have been better off if he actually passed away. There is room for you to feel all of these things and still have lots of understanding and empathy regarding mental illness.

      You say ,”Obviously I would never say anything and I just smile and nod.” I have taken the same approach. It is the only thing to do, along with of course offering her help and support.

      1. OMG — this is truly awful. I have no words.

        Did she stay married to him? I can recall reading somewhere where the parties got divorced with a guardian being appointed for him so that he could become indigent and the state would take over the astronomical medical / 24/7 nursing home costs (or medicaid — something for disabled adults?).

        1. In my state at least, she’d still be on the hook after a divorce for supporting him if he can’t provide for himself.

        1. Agreed. And, cannot believe anyone is stupid enough to say how “lucky” she is he survived. There are things worth than death, and this is case in point.

          1. People should not be telling her she’s lucky. But people here seem so quick to say that disability is worse than death!

          2. He has a severe brain injury. It’s not like the guy is just in a wheelchair. I don’t think ALL disability is worse than death, but I can say with certainty that I would rather be dead than living with a severe brain injury.

          3. From a financial perspective, disability can be worse than death. The newly-disabled person still has expenses but no longer has income.

            Take all the LTD insurance you can get at work, even if you have to pay extra for it.

    14. It hasn’t been mentioned yet in the judgemental screaming, but your friend will need a means to support herself.

      Work with her on her resume. Help her find and qualify for affordable childcare. Take her to temp agencies. Buy her business cards. Help her network. Watch her kids when she goes to interview. Set her up with informational interviews. Walk her through setting up a LinkedIn account, help her with the usual job search engines, and, if you can afford it, pay for a session with a career counselor. If she had a career field before staying at home, buy her a membership in a professional org.

      Even if her husband’s life insurance does pay it, it’s probably not enough for her to stay at home until retirement.

      Also, find an estate planning attorney for her. She will need her own estate plan (and life insurance), and she will need to probate her husband’s will (if he has one), or go through the process of being appointed as executor/personal representative if not, and working through having the assets put into her name.

      1. This is great tactical advice and an excellent rundown of things the friend needs to consider.
        Also maybe something to consider about staying home vs. continuing to work, sorry to say. All love to the OP’s friend but this is exactly the kind of very vulnerable position women (and moms especially) put themselves in when they choose not to work. At any moment the rug can get pulled out from under you. At any moment. A partner who has agreed to support you can withdraw that support at any time in any number of ways – this being the saddest and most tragic. I believe, always, in hedging my bets. (Not that I would ever express that to my friend if I was in the OP’s position.)

        1. Thank you. I hope it will help, if the OP can wade through everything else to see it.

          You’re right on the rug being pulled out from underneath her. The other problem is that it’s *another* change in routine for the kids who are already suffering so horribly from losing their dad. Now they won’t have Mom to pick them up from school, bake cookies, potty train them, or put them down for naps. I have no idea how to help alleviate that change – other family members? Friends who do a round robin of PTO to play Mom, so that maybe the kids go to daycare three or four days a week but once a week have their mom’s friend taking care of them?

    15. A reminder if you are suffering from depression and reading this deeply offensive, triggering thread: you are not worthless. You are not selfish. You have an illness that can be treated and there are resources available to help you. Call 1-800-273-8255 if you need urgent help.

      2. This entire thread horrified me. Something is selfish when the doer knows how what he is doing will impact others, and goes forward anyway. This is not the case for those who struggle with mental illness. Imagine waking up every day and feeling like your very presence was a burden to those around you. I kept reading these comments and asking myself “where is the compassion?” I would never refer to suicide as selfish. The situation that the OP described is a tragedy, and I feel for the wife, kids and family. They are going to need help from as many people as possible.

        1. People seemed to be trying to be deliberately cruel in the comments, but for those who might just be ignorant, one of the hallmarks of suicidality is the “they’re better off without me, I’m such a burden to them and I can’t do that to them anymore” mindset. Mental illness requires compassion and intensive treatment, not judgmental screeds. I found this thread really disturbing and upsetting.

          2. The OP shared her honest feelings (which specifically noting that she would never say this in real life) and was immediately labeled judgy, wrong and cruel by the first two people who responded. The people who are saying suicide is selfish are standing up for the OP and mostly saying she’s entitled to feel how she feels. Really, who is being cruel here?

          3. Anon at 12:37, don’t even try that garbage. If you honestly think that “hey, it’s burdensome to let your friend know that you think it’s selfish” is crueler than “people with depression are horribly selfish and would definitely just kill themselves for the insurance money,” then you need serious help and to step away from the computer right now.

          4. The OP specifically said in her post she was not saying any of this to her friend, so yes I think it’s very cruel to attack her and tell her she’s a terrible person. Nobody except one person who was widely condemned made any connection between suicide and insurance money, that’s a strawman.

          5. Literally NO ONE has called the OP a terrible person whereas dozens of posters have made harsh, stigmatizing, and judgmental comments about the husband, who was clearly suffering from severe depression (an illness, not a choice, not an insurance scam, not a ploy to screw over his family). We have no idea whether he was in treatment or what other steps he had taken because the OP did not share them. I can’t believe how intent you are on being an assh*le.

          6. “Nasty, self-absorbed piece of work,” “judgy little Bs,” and now a-hole are all comments from your “side.” Literally nobody called the OP’s friends husband any of these words, just validated her feelings that a *decision* (not a person!) was selfish. Again, who is being cruel, here? The people who are so supportive of those with mental illness sure love to bully others online.

          7. Anon at 1:19 pm, there is at least one long-time commenter here who has been open in the past about being a survivor of a suicide attempt. There are other commenters who struggle with severe depression or had struggled with it in the past.

            Mental health professionals almost uniformly disagree with the idea that “suicide is selfish.” You all need to stop pretending to be experts on mental health and shut your nasty mouths.

      3. Anon, thank you for posting this resource. I lost a friend to suicide and just want folks who need it to get help.

      4. If anyone is offensive it is you and all the people (or maybe just you) who can’t distinguish between the intent of an action and the outcome of an action. Sanctimonious does not begin to cover it.

        1. I am very sorry you are so bitter and angry, and that your life (and your life choices) have lead you to the point you are at and the mental state you are in. I hope you get help for your anger, which is almost certainly going to destroy you and most likely people around you unless you get it under control. I would say “I’ll pray for you,” but you would just take that as being “sanctimonious.” But Amberwitch, I am going to pray for you, that you get help and also that you never find yourself in the position the OP’s friend is in.

          1. I don’t understand this response to Amberwitch. She made a valid point. Nothing about her comment indicated that she was bitter or angry. Are all of these people who are calling the OP’s friend’s husband selfish secretly worried that they wouldn’t know what to do if they had 4 kids and a husband who died? If you are worried about it, make sure that you can take care of yourself. These responses kind of remind of the discussion about affair partners. The reaction was so full of vitriol during that discussion as well. Ladies–learn how to take care of yourselves. Your husband’s income is never guaranteed. And quit taking out your fear on others who are trying to encourage kindness toward mental illness.

          2. I work and could take care of myself and my (one) kid if my husband dies, so no, my comments are not grounded in financial insecurity. I will say though that life insurance is generally the financial security blanket for a parent who leaves the workforce to raise children and when you commit suicide your survivors frequently cannot collect life insurance, so she’s really between a rock and a hard place here financially. Maybe you believe being a SAHM is not a valid life choice and that’s fine – you shouldn’t do it – but clearly this family made the decision for her to stay home, presumably jointly, and I’m not really sure what else she could have done to protect herself in this case.

      5. Thank you. We also don’t know what the husband was going through and what mental health problems he had and whether or not they were treated. No one commits suicide who is not having mental illness, although an exception may be terminally ill people.

        Source: I have severe mental illness (schizophenia) and am very, very careful about treating it. I developed it in college, and luckily the UC system has good student health care including mental health care. Without proper medication, I would either be homeless or dead. I would have no clue where or who I am. With medication, I am a functioning member of society – a happy attorney who does “normal” things like go to brunch with friends and Netflix and chill with my husband. My husband helps me monitor my medication and makes sure I am taking it. When I travel for work, I have to have a co-worker do the same (I work at a really great family-like small law firm in a practice area I really like). I wear a discreet bracelet that states my condition and my drug regimen in case I ever end up in a hospital and unable to communicate. But with this system I have not had anything like that for decades. Not everyone can be as lucky as I am. I have also had to be open about my condition for survival, which can be very hard for some people. And some people don’t have this kind of support network.

        1. I’m so glad that you are in a good place and have a supportive spouse and coworkers. That’s so huge. I too wish that more people had strong support networks and access to mental health care.

      6. THANK YOU. I just wish my friends who’d committed suicide were still here, not dead. And also, I don’t think the availability of all guns all the time in America helps with the incidence of suicide, but clearly, there will never be any kind of gun control because America collectively decided that guns>literally anything else .

    16. Dolce, I’m so sorry for your friend’s horrific loss and the impact it will have on her children. If there are things the husband handled exclusively or left undone, you can take these over for a while or hand them off to a professional (and pay for it if you can). Like if he always took the kids to swimming lessons while she went for a run on Saturdays, you can handle swim lessons for a couple of months. If he was in the middle of pruning their trees, hire a service to finish the work.

    17. My uncle completed suicide when I was 13. He had attempted it before. He left my aunt and cousins who were younger than me “alone” in another state. He had moved the family halfway across the country during a manic episode. We did not think it was selfish. It was a symptom of mental illness that he had struggled with for years. It was terribly gutwrenching for him to make that decision in a moment of desperation, but I understand mental illness means you’re not in your right mind. You *can’t* be selfish when your brain chemistry is off. I hope you are supportive of your friend and the extended family, encouraging them to get help for any depression or anxiety they experience as a result of this.

    18. My grandfather died by suicide last November. These comments calling people who commit suicide “selfish” are hurtful to survivors of suicide loss. Yes, I get it, if you are outside the situation and are not an immediate family member (i.e. a direct survivor of suicide loss), it is easy to characterize as a selfish decision. You have no idea how hurtful it is to have people tell you that your loved one was selfish or disturbed or a very bad person, even if those things are “objectively true”. My grandfather’s suicide was unexpected and completely soul-wrenching. I will never recover from it. What didn’t help in the immediate aftermath was people telling me how selfish they think he was.

      1. Thank you for sharing your perspective. I have been on the verge of suicide with my depression several times in my life, once in the months after my daughter was born. I ended up getting treatment and when the fog lifted I knew how terrible it would have been if I had acted upon my thoughts. But at the time I really thought the people I loved would be better off without me. When it started taking all my effort just to decide to stay alive another day I knew I desperately needed help, but I can imagine someone being even worse off than I was not having even that amount of clarity. I’m so, so sorry that that was what your grandfather faced and that you and your family had to suffer that loss.

        I don’t think the people who say suicide is selfish are bad people, but I also don’t think they really understand what it feels like to be in the deep end of depression.

    19. My suggestion is to Google Susan Silk and Barry Goldman’s Ring Theory and ALWAYS abide by the rules. Comfort IN, dump OUT.

    20. “How great was he? He abandoned his daughters and left the mother unable to support them.”

      Here’s the problem. You’re judging his *value as a person* and *whether he was a good person* on a decision that he made, as if the decision was rational and calculated and made from a place that accurately reflected his values. Funny thing about mental illness, it distorts your ability to make rational, healthy choices that are consistent with your values. In your mind, does this decision outweigh everything else? Because it sounds like it does. You’ve gotten good advice about actually supportive steps you can take and how not to dump your anger at her, but maybe you can reframe and try not to cast this person’s whole being in a negative light.

  9. Those who have done a major remodel – help! I could use your advice. We have an antique house in New England, and have finally decided that we’d prefer to expand instead of moving. We’re planning to add on roughly 1200-1400 sq. feet (upstairs and down). It will involve renovating the existing kitchen/mudroom to expand and add space to them both, as well as adding room for a dedicated office upstairs and proper closet storage (not a single bathroom has a linen closet, joys of old homes). Roughly 600~ feet above and below, so not a *ton* of new square footage. I’m VERY focused on making the most out of the new space and figuring out ways to make smarter choices (both w/r/t storage/function of the space, and keeping costs to a minimum). I think we need to engage an architect, BUT we want to keep our current contractor who’s done a lot of work for us and we trust. I’ve never used an architect before and I feel like in our VHCOL area they’re used to $1MM plus money is no object renos. This may sound like a silly question, but can I engage an architect just for plans but do the project management myself/with the contractor? I also don’t need/want an interior designer but is that necessary to get discounts/access to certain cabinetry vendors/suppliers? Bathrooms were much easier!

    1. Not sure on the architect question but your contractor or trades should have access to similar deals and vendors as a designer would. We finished a reno recently and did not use a designer. Our contractor had great prices and contacts for kitchen, tile, etc and our painter had great “trades” prices on paint and wallpaper.

      One of the best things that we did is cabinets and drawers wherever possible. So easy for storage, can be closed/hidden. Come in a massive range of price points. I would definitely look into that for the office and mudroom. We don’t have a mudroom but I used our kitchen cabinet vendor for built-in bookshelves including base cabinets with doors. So much storage, I can’t even fill it all (yet)!
      :D

    2. Ask your contractor for a recommendation- preferably someone he or she has worked with before.

    3. Yes, use an architect. There are way too many ugly houses that are just done by general contractors that make it look like the even minor addition is eating the original house.

      To answer your more tactical questions – yes you can purchase these as separate services and continue to use your preferred GC. In the suburbs of Boston where we live, it’s definitely pretty standard to engage an architect for the type of work you’re describing, definitely not just money is no object renovations. On our street, 4 of the 1600s-1940s houses all got renovations designed by the same architect and used different builders. All of the renovations are different but all look great and really compliment the original houses. Ask around for recommendations from neighbors or friends whose houses you admire.

    4. Yes, architects offer a variety of services. Many of the residential architects I know of work at many price points. I am biased, but hiring an architect is worthwhile. It is good get everything worked out on paper before they try to install it for real and it doesn’t work. Good luck!

    5. I’m not sure if you’ve seen my posts before, but I’m the ‘rette with a two hundred year old house in Virginia. The house was badly remuddled by its last owners, so we’re undoing that and then adding a new portion for a modern family room, master suite, and kids rooms. It took us a few months to find the right architect, but he has done SUCH an amazing job so far.

      We started with a local GC’s rec for an architect, and she was nice, but we felt like she didn’t have the chops to do a serious historic addition. (She was $80/hr and would have been fine for, say, a family room addition to a basic house.) We interviewed one architect who had worked on a Coastal Living design house, and we felt like she didn’t get us and our house (our house is cozy; she wanted to make it a modern beach house – she was $250/hr). We settled on (and by that I mean fell in love with) an architect who’s mostly retired – he owned his own firm for 30 years and now takes on occasional projects that interest him. He’s $100/hr and has been amazing. Seriously, we love this man (and his wife and their dog, both of whom come to hang out on measuring days :) ) He just “got” us and our vision immediately. The house plans have turned out a million times better than we could have imagined. It’ll be about $12k for him to design the whole thing and oversee construction, and for us, it’s worth every single penny. Working with him has made the project a joy so far.

      The best directory of architects I found was on Houzz. I gotta say, for the most part, reach out to the architects who SAY what you like, rather than basing it all on pictures. Because houses don’t get built everyday, an architect’s portfolio might look pretty outdated, but if they seem to share your vision based on what they’ve written, it’s worth reaching out and interviewing.

      The house is on instagram as @cedarmoon1820. I’ve posted the various stages of plans and such on there. Message me there if you want to continue to talk – renovating a historic house is fun!

      1. ditto–i used a friend in NYC and they were the best! they “oversaw” the work somewhat, but even if my obsessions with home renos and the shows and years of noting specific design elements/materials, they were worth every penny for their expertise, 3P opinion, etc.

  10. Is this you:

    Pear, short-waisted (natural waist seems to be near armpits), with a tummy.

    If so, what dresses and stores do you like? I feel that I have resized a bit due to age/gravity/sedentary life and need to reshop. I have an MMLF Etsuko that still works, but the rest of my closet is headed to goodwill.

    To complicated matters, I’m 5-4, so regular dresses often have a waist that is where my hips are (and my hips are generous, so nothing fits) and petite dresses often are too short. I feel like I need an Executive Shift (but shifts trend so casual in styling, length, and fabrics), or something that is a shift/sheath hybrid.

    [I’m wearing a shirtdress today that is just a hot mess — too much fabric up top, seems to make me look much larger than I am. But at least it is in a print that I like. #bethewallpaper]

    Help!

    1. Hi – this sounds like my current situation. I try to pick dresses that have a fitted, higher waist, with a flare or looser skirt. Sheaths that are fitted throughout tend to my hips or top but not both (without tailoring). I’ve been on a MMLF spree recently (thanks to the B/S/T group on facebook and resale sites), and the Emily and Zulma were both winners. I tend to size up 1 size for MMLF.

    2. Yes, this is my body. I generally have the best luck with petite sizes in order to get the correct proportions – but like you, I also then find that the petite dresses are shorter than I want. So I hunt for midi-styles in petite sizing and have them hemmed if they are too long. Fit and flare styles work better than sheaths and shifts for me, though they can sometimes skew too party; again, I have to hunt for the right mix of fabric/styling to keep it work appropriate. Ann Taylor often works well for me, and I have a couple wrap dresses from Karina that I like a lot. And when all else fails, skip the dresses and buy separates.

    3. This sounds like me (5’4, pear, high waist) and… I feel your pain? I have a few things from BR that work well (especially in the petites, but sizing up). I also like the Etsuko and wear a lot of slightly wider dresses with a belt, so it can sit at my natural waist. I always just scan stores for higher-waisted styles (I liked empire waists or peplum, especially the higher-up ones, and wish they were still in style) and try to stay away from anything that’s meant to be straight or drop-waisted. I often get things tailored around the shoulders so the waist hits higher, but that does run the risk of turning everything into a miniskirt.

    4. Talbots petites. I am shaped like you, but 5’1′, and find that their petite dresses are slightly too long waisted on me, so the waist hits a little low. If you are 5’4″ they should fit you very nicely. I don’t think they’re the first flight of fashion, and you’re not going to look “on trend” (blergh!) but they are great office appropriate basics.

    5. I am 5′ 3′, used to be 5′ 4′. I have a shape rather like yours. I do not think shifts look casual–it depends on the fabric and the accessories that you put with the outfit. In fact, I think shifts are the best solution for my shape. I buy them to fit my hips, and my tailor takes them in under the arms (sometimes this involves the sleeve a bit) to make them fit better.

      Sheathes, in my opinion, work best on younger woman who have a hourglassy shape. For the rest of us, they end up looking too try-hard, trying to have a shape that we no longer have. Give shifts a chance!

    6. Not exactly what you asked, but flowy a line skirts can work — they don’t have to be super flared, and in drapier fabrics work well. I’ve seen more and more matching skirt and top sets that look like a full dress at anthropologie, and when I purchased a set, I thought the top was cropped, but in fact, met exactly at my waist, which was a surprise.
      In terms of dresses though, I’m short waisted with wider hips (but more of an hourglass shape overall), and I like sheath dresses, but they can end up being more boxy on(in summer, I go with this boxier look because it is cooler in the heat). You can ask a seamstress to add some long shaping darts also called fisheye darts to give the dress slightly more structure in the back, or in the front, or both sides of the garment depending how much extra looseness there is in the fabric. It will alter the overall shape of the dress and make it more Aline or bell shaped, but you can emphasize that you still want a loose look, if that is what you are after.

    7. I really love the Chelsea Rose dresses from JCPenney. They have a high waist but are long enough. They don’t have many at one time but they do come out with new ones every season. Literally every single one of them fits the same (I own 6) and they often have SLEEVES (no pockets though). They are poly but don’t feel hot or clammy (this coming from a person who donated all poly shirts last year). They say dry clean but I hand wash mine in the shower, roll in a towel, line dry. They are crazy cheap (like under $40 on sale) and are fantastic workhorses on par (or better) with my two multihundred dollar dresses.

      1. Same body type, and I get compliments on Danny & Nicole dresses from people I wouldn’t guess shop at JCP. The key is to be picky about the seasonal prints and styles. I will definitely check out the dresses you’ve recommended.

    8. Try LandsEnd, both petite and regular and see what fits. Some of their dresses have a higher waist – not empire – but higher than my natural waist.

  11. Thank you to the poster who recommended the man who has it all Twitter account. Not only were some of those posts thought-provoking, some were unintentionally a hilarious parody of this site 10 years ago. “Is it professional to have a face?” Dead.

  12. Any ideas for bathroom storage? Hoping to potty train soon which means that we can get the changing table out of our bathroom! There is a huge space (the size of an IKEA changing table) where I could put some storage but the bathroom does tend slightly towards damp so I wouldn’t put towels in it. Any creative storage solutions? I’d get something closed and use it for cleaning supplies but I do worry about a crafty toddler.

    1. Honestly, a stand alone bathroom cabinet is what you need here, you will adore the storage space as the child gets older. Put child safety locks on it if that’s all you need. I really wouldn’t worry about a damp bathroom – anything sold as a bathroom cabinet will be made of treated wood or plastic, and sealed.

      I vote for over the toilet storage (secured to the wall of course) with child proof locks for cleaning supplies.

    2. You could get a dresser / cabinet used on Marketplace and then paint it and seal it with a marine varnish, if that’s your style. I did that years ago in another house and it held up great.

  13. Help me plan a trip! Husband and me, no kids, somewhere warm in Dec – Feb, probably 5D/4N including travel time. Where would you go?

    A little more about us: interested in good food and scenery, not the biggest fans of flat sandy beaches but not totally opposed. On the eastern side of the US. Adventurous / active. Open to all-inclusive but not a must.

    Side benefit of this question is daydreaming myself away from this dreary day :)

    2. Charleston and Savannah would be in the 60s-70s around then. Not sure if that’s warm enough for you.

      1. Highs might be in the low 60s, but highs in the 50s are totally possible and lows will be in the 40s/possibly even upper 30s…not exactly warm by most people’s definitions. We went to Charleston in March for spring break and I thought it was chilly (and we’re from New England!)

      2. We went to Charleston in early March last year and it was a lot colder than I expected. Still better than the DC area, but more like upper 40s at night, mid-60s during the day.

    4. I would say Puerto Rico. Go kayaking in a bio-bay, ziplining, rainforest, nice beaches, and San Juan has great restaurants and art! And usually a pretty inexpensive & easy flight.

  14. Looking for some advice. I am going to a full day interview for an academic physician job, then out to dinner with members of the division starting about 1.5hrs after the last interview. What is the etiquette on what to wear for the dinner? Keep the suit? Change to a work-appropriate dress?

    1. I’d keep it business. They’re probably coming straight from work. A business appropriate dress is fine if you’re feeling the need to change. Or wear your interview suit. Maybe lose the heavy tote and carry a smaller purse. But this is not the time for a c0cktail dress (not that you said that, just for anyone else reading)

    2. I’m thinking men wouldn’t change out of their suits for dinner so you wouldn’t either. But if you want to go more casual, maybe bring a blazer to switch.

    3. I would just keep the suit, but I would wear a shirt under the jacket with an eye towards being able to take the jacket off. If everyone else at dinner is casual, I would plan to take the suit jacket off for the meal. Even with a 1.5 hrs break, it would seem weird to me to change during that time.

    4. The Professor Is In had some posts on this topic for academics — YMMV for academic physicians though.

    5. Yeah, don’t change – no one else will have. You’ll want a smaller bag. You’ll want to pass out during that 1.5 hours off. And keep in mind that your schedule might get delayed/ switched around/ another person added such that the break might disappear. Signed, veteran academic interviewer.

    6. I had a similar situation last Fri. I wore a sheath dress with matching blazer. When other folks took off their blazers during dinner, I did the same.

      Also, make sure to order something that isn’t likely to spill/drip on you. Best of luck!

  15. After the great discussion yesterday about the “Athleisure, Barre, and Kale” article, I thought I’d share another thought-provoking article that I think it also applies to a lot of us here. It’s an Altantic article (which I’ll link in a separate post below, but you can google it in the meantime) entitled “How Life Became an Endless, Terrible Competition” with the tagline “Meritocracy prizes achievement above all else, making everyone—even the rich—miserable. Maybe there’s a way out.”

    I’m still digesting the article myself to come to a fully formed take on it, but my initial reaction is this: while I find the author’s argument about the “meritocracy trap” for upper-income people to have some truth to it, I found myself disappointed by his suggestions on how to fix it (expand access to education!, focus more on supporting middle class jobs!) which seem, at the same time, both vague and things that governments have been trying to do for a while without much actual impact.

    Anyway, I’d be interested in hearing what you all think.

      1. I don’t know. Status signalling to me is more about acquiring material goods. This article isn’t about that at all. It is critiquing the fact that, to prove our worth, high income people are willing to work 100 hours a week even though it makes us miserable (whereas in the past, the elite prized leisure over working). So, while I agree there is signalling going on here, it’s more signalling “merit,” and understanding the societal repercussions of it

          1. +1. A third child is status signaling in a lot of circles, and kids are definitely not a “material good” (although they require a lot of material goods!)

          2. Various ways to signal status that have nothing to do with material goods: having a third child, sending your children to private school, the ZIP code you live in, the types of jobs you do, what your spouse does or does not do for a living, membership in a country club or similar, where you went to college, if you went to college or graduate school, where you worship (or not), who you know and what circles you run in, what ‘extracurricular activities’ you put on your resume…..

        2. I had no idea the sweet curly-haired girl making pancakes in my kitchen on this last day of summer break was a status symbol.

          1. When daycare is $2k+/month and private college is hundreds of thousands of dollars, yeah, choosing to have three kids is absolutely a status symbol. It says way more about your finances than any luxury car or designer bag ever could.

          2. Status symb until you complain about daycare or college costs, then we wonder why you never figured out birth control.

    3. I agree with the diagnosis but the proposed solutions are facile – there’s lots of “managers should” and “law should” but nothing concrete about how you actually change the incentives that produced this situation.

    4. I deeply agree that meritocracy is broken. Not acknowledging that is also at the root of gender and race discrimination. Equalizing access to education might have been a goal of past administrations, but we’re clearly not there yet, so that is still important to pursue.
      I believe that a shift needs to happen that leads society to value private and civic life so strongly that as a consequence, work accounts for a lesser part of everyone’s identity. If we take the time for family, volunteering and friendships out of our workweek, it might become the norm to work only 40 hours (or less!?). This would also soften the blow of employment inequality which will be even worse the more we automate.

    5. I just … don’t really get stuff like this. If you want to be in big law (or a similarly demanding and lucrative job), by all means, I think that’s great. But if you don’t, then why not just not? Maybe this is regional, or related to having rich parents or going to fancy schools. I live in flyover country, grew up comfortably lower middle class, and went to public schools up through law school. Maybe I just don’t understand this world, but it doesn’t seem like it’s that hard to find a professional job that pays a decent, comfortable wage (though perhaps not Manhattan penthouse and designer purses wage) without requiring enormous time sacrifices like this.

      2. I agree, Anon at 11:26. All of this hand-wringing about the endless grind to acquire more status and prestige is something that only affects a small portion of American society, and it’s largely a self-selected portion. Millions of people live perfectly happy lives making decent wages at jobs that don’t consume their lives. If you choose to be in the rat race, that’s your choice. Don’t succumb to this idea that the rat race is the only way of life.

      3. I think in HCOL areas it is a lot harder to find that combination of a job that pays enough to allow you to either pay for private schools or to live in an area with good public schools (our good public schools are either in expensive neighborhoods or in the far-out suburbs) AND save for retirement AND save for college (bc all of our good state universities are increasingly hard to get into, so you can’t count on sending your kids to them) AND that isn’t super “greedy” in terms of its time demands. It really feels like COL has outstripped wages in my city in a way that makes it tough for people in the professional-but-not-law/finance/medicine professions. What I see is that a lot of people basically roll the dice on retirement in order to be able to afford a neighborhood with good public schools + college savings.

        1. agreed. and if you grew up in certain areas of the country, truthfully it is hard to relocate to other areas and not feel completely out of place, like an outsider and it can be hard to feel at home. and if your parents were able to provide you with certain opportunities, it is hard not to want to provide those same things for your kids. DH and i moved out of the northeast to get out of the rat race a bit, and while we are still in one of the largest 5 cities in the country, it is not so easy to make friends and feel at home when so many people are from here. and there is also value to living close to family/friends and so if your family all lives in some of these areas it is not so easy to just pick up and leave. and depending on what you do for a living you can’t necessarily just move anywhere and get a job.

        2. I get that those things are not necessarily easy to walk away from, but I guess I don’t really get that they are nearly impossible to walk away from. I mean to say that I understand life points you in this certain direction and it’s hard to change course, but, at the same time, I sort of resent someone telling me I should feel sympathy (and I don’t think that you all are telling me that at all, but the article seems to be) towards someone who chooses not to step off. I acknowledge that there are sacrifices, but they don’t strike me as daunting.

      4. Some people want to make money. What’s so hard to understand about that? It can be for a variety of reasons — anything from having a yacht and $8 million mansion to feeling monetarily “secure” when it comes to retirement, housing and college savings. I do agree though that it’s nothing to complain about. If you want $$$$ you will work the hours for it. If you don’t want it that much, find yourself a 9-5 making 100k and that’s that.

        1. As if a 9-5 making 100K *isn’t* making money?!

          Sometimes the perspectives on this board are so, so skewed.

          1. If you could make five or ten times that, yes. That’s why I said this is all status-signalling.

          2. To each her own but junior consultants right out of college bring in that much. So yeah . . . some people have different goals than that for their 30s, 40s, etc.

      5. I grew up in the Midwest, and, based on friends and family that are still there, I think it is possible to have a comfortable middle-class lifestyle with a professional job that is 40-hours a week, especially if you are a dual-income family. I now live in an HCOL city on the east coast, and everything just seems so much harder. Comparable homes are 10x as expensive, and even decent 1,500 sq ft homes are 3-5x what people pay in my hometown and likely don’t get you in to a decent school for your kids. There seems to be more of an expectation that people will work long hours. I got off the biglaw wheel, and I’m still not sure how I’m going to afford kids even with a decent income.

        I don’t see moving from my city now, but I will encourage my kids to consider living elsewhere. If you could be happy in a Midwest city, the lifestyle seems so much better.

        1. Yep, the lifestyle is great here. DH and I earn ~$150k combined and feel like millionaires. We max our retirement, pay ahead on our mortgage, save a lot for college, pay for the best childcare money can buy, take super nice vacations and still have money leftover for general savings. I honestly don’t know what we’d do with more money. However, in a HCOL area I can imagine feeling very financially strained even if we cut out the vacations and other luxuries.

          1. Hi, you’re pretty much like me! We make a bit less, are renting now (will look into buying when we have a better idea of what our long-term plan is), shove money into our retirement funds, and are able to take vacations at will.

          2. Please consider submitting a Money Diary entry to this site! I would love to see how that $150k breaks down to afford all of those things. And, I dont mean that snarkily at all, I just honestly believe it would be so helpful to see how far $150k goes for a family.

          3. Yep, that’s us too. HHI of $150k and we’ve paid off our house, have no other debt, are saving a ton for retirement and kid’s college, and live like kings in our mid 30s. I’m so happy we live here. A 10 minute commute is pretty nice too. There is no way in he l l that I’d move somewhere fancy and expensive and stressful. No thanks.

          4. Not the Anon above, but $150k a year is $12,500 a month before taxes. Her mortgage might be $1,500 a month for a nice house; childcare might be $500 to $800 a month, depending on the age of the kids… leaving ten grand a month for taxes, food, gas, car loan, retirement, home repairs, utilities, insurance.

          5. I’m the poster at 12:55. I can give you a rough breakdown. We both put $19k into retirement before we even see our paychecks. Our post-tax, post-401k paychecks combine to be about $6500/month. Our 15 year mortgage is $1100 although we usually pay more like $2000, and our amazing daycare is $1300 (admittedly for one toddler only, this picture will be fairly different if/when we have two kids). That leaves over $3k month for misc expenses. Unless we have an expected big expense (in which case we would temporarily cut back on overpaying the mortgage) we generally only spend $2k/month on groceries, gas, utilities, dining out, etc. and so the remaining $1k is split between college savings and slush fund for vacations and other fun. We drive really old cars that are long since paid off, and we’re fortunate that our house is new-ish and we haven’t had to invest much in home repairs beyond normal annual maintenance. Due to child tax credits, college savings account tax credits, etc., we usually get a $5k+ tax refund that goes directly into college savings.

      6. I agree, sortof. I’ve stepped off the hampster wheel and have a professional job with a decent, comfortable salary (MCOL, HHI in low 6 figures). In some ways, it’s amazing. I work 40 hours, I’m home for dinner every night I want to be, I rarely get calls or emails at night or on weekends, and I can plan and take a vacation. My health is 100% better. I’ve lost weight because I eat home-made meals and actually workout instead of canceling my exercise classes at the last minute for “emergency” assignments. I’ve stopped grinding my teeth, which means I don’t wake up with a headache every morning. And at the moment, I don’t need my anxiety medication.

        But (a) there’s some inherent job instability. I’m not the highest producer/earner on my team, and people are fine with that right now, but in a recession, I’d be the one laid off. And (b) maybe because I grew up more upper class (one parent was a doctor), but it’s been a big lifestyle adjustment. It’s not just “no designer purses.” Stepping off the hampster wheel affects big stuff–where to buy a house (which affects school/commute), and how much house to buy; how much and what types of insurance to buy (life, disability, health, auto all really add up), etc. Once those decisions are made, a lower income affects everything else–cooking at home, bringing lunch to work, cutting out manicures, stretching the time between hair cuts/color, home workouts or walking/running the neighborhood instead of studios or gyms, road trips for family vacations, simple kids’ birthday parties at home, library and just 12 subscriptions for entertainment, etc. None of these choices are hardships or anything like it–it’s just hundreds of decisions that have to be made differently over the course of the year. I can understand why people can’t “just” get off the hamster wheel because it hasn’t been easy for me.

        1. This raises 2 interesting points for me. I personally was born and raised in NJ (rural part – not near NYC) and have lived in NYC and DC. I don’t like NYC or DC for living purposes (fun for visiting) and I know in my heart of hearts I’m a small city gal who’d like life in Omaha or Milwaukee or wherever (IDK if I’d fit in as a diverse person but I mean COL, commute, big house for a low cost etc.). Yet these towns probably have 3-5 employers (generously) that do what I do. So even if I can land myself a job, then a recession hits — chances are I’m not getting another job in the same city as tons of other employees with actual connections to the place will be looking as well, so that means . . . a move. Whereas in NYC or DC there are 100s of employers doing what I do, so chances are I could find some type of job — even if it meant a pay cut and horrible commute. And these things get to be more complicated once there are houses. Having grown up someplace with no economy whatsoever where you’d be lucky to sell a house in 2-3 years at a loss, I am very aware that most markets are not like DC — where people think it’s taking too long to sell a house if it sits on the market for 2 weeks. So while I may not like life in DC, I feel like career prospect wise, it makes sense (for now).

          And the other thing — I and I think a number of others on this board view the 19k in the 401k as “mandatory” not just the max. So for me taking a pay cut, I’m always mindful of whether I could cover that 19k and would I have to constantly make other sacrifices on a daily basis to cover it — like eating out 1-2x/mo or bringing a lunch or not being able to drop 1-2k on a trip whenever I feel like it. For me (at this point) it’s a no go to give up earning potential and investing potential; this one I hope changes in the future — I hope at some point in my 40s-50s I’m able to say — this is more than enough and if I only put in 12k from here on out, that’s still ok.

          For me this keeps me in places I don’t want to live on a treadmill. It isn’t always just about having a yacht.

          1. I’m kind of skeptical that you can’t find a smaller city with lots of job options. I mean, sure, if you just randomly decide to move to Omaha there might not be jobs for you there. But surely there’s a city smaller than DC where your industry is active? I know a lot of finance people who have moved to Charlotte, NC for example.

          2. I’m not the person you’re responding to but I’m skeptical that you know anything about the poster’s field. There are professions that are geographically centered. I am in one of them. I cannot work in a small town. There is just no market for my skills there. (I’m an actuary)

          3. I didn’t say she would work in a “small town” I said I would be surprised if she couldn’t find a city smaller or at least cheaper than DC to move to. Heck, Chicago is bigger than DC but a lot cheaper.

      7. Totally agree. Also in flyover America and these…just aren’t our values. I don’t know anyone who works 80-hour weeks or would ever want to, no matter how much money they were making. I really like living in a place where family is the center of people’s lives and it’s just kind of not acceptable to work and work and work and neglect your family because you’re making money. There’s no amount of money that can make up for time with your kids, your spouse, etc. And there’s no house big enough, car nice enough, money in the bank enough, etc. to make up for what you didn’t do with your family, once those family members are gone. I honestly feel sorry for the people on the coasts who are caught up in all the competitive ridiculousness. I’m glad I don’t live there. I just don’t see the point of all that “hamster wheel” stuff, honestly.

        1. And having lived both on a coast and in flyover country, attitudes like yours are why I moved back to the hamster wheel. The sanctimony and complete inability to understand that different people may want different things or have different (not better, not worse) values.

          1. LOL. Okay sweetie, have fun with that. It’s always such relief when the Californians and East Coasters move back where they came from…they’re so amped up all the time, it’s hard to relax around them. Not inviting them to our parties only works for so long. Thanks for leaving of your own accord; we’re having a great time out here without you!

          2. Yeah the sanctimony was just dripping there. It rubbed me the wrong way too. I will take my big liberal coastal city any day over that attitude.

        2. I generally agree that family-centric is nice. But have you noticed a gender double standard? I ask because in my small Midwestern city it’s way more acceptable for men to work long hours than for women to. I’m all for not working too much, spending time with family, being very involved in kids’ schools, but if women are held to that standard, men should be too. The double standard is actually one of the things I like the least about living here.

        3. As someone whoover from a big coast city to the Midwest, I see your point, but the dark side is the snottiness towards working mothers, because “family us more important than money.” There are so many issues with that mentality and it makes me mental.

        4. Yuck, sit down already. I’m much happier here in the coastal city. Will happily continue to fly over your parts.

          1. Thanks! We don’t want you here either. Sad single cat ladies don’t really add much flavor to the neighborhood block parties. They’re usually real downers.

        5. Gross. You know sometimes people work long hours for reasons other than money, right? Caring about their professional success, feeling like their work contributes to society, wanting to contribute to the field, passion for an organization’s mission, taking advantage of interesting, engaging opportunities…

    6. thanks for posting, he was one of my profs in law school and i really like him. excited to read the book soon.

  16. Has anyone had a plate removed from a broken bone, preferably a collarbone? What was the recovery like?

    I broke mine last fall in a car accident, and it was absolutely awful. I’d have a dozen c-sections before I’d do that again. It’s not generally painful now, though it really took a long time to get to there. I would like to have the plate removed (it sticks up funny, and it really hurts if something hits it), but I’m sort of nervous about going through a similar recovery. Can anyone tell me it won’t be nearly as bad, and what their general time for recovery was? Anything else I should ask the doctor?

    1. I read this as “I’ve had a dozen c-sections” and I was like whoaaaaaaaaa. Sorry about your collarbone :/

    2. I can’t speak to a collarbone, but I had a plate removed from my fibula, and the recovery was basically non-existent. My surgeon told me to bring my boot and crutches, and I woke up and was like, do I have to use these? I think I’m good. By contrast, having it put in was AWFUL, and so much worse than the original break – too much pain to sleep. Super happy I had it removed, as it was not a big deal, and gave me back more mobility in the ankle, as well.

    3. Have you inquired as to whether or not this is something a doctor will actually do? No doctor worth their salt will remove a presumably helpful bone if they feel the risks of surgery outweigh the gain of removing it.

      1. I don’t think she’s asking to have her collarbone removed – just that hardware used in healing.

      2. I want them to remove the plate, not the bone itself! And yes, we discussed removing it in about a year when it was put in. I could probably leave it in my whole life, but it’s weird and uncomfortable.

    4. I had hardware removed from my knee (post ACL+MCL repair) last year and it was a breeze. I left the hospital without a brace and attended PT for two weeks – but it was nothing compared to post surgery PT. I probably could have skipped the PT but I like my therapist and had already met my deductible. I did not even fill the discharge pain medication and ran five miles three weeks later.

      My doctor presented hardware removal as optional, but strongly suggested. I have so much more mobility in my knee and the odd pops and freezes I was experiencing are gone.

  17. I am a mess today. I have basically been crying on and off since leaving work yesterday (combination of several mysterious aches and pains, regular old end-of-cycle hormones, a couple offhand comments by husband that triggered said hormones, calling my mom for what I thought would be a nice chat and it turning into a lecture about how I should get my mysterious pain seen right away). I went to bed and sobbed. DH was more-or-less asleep and it hurt me to be so obviously distressed and have no acknowledgment from him, but I felt really guilty about the thought of waking him up and demanding comfort. I am equally messy at work today and trying to get a handle on my emotions is only making me cry again. I’d go home, but there’s so much I’m supposed to be doing at work. I’m not sure what I need, but does anybody have any words of advice?

    1. Is there any way you can take yourself to a private spot for half an hour or so, let your emotions out, maybe journal or meditate a bit or anything that helps you cope. It sounds like you’re overwhelmed so every little thing is hitting you in your currently fragile emotions. If you can figure out which pieces are the foundation and which are extra bricks piled on top, that can help.

    2. If I’m in a state like this, I try a gentle approach, like telling myself “I need to take special care of myself today” and doing anything possible to treat myself well. I know it’s cheesy, but if there’s any way you can get your favorite tea/coffee, lunch, play a favorite podcast, take a 10-minute walk outside, make a Dr appt, or anything else you can think of…Take these self-care steps to get yourself through the work day and to some extent distract yourself. Then you can go home and deal with all the stuff that’s bugging you.

    3. Honestly, not to be your mom, but go see the appropriate doc for the mysterious pain. I’ve had a few things like that over the years and I carry a bizarre amount of anxiety and stress about what the mysterious pain is. And usually it’s nothing and frankly half of the pain seems to resolve once I get confirmation that it’s nothing/treatable. Pull off the bandaid, make a call for an appointment or go to walk-in clinic (depending on what the pain is). Seriously.

      1. I agree. Some of the stress is likely having to do with the mystery.

        One thing I have found very helpful in our marriage is to just say what you need the person to do. “I don’t want you to try to fix things. I just want to be sad. Will you stroke my hair and tell me everything will be ok?” I’m in a much better headspace to address things when I’m comforted first. Sometimes I will even say “I get to be mad at you for a little bit!” and if it extends beyond the “little bit” I’ve even said, “yes, ok, I want to be irrationally annoyed with you. Why don’t you just scratch my back to make it better?” And the tension melts away and he chuckles and obliges. He wasn’t so expressive at first, so I would ask him, “Do you just want to be p!ssy a little bit and have your own space? I’ll go upstairs.” And he might pretend to pout and say yes or say “no, I want to be mad at you a little and hear you apologize and hug me.” And so I do. I dunno, turning toward each other for comfort – even if the stressed is caused by that person – is just easiest for us and has made every day a joy. Don’t feel guilty for using your words. And this way you aren’t guessing what’s going on or what your spouse needs. Although if it isn’t obvious to you, human touch is always the ticket for me and my husband knows now to just offer hugs whenever.

        I hope your day gets a little better! **HUGS** to you from this stranger! It’s ok to feel your emotions and to just have them. Be kind to yourself and they will pass. Promise!

    4. Sending internet hugs! Is it possible to take a short walk outside? Even five minutes of new scenery might help refresh you. If you can take a bit more time perhaps an ice tea with something sweet might help ( I avoid sweeteners in all drinks, but during hormones the sugar helps!).
      You mentioned you couldn’t leave work; perhaps commit to working for one or two hours, and then leave early or take a half day — I’m a fan of half days in these situations, because I personally find trying to say and work can be fruitless. Ymmv, of course— hope you feel better soon:)

    5. Regarding “waking up DH and demanding comfort,” I went through a spell of pretty intense anxiety a while back, and I had an agreement with my sweet husband that I would wake him up if necessary and he would cuddle me up when I was feeling super anxious in the dead of night. I almost never did, but it was nice to know I could, and super nice on the few occasions when I did it. Might you make an arrangement like that with your husband?

      And also? This sounds like a mental health emergency. How about a sick day (half day?) and maybe a session with a therapist?

        2. You’re missing the point that setting up that system makes the anxiety go away in many cases. Knowing someone (your spouse, the person you should love most in the world and who should love you too) has your back is often enough to shut down those spirals.

        3. I’d absolutely do this for my spouse. I fail to see how the occassional night wake-up/cuddle is a “dumping bag”. People in relationships help each other out. This sounds like a great and healthy agreement to me.

          1. I agree. A man has a mission to comfort his wife when she needs it, just like a woman has a mission to comfort her husband when he needs it, and in both cases, to do whatever it takes to comfort the other. So stop it poking at each other like this, and be ready to comfort your spouse when duly called upon.

    6. Have your tried some evening primrose oil, black cohosh supplements, or chamomile tea? Lavender? Tuneric for inflammation related pain? Stuff like that may take the edge off enough that you can function.

    7. Everyone, thank you so much for the kind words and internet hugs. I promise I am doing my utmost to get in to see a dentist ASAP (harder than I thought, unfortunately). You all have buoyed me up enough to get through my day and function a little better. I’m so grateful for this community.

      1. Also, late post, but no kidding Pamprin actually helps this shit. Pain reliever, decongestant and a diuretic. Take 2 and the next morning I feel so much better. This is not posted in jest.

  18. Does anyone have this? Do you like it? I like the length and apparent light weight ness of it. Open to other ideas. Thanks!

  19. My closest work friend’s daughter is going off to college next week. Never met her daughter but wondering if there’s anything special/low key/not too expensive I can do for them. Any ideas?

    1. Gift card is probably your best bet. I’d do college bookstore or Target (even if there isn’t one locally, she can order stuff for her dorm room online).

      1. Second this, but also add Ikea and Bed Bath and Beyond as good places for gift cards as well, especially as BBB specifically caters its store to college students around the start of school.

      2. I’d find this a bit strange, if you’ve never met the daughter. Maybe go out with the work friend to take their mind off missing the kid? Maybe see a movie?

        1. Huh? How is a gift card ‘strange’? It’s as impersonal as you can possibly get. When I graduated and got married, I got dozens of cards & gift cards from parents’ friends and co-workers that I hadn’t met or had met only briefly. Totally, totally standard IMO. (If it matters, they were mostly for small dollar amounts, $10-25 at graduations, $25-50 at the wedding.)

          1. I meant that it’s strange to give a gift to a stranger in general, not the choice of gift card in particular.
            It sounds like we’ve had vastly different experiences, since I can match your ‘dozens’ with zero.

          2. I agree this is completely normal. Very similar to giving a shower gift to a friend across the country whose kid you won’t meet for many years if ever. I similarly got gift cards from friends of my parents who were very close to my parents but had never met me (usually college friends living in different states). From coworkers its a “nice to do thing but not expected” but giving college gift cards to people’s children is a very normal thing. I feel kind of bad for people that think it’s weird to do this – do you not have people in your life that would do this for your child?

        2. Agreed. Same situation for me at work — an older coworker is moving her daughter in to college this week; I happen to have gone to that college and the coworker is kind of upset that her only daughter who she is close with, spends a lot of time with is leaving — though obviously excited for her. I never even considered getting the daughter a gift — I’ve never met her. I figure once she’s back, I’ll ask mom to coffee and we can talk about whatever she wants — whether that’s a play by play of move in day or daughter’s early college life, or just a distraction to talk pop culture or whatever.

        3. This is probably a regional or your social group cultural thing. In my community this is done, very often. Friends of parents sent gift cards, really as a way to support the parents not the kids since the parents would otherwise buy those things. If it’s not done in your circle, whatever, but labeling anything you don’t do as “weird” especially for something as innocuous as gift giving is exactly the sort of thinking that isolates us from one another. Chill. the. f. out.

          1. Right. Getting a financially-dependent child a gift is also a gift to the parents. I don’t think it signifies that the OP has any deep emotional attachment to the child, just that she is friendly with her mom and wants to acknowledge this family milestone. It’s surprising to me that people find this so weird. I certainly don’t think OP is under any obligation to give a gift, but she said she wants to do something.

          2. I think you must have misread ‘I’d find this a bit strange’ as ‘WOW if you’re doing this, you’re completely insane omg’.

    2. I would take your friend out to lunch the week or two after she gets back from dropping her daughter off. Ask once how she is doing with the empty house, listen if she wants to talk and be prepared to district her if that is what she wants.

      I think it would be weird to give the daughter a gift. Starting college is not a traditional gift giving occasion, and I found it weird to get gifts from my parents’ friends who I didn’t know at even traditional gift giving occasions.

      1. This is where I land as well. If you have no relationship with the child, I’d focus on something for the mom. When I went away for college, I may have gotten small gifts from family friends, but not from anyone who didn’t know me at all & just knew my parents.

    3. Cookie Card from Cheryl’s Cookies! They have gluten-free and sugar-free options. $6 shipped.

    4. I’ll be on team gift card. If you’re really close to the mom and you want to get her daughter a gift, go for it! Something like a $25 gift card to target or amazon.

    5. I agree this may be regional. I’m in the Midwest and have both received and given gift cards in similar situations. I definitely wouldn’t hesitate to get the daughter a gift card in a small amount but I agree the advice to spend time with the mom is also a good one! Taking her to a movie is a really nice idea.

        1. She is also me :(

          Fortunately, my daughter is doing great so far! I hope your child is as well.

          It has not completely sunk in for me, though the moment I turned left last night to go to her bedroom to chat and say goodnight, and then suddenly remembered … well that hit hard.

          1. Thank you. I am glad your daughter is doing well! I have one junior, on one coast, and one leaving tomorrow for the other. The junior is absolutely thriving. I am worried about the freshman-to-be but hoping for the best, and she is very excited! I still have one in junior high (apparently a third-child status symbol according to other comments on this thread?!) so no empty-nest syndrome, but the pain is real.

        2. OMG you guys are making me cry and my daughter is 2! So many hugs. I’m sure your kids are/will be thriving at college but I can’t even imagine how hard this is.

  20. Question on money in general and refinancing to 15 years specifically. We already max out retirement accounts and have an emergency fund in high yield savings and a one year CD. With a recent job upgrade, we save about 2K a month. This is new, we’ve never been able to save much in the past and the small savings usually evaporated during job related moves. What to do with the money next? I’m mildly averse to playing the market mainly because I’ve never done it before although I do understand this or in the near future may be a good time to buy stock. I can certainly be persuaded. We have a 30 yr mortgage at 4.25 with 410K left on a home we will keep forever (even if we don’t live in it). My “high yield” savings by comparison is 2.5 at its best. I am considering refinancing to 15 years and should be able to get ~3.5%. This will increase our monthly payment by $800 and save something like 140K in interest over the life of the loan. I like the guaranteed return aspect of this, but I am I giving up a much better return in some other investment vehicle? Has anyone done similar calculations and what was the conclusion?

    1. I would never refinance to a 15-year mortgage because then I would be stuck with the higher payment if my income decreased for any reason. I would, however, absolutely consider paying on my 30-year mortgage as though it were a 15-year. The internet is full of “missing loan-term calculators” that will help you do the math. You could probably re-fi that 4.25 loan into a lower 30-year loan, too.

      https://www.bankrate.com/finance/refinance/drawbacks-refinancing-into-15-year-mortgage.aspx

      1. I refi’d as rates dropped from 8% in late 90s into the low low rates of the 2000s….refi’d from 30 to 15 years and then refi’d again when rates dropped again. Just do the math…in our case, it made sense, we saved alot of money and paid off our mortgage much earlier.

    2. It’s time to consider investment accounts. I would never buy individual stocks – it can work great or not, and I’m not willing to take the risk. However, I do invest in diversified mutual funds. There is still some risk, such as when the market goes down. But over the next 30 years of my life, those investments will increase in value so much more than a savings account with 2.5% interest.

  21. Something to consider with the refi– You may be able to save more money and have more flexibility by just paying $800 more per month on your mortgage and not doing the actual refi. Then you have the flexibility of ramping down the payment if you need to in the future. This was true for us when we took into account the cost of the refi. Once that was taken into account, I think we only saved about $2000 doing the refi vs. just upping our monthly payment ourselves. We do have a lower rate on our mortgage though— something like 3.2-3.5% so not sure how the numbers work for you.

    1. We came at this from the other direction. Consistently paid a few hundred extra per month every month for 8 years when we finally realized that refinancing into a 15 year would cut off 7 years of payments while we still pay the same amount each month.

  22. Shoe recommendations help? Any recs for ballet flats or mary janes that don’t put any pressure on the toes (i.e., don’t bunch the toes together)?

    I rammed my pinkie toes against some furniture pretty badly and have been limping about everywhere for a few weeks. It’s better when I’m in roomier shoes, but I have so much pain whenever I try to fit into my work pumps/flats (almond toe).

    Doctor recommends that I don’t wear any women’s dress shoes for the next two months… which isn’t going to fly in my business formal biglaw office. Only shoes I could wear were Cole Haan zerogrand stitchlite oxfords, which are basically knitted shoes without structure, but it doesn’t go too well with my mostly black and charcoal dress/skirt suiting pieces. I asked to have a cast instead, but apparently nothing is broken and a cast won’t fix the toe part well anyways so the doctor doesn’t recommend. Thanks in advance.

    1. Girl what? You have a broken toe. Wear sneakers everywhere, tell HR/your boss that you are doing so because you have a broken toe.

    2. I think I’d just embrace it. A colleague wore sneakers with her business formal for a couple weeks after foot surgery. We all understood.

      1. I broke my pinkie toe while working in big law. I wore sandals or sneakers with business formal for several weeks. The attorneys in my group all knew the story and laughed with me about it. No one expected me to wear cute pumps with a broken toe. *Note the doctor is probably being conservative about the 2 months advice, I seem to remember it healing to the point I could wear at least regular flats within a couple weeks.

    4. I’ve broken my pinkie toe, and bought a cheap pair of low-vamp ballet flats in a wide width (my feet are medium width). The low vamp hit below where the break was, and the wide width meant my toes weren’t smushed together. If you have a DSW nearby it’s easy to hobble around and try on a bunch of pairs, plus their staff are pretty helpful finding and fetching if you can describe what you need.

    5. These are really similar to the Cole Haan and fit your color profile: https://www.dsw.com/en/us/product/clarks-sharon-crystal-wedge-oxford/442856
      I have them in a kind of rose gold and they are sooooo comfy! So sorry to hear about the toes. Been there. I once broke my pinky toe pretty badly on the Thursday before school started. Caught it on an electrical box sticky up out of the floor. It took months for the swelling to go down. I have also badly bruised toes walking into something in my house. That took a lot less time to recover, thank goodness.

    6. I second the suggestion to wear runners or shoes that help the toe heal. However, if you want comfy flats, I tried on vionic ballet flats in a round toe style in a pale sand colour— I don’t have a link because they were on sale in a store. Didn’t purchase because my foot slides out as I walk ( I have narrow heels), but there is good toe space and they are the only ballet flats I’ve ever tried on with actual arch support, and that would accommodate my orthotic— sadface that they don’t stay on my foot!

    7. If a knit shoe feels okay, what about a Rothy (anything other than the point style) in a size larger than you would normally get? Probably not as business formal as you’d usually go, but also not a full-on sneaker.

    8. Or wear some sandals with open toe, and wear a splint (you can buy them from CVS for toe fractures) conspicuously on your foot, mention it if anyone comments or even looks askance at it, word will get around and it’ll be fine. It is totally ok to wear comfortable footwear even in a law firm when you have a broken toe.

  23. Is anyone else noticing that the comments the last few days have been way more bitter and vitriolic than usual? What’s up?

    2. I think the entire suicide thread is deliberately and shockingly cruel, but I haven’t noticed anything else lately.

    3. Sometimes I retreat to the moms site when this happens. They seem more chill over there.

      1. Sometimes I retreat to the moms site when this happens. They seem more chill over there.

        1. There is one (or more?) anonymous commentators over there giving mean, flip responses to everything now.

    4. Idk someone posted a horrifically judgmental comment about suicide and turns out lots of callous people agree with her?

      1. the original post was more…confused and trying to process her own feelings…the responders however were out of control.

    5. I’ve actually noticed this a lot lately. I think the tone of this place has trended more rude/nasty for a while now. It seems like everything devolves into “you are a horrible person.” I think we could have had today’s discussion 3 years ago without the name calling.

      1. I don’t know about that. These discussions about how the site has gone downhill in tone resurface every few years. I have noticed a specific troll who is pretty nasty (the one who always posts something rude and ungrammatical m like “get over it it was a choice you made, stop being so absurd” when someone posts about having a hard time at a new job or something), but otherwise, it’s been mostly the same to me.

        1. My favorite troll is the lady who doesn’t care what happens to ANYONE because her stock portfolio is looking GREAT!

          3. Good. Thanks for asking. Not sure about you but the S&P is still up 15.7% for the year last I checked, not to mention 35.5% since the election. Not sure what all the whining about the “crash” is about when we’re 6% off of all time highs. Oh right . . . it’s because of who is in charge.

          5. I don’t worry about that poster at all. She’ll get hers in the end. I am old enough to have seen how “what goes around comes around” really does work out in real life. Anonymous at 4:03, I’ll try to keep some dollar bills in my pocket so one day, when a set of catastrophic life experiences leaves you living under a bridge and panhandling for change, I can at least hook you up with McDonald’s coffee. Enjoy your lifestyle while you have it, because the way you’re going? The clock’s ticking until your time is up.

        2. +1

          I’ve been reading regularly and occasionally posting anonymously since 2012 and can concur.

        3. Do you mean the one who begins all their posts with “Omg get over it”? I’ve noticed that too – not a great attitude for a community that can be capable of such far-reaching kindness and empathy.

      2. This exactly. I think our political situation over the past couple of years has made it more acceptable to feel very righteous and morally superior and consider anyone who disagrees with you a “horrible person” who deserves to be called names in all caps. It’s no longer “Jane is wrong” but “Jane is a horrible, degenerate person whose views mean she’s not worth any consideration/courtesty/respect”.

      3. I honestly believe that most of the commenters on this site are at an age where they feel so very smart that it is fine to “enforce” their beliefs on others. Once the community shifts and grows up a bit, things will change. Young people who make a lot of money think they have it all figured out.

    6. In regards to the discussion today: I think a lot of women still believe in the idea that if you do everything “right,” and make all the “best” choices, nothing bad can happen to you, and so if something bad happens to someone, it’s obviously their own fault. They just didn’t make the “right” choices and so that’s why they have encountered misfortune. I believed that too, for a long time, until a therapist pointed out to me that that’s a really interesting bargain to try to make with the universe, which is more or less indifferent to bargaining, altogether. I also just lived long enough to see a lot of good people suffer through terrible tragedies that had no root cause and no logical reason for happening. At its core, the “it’s your own fault/flaws” perspective is a way of dealing with fundamental existential terror. Not a good, empathetic or productive way to deal with it, but it is a method nonetheless. Because the idea that terrible things sometimes happen to good people for no reason is too illogical and too terrifying to contemplate.

      3. It’s magical thinking by people who have had extraordinarily fortunate lives, even by first-world standards.

        In some ways, knowing that bad things can and do happen to good people is… comforting? It means that it’s not my job to have a perfect life or to not fail; it’s my job to make the best decision I can at the time, ask for help when I need it, and help others who need it. At the end, being a healthy, smart woman in 21st century America, things may wind up very well for me, but I’m not a failure if life kicks me in the a$$ too many times to count.

        1. I think I would have said that in general it feels like there’s a current of meritocratic thinking here that is defensive and quick to lash out.

          But in the suicide thread in particular, I think there’s probably also a lot of unprocessed trauma.

      5. I disagree, I’ve seen plenty of very bad things happen to very good people and am well aware that life can be profoundly unfair and is not remotely a meritocracy. I just don’t believe suicide is something that happens to you. Depression and mental illness are, but suicide is a choice.

        1. I’m generally sympathetic to acknowledging people’s choices. It’s empowering, it generally captures our experiences, and for many of us it’s the best way forward. But I’m just not convinced of your perspective here. For example, there was an anti-seizure medication that was associated with suicides happened completely out of the blue in patients with no prior history of mental illness. The patients who survived didn’t understand the impulse that had overtaken them either. I also know that mental illness can twist people’s thinking, especially if they are already feeling like a burden to others. You sound like you are insisting that mental illness only extends this far, and no farther, as if somehow it stops short of choices. But is there any reason to think this other than wanting to hold others accountable (or wanting to believe in the security of one’s own autonomy)?

    7. Everybody always thinks it’s some new trend, and it’s not. But anyway, I just skip the posts that have all the nasty comments. I love being able to collapse threads.

    8. Yes. Maybe I’m imagining it, but I feel like the biggest waves of nastiness come on Mondays and Tuesdays. Been reading since ’09. It’s like there’s a few people who do the exact opposite of “assume good intentions” and look for a perceived “weak spot” in any comment, and then challenge/attack OP on it even though it’s tangential to point of the post. I’ve said it before but it reminds me of reddit— an environment of nitpicking and arguing just for the sake of it.

    9. It got nasty enough a few years ago that I took a big, long break. I find the snarky, nasty and snippy commentators annoying, but from my now somewhat advanced age, I mostly feel sorry for them. That they need to get on the internet and snipe at people must mean that they are sad pathetic little people.

  24. Looking for a plus size black sheath dress or other similarly structured dress I can wear with a blazer. I bought a lovely light blue blazer to wear over a black A line dress, but there is too much fabric at the bottom and it makes me look very wide (I’m an hourglass and don’t need any emphasis on my bottom half). Having difficulty finding a simple sheath dress, sleeveless preferably, that isn’t scuba fabric.

    1. I’ve had good luck with Calvin Klein sheath dresses. Your blazer might work well with a pencil skirt too.

    2. I’m a plus and have a much easier time finding a black top and skirt that match than finding a sheath dress.

      That said, I have a few sejour/Caslon sheaths from Nordstrom and they have held up well. They’re more of a Ponte than a scuba fabric.

  25. For the folks who don’t think mental health can be “terminal.” I’ll post this again tomorrow, but when I went into my provider this spring for soul crushing depression he nearly hospitalized me, telling me he would code it with the same severity as pancreatic cancer and I should apply for long-term disability.

    Between 25%-50% of bipolar people attempt suicide, and of those 4%-19% are successful. We’re also at higher risk for accidental death due to risky and impulsive behavior. My brain literally functions differently than a normal person. So quit with the stigmatizing crap. Dying of cancer *WHEN YOU ARE GETTING TREATMENT* is the equivalent of me dying from my mental illness *WHEN I AM TAKING MY MEDS* and also, right now, leaving for my psychologist. Enjoy your mental health. Because I fight for mine every. single. day.

    I understand that folks who haven’t been this bad have a hard time understanding. But if the medical community treats it this seriously maybe ya’ll should, too.

    2. And I just want to tell you that you’re a special, unique person, whose life is of infinite value, and I will be thinking about you.

      I really wish we were better at treating mental illness like physical illness – it’s just as debilitating, just as scary (if not more so), and just as hard to treat.

    3. Thank you for this post and for fighting this hard fight everyday. Sending you love from an internet stranger.

  26. I am really, really hurt by the thread about suicide above. Great, you think it is selfish. Wonderful. Whoohoo, good for you! But there are commenters here who have been depressed, been suicidal, attempted suicide, and are survivors of suicide loss. Try having a little bit of empathy for other people. You have NO IDEA what some of us here have been through and have seen.

    1. This.
      I’m taking a break from this site for a while. I know that this nastiness and cruelty exists in the world but I don’t need to voluntarily expose myself to it.

    2. My best to both of you. cbackson, you have provided invaluable perspective and advice, and as much as this site will be less without you, I hope you enjoy your time spent elsewhere.

    3. I didn’t post above as I have no real opinion on the issue/don’t care. But seriously how do you go thru life so triggered? People legit can’t discuss things in front of you because TRIGGER?

      1. Sorry, but cleaning up the pieces of my grandfather’s skull and his brain matter after he shot himself was traumatic for me.

      2. Why is it so important for you to discuss other people’s suicides anyway? It’s really none of your business.

        1. The person who brought it up seemed to genuinely want advice on supporting her friend and was completely aware that her anger at the person who committed suicide wasn’t something to dump on his grieving family. I don’t think anyone else was really eager to “discuss other people’s suicides,” we were just defending someone who was being attacked for a perfectly reasonable question.

    4. This is nuts, honestly. You (general you) don’t own suicide as a concept, or society’s response to suicide, and just because you have the experiences that you describe above doesn’t make your opinion any more valid than anyone else’s on the matter. Life is beautiful and messy and nuanced and a trillion shades of grey, and the issue of suicide, in particular, evokes many difficult, complicated, and yes, conflicting feelings for people. No one on this board is pro-suicide and no one truly wishes that anyone’s life will be touched by it. But unfortunately, many, many of us have experience with it, in the ways you describe and in others, because it’s an epidemic in this country. And someone observing that part of them feels like it’s a selfish act in the specific circumstances described in OP’s comment – which is what kicked off this 100+ comment inferno in the first place – is not a personal attack on you, or anyone else on this board. Frankly, I’m appalled at the vigorous efforts to signal and shame in this conversation, in an apparent effort to drown out a perspective that many women on this board apparently don’t like. I think it’s illustrative of a larger problem that we see playing out across this country, in all the conversations we’re having. (Sorry to be US-centric.)

      2. Well, here’s my perspective that YOU apparently don’t like: I have suffered a recent loss of a loved one by suicide. I am probably not the only person here who has suffered that kind of loss in the past year. After my grandfather died, dozens of people told me directly that he was very selfish. I am still very, very tired of being told that my loved one was selfish. It did nothing but alienate me. I am advising the OP of that post and the people commenting that if they want to help people that have lost a family member to suicide, they should omit the word “selfish” from their conversations with those people. It’s not helpful. It’s hurtful. No one is silencing anyone or saying that they need a trigger warning before people post about suicide. What I am saying that the word “selfish” is hurtful to me as a survivor of suicide loss. I am saying that suicide is not a selfish act, it is an act of desperation. I think that is also a very valid opinion and it also has a place here.

      3. This is really, really off-base. If you actually had experience with suicide, you’d know that “it’s so selfish!!!!!!!1” helps literally no one.

        1. I do have experience with it, actually, many experiences. Like we all probably do, I think. They don’t make my feelings on it any more right or wrong than yours. And my heart goes out, truly, to the commenters above who shared their own experiences – including eevee – I’m so sorry and I cannot imagine your pain. But expressing the messy, complicated, conflicting feelings about suicide in the relatively safe anonymity of this board may very well help OP. She never, ever said she wanted to say any of her feelings to her friend. Instead she asked how to help. We should all be so lucky to have an OP in our life if and when we need her. But shaming her for feeling a different way than we’ve deemed acceptable isn’t helpful, either. Her comment was not malicious, and she isn’t feeling that way AT us. Did we not talk about this last week, someone else’s experiences (joys and sorrow) aren’t happening AT us? Did we not talk earlier today about how we all get to feel our feelings, there’s no right or wrong, and sometimes even the simple act of speaking them aloud helps us move past them? Good grief.

          1. OP’s friend’s husband died. OP is not in need of comfort or help, her friend who is the person who actually is suffering from suicide loss is the person who needs comfort and help.

          2. @all about eeevee, I don’t understand your point. Yes, OP is not the person who is (most) in need of comfort here, as her own post acknowledged. She was asking how she could best comfort her friend because, as you noted, it’s her friend and her children who most need support here. Why does that justify a reaction where you yell at her and tell her she’s a terrible person? She was clearly trying to do a kind thing here. Even if you disagree with her inner thoughts, why can’t you just recognize that she’s trying to do good here and offer advice without being so nasty?

      4. Let me guess: you’re one of the posters who constantly complains that she has no partner and no friends and OMG I’m so lonely?
        I think I figured out why. People generally don’t like to spend time with sociopaths who completely lack empathy. Your need to blurt out whatever happens to be on your mind and discuss ideas YOU think are interesting is not, in actual fact, more important than anything else in the universe. That news is shocking to you, I’m sure.

      6. I would have had a different response if OP had said “I feel horrible for even thinking this and I know it’s wrong/stigmatizing to voice this, but I can’t help feeling that he was selfish. How do I get through that so I can help my friend?” Instead she proclaimed that it was so selfish and that she could not sympathize with others who mourned the deceased. That was incredibly judgmental and maybe even tr*lling? I’m not sure.

        1. Nah, suicide is profoundly selfish and I don’t feel one bit horrible for thinking that. Don’t know why OP should have to couch her very legitimate feelings in terms of “omg I know I’m a terrible person and I feel SO BAD for even daring to think this but…”

          1. No one is saying that the OP was the problem here. The problem was the contingent of responders who refused to let go of the idea of suicide as selfish, and who want to vehemently defend their right to call suicide selfish. Suicide isn’t a topic that anyone should be talking about and trying to be “right.” Secondly, please look up the meaning of the word selfish. “Lacking in concern for others.” A person who is mentally ill and who commits suicide isn’t lacking in concern for others. They think they are helping others by stepping out of life. It has repulsed and horrified me today to read these comments, and now i am just angry that this community of so-called smart people are making such a stink with such flawed logic. None of you are nearly as smart as you think you are.

          2. There was a lot of criticism of the OP, actually. In fact, I was responding to somebody who said the OP was “incredibly judgmental” and possibly living under a bridge and that OP’s comments would have only been appropriate if she prefaced them by saying she “felt horrible for even thinking this.” Why is OP supposed to have to feel horrible about these thoughts? Clearly, a lot of people sympathized with her thoughts. That doesn’t make them appropriate to express to her friend, as she herself was clearly aware, but I don’t believe she deserved to be jumped on the way she was.

    5. I lost a mentor to suicide (he left children and his wife who had followed his career). There are others I don’t want to talk about. I lost a family member to a severe brain injury (and no, I don’t feel that losing him was better than having to care for him longer). It’s hard to look away from the things people say here. People say the same things in person, but they don’t explain their entire rationale. But it is also hard to see these views laid out so plainly.

  27. Does anyone else have a hard time setting yearly development goals? I’m a tax analyst in a public corporation and we’re being made to create a development plan. I’m only one year into my position and previously worked 5.5 years in public accounting before moving to industry. Previously my goals were clearly laid out, as the public firms have pretty clear guidelines about what actions will get you to the next promotion level. Now I just feel like… let me just work here and help you with your tax work? I am happy in my job, but I would never tell anyone (nor would I have in any of my 6/7 years of work) that I’m SO PASSIONATE about taxes. It’s a good job! I just don’t know how I could possibly lay out a plan where I sound like I’m excited about developing. Am I crazy?

    1. You’re not crazy and I hope you’ll consider re-posting tomorrow morning so this can get some more eyes. I’m in-house legal and feel the same. We’re constantly being asked to develop goals and metrics and KPIs and it is so hard for me. Not to mention my department has basically zero room for upward growth or professional development unless people in certain leadership positions move-on or retire – there is admittedly nowhere for me to go, so coming up with a professional development plan feels very hollow.

      1. Yes, sounds like we’re in a very similar situation! Maybe I will re-post tomorrow, now that I know at least I’m not the only one who has a hard time with this. KPI is virtually a swear acronym for me now.

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