Dear Prudence is Slate’s advice column. Submit questions here.

Dear Prudence,

While I was dating my college boyfriend, my sister started to date his brother. My relationship started getting rocky, and I had a choice between starting a new job in a different city or working on my relationship. My boyfriend was adamant that I not take the job and stay here with him. I made the mistake of staying. We broke up a year later because I found him cheating on me. My sister was still dating his brother and they ended up engaged. It was very difficult for me to be around my sister and her fiancé. After they got married, holidays were even worse. I struggled but moved on. Well, several years later, they are in the process of getting a divorce. And my brother-in-law just decided to nuke my relationship with my sister by sending me a taunting text containing a major shock.

In it, he revealed his brother had been cheating on me a long time before I found out, and my sister knew all the time!

I called my sister in tears and she confessed. I screamed at her. She was the one that encouraged me to stay and skip my chance at a new job. I called her a selfish whore and said that I considered her dead to me now. In the aftermath, our parents are more upset at me for adding more stress to my sister than about what happened to me. They say it was years ago and that I am overreacting. This has me so sick that my doctor put me on anxiety medication. I don’t know how to go on from here.

—Hurt and Lost

Dear Hurt and Lost,

Don’t let the terrorists (these two awful brothers) win. It’s not fair that your boyfriend cheated on you, and it’s even worse that your brother-in-law went out of his way to hurt you on his way out the door. I’ll be transparent about my agenda here: I don’t want this story to end with the two bad guy exes living happily ever after and enjoying each other’s company while you and you and your sister have to cope without each other. You say “My BIL decided to nuke my relationship with my sister” —but his whole plan fails if you don’t let him do that.

Also, totally separate from my desire for a narrative in which the terrible men don’t come out on top, I think your relationship with your sister is worth saving. Yes, it’s fair to be upset with her, to wish she’d made a different choice with regard to telling you about the cheating, and to need some time to get over it. But her behavior doesn’t rise to “selfish whore who is dead to me” levels. People often write to me often asking for advice on whether to tell a loved one that their partner is being unfaithful. It’s a common dilemma because this is a situation in which it’s really hard to know what the victim of infidelity would want. While some are grateful for the intel, plenty of others become outraged at the deliverer of bad news. I’ve made the case before that when there is cheating, there are almost always clues and that person in the relationship could pursue if they truly wanted to know, so there’s no obligation to inform them. But whether to speak up is a legitimately tough call—one about which good, kind people can disagree. Sometimes I think we should get ahead of the issue by giving our friends and family instructions about whether we’d want to be informed if they ever suspected that our partners were cheating.

What you’re experiencing is real pain and distress, and I would never agree that you’re overreacting or that the time that’s passed means you should be over it. But I suspect your response might be more about how much being cheated on all those years ago hurt you—and your shame over making a “mistake”— and less about what your sister knew and when. I hope the anti-anxiety medication is helping, and I wonder if it will give you the mental space to process what happened in your relationship, why you made the choice you did, and how you can forgive yourself for staying in a city with a guy who turned out not to be worth it. That’s a totally understandable (and extremely common) decision. And it’s worth noting that it did not ruin your life. I hope you can make peace with it and see it as part of your journey rather than something that derailed you completely. If you can do that, you may begin to see your sister is also someone who has made missteps but isn’t defined by them, and perhaps the two of you can figure out your next steps together.

Dear Prudence,

Our building has a laundry facility for all. I walk with a cane and have difficulty standing, etc., due to a bad accident. The other day, I went to put laundry in (there are two medium-sized washers). One had finished, and the empty one rejected my laundry card, so I simply emptied the done one into a cart. A new neighbor came and was upset that I “touched his laundry and didn’t wait for him.” I thought maybe he didn’t realize normal etiquette and that I use a cane. He was still demanding an apology. I said write a note to the board. I refrained from saying he had poor manners. I don’t feel obligated to teach a grown, able man what entitlement is. Your thoughts?

—Grown Able Manners

Dear Manners,

Your neighbor should know that if you use shared laundry facilities and don’t want anyone to touch your clothes, you need to either bring some work or entertainment and set up shop in the laundry room so you’re there when each load is done, or implement a very good alarm system to remind you to run down and grab your stuff. (If you’re waiting for a machine, it’s considerate to give the current user maybe five minutes after the buzzer to show up, but no longer.) That’s the rule! And even if he’s truly confused about how this works, he should have extended some empathy to you and the fact that you can’t comfortably stand around waiting for people to remember that they’re washing clothes.

You were right and he was wrong. But forget the lesson on manners and entitlement. In the same way that we all have to be responsible for our own clothes and not our neighbors, his bad personality is his business, and it’s not your job to provide guidance on how to be a considerate human being. “Write a note to the board” (a polite way of saying “Take it up with someone who cares, and by the way, they’re not going to be on your side”) was the perfect response, and you should use it again if you find yourself in this situation in the future. But I suspect your neighbor’s horror at having his wet clothes touched might have been the reminder he needed to time his loads better.

Dear Prudence,

I come to you fresh out of a nearly year-long relationship. I started dating “B” just shortly after coming out, and he was my first relationship. Things were peachy, save for a few disagreements here and there. When I say I’m fresh out of this relationship, it’s more “raw” than “minty.” It wasn’t my decision. My boyfriend, after months of sharing our personalities, time, and baggage, told me that his anxiety was making our relationship “suffocating” and that he would need to move on to take better care of his mental health. I had known about his anxiety and worked to foster an environment where he could feel honest about how he’s feeling and share whatever he felt comfortable with. The problem, however, is that he still held back. He said that he tried to sweep it under the rug throughout our relationship, but the kettle was boiling and he just couldn’t ignore the whistle any longer.

The shock hit me like a silver bullet. How could the man I love decide to stumble out of a relationship rather than grant me the opportunity to talk though his pain? How do I even know if his intention to seek help was genuine? Was it really his anxiety that suffocated our relationship, or was it me? These questions and any number like them still own my mind over a month later.

Now, we’re no-contact and according to what little information I have available (through social media), he’s positively enjoying his relationship-free life. He leaves no sign of the anxiety that reportedly damned our relationship, and he certainly doesn’t let it get in the way of clubbing, concerts, and other fun outings. Is he just sweeping it under the rug again? Is there any hope of us reconnecting? And, if there is, will I just end up getting burned again?

—Cloistered in Chicago

Dear Cloistered,

Sure, there’s hope that you might reconnect. People break up and make up all the time. But I encourage you not to pursue that. Block him on Instagram, and consider the relationship over. Forever. This advice is based on a few rules that I think apply to your situation:

- No-contact should include no following on social media (which, by the way, doesn’t provide an accurate representation of anyone’s mood or mental state).

- People are allowed to break up with you with no due process, for reasons that aren’t fair or honest or don’t make sense or are based on their own weird stuff and poor choices.

- It’s a bad idea to chase someone who doesn’t want you.

When I Picked My 8th Grade Daughter Up from a Coed Party, I Was in for a Shock. My Idiot Brother Just Gave My Toddler the Most Disgusting Toy. This Isn’t Funny. This Content is Available for Slate Plus members only Help! My Brother-in-Law Just Nuked My Relationship With My Sister With a Single Text I Reported My Colleague to HR. Somehow It Made Every Single Person at Work Turn on Me.

I know it’s not as simple as simply deciding to be done, and when someone doesn’t hold up their end of the relationship or share their true feelings, it can feel disorienting, and even like an injustice. You’re allowed to hate the way things turned out between the two of you and be frustrated that he didn’t work harder to address his mental health and nurture his connection with you at the same time. Rant about it to your friends, invite them to rant about it back to you, journal, scream—do whatever you need to. Except trying to reconnect with him. Instead, try to tap into the part of you that was eager to be in an open, supportive, healthy relationship and start to think about looking for someone who wants the same and is willing to work as hard as you are to make it happen. After all, if you were so invested in a relationship with a guy who found it suffocating, imagine how much better it will be when you find someone for whom being your partner is easy.

Catch up on this week’s Prudie.

More Advice From Slate

My fiancé and I broke up a month ago after four years together because he changed his mind about having kids in the near future and wanted to be polyamorous with me and his new crush. I really do not want to be poly, and having kids in a few years (I’m 28 now, he is 30) is really important to me. But I feel regret and wonder if I should get back together with him and if this is just a big struggle we have to overcome. He is dating his crush already, and she is poly. Since he met her, he is convinced that being poly is the thing that will make him happy. Should I try to fight for us?