My brother found himself a gold digger. She has the wrong idea about me.

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

Dear Prudence,

I make far more money than my brother and sister, to be blunt. The problem is that my sister’s daughter was born severely disabled and most likely will never live independently. My sister’s husband bailed after the birth, and our parents put off retirement to move where she lived to offer help. It has been hell. The state gives a pittance that you have to jump flaming hoops to get, my sister works part-time because she is a full-time caregiver, and my parents are exhausted.

I could have bought two new houses in cash for what I give to help. I pay for respite care, a new van, new equipment that the state wouldn’t cover, household expenses, and occasional vacations for my parents and sister so they can get some relaxation. My parents have been up front since my niece was born that any inheritance, beyond personal items, is going into a trust for her care. I have been adding to the savings, too.

My brother has been hands-off but understanding until he met “Laura.” Laura works a low-wage job and has expensive tastes, especially for her two kids. Both of them have dads and extended family, but apparently, I am the new piggy bank. Laura and my brother have been dating for five years, and I have met her kids all of five times, as Laura only has weekend custody. The last two times, they called me the wrong name and cried because I got them $50 gift cards and not a $500 gaming system.

Laura acts like a martyr when she is a gold digger. My brother makes a good enough living, but Laura sees me paying for my sister and parents to go on a cruise while paying for respite care as a personal insult. She makes constant catty comments about her and her kids never getting to go on vacation, and how it is hard not to be the favorite. I finally lost it when Laura ripped into me at a family dinner because I didn’t get her oldest a $3,000 e-bike and just sent a gift card.

I told Laura to go screw herself and screw her greedy kids. She wasn’t even trying to raise them right for the pittance of the time she has them. And I told her she could consider this a permanent embargo on any gifts from me from now on. I think my outburst actually scared Laura because she immediately shut up and went outside to have a cigarette. I left soon after and got home to my brother, leaving me six different voicemails about how terrible I had been and demanding an apology. I texted him to keep his girlfriend in line and out of my wallet.

I actually don’t care if my brother and his girlfriend stay pissed off at me, but they are complaining about me to our parents and sister. It is really hard on my mom because she has health issues, deals with my niece daily, and is a people pleaser. What do I do here? Five years of playing nice have done nothing. I never plan on having kids or getting married, but given what my niece will need for the rest of her life, even if I were the actual aunt to Laura’s kids, they can learn that their wants aren’t a necessity. What now?

—Aunt Richie

Dear Aunt Richie,

I was totally on your side for the first part of the letter! Don’t get me wrong, I am still on your side. You’re incredibly generous, your care for your family is evident, and you have no financial obligation to Laura and her children, so I’m glad you’re not falling for her con. Honestly, I even think you’re going above and beyond by sending gifts for the kids’ birthdays. People you have met five times are pretty much in the “If I am seeing you on the holiday or birthday, you get a gift if you’re lucky, and if we’re not seeing each other, you don’t” category. So nobody should be criticizing you.

But you didn’t need to go 10 steps past holding a reasonable boundary while maintaining your dignity to cuss her out and include a low blow about her parenting. I get that her demands were ridiculous and that she was being awful, but now you’ve been kind of awful too, and you probably don’t feel any better than you would if you’d just said, “I’m sorry you feel that way, but my gifting budget isn’t flexible.” Sorry, I know it’s not helpful for me to chastise you for what you’ve already done. I say this so you know what to do next time this happens (because I’m sure it will).

If you can find it in you, you can apologize to Laura—for the way you spoke to her, not for the refusal to give in to her panhandling. And your statement to your mom should be, “I’m really sorry all of this is stressing you out. Please know that I’m OK even if Laura is mad at me. The important thing to me is that you, my sister, and my niece have what you need, and that’s what I’m going to focus on. If you would like to be left out of any future conversations about this, I can definitely honor that, and you should ask my brother and Laura to do the same.”

Dear Prudence,

My best friend has been going through an incredibly tough couple of years, which have involved them getting dumped, repeating the final year of college, dropping out of college just before exams, and isolating themselves socially, both from our mutual friends and everyone else. They’re currently working a job they dislike, and often tell me that they feel stagnant. Their self-esteem has absolutely tanked, and their ambition has, too. They almost certainly have depression. We’re only in our mid-20s, but they talk as if they have no hope for the future. I’m incredibly concerned for them.

I’ve encouraged them to return to counseling and seek out a career counselor/occupational therapist, but they either aren’t able or aren’t willing. It feels like they’re in a spiral of self-sabotage, and while I try my best to be there for them, I’m very busy with my own life. I’ve tried to loop mutual friends back into the mix, but I can only encourage so much. I love them dearly, and no one deserves to feel like they do. I don’t know how to help bring their hope back.

How would you encourage someone who’s stuck in this cycle? Would I be overstepping if I sent them a list of therapists and career counselors? I don’t know what to do outside of just being there for them, and I don’t feel like that’s been enough. I live a city over, but there have been points where I make a last-minute sprint up for the weekend, have a mutual friend pop over, or check in with their mom.

—Heartbroken Friend

Dear Heartbroken Friend,

I can’t tell whether you’re alluding to a worry that your friend is suicidal. If that’s it, there’s a school of thought that says you should ask them directly. According to the Jefferson Center for Mental Health, a nonprofit mental health care provider, although many worry that mentioning suicide could cause harm by putting the idea into someone’s head, research indicates that that’s not the case. Instead, asking someone directly, “Are you thinking about killing yourself?” (You can say “Have you been unhappy lately?” or “You seem down, tell me about it” or “How are you doing?” to start the conversation, the Jefferson Center suggests) can chip away at the stigma around depression and offer some relief. If the answer is yes, that’s when you would push your friend to connect them with professional support. The National Alliance on Mental Illness backs this approach, too.

If, on the other hand, you just hate to see someone you care about miserable, you should resist the urge to fix the situation for them—at least without asking. A list of therapists and counselors is a few clicks away, and they know that. So you shouldn’t provide it unless they’ve said they are having trouble doing the initial research. Instead, why don’t you offer them a menu of things you are willing to do to help and let them tell you what they really need? That list can include research and appointment-making, but also other stuff like starting a new hobby, reading a self-help or inspirational book together, connecting them to people who might be able to help with their career search, or providing a steady stream of gossip or pop culture commentary. This will keep you focused on something manageable, which is good because your goal to “help bring their hope back” is very well-intended but way too ambitious.

You can’t—even by making yourself available all the time and nudging them toward what you would do—make repairs to another person’s brain. Trying to do so will leave you frustrated, demoralized, and potentially even so resentful that you become less patient with them, and the friendship suffers. Asking what they need specifically will save you from the endless but nebulous and not necessarily effective work of “being there.”

If your friend tells you what they want most is for you to listen or spend time with them, don’t assume you need to give pep talks or suggest an endless list of solutions. It can often be just as helpful to affirm that what they’re going through is really hard and that you see how much they’re suffering. This won’t lead directly to a new job, a better attitude, or even an appointment with a therapist, but it could bring them comfort that will make the road to these things—if they choose to get on it—a lot less agonizing.

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Dear Prudence,

I’m in a few different group chats with different sets of friends. Fairly frequently, the two (or more) other people in those chats will seem to forget I’m included, rather than it being a one-on-one text, and will start planning a meet-up I can’t attend or otherwise have conversations I’m not really in on.

My feelings might be a little hurt in some cases, but the real problem is picking up my phone to hundreds of unread messages and having to sort through them to figure out which ones might warrant a response from me. I’ve tried screenshotting the unread messages count with a “come on, guys,” and got a one-time apology but no other effect. Is there another way to ask them to knock it off without sounding resentful or passive-aggressive about being excluded? I don’t care if they hang out without me; I just don’t want to be alerted to all the dozen messages traded in their attempts to figure out the parking situation.

—Over Notified

Dear Over Notified,

I’m going to tell you what I tell myself when I’m at the final step of ordering groceries online and become absolutely overwhelmed and exhausted by the prospect of selecting replacement items: “This is not a problem. Technology has made you think it is a problem, but it’s not a problem. Get over it.”

The extra notifications aren’t hurting you, and part of being in a group chat means sometimes receiving messages that aren’t sent with you in mind. Are you old enough to remember what life was like before this kind of communication? If you wanted to chat with all your friends, you had to figure out how to all be at the same place at the same time. That was a LOT more work than two minutes of scrolling and skimming. And guess what? When you got there, there were moments when the conversation took a turn that didn’t interest you, and you just had to sit there and survive it or get interested.

If you can’t shake being deeply bothered by reading irrelevant texts, even with this perspective, you might ask yourself how much you actually like these friends. I have a group chat with my husband and our mutual friend that occasionally takes a turn toward discussing the demands and internal politics, and conferences of an organization that I don’t belong to. But I am interested in what they have going on in their lives, so I don’t mind—and actually enjoy—being a fly on the wall as they go back and forth about it. I imagine if I received a “Hey, I’m parking” message while I sat at home, I’d think, “I wish I were there! Have fun!” and probably text that, along with, “Send me a picture!” because I like them. Scrolling through the messages of people you like is no less interesting than scrolling through the rest of the internet.

What you’re dealing with is perhaps the lowest-stakes example of the mantra: “The cost of community is inconvenience.” Except it’s actually not even inconvenient! If it’s too overwhelming to go back and read to find the messages that do concern you, just don’t. Someone will follow up if they really want a reply, and I don’t think that will bother you too much.

Classic Prudie

I believe my nephew is on a three-year journey of faking his college enrollment. His financially strapped parents have paid for all his “college expenses,” except for tuition. They also suspect something is up. They’ve asked me to help. Things are coming to a head because he now has to invent reasons why he didn’t graduate with his class in the spring. The first reason was a made-up study abroad program he had to finish that prevented him from finishing his last class. He faked a lot of it well but didn’t know he was given away by his cell phone still having the U.S. ring, even though he was supposed to be in Europe for the semester.

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