A man fixed his wife's old computer and accidentally discovered that, in the months before their wedding, she was trading explicit FaceTime sessions and steamy emails with her ex while he was presumably picking out centerpieces and writing vows. He wrote to Dear Abby for guidance. Abby told him to have a conversation and maybe see a couples therapist. That's it. That's the advice.
The Emails Were Not Subtle
Let's be specific about what this man found, because the New York Post's coverage of the Dear Abby column published July 8 does not leave much to the imagination. The wife, a few months before their wedding, was exchanging what the letter describes as 'steamy back-and-forth emails' with her ex, identified only as Doug. Doug, for his part, was describing his sexual feelings in writing, complimenting her body, and detailing exactly what he planned to do to her. She played along enthusiastically.
They moved things to FaceTime, because apparently email wasn't quite intimate enough. The wife, showing at least some operational security instincts, told Doug never to text her. Doug, clearly not getting the hint about discretion, kept emailing afterward to describe what the FaceTime calls had been like. This went on for about a month and a half, according to the letter writer, who signed himself 'Betrayed in New York.' The name feels apt.
Doug lives in another country, so the husband confirms there was no physical meetup. He notes their marriage is otherwise good. He also notes, with what feels like admirable understatement, that this discovery is 'killing him.'
She Did Eventually Cut It Off
Here is where Abby hangs her hat, and to be fair to her, it is not nothing. The wife did end things before the wedding. When Doug kept emailing to ask why she'd gone silent, she gave him nothing. She blocked his number on her phone. By the time her husband walked her down the aisle, Doug was apparently staring at an empty inbox in whatever country he lives in.
Abby's read on this is essentially: she realized she was making a mistake and corrected course before the marriage began. The implication being that the husband should weigh this in the wife's favor. She stopped. She blocked him. She said 'I do' and has, as far as anyone knows, been faithful ever since.
That framing is not wrong, exactly. It is just doing a lot of heavy lifting for what was, by any reasonable measure, an extended emotional and sexual affair conducted in the final stretch of an engagement.
The Advice: Talk, and Maybe a Therapist
Abby's actual prescription, as reported by the New York Post, is threefold. Tell your wife you found the emails. Tell her how it made you feel. And if you can't process it on your own, see a licensed marriage counselor.
Look, this is not bad advice. It is technically correct advice. It is the advice a reasonable, measured person would give. It is also the kind of advice that feels slightly surreal when the situation is 'my wife was sending explicit FaceTime content to her ex six weeks before our wedding and telling him never to leave a paper trail.' The gap between the problem and the prescription is doing some work here.
To Abby's credit, she does not tell the husband to just get over it. She acknowledges his feelings are serious enough to warrant professional support. She just does it very calmly, in the tone of someone recommending a good plumber.
Meanwhile, in the Same Column, a Man Is Slamming Doors
The second letter in the same column, also covered by the New York Post, features a wife whose husband throws screaming, cursing, door-slamming tantrums over minor household inconveniences. The trash can gets knocked over and he loses his mind. The screen door is in his way and the neighbors can hear him yelling. His wife is exhausted and says she feels like she will have to live with this forever.
Abby's response here is genuinely interesting, and arguably more useful than some of the marriage advice she gives. She suggests the husband's rage might be 'displacement,' meaning he is actually upset about something else in his life and taking it out on the nearest object or person. She advises the wife to catch him in a calm moment, ask what's really going on, and listen.
This is solid pop psychology. It is also, notably, a more gentle framing than most people would extend to a man who curses and slams doors in front of his wife so loudly the neighbors can hear. The column calls it a 'short fuse.' Most people would call it something else.
What Dear Abby Actually Reveals About How We Talk About This Stuff
Dear Abby has been running since 1956, which means it has now been processing American relationship dysfunction for seventy years and counting. The column's whole deal is measured, non-escalatory advice, and in a world that runs on hot takes and outrage clicks, there is something almost radical about its commitment to 'have you considered talking to this person you married.'
But both letters in this edition, taken together, reveal something worth sitting with. The wife who ran an explicit emotional affair in the final weeks of her engagement gets framed around what she did right at the end. The husband who terrorizes his household with screaming fits gets framed around what might be causing his pain. Both framings have some merit. Both also leave the person writing the letter holding a fairly large bag.
The husband in New York found explicit emails on a computer he was doing a favor to fix. He did not go looking. He did not snoop. He was helping out and stumbled into the worst possible find. He deserves more than 'tell her how you feel and consider therapy.' He deserves someone to say, clearly: what happened was a serious breach, it makes sense that it is killing you, and you are allowed to decide how much weight that carries.
The Dingo Take
Here is the thing about advice columns: they are performing a service for the reader, not just the letter writer. When 'Betrayed in New York' mails his story to Dear Abby, he is not the only person reading the response. Every person who has ever found something they were not supposed to find is reading it too. And the answer they get is: be calm, communicate, seek professional help. Which, again, is not wrong. It is just extraordinarily tidy for a situation that is extraordinarily not.
The wife stopped. She blocked him. The marriage has apparently been fine for three years. Those are real data points. But 'she stopped before the wedding' is not the same as 'this did not happen,' and treating it like a minor historical footnote that a therapist can help smooth over sells the husband's actual experience pretty short. He found out his wife spent six weeks of their engagement doing explicit FaceTime calls with her ex and telling him never to leave a text trail. That is not a 'short fuse' situation. That is not a displacement issue. That is a thing a person did deliberately, repeatedly, and with some sophistication.
Abby's advice will probably help him. Therapy will probably help him more. But somebody needed to say out loud that what he found was genuinely bad before pivoting to the action items. That somebody is us, apparently, in a news article about an advice column, which is either a sign of how far we have come or exactly how far we have not.
