Welcome to Dear Prudence. I'm your prudence, Janay Desmond Harris. Today, we're answering

letters about whether to reject invitations from friends with filthy homes, how to cope

when everyone at the office thinks you're a cheater, and what to do when you suspect

your ambitious partner is about to burn out, and you're secretly kind of excited about

it in my opinion. Here to help me out today is Candace Lim, the co-host of ICYMI Slates

podcast about internet culture. She comes to Slate from NPR, where she was an assistant producer

at pop culture happy hour. Welcome to the show Candace. Hi, I'm so glad to be here. Thank you,

thank you so much for joining me. I can't wait to get started with the letters, but before we dig into

them, I want to ask you the traditional question, which is, you know, you're never supposed to

give advice unless asked. That's kind of like a rule of our society, but I'm asking you to give

advice on any topic you want. What's an unsolicited thing that you just want to tell people about?

So, Janay, are you the type of person who, like, sends your friend's birthday texts on their

birthday? Yes. Have you ever kind of forgotten if your friend's birthday was today or tomorrow?

Absolutely. So, my advice probably works best in a bicostle or time zone differentiated friendship,

but basically, I'm on the West Coast and I have a lot of friends on the East Coast. I went to

college there. And so, let's say you are not sure if your friend's birthday is on Tuesday or

Wednesday and you're like, uh-oh, Facebook's down. I don't know what to do. Here's my advice. You

text them at 11 p.m. PT. Pacific time, okay? You say happy birthday. Don't say more. Don't say

yesterday, today, blah, blah. Either you get the date right and it's Tuesday and you just made it

under the clock and you're like, yes, or you're early. Yeah, the first one. And they're like, wow,

she's so early. She cares so much. She must love me. And it's like, yeah, I do. That's really good.

Thank you. That's really, really good advice. I actually have been thinking about birthday

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