Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with dilemmas

Would my roommate's boyfriend's surprise appearance be unwanted?

Anonymous — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 08:20:37 -0800

My roommate's long-distance boyfriend asked me to help him surprise her. But I'm afraid he might be the one who gets surprised, if she's sleeping with someone else (I'm not sure). What do I do? My roommate and I have been living together since September. We were assigned randomly (last year of college) and did not know each other before then. We get along well and are friendly, but we aren't friends.

She is from the opposite coast, and is in a long-distance relationship with a guy who still lives there. In October, he came to visit for about five days. I met him briefly and said hi, but we didn't talk. He stayed in her room (we have separate bedrooms). Everything seemed to be going well: they went out every night, she put tons of pictures of them together on Facebook, and they had loud (although brief) sex every night.

Earlier this week, he called me out of the blue and asked for my help. He wants to surprise my roommate by appearing one morning, but because the apartment we share is in a college dorm, he will need me to go downstairs, sign him in with security, and bring him up to the apartment we share. He will be flying in early Saturday morning and flying out late Saturday night (his family has a ton of money, much more than either she or I do). I thought this was an awesome, romantic idea and he was amazingly sweet and dedicated to think of it and to be willing to give up so much (not just money, but a lot of time and effort) to make it happen, so I agreed without a second thought.

Tonight my roommate brought another guy into the apartment late at night, made dinner for him, and hung out with him for hours, talking/joking about a lot of things, including explicit sex talk. Their conversation didn't include any obvious reasons for his presence (e.g. both foodies, or he wanted to learn how to make this meal, etc.). I thought I heard a few sounds of kisses, but they were cooking, so it could have been something else? This was all in the shared area, where I couldn't help overhearing. They also spent some time inside her room. At one point when they were in the kitchen, I went in pretending to get something. Nothing obvious was going on, but they were clearly physically comfortable with each other (touching, standing against each other when I tried to get by in a crowded space).

I have really good guy friends of my own, so I know that could be all he is, but among other things, we live so far away that friends don't want to come over -- they'll ask to meet at their places, or somewhere in between. Literally, in 3.5 months, neither of us has ever had anyone but sex partners visit the apartment. Between that, the late-night circumstances, the possible kissing . . . it seems to add up. But one thing against that interpretation is that when she was having sex with her boyfriend, she was very loud, but when she and this guy were alone in her room, I didn't hear anything, so that argues they were watching a movie or something not sexual. Still, if she was single, I would definitely assume that this was a date.

As it is, I have no idea what's going on. Maybe she's just realized she likes this guy better, and she's waiting to break up with the boyfriend in person when she goes back home for winter break. Maybe she's getting a little on the side and not planning on telling her boyfriend. Maybe she's sleeping with other guys so she can call her boyfriend and tell him every last detail while he jerks off. Maybe she's not even sleeping with this guy! Whatever it is, it's none of my business, and I wouldn't care at all if I hadn't agreed to help her boyfriend go to such great lengths to surprise her.

So what do I do? Call the boyfriend back and be like "You may want to reconsider"? Ask the roommate if she's interested in the new guy, and look incredibly offensively snoopy if they're just friends? Keep my mouth shut, go along with the plan, and have them both absolutely furious with me if she's done with him? The boyfriend is coming this Saturday, the 15th, and I'm sure he already has the plane tickets -- I have to decide fast!

Help Sophie Make a Choice

grumblebee — Fri, 02 Jun 2006 10:06:01 -0800

You're a single mother, with no living relatives except your twin daughters, who are both dying of kidney failure. You have one kidney to donate. Is there a moral/ethical philosophy that deals with such rock/hard place dilemmas? Maybe you can point out a loophole -- the mother could give both her kidneys, sacrificing herself to save the two kids. But work with me here, okay? (The mother only has one healthy kidney.) My point isn't about this specific dilemma -- it's about making choices in which, whatever you do, someone gets deeply hurt.

Another -- less plausible -- scenario: a madman holds your family at gunpoint and says he's going to shoot one of your kids in two minutes. He wants you to choose which one, and if you don't make a choice before the time is up, he'll shoot them both.

Or, more pedestrian: you're a middle manager who has been ordered to fire one of two people, both of whom have equal merit.

Sometimes the "someone has to lose" scenario is due to the complexity of a system. It may be that preventing environmental harm means forcing a company to buy expensive, eco-friendly equipment, which may hurt their bottom line, forcing them to fire workers.

Most moralizing I've heard assumes there's a correct answer -- or at least a lesser of two evils. But this dodges much of real life. The "wisdom" I have heard usually boils down to "we live in an imperfect world", which just describes the problem.

When there is no good choice -- yet one has to make a choice -- an option is to use randomness. But there's something so cold (though fair, I guess) about flipping a coin to see which daughter gets the kidney. It would feel, to me, like I was dodging the humanity of the situation. Truthfully, these situations are so horrible that the common way to deal with them seems to be denial. This could involve oversimplifying a complex problem (at least we're not hurting the environment) or justifying a random action (I looked into Lizzie's eyes and could tell she accepted her fate...).

One of the reasons I so hate politics is that it almost always involves this sort of denial. Almost any complex political decision is going to hurt someone, and (probably because admitting this would mean losing votes) the decision makers almost never deal with this dead on. ("We're going to stop the company from making massive lay-offs. Unfortunately, this WILL impact the environment...")

What have "the wise men" said about grappling with such dilemmas?

How do I go about collecting a debt from a (so-called) friend of the family?

Anonymous — Mon, 12 Dec 2005 13:50:48 -0800

I really need AskMefi's collective wisdom on this one. How do I go about collecting a debt from a (so-called) friend of the family? I'll try to keep the facts simple. Almost a year ago my wife lent some money ($3000) to a friend of hers in order to help fund her jewelry business. This money was supposed to be paid back within two months and was not. The reasons for this seemed understandable at the time. However a few months later my wife loaned her another $1000. The theory being that this was all the capital needed to get a return. (Said "friend" buys jewelery wholesale and then resells it at jewelry fairs around the country).

Now it gets messy. My wife gave this individual her credit card number in order to fund the wholesale purchase. In addition to the $1000 agreed upon there was an additional $1500 placed onto the card without permission. To make a long story short, very little of the money has been repaid - my wife has tried to resolve this in many ways short of calling the police. The issues are complicated by the following facts: we are not geographically close to this individual so we don't see her frequently; our young son and the individual's young son were friends before all this happened and lastly there is a strong suspicion that there may be drugs involved, meaning that we think she (and her husband) are psychologically addicted to pot. There is much evidence to support this- in addition to past observation there is always another excuse about the delay of money.

I have agreed to take over this issue from my wife. I see the complications with the initial $3k being that we only had a verbal agreement (which was a really bad idea I know). I'm really at a loss as to how to start getting back our money, which is around $5000 at this point. I feel like I have to make very clear to this individual that a plan is needed to return our money. At this point I would be happy getting our original funds back, never mind the "interest" we originally agreed upon. Any advice appreciated!