# Your daughter's love life is not your emergency > A mom wants her nearly 30-year-old daughter to stop picking disasters. Prudie says the real question is what the family did next. - Title: Your daughter's love life is not your emergency | Shortify - Summary: A mom wants her nearly 30-year-old daughter to stop picking disasters. Prudie says the real question is what the family did next. Punishing an adult child… - Keywords: dear prudence, family, advice, boundaries, estrangement, daughter's, love, life, emergency, Slate Magazine - Source: Slate Magazine — https://slate.com/advice/2026/09/family-advice-daughter-bad-taste-men.html?via=rss - Author: Jenée Desmond-Harris - Published: 2026-09-14T10:00:00+00:00 - Read time: 2 min - Topics: dear prudence, family, advice, boundaries, estrangement ## One creep in a room of ten A mother writes in about her daughter's taste in men. Put her among ten decent guys and one predator, and she finds the predator every time. > she will run right up to the creep and let him ruin her life ## The damage grew up too In high school it was heartbreak. As an adult it is her car, her apartment, her savings, and her career taking the hit. ## The car, twice A college boyfriend wrecked her car. The parents replaced it, she promised not to hand over the keys again, he wrecked that one too. She stayed. ## Drained by boyfriends One partner after another moved in and lived off her until the account hit zero. She quit jobs to follow men across the country. > only to break up before her bags are unpacked ## Home five times Since graduating she has moved back in five times. Each cycle: parents help her rebuild, she gets on her feet, the next boyfriend arrives. > her love life ruined her actual one ## The common denominator The daughter, nearing 30, says she is unlucky and there are no good men left. Her mother told her to look at what every relationship has in common: her. > there are no good men left ## Then it got worse Living with her sister, she started sleeping with her sister's boyfriend. Her sister threw her out. She lost the job she shared with him. ## Living in her car The parents said no to another return home. The family split apart. She calls them crying from a car she now sleeps in. They send money and wonder where it stops. > where does it end? ## Prudie splits the two issues You can refuse to house her, and anger about the cheating is fair. But the years of bad boyfriends caused you no harm, so why is that the charge sheet? > Nothing she's done has harmed you ## Cutting off is not a lesson Letting your daughter sleep in her car is not a correction that produces better judgment. It just adds homelessness to the pile. > cutting her off is not going to help her make better choices ## Ask the right question Sit down with your husband and name your goal for your relationship with her, not for her relationships with men. Then ask if this approach gets you there. > I don't think it will ## Look further back Prudie floats a harder possibility: is there something in her childhood that started the pattern of seeking love from people who treat her badly? > Did she go through anything especially difficult that harmed her self-esteem? ## Apologize while you can If anything in the family history needs an apology or repair, this is the moment for it. Not after she has stopped calling. > If there's anything you need to apologize for or heal from as a family, now is the time. ## Key takeaway Punishing an adult child for bad romantic choices does not teach better ones. Ask what you want your relationship with her to be, then act from that.