Help! Must I Tell My Wife About This Thing That Happened With Our Son?

This is an advice column. I, Ben Dreyfuss, have neither a wife or a son.

Photo by Vinicius "amnx" Amano on Unsplash

Let’s do an advice column! If you need some advice, please shoot me an email at helphelphelp@calmdownben.com.

I Let Our Son Get Drunk. My Wife Will Be Mad. Must I Tell Her?

Dear Calm Down,

My wife and I met in high school and fell in love despite having somewhat different teen experiences. I was a jock and a partier. She had strict parents and was studious, shy, and buttoned up. She didn’t consume alcohol or smoke pot until we got to college. (We went to the school to be together.)

Our son was born while we were at college. That was hard, and I don’t recommend it. We’re now in our mid-thirties, and our son is 16. The summer before he entered high school, she and I talked about which path we thought he was more likely to take. She did not want him to spend his teens in a drunken stupor the way I did. Though I think I turned out fine, I love her, and as a concession, we agreed to make a deal with our son. If he made it through all four years of high school without drinking alcohol or doing drugs, we would give him $10,000. 

We both have good jobs and are financially well-off, so we’re going to pay for his college no matter what and give him an allowance, but the $10,000 would be something he could do whatever he wanted with.

He is now a junior in high school, and to the best of our knowledge, he kept up his end of the bargain for the first two years.

Since January, I have been consulting for a firm abroad. It’s been hard. I miss both of them. I was very excited when my son decided to come to visit me for his spring break. Unfortunately, when he got here, he was being a teen. He kept whining about missing his friends and wasn’t interested in doing any of the sightseeing I had planned. This was very disappointing to me since I’d been looking forward to his visit.

On his final night, we went out to dinner, and I ordered a drink. He joked about how in this country, you only need to be 18 to drink legally. He bet me that since he looks a little older than he is that if he ordered a drink, he wouldn’t get carded. For whatever reason, I agreed to this. Sure enough, they did not card him. 

Once it was at the table, he playfully at first but then seriously asked if he could have it without breaking the $10,000 contract. This was the first time he had been anything other than annoying on this trip, and so I said yes. He drank it. I stopped paying much attention but noticed by the end of the meal he was drunk. When the check came, I realized he had ordered a shot and another beer when I was in the restroom.

I did not call him out. The next day he flew back to the US.

I know I need to tell my wife about this, but my question is: do I need to tell my wife about this?

—A bad dad but hopefully not too bad husband

Dear Man Who Hasn’t Gotten A Divorce Yet,

Before anything else, I need to tell you never to mention that detail about him ordering drinks while you were in the bathroom. Ever. To anyone.  You didn’t call him on it in the moment, and it doesn’t make anyone look good. If you did mention how there were more drinks on the receipt, people would reasonably point out that there are other ways that happened. It isn’t conclusive evidence, and you missed your chance to get him to admit it in the moment.

Put the receipt in a safety deposit box and bring it up to him when you’re a grandfather and he’s complaining about his own kids if you want. But otherwise, just forget it ever happened.

Ok, moving on:

There is no way around this: you screwed up. You’re in a bit of a pickle.

In a vacuum, letting your dumb 16-year-old son have a drink or even a couple of drinks isn’t necessarily bad. I think you understand this. But you don’t live in a vacuum. You live in a home with your wife and son (most of the time). You and your wife made a deal with your son. No one made you make that deal. Your wife might have been the motivating force behind it, but you are a party to the contract.

At this dinner, you gave your son a one-time pass to violate the contract. Whether he had one beer or snuck a few more when you weren’t looking is the sort of legalese nonsense that makes people roll their eyes at lawyers. The important fact is: your son has now had alcohol but he has not violated the contract.

Let’s walk through your options: