You know who needs help? The sad sacks who divulge their personal details in the Times' Sunday Styles section each weekend. It makes sense to read their musings as desperate pleas for help and advice, right? We don't know why we didn't think of this before! (Pot.)

This week in Modern Love, we met Ada Brunstein, who takes turns leaving passive-aggressive personal artifacts in the house that her boyfriend and his wife used to share, which the wife still lives in with her boyfriend whenever Ada and her dude aren't there. This arrangement makes "sense" because of... something to do with being short on cash, and also cat custody. Oh, Ada. Honey. Let us brew you a nice hot cup of herbal tea. Oh, do you like it? Yeah, it's Celestial Seasonings' brand-new You Are An Idiot And You're Fucking Up Your Life Rooibos Blend.

Ada, here's how you describe your situation, after leading in with a terrible metaphor about toothbrushes (but I'm not here to give writing advice! Onwards!):

The separation of my boyfriend and his wife had been explained to me in all of its maddening reasonableness. There had been no betrayals, no angry words, no slammed doors. They had tried counseling. But after seven years, they thought there was nothing left to do but move on and move out.

Problem is, they moved on but didn't move out. Both have modest incomes, so she couldn't afford his share of the house, which is in a costly area. They had bought it only two years before, and he didn't want to sell it. So they moved to separate bedrooms and agreed to share custody of their cat.

Some months later, they each took up with new partners, the wife's boyfriend and me, in the same week. Which precipitated the following arrangement: When the wife and her man are at the house, her husband and I stay at my place. When they're at her boyfriend's place, we stay at the house.

Divorce is supposedly somewhere on the horizon. Meanwhile, the four of us have been living this way for almost a year.

OK, for starters. Why did you move in with someone you'd only been dating for a couple of months? Who's... still married, and shows absolutely no signs of actually getting that divorce? Who makes excuse for his passive-aggressive bitch of a wife when she basically lifts her leg and marks her territory?

A week later, she left her full-length Japanese dress dangling precariously from a hanger in the kitchen doorway for a full week while she was away. Normally I don't talk to him about these things. Men don't understand this kind of battle. But this time I asked him why she might have hung the dress in the doorway of the most used room in the house, and he said, "She didn't want to wrinkle it, I guess."

"Doesn't she have her own room for these things?" I asked.

"I guess there was no space," he said. Worse, he seemed to believe it.

Every time I entered the kitchen that week, I brushed close to the dress. It was hard to squeak by without touching it, but still I made a special effort. Sometimes it swung, but it hung on.

Ada. Aaaaaada. That divorce? Ain't happening. Also, even in the best of circumstances, and please read this next part closely because, guess what, it's the writing on the wall you and I and most people I know have been studiously, stupidly ignoring: People shouldn't cohabitate unless they're related by blood or marriage. How are you doing with that tea, dear? Ready for a refill?

The House of No Personal Pronouns [NYT]