Making Bad Choices With Rain Phoenix: A Reader Worries "I Think I Hooked Up With My Best Friend's Husband."

Today's atypical relationship advice column involves this AJPTer's intriguingly bad situation involving her new friend and neighbor. PLUS How you can get Rain's help with your own dilemmas!

Hi there, Tuesday.

The person I would go to for insight about anything to do with my relationships would be Rain. I also might go to her for beauty tips or tips on brewing perfect tea, but those are not pertinent here.

I've known Rain for many many many years and, as was clear from when we published her first AJPT story here, lots of you know and love her also. So it is a thrill to debut the first ever installment of her recurring column where she answers AJPT readers’ questions with her unexpected and highly effective advice.

Often when I myself read advice columns, I just read the questions because I find them interesting and then skip past the boring predictable “expert” answers, but in this case, Rain’s answers and the way she writes (like she talks) with her very specific guidance - using what she knows and also what she doesn't know -is so refreshing and intriguing too.

I love you all and thank you for being part of the first “Making Bad Choices With Rain Phoenix.*” It was hard to choose which question to start with, but something about the fact that this reader went to the effort to sign off with what sounds like an “advice column” name, “Regrets On The Beach,” was extra touching. Ask your questions in the comments or, even better, send them to me at jane@anotherjaneprattthing.com, make them anonymous like “beach” did or not, and I'll pass them right along to my friend and yours, Rain, to answer in a more in-depth way in an upcoming column.

Love love,

Jane

*Rain and I really liked and laughed over all of your other column title ideas, especially the amazingly clever puns using her name in the headlines, and in the end felt like this one said it all the most clearly. We hope you like it and tell us if you don't! Or if you think yours was way better. Xo

Dear Rain,

22 years ago, when I was a senior in high school, my family took us to Mexico on Spring Break with a few other families. One night, my friends and I went on a “booze cruise” without the adults, and I met a guy there. We clicked (drunkenly but quickly) and then hooked up on the beach afterwards. (Not intercourse ... but it was hot and heavy and nobody had clothes on.)

It was one of the most romantic and sexually charged nights of my life up to that point. For years, I thought about this night and the guy. I never saw him again — I only knew his first name and a few personal details- but he was etched into my mind. I always tried to find him on Facebook and never did.

Fast forward to me, now, living in a big city, married with 2 kids ...

Last year, I met a woman, a mom in the neighborhood, who became one of my best friends. Our kids are very close and she and I talk about everything. Our families, including our husbands, became fast and easy friends as well. Recently, almost a year into our friendship, her husband (who happened to have the same name as the beach guy) shared a personal detail with me … and all the memories of that night came instantly flooding back. I am now so certain he is the guy from the beach.