Every few months, an advice column quietly drops into the culture and suddenly everyone on social media is talking about it. The Washington Post’s “Asking Eric” letter about an ex-military husband who has abruptly started dressing like a cowboy is one of those pieces: strangely specific, unexpectedly tender, and surprisingly revealing about marriage, masculinity, and aging in America.


Illustration of a man in cowboy attire standing in a domestic setting
Promotional illustration used by The Washington Post for the “Asking Eric” cowboy cosplay column. Image © The Washington Post, used here for contextual commentary.

On the surface, it’s about “cowboy cosplaying”—but underneath, it’s a story about control, comfort, and how weird it can feel when someone you thought you knew reinvents himself 30 years into a relationship.


The Column in Context: Military Uniforms, Cowboy Boots, and Midlife Reinvention

The letter writer, married for nearly 32 years to a retired military man, describes a husband who spent decades in regulation uniforms and standard-issue boots. Now, post-retirement and working as a civilian, he’s suddenly pivoted to a full Western look: we’re talking cowboy boots, hats, and the kind of “I’ve been watching Yellowstone” energy that makes spouses everywhere tilt their heads.

The tension isn’t just about fashion. It’s about a partner watching someone she’s known for decades adopt a new costume—and worrying that it signals a deeper identity shift. Is this a harmless aesthetic phase, a midlife crisis in leather, or a sign of something more unsettling?

Advice columns have always doubled as cultural documents. From Dear Abby to Carolyn Hax to Slate’s Dear Prudence, they track how we talk about relationships, class, gender, and taste. “Asking Eric” fits squarely in that tradition, using one man’s cowboy era to explore who gets to change inside a long marriage—and who has to live with the fallout.


What “Asking Eric” Actually Says About the Cowboy Cosplay

Eric’s response threads a needle between common-sense reassurance and gentle provocation. He isn’t alarmist about the husband’s new look, but he doesn’t treat it as trivial either.

While you’re focused on the hat and boots, what you’re really telling me is that your husband has started acting like someone you don’t entirely recognize.

That’s the emotional core of the letter: not “my husband’s outfits are embarrassing” but “my husband feels different, and I don’t know where I fit in that new picture.”

Eric leans on a few key points:

  • Clothes as coping mechanism: After a lifetime of strict uniforms, the cowboy look might be less fantasy and more freedom—his way of trying on a less constrained self.
  • Identity vs. costume: The advice nudges the letter writer to separate aesthetic cringe from genuine relationship concerns: Is he pulling away emotionally, or just shopping at a different section of the store?
  • Communication over silent judgment: Instead of mocking or quietly resenting the change, Eric gently suggests curiosity: have you actually asked him what this look means to him?

The tone is characteristically Washington Post: measured, literate, and lightly amused without punching down at either spouse.


Cowboy Cosplay and the American Imagination

The husband’s sudden turn to cowboy aesthetics isn’t happening in a vacuum. Western iconography has long been a shortcut for a certain kind of American masculinity: independent, stoic, outdoorsy, and just dangerous enough to be intriguing.

Cowboy hat hanging on a fence in a Western landscape
The cowboy look has shifted from functional workwear to a flexible aesthetic—part nostalgia, part fantasy. Photo via Pexels (royalty-free).

From classic John Wayne films to Taylor Sheridan’s sprawling TV universe, the cowboy is less a job and more a mood board. For a retired servicemember, the move makes a certain emotional sense: it’s a lateral slide from one uniform of masculinity (disciplined soldier) to another (rugged rancher).

That’s what makes the column culturally interesting: it’s not simply about taste, but about how deeply these archetypes are embedded. The husband isn’t inventing a persona out of thin air; he’s borrowing from a century of Hollywood and country music mythmaking.


Long Marriages and the Shock of Seeing Your Partner Change

One reason the column captured attention is that it speaks directly to a late-life relational anxiety: how much is your spouse allowed to change before you feel like you’re married to a stranger?

Long-term relationships mean revisiting who your partner is—sometimes more than once. Photo via Pexels (royalty-free).

The letter implicitly raises a few core questions:

  1. Are you in love with a person, or with a specific version of that person?
  2. When someone sheds one uniform—military, corporate, parental—what comes next?
  3. Is discomfort with a partner’s new look really about fear of the future?
You don’t have to love the boots. But you do have to be honest about what else they stand for in your mind.

Eric’s framing encourages the letter writer to move the conversation from “I hate your hat” to “I’m trying to understand what this change means for you—and for us.” It’s quietly radical advice in a culture that often treats style as superficial and midlife reinvention as inherently cringe.


Is the Cowboy Era a Red Flag—or Just Questionable Fashion?

To Eric’s credit, he avoids turning the column into a diagnosis. He doesn’t leap to “affair,” “crisis,” or “personality collapse,” even though the internet loves that kind of heightened reading. Instead, he treats the husband’s new aesthetic as a data point to be explored rather than a symbol to be decoded once and for all.

From uniforms to personal style: when one partner evolves, the other has to negotiate that shift too. Photo via Pexels (royalty-free).

At the same time, the answer doesn’t dismiss legitimate discomfort. Living with someone who is suddenly in costume 24/7—cowboy, biker, crossfitter, “crypto guy”—can feel like sharing a house with a brand instead of a person.

  • Strength: The column validates the letter writer’s unease without mocking the husband’s taste or pathologizing his style.
  • Weakness: Readers who want firmer guardrails (“this is normal,” “this is a sign of deeper trouble”) might wish for a more concrete threshold between quirk and concern.

That ambiguity is partly the point. The advice is less about issuing a verdict and more about encouraging an honest conversation—one that could apply as easily to a new religion, hobby, or political stance as it does to a cowboy hat.


Where “Asking Eric” Fits in Today’s Advice Column Landscape

The Washington Post’s “Asking Eric” joins a crowded field of modern advice columns that blend emotional intelligence with cultural commentary. Unlike some more sensationalist formats, Eric’s tone is closer to a thoughtful friend who reads a lot than to a reality-show confessional host.

Person reading an online article on a tablet at a café
Advice columns have become a key part of digital culture, blending personal drama with social commentary. Photo via Pexels (royalty-free).

In this cowboy column, you can see a few hallmarks of the current era of relationship writing:

  • Therapy-adjacent language: Questions about “what this represents” and “how you feel” rather than quick-fix rules.
  • Cultural fluency: An awareness that cowboy cosplay isn’t just about boots; it’s about media, nostalgia, and identity.
  • Empathy for both sides: The letter writer isn’t the hero, and the husband isn’t the villain—they’re two people renegotiating a shared life.

For readers, part of the draw is voyeurism—the safe thrill of observing someone else’s domestic weirdness. But the best columns, including this one, subtly invite self-audit: how would you react if your partner suddenly changed their whole vibe?


Key Takeaways: What the Cowboy Column Is Really About

Strip away the hat, and the column lands on some surprisingly universal points:

  • Style is rarely “just style.” Clothes can be armor, rebellion, or a way of rewriting your story after a major life transition like retirement.
  • Long-term relationships require version updates. You don’t stay married to the exact same person for 32 years; you stay married to a succession of evolving selves.
  • Talking beats silently judging. Whether you’re the cowboy or the one side-eyeing the boots, unspoken resentment is a bigger problem than questionable fashion.
  • Cultural fantasies shape real lives. The Western archetype still has enough pull that an ex-soldier can slide into it like a second uniform.
The real plot twist isn’t the cowboy look—it’s whether the couple can talk honestly about what it represents. Photo via Pexels (royalty-free).

Final Thoughts: Beyond the Boots

As entertainment, the “Asking Eric” cowboy column is fun: it’s vivid, specific, and tailor‑made for group chats and quote‑tweets. As commentary, it’s quietly insightful about how people reassemble themselves after a structured life—especially ex-military folks navigating civilian identities.

The piece doesn’t tell readers whether to embrace or banish the cowboy era. Instead, it suggests a more interesting project: use the boots as a conversation starter, not a verdict. In a culture that often screams about “red flags,” that measured approach feels oddly refreshing.

Whether your partner’s latest phase is cowboy, cottagecore, or marathon runner, the real question isn’t “Is this cringe?” but “Can we be curious about each other’s changes instead of afraid of them?” On that front, Eric’s column earns its viral moment—and gives readers a surprisingly thoughtful script for the next time someone in their life shows up in a brand‑new hat.

You can read the full column, “Column | Asking Eric: Ex-military husband suddenly dressing like a cowboy,” at The Washington Post.