Get out and find the conversations you want

DEAR MISS LONELYHEARTS: I'm a late-20s successful intellectual having a hard time finding a match. I'm finding my dating experience odd in that conversations really take off with playful banter, drinking and stories of stupidity or silliness. Granted people can relate to this, but it makes for a lot of repetition and can be tiring in excess. Where are the city's great conversations? -- Looking to Learn, Southwest Winnipeg

Dear Looking to Learn: If you're not involved in the university anymore, get re-involved taking discussion-style courses such as philosophy or political science or film -- anything that truly interests you. Book clubs are good for conversation, too. If you're interested in mysteries and crime fiction (some intellectuals are) the Whodunit store has a lively co-ed one run by former professor Jack Bumsted. Following your interests, look for ways to get more passionately involved and you'll find like souls. For instance, if you like films, make a short one this year. You might want to join the Winnipeg Film Group, be an extra in some movies, take a film-acting course (Onalee Ames Film Studio has one). Whenever you are searching for knowledge that excites you, chances are high you'll have meaningful conversations with all kinds of people. If you suspect you're IQ is really high, you might want to test for Mensa, a world-wide group of people with IQ's in the top two percent, and attend some events. Check out www.ehow.com/how_5400352_mensa.html

Dear Miss Lonelyhearts: I'm sick to my stomach that my husband is travelling for his work, and seeing other women (I think!) As long as he was under my wing here at home he didn't dare go back to his cheating ways. I almost left him when our child was two, and he straightened out to keep the family together. He recently accepted a big promotion which involves weekly travel to his home city, and now he is gone two to three days a week. I don't trust him out of town. He claims he has matured and the things he used to pull as a young husband 20 years ago were born of immaturity and having married too soon at 18 (we had a baby already). In counselling he said he was acting out his desire to be young and free, even though he loved me and the baby. I think he's lying now, as I'm seeing the signs. I wash the contents of his suitcases when he gets home and they smell differently to me, like women's perfumes and colognes, cigars and weed. He says I'm imagining things. He forgets that's exactly what he said 20 years ago. I make good money myself now. Should I fly to Toronto unannounced and surprise him to find out what's going on? -- I Mean Business, Wpg.

Dear Business: This could backfire big time. How would you feel if he flew to another city to try to surprise you with a man? What if you weren't? What would you do -- camp outside his hotel room door? Try to bribe staff to let you into his room? If he's a smart cheater, he only gives you his cell phone number and doesn't stay in the hotel he names. If you arrived in the city where he was staying he'd have time to manipulate things before you ever saw him. Since you're seriously unhappy with the marriage again, and counselling worked the first time, insist on it now. Shine a spotlight on the problem by telling him you're not willing to live in what feels like a cheating situation where you can smell cologne and cigars and "good times' on his clothing. As long as you're just whining and sniffing, he isn't taking you seriously. Stand up and roar.

lovecoach@hotmail.com

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition October 3, 2012 C4