Don’t expect applause for sex-life choices

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This article was published 19/01/2019 (2480 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Dear Miss Lonelyhearts: I spent Christmas and New Year’s with my family and flew back home to Winnipeg a complete wreck. I’m still trying to get past their harsh criticisms and disapproval of my polyamorous lifestyle.

I have always believed in being open with my hippie parents, who, in the past, were more unconventional than me. Now, I am freer than they were, by a long shot. But who would have thought they’d disapprove of my polyamorous lifestyle? Me and a number of my closest friends are having multiple sexual and love relationships with the consent of everyone involved.

We’re all in our late 20s and early 30s, and none of us have children, but that seemed to be my parents’ big worry: “What about the poor kids? How will they know who their real parents are?” I am so shocked and disappointed with their judgmental comments!

I don’t want to go back there and visit again if they’re going to be like that. I feel deeply insulted.

— Hurt By My Hippie Parents, Winnipeg

Dear Hurt: You told them of your new lifestyle, confident you’d get the hippie seal of approval. If you’re going to live a sexual lifestyle outside the norms of your own “unconventional” parents, you have to learn to not look for approval — and to go about your life quietly, enjoying it and speaking of it only with other people who are into it.

Do you think young adults of the hippie generation didn’t get pushback from their parents? I remember getting into a personal war with my father during a visit home from university when he sarcastically called my brother John, with newly grown-out golden-red hair, Mary. Then, my dad made a crack about cutting John’s long hair when he was asleep — and I hit the roof. I seem to recall “over my dead body!” was my opening war cry.

Meanwhile, my mother was nervously making out a sleeping list. She put it on the kitchen table to try to keep girlfriends and boyfriends from getting together at night. It didn’t work very well. We all quietly crossed paths in the dark in the middle of the night.

We were starting to learn.

You can’t expect the generation that went before, no matter what their behaviour, to applaud the new generation’s sexual style and behaviour. It just doesn’t work that way.

Dear Miss Lonelyhearts: My boyfriend casually uses the word love, or calls me “Love,” but he never goes all out and says “I love you.” I finally took a deep breath and asked him why, and he said, “because you’re going away soon.” It’s true I’m going travelling, and didn’t invite him. I’m going with two of my girlfriends, and I don’t know what will happen.

He says he can’t afford to say “I love you,” which to him means marriage one day. On the contrary, I think a person should love hard, when it comes your way, and see what happens.

If we find we love each other enough, I’d come back to him and he’d come back to me after our time apart, and maybe get married. I just don’t know what to say to him anymore. Please help.

— No “I Love Yous,” River Heights

Dear No Love: Leave things the way they are. You aren’t taking him with you, and he deserves to be free while you are away. You may meet a number of young men in other countries with charming accents you’d like to spend some romantic time with, and your boyfriend needs the same freedom back home.

You have chosen to go away and leave this relationship, so you both need to simmer down for now, or it’s going to be a horrible breakup when you say goodbye and rip apart.

Better to leave it at, “Maybe we’ll commit some day, but for now, let’s be young and free.” That hurts, but it doesn’t involve deep “I love you” declarations. Maybe this is all he can handle without totally writing you off, so don’t be pushy.

Please send your questions and comments to lovecoach@hotmail.com or Miss Lonelyhearts c/o the Winnipeg Free Press, 1355 Mountain Ave. Winnipeg, MB, R2X 3B6.

Miss Lonelyhearts
Advice Columnist

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