Focus on revitalization, not revenge, with mate

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 01/06/2024 (864 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

DEAR MISS LONELYHEARTS: My 35-year-old husband hired a “mother’s helper” for the lake without my permission. He told me her name and that she was 17, graduating Grade 12 this month and a great swimmer. Fine.

But then, I asked to see a photo of her — and he balked. I knew something was up. I had her name, so I pulled out my phone and found her in an instant.

Oh my God. She looks exactly like the girl with the waist-length blonde hair who broke his heart in high school.

She also has that tall, strong Taylor Swift look and hot-red lips.

It just burst out of me: “That isn’t happening while I’m your wife, so phone her now and tell her it’s off!” My husband looked away for a minute, then he turned his back, and punched in her number.

I heard her voice loudly reply to him firing her. She was asking why and blamed it on me, muttering that I told him he had to do it and that he was sorry.

Now I don’t trust my husband anymore. To him, I guess I’ve become his plain-old wife or a tiresome mother figure. What can I do? I refuse to compete. What do you think?

— Feel Like Getting Revenge, Silver Heights

Dear Feel Like Revenge: Now the teenage hottie, who only looked like your husband’s old heartbreak, has disappeared from your lives, a better reaction would be, “Whew, dodged that one. Now we need to go into repair-and-rediscover mode as fast as we can.”

To get into that way of thinking and feeling, go back to the time when you and your husband were cosy intimates. How did you talk to each other then? What special things did you do together, alone? What did you wear to turn each other on? What were your shared dreams for the future? What little gifts did you buy for each other?

If you still want this man in sensual ways, it won’t take much to turn your husband’s eyes away from a teenage babysitter’s exterior looks and back to the real love of his life.

Dear Miss Lonelyhearts: My husband and I just went out to have a closer look at our slough on the edge of the small farm we just bought, mostly for growing flowers and certain plants that love this terrain.

We are retired and finally saved up to buy a little land in the country, but some of our friends in the city whose opinions we value think we’ve turned into nutballs in our dotage.

What should we say to them?

— Not Nutballs, southwestern Manitoba

Dear Nutballs: Why are people like you, who are starting to have lots of fun in a new way, worried about being thought of as nutty? You’re on your own little property, not hurting anybody, and your real friends will congratulate you.

Learn to turn a deaf ear to stuffy people. Enjoy the type of freedom children know.

While the adults are wasting time judging and trying to make sense out of every new thing invented, children just jump in and try more different things, making even bigger splashes with each experiment. That can be you.

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.

Maureen Scurfield
Advice columnist

Maureen Scurfield writes the Miss Lonelyhearts advice column.

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