Hit the brakes on driving lessons from mate

DEAR MISS LONELYHEARTS: I’ve been trying to learn to drive in busy traffic. My boyfriend said he would teach me, but he gets too playfully amorous while I’m trying to drive his new car in busier areas like downtown. He thinks it’s a big joke, but when I yelled that he was distracting me, he said, “Good.”

So I pulled over, slammed on the brakes and got out, thinking he would get back into the driver’s seat and drive us home, but he didn’t budge. He was being a real jerk.

I got back in, drove us to my place in silence, left the keys in the ignition and went inside and locked my door. Now we’re not talking and neither one of us is apologizing. What do you think?

— Still Mad, St. James

Dear Still Mad: Stop — you’re both in the wrong lane here. You need an experienced, objective driver — or better still, a trained driving instructor — to help get you up to speed on the road and learn to drive safely. Remember, lives are at stake — your own, your passengers, people in other cars and innocent pedestrians trying to cross the road in front of you.

As for your relationship, your man is so foolish he thinks it’s a laugh to flirtatiously distract the person driving the vehicle he’s riding in.

Bottom line? This may be a good fork in the road for you and this foolish boyfriend to go your separate ways, then you can sign up for professional driving lessons with an instructor who takes his job more seriously.

Dear Miss Lonelyhearts: My new girlfriend loves Halloween and has an old trunk full of costumes she’s collected from past years. I have just one amazing costume I wear every single year, and I look forward to it. It’s my Dr. Frank-N-Furter get-up — the character from The Rocky Horror Picture Show. I have an athletic body and enjoy hitting the tanning booth beforehand for a hot look.

My mate wants me to opt for something different this year — like joining her in wearing his-and-hers costumes. Ugh. I’m not ready to look like a matching husband-and-wife team.

I told her that and now she’s miffed. Should I cave in?

— Costume Hassle, Tuxedo

Dear Costume Hassle: Couples should dress up in Halloween costumes that suit them individually — especially in the early days of a relationship. You really should encourage each other to express yourselves and have some real fun with it.

You could even say, “I’d really love it if you surprised me with a costume that exhilarates you.”

Creative costumes can make for great conversation with a new partner. You two might be expressing hidden parts of your personalities or just bringing out the wild side of your senses of humour.

Dear Miss Lonelyhearts: I just saw a person from my past and she still looks dangerously beautiful.

This particular brown-eyed woman, who has haunted my dreams for years, relocated to the Maritimes years ago. I prayed she would stay there as it allowed me to finally move on, along with the help of seeing a therapist.

But now she’s back in Winnipeg in all her glory, and with an amazing new car.

I bumped into her at the garage where we both used to take our vehicles, and my mechanic rolled his eyes and said to me, “Yup, here comes trouble again.”

Shortly after we saw each other she phoned me, wanting to come over to get “reacquainted.”

How do I handle her this time around without getting hooked again?

— Past Boy Toy, North Kildonan

Dear Boy Toy: You may think you’re safe for now, but when you’re virtually addicted to something or someone, the problem can flare up all over again, even if you say to yourself, “OK, I’ll just give in one time. I’ll just have a little taste of this and move on again.”

It would help to seek professional advice again to have psychological tools at the ready to cope, so you should really consider seeing the person who helped extract you from the relationship previously — it worked for you once.

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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