Spouse’s plastic surgery disturbing

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 09/04/2017 (3447 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Dear Miss Lonelyhearts: My wife has been sneaking off and getting a lot of cosmetic surgery, and she’s starting to look a bit tight in the face. She makes a lot of money so I have no complaints and no say about anything, ever. (That beats my old wife’s antics: she never kept a job for long and liked to gamble. She sucked me dry.)

Anyway, I made the big mistake of telling my new wife — to be helpful — that she should take a break from the cosmetic stuff. Her face has no lines now and is starting to look like a mask, but now she doesn’t want me to look at her.

I can’t tell her it looks like things are starting to relax now because it’s too soon and it isn’t. What do you think? — In Big Trouble, Winnipeg

Dear In Big Trouble: It’s interesting you use the term “sneaking off.” Have you criticized her before about this? What is it you want out of this? You harshly criticize both your present wife and your last wife to me in your letter and I wonder about the words you use.

If you were gentler with your present wife, she would feel she was beautiful and appealing to you and maybe take some suggestion about slowing down on more surgery without being hurt by your words.

Are you hoping to get your wife to look at you again? She must feel very self-conscious now. Are you thinking she may leave? It’s time to go for marriage counselling, or you may lose her.

Dear Miss Lonelyhearts: I’m sad to hear my wonderful neighbours are moving, but it gets worse: a known quantity is buying their house and moving in.

This family is living across the back lane from me, which is bad enough, but now they’re going to be living right beside me. I can’t stand the husband: he’s a drinker, a bully and a braggart and I suspect he beats his wife from the way she walks around wearing dark glasses.

They have loud teenage kids with rattletrap cars. I want nothing to do with them and there will be no division between their yard and mine.

I can afford to build a fence, but it’s a lot of work and expense and what if he wants to fight me over it? My wife says I’m scared of him and she might be right. — Little Guy, Selkirk

Dear Little Guy: You have the money to buy the privacy you’ll need, so don’t make the mistake of being cheap on this point.  You already know you can’t stand the guy and don’t need to wait for proof about why you hate him.

Go over and tell him now you’ve been planning for a year to build a nice fence this spring and ask him if he wants to pay 50 per cent. He’ll probably say no, which means he will let you build the fence without a fuss as long as it’s not one inch over his property line. Then build a fence you can’t see through, and plant tall bushes inside it.

As for big, bad teenagers, with any luck they’ll be gone in a few years, especially since the family sounds unhappy. Plant half-grown bushes inside the property line in the front yard, and you’ll only have to hear the noisy cars, not look at them.

Please send your questions 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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