Reflect on troubled marriage in the new year

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 20/12/2019 (2442 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

DEAR MISS LONELYHEARTS: Last year, I gave my wife an expensive vibrator with lots of gadgets for Christmas, which I sadly found in the garbage a few days later. She meant for me to see it! I was hurt and mad and hid it in a back room at my small business. I don’t know why, but it gives me some satisfaction to have it near me and saved.

This year, I don’t know what to give her, and I’ve waited to the last minute. I guess she’s getting a fuzzy old-lady robe — just her style. Our sex life has been almost nil since last year. I used to think I loved her, but what she is to me is a homemaker, cook and housecleaner. God knows she doesn’t work at anything that would bring in money, and our kids are all gone.

I’m looking at 2020 as a life-changing year for me. Every day, I stare at the locked filing cabinet with the vibrator and think, “I don’t want to be a lonely married guy.” Miss L., I’m pretty sure I’m not going to get back the warmth, fun and passion with this wife. I’m a fit, healthy “nice guy” — not even 50 yet — and I see lots of women at my work and the gym. I don’t know how much longer I can last, faking this marriage. Help!

— Rumblings of an Earthquake, St. Boniface

Dear Rumblings: Take your marriage into counselling in January, and go alone the first few times. Get it all out on the table, including the vibrator story. Your wife will be upset, and no doubt she’ll come to sessions when she hears they’re happening. Be warned, she will have some serious complaints about you, too!

Maybe you can clear away the problems and the passion will flow back in — or maybe you can’t. At least you need to give it a genuine try, so there are no regrets if you leave. Divorce hurts worse than you can imagine right now.

Hot tip: if you want her to come for counselling, the “old-lady bathrobe” won’t make her see any reason to go. How would you like a snow shovel for Christmas? Same cold, angry message when a marriage is getting ugly. For your wife’s Christmas present, add some red roses, just for old times’ sake, and to make her feel there’s some hope when it comes to talking to you.

Dear Miss Lonelyhearts: I just read the letter from Single Mom in Pain. She wants her daughter to have nothing to do with meeting her birth father this Christmas, nor to be having Christmas dinner with him and her grandparents. The daughter has declared she’s going! The birth mom (it was a teenage pregnancy) has been invited to dinner, too. You urged her not to hide, but at least meet the dad at the door, and see how she feels when she sees him again.

Though dad paid support all these years, I suspect mom thinks she has given her daughter everything, and does not want the father in her daughter’s life. If she maintains this stance, the daughter may pull away and move in with her dad. So, I suggest mom meets with dad before Christmas to pour her heart out, explaining why she made the decisions to keep him totally away, and how she didn’t understand how much her daughter needed to know her dad.

Maybe going for Christmas dinner with dad at his parents’ (who still live nearby) might be too stressful for mom, but she could pick up her daughter later, and stay for coffee and cookies. If she plays her cards well, she could have a happy daughter with a good relationship with both parents, and who knows what the future might be for mom and dad! (For some reason, he seemed eager to have the girl’s mom come to dinner, too.)

— Hoping Mom Sees Reason, Winnipeg

Dear Hoping: That would be a lovely fairy-tale ending, especially at Christmas, but mom has so much to answer for — to this man and the grandparents — that I doubt she’d agree to a formal dinner, just like that.

I hope she’s courageous enough to greet the birth dad at the door when he comes with a pleasant “hello” and “have a nice time.”

That’s about all one can expect, but maybe there will be a ceasefire, civility and the start of a friendship in years to come.

Dear Miss Lonelyhearts: This letter from Single Mom in Pain really hit me, as a fellow from work told me a girl tracked him down as her birth father and phoned him. He said his world turned upside down, but he decided if this child was his, she was entitled to speak to him. She was living in the U.S. with her adopted parents, had a happy life and was getting married in a few weeks, and wanted to meet him soon.

He had to tell his wife, and at first “all hell broke loose,” but in the end, they planned a quick trip to the U.S. As soon as he saw the girl, there was no denying the truth she was his.

They returned to the U.S. for the wedding as special guests, and have been in contact ever since. Too bad more stories couldn’t end so well!

— Hopeful This Will, Too, Winnipeg

Dear Hopeful: I’m with you! Single Mom in Pain has the power this Christmas to heal a longtime rift, but also the power to turn her back and make everything awful for her daughter. We can only hope she writes back to tell what happens this Christmas, as a lot of readers will be feeling for the whole family — birth mom, birth dad and the paternal grandparents, who will be meeting their granddaughter for the first time.

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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