Gift receipt won’t solve this marital problem

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 04/01/2020 (2427 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Dear Miss Lonelyhearts: I got a whole box full of sex toys for Christmas from my young husband. Big deal! They were obviously meant more for him, than for me. I took them into the garage and put them on the top front shelf with the big box label showing, so he saw them when driving into the garage. Ha!

When he came exploding into the house and threw the box on the table, he said, “I paid $450 for all this stuff for you!” and I said, “You bought it for your own benefit, buddy. I never asked for this! I asked for a DECENT VACUUM.”

He then muttered that our three-year-marriage is so full of problems it has come down to “living like roommates in an antiseptic house.” I said he’s such a lazy slob I couldn’t agree and that he turns me off now because he seldom showers!

So, he grabbed the sex box and some clothes, and went to stay with his best buddy, who probably doesn’t want him there, anyway. I have zero desire for him now, and his box of plastic and motors. What should I do?

— Too Mad to Think Straight, Fort Rouge

Dear Too Mad: Please write back and tell me when this marriage started going off the rails, plus your top 10 complaints and his top 10 about you, if you can think of them. Then we have something to work with, just to start. 

Then you need to search out some marriage counselling. It’s often needed in the first years of marriage, as adjusting to living with another adult can be difficult. It doesn’t mean you don’t love each other, deep down, so counselling is worth a try, especially when you’re too mad to think straight and can’t talk anything out. 

Dear Miss Lonelyhearts: My wife has become a screamer, and not the nice kind, like a woman in ecstasy, but a fully abusive screamer. That means screaming, with terrible swearing, directed at our young teenagers when she’s angry. I didn’t suspect this about her when I married her, or I wouldn’t have signed on to be her husband.

She didn’t scream when we were dating, or when the kids were young. But her mother certainly did, and I took action. I shut her mother down big time by telling her I’d call the police for verbal abuse of her children.

My wife still doesn’t scream at ME, but she has started screaming like a banshee at our kids now they are in their teens, and giving her some back talk. I couldn’t believe she would start the abuse, formerly meted out to her by her mother. I won’t live with it — or have the kids live with it! 

I’d never hit my wife to shut her up, but I don’t how to get her to stop screaming like her mother, that old witch! 

The kids finally told me she screams at them all the time when I’m not at home. I got them to use their phones to record it. It was horrifying. Is she going crazy like her mother, I wonder?

Miss L., I’m not a poor man. I told my wife last night I’m going to have to leave her if this screaming continues, and I will invite our kids to follow me to my new place, as they are old enough to decide with which parent they will live. My wife cried herself to sleep, saying, “But I love you, I love you!“ Please advise me what to do ASAP.

— Scared It’s Like Mother, Like Daughter, North End 

Dear Scared: Your wife needs psychological help right away. No doubt she’ll go for help, rather than lose you and the kids. So, talk to your family physician and invite her to come. She needs a referral to a psychologist or psychiatrist who can work with her. And, consider this: Your kids could probably do with some help from the verbals lashings she has already given them, when you weren’t around.

Dear Miss Lonelyhearts: Well, I don’t know how to put this, so I’ll just confess. My old boyfriend, now 25, has moved back to Winnipeg and I want him back! 

I’ve been going with another guy the last two years, and he is very sweet. But my old boyfriend owned my heart and soul. He broke my heart when he decided to go adventuring in Europe and came back with a girl he met in Europe and started living with her in Montreal. He recently broke up with her, and came back home to live here.

Now, I stay awake thinking of him long into every night. My new guy, who lives with me, doesn’t know why I seem to be “spaced out” and sexually uninterested. Should I tell him the truth and leave him, not knowing if my old boyfriend would want me back?

— Second Chance at Love? South Winnipeg

Dear Second: What this tells you is that you’re NOT in love with the new boyfriend and should set him free.

As for your chances with the old boyfriend — don’t count on anything. He chose to leave you before, and certainly didn’t come running back to see you when he landed in Winnipeg. Maybe he’s just back because this is his hometown. But, you and I both know you’re going to take another run at him. It might help your chances if you were free for a time, and he found that out, before you give him a call and ask to see him.

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

   Read full biography