Don’t waste energy on holiday hustler

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 06/01/2020 (2429 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

DEAR MISS LONELYHEARTS: Over the Christmas holidays I had a passionate 10-day romance with a man who was visiting his family in town, but staying in the hotel where I work. We were so immediately struck with each other the romance went on from Day 1 of meeting him until the day he left on an airplane to fly back to his home city. But, I haven’t heard one word from him since.

I was sure he’d phone me on his cell as soon as he was on the plane. I can’t even get him now.

When I had asked about his workplace all he said was he was a “boring accountant, nothing to talk about there” and we went back to making love and having fun together downtown and at The Forks. Miss L., I feel like I have been ghosted!

Yesterday, I was so frantic I went to his parents’ address. He did go there for Christmas dinner and told me where they lived just out of town. No one answered the door. What do you think is going on? Was I just holiday sex? Could he be married? Why didn’t he stay at his family’s house? I don’t understand.

— Totally Shocked and Hurt, Downtown Winnipeg

Dear Hurt and Shocked: My best guess is he’s involved with someone in the place where he lives, though not married, as he came here to see his family over Christmas and holidays and stayed 10 days. He can’t be all that close to his folks if he stayed in a hotel. That’s not what a married man would do at Christmas, or even a divorced man with children he’d want to see during the holiday season.

What can you do? Nothing. What is the point of tracking down a ghost who is so cold? No matter how wonderful a man or woman seems to be — charming, smart, sexy — they can be also be dishonest and unfeeling at the same time.

It’s very strange he stayed at a hotel for 10 days all alone. I can’t tell you why. In the final analysis, this man treated you badly. He dropped you like a rock after being intimate with you for over a week. Let him sink like a rock in your mind, too! He isn’t worth analyzing and certainly not worth chasing. He’s just a con man.

Dear Miss Lonelyhearts: I got the “turkey dump,” as people tell me you call it. I got the boot at Christmas, and it was the shock of my life. It seems the poor lady felt “eaten up with guilt” and couldn’t start the new year without telling me the truth.

She doesn’t want to get engaged anymore, which was in the works for Valentine’s Day. In fact, she wanted to disengage without even talking and trying to save the relationship.

She had the nerve to say she was “not interested in me physically” which shocked me because she’s so skinny she has no sexy body parts left, and I am well-muscled from daily workouts at the gym. She said “the spark is missing” and I suggested she has no sex drive because she doesn’t eat enough to keep a mouse alive.

Then she got into not wanting to move into my new house, and my aging mother “who drools.” Finally, I put my hand over her mouth, and said I’d be glad to break up on those points alone, and I didn’t want to hear anymore criticism.

Anyway, I walked out her door expecting to feel like crying, and I didn’t feel that way at all. I can only say I felt a strange relief. I walked for a long time in the snow trails by the river, thinking the tears would start to come, but they never did. I felt like a railway engine chugging along slowly with this relationship, but not even thinking of stopping it.

It wasn’t a great pairing as I look back. I did everything wrong, according to her. So now what? I’m not even in grief except I’m sorry for letting my own friends go, and taking on her family and friends. My ex ruled out my sporty social life. It seems I just stopped thinking in terms of getting together with my “jock friends”or having her join in with my family. Everything was about her, always.

The only thing that scares me is the loneliness ahead! I dropped all the friends of mine she didn’t like, and joined her group. I have nothing to go back to.

How could I have let that happen? And how did I let her beat down my self-esteem so I’d let her take over like that? What do I do with myself now?

— All Alone, Wolseley

Dear All Alone: It’s always good to invest in your heart and mind by having a few sessions with a relationship counsellor or a psychologist after a breakup. It helps you to untangle the reasons for the broken relationship, and can protect you from a selfish ex who can’t find somebody else fast enough, and comes back trying to pull you in again.

There’s a group you might be interested called Rebuilding When Your Relationship Ends. It has a good reputation for setting people back on their feet, and reconnecting them with a group of new friends. It’s a 10-week seminar starting Jan. 15. For information call 204-775-3484.

Also consider reconnecting with your own family and doing more things with them than going over for a nice Sunday dinner. Get some games out, take them to a concert, get to know any nieces or nephews you might have. Some day you will look back and be very glad this woman dumped 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.

Miss Lonelyhearts
Advice Columnist

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