Take level-headed approach with mom’s neighbour

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 04/02/2021 (2026 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Dear Miss Lonelyhearts: My old mother is a dear person who is nothing but nice to her neighbours. But there’s this one old witch who lives next door who has taken it upon herself to bombard my mother with complaint notes on her door.

She complains about Mom’s garbage, her lack of recycling, letting her cat out in the park nearby and her little dog barking too loudly. Plus, Mom’s driveway is full of snow because she doesn’t drive in the winter. Not that old witch’s business, is it?

I want to go and pound on that neighbour’s door and yell at her for her bullying and harassing my mother. Trouble is, she’s just the type who’d call the police and get me in trouble. My mom is too timid to stand up for herself. What do you suggest?

— Angry Son, South St. Vital

Dear Angry: This neighbour’s constant spying and harassing has a feeling of stalking and bullying. Don’t try to handle it yourself. Collect all the nasty notes and make a list of each incident and approximate dates with your mom’s help. Then contact a lawyer who could send a stiffly worded warning letter to this neighbour to stop harassing your mother.

She needs to be ordered to stop spying, to stay away from Mom’s property and cease any contact or find herself in legal trouble.

The lawyer may not be able to stop the woman’s bullying of other people (she may have others on her list) but at least the focus will be off your mom. She will no longer be “easy pickins.”

Dear Miss Lonelyhearts: This is in regard to “Father-to-be” who wrote about his wife secretly going off the pill and getting pregnant after they’d agreed not to have children. That went beyond a difference of opinion into irresponsible and damaging behaviour.

Consider the opposite — a husband who’s been poking holes in condoms for months. Still feel like he should just get over it and get on board?

If the two parties are consenting to protected sex and one secretly removes the protection, it’s called “stealthing.” There are bills under review in multiple American states to make stealthing a prosecutable offence.

— Concerned, Manitoba

Dear Concerned: In this case, the wife — half of a loving couple — did a sneaky thing. The husband who wrote said that when they had two good careers going that “we’d kind of decided, though not 100 per cent, we wouldn’t have time for raising children.”

Suddenly the wife lost half her work to the pandemic and her tension headaches stopped. She decided on her own to try for a baby.

Hubby says he loves his wife, but wishes he’d been included in the decision making back then.

He’s not planning on leaving the marriage. So, being a realist, my advice was to accept this baby that’s coming, and try to enjoy it.

The child may turn out to be the right thing in the end for both of them. A surprising number of babies were not planned in this world, and the parents end up loving them.

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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