Build some bridges between quirky mate and kin

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This article was published 20/02/2024 (956 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

DEAR MISS LONELYHEARTS: My boyfriend and I love each other, though we have wildly different interests and opposite personalities. However, we both work in scientific fields and respect each other’s research, and he’s gentle and very funny with me.

I moved into his basement suite rental a year ago. We became friends, and six months later, I must confess I went after him — and we became lovers. We continue to live on different floors of his big house, still keeping our own suites for rest and recuperation. I love it this way!

My guy has additional privacy with an all-season heated garage and a poker room there for himself and his buddies. At one time, his garage used to be a summer bachelor pad, but he’s a one-love-at-a-time guy in recent years.

My mother asked recently, “What’s there to love when you two have nothing in common?” Not true! We both have full-time jobs in scientific areas we mutually respect. Also, he lives by an area of bush and trees and has rescued many birds and a few baby squirrels. I want to do this with him.

My brothers are both very critical, calling him “the mad scientist.” I’ve started keeping a distance from my family, but I’m starting to miss them. What can I do so my family and I can be closer, and so they will really like and accept my man?

— Missing Family Ties, Charleswood

Dear Missing Family Ties: Start by consciously building bridges from your family’s world to that of your new man. Invite your family out to dinner, without your guy. Casually tell the family all the things you enjoy about him. Then make it easier for them to socialize with him by briefing them on topics they could enjoy chatting about together. Bird and animal rescue is a topic that interests a lot of people these days.

You can soften the situation with your mother when you’re alone together by talking about the way your life has fitted together with this man’s. Help her to see the many sides of him, and how much you both care about each other.

She and your father might still worry he’s a perennial bachelor and wonder what the all-season garage room is really used for! Set your mom straight on that, and let her inform your dad.

Dear Miss Lonelyhearts: Help! I have a close girlfriend who’s being unfaithful to her husband. I now carry the burden of knowing she uses me as her cover when she’s with her other man. I hate that she’s told me the details of her affair.

I don’t like her husband one bit — he’s a creep — but I don’t like being used, either. I told her I can’t keep talking to her about it, and she said, “But then who am I going to talk with?”

Now what? She was a very close friend. She keeps phoning me and I’m not picking up — but I’m getting a rash over this! What should I say to her?

— Horribly Upset, Transcona

Dear Upset: It’s one thing to tell a close friend you’re having an affair, but quite another to use that friend as cover and for coaching. Next time she phones, pick up immediately. Tell her the deep upset is literally giving you a rash, and you won’t listen to any more details of her affair.

Before hanging up, suggest she talk to a marriage counsellor, a personal therapist and possibly a divorce lawyer. You will feel even better after doing that, and she will feel worse — but that might force her to get help.

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.

Maureen Scurfield
Advice columnist

Maureen Scurfield writes the Miss Lonelyhearts advice column.

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