Stranger on plane helped ease his pain

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 06/04/2016 (3513 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Dear Miss Lonelyhearts: I was sitting alone on a plane this week feeling depressed and suicidal. I had just found out my wife was in love with another person (a woman). My eyes were red from crying the previous night. Suddenly, this woman popped down beside me — she said her seatmate was snoring. She asked me what was wrong. I was too weak to resist her sympathy and spilled my guts: my job requires weekly travel and my wife said she was so lonely that one of her old girlfriends had become her lover. She told me to quit my job or else, and I refused. I told her it was my career that I went to university for seven years to get and couldn’t quit. My wife said it was all my fault that she had a lover, and decided to leave me.

The stranger took my hand and said to me, “I was in your wife’s position once,” and told me she tried to make her decision to cheat the entire fault of her then-husband, who was busy and away like me. She said the truth was that she was somewhat lonely, but she was also sick of him for many other reasons. She found someone new, blamed her husband for the whole breakup and looked like the victim.

She noted I had always been a traveller for my work, and asked what else had been added to the relationship stew. She asked about the lesbian friend. I told her my wife and her been been lovers back in college, before she met me. The woman had just become single in the last 18 months after her wife left her. It was an illumination! I felt the burden of guilt lifted off me. I knew I would be able to accept the breakup and survive.

As quickly as she arrived, the woman was gone. I didn’t see her get off the plane, though I looked everywhere. She had just disappeared into thin air. Was she real? Had I been dreaming? I don’t think so. Then I wondered: was she an angel sent to me in my time of need? What do you think?

— Totally Dumbfounded, Downtown

Dear Totally Dumbfounded: Fate, an angel, luck, a dream, who knows? Sometimes things happen in life and we just don’t know why. We can only be grateful the intervention did happen, and look for a chance to pay it forward. Once you want to find a way to help someone, you awake from the busy-life trance and start looking around. You’ll see all kinds of opportunities. The lesson you need to take from this failed marriage is to wake up, and from now on, pay attention to relationships outside your love of work.

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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