His touching of another man a clear exit sign

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This article was published 18/04/2016 (3501 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Dear Miss Lonelyhearts: I was at a cocktail party with my boyfriend and I saw him run his hand over another man’s bum in a very familiar way, and the guy turned and winked at him. It wasn’t like a football player’s pat on the butt at a game, and my guy had initiated it! I took him aside immediately and said, “What was that all about?” and he pretended he didn’t know what I was talking about. I saw what I saw! Should I drop him? He’s the new guy in my life and very smart and handsome.

— So Upset, South End

Dear So Upset: You saw what you saw, and felt what you felt, and your new boyfriend told you you didn’t see anything. Wrong-o! You saw the exit sign. Don’t pretend you didn’t see it and play along with that game, unless you’re OK with the possibility of him being bisexual and possibly non-monogamous.

Dear Miss Lonelyhearts: My husband and I love to cook and bake. As a result we have grown another whole person between us — more than 100 pounds of fat. That’s 50 pounds on me since our wedding two years ago, and maybe 60-70 on him. We don’t have a scale. We come home every night and our hobby is to compete by cooking for each other. Then, he bakes late at night when we’re watching TV.

We eat normally through the day, and then we hit the stores on the way home and go crazy at night — drinking wine, snacking on appetizers then eating a full, fantastic meal with salads and the two entrees we made. My parents live in Toronto and hadn’t been with us since the wedding —the last photos they saw were honeymoon photos. They came to visit us last month and arrived at the door in a taxi. They took one look at us, and before my mother could help herself she said, “My beautiful girl, what have you done to yourself?”

We tried to laugh it off: “You get three hosts for the price of two, ha ha,” my husband said, but over the visit both my mom and my dad looked at me with worry. One night I just couldn’t take it and went into the bedroom alone and started to cry, and my mother came in and tried to comfort me. She said, “Honey, you’re going down a dangerous path. You’re going to be too heavy to get pregnant, and you’ll probably get gestational diabetes if you do.” She’s a nurse, so I suppose she knows. But, I lost it and screamed,”Leave me alone!” She and my dad left the next morning.

After that wake-up call, my husband and I can’t pretend anymore that we’re not obese, but we love to cook. That is our biggest bond. What if we can’t cook anymore? That’s our thing together.

— Fat and Not So Happy, Charleswood

Dear Fat and Not So Happy: You need a “vacation rehab.” Take a trip for two somewhere you can’t cook, and I don’t mean a cruise. Food has become the only entertainment for you, but you will rediscover living in many other ways if you aren’t in a position to cook for weeks — no suites with a stove, just a hotel room in a destination known as a great place for walking, exploring, swimming and going on sight-seeing tours. Get back into the honeymoon spirit in the hotel room, too. 

When you get home, you can still make cooking a small project if you learn how to cook lean-and-mean together and get active by going for walks right after dinner. Cooking doesn’t need to kill you. Forget the the competition, and learn how to cook in a way that helps you drop the pounds.

 Maybe you could put all those skills to use by testing recipes for a book for couples losing weight together, but you can only make one salad, one entree and one dessert between the two of you, per meal. Take photos of the food and take pictures every time you lose another 10 pounds. That’s a book I bet a lot of couples would buy.

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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