Husband needs to show love for your body

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This article was published 02/01/2017 (3256 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Dear Readers: Happy New Year! I hope you have a great year and find ways to make your wishes come true. I really enjoy reading your letters and finding different solutions for you to consider. Should you run into problems in your personal life, you can always write me, Miss Lonelyhearts, for an opinion. The contact information is always at the bottom of the column for you to use. Cheers! Miss L., a.k.a. Maureen Scurfield

Dear Miss Lonelyhearts: I made up a list of New Year’s resolutions and showed them to my husband. He laughed in my face. He said every year I make a resolution to lose weight and every year I get fatter. I was so mad, I told him, “And every year you hope to get more sex and because of the way you talk about my imperfect body, you get less. Looks like you’re going to get what you deserve again in 2017.” That shut him up, but now we’re barely talking. — Growing Colder and Colder, Winnipeg

Dear Growing Colder: It would be better if you were “bare and talking.” Let’s see if we can get that happening again. Write a hand-written note to him and give it to him just as he’s going out somewhere. It should read something like this: “I know you want more lovemaking in our relationship, like it used to be, but I can’t want that too unless you make me feel like you love my body. How do you really feel about my body — how it looks, how it feels to you? What exactly do you love about it? Please write back and make me feel like I want to get undressed and make love with you all night long.”

Good luck, and let me know how this goes. I have a feeling this just might work.

Dear Miss Lonelyhearts: I ate two days of hot dogs and stir fry in protest after so much turkey this Christmas. Why does everybody have to stuff you with turkey? I was invited to two dinners and a lunch where they served turkey and I went gobble-gobble-gobble all the way home. Isn’t it time people loosened up with this stupid old tradition? — Enough Already, West Kildonan

Dear Enough Already: You sound young, or just immature and single. You got three Christmas invitations — lucky you — and probably didn’t have to cook any of these “stupid” traditional meals. So, the next time you get invited, you bring a pot of meatballs, or your great stir fry. Show you are glad to be invited and want to pitch in. Be grateful, you goose! Which reminds me: next year you could host a holiday dinner and have everyone over to your place for Christmas goose, a different traditional Christmas meat.

Dear Miss Lonelyhearts: This letter is in response Once Bitten, Twice Shy (the woman who was tickled unmercifully, so she bit her boyfriend’s arm).

Tickling as described in the letter that woman wrote is physical abuse. Domestic abuse, and in this case public abuse, is unacceptable. Though I can’t condone the biting the woman did in return, she was cornered into a response reaction. At the end of your response you suggest that he might owe her a “wallop the next time there is a fight.” It sounds like you think he would be within his rights to do so. You should not print these words. This couple either needs counselling or the women needs to get out of an abusive situation. — Alex, Manitoba

Dear Alex: You missed out some all-important words I wrote and changed the whole meaning of my response to the lady. I said, about the big bruise the tickler was showing around to everyone: “He may feel he owes you a wallop and people would back him if he did let you have it, next time there’s a fight.” I certainly did not suggest he owed her a wallop, but that he was canvassing for sympathy for a possible smackdown at a later date.

Dear Miss Lonelyhearts: During the holidays, my husband and I did a lot of visiting with friends, shopping, etc. and I’m tired of hearing people saying things such as, “How are you guys doing?” Women are not guys. I know the word is used generically to address a group of people, regardless of gender, but I find being addressed as a guy to be rude, unprofessional, disrespectful and unacceptable.

I don’t correct people or remind them I’m not a guy. There are businesses I don’t shop at anymore because of the way staff address me. I don’t like hearing interviews on either TV or radio where the reporter uses the word guys when speaking with women.

Whatever happened to people being treated with respect and courtesy? Am I overreacting? I look forward to your comments and what your readers have to say. — Not a Guy, Winnipeg

Dear Not a Guy: Why has “you guys” been a favourite phrase? Because “what are you guys doing?” sounds chummier than “what are you people doing.” But, it really doesn’t fit, I agree, now that people are more sensitive. Just be patient. That phrase is going the way of the dodo bird and you don’t have to fight any fights.

“You guys” doesn’t bother most women, but I’ve noticed it is starting to die out as a phrase to use for both sexes and people of all sexual preferences. The straight, lesbian and trans women I checked with said the phrase doesn’t bother them, but it’s definitely out of date. Give it a year or so and I predict you will mostly hear it used among men.

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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