Tell daughter to stop squealing on prolific brother

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This article was published 02/07/2019 (2652 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

DEAR MISS LONELYHEARTS: My only son, age 21, has a harem happening! Since his breakup with his high school girlfriend, he’s been seeing all kinds of girls/women off Tinder, to name one online place. How do I know this? His sister ratted him out. She says he’ll catch a disease, if he hasn’t already. I should mention she’s 23 and has no one in her life, and she’s pretty jealous. She spends a lot of time trying to spy on him.

He doesn’t live at home anymore so there’s no longer a constant parade into the basement room and girls’ shoes at the door — for his dad and I to stare at.

My jealous daughter is like a private detective with one client. Yesterday, when she brought up more evidence of her brother’s getting around, she used the “wh—ing” word. I let her have it. Finally, I asked her why she wasn’t spending more time on her own social life and less on her brother’s and she said, “He’s always been your favourite and you’d stick up for him even if he was selling coke.” I said, “Is he?” and she admitted she’d just said that to make a point.

I told her to start minding her own business and she proceeded to start packing. I thought she was moving in with a girlfriend, but she was just moving downstairs to his old bedroom in the basement to get further away from me.

She’s only talking to her dad now and he’s mad at me (she’s his favourite). I know I need to start talking to her again but don’t know what to say. Please help.

— Unpopular Mother, River Heights

Dear Unpopular: You’ve made your points, and she won’t forget them. You do need to say you’re sorry for the way you said things, that you love her as much as her brother, and leave it at that. It’ll be easier with her living downstairs.

You don’t say if she’s working, going to college or unemployed. How about paying some attention to what she’s doing education- and work-wise? Encourage her to create a cool space for herself and friends in the basement and if she hints she’d like to move out with some girlfriends, support her all the way. At 23, she needs to get launched herself, have some fun and enjoy a different kind of privacy outside the parents’ house, where walls have ears.

Dear Miss Lonelyhearts: My husband called me a bunch of names — not swear words, but hurtful just the same — and also said things about my no-good family, my crummy hometown and my mediocre talent as a musician. He got me a job in his buddy’s rental office and said if it weren’t for him, I’d still be a nobody shovelling fast food.

He’s not such a big deal himself; he works in an office adding up numbers. Little does he know that since he said those things, I’ve been warming up a friendship with another “nobody” musician. We’re not famous and never will be, but we sing very well together.

My husband is 30 and we have no children because I don’t want to have any with him. I don’t mind the regular athletic sex he has to offer, but I don’t feel that soft, mushy love you need to feel for a man to want to have his babies. He really wants to have a child right now. He says I’m holding out by taking the pill and that he can’t force me, but he wants to have a family with me. Why would he want to make babies with a nobody? Who knows what we’d produce.

— Not That Stupid! North End

Dear Not That Stupid: The baby of a loveless union would know a lot of misery. When parents knowingly have a baby in this situation, that child sees, hears and feels a lot of unhappiness from the fighting and cold silence. Since your love for this man is gone, it’s time to make music somewhere else.

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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