Cut hubby slack to bond with biological family

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 07/02/2021 (2062 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

DEAR MISS LONELYHEARTS: My husband and I used to have a very close relationship — the envy of all our friends. Now, we don’t! He made contact with his biological family and now he’s literally fallen in love with them. He’s on the phone all the time with them.

Without consulting me, he planned for us to go visit them in the town and countryside where most of them live “for maybe a month” when it’s possible. I protested that he didn’t even talk about it with me, and I have a job. We used to be so close, discussing everything, and mutual decisions were easily made. Get this — he said to me, sounding almost relieved, “It’s OK if you don’t want to go, but I need to go. This is my family!”

And I’m not his family? And how about his adoptive parents? We don’t have any children — there’s just us and some nieces, and my parents who live in Ontario. So I’d be left all alone at home for a month, if he went without me. What’s going on? It seems the great love he showered on me is now going to his bio family. He says his brothers want to take him fishing and hunting.

My husband is starting even to look different in the clothes he’s wearing — sporty like his brothers. It’s really weird when your artsy husband finds a different identity after so many years. Please help me! I don’t know how to react, and he’s drifting away.

— Feeling Abandoned, Winnipeg

Dear Feeling Abandoned: This is one of those hurdles that suddenly appear in a marriage — totally unexpected, like an affair, though not as deadly if you handle it right. Your husband is very excited right now, as you would be if things were reversed. He needs to know what his roots are. Your jealousy is understandable, but it’s making you grow apart.

If you want to get close again, you’ll have to stop resenting this wonderful addition to his life. It’s time to embrace his biological family. So tell him you’d love to meet his family, and you could get time off work and go for, say, two weeks or so, and he could stay the month if he wants. That would give him time to go hunting and fishing and whatever else the brothers want to do. Who knows? There could be some family reunions, and it could be a lot of fun.

This week, pull up a chair and get online with him when he’s chatting. That doesn’t mean “side-eye and a quick hi” when you pass him at the computer. Ask him to make you a little family tree of the people he now knows about, with a little detail about each one. And consider this — you get a bigger family and may forge some close bonds with different adults and children in the clan. It could be great for you.

You’re at a crossroads right now. If you get huffy — and some of that seems to have been happening — it could be dangerous for your marriage. Your beloved husband’s dream of finding long-lost biological family members has come true. Take part in his little miracle and be friendly and fun with his newly-discovered family, and he will love you all the more.

Dear Miss Lonelyhearts: I met a man on a cruise almost two years ago and had a really hot and exciting time together. We have kept in touch and he calls me all the time. We’re dying to get together!

He just told me to name the date we can take another cruise, and he doesn’t care when it is — even a year from now. “It’s a Valentine’s present from me,” he said. Whoa! I get that he wants to nail something down so it doesn’t feel like we’re floating aimlessly. But, to tell the truth, I don’t feel comfortable doing that. A lot can happen in that time for him or for me.

He wants to pay for it all, and I don’t have the money to pay half just now anyway. But the problem really is, I just don’t like the idea of being tied to a date that far into the future when I haven’t seen him since way before COVID. I do have real feelings for him though.

— Pressured by Sweet Man, Osborne Village

Dear Pressured: Don’t say a cold “no” about this romantic cruise. Just tell your amorous loverboy you won’t be comfortable setting the date until you’re both vaccinated, COVID is tamed and travel is an option. If he gets cranky about you not accepting his generous gift, so be it.

Tell him you understand how he feels about being kept apart by circumstances, but that’s not your fault and it’s not a rejection. If he says he’s booking a cruise without your permission, then he’s pushy, and not the kind of guy you need in your life.

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

   Read full biography