Letters to the Editor
Alonso Quijano
Published Letters: 7
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3 Choices!
[Read the article: Lonely single guy tired of being lonely and single seeks person ]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I'd say you basically have 3 choices here:
1. Pretend to be someone you're not in the hope of getting more dates, especially more than 2 dates with the same person. The problem with this strategy is that if it succeeds and you meet someone you like, then you're stuck maintaining your new identity to hold onto her. Trapping yourself into playing a role indefinitely is a bad idea.
2. Actually become someone you're currently not in the hope of getting more dates, especially more than 2 dates with the same person. This battle plan is pretty challenging, and you run the risk of your new self getting no more dates than your old self did -- which can be dispiriting. If you take this route, try to become someone you've always wanted to be, so that at least one person will definitely like the new you.
3. Don't depend on someone else to make you happy. Decide that the person you actually are is a worthwhile guy, and that the only relationship really worth having is one where the woman likes that person. Ignore all the advice summed up by options 1 and 2 above. Realize that a relationship can be a wonderful thing, but also realize that the idea that life without a relationship is empty and worthless is cultural propaganda intended to sell flowers, candy, wedding cakes, and diapers. There are many, many ways to be happy, and being half of a couple is only one possibility (and no guarantee of happiness, either, as the divorce statistics make clear). So go out and make yourself happy now, and in the process you might even meet a woman who's attracted to happy, self-reliant guys. And if you don't, you'll still have made yourself happy, which is why you want the relationship in the first place.
Good luck!
AQ
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Your Husband Is Not To Be Trusted
[Read the article: My husband is groping my sister]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Let me give the masculine point of view here: if I were behaving the way your husband is behaving, it would only be because I no longer wanted to control my impulses for the sake of the marriage. Your husband is drinking too much and he's acting on his attraction to your sister (how much physical resemblance and/or age difference is there between you and her, by the way?); he's doing it because he (a) wants to, and (b) knows he can get away with it, in part because he's gotten away with it before. If I were doing this (speaking as a guy), I would be acting this way because I no longer really felt accountable and I could keep right on enjoying the benefits of married life without needing to do anything to earn them. Listen to a man here: trusting your husband any further at this stage would not be smart.
Oh, and trusting your sister is a bad idea, too. At best she has a conflict of interest here; at worse she's manipulating you with these revelations.
AQ
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It Really Is Simple
[Read the article: I'm afraid I'll be unfaithful to my husband]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It really is simple: you're not ready to get married. It's one thing to gamble your future happiness on your ability to control your impulses better in the future than you have in the past, but it's another to gamble your fiance's happiness, too. If you can't give him the kind of commitment he deserves, then let him go find someone else who can.
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Gender gap here?
[Read the article: My boyfriend won't give me his apartment key]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Reading the responses to this letter, I can't help thinking that they would be very different if the LW were a man complaining that his girlfriend would not give him a key to her apartment. In that case, I suspect, a man would be criticized for failing to respect a woman's need for control of her own space, her right to determine for herself the boundaries of the relationship, etc. Here, however, many posters' assumption seems to be that any such implicit assertion on the man's part is selfish, controlling, etc. Why is his desire to set the boundaries of their relationship less valid than hers? I'm detecting a gender bias.
Speaking as a guy, I see one simple fact here: she has asked for a key before he has felt comfortable offering her one. But, as other people have asked, why is she entitled to a key? Because she's doing things for him that he apparently never asked her to do? If that's the case, she's the one who's being, or at least trying to be, controlling: performing certain actions and then demanding the key as her just recompense.
Giving someone a key to your apartment is an act of great intimacy, signalling a level of mutual trust and commitment which can't be unilaterally asserted. It seems to me that the LW and her boyfriend have two different views of how intimate their relationship is, and if that's the case, why are people assuming that her perception of that level of intimacy ought to be the one which determines his actions?
If the LW wants a relationship where she gets a key at this stage, then she's entitled to break up with this guy and go look for someone else. But I don't see why he is necessarily a selfish SOB simply for not ponying up a key to his home on demand.