Letters to the Editor

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Demotage

Published Letters: 4

  • Those are great but....

    [Read the article: Credit check]
    [Read more letters about this article: Here]

    How could you leave out "Get Smart"?

  • Thank you Cary!

    [Read the article: My married boyfriend's ditching me for Christmas]
    [Read more letters about this article: Here]

    Your letter wasn't intended to make me feel better, but it did. You see, I was the man in a similar scenario a few years ago. The details were a little different; I was still "technically married ;-)" and my partner wasn't. My daughter required my attention in the week spanning Christmas and New Years. I don't want to make it sound like it was an unwelcome obligation for me to see my daughter, for I wanted to. But the fact is there was something going on in her life at that moment, and she needed my help. Unlike the man in this story, I did think about my partner, did discuss it with her, and decided that it was best that she did not accompany me. My daughter was at the time, still struggling with my impending divorce, and it would have been damaging to our father/daughter relationship to bring my companion on the trip. I did discuss it with my companion and told her that while I would love it if she could come, it wasn't the best thing at that time, so I wanted to go alone. I did. My companion (who was the real love of my life) was hurt and told me that it made her feel like a second class citizen, and less important to me than my daughter. I understood how she felt. I love them both, but the well-being of my daughter took precedence for me in this case. It was not the end of our relationship. That came several months later for other reasons, but it was a blow to us from which we never fully recovered. I know that I made the right choice, but I've regretted it all the same. You made me feel better. So Thanks.

  • don't know everything

    [Read the article: Some drunken chick is texting my husband while we're sleeping]
    [Read more letters about this article: Here]

    LW,

    I would not presume to offer up an opinion about whether your husband has cheated with this woman. What I do know is that in almost every relationship I've ever been in, whenever I've practiced some form of avoidance in talking with my significant other, I was hiding something. It wasn't cheating, but it was always something I didn't want her to know for one reason or another. Sometimes it was just an emotion I felt uncomfortable revealing. In the best relationship I've ever had, my S.O. wouldn't stand for it, and worked hard to break down that barrier. I fought it. I don't think I ever said she was crazy or 'got like that', but I did insist she stop bugging me. The bottom line is that she wouldn't take no for an answer, and eventually I stopped evading her. I made everything in my life transparent to her, and she in turn, felt safe and stopped 'bugging me'. The closeness and trust that ensued was priceless.

    You may or may not have a cheating problem. I have no idea. But you are not sure if you trust him, or you wouldn't have written the letter, and he doesn't trust you enough to open up to you (or, he is, in fact cheating). Even in the absence of cheating this lack of trust is toxic to your best relationship. If I were him (and I were not cheating), I'd thank you later if you didn't take no for an answer.

  • a story

    [Read the article: Help! I'm committing professional suicide!]
    [Read more letters about this article: Here]

    I feel for this person because I've gotten myself into some procrastination holes myself. Sadly, I don't have any good suggestions except to so *something*. The key for me was to just do *something*, *anything* to break the log jam. Just do a task that takes half an hour, but make yourself get it done. The next task will be a little bit easier.

    I do have a funny procrastination story though. There was a man who worked for me a few years ago. He was the world champion of procrastination. I wasn't in a position to fire him - I was kind of stuck with him, so I met with him every morning and demanded a specific complete task by the end of the day. The first day, it was something that would take a 'normal' person maybe half an hour to complete. We progressed from there, although the basis of his problem was, I suspect, depression, which I couldn't really help him with. That wasn't the funny part of the story. The funny part is that when left to his own devices, he spent entire weeks designing and posting a web page on 'how not to procrastinate'. This, was not anything even closely related to his job. But it has to be one of the most creative ways to procrastinate that I've ever seen. I'm just happy that the disruption in the time-space continuum caused by the act of procrastinating by telling people how not to procrastinate didn't suck him away to some alternate universe! On second thought, maybe that would have been better.

    Dang! Got to get back to work!