Dear Queenie,
I got married in Colombia last year and only my parents and brother and sisters came to the wedding. We received lots of nice presents from my wife’s family but only one from any of my relatives. My wife thinks they are a bunch of selfish stingy people she doesn’t want to know.
I have been at several of my cousins’ weddings and I know they received plenty of nice gifts from family members.
Queenie, how can I get my wife not to hate my family?—The Bridegroom
Dear Bridegroom,
Did you send these relatives invitations to your wedding? If not, they had no obligation to send gifts. And even if you did invite them, the fact that they did not (or could not) attend may have made them feel no such obligation.
It is also possible that they may disapprove of your wife for some reason. Perhaps your parents can enlighten you – or find out, if they do not already know.
Then you will know what, if anything, you can do to make things better between them and your wife.
Dear Queenie,
When someone gets divorced their former spouse is referred to as their “ex”-husband or -wife. But what do you say when the person died? It seems wrong to talk about their “dead” husband or wife. So what do you say?—Verbal Etty Ket
Dear Etty Ket,
The common way to refer to any person who died is “late” – “the late Mr. or Mrs. So-and-so,” my (or her or his) “late” husband or wife or parent or sibling or child or whoever.
Dear Queenie,
My husband and I have been thru Hell in 2017 with my young adult daughter and her psychotic boyfriend.
He is abusive, sneaky, controlling and can't seem to find a job for a whole year. He uses the two-month-old baby as his passport to her. He apologises every time to us, only to repeat the same crap all the time, from threats to unlawful entry, trespassing on the roof to her bedroom window, to hijacking her car, you name it. I have the 2017 record for 911 calls.
All of that happened, yet my daughter still finds her way back to this jerk. It is the grace of God why I am preventing my husband from taking him out.
Queenie, what more does it take for her to wake up and walk away?—Exhausted mother
Dear Mother,
Has it occurred to you that the reason your daughter stays with “this jerk” is that he has threatened her and/or her baby with physical harm if she even tries to break up with him?
However, I think you also have another problem if your husband is voicing threats against your daughter’s boyfriend. And if he is, and he often talks like this when he is angry about anything, it could be at least part of the reason your daughter is so accepting of her boyfriend’s behaviour – she could have come to consider her relationship with him perfectly normal.
As I told “Worried grandmother” on Monday, January 8, Safe Haven (office 9277; 24-hour hotline number: 9333 or (721) 523-6400; e-mail address This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or Facebook: SafeHavenSt.Maarten) can give you and your daughter advice and assistance in dealing with an abusive relationship.
Dear Queenie,
My husband got upset about the fact that he is getting old and he had an affair with a woman who was married 3 times and cheated on all of her husbands. Now he is living with her and her teenage kids.
I have filed for divorce but he is not cooperating. He cancels legal appointments and even asked me not to go on with the divorce. He says he wants us to get back together and fix things up, but I think it’s about the money, because he’s still living with that other woman.
Queenie, should I give him another chance?—Undecided
Dear Undecided,
Tell your husband he cannot “have his cake and eat it too.” If he leaves the other woman and if you can forgive him, give him what you make clear is his very last chance. If both these conditions are not met, let him go.
Dear Queenie,
A friend of mine is married and when we get together for drinks or whatever she spends most of the time complaining about the problems she has with her husband. It just gets to be too much, and sometimes I can hardly keep from pointing out to her that some of the problems she brings on herself by the way she behaves and the way she treats him.
Queenie, how can I get her to talk about something else?—Bored friend
Dear Friend,
You can try to change the subject, but I suspect you have already taken that approach with little success.
Do what I do with people who write to me about such problems: Tell her you are not equipped to help her deal with these problems, not interested in hearing about them any more (I do not say that last part!), and she should seek professional counselling.
