Dear Queenie,
I have been married for more than 30 years to a man I’m not in love with, although we get along with each other all right. We stayed together for the children’s sake, but now they are all grown up and out of the house.
I’ve been having an affair with another man for a couple of years. I just love him, but he’s hard to get along with sometimes. He has a bad temper and tries to control what I do and is very jealous and suspicious of everyone else I know.
I told him from the beginning that I wouldn’t leave my husband because of the children, but now they are grown up he is pressuring me to get a divorce. I can’t stand the thought of losing him, but I also can’t stand the thought of losing my safe home.
Queenie, what to do?—Ambivalent
Dear Ambivalent,
The thrill and excitement of having an affair have allowed you to accept the very unpleasant aspects of your lover’s character. His behaviour will not improve if you leave your husband; on the contrary, it may very well get worse.
Break up with him before that happens, and work on making your marriage as fulfilling as possible.
Dear Queenie,
I am currently seeing a guy who spends all day all night on WhatsApp and Facebook soliciting his women friends, some of whom are supposed to be my friends, inviting them out and writing sensual and erotic stuff to them and inviting them to meet with him.
When confronted he denies this. To make things worse he always has condoms in his bags.
Queenie, what should I do, being he is lying when confronted?—Confused ’n Hurt
Dear Confused ’n Hurt,
You should stop seeing him. Even if you are not in a monogamous relationship with this man, he is clearly a liar and he is not likely to change.
And if any of your friends know that you are seeing him and still respond to him, you might want to seriously consider the value of their friendship.
Dear Queenie,
All my friends have children or are about to and they keep asking me and my husband when we are going to become parents too. Maybe we will someday, but I have never wanted to get pregnant and go through childbirth and my husband isn’t interested in adopting, so maybe we never will have children.
It’s bad enough when our parents get after us about giving them grandchildren, but our friends too?
Queenie, what do we say to people when they get on our case?—Happily childless
Dear Childless,
If you have medical reasons for not conceiving and bearing children and are comfortable sharing them with family and/or friends, explain your reasons for not having children.
Otherwise, just tell them, “Maybe someday,” and change the subject.
Dear Queenie,
My girlfriend knows a lot of people and when we go out somewhere she is constantly looking around for someone she knows and leaving me to go over to greet them and chat for a bit. This makes for constant interruptions in whatever we are doing and it’s gotten so I just don’t want to go out anywhere with her anymore.
Queenie, shouldn’t I get more respect?—Fed up
Dear Fed up,
Have you told your girlfriend how you feel about this? If not, sit down with her and do so as soon as possible.
It might help if she would introduce you to the folks you do not already know and include you in these conversations.
Also, I have to wonder why some of these people do not come over to her to say “hello.” And, could it be that they consider her greetings an intrusion in whatever they are doing and are just too polite to let her know how they feel?
Several of you have pointed out to me that in my answer to Frustrated (Thursday, May 18) I suggested that her boyfriend might be refusing to have sex with her because he is gay or sexually dysfunctional, but failed to point out to her that one possible reason might be that he does not believe in having sex with anyone outside of marriage, or at least a committed relationship.
Please note that I did not mean any of the reasons I did give in any derogatory sense, but merely mentioned them as statements of possible fact. However, I do apologise to her boyfriend for omitting the possibility of his having moral objections to submitting to her propositions.
And I have a question for the person who described my column as “sh**ty”: If that is what you think of my column, why do you read it?
