Dear Queenie,
My boyfriend wants us to be together, just us, all the time. He gets mad if I want to just be alone for a while and if I have lunch with a friend instead of coming home to have lunch with him he thinks I must be cheating on him. If we go to visit my family (he doesn’t have any) he sulks while we are there and quarrels with me when we get home because I was visiting with them and not paying enough attention to him.
Queenie, I try to understand that this is partly because he doesn’t know what it’s like to be close to your family but how much togetherness is too much?— Suffocated
Dear Suffocated,
I think you can answer your own question: too much is when you feel smothered.
Your boyfriend is behaving like a clingy child who cries when his mother leaves him in kindergarten for the first time – but the child (usually) learns to get over it and apparently your boyfriend has not.
Two adults in a healthy relationship spend a great deal of time together, but they are not “joined at the hip.”
Even if your boyfriend gets counselling and tries to change (grow up), it will take a long – and I mean looooong – time. I do not recommend waiting around for that to happen.
Dear Queenie,
My son and his new wife don’t want me to have anything to do with his first wife now that they are divorced, but she has custody of their children and if I don’t have anything to do with her I don’t get to see my grandchildren.
Queenie, what should I do?—Lonely grandmother
Dear Grandmother,
Your son and his new wife have no right to dictate whom you may or may not have contact with. More especially they have no right to cut you off from your grandchildren – and your grandchildren from you.
And I have to wonder, does your son have no contact with his children? Perhaps when (if) he sees them he could bring them to visit you. If that never happens, by all means arrange to stay in touch with the children, but on occasions when your son and his new wife will not be involved.
Dear Queenie,
My boyfriend and I are very much in love and we plan to get married, but not for a while yet, so we want to live together until then, also to be sure we are really ready for marriage.
My mother has always said this is a good idea, to be sure a couple is compatible but now she is having a fit about it. It seems this is okay for others, but not for her own daughter.
I say I’m a grown woman and she can’t expect to keep running my life as if I was still a child, but she keeps worrying about what people will say and what she could say to them.
Queenie, what do you say?—Disgusted daughter
Dear Daughter,
I agree with you.
As for what your mother can say to judgemental people, she can tell them just what you said: “My daughter is a grown woman and I can’t run her life as though she were still a child.”
Dear Queenie,
I have fallen in love with my doctor and I’m due for a check-up soon. Neither of us is married or in a relationship.
Queenie, should I say something to him about it or should I go to another doctor first?—Im-patient
Dear Im-patient,
It would be unethical for any doctor to become involved with a patient.
Make an appointment with another doctor for your check-up and afterward explain to your present doctor why you did so. If he shares your feelings he will be free to say so, and if not, you both will be spared future embarrassment.
Dear Queenie,
Our daughter is getting married next year and we sent all our rlatives and friends a “save the date” card for the wedding. Unfortunately, one of our married friends died suddenly a couple of weeks ago.
Queenie, should we still send his widow an invitation while she is still in mourning?—Mother of the bride
Dear Mother,
Yes, by all means send the invitation, but include in it a message of condolences on her loss. Let it be her decision whether to attend, and do not be offended if she does not.
