Well Duh!!!

In my local newspaper there is a syndicated advice column. In yesterdays column there was a letter from a 57 yr. old man (married 27 years) asking them if they thought his wife was having an affair......

The clues were:

1. Met an old highschool boyfriend at a reunion and they spent hours talking together.
2. She takes a mental health day off work(wtf is that anyway? and hey, I want one!), and drives 200 miles roundtrip to go shopping....old bf lives near the shopping area.
3. Wife says she is in need of time alone and is going to take a vacation by herself, hubby finds info on their pc that she has been researching motorcycles and that the location she is going to vacation has a motorcycle show happening at the same time...wifey btw isn't into bikes, but old bf is.

Okay, simple answer.......hell yes! she is working on an affair, planning an affair, or already in the midst of one! Or she has decided she wants a new hobby, and is going to become a biker chica.


My questions regarding this letter....wtf is he checking the odometer on her car for? He wasn't checking to see if she needed an oil change, he was just retrieving something from the vehicle.
Why is he checking out her time online? Why is he checking up on what is happening at the hotel she is going to stay at? Because he is the suspicious sort in the first place? Because she is at the age when women question their entire lives....mid-life crisis time? Or is it because things have not been good for sometime, and her behavior has changed?


Am I an oddity in thinking this was a really stupid letter to write? Wake up mister, yeah she is gonna, or is, and he knows it, so why did he write in? Sometimes I really think no one writes in to these advice gurus, they just make up some moronic letter, and then give a trite, cliched answer.

Oh in case you're interested, they told him to confront her with his suspicions.....why do I think she would just blow him off? Why do I think he won't say anything?

He won't say anything because he is afraid of the answer, why else would he write in and ask a question he already knew the answer too?

She will blow him off, because number one.....I think she has lived with his suspicious nature for a long time, and number two.....unless she is ready to work on the marriage, or bail from the marriage.....why would she admit to any of his suspicions being correct?

This once again proves to me that we all play emotional games with ourselves, we are so afraid of putting it all 'out there', afraid of hearing the truth, afraid to say what we are feeling.....I have no idea how to get past that, because it takes listening, it takes trying to understand things from the other person's point of view, it takes holding out your heart and taking the chance of at least some minor bruising. If we do that, we also have to be prepared for the consequences, the chance that things will change, and how many of us really want things to change? How many of us stay in a bad situation just because the change might be worse, or because it is easier to keep things just the way they are? I know I do it, I don't ask a question because I am afraid the person I am asking will percieve it in the wrong way. I am afraid that I won't be able to explain where I am coming from, afraid that they will accuse me of being like everybody else (whoever that is).

Not really sure how this ties in, but my children were talking about how they do not feel they get respect from many older adults, especially the 'other adult' in the family, they are still treated as small children, with no ability to have good ideas of their own, or self-control. In that same hour, I had been told by the 'other adult' that these very same children showed him no respect.....thus my question to them....

"Be honest, do you feel that I show you respect?"

"Yes, you do?"

"How do I show that, what makes you feel that?"

"You listen to us, you hear what we are saying, you don't interrupt with some judgemental comment before half the words have left our mouths, you may not like what we are saying, you may be disapointed, but you listen."

*pats self on back*