LETTERS TO GUS
A Common Sense Advice Column
Dear Abby:
My wife, “Nancy,” and I have been married 3 ½ years. We’ve always had our differences – our taste in music and movies, and the fact that she’s a social butterfly and I’m not. But we’ve always had similar goals and interests in other areas of life.
About four months ago, Nancy met a guy on MySpace. He’s from southern Oklahoma; she’s from Dallas. They hit it off right away and are now self-declared “best buds.” I don’t doubt that they are just friends. However, he always says how much he “cares” for her. They spend many hours a day talking to each other on the computer. I have voiced my concerns, which have been met with stiff resistance. Now my wife is planning a trip to Dallas, where her parents live to spend a week with them and this guy that she met online. I don’t think anything is going on now, but I suppose it could happen. What really bothers me is the amount of time they spend on the computer and leaving messages for each other when they aren’t both on. It leaves no time for our marriage. It also tells me that Nancy isn’t getting what she needs from me or is bored with me because she makes the choice to continually talk with him instead. I have already told her I want a divorce based on the premise that “If marriage is a flame, she is snuffing it out.” Is this a sound choice on my part? Doing this is very difficult and it’s just begun. And yes, I am filled with so much anger, frustration, and rage that it’s hard to hold on.
Signed: Hurt Beyond Words, Cedar Rapids, Iowa
Ol' Abby gave him some stuff about his wife’s emotional affair, and how he has a right to feel hurt and how he needs to go with counseling with his wife.
If he’d only asked me I would have given him this advice:
Dear Stupid Beyond Belief:
You’d have to be deaf, dumb, and blind not to see the problem here. The reason Nancy is giving you ‘stiff resistance’ is because you haven’t been giving her any. Then you act prissy, have a hissy like a sissy because your missy is playing kissy-kissy.
You tell her you want a divorce and now she’s planning a trip to Texas and you don’t think anything is going to happen.
When your little tweetie, meets up with her cyber sweetie, before she can get her bags her beau will be bagging her in the bathroom.
Dude or should I say ‘Dud,’ she left you a long time ago. She’s going to Dallas to make sure before she sacks you - this guy is good in the sack.
Is Abby getting senile, “Talk to your in-laws?” Her mom and pop are already setting a place at the table for their new son-in-law.
Listen Buddy, the flame is more than snuffed out, you’ve about to be tossed out. As they say in love, ‘caveat emptor.’ Opps that means ‘let the buyer beware.’ which would more properly apply to hookers. In your case the saying would be: the moment her scheming behind is out the door, remove all her stuff out of the house, selling what you can on Ebay. Clean out the bank accounts, cancel all the credit cards, change the locks and get a lawyer. When she shows up with the cops just explain she had already taken all of her possessions when she left you to go to Dallas to cavort with her boyfriend. Let her try to deny it, plastic surgery couldn’t remove that look of satisfaction on her face.
Listen if it makes you feel any better, I’m sure Nancy never loved you in the first place; just thank Goodness and Greyhound when she’s gone.”
Signed: Grizzly “love is blind ‘and’ stupid” Gus
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Dear Abby:
I’m having a problem with the older sister of my daughter’s best friend. I’ll refer to the girl as “Cassie.” Cassie is 16 or 17, and she’s attracted to my significant other of 19 years, “Adam,” who is 42. Adam and I are friendly with Cassie’s parents. We socialize with them at school sporting events, as well as at-home get-togethers. Over the past year, Cassie has started coming up to me and asking, “Where’s Adam?” Then she will jump into his arms, wrapping her legs around his waist as she says “Hi.” Adam said she sometimes smacks him on the behind. She also stands directly in front of him and says things like, “Doesn’t my butt look good?” We have discussed this as a family and have indicated to our daughter that we would never tolerate the same actions on her part. She agrees and expresses disgust. I have also pointed out to Adam that this would not sit well with him if, in two years, his daughter began exhibiting the same behavior with a friend’s father – or anyone else, for that matter. How do we handle this without our friends becoming insulted? We suspect they think Cassie’s behavior is “cute.”
Signed: Disgusted In Decatur, IL
Abby went off on how inappropriate Cassie’s behavior and other stuff. This is what I would say about Cassie:
Dear Disgusting:
Hmm, sounds to me like Cassie is just a little tart and a bit sassy. She’s just a mixed-up and confused young girl. To stand in front of Adam, a middle-aged man and ask him if he thinks her butt looks good is certainly wrong. The next time she does that Adam needs to correct her immediately.
“Sweetie, first you have to turn around and bend over so I can see your butt.”
What makes you so sure there IS a problem? Adam is allowing himself to be locked into a heated embrace with a young pretty hormonally over-charged teenager, who with her soft smooth shapely subtle thighs and emerging feminine undercarriage undulating, gyrating, throbbing, pulsating, in a fertile frenzy – is met with Adam’s stiff resistance, which seems to just encourage her even more.
For Cassie, she’s found someone she can embrace and give her a hand, maybe a tongue, and at some point other parts of the anatomy in her journey to becoming fully sexually active. After all at 16-17 she’s already way behind her peers. As for her parents, they will continue to think it’s cute until they find out they’ve become grandparents before they’re kid has even graduated from high school.
Adam is being honest with you, he’s already told you that Cassie slaps him on the butt; there’s no telling what else he’s taught her by now.
Cassie is really not the problem here, she’s asking for ‘it,’ and hopefully she’ll muster enough common sense to wait until she’s eighteen before she gets ‘it.’ The real problem here is you and Adam, playing house for nineteen years, and having a child out of wedlock, (which is rather common now) but having the audacity to lecture someone else about their morals or parenting? And further proof of your misaligned moral compass, you got a underage teen humping your faux husband and you’re afraid of offending her parents? And Abby must be ready for the ‘home’ when she suggests Adam should go up to the girl’s father and ask if they have insurance the ‘next time’ his daughter and this middle aged man are rolling around in a sweaty wrestling match. If some said that crap to me, about my daughter, you’d better hope my home owner’s policy covers the removal of my foot up his butt!
Signed: Grizzly ‘disgusted with the whole bunch,’ Gus
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Dear Abby:
My sister, Jane, and I are both in our mid-50’s Jane has had numerous affairs over the past several years after her third divorce, and was involved in an intimate relationship with a terrific man, ‘Will,’ that that lasted about three months. Jane broke up with will several months after she decided he wasn’t what she was looking for, and she’s presently engaged to be married to a very nice man, ‘Sam,’ and seems very happy. I dated Will several times before he and Jane became involved. We weren’t intimate at that time and we started seeing each other again over the last month. This time we have fallen in love.
My problem is Jane is upset that Will and I are together and says I have “betrayed” her. She is worried about having her former and current lovers present at family gatherings and our parents are also concerned. They say it’s “just weird.” The fact that my sister was intimate with Will doesn’t bother me or Will, but it sure bothers them.
Abby, I have always been the “good girl” in the family and bowed under their pressure, but my relationship with Will is more than I could have ever imagined and I don’t want to give up my future happiness just to make my sister and my parents more comfortable. My adult children have all met and approve of Will and our relationship but Jane and my parents won’t budge. Any suggestions?
Wants Will in Walla Walla Washington.
Dear Abby said some stuff about choosing between Will and the family and junk like that. Let me give you the 411 on this deal in Walla Walla:
Dear Wants Will in Walla Walla:
Cheer up, after all everyone knows, ‘where there’s a Will – there’s a way!’ Speaking of which, it sounds to me like Will has been having his way with all the women in your family.
First things first, I hate to burst your bubble but since you’re in your mid-fifties you ain’t a girl no more, good – bad- or otherwise. And the fact you have been good at all is how you lost your Will in the first place. Your bad sister Jane is obviously better at bagging a beau than you. Since she’s undoubtedly been intimate with everyone in the immediate vicinity it should be obvious to all that in order for you to get a date you’d have to recycle one of your sister’s hand-me-down boyfriends. And you can tell Jane to stop worrying about having all her former and current lovers present at family any gathering because the convention center is unavailable and there isn’t any other facility big enough to hold them all.
As far as you betraying her by dating Will you could in a subtle way say, “You know Jane, you inconsiderate immature selfish little slut, I was the one who dated Will first and you certainly didn’t consult me before you started banging his brains out, now did you?” or something along that line.
If things don’t work out with Sam, maybe you and Jane could just share Will, as I am sure he’d be ‘Will-ing.’ I’m sure if given a chance Will knows a lot more ways than one.
As for your parents I think you should try to remember that they are old and set in their ways and if they don’t pass away soon, maybe you could have them committed so they won’t cause any more trouble.
Of course the simplest solution to this entire matter would just be for you to sleep with Sam as soon as you get the chance and then everyone will be happy.
Signed: Grizzly un-Will-ing Gus