Eve With the Apple

Of course you’re drooling over this guy, EWTA. Of course you’d rather be losing yourself in the lusty embrace of Mr. Gorgeous Adventure Man than stuck in your same old kitchen making the same dumb peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for the kids every day and doing load after load of the same old dirty laundry every week while your husband does his same old chores. This new guy is a perfect escapist fantasy, better than a romance novel. But while fantasies are great, healthy, and usually harmless, trying to turn them into reality is often disastrous. A guy who is always looking for the next thrill, the next challenge, is rarely looking to get more than casually involved with a married mom. He’s much more likely to see you as just another conquest; as soon as he’s made it you’ll be added to his list and he’ll be ready for whatever comes next. He may even view your married status as his safety net; you’re less likely to try to tie him down.

You know the risks of having an affair and you know what happened to Eve. If you’re willing to lose your flawed little piece of Paradise for the sake of a bite of this guy’s apple, go for it. But picking up a stack of Sandra Brown novels might be a better idea; they’re such maddeningly unrealistic and repetitive sex-drenched trash that they make all but the most determinedly deluded romantic fantasists happy to have their real lives to return to.

My fiancé, Leo, and I have been together since he was 15 and I was 14, and now he’s 19 and I’m 18. We both still live with our parents, but we’ve been talking about getting married next year when he finishes junior college, and I’m really excited about it. I love him a lot, but my parents don’t like him and have been trying to get me to break up with him since we met. So now he won’t come to see me or even pick me up to go out more than once or twice a week because he says he’s uncomfortable around them. He spends much more time with his friends watching sports or playing car mechanic than he does with me. Sometimes I get mad and then for a while things are better, but soon he’s back to his old ways. Things will be great once we’re married and start our own family, but how can I get him to pay more attention to me now?

Lonely for My Leo

Madame Minkskya has gazed into her crystal ball, LFML, and seen your future. At 23, with one baby in training pants, another in diapers, and another on the way, you’ve quit your job to stay home with them. Leo’s working at the local lube shop. Today was payday, and you’ve just had another fight because after work he stopped off at the bar with his buddies for some beers. He said he works hard and deserves a night out once in a while. You said you’ve got a 24-hour-a-day job and they’re his kids too and nobody gives you a night off. Then you started crying, and he stomped out because he’s sick of listening to you complain, and besides that the house is a mess and you’re home all day so it’s your job to keep it clean. Then you called your mother, and all she had to say was she told you so.

Maybe this won’t happen to you, but it can and does happen all the time to young women who can’t wait to trade the youthful freedom they have for the happy-ever-after they expect. Marriage isn’t just sex and living away from your parents; it’s work and it’s hard and it’s no cure for an inattentive boyfriend. Let Leo hang with his friends if he wants, while you find other things to do besides waiting around for him to give you a life. Hang with your friends, take some college courses, have some fun. Not just because maybe if you’re less available Leo will be more so, but because now is when you can. Otherwise, it might be 25 years or so before you get another chance.

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