Advice Roundup

Flogging the Agony Aunts: September 8th, 2008

Last week's worst relationship advice

-Judy McGuire

Last week's Ask Amy column heard from a gentleman who discouraged his wife from breastfeeding publicly because it sexually arouses him,  and presumably every other dude in eyeshot. To deal with this, he sends her out to the car (!!!) when Junior needs a nibble off a nipple. Amy's only comment is that this solution doesn't sound very comfortable for mom or baby.

Um, what?!? He sends her to the car? Nooo! I can assure you that most humans don't find the sight of a starving infant latched onto a nipple arousing. I don't doubt that a certain population does pop wood over it, but there are also men who find the sight of bare feet unspeakably hot. Should we forgo flip-flops? What about big noses? Show me a big honker and I get all sticky, but does that mean men with sizeable schnozzes should cover up when I walk by? I think not. (And I hope not - meow!)

The venerable NY Times has started up an advice column called "Social Q's" and I for one am so glad they did because they hear from the sort of upper-crusties who generally think they're too good to write to advice columnists. Last week we heard from a woman scorned who's furious that her soon-to-be-ex is bringing his young-enough-to-be-his-daughter mistress to their country club. Not only that, he's constantly dry-humping his scandalously younger squeeze in front of everyone - including his understandably skeeved teenage children. 

Their advice is that she should just suck it up until she cleans him out in the divorce. I'm sorry, New York Times, I didn't realize it was 1952. It may shock you to learn that wives these days often have things like careers that preclude any "cleaning out" of bank accounts. In fact, research shows that while the average man's income goes up 11% once he's unhitched, the wife's goes down an average of 17%.

What she should do is turn lemons into lemonade. Maybe start a website called embarassingmidlifecrises.com featuring photos of his saggy ass rubbing up against her firm one. I'm certain other scorned wives would be happy to contribute and she can even make some dough by selling ads for Viagra and Propecia.

Cary Tennis is back from Burning Man and, as expected, a week in the desert has made him more batsh-- crazy than ever.  Wednesday's column hears from a woman whose husband goes completely off the rails every time she goes on a business trip. He screams, he pouts, cancels her credit card, and either calls a million times in a row or doesn't speak to her for days at a time.
Cary thinks her husband either has a fear of abandonment (gee, ya think?!) or is contemplating an affair and projecting his own extra-curricular dabbling onto his wife. Then he - meaning Cary - goes completely off the deep end:

We forget that our blood is a gift, that our brain is a gift, that our water and sweat and semen and tears and arm hairs and tongue, teeth, gums, jawbone, epiglottis, eustachian tubes, nose and throat and eyes, our spit and our urine and our shit, our hipbones and toenails and kneecaps, that all of us is a gift, that we have a source in the world, that cut off from that source we die. We forget this. We have to be reminded now and then. So we go out into the desert and somehow we are reminded.

Um, what? This woman should obviously commit her husband to the mental ward and then head straight to divorce court without passing go, and you're talking about the gift of semen? Oh, Cary. We missed you while you were gone.