Q. My cousin from Europe recently visited my family and me. My father emigrated to the U.S. while his stayed in the town where they were born. Anyway, my cousin really, well, reeks. I’m not saying anything about European hygiene, here—I am quite sure it’s him specifically. The smell was almost overpowering in our small house, but I had no idea how to handle it. I tried giving him a nice gift basket of soaps and toiletries and things, but he just laughed and said, “I guess you think Europeans smell!” I couldn’t say, “No, it’s just you,” but I am also occasionally coughing because of the stench. He’s still staying with us for at least a few more weeks. What can I possibly do here?
A. First, listener, are you sure this is really your cousin’s problem? Could it be that you are simply unaccustomed to the more natural environment in which our European friends and family live, and that you, in fact, reek of soap and perfumes to them? That is, could it be you who smells? You need to be honest with yourself more often, and this is a good opportunity to learn to do that.
Here, I just have to ask myself just when honesty went so very out of fashion. Also, if you can’t be honest with your family, with whom can you be? Please, listener, assess your relationship to your family, to your cousin, and most importantly, to yourself.
Q. My wife has a “girls’ night out” pretty much every week. She and four of her friends go out, usually to a bar near one of their apartments, and “unwind.” I used to feel a little jealous that she seemed to need to get away from me to relax. Then recently, my wife suggested that, rather than staying home and “sulking” (as she put it), I go hang out with my friends that night. I tried that, and I found it really enjoyable. Some of my friends and I played some penny-ante poker a couple of weeks ago, and last week we went out to a sports bar and watched the game. This week, though, my wife isn’t going out with her friends, due to most of them having family obligations or being out of town. She wants me to stay home, too, or she wants to try to tag along on my night out. I don’t see why I should agree to either one. She never stayed home just because I didn’t have any plans. I never tried to tag along on her “girls’ night out.” My pettier side wants her to experience what it’s like to sit home while her partner is out having fun without her, but I also just want to see my friends and don’t want to disappoint them. Am I out of line here?
A. It sounds like you and your wife share similar insecurities, or that neither of you can stand to be alone. Having similar neuroses can sometimes be really great for a relationship: it helps you sympathize with each other and share interests. It can also be dangerous, though, because if those neuroses are not compatible, the relationship becomes very difficult.
Perhaps the trouble here is exacerbated by the fact that your wife thinks that what you’re doing is more fun than staying home would be for her. One idea would be to allow her to tag along, and then do the most tedious, annoying things possible with your friends so she will never, ever want to come with you again. For example, which of you has the smelliest basement? Could you sit around there drinking cheap beer and doing little else? What about a strip club or watching porn? A little imagination here can go a long way toward resolving your marital differences.
Q. I am engaged to a man I really love. Everything about our relationship has been like a fairy tale, from our first date to the proposal to our plans for our life after our wedding. The only problem we seem to have is that he says I don’t make enough money. To be fair, he’s right that I don’t make a lot. Since I dropped out college several years ago, I’ve been working in retail. It’s not so easy to move up, even if you’re experienced. Still, if I’m going to make more money and I can’t afford to go back to school (and I don’t think I want to anyway—I’d had enough years ago), it seems to me that the only way is just to hang in there and work hard to get promoted to a management job, where my income will be better. My finance keeps suggesting different jobs that I can’t get hired for without a degree. Those suggestions have gotten a lot more forceful over the last few months, and now we’re starting to fight about it. I don’t know that this is a problem I can fix, and even if I can, I can’t fix it quickly. What can I do, and what do I do in the meantime? I don’t want to ruin this relationship.
A. I’m not sure I understand, listener, what it is about this relationship that makes you think it’s like a fairy tale. After all, Prince Charming never cared about the soon-to-be princess’ paycheck, and the whole “Cinderella syndrome” is based on fairy tales, where the woman is looking for a male rescuer to swoop in and make her life fabulous. Your relationship comparison simply does not seem apt. He doesn’t want to take care of you; he wants you to pay your own way into the castle on a salary where you can’t do that. If this man can’t accept your career choices as part of who you are, he is clearly not the one for you, regardless of how handsome or charming you may feel he is. (He’s going to become a lot less so if the fights get worse anyway.) I think the more important question is why you want the relationship to continue. You need to figure out whether he’s a prince or a frog, and fast.
My recommendation is a series of tests. Determine what the most important characteristics of a prince are, and test him based on each one. For example, you might observe that a true prince would be able to pick out the right silverware to use at a fancy restaurant and wouldn’t think twice about picking up the check. So go to one, and see what he does. Maybe you feel that a true dashing prince would carry you over mud puddles. Find one and see what he does. If he scores “frog” on more than half the tests, he’s a frog and you should move on in your quest for a real prince.
