Wife’s desire for motherhood grows stronger as years pass
DEAR ABBY: My husband and I are 15 years apart in age. We have been together for six years and married a year and a half. He is my entire world, my best friend and soul mate.
When we first met, he told me he didn’t think he wanted another child (he has a daughter). I learned to accept it if I wanted to be with him. I had to be OK with being a stepmom and not having a child of my own.
Fast-forward: It’s six years later. His daughter (now 14) no longer comes around. (The ex-wife discouraged any relationship between my stepdaughter and me.) I’m finding it harder and harder to cope with the fact that I don’t have a child of my own. When I bring this up to my husband, he tells me, “I told you in the beginning I didn’t think I wanted another child.”
How do I deal with this? It’s breaking my heart because she is not around anymore and I don’t feel like a mom of any sort. – LONGING TO BE A MOM
DEAR LONGING: Tell your husband that in the beginning when he told you he didn’t think he wanted another child, you agreed because you thought you could accept it, but that as time has gone by, you no longer can.
Then tell him you feel an important part of being a woman is being a mother. If he refuses to relent, then as much as you may love him, you may be married to the wrong man and you will have to move on if you need to follow your biological imperative.
DEAR ABBY: Can you please educate your readers about supermarket etiquette? Every time I buy groceries, I encounter people who push or park their carts in the middle of the aisle with no consideration for other shoppers. I also see them blindly blast through intersections in the aisles and barely avoid colliding with each other.
A few weeks ago, I said to a gentleman, “Pardon me, may I go around you? Thank you.” He responded that I was the first person who had ever said that to him! I’m surprised there aren’t more cases of road rage in supermarkets.
My suggestion: Why don’t we follow basic traffic rules in the supermarket? For example, stay to the right unless you are passing. Yield at intersections to the shopper on the right, etc. Abby, what do you think? Also, what’s your take on big kids riding in the grocery carts? – DISGUSTED SHOPPER IN ILLINOIS
DEAR DISGUSTED: What you describe happens when folks fail to consider how their behaviour affects others. When someone blocks the aisle with a grocery cart, the logical way to deal with it is to say, “Excuse me, please,” which alerts the “offender” that there are others in the store besides him or her.
Your suggestion that shoppers observe basic traffic rules is a good one – particularly when it involves observing the speed limit. Charging through the intersections of the aisles could cause an accident in which another shopper is harmed.
As to “big kids” riding in shopping carts, as long as they aren’t bothering other shoppers and the store doesn’t care, I mind my own business and don’t judge.