Spouse doesn’t want to whine about wine

Dear Amy: I am married to a wonderful, kind and generous man.

We have a very good marriage. We’ve never had a real argument or nagged each other about anything.

I am worried about his weight, however. He had lost a lot of weight, but now he’s regaining it.

This is because he has a glass of wine just before bed. I don’t mind his daily glass of wine, but I wish he’d have it at dinnertime so that his body has time to process it.

I know he enjoys his bedtime snack, so I’m loath to bring it up. How do I gently and kindly ask him to forgo it at bedtime without sounding like a nag?

— Worried

Dear Worried: If your husband’s nightly glass of wine makes him surly or uncommunicative, or interferes with his sleep, your shared intimacy or sex life, then you get to bring it up.

In short, if his nightwine affects you, then you should initiate a conversation about it.

If his glass of wine at bedtime doesn’t directly affect you (and it doesn’t seem to), then you should keep your thoughts to yourself. In my opinion, your basic assumption is off-kilter. More likely, his weight gain is the result of a dozen little and large choices he makes throughout the day, not the timing of his nightly drink.

Furthermore, if he has struggled with his weight and has managed to successfully reduce it, then he knows the basic rules of losing weight.

If you want to continue to support his weight loss, you should ask him, “What’s the best way I can support you as you work toward your goals?”

I hope he answers, “Just continue loving me, just as I am.”

I’ll offer an (unsolicited) opinion on how to have a happy marriage: Learn to fight. Learn to forgive. And try mightily to love one another through thick and thicker.

Dear Amy: My mom and I generally have a good relationship, but she does one thing that is really inconsiderate.

I am a light sleeper. I normally wake up around 9 a.m. My mom is a very active person and insists on exercising every morning. Because gyms have closed, she has resorted to running on our home treadmill in the mornings. However, since the room with the treadmill she runs on is right beneath my bedroom, her loud running wakes me up.

I pointed out that she can run outside or run on the treadmill at other times of the day, but she insists on her current routine.

I asked my dad to talk to her, but he is afraid that she will explode with anger.

I’ve tried to make compromises by asking her to run only after 8 a.m., but she will not budge, and often runs at 7 a.m.

In response, she screams at me, saying that I am “not the only person who lives in this house.”

I am a college student. I need adequate rest in order to do well in school. I am often tired and unable to focus well on my studies. I feel that it is common decency for people to respect others’ sleep. How can I form an agreement with my mom without me sacrificing my sleep?

— Sleepless

Dear Sleepless: Asking your mother to run at a later time in the morning is not a “compromise” — it is merely you asking her to change. A compromise would be you agreeing to go to bed an hour earlier if she would agree to run an hour later.

You are responsible for your own health and well-being, and so the most obvious solution would be for you to adjust your sleeping hours, the way you would if you lived next to a construction site where they started jackhammering at 7 a.m.

If you went to bed earlier and started the day feeling rested, you might find that those early morning hours were among the best of your day.

Dear Amy: “Desperate Daughter” was upset about her father’s habit of sending unwanted political emails, especially after he’d been drinking. Instead of deleting those emails or having them go to her spam folder, how about her collecting them and having a heart-to-heart about him getting some help?

— Amy

Dear Amy: As I said in my answer, the problem wasn’t really about her father’s politics, but his drinking. I agree that confronting him might inspire change.