Snoopy or just oblivious?

Dear Amy: In my mailbox today was a credit card bill addressed to my husband with a sticky note attached.

Our next-door neighbor (she has a mailbox next to ours at the end of our driveway) explained that the piece of mail had been misdirected and she sliced open this bill, not knowing it belonged to my husband.

The last time a piece of mail was misdirected it happened to be my husband’s pay stub. This also was sliced open with a sticky note attached, apologizing.

We have received her mail, but we do not open it. We are quite careful about scanning the front of the envelope before opening.

This neighbor now knows my husband’s salary and also how much he owes. How do we handle this?

Frustrated

Dear Frustrated: You and your husband should go paperless and switch all of your financial records, banking and bill paying to online.

You should both get fresh credit reports and monitor these regularly.

Tell your neighbor that you understand mistakes happen, but you do not want her to open your mail — ever.

It is not illegal to mistakenly open someone else’s mail, as long as the mail makes its way to the appropriate recipient.

According to 18 U.S. Code 1702, it is a potentially serious offense to deliberately open someone else’s mail.

Tell her: “This has happened twice now. We look at all the mail that lands in our box very carefully and make sure it is ours before opening it. We expect you to be as careful with our mail as we are with yours. This is a serious violation of our privacy.”

Dear Amy: My husband and I are both 70.

Our daughter lives in a different country, and before COVID we would visit one another at least once a year.

We were finally able to visit last summer after almost four years.

While talking to her father recently, she told him that ever since his birthday she’d been thinking she’d like to go on a trip just with him, and that she thinks she can get away for two weeks.

She did not make this offer to me.

I don’t think I need to be included in a special fatherdaughter trip, but the fact that she doesn’t have the desire to have a similar time with me has hurt me deeply. How do I get over this?

Second-Place Mom

Dear Second-Place Mom: You and your husband have both turned 70. Your daughter seems to have seen this landmark birthday as a good reason to spend special time with her father (and it is).

Perhaps, when she saw you both recently, her perception was that her father had aged a lot of late. She is worried about him.

Maybe they’ve always had a close connection, and she misses him. Or they never had a close connection, and she wants to forge one.

Maybe she takes her close relationship with you for granted. Or you and she have never been close, and her exclusion is deliberate.

Or ... she is planning a special mother-daughter trip for next year.

Tell her, “I love the idea of your father-daughter trip. Dad’s really looking forward to it. But I have to be honest that my feelings are hurt that you didn’t think to do this with me. Is everything OK between us?”

The way to get over this is to deliberately alter your attitude. Take the high road, respond generously, and you’ll feel better about yourself — and them.