Young women love flowers and jewelry. An attractive ring and a bouquet of roses are old and respected ways of telling a young woman you want to be forever remembered in her heart.  Dear Mrs. Web still swoons when she remembers the special piece of jewelry Dear Mr. Web bestowed upon her prior to their marriage.

The only things you can do for this situation is encourage your friend make good choices. Don’t support her bad choices, lie for her, or encourage her difficult behavior. It sounds like she is making poor choices (yelling, forging signatures and lying). 

If she were my daughter, I would keep her on a short leash too. One earns trust and privileges. Sometimes people have to make poor choices and bear the consequences in order to learn how to get along.

Sometimes mothers and daughters need to be with each other in a different way. I will spend the day with just one of my daughters and we will do things together that she enjoys. Even a breakfast out helps. I often encourage teens to take their parents out to breakfast as a way of connecting with them.

I think unwed and divorced parents need to separate their children completely from their dating life. Children think differently than adults and cannot understand spending time with someone then having them disappear. 

Remember how young ones react when their best friends play with others?? It is much harder for children to understand change than adults.  

Going to Florida and girl-watch and party is how some 48-year old men act when divorced. I assure you it would not have been fun to go to Florida with a bitter divorcee. 

I think the important part of this whole thing is that your boyfriend chose not to go. Perhaps the two of you should plan a trip together, a honeymoon, perhaps?

Let’s see if I can help here.

I am going to start at the beginning. Your fiancée left you for your brother. Your family covered it up. Thank goodness you were not married and had children when this happened. Frankly if your fiancée could do this, your relationship did not have a good and firm foundation. It is better that it happened sooner than later. 

Your family cover-up is very sad. People usually cover up unpleasant news because they hate facing the consequences. Obviously, your family doesn’t work well with relationships.

You were very hurt. In relationships people do get hurt and move on. You have a new wife - at least I hope she’s your wife - and a baby, congratulations! 

However, this past issue has cut your family in two and now they are placing the blame on you and your wife.  Your family wants to close this issue, and no longer deal with it.  It is over as far as they are concerned.  But it isn't over for you.

Your former fiancée did a wrong thing, as weak people often do. In some ways, I pity her. Nevertheless, she is now your brother’s wife, your parent's daughter-in-law, and your sister-in-law. Your children are cousins.

Your family does not manage relationships well. In order to function at all in your family you are going to have to accept and forgive what happened. They were all weak people who made self-centered or easy choices. You won’t be able to fix who they are, or change them. However, you can change yourself and reach out to them. Will it be hard at first? You bet.

You don’t have to be in the middle of your brother and his family’s lives but you can socialize occasionally at family gatherings. You can stay connected. If things ever get too crazy, you can always politely leave.

There is one other thing you can do to redeem this mess. You can be the best husband and father you can possible be to your own created family. You and your wife can set loving examples of being everything a family should be, committed, honest, caring, open, loving, responsible, calm, forgiving and understanding.  Your children will flourish with such examples.  So will you.

The best way to become closer is to spend time, talk to, and do things with him. Ask him how his day has been and offer to help when he is doing household chores. Talk about his interests and hobbies. Ask for help in an area that he has some expertise. Update him about your life and friends. Go for walks. Turn off the television.  Thank him for being your dad.

Ask your parents to play a board game in the evening after dinner, pop some corn, pour out sodas, and enjoy. Read books aloud. Card games are fun too. If he is an athletic sort, perhaps all of you could take up a sport together.

There is no issue here. You would be nuts to move your daughter into a chaotic, unscheduled environment, and double nuts to move your daughter into someone’s life without the benefit of marriage. So, don’t do it.

This man has a chaotic life, failing children, a nasty relationship with his ex, all swirling about him and he wants another family to move in? He has too much on his plate as is. 

You are having an excellent preview of your future with this man: chaotic. This living arrangement does not sound like a good fit for you or your daughter. It is not fair to your daughter to be placed in such chaos.

Your Aunt probably was offended by your stand. Your logic and reasoning had nothing to do with it. Logic and reasoning often have little to do with how or what most people think. This is why polite people do not discuss politics and religion publicly. There cannot be a real meeting of the minds; just statements of worldviews and arguments based on the different worldviews, which is, in most cases, fruitless.

When someone states his religious or political beliefs, one can listen politely, agree, or say; "I don’t quite see it that way." Then change the subject. It is not useful to go any further. Minds are not changed in political arguments. Talk about the weather.

Thank you for your kind words about my site. Please spread the word, the more visitors to Dear Mrs. Web, the more I can offer.

I would be concerned too. Have you talked to your fiancé about what he expects from you when you are both married? A man who has his mother perform these mundane daily tasks often will expect his wife to step in, or even worse, continue to have his mother do them. Have you visited my Topics to Explore Before Marriage?  Find out what your future might look like now.

On some levels, both of you are right. Some men tend to look at the surface of the story and see a situation that doesn’t make sense and therefore earns the label: "stupid."

Some women see the pain in the story and name it "sad." Both are opinions. We each have the right to our own opinion. You don’t have to agree with an opinion, but you do have to respect it. Not the content of the opinion, but that he has it and it belongs to him.

I think you should be honest with your Mom. Think of how hurt she will be if she hears you are dating from someone else. I am sure it will hurt her to hear you have been untruthful, but it is even more important that you owe up to her and apologize. I am sure you wanted her to be proud and brag about you, and it is sad to disappoint her.

I would sit down privately with her, and tell her all. Remember to apologize. Ask for help in learning to be open and truthful, even when the truth is difficult. To be caught in a lie is one thing, but to owe up to a lie on your own and apologize is a way to build good strong character.

I don’t know. I think you are going to need to ask him. People sometimes say things that may have been true in the moment, but are no longer true. I would hold off saying anything to him though, until I had more indication of his interest and commitment rather than four dates. I do want to assure you, just about everybody feels the way you do occasionally.

Well, everyone can change, if they want to. It sounds like you have a good reason to change; your marriage is sinking. There are many ways you can get help. Start marriage counseling and a read a great book on my website called If He Only Knew in my Bookshelf. It will give you some idea about how your wife is feeling and how you can respond to change your marriage.

She can only make you look good. She is performing at sub-par and you are performing well.  I do not know why your manager is tolerating her poor work habits.  I wouldn’t go there. If you complain, you will look bad, and perhaps rock a boat no one wants moved. 

See if you can find the humor in her behavior, so you won’t feel put upon or shortchanged. Face it, you may have been hired to fill in for her incompetence.

Well, she asked you whether you would go out with her. No one can read anyone’s mind about how she really feels. However, one can take a good guess by listening to her words and watching her actions.

I get a sense you don’t want to be toyed with. So, I would be frank with her: If you want to go out with me, you go out with no one else. Tell her to make up her mind.

I am a proponent of a more courtship-based philosophy of dating. Look at my bookshelf for good books by Josh Harris and others.

Don’t ever say another negative thing about her.  Hold your tongue, even if you have to use both hands!  

Be kind and solicitous. Whenever she is cranky or controlling  point it out, " Gee, Bertha wants us all to go daisy –picking but we all want to eat lunch…"and drop it in his lap. Encourage everyone else in the family to also drop the problems they have with her into his lap. He will spend a lot of time smoothing out the way for his beloved. That is hard work.

Be kind, but keep your boundaries around her.  Be reasonable but don't give in to her childish behavior. He may begin to see her as a constant problem.  He is going to be very uncomfortable. 

Realize that some totally besotted men will actually marry someone so difficult. It gives them something interesting to do.  So, be nice, she may become a family member.

Courtship is a method of finding and choosing your forever life-mate. It has become popular in the conservative religious communities and is slowly spreading as teens and adults find they need a better way to develop and evaluate relationships.  

Courtship requires people to get to know each other as friends within each other’s family settings. Courtship requires both participants to rely on and work with other trusted adults to discern whether this particular person would be the best person for a future marriage and family.  Courtship helps people plan their futures together.  

There are many forms of courtship models currently available. Some require large amount of direction and intervention by a parent or other trusted adult and others have the parents involved but not directing everything.

I like courtship because it takes the sexual pressure off people. It asks you to bring potential life-mate into your home and into your life so you can assess them in the everyday, not on dates. It asks you to spend time with the person in only group settings thus keeping the sexual pressure to a minimum. Additionally, it has you talking directly to another adult or group of adults you respect and who care about you about the relationship.  So, lifetime decisions are not made in a alone and in a romantic thrall.

I hope you like this introduction. There is a lot more about it out on the Internet, check my links page.  My popular Topics to Explore Before Marriage is excerpted from the popular courtship introduction, Of Knights and Fair Maidens.