Today when browsing through the different links to Dear Mrs Web, I came across a link that described the Dear Mrs. Web site as a "retro" perspective in matters of dating and courtship. Retro! Dear Mrs. Web! 

Can you imagine?

It’s odd how perspectives differ. When Dear Mrs. Web thinks of retro, the hollow sixties, and seventies immediately her mind: Flower power. Free love, free sex, no commitments. Remember that old chestnut: "don’t hold onto your love, if he leaves, you never really had him?" Yuck!

Back then sex cured everything. Inhibitions were passé. Consenting adults were meeting their "needs." Women scoured discos and bars looking for Mr. Goodbar. Divorce was considered good for the children. Music was all beat, no lyrics. Spouse swaps. "As long as I am happy, the children will be happy." Free school. Filled divorce aftermath workshops. Moreover, who can forget the terrible clothes?

Dear Mrs. Web cannot think of anything more retro or tiresome than that era of freedom without responsibility. Juvenile impulses were unleashed across the nation. We are still mopping up the mess today, 30 years later. Our country has young adults who have never seen a solid marriage, and has a population that craves that their every whim satisfied. 

Marriage is now seen an option, not a lifelong commitment. Couples now consider children add-on features, to be accepted or rejected, not precious gifts to be loved unconditionally. So-called adults are involved in strings of consecutive marriages or uncommitted relationships as a way to meet their lifelong needs, avoiding any of the needed compromise and character-building that comes with life-long love and commitment

We live in a world where the art of choosing a true life-mate has been lost. Those retro years have wiped out this fund of knowledge from our consciousness. We enter uncommitted emotional and sexual bonds with likely, or in many cases, unlikely, members of the opposite sex. We dance on the edge of knives in these relationships fearful of hurt, wary of commitment. 

Meanwhile we wait for stars to line up pointing to the best life-long mate. For we want love desperately. We want commitment, happiness, and a future with a forever beloved.

We end up with morning-after doldrums. Wreckage of past relationships and heartbreaks wash up on the shores of our battered hearts. We are pained and puzzled. We have been obedient and followed our cultural directions carefully. We have gone out, dated, hooked up, played house, and married. It has not worked. We have given away so many pieces of our heart that what we have left is bruised, cautious, fearful and unable to passionately and permanently connect. 

It shrinks when it should swell. 

These retrograde, tired old ways do not work. Let us admit it and change the tunes of our lives.

Dear Mrs. Web’s mail is full of letters from people who do not know why their love lives do not work. Why this tearing heart and soul apart from body and mind leaves them fragmented, shaking and alone. My heart pours out to them. There is a better way.

Yes, I do promote and support courtship. Dear Mrs. Web has taken it apart and scrutinized it and she can find little to fault with it. Asking the heart, soul, and body to wait for love doesn’t seem nearly as difficult to her as having them both shatter from being continually handed over to people who do not value them.

Encouraging people to get to get to know each other with depth and grace is a commonsense approach to choosing one's life-mate. Having one’s family and friends embrace and get to know a potential mate seems to be an intelligent move. After all, when you marry, you do not just marry one person; you do marry the family. The pages and pages of my In-law Archives prove it.

Listening to trusted opinions and comments about the beloved is equally important. When in love we are blind, and we need as much information as possible. Watching how this future potential mate treats his family, as well as yours just plain makes sense. It is a peek into your possible future. 

Judging character traits, evaluating flaws (don’t we all have them!) and making informed choices about a mate seems far more preferable to the blind love driven by physical desire and overwhelming neediness that drives most engagement and marriage decisions today.

Courtship and betrothal offer men and women today a better and different option. We no longer have to abide by the outdated, ineffective, and tiresome. We no longer have to compromise our values and our hearts.  We can learn to cherish and be cherished.

So, is Dear Mrs. Web retro? 

No way! 

Timeless? 

Could be. 

Classic? 

Perhaps. 

Retro? 

Never!

Some people think that brides and birthday children must get there own way no matter how silly or unreasonable. Dear Mrs. Web disagrees, with vigor!

To not invite the little guy is a deliberate and hurtful snub. We do not permit our second graders to snub a classmate. Let us model generosity here. What is it going to cost you, a little cake, a little ice-cream, and another goodie bag?

You should help your son understand that just because we don’t like someone, it doesn’t mean we forget our manners. Manners are the grease that helps us all through awkward situations. Work with him and help him learn ways to be kind and gracious to all his guests. And no, 8 years old is not too young.

You can’t save your friendship. Breakups don’t save friendships; there are no real friends in former lovers - just one wounded person and one guilty one.

You might consider taking care of yourself and learn from a relationship better ways of providing the commitment you want. I advise courtship as a way of stepping towards commitment. I think it offers a better alternative to the consecutive emotional and physical commitments that some people almost take for granted today. Visit my website and look on the bookshelf for books about Courtship. I recommend I Kissed Dating Goodbye for people who are do not want to go through this sort of emotional see-sawing.

Alcoholics need to be boxed in from their first relapse drink.  They drink – they lose. Immediately. Don’t let her get away with any drinking in your life. It is one of those "give them an inch…take a mile" situations.

She is out of control. I would contact her physician(s) and tell them what you are going to do. Then I would ask her to leave, kindly and firmly. Immediately, if possible. If she has been in treatment you may be able to discuss how best to do this with a social worker from the treatment center. No reconciliation until sober and trustworthy. No one should be permitted to blow up the family with their acting-out behaviors. You need to protect the children and yourself.

Wouldn’t you say it sounds like your son is obsessed? Sometimes young love loses all its boundaries. Another thing that comes to mind is drug use. Drastic personality changes are often linked to drug use. I would say it is time to have a sit down with the girl’s family, since you seem to be raising her, part time, in your home. I would find out why there is a rift in their family and get to know them better.

I think that you are right to ask for balance. He is still under your roof and needs to abide by your rules and requests. I think it is reasonable to negotiate private family time without her. I have run into more than one teenaged boy who denied the true nature of the relationship he had with his girlfriend, almost up to the wedding, or in one memorable instance, the due date.

There is a book I recommend that is on my website called I Kissed Dating Goodbye. It is about male and female relationships and balance. He may find it helpful. In earlier times, parents sent their obsessed children on year-long continental tours. Perhaps you could help him arrange a summer as a camp counselor, traveling construction worker, overseas missions work, or some other type of travel.

Distance often breaks up relationships. I don’t think there is a way to change the situation. The reality is if he really loved you, he would not have "dumped" you.

I am so sorry. What a sad situation. Your wife is behaving like a cad. I agree that you can not know whether she is being truthful. 

However, there is even more at stake.  Despite her selfishness you have a little boy to think about. Therefore, I would go talk to a lawyer about taking back possession of your home and negotiating marriage counseling and family counseling for the three of you.

I am a generalist. Why? Because life is not lived on one note.

You are saying that you have been so hurt and are thinking of closing your heart to your in-laws. That this would be something that your husband would be aware of and support. And that you are also worried about the relationship your in laws will have with your child(ren).

You cannot predict how your in-laws are going to respond to your little one as she gets older and more beguiling. You are correct in stating that one must protect a child from negative or painful influences. However, nothing negative has happened to your child. You are too much in the future. Stay in the now.

These people don’t have a lot to offer you, and probably never have. You sound like a warm, loving woman who wants to be a beloved daughter to these people. It is probably not going to happen. That doesn’t mean you have to close yourself or your heart. What it does mean is that you realize and accept their limitations and inability to connect. It is time to bury your expectations and mourn the loss of what you might have had with them.

You are probably right, that God put you in this family for a reason, but instead of changing this family, he might have put you there to help you learn new ways of being, and letting go.

I think that what you did was a mistake, because you set the relationship on a sexual footing. Why would he want more than sex from you? You are both treating each other like meat instead of human beings. 

I think it would be another mistake to sleep with him again. Contrary to what you might believe, a way to a man’s heart is not through his genitals. I doubt you will be able to get the relationship onto another track. I know he treats you nicely at times; any man who has hopes for a repeat performance would.

Some men become wonderful and loving stepfathers to their beloved’s children. However a ready-made family comes with its own history and habits and there will be places you will fit, and places you won’t.

When I hear about "crazy ex’s" and restraining orders, my first reaction is that this family has possibly had a very tumultuous life. Sometimes families that have lived in this sort of turmoil tend to continue to have constant turmoil in their lives. In your shoes, I would look for signs of that sort of ongoing turmoil.

The problems and solutions of step-parenting are many and diverse. I could not begin to list them here but would be happy to answer different questions. Scan through the Step-parenting section of my Bookshelf for recommended books.

I imagine when a man hears his friends criticized he feels just like anyone would, annoyed and also criticized. There is a big difference between criticism and just telling someone that you have a different outlook than they do. There are people we should never spend time with, criminals, and cruel, abusive, or morally repugnant people. However, people with whom we just don’t see eye to eye, or who are different than we are; we tolerate occasionally for the sake of our beloved.

You don’t have to enjoy his friends, just be polite to them occasionally, two or three times a year. You can be busy other times.

You made a baby with and married a man who has a history of dishonesty and cheating within your relationship. You state you still resent his behavior from over three years ago and do not trust his relationship with his other child’s mother.

You say he has asked for forgiveness and you have granted it. Did you both run away from your problems or did you face them squarely? Did you tell him about your hurt and pain? Did he beg forgiveness and did you both get to the point of vulnerability and renewal? Or, are you still scrunched up in pain? When renewal happens in a marriage, it is a kind of a honeymoon, but with new level of wisdom, self-knowledge, knowledge of the beloved, and acceptance of each other.

This kind of work takes a fair amount of time. In the meantime, there is trust to be built. Therefore, your husband should not be alone with your former lover. You will need to accompany him when he picks up the child to come home with you for the weekend. You may even find yourself doing pick up and delivery yourself.

You married a man with not only a financial commitment to another child, but he also has an emotional and fatherly commitment to this child, who is your own little one’s half-brother or sister. This woman’s child is part of your family, and in some ways she is too. So it is time to make peace and go forward, parenting your own child, being a wife to your husband, finding kindness in your heart for your step child and extending peace towards its mother.

This is the life you signed up for when you became pregnant by this man and married him.