My wife of 13 years said she mentally divorced me three years ago, when our marriage counsellor decided I was a danger to myself or someone else and placed me under observation for five days. This only made me more miserable, depressed and thinking negatively. I was later convicted for a DUI that made me lose my job and driving privileges for 18 months. I was again depressed. 

But a year later I started a new job, and received positive feedback and praise from both co-workers and management. I now have a deeper sense of my feelings for family and my love for my wife.

She says she needs her space and time to see if she wants to continue working on our marriage - it seems there’s no love, just her concern about my well being.

My heart is broken, yet I have faith that she’ll change her mind and see the good father and husband I’ve become.

I’m seeing a counsellor soon for help with my marriage. What do you think about my being optimistic?

- Determined

You’ve come a long way through a hard struggle, so you have every reason to be optimistic on many fronts – personally, as a parent, at work, etc. 

Recognize, however, that your wife also went through those hard times, and had to build a wall of self-protection to manage her many responsibilities. She’s undoubtedly tired and wary from it all.

Show her your understanding of this, and allow her the time to heal and renew her emotional energy, without pressuring her.

You spent many months on your mental journey; respect her need to come to her own decisions. Getting counselling again, yourself, will re-enforce your sincerity; hopefully, at some point your wife will join you in this process.

Whatever the end result, make your positive perspective an essential part of your core being… you need that for all your relationships and the important one with yourself.

So, my friend’s sweet, funny as hell, and I always have a great time when I’m with him. But he recently admitted that he’s desperately in love with me. I found it weird because a) we haven’t known each other for that long, and b) we’re only 15. 

Unfortunately, I don’t like him that way at all.

Turns out, he doesn’t handle rejection that well. He gets jealous whenever he knows I’m hanging out with another guy, he constantly guilt-trips me about rejecting him, and he makes me feel awful when he says “I’ll always love you.”

Normally I’d tell the guy who’s saying this stuff to go to hell, but he’s really an awesome guy. I want to still be his friend, but he’s not making it easy.

Two of my guy friends think I should let them kick him around. Of course, I wouldn’t.

I told my “friend” to knock it off countless times, but he isn’t listening.

- Frustrated in Calgary

No one handles rejection well, and you’re the one not making it easier. Stop parading the “he likes me” t-shirt; you’re telling others is unfair and makes your friend feel more desperate to look better in their eyes by achieving his goal, which is you. 

You’re weirding him out by letting him know when you’re with other guys.

Frankly, you’re playing a 15-year-old’s game, and not acting as a friend at all. You’ll be lucky if he stays a pal, but if he doesn’t, it’s with good reason.

My newlywed husband leaves clothes by the bed, beer bottles and dishes on the coffee table and DVD’s everywhere; I clean his mess for an hour daily. 

He leaves dishes in the sink for two days and our roommate has to wash them herself just to use the pots.

He complains that his three 12-hour shifts (nearby) leave him too exhausted. I work nine hours, five days weekly, with two hour’s commuting.

He won’t walk the dog with me, or put in a load of laundry while I’m making dinner, just watches TV.

- Hopelessly Devoted

Act NOW, or you’ll become “Hopeless, Angry Drudge.” Option 1) Stop making his dinner, or doing his laundry until he joins the team; 2) Insist he buy the roomie her own separate dishes and pots; 3) He pays for cleaning help once weekly; 4) Sell the TV, and DVD player; 5) You leave till he grows up.