There’s plenty wrong with this picture

Advertisement

Advertise with us

DEAR MISS LONELYHEARTS: My new boyfriend claims nothing can wake him up once he’s in a deep sleep. So the other night, when I was staying over, I was lying there awake while he snored.

Read this article for free:


By clicking the button above, an account will be created and you will begin to receive some of our recommended newsletters. You may opt out of any newsletter by visiting your Email and Communication Preferences page or by clicking "unsubscribe" at the bottom of any email.

or

Already have an account? Log in here »

To continue reading, please subscribe:

Digital Subscription

One year of digital access for only $1.44 a week*

  • Enjoy unlimited reading on winnipegfreepress.com
  • Read the E-Edition, our digital replica newspaper
  • Access News Break, our award-winning app
  • Play interactive puzzles

*Billed as $5.77 plus GST every four weeks. After 52 weeks, price increases to the regular rate of $19.95 plus GST every four weeks. Offer available to new and qualified returning subscribers only. Cancel any time.

To continue reading, please subscribe:

Add Free Press access to your Brandon Sun subscription for only an additional

$1 for the first 4 weeks*

  • Enjoy unlimited reading on winnipegfreepress.com
  • Read the E-Edition, our digital replica newspaper
  • Access News Break, our award-winning app
  • Play interactive puzzles
Start now

*Your next Brandon Sun subscription payment will increase by $1.00 and you will be charged $17.95 plus GST for four weeks. After four weeks, your payment will increase to $24.95 plus GST every four weeks.

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 22/01/2025 (644 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

DEAR MISS LONELYHEARTS: My new boyfriend claims nothing can wake him up once he’s in a deep sleep. So the other night, when I was staying over, I was lying there awake while he snored.

I sat up, slithered out of the bed and tip-toed into his computer room. I started to look at his bookshelf collection. It was pretty boring, but below the work-related books on the floor under the bottom shelf, I spotted some picture albums.

My eye caught a red album, unlike the others, so I pulled it out. It was an amateur porn collection featuring himself in a male bikini and otherwise completely naked, surrounded by some girls who looked college age — also naked.

I had no idea my boyfriend looked so hot then — he was young and fit. You could see he was into weightlifting. Wow. You could tell he knew he was hot and enjoyed the posing

I was not listening for footsteps. Suddenly, my boyfriend popped up beside me, grabbed the album and said, “These pictures are private — and none of your business.” I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

Then he calmed down and got kind of sly-looking and said the only way he would let me get away with snooping in his stuff is if I posed for some hot photos for him.

I said no way, we fought for a while, then I left.

Today he started calling me and apologizing, and whining, “One little nude shot of you is all I wanted.”

— Nobody’s Nude Model, North Kildonan

Dear Nobody’s Nude: Don’t even consider posing for a nude picture to make things feel even. Tell your new guy you couldn’t be less interested and you’re finished if he continues to hassle you.

Images like this tend to end up in the oddest places, and it would be embarrassing if a nude photo of you got into the wrong hands.

What if you stayed with him for life? It would be particularly embarrassing once you’re older and have a family for the kids to find dad’s naughty photos.

Dear Miss Lonelyhearts: It’s only January and already my husband has rented a cabin, a boat and the works for this summer without my input.

We are newly married, and he didn’t even ask me to chip in one idea toward these plans. He didn’t even tell me about the rental until there was no going back on the plan. The money is paid and he gets his way. I’m so mad at him.

I reminded him we’re a married couple now and should be sharing this kind of idea. He just laughed and said, “Where would you have the money to pay for a place like this for more than a week?” He said he wanted to surprise me.

Baloney. He already has all his friends with cabins near his family’s cottage in Ontario, and I have all my family and friends at another lake in Manitoba. He just wants to get his way so he left me — “the love of his life” — completely out of the decision.

By the way, this is supposed to be our baby-making summer as we’re not a young couple.

How should I deal with this? I’m too old to be manipulated.

— Furious Bride, West End

Dear Furious Bride: This may be the last summer with so many options since starting a family is part of the immediate plan. You and your husband probably both have your own vehicles, so that’s great. If you don’t like the situation, you can leave.

You can go to your husband’s rental until you get tired of it and weary of the people who go with that deal. Your husband can accompany you to your own family’s lake at different times.

Not everybody enjoys being with relatives for entertainment on 2a 4-7 basis, so live it up with all the friends you can this summer before you’re on the way to baby No. 1.

Please send your questions and comments to lovecoach@hotmail.com or Miss Lonelyhearts c/o the Winnipeg Free Press, 1355 Mountain Ave., Winnipeg, MB, R2X 3B6.

Maureen Scurfield

Maureen Scurfield
Advice columnist

Maureen Scurfield writes the Miss Lonelyhearts advice column.

Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism. If you are not a paid reader, please consider becoming a subscriber.

Our newsroom depends on its audience of readers to power our journalism. Thank you for your support.

Report Error Submit a Tip

More Stories

La lang di Michif ta-pashipiikan

By Melissa Martin and Ruth Bonneville 24 minute read Preview

La lang di Michif ta-pashipiikan

By Melissa Martin and Ruth Bonneville 24 minute read Saturday, Sep. 25, 2010

CAMPERVILLE, MAN. -- Seated in the living room of her tiny, impeccably ordered house, Grace Zoldy takes a little girl's hand and begins a language lesson.

"La viande," the woman says, her hazel eyes dancing under a fringe of silver bangs. "That means meat."

"Deux poisson," she says next, a nod to the goldfish circling a nearby tank. The little girl likes to come watch them. "Two fish."

The sounds are familiar to anyone who took elementary-school French. But Zoldy is not French, and her words aren't either: they are something rare, something studied in universities in countries that Grace, when she was learning these words as a toddler in Camperville, didn't know existed.

Read
Saturday, Sep. 25, 2010

Seniors should never be homeless

Jon Gerrard 3 minute read Yesterday at 2:00 AM CDT

There is much attention paid to helping those who become homeless, but all too little attention given to preventing homelessness in the first place.

About one quarter of all the people experiencing homelessness are seniors, according to the most recent End Homelessness Winnipeg report. This represents a fundamental failure of our province to prevent homelessness.

Ending homelessness where it has become chronic should not be considered the end point in addressing homelessness. It is like trying to solve the problem of water on your kitchen floor by mopping it up, without considering the importance of turning off the tap so that water does not continue flowing over the edge of the sink.

Preventing homelessness in seniors is achievable. We have many resources and many organizations which support seniors, but they are fragmented, poorly co-ordinated, inadequately, funded in some cases, and have not sufficiently focused their efforts on preventing homelessness in seniors. Too many seniors are falling through the cracks.

Transit budget cap means cuts

Aldo Santin  5 minute read Preview

Transit budget cap means cuts

Aldo Santin  5 minute read Wednesday, Nov. 13, 2019

Winnipeg is literally facing dark times, officials involved in budget presentations revealed Wednesday at city hall.

The public works director said a proposed freeze on the street lighting budget means the City of Winnipeg will have to turn off an increasing number of lights over the next four years.

Winnipeg Transit said an imposed two per cent cap on its budget will mean the elimination of dozens of positions and the low-income bus pass might never see the light of day, along with a host of service cuts.

The budget prospects left Coun. Matt Allard, chairman of the public works committee and a public transit advocate, looking rattled and at a loss to explain how city hall can dig its way out of the financial situation.

Read
Wednesday, Nov. 13, 2019

Manitoba Green Party poised to make history

Dan Lett 5 minute read Preview

Manitoba Green Party poised to make history

Dan Lett 5 minute read Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2019

The door has opened for the Manitoba Green Party in this election. But can it finally find the ways, means and luck to take advantage?

In the 2019 election, it's not so much that the Greens have reached unparalleled levels of support in pre-election polls, it's more the case that the Greens have made so much headway in other provinces, why not here? Certainly, the conditions are ripe for a Green breakthrough.

Pre-election polling published in the Free Press showed the Greens solidly in the mid double-digits of support, statistically tied both province-wide and in Winnipeg with the Manitoba Liberal party. That would suggest, based on previous elections, that the Greens have a very good chance of electing at least one MLA.

In the 2016 election, the Greens captured five per cent of the popular vote and did not elect a MLA. However, they did finish second in four seats, although they were distant seconds in all but Wolseley, where Green candidate David Nickarz finished second to NDP MLA Rob Altemeyer by just over 300 votes. The Greens came within a whisker of their first win in Manitoba even though they failed to get get more than 10 per cent support in pre-election polls.

Read
Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2019

One-day conference for health-care technology

Free Press staff 1 minute read Yesterday at 2:01 AM CDT

Indigenous leaders and bioscience professionals are gathering this week to promote health-care technology in northern communities.

Bioscience Association Manitoba is hosting its second annual Indigenous Health Innovations conference on Thursday, a day after the World Indigenous Business Forum ends its Winnipeg tenure.

“We fly a lot of people in the North to get access for care for things that technology can actually give them,” said Andrea Ladouceur, Bioscience Association Manitoba’s president.

For example, Manitobans may hop on a plane for a strep throat test when they don’t need to, she said.

Director Schrader returns to silver screen with complex view of religion and belief

Alison Gillmor 4 minute read Preview

Director Schrader returns to silver screen with complex view of religion and belief

Alison Gillmor 4 minute read Thursday, Jun. 14, 2018

Bleak, wintry and rigorously controlled — until it’s not — this Book of Job-like drama from American filmmaker Paul Schrader looks at the challenges of faith.

The 71-year-old Schrader, known for scripting four Martin Scorsese films (including Taxi Driver and Raging Bull) and for directing his own (including American Gigolo, Affliction and Auto Focus), grew up in a strict Calvinist home — he famously did not see a film until he was 17 — and has always been drawn to stories of agonizing and uncertain redemption.

As the Rev. Toller (Ethan Hawke) wrestles with what it means to lead a righteous life in our badly broken world, his spiritual fate remains in doubt. It is certain, however, that First Reformed marks a cinematic rebirth for Schrader after recent disasters like The Canyons and Dog Eat Dog. Serious, complex and moving, this is not a perfect film, but even its flaws are powerful.

Toller is a solitary man who has come to the ministry late in life, after a family tragedy and a failed marriage. First Reformed, a historic church in upstate New York that was once a stop on the Underground Railroad, has since been reduced to an austerely beautiful tourist shop, more of a museum than a place of worship.

Read
Thursday, Jun. 14, 2018