Urgent love-and-marriage agenda can be frightening

Maureen Scurfield Miss Lonelyhearts
By: Maureen Scurfield Posted:

Advertisement

Advertise with us

DEAR MISS LONELYHEARTS: My first wife married me in a hurry because she thought she was pregnant with my child, but then she had a miscarriage. We struggled after that and she divorced me within a year. She said she didn’t love me anymore. That cut deep.

Read this article for free:


or

Already have an account? Log in here »

To continue reading, please subscribe:

Subscribe and receive a limited-edition Free Press branded hat or tote.

Digital Subscription

One year of digital access for only $205*

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

*First annual payment billed as $205.00 + GST for one year. This annual subscription will automatically renew at $233.00 + GST every 52 weeks (10% off the regular annual price of $259.35). 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 24/04/2025 (530 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

DEAR MISS LONELYHEARTS: My first wife married me in a hurry because she thought she was pregnant with my child, but then she had a miscarriage. We struggled after that and she divorced me within a year. She said she didn’t love me anymore. That cut deep.

A few weeks ago, I told my new girlfriend everything that happened and that my great wish is to marry and have a kid. Now she’s started stalling.

I can’t win for losing — one woman after the other. What is my problem? I want a real love life and a happy marriage, but I just keep getting myself in trouble.

— Total Screw Up? East Kildonan

Dear Screw Up: Your hasty timeline is scaring women off. You need to relax and look at each new relationship as a friendship with romantic possibilities.

That means taking time to have real conversations and explore all kinds of things together, well before you think about love, marriage and kids.

A man or woman with an urgent agenda like yours makes new people antsy. It causes them to wonder what may be wrong with this person who’s in such a hurry to get serious and get married. Why are they in such a panic?

Dear Miss Lonelyhearts: My partner is stealing money from me when I’m asleep. It’s not that she needs it — she earns a lot at her job.

I watched her with one eye open last night, going through my pants pockets. I had left nothing in there — not a dime. I heard her swear softly and get back into her side of the bed.

She’s gorgeous and has a very good job, but she’s kind of creeping me out now. If I say something about it, then what? She’ll probably cry and never come back.

How can we fix this? I can’t marry someone who needs to steal. In many other ways, this woman is perfect for me. Help, please.

— Loving a Thief? Portage la Prairie

Dear Loving a Thief: This light-fingered woman is not perfect for you or any partner until she gets help for her need to steal. You should be aware that some people just can’t stop, as it’s impulsive and has nothing to do with need.

You also don’t know if this girlfriend is stealing elsewhere — from stores, friends’ houses or purses slung over chairs in restaurants or bars — but it is likely.

Her stealing habit could end up getting you in serious trouble too, especially if she stashes stolen goods at your place or you both get busted as you walk out of a store or restaurant.

She’s one scary mate to have — dangerous to herself, to you and other people close to her. It’s time to walk.

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.

   Read full biography

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.

Maureen Scurfield

Maureen Scurfield
Advice columnist

Maureen Scurfield writes the Miss Lonelyhearts advice column.

   Read full biography

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.

Related Articles

Don’t expect your two-lover setup to last long Clarify fact and fiction for fibbing daughter Don’t fear reaching out to folks, post-meltdown Marriage was set to self-destruct this way, so cope Take this as last warning to love her, or lose her Cat’s out of the bag, so it’s time to move on Find out what’s behind B-word bemusement Don’t keep flame burning for travelling troubadour Don’t drag things out with poorly matched mate

Advertisement Advertise With Us

Report Error Submit a Tip

Advertisement

Learn more about Winnipeg Free Press Advertising solutions

More Stories

Free Press file photo Striking Dynacare employees have been declared “essential workers” by the Manitoba Labour Board.

Essential workers ruling raises questions

Editorial 4 minute read Preview

Essential workers ruling raises questions

Editorial 4 minute read 2:00 AM CDT

Ever been to a Dynacare clinic? Most of us have been. It’s an amazing demographic and ethnic slice of the city we’ve become. Old patients. Young patients. New arrivals. Long-time Canadians. People who know the ropes — others who are startled by the crowds and the noise and the lockstep forward motion of professionals doing what they have been trained to do. It seems, all at the same time, both chaotic and diagnostic, as names of patients are steadily called out and thousands of tests are performed.

But Dynacare is at the centre of a new kind of test and this time, we’re all in the test tube together.

It’s the first real test for new labour law put in place by the government of Premier Wab Kinew in 2024 — a law that redefined what essential services are for provincially-regulated workplaces. Under this law, companies and their employee and unions must have an agreement of which employees are essential — which ones must stay on the job during a legal strike for the protection of the health and safety of the public.

Dynacare had that kind of essential employee agreement with its staff and union — the company and the union had agreed the employees were not essential.

Read
2:00 AM CDT

Scare up some social reconnection this fall

Maureen Scurfield 4 minute read 2:00 AM CDT

DEAR MISS LONELYHEARTS: I’m an emotional mess. My lesbian girlfriend and I broke up in August, and now I hold the lease on the apartment we shared. It’s a great big old place with two spacious balconies.

I just got new roommates — two younger friends who really love it here — but secretly I’m still feeling lonely. Every minute of living here reminds me of my girlfriend because we decorated the place together and hung out on the balconies to sunbathe in the summer.

Would it help to move out of my beloved old block with its memory triggers? Maybe, but what if I died of loneliness in a new place? I need people around me, and no one but my ex-girlfriend has really been the right person. Please help. I feel sick about this.

— Love-Nest Sadness, Winnipeg

The Green Fog was made in the image of Vertigo by Alfred Hitchcock. (San Francisco International Film Festival)

The Green Fog pays homage to the City by the Bay via Hitchcock's Vertigo

Randall King 5 minute read Preview

The Green Fog pays homage to the City by the Bay via Hitchcock's Vertigo

Randall King 5 minute read Wednesday, Jun. 6, 2018

The Green Fog is certainly an original film. But it is best approached with a thorough familiarity with Alfred Hitchcock’s classic 1958 thriller Vertigo.

In fact, it’s an absolute prerequisite.

Commissioned by San Francisco International Film Festival director Noah Cowan, it is a “celebration of San Francisco in cinema” that, in its own strange way, functions as a kind of remake of Vertigo, told obliquely with footage from an array of San Francisco-set movies and TV shows, including Bullitt, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, McMillan and Wife, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home and The Streets of San Francisco.

“We were told to feature footage from any film or TV show ever shot in the Bay Area,” says director Guy Maddin (My Winnipeg, The Saddest Music in the World), who took the assignment in collaboration with fraternal partners Evan and Galen Johnson.

Read
Wednesday, Jun. 6, 2018
Reverend Gary Paterson, right, and his partner Tim Stevenson clap and beat on a pot with a wooden spoon as part of a tribute to health care workers in Vancouver, B.C. Tuesday, March 24, 2020. Thousands of people in Vancouver's west end have been going out on their balconies to applaud the front line heath care workers each night at 7pm. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jonathan Hayward

With a bang, B.C. applauds health-care workers

Amy Smart, The Canadian Press 3 minute read Preview

With a bang, B.C. applauds health-care workers

Amy Smart, The Canadian Press 3 minute read Wednesday, Mar. 25, 2020

VANCOUVER - At the same time each night, Rev. Gary Paterson and about half a dozen other neighbours have begun gathering at least two metres apart on the rooftop patio of their building in Vancouver's west end.

They don't know who will signal the beginning, and everyone's clocks are slightly different, but just before 7 p.m., they hear clapping in the distance.

"It's usually at about two minutes to seven, like people can't restrain their enthusiasm, and then it starts to move like a wave," he said on Wednesday.

The applause is for health-care workers and other essential service providers on the frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Read
Wednesday, Mar. 25, 2020
Esther Williams and Red Skelton sing 'Baby, It's Cold Outside' in Neptune's Daughter (1949).

Banning controversial songs is a tone-deaf solution

Jen Zoratti  10 minute read Preview

Banning controversial songs is a tone-deaf solution

Jen Zoratti  10 minute read Friday, Dec. 7, 2018

Along with sipping egg nog and trimming trees, Canadians engaged in another reliable holiday tradition this week: debating whether or not Baby, It’s Cold Outside promotes date rape.

On Tuesday, three of the country’s major broadcasters — CBC, Rogers and Bell Media — announced they’d be putting the chill on the contentious duet, written by American songwriter Frank Loesser in 1944, and would not be playing it on their radio stations this year.

Several American radio stations have also put the song on their naughty lists, arguing it has no place in the #MeToo era. 

Through a modern lens, it’s not hard to see how some people might view this song as a woman being pressured into sex by a guy who won’t take no for an answer. 

Read
Friday, Dec. 7, 2018

The alternative is in the ground

Stuart Williams 4 minute read Wednesday, Jul. 29, 2026

The cheapest 750 megawatts isn’t a methane plant. It’s our own furnaces.

Manitoba Hydro wants to build up to $3 billion worth of additional methane turbines near Brandon — 750 megawatts of fossil-fuelled power, to get us through the coldest winter evenings and the driest years.

As the Public Utilities Board weighs the plan this summer, Manitobans should ask a simple question — is burning methane really the cheapest way to keep the lights on and the furnaces running?

The evidence says no.