Make it game, set, match with no reply for cheater

Advertisement

Advertise with us

DEAR MISS LONELYHEARTS: He’s so caught! My new boyfriend has been lying about the “tennis” he supposedly plays most week nights with his friends at “different clubs.”

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 07/08/2025 (451 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

DEAR MISS LONELYHEARTS: He’s so caught! My new boyfriend has been lying about the “tennis” he supposedly plays most week nights with his friends at “different clubs.”

Yeah, right. He’s not playing anywhere except in someone else’s bed. His unusual sports car has been spotted at a certain residence for several weeks now by an old friend of mine. She lives right across the street.

My poor friend sounded embarrassed when she called to say that she was ratting him out. I’m so grateful to her for filling me in. I just don’t know how far I should go with my revenge. I hate being made a fool of and having anyone think they got away with it. What do you suggest?

— Want Revenge! East Kildonan

Dear Revenge: A person with an ego that needs constant stroking can’t bear for a relationship partner to end an affair in cold silence — with no showdown. So, without any explanation, totally block his calls. He’ll know why.

If he drives over to your place incensed — and it’s likely his ego will take him there quickly — don’t invite him in. If he rings your doorbell incessantly or waits outside your house by the curb for you to come out, call the police.

They’ll move him along, so he won’t come back. He might even be charged, especially if he’s rude and acting entitled to the police about his being there stalking you!

Dear Miss Lonelyhearts: Because we couldn’t use our cottage due to the wildfires, my wife and I went a whole other route. We sold our too-big empty family home and bought a small house with an indoor year-round pool, already functional.

We wish we’d done it years ago — what fun we’re having with pool parties! And the weekend can start early and end late, with no long highway drive for the adults.

We’ve stumbled into an alternate way to have fun, now that our grown kids are up and out, and have their own families.

We didn’t need the big half-empty house, and now we don’t need to travel on the busy highway for hours to get to the lake and back on the weekends. Plus, the groceries and liquor store are just down the street here in the city, and there are new festivals in town every week.

Stop moaning, people! Your place in Winnipeg can be a fun place to “visit” four seasons a year now.

— Big Guy, North Kildonan

Dear Big Guy: Some people close their minds to alternatives, and waste time mourning old patterns. Other people get creative in fun and different ways for them and their families — like you have.

The trick can also be to take the money you’d spend on gas, park entrance and treats at the cottage and spend it more freely on small summer excursions in the city.

Some people who long for cool lake water and summer swimming are spending money enjoying weekends in the different city hotels with pools. Others go to YM-YWCA locations — some with big pools lit by sunlight streaming through giant windows.

On really hot days, there’s nothing like movie theatres, the smell of popcorn and comfortable recliner seats. Some parents take babysitters to accompany the kids for a children’s movie in the afternoon, then they take in a more mature flick or go off shopping together — a two-hour adult date.

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

Province changes Thompson ‘Vaxport’ plan

Carol Sanders 5 minute read Preview

Province changes Thompson ‘Vaxport’ plan

Carol Sanders 5 minute read Thursday, Jan. 14, 2021

The Manitoba government has changed its plans for a vaccination "super site" for the North — just days after it was announced — after local officials argued the original proposal was unworkable.

Some northern residents will still get their COVID-19 shots at Thompson's airport, but "Vaxport" will be less super than originally planned, providing injections only to residents of fly-in communities.

Most northern residents will get their shots at the Thompson Community Recreation Centre, which is centrally located in the city of about 13,000.

"This makes much more sense logistically, and for the citizens of Thompson," Mayor Colleen Smook said Thursday after touring the airport site, which is located 10 kilometres from the city and isn't serviced by public transportation.

Read
Thursday, Jan. 14, 2021

Has the political wind changed?

Gwynne Dyer 5 minute read Yesterday at 2:01 AM CDT

It has been quite a week. First we had “Lula” – Luiz Inácio da Silva (as nobody but his mother ever called him) – defying everybody’s expectations. After winding up two million votes behind his challenger, Flávio Bolsonaro, in the first round of the Brazilian presidential election, he made a “miraculous” comeback in the second.

It was like a man going into a revolving door behind you and coming out in front. At the end of the first round, Lula was two million votes behind; at the end of the second round on Oct. 25 he was four million votes ahead. So how did he win a fourth term without cheating?

That’s what Bolsonaro claims he did, having fled to the United States; Trump, Flávio’s mentor, hints at the same. But Lula’s victory was not miraculous. He only learned to read when he was 10, and at 80 he still refused to have a mobile phone. His team finally made him get one and use it.

He wouldn’t do social media videos, so they created a WhatsApp channel called Lula’s Army, and made him appear on it at least daily. The channel went from zero to 10.8 million viewers in two weeks, and Lula won.

Imperialist crusades: 21st-century style

John R. Wiens 5 minute read Preview

Imperialist crusades: 21st-century style

John R. Wiens 5 minute read Wednesday, Jul. 8, 2026

In the 11th century and lasting into the 13th, the papacy launched a series of at least eight military campaigns we now refer to as the Crusades, or Holy Wars. They were an imperialistic call to arms for Christians to retake Jerusalem, which was at the time under Muslim rule.

Spiritual rewards for participation were implied, and other incentives offered, to dull the extra taxation demanded to fund the campaigns. Over time, the “crusades” morphed to become massacres of not only Muslims but also Jews and Christian dissidents — in other words, any enemies of the papacy. If today’s news sounds like déjà vu all over again, it probably should.

The stories keep repeating themselves in many forms. We now know that two 20th century world wars, global in scope, were caused by imperialistic ambitions, changes in the balance of international powers and corresponding arms races. The first was attributed to the assassination of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne by a Bosnian Serb, a kind of “regime change” initiative. The second resulted from rising tensions between Allied and Axis powers, triggered by the rise of European fascism and Japanese militarism. The human toll of both was unimaginable.

In the First World War, 15 to 22 million people, including soldiers and civilians, were killed and another 23 million were wounded. These numbers do not account for those otherwise affected — victims of chemical warfare whose compromised health shortened their lives; of the subsequent Spanish flu epidemic amplified by the displacement of peoples; others who died from other diseases caused by war conditions; and those who were malnourished or starved. Nor do they account for the ongoing trauma and resentments passed on intergenerationally to this day.

Read
Wednesday, Jul. 8, 2026

Letters, Oct. 31

6 minute read Yesterday at 2:01 AM CDT

Civic election a missed opportunity

The outcome of the latest municipal election in Winnipeg is nothing short of baffling. The decline of what was once a proud, beautiful prairie hub is impossible to ignore.

Winnipeg is rapidly sliding into a state of structural and social dilapidation, yet voters have inexplicably chosen to hand incumbent Mayor Scott Gillingham a second term. The decision smells of complacency, and sadly, it represents a massive missed opportunity for real urban renewal.

Walking through downtown Winnipeg today is an exercise in heartbreak. A city centre that should be a bustling economic and cultural core has instead transformed into an absolute eyesore. Encampments and tents are permitted to dot the heart of the city. Streets that used to thrive are now dominated by the tragic, visible reality of severe addiction, with individuals wandering and staggering through public spaces without adequate intervention or care.

B.C. declares state of emergency over wildfires

Amy Smart, The Canadian Press 4 minute read Preview

B.C. declares state of emergency over wildfires

Amy Smart, The Canadian Press 4 minute read Wednesday, Jul. 21, 2021

VANCOUVER - British Columbia's public safety minister has declared a provincial state of emergency over the growing wildfire threat to prepare for potential mass evacuations and help secure accommodation that might be needed by evacuees.

Mike Farnworth said he made the decision based on information from officials that weather conditions will lead to more severe fire behaviour and the potential for more evacuations.

"In a briefing last night, I received word that we'll be facing a few days of very difficult weather in the Interior," Farnworth said in a statement.

The state of emergency goes into effect on Wednesday and gives government agencies, the fire commissioner and the RCMP the authority to take whatever action they deem is necessary to fight the wildfires and protect people and communities.

Read
Wednesday, Jul. 21, 2021

RRC Polytech program cuts take bite out of hospitality, tourism sector

Maggie Macintosh 4 minute read Preview

RRC Polytech program cuts take bite out of hospitality, tourism sector

Maggie Macintosh 4 minute read Saturday, May. 2, 2026

Manitoba’s tourism industry is bracing for the disappearance of hospitality training programs — once-popular courses among international students.

Citing budgetary challenges related to a shift in federal immigration policy, Red River College Polytechnic is scrapping 11 programs and scaling back three others in 2026-27. Its hospitality business management diploma is one of seven permanent casualties.

The announcement, while unsurprising, is but the latest blow to a sector trying to “build back the workforce” in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, said Michael Juce, president of the Manitoba Hotel Association.

“Are people going to go outside of Manitoba for training? And if they leave, are they going to come back?” Juce said, adding that rural hotels in particular are already grappling with staffing shortages.

Read
Saturday, May. 2, 2026