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New readers, welcome to Dear Wendy, a relationship advice blog. Read some of the most popular Dear Wendy posts here. If you don’t find the info you need in this column, please visit the Dear Wendy archives or the forums (you can even start your own thread), do a search in the search bar, or submit a question for advice at wendy(AT)dearwendy.com. I met a guy at work (different department) in February this year and things took off quite well. When this relationship started, he confided in me that he’d been having problems with his girlfriend of one year and they were on the verge of breaking up. He said they weren’t…

It’s time again for Shortcuts. For every question, I’ll give my advice in just a few sentences because sometimes the answer to a person’s question is so obvious and the need to hear it so great that being as clear and frank as possible is simply the best way to go.

My husband and I have an 8-year-old daughter who, during school breaks, spends a few days holidaying with my mother and stepfather. Yesterday, she shared a story that worried me. She told me her step-grandfather (John) was taking a nap and she woke him (on purpose) by singing loudly. John got angry and said, “You stupid little rat!” and left the room. My daughter cried and told her grandmother, who brushed the incident aside. Later John told her he wasn’t calling HER a rat but had thought he saw one running across the room. My daughter said she thought he was “just making excuses” for calling her a bad name. Later, they…

My boyfriend bought his parents’ house that he grew up in and they just moved out of a year ago. He is assuming that his future wife will move into it and he has voiced that he thinks that is me. We have talked about getting engaged in another year. I told him that I want to buy a home together with my future husband as I have the savings and income to do so, but he is unwilling to give up this house right now. He seems to think there is nothing else on the market this big and finished in our area for this price. He also said his parents…

My daughter, who is 18 and still in high school, has had the same boyfriend for about two years now. Recently it has come to the family’s attention that he smokes weed and has contacted other girls asking them to stay the night with him. I sat my daughter down the other night and told her everything. Of course, she cried and was very upset. I never told her to break things off with him. I told her to pray about it and think about it and that she would know the right thing to do. The next morning she went to see him to end things. She then proceeded to come…

I used to be a school teacher in London. I did it for almost two decades in some of the toughest areas of the city. It was challenging and fulfilling work, but I was barely able to make ends meet. Every month I struggled to pay the mortgage and the bills and put food on the table. I married another teacher at the age of 36 and had two wonderful children, but we eventually and tragically fell out of love with each other. Circumstances being what they are, we still live together as a family, but my husband and I have gone our separate ways emotionally. It was during my second pregnancy…

I was introduced to a wonderful man, “Derek,” by our 23-year-old daughters after both of our recent divorces. Everything started out great, and then all of a sudden his daughter decided that she didn’t like me. She told Derek’s mother horrible lies about me before I had a chance to meet her, and now my reputation has been ruined by these lies. “My Boyfriend Treats His Daughter Like SHE is His Girlfriend” Derek and I are both very much in love with each other and felt we had everyone’s blessings, so we probably moved the relationship forward a little faster than we would have otherwise done. I fear that Derek’s daughter became…

Last year my husband mentioned that his mom would be having a party for his dad who is turning 60 in May. We live on the east coast and they live in the midwest, where my husband is from, a few hours from Chicago, where I’m from. We went back to Chicago this past November and saw his family for Thanksgiving, and I’ve had conversations with his mom and sister since and they’ve never brought up this party. Don’t you think it’s weird they have not mentioned it? I talked to my MIL last month when she called for my birthday, but she never said anything…. So my husband has just told…

I’m an early 30s woman, married almost three years to a man whom I’ve been with for six. I’ve always identified as straight-ish; although I’ve had crushes on women for my whole life (a couple times a year since middle school), I’ve never done more than kiss a woman — and, honestly, it never really occurred to me that those crushes meant anything. Being with a man has fit the script I wanted for my life, and it seemed to work, so I went with it. My husband is a wonderful man, but our relationship is much more one of compatibility, comfort, making sense life-wise than some deeply passionate romance. Neither of…