Columns

My father was diagnosed with testicular cancer about three years ago and we were recently given the news that he has a matter of months to live. My parents had an arranged marriage before they moved to Canada. Around twenty years ago my father started an affair with a Canadian woman. It is an open secret in my family, but the rest of our community doesn’t know. My brother and I had a happy childhood in which our father was always there when we went to bed and when we woke up. He never missed any holiday or event in my life. His mistress, though, has become more and more tiresome. She…

After I got engaged in December, I immediately asked five of my close friends to be in my wedding and all accepted. One of those friends, “Julia,” was a former roommate until I moved out of our apartment a year and a half ago due to a pregnancy. I did her a favor by letting her keep our cable in my name for one more year since she couldn’t come up with the $300 deposit to switch it over to her name, plus I was pregnant and had other things to worry about and didn’t have time to continue going back and forth with her on the topic. She and her new…

My husband and I got married almost a year ago, and it’s been quite a whirlwind. Our relationship with his mother had been getting increasingly toxic after we got engaged and particularly after the wedding. We had moved to her city two years ago, but because of her toxicity, uncertainty with our careers, and general dislike for the city, we decided to move to where my husband’s father and stepmother lived; it had great career prospects, was significantly closer to my family, and, most importantly, the in-laws were ecstatic about the idea. We lined up jobs, packed up our apartment, and moved. At my father-in-law’s insistence, we moved in the upstairs of…

I recently got a job which pays me almost twice what my live-in boyfriend makes. He’s got some student loans that he has to pay off, and he’s afraid to go back to school and accrue even more loans. We’ve only been together eight months, but we’ve not seen any red flags at this point. We’ve discussed moving out of state together and we know we’re signing our next lease together, but we’re still in our early twenties and, though we have similar ideas of what we’d like our lifestyles to look like later on in life, it’s not as if we’ve discussed lifelong commitment. I’d love to help him financially in…

My husband, “Lance,” and I have a 16-month-old daughter, and, since she was born, our marriage has been strained. From my perspective, he doesn’t want the responsibility that comes with being a husband and father. He is unreliable and a liar. He has his own interest at heart at all times. If something requires sacrifice on his part, he won’t do it. Recently, he moved out and says he wants a divorce. We’ll have to sell the home we own since neither of us can afford it on our own, and I don’t know whether I should stay in the town where we currently live or move closer to my family. Currently,…

I worked for a non-profit for more than four years and, though I liked the people I worked with and the job was flexible, my boss was a misogynist and bully, and multiple colleagues (male and female) left during my time there because he was unreasonable, insulting, and belittling. I left because of him, but I continue to work in the same line of work in the same part of the city. Before I left, I had to train my replacement. He had a similar personality as my boss but also didn’t want to do any work at all. He complained about responsibilities, buckling at the simplest tasks, and didn’t want to…

I was married for ten years in a relatively loveless relationship. She and I split up close to four years ago, and the divorce was final about a year ago. A few months back I decided to start dating again, so I joined a few dating apps, and I went out on a few dates here and there. One of those was with “Mary,” and we hit it off very well. I’ve been seeing her quite a bit, but she and I had an understanding from the beginning that we were just dating and that both of us would probably see other people until we got to the point of wanting to…

I have been in a relationship with an old high school friend, “Don,” for nearly two years now. We are both 47 years old, we have been separated from our estranged spouses for several years, and neither of us can afford to seek a divorce. Don’s wife took his son and his step-twins more than four years ago and moved out of state. The children are now 11 and 17, respectively. I left my husband a little over three years ago. My teenage daughter and I moved into Don’s house seven months ago. I was homeless. Don drives out of state every weekend to see his children and usually brings his son…