AM I CONTROLLING

Everybody's Uncle,

Yesterday my girlfriend told me its over and she wants me to leave. We have been living together for 3 years now. The reason she gave me is that she does not want to live with a man who controls her life.

We have the same argument for quite some time now and I would appreciate your opinion on our problem. She sees nothing wrong in going out to bars (she calls them booze cans, she usually is the only woman there) or other men's apartments staying the night. They get drunk and stoned together; Last week she came home with his clothes on. She says that they are her friends and at 44 years old no man is going to control her. She also states that I don't know how to love and I am a control freak because I object to this.

When she comes home from work she has a couple of beers a joint and then goes to bed or gets mad at me if I say anything or just try to avoid her. She wants me to go with her but I don't go because I don't want to sit around with a bunch of drunks until 2 or 3 in the morning.

Most of her friends are alcoholics and the ones that aren't she only calls when she needs something from them.

I am leaving in two weeks because I don't see any future with her. I have tried to explain that I feel that this is no life and that some day something really bad is going to happen to her. Last week she said that a man grabbed her bum, but this just make her mad and she says they are her friends and I can't control her or what she does.

Don't get me wrong I like to go out and do things and there is nothing wrong with having a drink. But I think she is going to destroy her self - or is it as she states I just want a puppet that does what I want when I pull her strings. I don't think I am controlling but I may be wrong.


[Leaving]

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Nephew,

My advice is to leave yesterday!

Women dominated by control freaks are not allowed out of the house except for absolute essentials, and then, with an umbilical cell phone. Bars and overnighters with men are so far off the reservation that you couldn't see smoke-signals with a telescope.

Excessive drinking and pot smoking should signal an immediate departure. Life styles that are totally incompatible breed poor relationships.

[Jimism: When your mindset and my mindset are so far apart, we will be in conflict at all times.]

Adults without marriage commitment and/or children have virtually no obligation to remain in stressed relationships. Discussion and compromise are factors in the best relationships. Freakish control or domination has no place in healthy unions.

Philosophically, adults should be objectively self-defined [Jimism: To thine own self be known.] and nakedly honest in presentation. People live and die within images created by their own delusions, often, taking down themselves and souls they dominate along the way.


Mature relationships should not be a contest of wills. Each person has the right and responsibility to be his own person. [The song says, "I did it my way ," not, "YOU did it my way."] Discussion and compromise - yes. Domination - no.

Attempts to change the conduct of other adults are usually stressful and rarely fruitful. When honest communication does not exist or can not bring resolution to serious conflicts, it is time to move on.

You employ the word "bum" [an older term for buttocks] and indicate your lady is 44 years old. I assume you are a man of some years. Get away and take time to objectively redefine yourself. Ask this question, "What kind of man would put up with the woman you describe for three years?

All the best,
Everybody's Uncle