Dear Dr. Holmes:

I wrote to you on a couple of occasions concerning other people's problems, mainly because I like your common sense approach to problems. My name is Andrew, English born and bred, married to a Filipina and have been living in this country for the last 15 years. Now I have one Hell of a problem of my own: this letter might be a bit disjointed, but life is disjointed at the moment. In fact, “Life is hell,” would probably be a better description.

My wife Linda, with whom I have two lovely little children, is on a helter skelter to disaster. I will start at the end and go backwards. Since last 1996, she has been having an affair with a DI (dancing instructor) called Edgar.

All this was going on while I was away working for the good of the family. I am a self employed consultant in the oil and gas industry and command good fees when on contact.

She spent a small fortune on the guy, even feeding his wife and kids to the detriment of her own whom it appears she does not give a damn about. The guy even moved into the family home and of course into our bed with her. He even had the gall to beat my kids. The little girl even saw them in bed together and the little boy is terrified of him and a lot of people say he is traumatized. Many of the neighbors were so concerned about the kids that they were trying to find a way to get in contact with me to tell me what was going on. Once I found out about the state of affairs, I tried talking things out with her, but she said the guy loved her and she loved him.

I asked how she knew the guy loved her. She replied [excuse the bastos (grossness), Dr. Holmes, but these were her exact words]: "When I first went with him, I was having my menses and he ate me."

What I want to know is, would this really be sufficient proof that a man loved a woman? She appears to get pregnant every month, I asked her why she did not ensure that he took precautions. She replied, "He is too big to wear condoms".

They used to lay in bed nearly all day drinking and having sex. She told everybody that they did it four or five times a day. She even told one of the maids that Edgar used to eat her all the time.

Eventually, I invited the guy over to the house to sort things out. I had to promise not to kill him, before he turned up with a companion. He proceeded to stroke my wife's arm and tell me how much he loved her, my kids and even my dogs, which he also used to beat. His companion eventually told me in English that Edgar was BS and left.

I said to Edgar that if Linda and he were in love, they had better go off together and live happily ever after. I asked him 20 times if he was going to support her, because she wouldn’t get a single centavo from me. Eventually, he said he did not want to break up my family. The linta (leech) was even showing me pictures of his son in Tarlac.

The upshot of this was that after this, she used to go off for weeks at a time and spend the time with him in motels. She paid of course by pawning her jewelry, then she would come home to me and say that she wanted to try again. If I took her back, she would be off again after a few weeks to be with him. Of course the guy was controlling her.

When the money ran out he would send her home, saying that I was not ready yet (though for what, I don't know) and to give me more time. He actually told someone that they were waiting for me to go back to work and then of course he could move back in the house and continue with his easy life.

Dr. Holmes, in my line of work I have to be a good judge of character and I weighed this guy up in 5 minutes. He is lazy, semi intelligent (with a lot of gutter sense) and of course a Leech. No way is he in love with my wife. He just wants the money and the free sex from a good looking girl, but I don't suppose she will ever see that.

I took her to see a psychiatrist. She came home and said that she tricked him (the psychiatrist). I called the doctor and told him what she had said. He, of course, knew that already. After a couple of visits, he told me that she was a manipulative person and a pathological liar.

Sincerely yours-Andrew

Dear Andrew:

Thank you very much for your letter. There is more to it, of course, which I will print in a future column. For the rest of this column, I merely want to answer the question you asked and put a few things in perspective.

You wanted to know whether the fact that a man went down on a woman when she had her period was sufficient proof that a man loved a woman.

No, it wouldn't be. Love is a far more complex emotion than the enthusiasm required and appreciated to go down on a woman for a couple of minutes (or even several hours). In addition, love is a commitment, which requires even more than mere emotion would.

But that is not the point, you see. It is not so much whether oral sex during menstruation per se (or any other behavior, sexual or otherwise) can really be looked at as the proof of love, but whether she believes it is.

More to the point, it is whether this same sexual act is sufficient reason for her to fall in love with him.

Alas, the answer to both pointed questions is yes. This, coupled with her being enamored with the size of his penis, and the frequency and, perhaps, intensity of their lovemaking, seem to have captivated her to so deeply that she is willing to risk your marriage for this relationship.

What you can do to win her back (and whether you even want to at all), we will discuss in a future column. In the meantime, keep your chin up and remind yourself that, even if it doesn't seem that way at the moment, life is worth living and some things (our children's welfare, your sanity, if not anything else) are worth fighting for.

All the best

MG Holmes

(BodyMind Vol. 1 No. 8 - First posted: 12-14-97)

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