Ron M

I was seeing a young woman with two kids. When we first got together I was in the middle of a divorce, and she said the same. Her husband is in the military out of state. After we had been together for a month I find out that she is separated, but her husband still pays all of her bills and in her words has "a fantasy we can be this happy little family again". She admitted to me that her husband didn't know she was dating again, and that if he found out he would probably divorce her right away and stop supporting her since he is paying her car bill, phone bill, other bills, etc.

She would tell me how awful he was and how they didn't get along, but he seemed to take an active interest in his daughters and I began to feel bad about what we were doing since it didn't seem like she really wanted to divorce him, just string him along to get what she wanted from him while having fun on the side with me. She said a big reason she was putting off divorce was she didn't want to lose custody of her kids.

Eventually I found out other things about her that led me to believe she is generally an unstable person who can barely manage her life. On one hand I don't want to ruin her life or make things harder for her daughters since she doesn't make any money. I would just let it go, but I feel bad for her husband who has no clue what she is doing, especially if he is paying her bills while she is sleeping with other guys and bringing strange men around their children? Her two year old even called me daddy once, which was a little weird.

I found out within a week of us breaking it off she was back online looking for another man.

Should I tell him or just leave it alone and let karma deal with it?

I am about four months out of a divorce and two months ago started seeing a young (24 year old) woman with a kid whose divorce is still pending.

A few days ago she asked me what we were, and I told her (honestly) that I'm not ready for a serious relationship, but I like spending time with her. She's never seemed clingy or needy before, and always seemed to sort of have a wall up. She said she had a wall up because she didn't want to get attached and get hurt.

I told her I would be exclusive with her, but that I wasn't at a point to start planning for a future with anyone, and I want to take things EXTREMELY slow. I see her once a week or so since we're both busy with our lives.

She told me she didn't want a relationship either, and although I've met her kid (casually, not a formal 'here's mommy's boyfriend' thing), she told her kid in front of me not to mention to her parents that she was spending time with me, so I figured she was also not looking to make anything really serious.

So today we're talking and she tells me that I remind her of the Mr. Big character from Sex in the City. I guess it's kind of a compliment, but my female cousin who watches the show said he's a "bad boy" and a douche who treated Carrie badly and lied about committing to her. I've been very honest with this girl about my intentions and where I'm at. I fit the "bad boy" definition a bit, but I'm not leading anyone on. I am concerned with the fact she already has a kid, but even if she didn't I would still not be jumping into "commitment",

Can anyone help me figure this out, or at least explain Mr Big to me? I really don't want to watch a bunch of seasons of this show to figure things out.

I have been with the same girl for 10 years. We have been married for four of those. Her last boyfriend before we met cheated on her, and when we first started dating she told me the reason she didn't trust men was because of him. However she would still talk to him and ask him for advice about our relationship, which I didn't like. I told her how much I didn't like him and that I didn't want to see him around. A few years into our relationship while she is at college, she goes to some social events with him. She later told me that he was pursuing her and trying to win her back, and that she was lonely because I wasn't spending enough time with him. When she told me this I got upset and thought about ending it, but she assured me it was in the past and over. A year or two after this incident we got married.

So imagine my surprise when I find out just a few days ago that last December a few days before Christmas she had a yahoo conversation with him where she was talking to him about things they could do together in the city, including seeing a burlesque show, and her attitude with him was flirty, such as calling him "silly panda", and asking if he wanted her to clean his apartment for him. It floored me, and when I confronted her and asked her if she was still talking to any guys she said no. I had to tell her about the conversation I found. She said it was innocent and they were just friends, and that she never did anything physical with him. I eventually got it out of her that she was talking to him from December-May of this year, and that they hung out on a few occasions. She said he helped her buy computer parts at a store once and she went rollerblading with him and his girlfriend on another occasion. She kept emphasizing the fact that he had a girlfriend who was aware of my wife being "friends" with him. I don't know any of these people and can't verify this one way or another. She then told me she has also been playing words with friends on her IPhone with this guy, which means she would have been laying next to me on the couch and playing games with this guy. The only reason she eventually stopped hanging out with him was that her best friend kept telling her it was "wrong".

The whole thing makes me sick. She knew I hated him, and that I didn't want her hanging out or talking to him since he was an ex-boyfriend. The fact that this all happened behind my back and reading the conversation where she is telling him about her day and being cute with him makes me want to puke. We had 10 years. How the hell could she do this? I finally got her to admit it was emotional cheating, and I told her it pissed me off because she always told me how much she hated cheaters. She started crying and saying she wasn't that kind of person, and she was being selfish and dumb, and she needs to change, and she loves me, blah blah blah.

So I told her I want three months of separation to get away from her and let my emotions cool down so I can make a better decision about if I want to stay with her or not. I keep alternating between anger and hurt for her betrayal of our wedding vows and sadness at losing everything I had worked for with her. The thing is too, we weren't a perfect match before this and she would be hella stubborn and fight me on a lot of things. My family pretty much hates her now, so there's that.

Has anyone gone through anything like this? And before anyone says there was something I did to cause her to reach out to her ex several different times, I will tell you right now I was trying to make my marriage/relationship with her work. I was going to counseling, taking her on more dates, talking to her more. It actually started to feel like the harder I tried the more unappreciative she got. As soon as I told her I knew she had been talking/hanging out with this other guy and I was leaving she started begging to have me back and telling me how much she loved me.

I have been with this girl for almost ten years. No kids. Don't own a house together. We both work.

I had cold feet when we got married. I don't think I've felt truly close to her or crazy in love with her in many years. She doesn't have a lot of good friends and her family life was really dysfunctional. I feel like she just wants to fight all the time with everything. She is super stubborn. But she can also be really warm and affectionate sometimes.

She also has depression and anxiety, and other health issues that I have been helping her with. The depression/anxiety cause her to feel terrible about everything and only see the negative, and the flip side is she panics and gets impulsive when she is hurting. If she tries to call me and can't reach me, she will call all of my friends and family trying to find me. I feel though like she has not acknowledged all the sacrifices I've made to help her, and she focuses on the times when she feels like I haven't been there for her the way she wanted. I know in a few cases I could have done a better job, but overall I tried to be there to take her to the ER when she had to go (turns out she has a gastrointestinal issue). She also has six figures of student loan debt which will take a long time to pay back.

I have become less affectionate and caring. I feel like I can't trust or open up to her any more because I feel like every time she has a bad day she runs to other people to tell them everything and make me out to be some terrible person. She even makes sniping remarks about me in front of other people, like she's trying to hurt me. It's not just that she doesn't have a filter, but she has this resentment and anger building up (and I've seen her get like this with her family too).

Last week she came home and was distant and I asked her what was wrong, and the short of it is she said she wasn't happy and wanted a divorce. She had already contacted an attorney, and spent the next several hours telling me I needed to be affectionate and loving and care for her 100%, and that I should be happy to take care of her for her health problems and be joyful I get to care for her. She also said I deserved to be with someone who made me happy, and that I was a good guy.

The next day she didn't want to see or talk to me at all. I sent her messages saying we should go to the counselor again (we had stopped going two weeks earlier...I thought things were fine). I came home late to an empty house and cried myself to sleep.

The next morning she was sitting on the couch, and wanted to talk. She said I don't need to be with someone who has so many problems, and she doesn't want to compromise on her needs.I told her the counselor said you have to compromise in a marriage and she said she wanted what she wanted...no compromise.

She left after a while and while she was gone I went on her computer and checked her email to see who she had been talking to since this was all so sudden. I found that she had been telling friends and co-workers that she was leaving me because I was "emotionally abusive."

I got mad and called her and told her she was a liar and a coward for making up lies instead of telling people she was leaving me because she was unhappy, and she apologized and said she wouldn't tell anyone that anymore. Then we spent a while talking about how we should split everything up, and I told her my perspective on things.

I told her I thought it would be better to separate than just divorce right away. I told her she had issues she had to work on. She tried to say if I was just treating her better all of her issues would improve (such as her depression and anxiety). I then left the apartment since I was so burned out.

Later that night she starts texting me like crazy saying she was wrong and I was a great guy and she was sorry and would do anything to change and just wanted me to go home to her. I told her that I wanted to separate for awhile still to clear our heads and because she had really jerked me around and was changing her mind so quickly (hell and back in 3 days). She said that she wouldn't leave me and wanted to make it work, etc. She was practically begging for me back.

I still think we should separate to cool down and get perspective, and go talk to a counselor about it. My grandmother told me she thought that my wife and I were comfortable in our routine together but not happy. What do you think? Anyone have similar stories and how did it work out?

I am looking for general feedback since I tell my wife she is out of line and she doesn't believe me. The issues:

1. All my wife does is ***** about her job. It's not easy I'll give her that, but all she does is come home and start complaining about her job for hours on end (most of the people where she works are women). Then once she's done with me she gets on the phone and starts crying to her friends and coworkers about so-and-so and how mean they were to her. I have tried to listen and give her advice in the past, but it seems like it is too much for her to handle. Whenever I tell her to calm down and leave work at work and not bring the drama home she tells me I don't understand because my job is so easy. I manage about a dozen people and have set up a fairly low-stress career for myself. I don't make as much as she does, but it's a comfortable living for me and I don't appreciate her putting down my job because she's jealous of it.

2. Related to issue number 1, we got into a huge fight where she started begging me to let her quit her job. She has six figures in student loan debt that she picked up while trying to get this job that she hates so much, and now she wants to basically drop out and in her words "take a few months off" to get herself unstressed. Her plan was to live off of me and move in with her parents. I said hell no and that if she wanted to do that I would divorce her (I said this to shock her since I thought she was losing it). Then she went crazy and it took a few hours before we were ok again. She was really mad at me for threatening to divorce her. I thought it was the right thing to say, given the circumstances.

3. I am a Christian but definitely on the more liberal side of things. I believe in evolution and am open to hearing about near death experiences and things like that. My wife is a fundamentalist Baptist and believes in demons. She began asking me one night what my faith was (we both go to church together fairly often and I've told her before I am a Christian), and we got into this argument where she basically told me I was going to hell for the stuff I believe in. I told her off and said I didn't want to talk about that stuff any more and we got into another huge fight and haven't talked about our faith since.

4. My wife gets sick a lot, blaming her work for making her stressed and causing her immune system to fail. She had a bad cold for a week and I wanted to go out of town for the weekend with my friends to go camping (yes, only camping), and had been planning this trip for a few months. The night before I leave, she seems fine, but then the night we get there and are in our tents sleeping (after midnight), she calls me and demands I come home to pick her up and take her to the hospital. She said she was allergic to some antibiotics she took or something. I was a two hour drive away from her not to mention I would have had to pack up everything to leave. I told her I couldn't and to have someone else drive her (our parents live close to our apartment), but she wouldn't do it and basically kept demanding I come home. I didn't go home because I thought this was ridiculous (something like this happened before where she made me drive into the city to pick her up at 3:00 a.m. to take her home from her friend's house because she was sick). The next day when we got back she was really pissed at me and said next time she's sick at all I should not go anywhere. I told her that was ridiculous and she started crying I would need to support her as her husband by staying home all the time. I never go out as it is to bars or anything so I thought this was unfair of her to say.

5. She tries to take any gift money I get all the time saying it should go to paying bills. I get maybe a few hundred for my birthday from my parents and I feel I should be able to do what I want with this. She always makes me feel bad for this. On the topic of money, we combine our finances.

I usually don't remember my dreams, but after this one I woke up and could remember it perfectly, and still remember it weeks later.

I had two dreams.

In the first dream, I was walking on a highway for some reason past cars that had all stopped because of a traffic jam. I was walking toward them and they were pointed in the direction I was coming from, if that makes sense. I passed an open military truck with soldiers sitting in the back, and they were looking down at me. I remember thinking "they're going to spit on me", and sure enough, one of them spat on me. I told him to get down off the truck, and I was going to beat him up. But once he was down off the truck I took him behind a car and told him I forgave him and that I wanted God to bless him and keep him safe.

The next thing I remember, I was riding in a car in a suburban neighborhood, and a little girl ran up and stopped the car. She had something in her hands. It was a dead duckling, brown and filthy. I got out of the car and took the duckling from her hands, then walked over to a puddle where there were a bunch of children and knelt down by the puddle with the duckling. I began to wash it, and keep in mind it was dead and its coat was matted in dirt. As I washed it, a little boy said "are you washing it in the blood of Jesus Christ?" I said yes, and continued to wash it. Then the next thing I know it was bright yellow and clean and it stood up in my hands.

Then I woke up.

I was wide awake and I felt really happy and couldn't stop thinking about those dreams. I normally don't remember my dreams, but I couldn't forget that one.

Anybody have anything similar happen?

I don't know much about roofing, but my uncle said I would be able to re-roof just one side of my house. I only need one side re-roofed because I had an old tree that damaged the shingles on that side (the tree is gone now). The Sears roofing contractor told me I would have to do the entire roof as there would be leaking at the junction where the two roof halves meet if he only did one side and not the other.

Does that sound right?

What is it like to sleep with someone who is heavier compared to thinner, or vice versa? Is there a particularly enjoyable body type you prefer? Why? Everyone is welcome to respond.

I have a 97 Ford Explorer and I can't figure out what is wrong with the heating/cooling system.

I have enough coolant in the reservoir and the engine is overheating, and when the engine starts to overheat the heater blows cold air. If I'm going fast, like 50-60 mph, the engine cools down a little, and it will blow warm air through the heater.

In the past I had an issue with my coolant's thermostat and replaced it, but even then I could cool the engine down by turning on the heater full blast and I would get hot air. Now when the engine is overheating and I try to turn on the heater I get nothing but cold air.

Do you think this might be a thermostat issue or a block somewhere? My coolant levels are ok; nothing is leaking.

I've been with the same girl for four years, and when we first started dating, her ex was always trying to get back together with her.

After a few months, though, he gave up, or so I thought.

Now, she tells me that over a year and a half ago he had contacted her again and had come to her work weekly for several months trying to convince her to get back together with him and that even her friend had tried to hook her up with him. I asked her why she had said that only now instead of telling me at the time and she said she was afraid I would do something to hurt him. She denies ever doing anything with him, but added that she had considered it back then for just a second because she felt she wasn't getting an emotional connection at home.

I worry because she didn't tell me about this until now, and because she admitted to wanting to get back together with him for "just a moment" when things weren't going well in our relationship. However, if they did anything together, why would she tell me anything at all? Unless she was worried her friend might tell me that her ex was hanging around her work over a year ago. I don't think she's the type to lie to me, as she's usually a bad liar.

Do you think she's holding out on me and that more happened between them?

So today in the shower I was soaping up my shoulder and I felt this sharp stubbly thing poking my finger. I couldn't see very far back but it looked like a little piece of a scab maybe and it was on what looked like a very small sore. I thought I had scraped my arm and I was pulling at part of the scar.

Later on, I had a friend take a pair of flat tip pliers to try to grab it and pull it out and he grabs it and gives a tug and the skin lifts up around it and this little white thing a little bigger than a sesame seed pops out about halfway. My friend got squeamish but pulled it out the rest of the way. There was this white stringy stuff attached to the end of it that had gotten pulled out too. He pulled that out also, and it stung a little bit like maybe it was attached to something. That stuff was maybe a quarter inch long.

The hole stings now a little bit, which makes sense considering that I had to stretch it out to get that first thing out of there.

Any ideas what it could be?

My fiancee was on Wheel of Fortune and won a trip to Turtle Bay Resort in May for one week. We are going to use the trip as a honeymoon and the company in charge of arranging everything sent us a packet saying we would be in an "Oceanview Deluxe Room". I went to their website to see what the room would look like but the only rooms they showed were "Oceanview" or the suites/beach cottages.

Anybody stay at Turtle Bay who could offer insight into the different types of room?

I bought a Norinco SKS-M that accepts detachable AK mags. But it turns out it's chambered in 7.52x39mm. Is this right? Where can I find ammunition for it? I tried chambering 7.62x39mm but it would jam.

Why is it that whenever anyone is upset by their wife/husband/boyfriend/girlfriend/SO going out and having a "good time", that the common response is "you should be happy they're coming home to you."

Frankly that seems like BS. Obviously the fact that he or she is going out and "having a good time" with members of the opposite sex is the problem, not that the person may or may not come home.

I don't want my girl going out and coming home smelling like she's been out skankin' around. If I knew my girl was out cheating on me I would lock her out and be glad she's not coming home to me any longer.

I supervise at a security company and I've been ordered not to go over 40 hours a week, as our OT budget is down to nothing. However, I was on the schedule for 46 hours last because of some special events we had to cover. Now on my timecard those extra 6 hours are gone, and I asked someone else who worked here and he says it's either my boss or his secretary who cut down on hours after we're punched in.

Isn't this illegal? I'm afraid to say anything because I don't want to lose my job.

I had a rude awakening today when I went to a local gun show and the cheapest SKS I could find was a Chinese model with a folding synthetic stock that the owner was willing to go $300 on. I passed on the sale, but kept his phone number in case I coudn't find anything else. I still don't know whether to call him back.

I remember when only a few months ago you could buy a good Yugo SKS for about $180, now that same store sells them for $330. Same for AK's; they used to be $399 here and now the same gun is selling for $699.

Of course the whole election is scaring the prices up, but assuming that Obama doesn't ban "scary" guns as soon as he's in office (I don't think he will), how long do you guys think it might be before gun prices drop down to something more reasonable?

Or do you think this is how it's going to be for awhile, that gun prices are going to stay ridiculously high and I should call back that guy on the $300 Chinese SKS?

I'm getting married in early May and we have a lot of the big things taken care of like the florist and the church and the reception hall and the invitations ordered, but there's of course a lot of smaller details that my fiancee and I are trying to figure out.

Neither one of us comes from a very "traditional" family and we're stuck trying to learn how to plan a wedding and figure out etiquette, etc. The problem is that my mom, who married my dad in a rushed wedding because she was pregnant and then got a divorce when I was two, keeps interjecting with bitter comments about her own wedding and how she didn't have a bridal shower. I thought she would be happy for us, because my fiancee isn't pregnant and I'm a lot more emotionally stable than my father, but she insists on doing everything her way and then also shooting us down on various things.

For example, my fiancee and I were registering for gifts for her bridal shower at Bed Bath and Beyond and picked out some china and dishes and things like that, and when my fiancee told my mother about it my mother basically said not to bother with china because she's never had a reason to use it herself.

She's also taken over the floral arrangement and keeps nagging my fiancee to change the color of her bridesmaids dresses to what she thinks they should be.

I have a few high-capacity magazines (14 and 30 round mags) and a couple of semi-auto carbines with pistol grips and detachable magazines.

Can I bring them with me when I move to San Diego?

Does anybody know of any unarmed campus security departments that wear body armor though they don't carry guns?

I know Loyola U in Chicago does. Does anybody else?

Where I work we carry batons, OC and handcuffs but are thinking about incorporating body armor. Guns are still a long way off as the current school administrators want to avoid that kind of image, but we are debating over whether or not we should have light ballistic vests to wear under our uniforms. We have a small campus near a decent-sized city and have maybe 5-6 violent incidents per year.

Thanks for any help/advice/comments. I would especially hearing about other colleges where they don't carry firearms but wear bullet proof vests.