by: Wayne and Tamara




Direct Answers - Column for the week of November 18, 2002


The manager of a very posh store in New York City has this weird habit of touching her employees' lunches. She has picked up sandwiches and taken bites out of them without permission. She even sticks her finger into their donuts or muffins while they are eating them.


She laughs and thinks it is funny. I find it disgusting and rude. What is wrong with this woman? People have said things to her, but she continues to abuse her authority. Since she rules the store, what can they do?


Mardi


Mardi, there is one thing they can do about this woman's behavior. Make her disappear! They can do this permanently by quitting, or temporarily, by eating out or eating elsewhere.


Obsessions, compulsions and morbid habits are deeply rooted. Her brain is stuck on impulses you will probably never understand, but even if you did, you lack the power to change them. It is sometimes said people who act this way get no pleasure from their behavior, but there is a clear gain to her actions.


Every time she touches her employees' food she reinforces her superiority and their inferiority. In a way, that is the essence of poshness. The word "posh" means elegant, expensive and upper class.


Knowing the right wine to order from an extensive wine list may be wonderful, but only if you already know what is truly important. For that reason, being posh implies the ability to make unimportant distinctions, while being blind to what is truly important. In that sense your manager and her store are truly posh.


Wayne


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I am recently separated after four years of marriage. I have always been a large person, tall enough to be mistaken for a professional basketball player. For the last 10 years my weight has fluctuated from 250 to 450 pounds.


When I started dating my wife, I was at the end of a liquid diet I had been doing for 11 months. I was looking and feeling good. She treated me so well and things were so nice, I swear I could do no wrong.


Darcy knew I had been battling weight problems most of my life. Eighteen months after the marriage, the weight came back on. I knew I would have to do something and made efforts to change my eating habits, but it was never good enough. She made me feel like a monster.


Darn it, I'm a nice guy. But she resented me and said my weight problem had taken over both our lives. Slowly but surely intimacy and communication were going and then gone. We went to counseling, but it always ended up about my weight. I'm sick of defending my weight problem. There's more to life than trying to lose weight.


She even told me on our first date she liked me when we met several years before, and I was fairly large then. Was she lying? I filed for divorce last month. I could not live with the resentment and disrespect. Any advice?


Kevin


Kevin, with many people, the amount of affection they feel is based on the lack of problems they incur. If there is illness, job loss or the birth of a child with medical problems, they are no longer comfortable in the relationship.


People want to be married. Often they will stuff everything under the rug to go ahead with the wedding. Don't trap yourself in misery because you won't be honest. Ask yourself honestly, Would she have married me if I had not lost all that weight?


Manipulation during the dating process always comes back to haunt us. That is why we need to present ourselves as honestly as possible. Maybe you both pulled something on each other. Next time you want a woman who knows and loves you just as you are, because that is where real happiness is to be found.


Tamara

About The Author Authors and columnists Wayne and Tamara Mitchell can be reached at www.WayneAndTamara.com. Send letters to: Direct Answers, PO Box 964, Springfield, MO 65801 or email: DirectAnswers@WayneAndTamara.com.