Author: Jack Waggon

Dear Jack,

My girlfriend and I have been together almost four years. Everyone says we are perfect for each other, and we are. She is the best friend I’ve ever had. But over the last few months she appears to have lost all interest in sex. Our sexual relationship has never been spectacular, not even in the beginning, but it has always been pretty good. Neither one of us are particularly adventurous in bed. I have been faithful to her since the beginning, and as far as I know she has been faithful, too.

Nothing else has changed in our relationship – just the sex. She seems to have some excuse every time I try to get intimate, while she hasn’t tried to initiate sex since I don’t know when. I’ve tried to talk to her about it, but she doesn’t want to talk. She says nothing is wrong, but clearly something is. Meanwhile, my boiler has been steadily building pressure. It’s getting more and more difficult not to blow my top. I’ve spent a few nights on the couch, sitting up most of the night watching television and trying not to think about it. But it’s getting to the point where it’s all I think about, and eventually that will change the other parts of our relationship.

I want to stay faithful, but how can I under these conditions?

Boiling Over

Dear Over,

I could make some jokes about experiencing the joys of marriage without the expense of a wedding and a divorce, but I won’t. I commend you for your desire to stay faithful and your success so far. Unfortunately, I’m afraid you’re in a situation that is only going to get more difficult.

I’m not a doctor, though I was once pre-med, so my medical judgment is about as trustworthy as my judgment of race horses. But I’m going to guess your girlfriend has issues that can only be worked out with her doctor. A drastic decrease in libido could indicate a medical problem, or it might be a symptom of depression, or who knows what. Something may have happened that she can’t talk to you about, for whatever reason.

If she won’t talk to you, you need to do your best to get her to talk to someone. If she doesn’t already have a therapist, suggest she talk to her gynecologist. I suspect you’re going to have a difficult time getting her to do even that, if she is so insistent that nothing is wrong. You need to convince her, somehow, that it is. My first wife used to complain about my snoring, but I always denied that I snored, until she made a video tape of my snoring and showed it to me. (Then she sent it to America’s Funniest Videos.)

Maybe if you mark on a calendar each time the two of you had sex over the last six months, and show her the days and/or weeks that passed between moments of intimacy, that will convince her.
If not, you’re going to have to make the even more difficult decision of whether to talk to a female close to her, like a friend or sister. Hearing it from them might shock her into realizing how concerned you are. Then again, it might strike her as an unforgivable betrayal on your part, so you need to tread carefully.

Whatever happens, you will need to be as patient and understanding as you can. No matter how angry you may feel, she isn’t doing this on purpose. She isn’t trying to hurt you. She needs help, and you need to help her find it. And last of all, trust in the healing power of time. Things won’t always be this way. Don’t do anything you know you’ll regret. Even the fierce urgency of Sex Now Dammit! will pass.

Got a problem? Jack Waggon will set you straight: jack.wagg@gmail.com

— Not That Old

Dear AARP Member,

I had a beautiful old aunt whose eye doctor recommended she have cataract surgery. Although she thought she could see perfectly well, she finally acquiesced. After the surgery, she came home and looked at herself in the mirror. “Oh my God!” she cried in horror. “And here I thought I’d been aging gracefully.”

Your answer to those people should be, “They’re my kids.” Believe me, they will feel horrible for asking, and revenge is sweet. You can’t be young forever. Don’t mourn the passing of years, and for God’s sake don’t get some horrible dye job or, worse, plastic surgery. Embrace life and move on.

You might also want to have your eyes checked. A touch of color wouldn’t hurt, either.

—Moved On

Dear MO,

Ignore it. Or reject it. You don’t want him in your life now? Don’t open the door. Maybe you will hurt his feelings, but at this point, who cares?

Got a problem? Jack Waggon will set you straight: jack.wagg@gmail.com

Dear Jack,

Tired of Sneaking Around

Dear Sneak,

I decided to use your letter not because I expect to be able to help you with your problem, but as a warning to all young parents out there.

Your kids do this to you for one rather simple reason: because you let them. I suspect they ruled your house from an early age, because it was just easier to give in and let them have their way, wasn’t it? I would also bet good money that you are divorced from their other parent and spent their teenage years competing with your ex for the affections of your children, most likely by buying them whatever they wanted.

Spoiled brat kids grow up to be spoiled brat adults. But I might be able to help you, if you have the spine to follow my advice. What you have to do is this: Tell your kids to piss off. Let them get mad at you. Tell them they are welcome to come along, but only when you want them there, and if they come, they have to pay their own way. The gravy train has reached the end of the line. Time for everyone grow up.

But you already knew this, didn’t you?

Got a problem? Jack Waggon will set you straight: jack.wagg@gmail.com

About to Ralph

Dear Ralph,

There is no ‘I’ in ‘team.’ But ‘team’ backwards is ‘meat.’ Which is to say, office clichés make me want to hang myself.

Your need to work together probable prohibits you from transferring to another desk, or preferably another building, much less telecommuting. No way you can say something to her without shattering the esprit de corporations and generally making everyone else miserable. So I’d say you’re up the office creek without a mouse-pad. Those Bose noise-eliminating headphones are expensive, but I suspect you’d pay almost any price to escape the guttural symphony of her feeding.

Rest assured, it is not just you. As a kid, I hated having to mind my manners at the table, but I have since learned that manners are an under-appreciated social skill necessary for the prevention of needless effusion of blood. Whenever I see the friends of my children moil over pizzas like a pride of lions, cracking the bones of the crusts with their teeth, their cheeks blood red with pizza sauce up to their ears, I thank my sainted mother for smacking my hand and telling me to sit up.

Perhaps I can offer an alternative to resignation and suicide. In the gag-inducing parlance of the office, this is not a problem, it’s an opportunity. Like most office workers, I suspect you don’t get enough exercise. Whenever the horsewoman commences to chomping on an apple, why not take a break, stretch your legs, do some stairs, go outside for a bit of real air and natural sunlight? You’ll feel better, and one day you might even find yourself bringing her suckers instead of stealing them.

Got a problem? Jack Waggon will set you straight: jack.wagg@gmail.com.

Dear Jack,

About a month ago, I was laid off, and not long after that a tree wrecked my place during one of the storms. I had to move back in with my parents.

I moved out when I was 18, right after I graduated high school, because I couldn’t wait to get away from my parents. It wasn’t easy. I lived in a bunch of really crappy apartments and went though about a hundred lazy, slobby, worthless, crazy, thieving, and sometimes psychotic roommates. I worked two and sometimes three jobs just to make rent. My parents never tried to help me out, and I wouldn’t have taken their help if they had offered it. We barely spoke for about three years.

Lately things have been getting almost okay. I had a stable group of two roommates in a decent rental house in a pretty good neighborhood. My relationship with my parents was getting better – you could almost call it normal. I thought I had won their respect. They never expected me to amount to anything. My mom recently told me that she thought every day I’d call begging to come back home.

That day finally came, but not through any fault or failure of my own. They welcomed me back and said I could stay as long as I needed. I moved into my old room and stored my stuff in their garage.

It wasn’t three days before it was like nothing had changed. My dad has started treating me like I am 17 again, laying down rules that I have to follow as long as I’m living under his roof. He asks me three or four times a day if I’ve found a job and interrogates me on where I’ve applied. My mom is harassing me about cleaning my room and helping out around the house. I’m paying rent, by the way, but it doesn’t matter. I paid rent when I was 17, too.

My roommates have found a place to live and have replaced me with a new roommate. I don’t blame them, because they still have jobs. I’m looking, but there isn’t anything out there like what I was doing before, certainly not making the kind of money I was making. I’ve had a few job offers, but the pay is barely more than I’m getting from unemployment. Today my dad asked me how much longer I plan to stay. He wants his garage back. I’d love to leave, today, but I’ve got nowhere else to go. Why can’t they just leave me alone and give me a chance?

Frustrated

Dear Frustrated,

Parents sometimes see their adult children, not as adults, but as the same helpless little brats too stupid to pull their pants on the right way, because most of the time that’s exactly what you are. Not all of us are strong enough to accept our obsolescence in the lives of our children, so the only way we can keep feeling needed is to keep treating you like a child.

You sound like you once had the backbone to stand up to them, walk out the door, and make your own way in the world, once upon a time. You did it once. Do it again. You’re older and smarter now, so you won’t make quite as many mistakes.

Plenty of people have to start over in life, often from scratch. I’ve done it six times that I can recall. It isn’t fair, but life isn’t fair. You may not be able to go back to where you were right away, no matter how much time your parents give you to get back on your feet. You might have to start all over, working low wage jobs and living in crappy apartments with psycho roommates. But isn’t that better than having to kiss the ass of the man who wants his garage back more than his son?

Got a problem? Let Jack Waggon set you straight: jack.wagg@gmail.com

–Sick of It All

Dear Sicko,

What, you wrote just to complain? This is an advice column, not the agony column.

Welcome to the real world, pal. Did you just get off the boat? The American Dream’s murdered corpse had rotted to bones in the ditch long before your generation learned to ride on two wheels. It was never much of a dream anyway. For a few years, a man with a high school diploma could get ahead in the world. Before that, people worked until they died.

So yes, you’ve been lied to. The world sold you a bill of goods. So what are you going to do? You can move to Jamaica and live off the money you make braiding people’s hair. You can try out for American Idol. You can play Powerball and hope for the best. You may already be a winner!

You can swallow it and get along as best you can. This is what most people are doing today. No, you’re not going to retire at 55, and when you do retire at 67 or 70 or whenever the politicians say you can, you’ll have to live off what you’ve saved or mooch off your kids, because the same politicians who set the retirement age will have robbed Social Security of every penny in order to buy more yachts for billionaires.

You can sell your soul and become one of the bosses, if second homes and fancy cars are what you really want out of life. Those things are nice, but they can be taken away – usually by ex-wives.

Or you can make your own world. Stop working for The Man and become The Man. Only, be a better The Man than the liars you’ve known all your life. It’s not about becoming a tycoon. Just try to maintain. Take care of the people who work for you. You’ll work harder than you ever will working for someone else, and you’ll never be a billionaire and you won’t be able to retire early, but at least you will have done some good. And that’s all we can really ask for – the chance to do some good.

Got a problem? Let Jack Waggon set you straight: jack.wagg@gmail.com

–Flunking Out

Dear Flunkie,

Wouldn’t it be a better world if all us supra-geniuses didn’t have to waste all those years going to college? Why won’t they let us just take the tests and get our diploma?

A long time ago in a university far far away, I had a physics class in which I made an A on every test including the final, yet when I checked the professor’s door for my grades, I had an F for the semester. I inquired as to why (that’s putting it mildly). He said I hadn’t turned in a single piece of homework. Not one. Frankly, he wasn’t sure how I managed to make A’s on all the tests without doing any of the homework. He didn’t accuse me of cheating, but he suspected it – enough to give me an F.

However, he said that if I would do all the homework before the end of the semester (btw, that was two days away), he would give me a B. So I did all of it – an entire semester’s worth – and I got my grade.

You need to go back to school today. Right now. Go to your professors and explain what’s been going on, even if you don’t know why. They hear sob stories all the time, but sob stories work. I know a woman whose success in college is due entirely to her sob stories, as she never finished an assignment on time. Your professors don’t want to fail you, and they’ll probably give you a chance to make up your work and salvage the semester to some extent. Maybe not all of them, but even one or two Cs is better than all Fs. And you’ll have the satisfaction of having tried, rather than just giving up.

You also need to talk to a doctor. If you don’t have insurance, see if there isn’t a campus clinic or something along those lines. My guess is you have attention deficit issues. I do not make this guess lightly, because I also have this problem. Just ask my editors.

Got a problem? Let Jack Waggon set you straight: jack.wagg@gmail.com

–Sick of the Party Pooper

Dear Sick,

Were we ever married? Never mind, I know it’s not me, because my girlfriends stopped getting younger years ago.

If you’re looking for some kind of magical legal advice that will put a stop to his disruptive activities, some way to hit him in the wallet or drag him into court, I can’t help you. Though I’m not a lawyer, I have paid for second homes for a few lawyers in my day. And having been on the business end of a drawn and loaded legal opinion more often than I care to remember, I can say that your options in this situation are probably pretty few.

So why not consider the human side of this? Try to see him, not as your ex-husband, but as a human being. He’s clearly being disruptive, and he clearly enjoys being disruptive. Why? Because it so thoroughly pisses you off. Your anger isn’t just a form of entertainment, it’s his way of getting you to pay attention to him. Now ask yourself why your ex-husband is trying so desperately to get your attention.

That was a fun thought experiment, wasn’t it? I’ll wait until you finish screaming. Please, put down the scissors.

He will stop being disruptive when his disruptive activities no longer satisfy his need to piss you off. You can’t change him. You can only change yourself. So stop letting him piss you off. You need to commit to six months of being obnoxiously pleasant and accommodating. You have to show him that his antics don’t affect you at all. Instead of rolling your eyes at his latest bit of eye candy, welcome her and pull her off his arm. She is both his shield and his sword, so rob him of his power to ruin your life by being bigger and better than he is. He’ll either grow up or go away.

Another option is to give him positive attention away from the kids instead of negative attention in front of the kids. You’ve been divorced a while now. Maybe it’s time to stop being mortal enemies. But tread carefully, for down that path may lurk remarriage. It’s happened before, though thankfully never to me.

Got a problem? Let Jack Waggon set you straight: jack.wagg@gmail.com

Guilty in Germantown

Dear GiG,

My father was a genuine bastard, probably the worst person you could ever meet. My hate for him made me who I am today. I made a vow at a very early age that I would never be like him and spent a good part of my life steering my course away from his star.

He lived long enough to be a crotchety old know-it-all without a good thing to say about anyone except himself. When he accidentally electrocuted himself (he refused to hire a contractor to do some work in his house because he could do the work better than any overpaid electrician), do you think I grieved? Just because there are good fathers in the world doesn’t mean all fathers are good. Some we are better off without.

I don’t know why dying turns bastards into saints, but this is common to our culture. Maybe it’s superstition – a fear of speaking ill of the dead. Maybe it’s just good manners to extol their redeeming qualities, even if you have to make them up. Nobody wants to go to a funeral and listen to stories about all the people the stiff hurt in the years he cursed this earth with his presence. It’s just not done.

Don’t feel guilty because you didn’t know he was about to die. I doubt, had you known, that it would have made any difference. All you can do is mind your manners and go through the polite motions of grief. Find something nice to say about him – he loved his grandchildren – and repeat it at appropriate moments. Those who really are grieving will appreciate it.

I suspect the real source of your guilt is your lack of grief. You know you’re supposed to think better about the dead, but in your heart you really don’t. If you’re like me, you probably feel profound relief. Don’t beat yourself up about this. You’re not a monster. You’re only human. Life goes on.

Got a problem? Jack Waggon can set you straight: jack.wagg@gmail.com