Hey Sars —

I’m getting married in a couple of months. My fiancé and I have been
together for five years, we’re happy together, all is well. We’re both certain
that we’re ready to get married, and are grateful and glad that we found
each other and are building a good life together.

However…my subconscious is giving me a pain. I got a new job about six
months ago and have been working lots of long hours with “the guys” (the
development team). In my waking hours, that is all fine and good and I like
my coworkers a lot. But, I have been regularly dreaming about one of “the
guys” — yeah, That Kind of dream. In real life, I’m not physically attracted
to this guy, although I am drawn to him intellectually. In these dreams, I
can’t stay out of his pants.

So, what gives? Why am I having these types of dreams when I really do love
my fiancé and have every intention of being faithful to him for the rest of
our lives? If this were a novel, the dreams would be a sign that the guy was
my One True Love and I would throw over my fiancé to be with him. Snort.
This is isn’t a novel. How do I get my dream-self to shut the hell up?

Coffeedrinker

Dear Coffee,

You don’t.Your subconscious wants what it wants; there’s not much point in trying to quash what bubbles up from it.A few weeks ago I dreamed that my mother ditched dear old Dad for Brennan from The Amazing Race.Doesn’t mean it’s going to happen.

Subconsciously, you feel apprehensive about getting married.That’s totally normal; marriage is a big step, and a few threads of doubt or anxiety don’t mean that you don’t love your fiancé or that marrying him is a bad idea.It’s just your psyche’s way of dealing with an important romantic decision that carries certain important responsibilities like fidelity.

I can see why the dreams ook you out a little bit, but don’t worry too much about them.

Dear Sars,

I have a crazy relative problem to run past you.

By way of background, my parents have been divorced for over twenty years,
and happily (more or less) married to their respective second spouses for
nearly that long.My parents have had very little contact in that time
(especially since my brother and I reached adulthood), and they did not even
meet each other’s spouse until my brother’s wedding last year.My mother
has had no contact with my father’s side of the family and vice versa since
the divorce.Heck, they live halfway across the country from each other.
However, my stepmother seems to be insanely jealous of my mother.

Recently, my father’s side of the family gathered to celebrate the 25th
anniversary of my uncle’s ordination into the priesthood.There was a mass
and church supper as well as smaller, family-only gatherings held over a
weekend.There was a lot of storytelling and good-natured teasing all
around.My aunt brought a scrapbook my grandmother had kept the year of my
uncle’s ordination (1977), so that we could point and laugh about our crazy
clothes and hair.My grandmother kept the most amazingly detailed
scrapbooks each year from the mid-sixties until her death five years ago.I
found out later that my stepmother was extremely upset that there were
pictures of my mother in the scrapbook, and that she had insisted to my aunt
that they should be removed.When my aunt refused, my stepmother got even
more upset and spent the rest of the weekend avoiding the family and giving
the silent treatment.I did notice this at the time, but the official
explanation was that she was ill.

Now, I can understand that she might have felt left out, because my father did
not know her in 1977 and most of the stories and jokes were about things
before her time.However, she was just a guest at someone else’s
celebration, so ostensibly IT WAS NOT ALL ABOUT HER.And it wasn’t like
there were scads of pictures of my mom; there were maybe four or five in a
200+ page album.The thing that bothers me the most is the fact that she
expected my mother to be Trotskyed out of family history just because my dad
has a new wife.I know that my father does not feel this way and I have
plenty of other relatives with exes who, I think, wouldn’t even consider
doing such a thing.

If you couldn’t tell, I don’t get along with my stepmother anyway for
various reasons.I am civil and even friendly to her for my father’s sake,
but I avoid her as much as I can.Rationally, I know I should just let it
slide and be the adult in the situation.However, I have this nearly
uncontrollable urge to shake her and tell her to GROW THE HELL UP ALREADY.
What do you think?

Fed Up Stepdaughter

Dear Step,

It’s your father’s problem.Let him deal with it.

Don’t get me wrong — your stepmother behaved like an unconscionable brat.For her to expect your father either not to have a past or not to acknowledge it is ridiculous, and after two decades, she should have gotten a damn grip by now; at the very least, she could have waited until the weekend ended to express her discomfort to your father.It’s not her scrapbook, it’s not her business, and I don’t quite see how an adult thinks it’s within her rights to sulk over something so minor at a party that’s not for her, but if people behaved politely and reasonably, I wouldn’t have a column, so let’s return to your question.

Unless your stepmother expressed her miffiness directly to you, leave it alone.Based on that incident, it sounds like she’d use any excuse to feel persecuted, so if you bring it up to her, she’ll just get all defensive and sulk some more.The best course of action here is not to dignify her bullshit with a response.

Dear Sars,

I’m thinking of starting an advice website of my own, and yours is the best
one out there as far as I’m concerned.I think I’ve got most of the
particulars figured out, but there’s one I haven’t been able to resolve: How
do you tell the real requests for advice from the fake ones?

Now, I’m not talking about the obvious fake ones, like “dear sares well, my
prob iz that MY PENIS IS sO FUKING BIG!!!!!! here is a pic see what i
mean?????”I’m talking about the letters that are strange but possible, and
for the most part spelled and punctuated correctly, along the lines of “I’m
in love with my cousin/I slept with my stepbrother/I think my boss is a
devil worshipper.”These could be true — hell, if some people didn’t have
these problems, Dan Savage would be out of a job — and if they are, I want to
run them and answer them and try to help.But I don’t particularly want to
gratify a bunch of giggling drunk college sophomores hunched over an iBook
composing sincere-sounding letters from fictional pedophiles.

I’m sure you don’t, either, so what are your criteria for determining
whether a letter gets run in the Vine, especially if the writer’s problem
tends toward the unusual?Thanks, and keep up the great work.

Would-Be Ann Landers Replacement

Dear Ann,

I don’t get very many fake letters.Maybe you can point to certain letters I’ve run in the past that came off as ploys to get TN swag, but the cliché “the truth is stranger than fiction” doesn’t come from nowhere.

And an unusual letter is good.I tend to get the same types of letters over and over, as you’ve probably noticed — most problems boil down to one of three or four central issues, because that’s the nature of human existence.So, even if I suspect that an out-of-the-ordinary letter is bullshit, I’ll usually run it anyway.

I do get the occasional fake, though, and I can usually spot the made-up letters because they feature a certain lack of affect; the attitude expressed in the letter isn’t appropriate to the problem in some way.Another way to spot a fake is to look at the relative length of the letter.Petitioners with a legitimate problem tend to go on at some length, giving me a welter of detail to make their cases, trying unconsciously to point me in the direction of the answer they want to hear; fakes don’t do that.Obviously, not every short letter is fake, but “I like a boy and I don’t know what to do” isn’t always bracing succinctness, either.

The solution, of course, is to just not run the ones you think came from a drunken dare of some sort.

[9/20/02]

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