Dear Eric: I have been married to a wonderful woman for more than 50 years. About five years ago, I discovered that she spends more than $4,000 a year on vitamins and supplements.
She hid these purchases from me by putting a small amount of the bill on a credit card and paying the rest in cash.
She buys them from her chiropractor, who has supplied them for more than 30 years. I knew she went to the chiropractor about once a month, but I had no idea about the amount she was spending.
I feel it is unethical for a doctor to recommend supplements and then sell them to clients. I have tried to get her to reduce her intake, or shop around for better prices or get a second opinion about her needs. She refuses and tells me the guy only sells natural products that are the best. I really believe the guy has some kind of hold or spell on her.
I have talked to her psychologist about this. He agrees with me but can’t seem to fix it.
I would like your thoughts. I am ready to go my separate way over this. Twenty more years of $4,000 a year is more than I can accept.
– Desperate Husband
Dear Husband: I agree that this chiropractor’s methods seem more than suspect. If she was able to buy these supplements from anywhere, it would be a different story. I would love for her to find a second opinion.
However, with regard to your marriage, I’m going to play chiropractor’s advocate for a second. It’s telling that she hid these purchases – it indicates she knows they were suspicious and that should be cause for concern. But I’m not sure it’s cause for the dissolution of your marriage.
If you’d never discovered this, would you have known? It doesn’t seem to have made a dent in your budget. So, perhaps the issue is the deception and not the expense.
The bottom line: You and your wife should be honest with each other. At the same time, you should ask yourself whether this admittedly strange habit is worth throwing away 50 years of marriage.
Dear Eric: I have been married for 36 years, and my husband has a daughter from a previous marriage.
I don’t consider her as a stepdaughter because I have had no part of her upbringing, and she has never liked me. She used to be a caring and nurturing person. Now she has become rude and spiteful.
My husband wasn’t allowed to meet her until she was 9, and I met her when she was 12. She is in her mid-40s now and has two young adult children whom I adore; they call me Grandma.
They live three hours away, but we can no longer travel because I am disabled and no longer drive, and my husband is terminally ill. When they do visit us (very occasionally) she continuously makes very nasty comments to me. I don’t enjoy the visits anymore and I have to remove everything from my bathroom and lock rooms off because she thinks it’s OK to steal things from our home.
They are planning to come in a couple of weeks, and I don’t want to see her.
She has told my husband that she wants me to leave when she comes to visit. This is not acceptable. This is my home and I’m my husband’s caregiver. I also want to see the grandkids, but I can’t do that and avoid her.
I have an app that can record conversations, and I want to use it to capture her nasty comments to me. Should I meet with them briefly then excuse myself and go into another room? Or do I keep enduring her rude and nasty comments?
– Not My Daughter
Dear Not My Daughter: First, I’d caution you to research the local laws related to recording a conversation without the other party’s knowledge or permission. In many places, this is illegal.
Secondly, while it’s not appropriate for her to ask that you leave the house when she visits, it’s going to be hard for you to have a relationship with her children without some repair in the relationship that you have with her.
One option is to address it head-on: “I’m concerned about the tension in our relationship and there are times that I feel disrespected. Can we establish some ground rules so that everyone feels safe?”
You’re not powerless here, even in the face of what you describe as nasty behavior. Even though she’s an adult now, the roots of this relationship began when she was a pre-teen. She needs to be responsible for her actions as an adult, but you can help reframe them in your mind by remembering that some of this is rooted in childhood pain.
Send questions to R. Eric Thomas at eric@askingeric.com or P.O. Box 22474, Philadelphia, PA 19110. Follow him on Instagram @oureric and sign up for his weekly newsletter at rericthomas.com.