LETTER #1

i have a question for dr rob

 

actually i have had this problem for awhile, and i've kinda put it off because i didn't think anything would really happen or come of it, but it has and now i have to do something i don't really want to do. first off, i want to acknowledge that dawn is going to think i'm a scumbag, and maybe i am. but whether that is the case or not, the problem still remains.

 

i have been with my girlfriend for 9 years now, ever since she was 16, and i was 20. she got pregnant at 17, and when she graduated high school we moved in together and started our life. we talk about marriage sometimes, but life sort of got in the way and we just continued living together, we had another kid a few years after the first and everything has been pretty wonderful without any major problems until about a year ago. i didn't go to college, so i started a carpentry business right after we started living together and she has stood by me during all the hard years when i didn't have any money, when the work was low, and she helped me build my business up to the point it is today. we're not exactly rich, but we have a nice house in el dorado hills with a boat and by all appearances we are the average loving happy family.

 

at my girlfriend's standing request for help, anytime she is available her younger sister has been coming over for years to see the kids and to hang out with us, and help out with everything around the house. but the problem is, i've always felt kind of a spark between me and the sister. i thought it was just me and i always pushed it away because she was so much younger, and i tried to forget about it. but we always had long talks whenever my girlfriend wasn't home and we got a lot cozier as the years went by. her sister is 19 now, and all the years of tension kind of reached a breaking point and we ended up sleeping together about a year ago. that's when everything started to go downhill. the sister is so much younger, prettier, thinner and more interesting than my girlfriend, and even though we swore that that first time would be the last, it's happened pretty regularly over this last year and we gradually fell in love. 

 

well, now her sister found out she is pregnant about 3 weeks ago, and we have talked about it at length and i really want to pursue this new relationship... but i have some pretty obvious logistical problems. 1st, i don't know how on earth i'm going to break this to my girlfriend. i have a feeling she's going to be a little surprised. second, i really don't know how the family is going to react - hers or mine - when she moves in and replaces my girlfriend. third, even though we're not married, we HAVE been together for such a long time that i don't know how this is supposed to work. it's my house, in my name only, as well as the cars, bank accounts and other posessions. can i protect my assets when we separate? i really don't want her to get any of my stuff. i was thinking of transferring ownership titles to my brother and secretly withdrawing funds from the bank and hiding the cash to prevent the legal system from cleaning me out. and since it is my house, i'm wondering if i can just throw her out, or if i have to get an eviction notice or what... i'm kinda hoping when she finds out i've been seeing her sister she'll just get mad and leave the house without a huge fight. the sister still lives at home, and so she wants to suggest that my gilrlfriend can just move back with her parents and take the room she is moving out of, but i honestly don't think that suggestion is going to go over real well. so that wasn't a good solution, but i honestly can't think of any good solutions either.  

 

so what i really need help with, is how to i pull this thing off with the least amount of hassle? i realize it sounds like a freaking soap opera, but when you're living it it's actually a nightmare. im afraid all the time that we're going to get caught before i'm ready to break the news, and i'm scared to death at the firestorm of potential trouble that could be waiting for me. and my friends have warned me common law marriage is like a real marriage and it makes my stomach turn to think there's some way she could take my house, my kids, and my money away from me somehow. i'm the one who built this business, and i was the one who worked out in the hot sun to earn everything i have while she sat at home gaining pound after pound. she used to be really skinny, like her sister is now, so i don't understand why she let herself go like that. her mom is skinny too, so i know it's not genetics. my new girlfriend has said she is going be sure to lose the baby fat and stay skinny, and i bought a treadmill so she can stay in shape. so i'm hoping this time around will be a better situation.

 

well, any advice or help you can provide to help things go smoother would be immensely appreciated. i listen to your show all the time and rob you always have the answers for everything. you run an awesome show. and arnie is really funny, i love listening to him crack jokes. thanks for everything you two.

LETTER #2

hi dr rob. please CONTINUE not using my name. i have to be honest, i didn't think i would write back to you guys, because i didn't think it would be very interesting to your show. then with the recent episode with the other guy getting caught because of writing this show made me think twice, but i don't think anyone will figure out who i am, so because you asked for it, and because there is no possible way for me to be found out, i decided to send you an update on what was decided. i have to warn you though, it isn't as interesting due to the path i decided to follow, but here it is anyway.

 

first i want to thank you for your advice, it really helped me alot. i didn't mean to sound so nonchalant in my last letter, i honestly didn't realize how serious the situation was. i only mentioned the boat because i really really love it, and fishing in the bay or the lake is the only way i can escape that shrew i live with. after listening to all of the advice, i sat down with my wife's sister and we had a long and serious talk. i explained that even though i loved her and that being with her was the only thing i wanted, it was impossible right now. we decided to continue seeing each other in secret, and i'll of course support my child after it is born and make sure he has a good life, and since i handle all the finances i'll be able to do that without my wife noticing the missing money going to her sister. i told my sister-in-law that sometime in the future we can be together, but that would never happen if people found out what we had been doing for the last year and a half.

 

so, i rented her an apartment so that it would be easier for us to meet and she announced to the family that she was pregnant but that she wasn't sure who the father was. nobody was happy, and she got a lot of judging looks and advice, but shes young and attractive so at least it was believable. then a few weeks after that i told my longtime girlfriend that we had been waiting long enough and i wanted to marry her. she was happier than i've ever seen her and showed off the ring to everyone we know. that caused a little friction between me and the sister in law, because she said she didn't like sharing me in the first place, and seeing that her sister had a ring and she didn't made her just more jealous.

 

but there's really no other way to do things if i want to make it work. because the plan is to get married, and through careful planning cause the marriage to gradually fall apart over the year following the wedding. at some point things will get to the stage where we have a serious fight and i can claim that things just arent working out and suggest a trial separation. during the enuing divorce her sister in law will take my side and all the time we spend together will develop into a relationship. people might not like it, but it's far better appearing to end up in an accidental relationship with your sister in law during a divorce than it is to get her pregnant while cheating on her sister. then in the inevitable splitting of assets, the common law part of our marriage will be a non issue, and the courts will only recognize the year of actual marriage to calculate how much she can take from me.

 

this way it will all come off as a natual progression of events and not as some ridiculous scheme contrived out of desperation, and no one will know about the past. i can adopt my child, and no one needs to know that i am adopting my actual kid, i can protect my assets and i can give my wife the smallest settlement possible. they will probably try to shaft me with child support or something instead of just giving me my children, even though she will probably continue not working on the couch all day watching the tv i pay for and eating the ice cream i buy in an effort to become as unattractive as she possibly can. i don;t know what on earth is wrong with that woman?? hopefully i can get her somehow declared an unfit mother and we can just take the kids and she can get a job at her favorite mcdonalds and she can make her own way in the world. i want to take care of my children because i honestly do love them, but the tub of lard they call a mother just desn;t care about looking good. i even bought her a gym membership for her birthday last month and the promise of a credit card at nordstroms to try to look a little more stylish like her sister if she could get back down to what she used to be in high school, but my efforts to save our relationship inevitably fall on deaf ears. her sister on the other hand actually USES her gift and is still in great shape in spite of the pregnancy.

 

the whole thing really saddens me. her total disregard for our relationship is what drove me to doing what i did, and i just hope that when the relationship with her sister becomes public we can do it right the second time around. if only she had been a better girlfriend and mother none of this might have happened. so, that's the update. i'm sorry it doesn't have the fireworks of the last guy, there are no dramatic confrontations, or listeners figuring it out because theres really nothing for anyone to piece together. i just have my quiet little plan that is going to take more than a year to pull off.

 

i don't know if you want to hear about it, but if you want to i can write back after the divorce and let you know what happened. and hopefully that update won't be as mundane as this one was.

LETTER #3

Hello Rob Arnie and Dawn. It has been a long time since the last time I wrote, but I thought I would give you an update. I don’t know if you remember me, but I’m the guy with the boat and the common law marriage who got my longtime girlfriend’s sister pregnant. 

I did hear the last update you read on the air when you did it, and to be honest it sounded a lot more ridiculous as you read it than it seemed when I wrote it. Well, it’s all over. I have to say things didn’t exactly turn out in quite the clockwork manner I imagined it, and I never ever knew how hard and mentally draining a divorce would be. I mean it was so much worse than I could have even imagined it. As it was in progress, I actually wished I could just turn back the clock and stay married with my wife, even if she was a tub of lard. In retrospect, a life of quiet misery would have been far better than the holy hell my actions unleashed. But of course, once the cat was out of the bag, it wasn’t going back in no matter how hard I wished. 

 

What happened was this- I did go through with the marriage, and everything was going great. And It would have CONTINUED to go great, if not for my jealous girlfriend. No matter how many times I tried to explain to her how things were, and how we WOULD be together if she would just be patient, nothing I did was ever good enough for that woman. I didn’t spend enough time with her, I wasn’t thee for the birth of our child (even though I TOLD her I couldn’t, in case my wife got suspicious) and all I heard was every day was how hard it was to be a single mother.  I pointed out how silly that was, as I paid for her home, her bills, her food, and all she had to do was cook clean and look pretty. It’s not like she was a real single mom, I thought it was insulting to the women who ACTUALLY do it all by themselves. But in spite of my protests, her demands on my time just got stronger.

 

Not to mention my wife started to get really suspicious as to why I was leaving all the time, and why her sister called me every night. And she couldn’t understand why I cleared out the text messages and call log from my phone every day. I told her it was to save phone memory, but she said iphones had more memory than the computers they used to fly to the moon, and I just said I didn’t want to take the chance of filling up my inbox too much. That… explanation didn’t fly very well, and I was stuck between one jealous woman who wanted more time than I could afford to give her, and another woman who was intensely suspicious of my activities. 

 

Well one night my wife decided to stop by her sisters, and wasn’t at all surprised to see me there. She said she knew where I had been going, but what she wanted to know was why – why had I taken such an interest in her sister, who had gotten pregnant recklessly by clubbing around and sleeping with too many guys to count, when I had kids of my own at home who needed me more. I tried to shut my wife up, but the girlfriend was already pissed because she knew she hadn’t done those things, and made the hotheaded mistake of saying so. My wife was surprised, and wanted to know if she knew who the dad was, why had she hidden it from the family? Maybe the dad could be helping to care of his child instead of her husband… 

 

Well, during this huge fight the truth came out, and I wanted nothing more than to move up to a mountain lake with my boat and fish for the rest of my life. I actually considered the logistical possibility of running away and living on the lake. But, that wasn’t in the cards. I don’t have to tell you how disappointed I was in my stupid girlfriend, who singlehandedly destroyed two families in a single evening! If she had just kept her big mouth shut we could have been together and happy, but noooo, her jealousy ruined everything. My plan was foolproof, things were going great but she just couldn’t wait 6 more months. 

 

Fortunately, as bad as the divorce was, the decision to actually get married was the only thing that went in my favor, and wow was it a big one. I did have to sell the house to pay the lawyer, but since we had only been married six months, I got almost everything. Not that it was very much, with housing prices what they are these days, but 100 grand in your pocket is still better than losing it all to the witch. And as much as she tried to take it away from me, I still got to keep the boat and the cars. I lost a lot, but she lost more, so it didn’t turn out as bad as it could have. her credit was destroyed, but thankfully my score survived. I was able to buy a new house while she moved into an apartment complex, so that’s ok, and I still get to see my kids. But they got me for child support the next 9 years, even though I have them half the time! I still don't quite understand how that works, if marriage is supposed to be a partnership, and I have the kids half the time, and SHE has the kids half the time, why do I have to pay anything? I should be able to just take care of them when they’re at my place, and she can do the same. That’s what equal custody is, isn’t it? It’s not MY problem she hasn’t had a job since 2003. 

 

As for the girlfriend, I’m on the hook for child support for 17 years there, but no spousal support since we never lived together. Can you believe she actually dragged me into court and got an order to make me take a DNA test to prove it was mine? I told her I wouldn’t do it, since it was her dumbass that ruined the plan in the first place, but common sense was never one of her strong suits. It was probably for the best anyway, since she quit using her treadmill and has already started on the same road of fatness her sister went down. I tell you guys, children absolutely ruin a woman’s body- no matter what. With the wife I thought it was just the fat, but even before the girlfriend started gaining weight there were stretch marks on her too. 

 

So I decided to be single for awhile, and I got myself taken care of so I wouldn’t have any more kids. The (ex) girlfriend’s friend from high school Mindy was calling me a lot when I was going through all the turmoil, and I told her at the time I just wasn’t ready yet. (NO dawn, she isn’t still in high school. She just turned 20 and is at college now. It’s only an 11 year difference) I needed to work on myself and wasn't nearly ready for another relationship. But since then I’ve been able to put a lot of my life together again, and Mindy loves the kids I have already and agrees with me that having any more kids would be a huge mistake. She actually likes the alone time we get every other week, and I have to admit it’s a pretty good arrangement. It’s hard to believe, but she’s actually better looking than the old girlfriend was, which makes me happy and knowing she won’t be having any children really puts my mind at ease. Most women these days want to do too much, and go in too many different directions. I’m really happy I finally found a woman who has her priorities in order, and doesn’t get mad at me when I go out on the lake. She even comes with me sometimes, and is happy staying at home doing her duties around the house without complaining. I just finished the last support payment to my ex-wife last month (thank you again to your listeners for the marriage idea!) I still have my business, and though I didn’t think it could be possible, sometimes happy endings really do happen. Considering the living hell I went through for an entire year, it’s really the best outcome I could have hoped for. 

 

From the bottom of my heart, thank you guys for your help and advice.

Loyal Listener

-Boatboy