Although this agony aunt story is about cats and an ailurophile (cat lover) who loves his cats it is actually about any relationship be it gay or heterosexual. It doesn’t matter. It’s about accepting the other person for what they are in their totality and if you can’t then the relationship won’t work and you should move on.
In this instance, we are told that a 53-year-old man (Mr X) was dating another man, Fred, 56, for a year. Fred was divorced 10 years ago. I don’t know whether that means divorce from a man in another gay relationship or from a woman. It doesn’t matter either way really.
We are told that three months after they began dating, Mr X announced that he wanted to go on a weekend trip with Fred, who said that he couldn’t do it because he couldn’t find a cat sitter for his three cats.
Mr X told him that he was disappointed and as a consequence Fred decided to take the three cats with them!
And throughout the mini-break Fred spent all his time interacting with his cats and more or less ignoring Mr X. This annoyed Mr X as you can imagine and there was friction between them resulting in the boyfriend not calling Mr X for three days after the trip. Mr X asked an agony aunt whether they should apologise or wait for the problem to cool down.
The agony aunt responded as I would respond namely that you accept the person and what they are completely. Although compromise on both sides is helpful.
The underlying advice here is that this relationship is unlikely to work because Fred probably does prefer his cats to Mr X. 💖 That is that. It can happen. Some people prefer cats to people. It can be a general feeling. And certainly, if Fred wanted to interact with cats on this mini-break rather than Mr X then I don’t think this relationship is that great, which might sound harsh but I think it’s a dose of realism.
You will find on the Internet stories of cats interfering with the relationship between partners and married couples whether they are heterosexual or homosexual. As I said, it doesn’t matter. But it is not that uncommon for a cat lover to prefer interacting with their cats which stresses up the relationship. It can even break it.
It depends on the person who is not a cat lover and how they deal with it. If they can’t accept it then it is the end of the relationship. If they adapt because they want to maintain the relationship as it’s important to them, there is a chance that it will continue. It’s about compromise and the amount that a person is prepared to compromise depends upon the strength of the relationship and their commitment to it.
Note: the story comes from www.nj.com. It may well be fiction. It does, though, drive home the point about acceptance. Also, if one partner loves cats that much the other partner should love cats too. That’d be the best way forward for success.
More: “DEAR ABBY: I’m recently married, and in my opinion, my wife has too many pets”
Cats over people always !! 😃
Yep, that is true!