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Teen girl worries about family's future

By Amy Dickinson, Tribune Content Agency on

You and your brother should dive into every outside activity you can. This achieves multiple objectives: minimizing your time in the household, developing expertise and hobbies (and hopefully having fun) and forming relationships with people who will be in your corner.

You and your brother should write a letter to your parents. Work on it together. Describe exactly how their behavior makes you feel -- how scared, angry and vulnerable you feel when they fight with each other, and how wrong it is for them to trash each other to you two. Ask them to stop.

In terms of your brother's future, first of all -- thank you for being a brave protector and a champion to him. If things at home don't change, or if they get worse, it might be best for him to live elsewhere. Don't keep this a secret -- friends or other family members might offer him a safe haven once you've left the household.

Dear Amy: My husband and I recently got into an argument about him visiting one of those restaurants where the waitresses are scantily clad.

I hate those kinds of places with a passion, and he knows this.

I think those types of places objectify women, and I feel like when he goes there (he doesn't do it often, maybe once a year) he comes home and compares me to the tight young bodies he just saw on display.

 

I have friends that go to these kinds of places WITH their husbands and it doesn't bother them, but I just can't get behind that.

I can't be the only woman out there who feels this way. Or am I just too insecure?

-- Insecure Wife

Dear Insecure: Go ahead and hate these places with abandon, but, please, not because of your own insecurities. Hate these places because a woman has to stuff herself into a ridiculous outfit and be objectified, and possibly outright harassed, just for the joy of doing the hard work of slinging burgers and beer. And she does all of this so she can put herself through law school, support her spouse or feed her kids.

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