Danger, Will Robinson!

"Wavering" wrote to Dear Margo:

I’m in my early 20s, a university student and mother to a lovely little boy.

But no husband? What’s wrong with this picture? (A lot.)

I had a boyfriend some years ago, and although things didn’t work out, we kept in touch and remained good friends. He went on a world tour recently and made the effort to visit me in another country, and told me he’d never forgotten me and still loved me. We got engaged, and our families were thrilled. But I can’t shake the feeling I’m doing the wrong thing.

Well, yes, you are. You shouldn't be involved with another guy while you are supposed to be raising your boy.

He’s a lovely, kind man, generous to a fault, highly educated, intelligent — and he thinks the world of my little boy. He wants to move halfway across the world to marry me and be a father to my son.

Hold on a second. I'm sure you’re an attractive woman and all, but the way you describe this guy, he could have any woman he wants. Why would he want to relocate "halfway across the world" to marry a single mother? (I can assure you that you do not have the one and only magic vagina.)

Let's consider the options:

1. He's hiding from the law.
2. He's got a psychotic fixation on the past (did you dump him previously)?
3. He's stupid or underestimates himself to a fault (both remain possibilities despite, or because, of his education).
4. He's really married to someone else and you’d essentially be marrying a bigamist who wants wives in two very different places in the world.
5. He's a pedophile.

Add that onto the fact that your boy doesn't need the new (or recurring) guy in his life, and you should say "NO!"

But I’m not in love with him.

Strike three. Even without the other things, it is selfish to marry a man you're not in love with because of the things you think he can do for you.

He’s extremely sentimental, for example, and effeminate in his mannerisms. I know it sounds terrible to say, but I find him so unattractive that I can’t bear the thought of intimacy with him.

I smell the putrid stench of a pedophile. Or maybe I’m imagining that at the guy is simply a homosexual (which is certainly not the same thing as a pedophile) and he wants a beard.

I feel that there has to be some sort of attraction for a marriage to work, no?

Yes. At your age, there needs to be physical attraction. There should also be attraction to personality and commonality on religion.

He tells me it doesn’t matter that I’m not ‘in love’ with him, that he wouldn’t even mind my ‘settling’ for him.

He's either on the down-low or he’s a child molester. WAKE UP, SISTER!

Dear Margo responded cluelessly:

If you marry this man, it will be a business transaction.

Yes, it is called pimping out your kid.

The fact that you find him effeminate and he has said being in love with him is not important suggest that he might be homosexual.

Okay, so maybe she isn't completely clueless.