You may write to the Doctor at P.O. Box 35, San Pedro Town, Belize, fax 226-2905 or e-mail at [email protected]

Dear Doctor Love,

    Before we got married my husband used to take me out dancing all of the time. We would go to the disco together and to all of the dances at the Lion's Den. Now we have been married for two years and the time we go dancing is less and less. He always says that he is too tired from working. He says he cannot stay out until daylight and then go to work the next day. He says this because he has a job where he has to work on weekends. All of the dances are held on the weekends and that is when everyone goes out to the disco. He is only off work in the middle of the week. Most of the time he just wants to sit at home and watch television. I think this is a bad attitude because all of his friends go out every weekend. He is like an old man and he is only 23. How can I get him out of this? I want to go dancing.

/s/ Housewife

Dear Housewife,

    Maybe you should consider yourself lucky. You are one of the few women who have written to the Doctor about a husband who likes to stay home. Most of them write that their husbands are always at the bars with their friends. If you want to try to change him, remember it can be risky. He might find that he likes going out so much that you will rarely see him.

One of the things you can do is suggest that you go out on his day off during the middle of the week. You can always go to one of the special promotions that the discos are always putting on. Why not have him take you out to dinner instead of dancing. If he tells you he is tired he is probably telling the truth. You do not say what his job is but when someone works all day in the hot sun they do not always feel like going out for a night on the town. Perhaps by starting slowly with something like dinner, you can work him up to taking you dancing.

Dear Doctor,

     I met a man from the U.S. who moved here. I started going out with him. I thought he was rich but he says he is not. I don't know whether to believe him or not. He says he is retired and he gets so much money every month from the U.S. government. He has enough money to have a nice apartment with really nice things but he still says he is not rich. I have never been to the U.S. but I have met a lot of people from there. I have worked in a hotel here in San Pedro for a long time and I see a lot of people who come here and spend a lot of money. He says that they are not rich either but I don't believe him. All of the people I have met seem to have a lot of money and they drink all of the time. I have seen them tip the maids sometimes twenty U.S. Bartenders sometimes get even more. Seeing people spend money like this makes me feel that I am very poor.

    Do you think it is true that he is not rich? I do not think so.

/s/ Just Dating

Dear Dating,

    You probably do not think of yourself as rich but you probably make at least $150 a week at your job at the hotel. If you had that kind of money and lived in a small town in Guatemala, Honduras or Mexico you would be considered a rich woman. Even in the bigger cities you would be well off. Here, though, it is a struggle to get by on that kind of money. It becomes easy to think of ourselves as poor because there are some people in Belize who are very well off. There are few truly poor people in Belize. If you do not believe this, travel either north, south or west for one hundred and fifty miles. Look around you and then you will see really poor people. There are places where entire families live all year on what you make in five months at your job. These are people who can't afford any luxuries at all and they have no hope or chance to earn any more money. These are poor people.

    Your friend is probably telling you the truth when he says he is not rich. To him, a person living on a fixed income could never be rich. This means that all he has to live on is the check that he gets every month for his retirement. If that fixed income is ten times what you earn, though, he is a rich man to you. Being rich is something that is in your mind more than anywhere else. A man who has a million dollars is poor next to a billionaire.

    Don't think that all of the tourists who come here are rich, either. Only a small percentage of people from these other countries can even afford a vacation. An even smaller percentage travel out of their native country. Most of these people work fifty to sixty hours-a-week and save for fifty-one weeks a year just so they can come here and enjoy their time off. If you wanted, you could do the same thing. You could take a nice week's vacation in Guatemala or Honduras and the people there would think you were rich too.

    By the way, most of them don't drink the same amount where they live as they do when they are on vacation. They are too busy working.