Girlfriend thinks my client wants to tie me

Dear Pastor,

Sincere greetings to you. I hope that you are doing well. I have a problem. I read your column as often as I can.

When I am not able to read it, my girlfriend tells me what was published. Please keep up the good work. I am a 48-year-old mason. I have taught my girlfriend the trade, so whenever I get jobs, she works with me. I cannot find a better worker, but she is a very jealous woman. She does not like to see other women come to the site where we are working. She feels these women are coming to get me, but I am not interested in them.

I was building a room and a bathroom on a senior citizen's house and my girlfriend said that the woman was getting too close to me. The owner of the house cooked some dumplings and curried chicken and offered to us. My girlfriend said that she did not want any because the woman was too kind to me. The other men who were working with me enjoyed the food, and so did I.

My girlfriend said men like me are going to get hooked by women because we love food too much. This is a senior citizen. She could have been my mother; why should I not eat from her? The other two workers and I enjoyed the meal. While we were eating, my girlfriend went out to the street and bought two patties, so the men who were with me ate her share of the food. I told my girlfriend that she was stupid to turn down the woman's food, because she was not feeding us with the hope that she was going to reduce what we charged her. The woman is not poor. Her husband died about seven years ago and she is adding on another room, bathroom and kitchen to rent to students who might be attending college. She is a wise woman.

Why are some women so jealous? I pay my girlfriend the same money that I pay my other two workers. I told her she should not come back to work with me until we are finished working on the woman's house. She said I don't want her to come back because I want more time with the woman. My two other workers are with me, so when would I have time to play around with this big woman?

C.B.

Dear C.B.,

I am always happy to see women doing construction work, and some have done very well.

But if all of them are like your girlfriend, the buildings will not go up at any rapid pace. Your jealous woman should stay home if she cannot control her jealousy. She is indeed a foolish woman. When a man is doing construction work, he doesn't have time to fool around women; your girlfriend should know that.

Pastor