Letters to the Editor
Amerigo
Published Letters: 955 Editor's Choice: 60
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Cheating and groping...
[Read the article: My husband is groping my sister]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It really doesn't matter that he only groped and that intercourse did not occur, because I am sure it would have occurred if he could have made it happen.
On the other hand, the fact that he has done this groping probably means that he is bored or unsatisfied with sex with his wife. Not that he does not love her and the kids, but that something in him is looking for more excitement. He is asking himself "is this all there is?", and of course the answer is "'fraid so, buddy."
So he is immature and/or has not come to terms with his fate in life, but he also drinks.
Drinking is always a problem. No matter what he says, if he is not quitting drinking, the same shit will happen again. He will keep on drinking because he is unhappy with his life and drink provides an escape, plus an excuse for doing things that would be hard to explain if he was sober.
On the other hand, if the LW is thinking of divorcing him there is no particular reason to think that either she or the husband or the kids will be any happier in the long run.
I think the husband and wife need to sit down and have an honest chat about this and about where their lives are going. Not a blaming session or a "make the bastard feel guilty" session, but a planning session. Maybe they can work it out, but a lot will depend on what type of a guy he was before all this started.
Part of the general confession from the old version of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer (if my memory serves me right) goes like this:
We have erred, and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep. We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts...We have left undone those things which we ought to have done; And we have done those things which we ought not to have done; And there is no good in us... ,
He does not have to be religious (I'm not), but if he cannot come up with something like this off his own bat, then there is probably not a lot of hope.
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@AKA Smith
[Read the article: My husband is groping my sister]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]BTW, you really paint a gloomy picture of marriage. I am glad that I never tried again.,
Me and Shakespeare. Jane Austen and Dickens always have their heroes and heroines living happily ever after with the patter of tiny feet and ringing laughter.
Here from final chapter of Nicholas Nickleby:
He and his wife lived in the old house, and occupied the very bedchamber in which he had slept for four-and-forty years. As his wife grew older, she became even a more cheerful and light-hearted little creature; and it was a common saying among their friends, that it was impossible to say which looked the happier--Tim as he sat calmly smiling in his elbow-chair on one side of the fire, or his brisk little wife chatting and laughing, and constantly bustling in and out of hers...,
Of course, Austen never married, and Dickens' marital life was quite bizarre. Although he continued to live in the same house as his wife, divorce not being easy in his time, he had a wall built dividing the marital bedroom in half, which makes the above quoted passage particularly hilarious to me, and probably to Dickens too.
Possibly the LW could have a salesman from a home remodeling chain stop by to discuss possible modiofications to the family home.
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One last shot at this...
[Read the article: My husband is groping my sister]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]... most of you women don't understand this, but when men get married they generally do hope that it is for life and plan to be monogamous. When they make marriage vows, they do at least hope that things will work out.
Infidelity is nearly always a sign of unhappiness, a hope, however forlorn, that there is something better.
Hence "cheating" is nearly always not cheating, at least not in the sense that it is aimed at the partner, like taking cash out of their pocket book. It is nearly always not the case that the man just contains the quality of "being" a cheater. He is weak, he is pathetic, etc., yes, but the "cheating" is not done for the sake of cheating, but because he is unhappy and seeks consolation and possibly because of the hoped for pleasure in the act itself, not for the sake of cheating.
Women tend to be enraged by the "cheating" because they believe that the sex the man is gettting outside the marriage must be better than what he is getting inside. If he is having a love affair, then no doubt it is, but in the case of these pathetic, furtive, drunken gropings, then it almost certainly is not.