@ Brightstar again:

After re-reading your horrendous comment, I amend my previous post.

My wanting to get ahead at work has nothing to do with your penis. It has nothing to do with anyone's penis. It has to do with me doing the best I can for myself and my family.

That you think that the introduction of women to the workplace, and the subsequent, gradual lessening of sexist attitudes and practices (such as going to a strip club as a business-related activity), is such a threat to your own masculinity...seriously, that's just sad.

This is probably the best example I've ever seen of the type of masculinity that bases itself on being "not feminine," and is therefore threatened when the role of women expands.

If you're this scared to have a kid, then I'd say no, don't have one. The world does suck; none of us were ever asked if we wanted to exist. However, there are surprising moments of joy and wonder and beauty and love. Only you can decide if you can offer enough of the good stuff to counteract the bad.

(On a side note, I don't think that all people cling to life because they value it. Many cling to it because death is frightening.)

But the real questions are, has he always been like this? This kind of stuff usually just doesn't develop overnight, and you didn't mention anything like "Ever since his dad died, he's done X." And if he's always been like this, why have you put up with it for ten years?

Oh, by all means, try marriage counseling. Urge him to do individual counseling. But most important, get yourself to a therapist to figure out why you've been married for ten years to a man who usurps your ideas, suffocates your identity, and trash talks you to your friends.

He's quitting his job and joining the Marines without so much as a heads up for you?

I think the engagement's over.

Sure, he might well be suffering from a mental illness. You might well get the stink-eye from acquaintances over breaking up with such an American hero.

But the hard truth is, he did this without telling you, without asking you, as if you didn't matter or exist in his plans for the future.

Unless you're content to merely be pulled around by his whims and his desires the rest of your life, it's over. Hand back the ring; wish him well, and find someone to whom you'll matter, and who will treat you accordingly.

If Mr. Marine For Now does have bipolar disorder, it doesn't automatically mean that marriage is impossible for him.

My aunt is bipolar, and has been on medications for probably about as long as I've been alive. She's been married for....oh, a decade? There are side effects, one of which means that she can't have children. (Or so I've been told. Alternatively, as she's Catholic, she may have chosen not to have offspring and uses the meds as a blind.) But Aunt is committed to being stable for her husband and the rest of her family, so she takes the medication.

Mr. Marine, however, doesn't seem to realize or care how his behavior affects those who care about him. Hence, LW should get out now before she gets any more entangled.

Yeah, being a female "nerd" gave me a special brand of hell in middle school. My sister recently commented on one of my favorite outfits from then, and asked if it was deliberate. The look of horror on her face when I said that it wasn't, I just didn't care was priceless, and probably says a lot about how oblivious I was to the social forms I was required to follow to avoid teasing. Being extremely bookish and good at everything in school but sports (and geometry, but my definition of "not being good at" = "getting a B"), and well....

But I'd take exception to the suggestion that not being able to follow, or even see, the social forms means that nerds intrinsically lack empathy. Frankly, the traditional bullying of nerdy kids by the more popular gives lie to that. If the popular kids were more capable of empathy as opposed to social manipulation, would they still beat the crap out of the nerd? And what of nerds like me and others I've met IRL or online, whose experiences as an outsider inform their empathy and (progressive) activism?

And I hear ya, Silenced, on the invisibility of being a female nerd. The misogyny in some nerd subcultures is appalling, as is the...interesting reactions I get when I admit to playing D&D, reading Star Wars novels (oh yes, I'm that nerdy), and reading classical literature "for fun." It's like I'm a new kind of species that they've discovered. (The reaction I get from non-nerds is equally interesting, for some of the same reasons plus the "You're a geek? But you look so normal" thing.)

But then, the rareness of the "female nerd" might just be because girls are socialized to read social codes and comply with them, as sort going hand-in-hand with "being nice" and a "good hostess" and all the other load of horseshit girls are taught about how to behave.

I've rambled enough. Time to get back to work.