Letters to the Editor
IndigoSwash
Published Letters: 101 Editor's Choice: 5
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Favorite response #2
[Read the article: Since You Asked: The Book]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]- - - - - - - - - - - -
January 18, 2006
Dear Academic's Wife,
I think you have placed yourself too much in your husband's power. You need to begin now a long-term project of reestablishing yourself as an individual independent of him. In order to do this, you must identify what you love -- the tangible activities, the situations, the images, the places, the sounds, the animals and plants.
Go back over your last 10 years and try to find those times when you were happy, the flashes of joy, the moments of contentment, the periods of life ranging from a week to several months or a year, where you felt most fulfilled and alive. What were you doing then? Were you doing academic work? Were you with your women friends? Were you helping someone else do something? Were you standing in the reflected light of your husband? Was it a family gathering? Were you delivering a paper or working alone in a room?
Concentrate on yourself, not your husband; concentrate on those things that have pleased you in the past, not those things that you think might please you, or that you think ought to please you if only you were the virtuous and splendid person you think you ought to be.
Write these things down. Make these things concrete. Allow yourself to long for these things. Remember the feelings. Let these feelings take residence. Encourage them; make room for them; cultivate them. Do this over a period of several weeks.
Meanwhile, as you go about your daily life, find some still point within yourself from which you radiate outward. When you go to a party with your husband, wish for nothing and ask for nothing. Be kind but secretly assess your feelings; ask yourself about these people -- who they are, what they want of you, what you want of them; are there certain ones that you like and would like to talk to, and others whom you despise, or in whom you have no interest? Talk to the ones who interest you and ignore the rest. Watch what goes on around you. Take note of who is kind to you and who looks right through you on their way to someone swankier and richer and higher on the org chart.
Learn this. This is the way the world is. Come to know this. This is the system of which you have allowed yourself to become a victim. This is the vicious system of status and appearances, of high school for grown-ups, of ever-shifting cliques and roving packs. This is the system of social hunger that rules the planet. Keep looking at this until everything has parted like a curtain and you bump into the emptiness at the bottom, until the laughter and smiles have evaporated and the frisson of excitement has left you and only the faintest whiff of champagne and cigars still hangs in the air and finally there is nothing there, nothing. At the bottom is simply emptiness.
Keep holding yourself apart until the emptiness becomes like a giant room of silence. When you are comfortable in that giant room of silence tap yourself on the chest and ask what is left.
All that's left is you. What you've got then is all you have to go on, but it is enough. Walk out of the room and regard your husband in this cold new light. Does he love you really? Does he worship you? Would he leave all this for you if you asked him, or is he entranced by it all? Are you his companion on the journey or the vehicle he has chosen to ride? Are you the center of his life or just a decoration, the centerpiece for his table?
Nevermind what happens if you lose him. You seem to intuit that you are going to lose him anyway. What's worse is if you lose yourself. You have almost lost yourself already.
So start by regaining who you are, and move on from there.
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It's almost 3:00 AM here in Massachusetts...
[Read the article: Schumer sees the Senate going Dem]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]... But I am holding off sleep just to see if in the next 15 minutes Montana or Virginia will turn BLUE on my CNN map!
What a day! I'm burning a big candle for the Dems!
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Mid-December?!
[Read the article: Schumer sees the Senate going Dem]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Perish the thought! ;-)
Ok, I give in... Gotta get up in 4 hours for work, but I'll be dreaming of a Democratic Senate rush too!
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My younger sister just became pregnant this month...
[Read the article: I want to carry a child for my sister]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]...for the first time at 32, within her marriage of two and a half years. I am 35, single & no kids myself, but if for any reason, she needed me to carry a baby for her, I'd do it with very little hesitation -- unless I will risking serious harm to myself or to the infant -- forbiding husband or not. But then I'm closer to her than anyone else, so this might be a given! :)
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Re: Still though...
[Read the article: My husband's father is crowding me out of my own house]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]From her age of 25, her FIL is probably 50? 55? Not exactly "old" I'd say.
I have had sick relatives live with my family, and I certainly don't begrudge them any help or care but this man sounds like a parasite, plain and simple.
Finding some social services care for him and another home to live in is what should be done, and soon. Yes, she is under huge stress, and I don't think she really needs to stop and meditate on anyone else's "perspective" when she is about to snap and divorce her husband. Her perspective sounds like the most deserving sympathetic one!
Nobody said his life has no value. They've said it's time for him to move out.
A man that can and is depleting the house of the childrens' food is not exactly "fragile." Mentally and physically ill maybe. He's not exactly going to get better being where he is now.