Letters to the Editor
ThisMama
Published Letters: 11 Editor's Choice: 1
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What makes it "your apartment"?
[Read the article: I let my friends stay with me and now they're evicting me!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Your letter doesn't say anything about the terms of your lease, but your first paragraph refers to your male friend as a roommate and implies that he pays part of the rent (which you couldn't afford alone). So it seems misleading to call the apartment "yours" (singular) rather than "yours" (plural).
You make it sound like the girlfriend is a long-time guest of BOTH you and your roommate, living there with consent of both of you. You two guys invited her to live in your (plural) apartment. I don't see why you (singular) claim the moral right to kick her out without his consent, any more than you would give him the moral right to kick out YOUR girlfriend if the situation were reversed.
It sounds like all three of you were living in a sort of commune fantasy, where this baby would have a mom and two dads. Which would be lovely, if all three parents were into it. Maybe your friends WERE into it, but are now sliding back into a more conventional Nuclear Family fantasy. This is what hurts - you were being Dad No. 2 (driving mom to the dr, etc), and now you've been demoted to Surplus Male and Intrusive Housemate.
Maybe they didn't secretly set you up for this ("Honey, let's exploit his domestic fantasies and then kick him out and keep the apartment!"). Maybe this is more like a failure of idealism ("Honey, I thought it would be cool to have a non-traditional family with more helping hands, but as the reality draws near it's freaking me out!")
So sure, talk to a lawyer. Protect yourself financially re: lease, security deposit, utilities, etc. But also consider how you drifted into this situation . . . what needs for intimacy, family, shared responsibility, etc. motivated you to invite a pregnant woman into your home?
Don't just demonize your friends as home-stealing sociopaths. Keep talking to them. Admit (at least to yourself) that your domestic arrangement was meeting your emotional needs. You're not just a sucker, doormat, pushover - you did this for a reason. You wanted this, and so did they. Now they don't, and they're allowed to change their mind. Just as you might legitimately say, "You guys, this seemed like a good idea but I'm really not ready for family life with a newborn. I know you were counting on me, and I'm sorry to leave you in the lurch, but I've decided to get my own place." That wouldn't make you a home-wrecking sociopath - just a person who changed his mind.
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Me, me, me
[Read the article: Lonely single guy tired of being lonely and single seeks person ]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I'm struck by the level of self-absorption in this letter. I don't see anything about other human beings that LW has dated, has wanted to date, would like to meet. I see categories of dating (online, blind, speed) and I see statistics (never gets to third date). I see a very high degree of self-consciousness ("I'm single, I'm lonely, I'm different, etc"), but no consciousness of other people -- what they're like, what they think about, what they do.
If the LW's dating goal is just to meet someone to fill an empty space in his image - a person to replace his book at the dinner table, etc. -- believe me the "datees" can tell!
A woman wants to be more than just the object that magically transforms "lonely single guy" into "guy with a girlfriend."
LW, I suggest: stop thinking about yourself as "The Single Guy" looking to change his status. Start thinking about yourself as a participant in RELATIONSHIPS with other people.
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Naked in front of WHOM is the issue
[Read the article: If Britney Spears shouldn't be naked in front of her kids, what about me?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Mom walking to the shower sans robe or towel is not at all the same as Mom lap-dancing drunk in the living room.
I think it's misleading to focus on the "naked in front of the kids" issue. The problem was that Britney was being naked or half-naked WITH MEN (i.e. sexually inappropriate), and/or in the presence of her adult staff and bodyguards. It's not that her kids would be traumatized by the mere sight of their mom's body. It's that her lack of physical and sexual boundaries suggests that she's not a competent care-taker.
Cary's right on to say that celebrities' domestic lives have little or no relevance for the lives of ordinary people.
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Did talking about your vagina in public feel like cheating?
[Read the article: I did a vagina monologue but didn't tell my husband!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It sounds like you DO feel like you cheated on him, and that doesn't seem surprising to me. Speaking about sexuality in public, especially in the first person, is an intimate act . . . even though you were speaking someone else's words, you made yourself available to the audience to perceive you as a sexual being, a sexual woman. That could feel like a violation of the private sexual space of your marriage.
This feeling of guilt might even be a sense that you violated yourself and your own norms of behavior by displaying your sexuality publicly... If you are a woman who usually downplays her sexuality in public, and prefers that people respond to you in a "gender-neutral" way rather than as a vagina-having person, you might be feeling the after-effects of having put that aspect of yourself on display.
Maybe it was exciting and you feel uncomfortable with that. Maybe it was embarrassing and you regret it. Maybe it was exciting and embarrassing at the same time. Maybe you'll never do it again, or maybe you'll write your own monologue. But I think it's more important to think about what the experience felt like and meant to YOU, than to distract yourself with worrying about what it might have meant to your husband.