Letters to the Editor
Published Letters: 236 Editor's Choice: 17
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Life is All About the Decisions, Isn't It?
[Read the article: I don't want to go to my college friend's wedding]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Which is more important, keeping the second tier friends for another year or two, or finding people with whom you have more in common than just proximity of time and place?
When I go to my high school reunions, there are women there who never moved on. When we all had small children, they were taking their kids to the same parks they went to as small children, with the same people they met as small children--a group of about 5 or 10 of us stayed in the same neighborhood and raised their kids on those same streets.
It worked for them to maintain the closeness that time and place had begun. For most of us, though, that isn't true. By the time we have been out of college for a few years, our circle of friends has shrunk to a handful, the ones that we KNOW we can count on through thick and thin. The ones who can count on US through thick and thin.
The LW mentions that she helped the bride through a tough time at one point. Does she LIKE the bride enough to pursue a closer friendship with her, or was it a one time thing?
Really, weddings are not command performances, and no one, even the bride's godmother, is required to be there. I would make my decision upon two things: the feelings of the bride, and my own. No one else's opinion is relevant here. If you care enough about the bride, and you believe that she cares enough about you that she she will be hurt by your failure to show, then go. Your husband is a big boy, and he will just have to need to get used to uncomfortable situations.
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Thank You, Ann Hood
[Read the article: Little girl lost, little girl found]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]for sharing your journey from loss to hope.
For those of you who have NOT been unfortunate enough to have lost a child, a close sibling, a parent at a young age, I respectfully suggest that you STFU.
Because you have no way of understanding what someone says when they make statements about painful Mother's Days, or sad Christmases or whatever.
It is not a detraction from the living. And no, when you lose someone whom you love with all of your heart, someone ELSE you love with all of your heart as well does not take their place. It's impossible. What can happen is that you learn to fill in the hole with scar tissue, and the pain is not so fresh, not so direct, not so searingly THERE.
But it never completely goes away, and can be rekindled, if more briefly over time, at a moment's notice.
My daughter just turned 30. But when my MIL, in a familiar act of inept carelessness, suggested that I, having lost a sibling to suicide, might have ideas to help her distant cousin through his son's suicide, I spent much of the day in pain. All the memories, all the horror, of driving to my brother's home with my 3 week old daughter, so that we could, as a family, tell our parents the awful news, came rushing back.
Do I love my children unconditionally? Of course I do. Are they, with their stepfather, my world? Of course they are. But one person cannot replace another. A son cannot replace a daughter, nor a daughter a son. And pain can, frequently, render one incapable of more than the minimum of human interaction, at least temporarily.
I used to be proud of being a Salon reader. I used to believe that those of us who read this news source were among the most intelligent, the most compassionate, the most forward-thinking people in this country. But there is a vein of incomprehensible cruelty, of the need to kick those who dare to reveal their human frailty, here. And I find that frightening.
Maybe it's not just here, maybe it's our culture as a whole. One that chooses to look on the bleak side, on the cynical side, on the unenlightened self-interest side of all issues.
It's too sad for words.
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So, Let Me Get This Straight
[Read the article: I'm a bisexual Christian husband and father]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Now that you know that you are bisexual, you are worried that somehow you'll just fall into bed with some random guy? Or is it that you are worried that you'll fall in love with some guy?
Wow, I didn't realize that same sex attraction was so POWERFUL that it could override one's love for and commitment to one's partner. Maybe that's why so many people are against gay and lesbian marriage: because it's too hard to stay faithful?
Or, could it, possibly, be that being attracted to the people that we're attracted to is just part of being human, and being faithful to our wives, our husbands, our lovers is what we CHOOSE? It seems that way to me. I am a heterosexual woman, who has seen numerous men that I find enormously attractive. Plenty of them found me attractive, too, judging by their comments, both verbal and non-verbal. But I have never been unfaithful. Not once. Not even an ardent kiss. Because it's wrong. Because I love my husband, and I loved him when we were dating, too.
That's your answer. If you married your wife because she was the sexiest, most amazing woman that you ever had the good fortune to kiss, then stay married to her, stay faithful to her for the same reason. If you married her because you wanted to deny your attraction to men, then figure out what you are going to do about it.
But attraction to one's own gender is neither that unusual, nor a license to cheat. It is, again, part of being human. It's what we do with that attraction, when we are in a committed relationship, that defines our value to ourselves and to the ones we love.