- Top Features:
- War Room
- Glenn Greenwald
- Broadsheet
- Joan Walsh
- Camille Paglia
- Since You Asked
- Follow Salon:
Read other letters about this article
...in the posters' reactions to the LW.
To me it's incredible that people can call the LW "a selfish bitch" and other such things. But here it is, they are calling her that.
One particularly psychologically-savvy individual was expressing amazement at a 29yo's lack of maternal feeling for a 16yo who isn't her own. Like it's just the most natural thing in the world to feel motherly towards other people's teenagers before hitting 30 (like most people would feel motherly in LW's place, right?).
My guess is she's expected to feel that because she's a woman. Women being, as we all know, instant caring machines.
My other guess is that some posters are annoyed with the LW because she dares think about her own life and about her own happiness.
First of all, again, because she's a woman - and because at a primal level women putting themselves first are perceived as "unfeminine", "cold", etc.
Second of all, because of our infatuation with the "good of the children". The good of the children is important, of course. But children are people, too, and like the rest of us they, too, must accommodate their fellow human beings, within the limits applicable to them. Love is not as unconditional as you would like it to be, people. And hard-to-manage teenagers that you don't share a blood-like bond with are not the most loveable creatures.
So lay off the insults, I say. At this point the LW has no "duty" to this girl other than refraining from causing her harm, which is pretty much the duty we have to all our fellow human beings. She doesn't owe her the sacrifice of her own life and happiness.
What she owes this girl is honesty. Honesty to herself and honesty to the father. If she feels the cons outweigh the pros, she should leave the relationship, and everybody will be for the better. But such decisions are always hard to take, which is why she wrote Cary.
Until then, why not ponder (I'm talking to you, vitriolic posters) how you would see things if your own daughter was the LW and came to you for advice. Would you tell her she's selfish and cold to express her feelings and think about what makes her happy? I thought not.
