Only on Salon.com do people seriously exist who think that it's reasonable to expect that one can live in an overpriced Manhattan apartment on the earnings of a freelance writer, for one thing.

Oh, amen to that. Salon is the virtual refuge of spoiled want and denial.

Joan Walsh is the worst of them all, a dabbler and a dilettante who tries to run with the big dogs and never comes off looking like anything but a poseur. Watching her "debate" with Christopher Hitchens is good exercise for the cringe muscles. No wonder she tries to defend the author of this article; she's no better.

Married 38 years. Lost my job in October 2006 at 57 years old with no formal education. He treated me awful. Have since found a nice job and now butter would melt in his mouth. His job of 24 years is in jeopardy. Pay back is hell. Still cannot forgive him for the way he treated me when I was fired. He said it was all my fault that I got fired, it was my fault we had no money, etc. If I could leave him I would. I hate him and I will never forgive him for the way he treated me.

As far as I can tell, this happens to some degree in just about any marriage where there is long, unplanned non-medically necessitated employment and the unemployed person sits around at home.

Everyone is pretty quick to judge Marisa's pre-marriage assumptions, but I really doubt that she was particularly subtle on the "I want to stay home with any kids we have for a little while" point and Paul DID marry a freelance writer.

If he wanted to be able to sit on his ass at home and not work for eight months (because you can't tell me that there were no jobs, at all in New York City that he could have taken in that period,) then he probably shouldn't have married a freelance writer.

And I think Joan Walsh defends young women because you people are so brutal to them.

I really can't imagine any other place where the "How DARE she object to having to pay all his bills while he sits around and plays Xbox all day for almost a year! What a materialistic bitch! She should be THRILLED that when they have a fight, he goes off and spends her money on getting tipsy!" argument is even seriously made.

She's a jerk.

Bigguns, I think what you are attacking here is naiveté itself: the belief that you should be cut a slack just because you "knew no better" and "had bad expectations" and "didn't know what life would turn out to be".

I remember someone--was it Anne Rice, of all people?--writing about how dangerous innocence was: innocence with claws red with blood, innocence that leads you astray, into self-centeredness, into selfishness. Innocence that makes victims of others besides the innocent person him/herself.

But bigguns--we all have illusions. I have yet to meet a person who did not have to go through phases in which s/he thought reality was something other than it is. (And do we know even now?... But that's another topic.) 7-year-old boys in Nazi concentration camps played pretend games. 10-year-old prostitutes played with their dolls.

It's not wrong to have illusions, just like it's not wrong to be illiterate. What is wrong is to have illusions forever, despite your experience with the world; or to be illiterate forever, despite your experience of a literate world.

I've taught 35-year-olds to read and write in their own language in some far-away little village. I didn't tell them that they were stupid and naive for not having tried to learn by themselves--there was, after all, a teacher paid by the government in the village; why didn't they try to set something up with him before I came? No, I preferred to think that they learned something new, that they became a little bit more capable of defending themselves in the modern literate world. I think their accomplishment--for it is an accomplishment--deserves praise, even if you can say that 35 is quite old to learn your letters.

Of couse everybody should do their damnedest best to know what the world and life are like and react accordingly. Of course people should become aware of their surroundings and learn to fend for themselves and stop having exaggerated expectations as soon as possible--life doesn't exist to make me happy, or anyone else for that matter.

But people don't do this at the same speed. Not everybody learns to read at the same age, and some people have handicaps. That doesn't mean their life can't be fulfilling, involve growth, and lead to a satisfactory resolution anyway. And I think this was the case in Ms Belger's tale.

Look, accusing her of naiveté is easy. It's even true! She was indeed too self-centered. But this is also like accusing my 35-year-old students of 'not having tried hard enough' to learn to read. It's also true: they could have. But however true the accusation is, it fails to note that the state of affairs is past. She is now more responsible than she was, and my old students can now read. This is an achievement, one that should not be taken for granted, one that not every individual on this earth can claim for him/herself.

Of course, you can claim she is still naive, given her starry-eyed optimism at the end of the story. I agree with you, but only up to a point. Optimism has a bad side--'no matter what I do, things will turn out OK'--but it also has a good side--'I do have the power to influence on how things will turn out'.

We all know, bigguns, that there are sufficiently many bad things in this world to keep us all in bed, depressed and despaired from any activity, believing that nothing is worth it and nothing will ever have any effect. But I don't do this, you don't do this, and it's because we still have the optimism to believe that the things we do can make a difference. Even if only in our lives, and if possible in the lives of others.

If Ms Belger wants to use words like 'happily every after', let us hope that it is not as a result of any misguided belief in fairy tales--but as a source of energy for facing the future challenges that she (and her husband) will have to face and coming up with appropriate responses. This is the good side of optimism.

I don't know for a fact that this is what will happen with Ms Belger, or that this is her intended meaning for her 'naive words.' But I can hope it is. Just like I can hope those 35-year-old students who learned to read from me are actually deriving advantages from their new skills, rather than simply drinking themselves to a stupor (as many men in that villages were and are wont to). I think it's possible that things may have a happy ending--if we work for it.