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Sunday, Nov 22, 2009
I can't forgive my wife for screaming at me and kicking me during labor. I hate her!
Mar 20, 2001 | Mr. Blue is in Florida this week, just in time for a cold rainy spell. The pool is frigid and water is dripping from the palms and the gray sea meets the gray sky at a barely discernible horizon. The Weather Channel is forecasting heavy rainstorms for today and tomorrow. Highs in the 50s. In Chicago it's 48 and partly cloudy. Next year maybe I'll look into vacation rentals on the South Side.
Numerous readers wrote in to disagree with my statement, "Computer programming is not a joyful business." I am glad to know that people disagree with that dour sentence. One programmer wrote: "Programming is a joyful experience for some people. It requires a love of solving a certain type of puzzle and a bit of empathy with the poor folks doomed to use the software we write." Thanks for the empathy, but whoever created the software for AT&T WorldNet should come and sit in this cold swimming pool for a while and let us throw gravel at him. WorldNet is a puzzle I don't love.
Numerous readers wrote in horror at my advice to Dragging who claims to have no feeling for her husband. I said, "So? Go." A narcissistic sort of letter, and one could advise her to seek counseling, read the Bible, get pheromone medication, take a vacation in Florida, but this is to play games: If you write to Mr. Blue and say, "I have no feelings whatsoever for this person," Mr. Blue is not about to argue you out of your feelinglessness. Sorry.
Many, many letters about Stuck at the Crossroads, the bright young woman of Asian descent who is ambivalent about going to medical school, feeling that her parents are pressuring her, feeling that her real love is art and literature. Most of the letters advise Stuck to take a year off and try to find herself. One reader writes: "Medical school is better suited to people who have little doubt that that's what they want to do. It is a rough road, with carcasses piling up in the ditches. The long hours of memorization, the congenitally competitive classmates, the long nights on call admitting the mentally ill, homeless and addicted to the medicine wards, under a great deal of pressure, make everyone who goes through it question their commitment at one time or another. It would be dreadful to have a young spirit crushed under the load, and end up becoming a doctor with a dulled spirit: one who has a job, but not the passion required to really make a life out of it or to advocate for their patients."
And after a wave of letters strongly disagreeing with my advice to the nonbelieving husband to please his wife and attend church on Sunday morning with the family, a second wave of concurring opinion washed in -- people who say that every marriage lives on simple give and take, including one person who says that it can only benefit a couple to sit together quietly for an hour every Sunday.
Dear Mr. Blue,
I think my marriage is at an end. We have a child, a beautiful month-old baby who lights up my life. But I can't forget how badly my wife treated me during labor. She screamed and swore and was embarrassing and awful. I tried to hold her hand, she struck me. The doctor told me to come to the end of the table, so she could press against my belly with her foot, and she deliberately kicked me, hard enough to drop me to the floor. The doctor said this was a relatively easy birth, plenty of room, and a quick delivery. A few days after she came home, I heard her tell someone on the phone that the delivery "wasn't that bad." Since then, she's been on cloud nine, but I can't forget the way she treated me in the delivery room. I don't want to touch her or be touched. Is there anything I can do? I don't want to abandon my new family, but I hate my wife. There's no more exact way to say it. I can't imagine anything that would make me want to share a house with this person who emerged while giving me a child, but the idea of losing my new baby is unbearable. Please advise!
Desperate
Dear Desperate,
What seems like a relatively easy birth to your doctor might not seem so easy if he had to pass a stool the size of a football out his tailpipe. Try it sometime. Stick your head up your rear end and see if you don't scream and swear a little too. A woman in childbirth is entitled to a great latitude of language. My own dear wife says she looked up at me in the delivery room and saw the beneficent look on my face and fervently wished that I were going through the pain in her place. Maybe your wife struck you because you had that fatuous look on your face. In any case, it's all over and you have a beautiful little boy. Grow up, get over it and be a man. Really. Holding a grudge on these grounds is the dumbest thing you ever did in your life.
