From Here To Attorneys’ Fees
A girl suspects she married too young, and doesn't know quite what to do about it. I just posted another Advice Goddess column. Here's the question:
I’m 23 and married just over a year. Six months ago, before my husband and I moved so I could start law school, I slept with an older attorney, a co-worker. I was wracked with guilt and confessed to my husband. Now, he’s constantly depressed, angry, and insecure, and I’ve happily buried myself in my studies, trying to forget that another outburst awaits at home. I regret what I did, but I don’t need to be constantly reminded. I can’t help feeling I married too young. I still love my husband although I don’t feel “in love” with him, but I stubbornly refuse to admit failure, and hold out hope things will work out. I’m overextended with studying, and keep waking up with a sinking feeling that something needs to be done. But what?--Silently Stewing
And here's what I said in response:
You take the relaxed approach to marital reconciliation -- simply holding out hope things will work out. You might apply this strategy elsewhere in your life; say, to home remodeling projects. Yes, forget drills, saws, and socket wrenches. Hire psychic construction workers, ply them with beer and Chex Party Mix, and have them spend the day holding out hope your kitchen cabinets will grow new doors.Your marital problems probably started with an equally relaxed approach to thinking -- a failure to use your head as more than a staging area for your hair. In this, you’re not alone. A lot of people, especially those in their 20s, make life-shifting decisions without really thinking them through. Take that pledge, “Till death do us part,” as in, “I’ll never, ever have sex with anyone but this man.” Can you seriously promise that or be counted on to make any decisions of lasting consequence at 22 -- in lifetime terms, essentially 22 minutes after you’ve recovered from being blind-drunk at prom?
Your approach to cheating seems just as "yeah, whatever." What was the idea here, you’d have sex with this hotshot attorney, hop out of bed, and blithely be on your way? Oops, what’s that thing following you home? Look, it’s a little black blob of guilt! You tucked it away in your purse. But, like Paris Hilton’s Chihuahua Tinkerbell, which she dumped on her mother after it got Tinker-huge, your guilt soon outgrew your handbag. Next thing you knew, you were giving a piggyback ride to a black blob the size of a Barcalounger. “Yoohoo…Honey…” After all, what’s a husband for besides hauling your oversized baggage around?
Now, there’s a creative take on justice: You do the crime, somebody else does the time. (Your future clients should be so lucky.) Meanwhile, you can’t quite get what, exactly, the big deal is. You said you were sorry; how come your husband’s still lying there on the front walk like Humpty Dumpty? Um, just a guess, but it might have something to do with all the effort you’re investing in rebuilding his trust and the marriage you exploded; or, as you put it, “stubbornly refus(ing) to admit failure” (while stubbornly avoiding doing anything else).
Ask yourself what’s really tragic, a marriage that ends or a marriage that goes on too long? Maybe the best you can do is turn this into a learning experience, and resolve to take a leap second/look first approach to life. This isn’t always foolproof, but even if it doesn’t stop you from, say, marrying too young, maybe you could get unmarried in a kinder, gentler way -- maybe by informing your husband it isn’t working, and parting friends. And, wow, maybe that’s what love is -- getting out of what love was supposed to be without mashing the other person’s ego into gruel.
Naturally, I got a bunch of letters and emails from people criticizing me for not telling the girl marriage is forever, and "a sacrament," and she should stick it out. I just love when people (surely due to unthinking religious indoctrination) value tenure over quality of life.
Marriage is a contractual agreement (at least when it isn't an imposed arrangement, like in some cultures). So leaving aside the emotional betrayal, there should be some sort of penalty to breaking it.
Now I tend to side with the sanctity of marriage position, which is why joke marriages (where the gal just wanted a big party in white and the attention of hundreds of people) should be annuled.
It also seems that, by implication, marriage should be done by people after they have completed their college and started on a career, when people are more likely to be thinking of "settling down."
Antoine Clarke at December 11, 2006 3:54 AM
It also seems that, by implication, marriage should be done by people after they have completed their college and started on a career, when people are more likely to be thinking of "settling down."
It makes much more sense, since they are also more likely to be developed as humans. Sometimes, people who marry young really only have in common an attraction to each other because they're such larvae as people.
Rutgers' Helen Fisher found, via reading UN divorce stats on the train from Manhattan to New Jersey every day, that people, around the globe, have a greater tendency to get divorced between the ages of 20 and 24.
Amy Alkon at December 11, 2006 4:48 AM
I was definitely a larva until age 24. Now my spouse and I are both beauty-ful butterflies! Or maybe we're those tarantula-fighting wasps. Bzzzz! Grrr!!! Fear our sting!
Point is, we're compatible. Imagine marrying as larvae, pupating into a lovely adult moth or spittlebug or carpenter ant or something, only to find your spouse has pupated into a lazy drone good for nothing but lying around the house eating and mating! Or a Madagascar hissing cockroach! Or a praying mantis!!!!
I think I've delivered a fatal headbite to this analogy, but the point still stands! Now I must go Google interesting insects people might pupate into.
Melissa G at December 11, 2006 10:07 AM
"I’m 23 and married just over a year. Six months ago, . . .I slept with an older attorney, a co-worker."
Wow - that's gotta be right up there with land speed records on non-celebrity marital infidelity.
snakeman99 at December 11, 2006 11:26 AM
Swear to God I have no fascnation with fidelity. But people --especially weomen-- don't confess because they're "wracked with guilt," right? They confess to make it clear that their needs aren't getting met. Wrong? People who care about partners' feelings die with secrets like that.
Crid at December 11, 2006 3:18 PM
It can work either way. Some people prefer not to know about a partner's infidelity, or even accept that it happens but don't want to have their noses rubbed in it.
However, if the trust that exists between a couple is based on the certainty that any infidelity would be admitted, and it gets out by other means (the cheat's lover bragging or trying to wreck things for whatever reason [revenge, jealously, stupidity, showing off]), then 'fessing up would have been better.
Speaking for myself, if I discovered infildelity by my partner by any means other than a confession, they would be be straight out the door and no messing around. It's one of the few things
I can think of would drive me psycho. My reasoning is that if she lied about sleeping around, then I couldn't have kids without having to do a DNA test and there is nothing I could trust her with.
I've heard horrendous stats that something like one in ten UK fathers are rearing cuckoos, but I'm going by memory of what someone told me.
In the aristocratic tradition, a woman getting pregnant from someone other than her husband was messing up the hereditary succession. The mere accusation of bastardy in a royal family was enough to trigger civil war, (indeed a routine part of preparing a coup d'etat typically centered around claiming infidelity by the queen or homosexuality [and impotence as far as procreation was concerned] by the king) which is why the English Treason Act of 1375 actually carried a mandatory death penalty for either having sex with the queen or the wife of the crown prince, or even just claiming to have done so. Former Major James Hewitt is very lucky he didn't sell his story about fucking Princess Di before her divorce.
(That sentence wasn't repealled until after she died.) He might have escaped with being shot as an officer, but I suspect hanging would have been the preferred punishment instead of the traditional hanging, drawing and quartering.
Antoine Clarke at December 11, 2006 4:38 PM
> if the trust that exists between
> a couple is based on the certainty
Good, successful investments are often based on bogus sales pitches. We like to think restaurant kitchens are cleaner than neurosurgery theaters, but of course it's not true. Still, we enjoy eating out, we live in health and we get our money's worth.
People keep secrets all the time... Honesty is a weird thing to hear about from someone who says twisted things like "I don’t feel 'in love' with him, but I stubbornly refuse to admit failure": She's just admitted precisely that. She calls herself "Silently Stewing", not "Regretful Cheater." She complains about her own emotions after describing her husband's misery. No kids, starter marriage, her own future is secure. So divorce, already.
> without having to do a DNA test
> and there is nothing I could
> trust her with.
Word!
Hitchens did a great essay about how one year after Diana's death, all the people who were weeping and dropping off flowers at the consulate and staying up late to watch the funeral on TV had forgotten all about her ass... The thene park was never built. It was like the end of a sitcom, and not a particularly instructive one.
Crid at December 11, 2006 5:06 PM
"She calls herself "Silently Stewing", not "Regretful Cheater." She complains about her own emotions after describing her husband's misery. No kids, starter marriage, her own future is secure. So divorce, already."
Exactly. Or, put another way, when she gazes into the future, does she really expect this to end any other way? Really?
snakeman99 at December 11, 2006 5:35 PM
Two more comments about this topic which holds --I steadfastly allege-- no grand personal interest.
1. If the wife was cheating with a lover who would spill the beans (whether willfully or negligently) such that the husband finds out without her confession, then the lover is an asshole. And so is the wife, who wouldn't have otherwise felt it for lover (unless there was a need to have something hurtful to confess), because it takes one to know one. And if the wife's an asshole, the cuckolded husband's probably an asshole too.
2. Carolla talked about living with a mistake in fidelity like this once: Let's say you get out of college and start working, but you hate your work, so you horse around a little. Three years later you realize how great your job is, and how it's positioned you perfectly for the career of your dreams. Do you -
(A.) March into the bosses office and confess that you're the one who sold the Minolta copier to a hock shop back in '03?
0r...
(B.) Come in early on Thursday with a bag of bagels to shoot the shit before going into your office to kick unholy ass on the MacPherson account?
Answer: B.
Crid at December 11, 2006 7:25 PM
From Here To Attorneys’ Fees
I nominate this as your best column title yet!
deja pseu at December 12, 2006 7:26 PM
Merci!
Amy Alkon at December 12, 2006 11:02 PM
A fantastic site, and brilliant effort. A great piece of work.p
Claudette at June 27, 2007 8:53 AM
Love this place!! I will be back many times over, and I am going to tell everyone I know about this place...amazing!
Zenobia Schendel at June 19, 2011 2:43 AM
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