What Can I Do To Stop Feeling So Miserable?

QUESTION:

I was never miserable as a child. I came from a Brady Bunch family. I don't know what my problem is.  For the last couple of years I've been depressed. After my first love left me, I tried to commit suicide. 

I felt so lost & saw no hope. I always feel insecure & need constant reassurance in relationships.  I read about personality disorders & connected most w/dependent personality disorder.  My biggest fear is rejection.  If someone leaves me I go out of control. 

I fly into a rage & feel this intense heat come over my body.  I always feel like it's my fault & end up in total depression. Some days I have road rage so bad & feel like "so what" if someone hurts me, it'll be better than feeling this pain.

Also I've noticed that all I do is complain about my problems & the solution to me seems out of reach.  I read your list for mentally happy people & realized that I put my happiness second to the person whom I'm in a relationship w/for fear of rejection. 

I know that isn't normal & it scares me.  I carry anger around w/me everywhere, mainly for lacking self confidence in every aspect of my life. I can remember as early as the 2nd grade not finishing a project because I thought that mine could never look as good as my friends.

I know this is long, but I've never spoken so openly about myself.  Now that I look back at what I've wrote I can't help but feel like I'm defective in someway.  I envy happy people. I don't want to live my life miserable & afraid anymore.

Please help.

living your life in misery is something like the description above...  this was a real letter written to an online psychologist for help...

Understanding about your emotions can help you begin to process some of the emotions & feelings that you have to start to resolve your feelings of misery...

Miserable People

9-18-1999

What I write few will read & even fewer will understand. If somehow it helps even one person, then the effort put forth will be justified.

I just can't believe how miserable people can be w/everything. They're unkind & 'Mad" all the time. They blame their plight on others. They want others to be perky, bright & jolly. They want pity & others to feel sorry for them. They can't accept or understand the needs of others.

They claim they're compassionate but this trait is never seen w/out a corresponding vocal statement about how tired they are & how many sacrifices they've had to make to be helpful. In other words, they're only compassionate & kind when it results in pity & others feeling sorry for them.

I, obviously, don't know why nature made these people this way. It may be a learned trait. In any event, these people love to make others feel bad. They love to be martyrs. They love to complain about everything others do. In fact, it seems their happiest moments are when they're berating someone else with or w/out cause.

The storm trooper attitude of these people is unbelievable. They walk over anyone & everyone in their field of vision. They take everything they can get in the process. They take & take whether needed or not. They never give anything back. They never get enough. They can never see their own short-comings.

This is the environment & society I have inherited. This is the society which believes they've earned & deserve to be a beneficiary in spite of their belligerent & hateful attitude. Attitudes which they never recognize.

They're uneducated, miserable, unhappy & broke . They'll not spend a minute trying to correct these characteristics. They prefer to make all those around them miserable & then blame everything on those they have just made miserable.

The following sorta sums up my frustration. This is from an Ann Landers column in the Wichita Eagle on September 16, 1999.

Live Long & Prosper!
J F Hawkins

Maintaining bad marriages can hurt kids

By Marilyn Elias, USA TODAY

Couples who keep an angry, belittling marriage together "for the sake of the kids" tend to raise children whose marriages are as miserable as the ones they grew up in, suggests a new 17-year study of two generations.

The findings provide strong evidence that marital unhappiness can be passed on to younger generations, marriage experts agree.

But that doesn't mean discontented partners are always better off divorcing, says Penn State University sociologist Paul Amato, senior author of the study. He and coauthor Alan Booth followed 297 married couples & one child from each family for 17 years. The researchers took into account key influences on marital happiness, such as income, education, age at first marriage & divorce history. Still, they found:

• The more discord parents reported in their marriages, the more unhappily married their grown kids were.

• If a parent's marriage improved over time, their child's marriage was better than that of kids whose parents were unhappy to start & never became happier. Worsening of the parental marriage led to poorer marriages for grown kids.

• The key qualities in parents' marriages linked to later bad matches for their youngsters were: jealous or domineering behavior by spouses; quickness to anger; being critical or moody & refusing to talk to one's spouse.

"If people in these marriages are staying together for the sake of the kids, they're not doing their kids any favor," Amato says.

But most marriages go thru bad patches, he adds. The findings don't suggest youngsters are better off if their parents split up rather than working thru periodic hard times.

Children raised by parents who quarrel bitterly or give each other "the silent treatment" may imitate these patterns in their own marriages, Amato speculates. Also, these kids don't learn how to resolve disputes w/loved ones.

Spouses are constantly battling in about 20% of U.S. marriages, says psychologist Mavis Hetherington, University of Virginia professor emeritus & author of For Better or for Worse: Divorce Reconsidered (W.W. Norton & Co. Inc.), due out next month.

"In these very contentious marriages, particularly if parents are arguing about the children a lot, kids are much worse off than they'd be if parents just divorced," Hetherington says.

But many marriages that end in divorce aren't hostile, Amato says. 3 out of 5 divorcing couples are just bored by their partners, his research shows.

And splitting up apparently hurts adult kids, too. Compared w/ couples from intact homes, having one partner from a divorced family doubles the chance of an adult child's divorce, Hetherington says. If both spouses are from divorced families, the risk is nearly 3 times greater.

None of this is written in stone, though. If a spouse has divorced parents but marries someone from an intact home who is well-adjusted & supportive, their divorce risk is no greater than that of couples whose parents weren't divorced, Hetherington says.

"Just about everyone can improve their marriage," says University of Denver psychologist Howard Markman, author of Fighting for Your Marriage (Jossey-Bass). "They can learn skills to help them handle negative emotions in marriage. It's the discord that hurts kids," Markman says.

Why There are so Many Marriage Failures Today

This is caused by 3 things, mobility, affluency & isolation.

In times past people lived & died in one geographic area as did their family. This meant that there were many relatives of yours who had observed your potential spouse grow up & could give you wise advice about them. Since both you & your spouse came from the same area, it was more likely that you had shared values & aspirations.

In times past it was both spouses against nature. Keeping alive was the primary goal. They didn't have discretionary resources to spend. Each spouse could have different dreams of the future, but since they wouldn't be implemented, they didn't conflict. Now that life is easy, there are expectations that these dreams can be implemented. If there aren't enough resources for both, conflicts emerge.

People live in isolation these days. They don't get to observe others & see how actions have long term consequences. Instead, they live in an unrealistic dream world created by fiction entertainment, journalism & advertising. As a result, they have world views that are more conducive to causing disasters in the physical world that their bodies live in.

Things take on a different appearance from other perspectives. One woman was impressed by a fellow who gave a large amount of his time & money to charity. After she married him, it was her money & time that could have been spent w/her that went to charity. She was less impressed w/his generosity.

One woman felt "protected" because her date frequently performed acts of physical violence on others in public places. She never wondered if he would use it on her after the marriage. She also didn't consider the arrests, jail terms & law suits it would cause later on.

Excitement comes from danger & danger brings disaster.

Making Assumptions Instead of Asking

It's so easy to ask that is surprising how many don't. There are so many basic value conflicts that people should list their values & compare the list w/their intended spouse's. One common pitfall to avoid w/this procedure is to tell the truth, not what you think is expected from you. People from rigid homes, such as dietary or politically oriented ones, frequently fall into this trap.

There was once a city fellow who thought that all country women wanted a simple, low cost lifestyle. There was a country gal who thought that all city fellows had high economic earning powers that could support her in the style she wished to become accustomed.

They got married & bought a bookstore w/her inheritance & lived to the limit. Times got bad & she refused to sell the stable of horses. She withheld physical affection from her husband in order to force him to make more profits from the store in spite of the poor economy & the stock liquidations that were done to generate cash to maintain the horses.

Two years later the store was abandoned in bankruptcy & the couple lost the quarter million dollar inheritance & the horses. [Since writing this I've discovered another case. A married couple from Eastern Europe came to the US. The husband worked as an engineer. The wife stayed at home because she couldn't speak English very well. The economic hard times of 2002 came & the husband lost his job. He tool training classes in areas of engineering that had job openings & after 9 months he got another job. His wife complained bitterly that he was spending money on these classes that could have been spent on her wardrobe.]

There once was a woman who was so sexually sensitive that she couldn't be touched w/out "going all the way." She therefore refused to be touched. There was a fellow who never touched her. She assumed that this was because he had high ethical standards.

After the marriage she was looking forward to a bit of fun. He continued to not touch her. You can guess his sexual orientations & his assumptions about hers. (Her income was larger than his & she was in line for a hefty inheritance.)

Here is a double problem. Different people need different amounts of solitude & of people time. Most don't consciously know their own requirements. I've seen many cases of mismatch between the two spouses needs as well as their available time after the time spent making a living.

Unrealistic Expectations

We live in a dream world of illusions produced by advertising, journalists & fictional entertainment.

"Life is tough & then you die."

is a realistic evaluation to keep in mind.

Whatever disappointments & irritations you have as single will be accentuated by having to live intimately w/someone else. Living w/ someone else while not being married will not reveal these. In fact, people who live together before being married have a higher divorce rate than those who don't.

Rescue & Reforming

After the marriage spouses have less influence over each other than before. Also, the traits you dislike in the other person will become more intense & exercised more frequently.

Cultural Differences

In different cultures, values are so wide spread & commonly held that they're taken for granted. Cross cultural marriages require special investigation because the people never think that other cultures have different ways of doing things.

A woman from an upper class South America background married a US fellow who was studying to become a professor. She didn't realize that US professors aren't well paid. She ended up living in what to her was degrading poverty. He didn't realize that upper class women from her country didn't do housework. It was the duty of the husband to hire the help or do the work himself. He ended up doing it himself.

Believing False Fronts

People, in general, make the biggest shows about what they're the most lacking in. This is usually done more to fool themselves than to fool others. Sometimes others are also fooled. Many professional societies are functionally mutual admiration societies for the people at the bottom of the talent range.

Here are two examples from fiction. Mrs Peel was genuinely talented & went about her business helping others w/out making any big show of it. The original Sherlock Holmes stories had him w/this same behavior. The recent PBS Jeremy Brett dramatizations showed Sherlock Holmes as a mentally ill person who had to be arrogant & put down others to compensate for his lack of talent & self esteem.

Putting God to the Test

This usually occurs in women w/strong religious beliefs. On the surface it sounds reasonable. They pray to God to select a mate for them. They'll know this person is God's choice when the next man proposes to them.

There are many flaws in this. It's trying to use the criminal act of extortion to force God to follow your directions w/the alternative that you'll end up w/the wrong husband if God doesn't supply one & soon & it'll be God's fault if you end up w/the wrong husband.

God doesn't take kindly to being ordered around by humans. God will always allow people to make errors & suffer the consequences. Look how many religious people suffer health problems from their eating habits (usually gluttony).

What if God wants you to never be married or to be married many years into the future? God has ordained trials & tribulations in this life & you aren't going to get out of them so easily.

What I've frequently seen happen in this situation is that some fellow who proposes to every woman in sight & gets turned down for good reason (usually mental illness problems plus the inability to hold a job) finally get around to proposing to the woman described above & she accepts. She lives unhappily ever after because she doesn't believe in divorce & he isn't going to walk away from a source of financial income from her working.

Quotes From the Past on Child Rearing

Here are two quotes from about 120 years ago:

Favorite children ... God disapproves of us doting upon them above measure. They will live to be as great a curse to us as Absolom was to David. If people want to grow thorns to stuff their mattresses, let them dote upon their dear ones.

from Morning and Evening by Charles Spurgeon, reading for May 4.

If you want to ruin your son, never let him know a hardship. When he is a child, carry him in your arms, when he becomes a youth, dandle him & when he becomes a man, dry-nurse him & you'll succeed in producing an arrant fool. If you want to preventh his being made useful in the world, guard him from every kind of toil. Don't suffer him to struggle. Wipe the sweat from his dainty brow & say, "Dear child, thou shalt never have a task so arduous." Pity him when he ought to be punished; supply all his wishes. avert all disappointments, prevent all troubles & you'll surely tutor him to be a reprobate & to break your heart. But put him where he must work, expose him to difficulties, purposely throw him into peril & in this way you'll make him a man & when he comes to do a man's work & to bear a man's trial, he shall be fit for either.

from Miracles and Parables of our Lord by Charles Spurgeon, vol. 1, page 350

Here is a quote from about 200 years ago:

It is hard to say whether pride or self will be the more fatal distemper.....First, be aware of adding fuel to the flame, of feeding the disease you should cure. Almost all parents are guilty of doing this, by praising their children to their face.

from The Works of John Wesley Volume XII, page 93 by John Wesley, Sermon XVC On The Education of Children

I frequently see the results of this today. Parents praise their children for doing the relatively simple minded activity of entry level computer programming & the children grow up thinking that they're the fount of all knowledge & have nothing new to learn.

That the world is over-run w/vice, can't be denied; but, vice however prominent hasn't yet gained an unlimited dominion. Simple & unmingled good isn't in our powers, but we may generally escape a greater evil by suffering a less & therefore, those who undertake to initiate the young & ignorant in the knowledge of life, should be careful to inculcate the possibility of virtue & happiness & to encourage endeavors by prospect of success.

from The Rambler No. 119 Tuesday, 7 May 1751, by Dr. Samuel Johnson, the famous English author and compiler of the famous dictionary.

Too frequently people think that teaching children about all of the evil in the world, such as by having current events classes in school, does them good. It only makes them cynical & unwilling to try to be good. "Screw others before they screw you" is what they're in effect taught.

And finally, married women who don't wear wedding rings are doing a grave disservice to women who aren't married & want to be. This is because one time chance encounters w/potential husbands remain just that. In the past the unmarried status of women would be immediately noticed & lead to invitations for future encounters. Now, men who have high ethical values would never broach the subject for fear of possibly tempting a married woman. Even an inquiry into marital status might tempt a married woman to misrepresent herself.

Claims of married women that giving the illusion of not being married increases their business income should be compared to the dictionary definition of prostitution.

Marriage taken to heart Study suggests a troubled union can be unhealthier than none at all

A happy marriage helps middle-age professional women avoid heart disease & strokes, but staying in the frying pan of single life is better for a woman's health than landing in the fire of a troubled union, a 12-year study suggests today.

Marital status & the quality of marriage both matter as women move into their postmenopausal years when the risk of cardiovascular disease grows, says researcher Wendy Troxel of the University of Pittsburgh.

She & psychologist Karen Matthews, who'll speak at the American Psychosomatic Society meeting in Orlando, have followed 422 premenopausal women into their 50's to see how their marital states before menopause predict later health effects.

Study participants were upper-middle class. Compared w/single women or those who were happily married in their 40's, the unhappily married or divorced were more than twice as likely to be at risk for heart attacks & strokes after menopause. There were too few widows to draw any conclusions about their risk, Troxel says.

The higher risk for unhappily wed & divorced women was significant even after accounting for age & health.

The symptoms researchers checked for are lumped under the umbrella of ''the metabolic syndrome'' & there's increasing evidence that they put adults at high risk for heart disease & strokes. Blood pressure, blood fats, glucose & tummy fat are considered in diagnosing the syndrome.

Depending on the study, marriage has been found to benefit & to impede women's health, but the research tended to lump all married women together, Troxel says.

Newer studies are separating happy & unhappy wives & are concluding that a good marriage is therapeutic, but a bad one may be worse than none at all.

Women in miserable marriages are stressed. Stress can drive up blood pressure & trigger stress hormone surges that make it harder to process insulin, putting women at risk for diabetes, which in turn is a risk factor for heart disease. There's also evidence that women in happier marriages take better care of themselves.

Among the upscale women she studied, ''the single ones often choose to be single. They may have good social networks & great jobs - all in all, less stress than women in bad marriages.'' Low-income singles may not be as healthy, she says.

Cardiovascular disease takes time to develop, so the higher risk among divorced women may reflect cumulative stress, Troxel says. Some were in bad marriages for a long time & others might suffer continuing divorce-linked stress.

Unhappy spouses often have sleep disturbances that can raise blood pressure, says University of Utah psychologist Timothy Smith. ''Marriage has such a strong effect because your spouse is inescapable. You can get away from your boss, but you can't get away from your spouse, even at night.''

That can be great - or terrible. ''There are different ways to be married & different ways to be unmarried,'' Smith says. ''You have to look at quality of life & the quality of relationships.''

Of course, our society & its expectations haven't entirely kept pace w/this transformation.

As men help boost their wives up the corporate ladder, stay home w/the kids, or chase nonwork-related dreams of their own, some face criticism. But others report that male friends & colleagues sometimes admit they envy the unconventional husbands.

These kinds of marriages are nothing new to the world of entertainment, where husbands have long toiled as agents or managers for movie-star or pop-star wives. In recent years, the phenomenon has begun to emerge in other fields, including the nation's tradition-bound corridors of corporate & political power.

Career Before Convention

California residents Alex & Rosario Marin exemplify this new thinking. When President George W. Bush picked Rosario, 45, to be U.S. Treasurer in 2001, Alex, 46, quit his mid-level government post & followed her to Washington w/their 3 children.

During the years she helped look after the nation's economic health, Alex juggled his own new job & the family's well-being. When she decided earlier this year to explore a run for the U.S. Senate, Alex again cleared the decks for his wife's plans & oversaw the family's return to California.

"Years ago, I told my husband that my mission was to help families like ours, who had tough beginnings," says Rosario. "And he answered, 'Then mine will be to help you.'"

Carly Fiorina, 49, chairman & CEO of Hewlett-Packard, calls her husband her "rock." At about the time she took the helm at the technology giant, he retired from AT&T to support her efforts. She's not alone; at Fortune's Most Powerful Women in Business Summit of 2001, 30% of the 187 participants had househusbands.

Women in other demanding fields also benefit from helpful spouses; after CNN foreign correspondent Christiane Amanpour, 45, gave birth in 2000, her husband, Jamie Rubin, 43, quit his high-level job w/the U.S. State Dept. to follow his wife to her new post in London & care for the baby. The most famous trailing husband of all, former President Bill Clinton, has frequently declared his pride in his wife's new Senate career.

When female baby boomers went off to college in the '60s & '70s, their mothers told them to look for a man who would be a good provider. Many of the young women ignored Mom's advice & pursued careers instead of husbands. In an extraordinary turnaround, some successful boomers even claim nowadays that women need to avoid upwardly mobile husbands.

An Increasing Trend

Women who "marry up" often end up abandoning their own careers, despite having invested years in specialized schooling & hard work, argues Anita Jones, 50, a Massachusetts oral surgeon. She recalls telling her mother, "I don't have to marry money if I can make it." In her case, her husband, Jim Sulanowski, 52, happily quit working as a stage manager to stay home & raise their daughter, Emily.

"I had the luxury of working & knowing my child was w/someone I trusted," Jones says. "We each have our job. It's good for the child & for the family."

Husbands such as Sulanowski aren't necessarily sacrificing themselves on the altar of their wives' careers. When women feel free to out-earn their spouses, a wider range of choices opens up for the husbands.

In truth, some men admit that bringing home the bacon can feel more like a burden than a birthright & that they'd rather have other options.

Many in this generation postponed having children & this has also tweaked tradition. A professional woman may be firmly entrenched in her field, w/a good salary, by the time she has a baby, leading the couple to reverse the traditional roles, w/the lower-earning husband staying home to care for the child.

No studies quantify precisely how many women have taken the economic lead in their marriages, but several point to a growing phenomenon. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, almost 31% of women now boast plumper paychecks than their husbands.

Some of the women have spouses who gave up earnings to care for the couple's kids & a recent U.S. Census analysis found that 105,000 full-time stay-at-home dads watched over 189,000 children last year.

That number may be under-reported, because some men don't want to admit to bucking social expectations, says psychology professor Robert Frank, an authority on parenting trends & coauthor of Parenting Partners: How to Encourage Dads to Participate in the Daily Lives of Their Children (Golden Books Adult Publishing, 2000).

And let's not disregard the transformation of men's restrooms, where diaper-changing stations are becoming common.

Commanding Forces

Last year, Denny Eakle broke thru one of the nation's toughest glass ceilings when she became a brigadier general in the U.S. Air Force. Currently Vice Commander of the Ogden Air Logistics Center, in Ogden, Utah, Eakle was an ambitious young officer, devising recruiting strategies at the Pentagon, when she first met Colonel Frank Terrell in 1985.

Though they didn't date then, two years later they rediscovered each other after both were transferred to a base in San Antonio. "One thing led to another," recalls Terrell, now 64. They wed in 1990.

However, she was a major & he was a colonel & that posed problems. The military can usually keep lower-rank couples together, but it's tougher w/senior-grade brass, because there aren't enough high-level jobs at most bases.

Indeed, just a few months after their wedding, Terrell was transferred to Georgia & Eakle got orders to return to Washington.

After two years of racking up frequent-flyer miles & talking for hours on the phone, they'd had enough. Sure, Terrell would have liked to have made general, but he realized that the odds had gotten slimmer as he had grown older.

"I had had a wonderful career, but she was a bright & shining star," he explains.

"I retired in 1992 & I've been following her around ever since." he's also been on a mission: "To strip away all her other responsibilities, so that she can focus entirely on her job. That's the way it needs to be."

"I work seven days a week," concurs Eakle, now 50. "If I didn't have a spouse to take care of mowing the yard, servicing the car, grocery shopping & so on, I couldn't function in my job. I don't think any other general would tell you differently."

Neither Eakle nor Terrell can envision a two-general family, or a two-CEO family, for that matter. Home life would be a shambles, they say. The partnership, they agree, enabled her to reach her goal. "Frank's personal sacrifice & it was a sacrifice, is a lot of the reason that I wear a star today," says Eakle.

She tells couples facing similar choices: "You have to decide whose career is important & whose is going to float behind, or you can suck it up & be separated in order to run two careers."

Eakle originally wanted to have children, but now thinks that not doing so was probably for the best.

Family Matters

Beth & Scott Keeve of Naperville, Illinois, were like-minded for the first 18 years of their marriage. When they wed in 1974, their goal was to earn enough to buy a house. Beth, now 50, taught, then went into personnel management, eventually becoming a managing director at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. Scott, now 52, was no slouch himself, slugging his way to a six-figure income managing a warehouse distribution center for The Tyson Companies.

They not only bought a house, but delighted in their two incomes & thought they would pass on making babies. Then, the unexpected deaths of two close family members caused them to rethink that decision. In 1992, on the cusp of turning 40, Beth gave birth to their twins, Sean & Elizabeth.

Hoping to preserve their way of life, Beth & Scott hired a nanny & went back to work. However, after 3 nannies in 7 years, they had to find a better way. Ever the personnel manager, Beth typed up a two-page job description of the ideal caretaker for their kids. Looking at it, the couple realized that they were the best qualified applicants for the job.

They discussed their needs, which included maintaining their lifestyle, for almost 6 months. Two considerations loomed large: First, Beth had a bigger paycheck & better benefits. And second, Scott worked long hours, which meant he didn't see much of the children, a pattern he wanted to break, not exacerbate by becoming the sole breadwinner. In the end, he gave notice.

He says it was one of the toughest decisions he ever made. A traditionalist, he grew up believing a man's place was at the helm. "The typical male-chauvinist approach: Right, wrong, or indifferent, that's what I knew," Scott says.

No one appreciates what Scott gave up better than Beth. "With a job like his, you get your strokes at work - bonuses, promotions, fancy dinners, travel. You have a sense of importance," she explains. Scott brought his work ethic to his new assignment, though, volunteering as a Cub Scout leader, PTA board member & basketball & baseball coach.

Beth adds that in deciding Scott would stay home, the two of them had one advantage over younger couples: "Both of us were established. There wasn't the agonizing question, 'What could I have been?' We have an appreciation of ourselves & our lives that we just didn't have in our twenties & thirties."

Scott concedes that he sometimes misses the income, the problem solving, the race against deadlines & especially, the interaction. "I had a good group of people," he recalls. He also knows that by the time the twins go to college, he'll be too old to reclaim what he has lost.

Still, he has no regrets. "The benefits of what I'm doing are enormous for the children & for me," he says.

Great Rewards

Some men have given up professional satisfaction only to find that they got even more rewards from tending to their children. Hogan Hilling, 48, of Irvine, California, folded his wallpaper business to stay at home w/his children - one of whom suffers from Angelman syndrome, a rare genetic disease that severely limits intellectual development.

His wife, Tina, 53, is a speech pathologist in an elementary school. Hogan, who runs a Web site, www.prouddads.com, says, "Nobody could take care of our child better than my wife or me." Explaining why he was the one to scale back his career, he says, "She had benefits; I didn't. And my business was cyclical, while hers was stable. Besides, I became a better husband, father & person because I gave so much of myself."

Beth Keeve comments that her dad's generation never had the choices her husband & other men his age have. "Our fathers would have seen leaving a job as abandonment of duty," Keeve says, adding that it isn't easy for men to break trail on this issue: "Women have a lot of role models at this point; they know other women who've stayed home, stayed in the workforce, or gone back & forth. Men still don't."

Ralph Earle, 46, of Concord, Massachusetts, echoes Keeve's observation when he says, "I have a relationship w/my kids that I wish I'd had w/my own father." Earle, whose wife, Jane Mendillo, 45, is chief investment officer for Wellesley College, is a home-based consultant, advising corporations on how to be ecologically responsible while increasing profits. He also watches over the couple's two children. A former executive in an environmental organization, Earle has preserved his contacts so that someday he can get back on the fast track.

Setting an Example

Though he's enjoying the time w/his family, his transition to primary caregiver wasn't easy. When he first showed up at school to pick up the children, he was one of just a couple of men doing so & most of the moms refused even to speak to him.

More fathers are now meeting their kids after school, says Earle: "But the norm hasn't disappeared. Some people think you're less of a man because you're not doing things the way they feel they should be done."

Battling preconceptions has been a lifelong concern for Rusty Robertson, 52, who owns a marketing & public relations business, RPR & Associates, in Los Angeles. As a kid in Dallas, she was bursting w/energy & dying to give it professional direction.

But her father would have none of it, she says, so she married young & had 2 children.

After her dad's death in 1981, when she was in her mid 30's, she rethought her situation. She left her marriage & struck out on her own as a single mom. Without a resume, though, it was tough to land an interview, let alone a job.

Then she was introduced by a mutual friend to Ed Robertson, then 46, a top executive w/a national insurance firm & recently divorced himself. With Ed's guidance & contacts, Rusty, who was 38 at the time, set up a public relations firm. The couple married in 1989.

When the career of Rusty's principal client, fitness guru Susan Powter, took off 2 years later, Rusty & Ed agreed that to expand her business, she should move to Los Angeles. Ed remained in Dallas & for a few months they tried a long-distance marriage. The stress soon took its toll & Ed left his job & joined Rusty on the West Coast.

Rusty was determined to pay her husband back for his support - dream for dream. One night at dinner, she asked, "If you could do anything now, what would it be?" His answer was simple: He'd try to make it on the senior golf tour.

"Before the night was over," Ed remembers, "she was kicking my ass out to go do it."

Ed fared well enough, but after 4 years of lugging his clubs from one hotel to another, he hung up his golf shoes. He came home not just to be w/Rusty, but to work as her firm's comptroller, while she jets around the country to seal deals.

He's fine w/ that. "Roles are changing," he says, adding that he has executive pals who say they would love to trade places w/him. If anyone casts a disapproving glance at Ed for playing number 2 to his wife - & a couple of people have - he has a quick answer: "I don't care. I got over worrying about that a long time ago. We are truly partners."

Rusty sees the effect on her sons, now in their 20's. "They respect what a woman brings to the table because they watched me & they watched Ed, a strong guy, make a choice," she says.

Couples who challenge expectations may have courage & resources that others don't. However, their examples suggest that conventional gender roles - & men themselves - are becoming increasingly pliable. True, there is still a consensus that most households can accommodate only one alpha earner.

But if the wife & husband find the formula that works for them, it doesn't seem to matter who earns the dough in the workplace & who kneads the dough in the kitchen.

Robert F. Howe, formerly on staff at People and The Washington Post, now writes for Reader's Digest, Smithsonian, and other magazines.

Is He Having a Midlife Crisis?

From Pat Gaudette

He blames her for all their marital problems

She said:

To sum up: My husband & I have been married 23 years. He moved out & is living w/a male friend these last 3 months.

During the course of this time, he told me he fell out of love w/me 3 years ago, had a weekend affair at that time, hated it - it was miserable. He is very sorry he told me & believes that he has to divorce me to make a clean break w/his past.

Now, during these 3 months, I've also been blamed for everything - a history of stresses during the marriage, our financial pressures, etc. He has gone thru all kinds of discussion, most of it was verbally abusive & attacking until about a month ago when I told him to stop it - I had more right to be angry than he did. He is going to be 42 & doesn't want to be old & fat or only be able to do things when he has arthritis.

I'm moving to a condo w/my 16 year old daughter. I've been in therapy.

The problem: I'm very much in love w/him. Every arrangement we've made together or discussed has been done w/love, including I'm going bankrupt in my name only to save an inherited trust he has & would lose.

He told me he doesn't want to compromise his life anymore. He has been "pretending" the last several years to be a good guy from guilt from the affair. He doesn't have a girlfriend & is willing to meet me weekly for a drink - but it has to be comfortable. He wants a divorce & only wants to come back if he realizes what a terrible mistake he made, in love w/me & begging my forgiveness. Almost as if that is the only way he can forgive himself for what he did.

Any thoughts?

Look Out for Number One

Don't enable his behavior

I said:

Unfortunately, you love this man more than you love yourself. And he loves himself more than he loves you. That makes 2 for him & 0 for you. Way too uneven!!

Since he's decided he must have a clean break w/you to clear his guilty conscience - hey, any excuse in time of need - what do you think that's going to do for your financial situation?

Particularly w/you going bankrupt to save his inherited trust? You need superb credit right now! It's time to look out for number one - & that must be you. As you have found out, no one else is going to put you first, that's your job.

Male midlife crisis does some terrible things to families. You'll become an expert in the next few years, I just don't want you to become a casualty.

Do not Forgive: Infidelity, Unfaithfulness, Betrayal & the Dishonesty of Cheating Hearts

Both men & women seem to generously cheat on their other halves, these days. Society in general, seems to think that stories of cheating hearts are nothing to write home about.

Research is trying to convince us that hormones, not Herculean horrendousness is to blame. And naturally, when we talk troublesome hormones, we usher to testosterone - what else?

Consequently, the ‘scarlet letter' goes to women, while men are left forgiven for their fundamental ‘frailty'. When I don't intend to deliver a sermon on the immorality of dishonesty & betrayal, I need to pinpoint to you what unfaithfulness really means in a love relationship & in a marriage.

Once the definition of infidelity is determined, it's easier to see clearly what ‘forgiveness' actually means in such a situation.

As a linguist, I always start my cognition journey w/the thesaurus in hand. Now, what are the synonyms of infidelity? Unfaithfulness, falseness, disloyalty, dishonesty, deceit, treachery & treason. And the synonyms of those synonyms?

Untrustworthiness, fickleness, duplicity, lying, pretense, inconsistency, capriciousness & vacillation. The sub synonyms of those?

Unreliability, undependability, deviousness, changeability, uncertainty, fraudulence, insincerity, untruthfulness, double-dealing, make-believe, charade, contradiction, whimsicality, frivolity, irresponsibility, volatility, indecision, fluctuation & ambivalence.

I could still derive sub-categories & feel you get the picture already. Then, when a loved one, a partner, a husband, or a wife ‘cheats' on me, he/she is all of the above & guilty of all the above. Could there be an excuse for all the above-mentioned sins & crimes?

Is there a blank space somewhere where we can tuck words like: sympathy, empathy, mercy, compassion or forgiveness? If you're still confused, please buy yourself a thesaurus!

Now, if someone who is guilty of all the above declares his love anew? If he is confessing his trespass & asking for a 2nd chance? If he is promising devotion, committment & a fresh start of mutual trust? If he/she says they're yours ‘now'.. will you take them back?

Now you find excuses for the guilty.. you cite words like flings, crush, passing fantasy, insecurity & sexual seduction. But this can't apply in any case you were betrayed for more than a few hours when that martyr was duped, dozed & drunk enough to lose their common sense, or if the poor thing has lost his/her mind & is verging on medical insanity.

But for someone who dated, fell in love, suffered longing, felt attached, devoted time, designed alibis, determined a relationship, shared his most intimate detail & desired to be w/someone else rather than be w/you, it's a different story. If you call a relationship w/a person who did that to you love, I wonder what hate is like. If you have the heart to invest in such a relationship again, I wonder what you think of yourself.

The world abounds w/people who hate us, feel jealous of us, want to harm us or are simply indifferent to our pain & suffering. I believe that to keep one of those in your own home, in your bed, in your arms is sheer madness.

We forgive mistakes, but punish sins. And dishonesty is more of a sin of character. It's the manifestation of falsehood of feelings we thought were love.

Hormones? I'd forgive a rat with minimal brain cells. But a sane person who gave me enough reason to fall in love w/them & trust them w/my life & future deserves one good last kick out of the door.

Forget about the shared resources & friends, the common dreams, the binding children, the single roof, the long history & good credit. You need to rate the person you are with anew. Rating him as he is today in reality as you see it clearly.

And ask yourself one simple question: Could this be the closest person to me in this life? The answer must still depend on two things: your sanity & your self-esteem.

Lately, I've had an experience of such a treachery that put me in the shoes of the other woman, or say the other girlfriend, when I thought I was fit into Cinderella's. He was in a longterm relationship, not sharing a roof but a life, w/someone for more than 9 years.

Falling for me instantly, spending a minimum of 10 hours w/me on the phone or in person & giving me all the devotion a woman w/my ego demanded, before having sex w/me, gave me little reason to suspect that he was ‘tied' somewhere else too. When I found out & terminated the relationship, he asked for time to sever the past bond in a civilized manner - something I totally approved of.

Severing the relationship w/his other girlfriend turned to be a dinner that lasted till 5 am one day, on the birthday of his friend, a business meeting on the week end that surpassed 8 hours & finally, a vacation of 4 days to a summer resort for Easter on the following evening I took him back for the 3rd time after swearing his love.

My relationship wasn't lust, no fling, no crush & no passing fantasy. It was big, solid, effervescent, mature, discerning love story of two people dating beyond their 40 years of age & past a marriage w/ children.

Yet, the minute I realized I was cheated upon when he declared on the phone that he was leaving for a vacation (with her) to sort things out & that ‘please-don't-be upset' meant he wanted his cake & eating it too, I almost giggled.

My reaction was: “ Suffering stops once you call a spade a spade; you know what you are? A phoney!" I did suffer for 4 weeks or so.. not love & loss, but wretched wrath.

On his return, I exposed him to that poor woman. He was leaving her. The surprise?

I said I'd never ever take him back for a day - leave or stay is nothing of my business. I have fallen in love w/a man not a mutt. Obviously, I had no love to give now that the person is someone else. One thing I did right: I didn't get confused; I didn't ‘forgive' & never intended to trust again. Why would I need to do that?

Love? It isn't love on his part & I can't be true to who was false to me. I can't love someone who doesn't mind hurting me, betraying my trust, fooling & using me. Can you? Those who do that to you hate not love you; wake-up!

We're all willing to correct something that went wrong. But in these situations the only thing that is wrong is to be in love w/a cheating heart.

No, you're not overweight, not boring, not sexually uninspiring. You didn't neglect them. No, you couldn't have given them more passion, compassion or validation. No, you do need to be blonde, beautiful, more fashionable, better-educated, smarter, richer or younger to keep them.

If they would stray they do anyway. Khan did that to Rita Haywarth, Charles to Diana, Kennedy to Jackie (& to Marilyn Monroe herself). Cruise left Kidman for Cruz & that guy left his wife of 22 years for a 25 years younger Zeta-Jones. The other woman might have something above you & might not. It isn't about her; it's about him.

When a man loves a woman, he fails to see all the Marilyns in the world. He wouldn't trade his Juliet for the glory of God himself. When a man loves a woman, he's committed to her. Yes, he doesn't go to vacations w/someone else to fix something else.

When he doesn't love her, he cries, throws tantrums, threatens suicide. Throw him out of the door & he'll knock the other one w/the same tears dribbling, the same cracking voice & trembling hands begging for a ‘2nd chance'.

No one should be given a 2nd chance, when the first one was a very long generous opportunity for love & happiness they paid back in hate, hurt, misery & suffering.

I wish I don't see all the tearful messages I see in my life & online from women complaining about ‘the-still-love-him' anguish; love yourself first! I wish women knew how to give less, forgive less, love less to get more respect.

About the author: Nevine Al Seidi
An Egyptian-born English-published poet and essayist.
justnevine@icqmail.com