Is it Live?
DEAR ABBY:
I have been in a serious relationship for 13 months. The woman I am with has a daughter who is 15 months old. I am the only father figure that has ever been in her life. Her biological father, "Ethan," saw her only twice. I have been supporting my lady and her child for a while.
Last January, Ethan died, and my lady took it hard. Last Saturday, she got his name tattooed on her back without consulting me. She didn't tell me until after it was done, and it upset me. We are supposed to be married soon.
Every time we make love, that tattoo reminds me of Ethan. I feel she should have asked me what I thought about the idea first. She expects me to consult her about things that I do before I do them. Am I wrong for expecting the same respect from her as I give her? Should I tell her how I feel, or should I avoid having a confrontation with her and try to forget about it?
-- ANGRY AND CONFUSED IN PHOENIX
Before you click on THIS LINK, decide for yourself whether we're making this up. No cheating, because we'll know if you do. For extra credit, compose a response.
I have been in a serious relationship for 13 months. The woman I am with has a daughter who is 15 months old. I am the only father figure that has ever been in her life. Her biological father, "Ethan," saw her only twice. I have been supporting my lady and her child for a while.
Last January, Ethan died, and my lady took it hard. Last Saturday, she got his name tattooed on her back without consulting me. She didn't tell me until after it was done, and it upset me. We are supposed to be married soon.
Every time we make love, that tattoo reminds me of Ethan. I feel she should have asked me what I thought about the idea first. She expects me to consult her about things that I do before I do them. Am I wrong for expecting the same respect from her as I give her? Should I tell her how I feel, or should I avoid having a confrontation with her and try to forget about it?
-- ANGRY AND CONFUSED IN PHOENIX
Before you click on THIS LINK, decide for yourself whether we're making this up. No cheating, because we'll know if you do. For extra credit, compose a response.
Presented for your delectation by the Gentleman Farmer at 6:10 AM
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Dear Miss Manners:
I have been dating my boyfriend for four months and it came up this week that he still does not know my name. I do not know what to do about this because he has heard my name so many times, both my English name and my Italian name. I also write it on everything I have given to him, yet he still calls me by the wrong name.
He will blame it on his disabilities, yet he knows all of his co-workers first and last names, even the most recent workers. He tells me he has all of these feelings for me and really cares about me but I feel, "You can give the world to someone, but if you don't know who you are giving it to, it's just not worth it."
Is it just a coincidence that this post appears on the same day as news reports that Oklahoma has legalized tattoos? It had been the only State that prohibited tattooing. Perhaps the Oklahomans had been right. Did the Oklahoma legislature know that tattoos lead to this kind of discord when it decided to lift the tattoo ban?
Dear "Angry and Confused",
It is indeed perfectly natural that you should be "angry and confused", because there is so much wrong with the way your world is arranged, in ways that are contary to your created nature.
1. The woman you love has a degraded notion of herself and of love, so that she was "in a relationship with", and bore a child by, a man with whom she then had no enduring connection. You are contemplating entering marriage with someone whose faculty for love was already injured and broken before you met her.
2. You and this woman, though not married to each other, have been in a sexual relationship with each other that, on the one hand, has made you intimately connected with each other but that, on the other hand, leaves you without the stability and confidence that sex is supposed to have, because it is supposed to take place within life-long marriage. You are having to put up with a constant, chronic, low-grade insult to your well-being, which flares up into acute pain when bad events happen.
3. You have generously invested yourself into the well-being of your lady friend's child. And now your empathy makes you feel vicariously the pain that this circumstance is bringing and will bring to this child--i.e., (1) alienation from her natural father, who (to put it in modern terms) evidently saw children as a women's issue and (to put it in traditional language) hated the fruit of his own loins; and (2) instability even in her relationship with you, since that relationship is built on the shifting sand of your own rickety relationship with her mother.
4. The tattoo is the icing on this cake. Or, if you prefer, an indelible caption on a sad picture.
You should not marry this woman unless (1) she will remove the tattoo, (2) the two of you can live apart until you are married, and (3) you can each make an unqualified, unreserved, conscientious, no-holds-barred vow to be faithful husband and wife until death do you part.
Human nature is not malleable. It is built to do certain things in certain ways, and when short cuts or compromises are attempted, the thing founders. Do it the right way, or don't do it.
--Arlington
Well, that's all true "Arlington," but you're ignoring the fact that the writer feels he's being disrespected. Or, at least, he suspects that he might be. And it makes him feel bad.
No THAT'S important.