Childfree Abby - Aspirations Of Being A Trophy Wife09 May 2006Message ID: 1273ni6a47punb1@news.supernews.com
Dear Amy: Two years ago, I started an affair with a married man in my office. I never thought of doing such a thing. Everyone in our office thought the world of him and his wife, and thought what a wonderful husband and father he was and how lucky his wife was to have him. I flirted with him, and occasionally we would go out in a group. One evening he had a bit to drink and the next thing I knew he was confessing to boredom and dissatisfaction with his wife and his life. Well, I didn't think twice and we were involved in a full-fledged affair. He decided to leave his wife. She was devastated and fought to keep him, but we were so in love that she didn't stand a chance. His three children barely speak to him. We are engaged to be married and everything has been great, in spite of his estrangement from his children and the fact that his wife made out quite well in the divorce. Unfortunately, now he is sick and has been diagnosed with lung cancer. I have had to take care of him and it's exhausting. No one in his family is willing to step up to help me take care of him. His children refuse to talk to me. The truth is, I don't want to take care of him. I thought it was going to be different -- that it would be fun and I'd have someone to take care of me. I still love him and all that, but honestly, I don't want to nurse him and watch him die. We aren't married yet -- just engaged. I want to break it off, but I hate leaving him with no one. What should I do? -- Concerned Dear Concerned: You began this affair a mere two years ago. You and your guy were in love enough to leave his family in shreds without looking back, and now you're letting a little thing like cancer stand in the way of your love, devotion and happiness? You say that you "still love him and all that." Well, this is the "all that" part of love. I have news for you. No one wants to nurse a partner and watch him die. And yet, people do, because standing by someone in sickness is the greatest expression of love there is. You should do everything possible to explore all of your resources for respite care and support. Contact the hospital's social worker for a caregiver's support group for you to join. The American Cancer Society offers a 24-hour hotline with counselors available to answer questions related to cancer or caregiving. A counselor could guide you toward local resources. Call 800-227-2345 or check their Web site at www.cancer.org. You and he should also do everything possible to include and involve his family at this time, not necessarily to enlist their help, but because his children should be encouraged to see their father to try to reknit their relationship while there is still time.
Dear Concerned, Just how old are you? The way you are whining makes you seem like you have an emotional age of a spoiled 14-year-old. Let me see, you have played an integral part in shredding the lives and feelings of four people because you were "in love". (I'm not letting him off, because he had a hand in this too.) I also suspect that there was a mid-life crisis going on here. Here you are, two years later, the bloom is off the rose and reality is setting in. He is critically ill, and you are whining that the very people whose feelings the two of you trashed are not leaping up and offering care and support. What the flying fornication did you expect? Now that your aspirations of being a trophy wife are in the toilet, you want to kick him to the curb and be off to pastures new because you don't want to take care of him. Furthermore, you justify this because you are "just engaged." I can only imagine what sort of private hell he must be going through now: knowing that he gave up a family and support system (albeit not perfect) that he desperately needs now, to be at the not-so-tender mercies of a self-centered gold digger. I am imagining it because you, chickie, don't seem to be concerned about his feelings or needs now at all. This letter is all about what you wanted and what you expected, regardless of the personal cost to anyone else. This man threw away a wife, a family, and from what you say, a goodly portion of his worldly goods to run away with you, chickie. You, and this grand illusion that you were "in love" going to live happily ever after. What an illusion this was: you are throwing a tantrum because what you really wanted out of the relationship was a sugardaddy who would take care of you, and now that's not going to happen. My, how quickly your "true love" vanishes when the going gets tough. Well, my dear, I have to give you a hearty bed-made-lie. Whether "just engaged" or not, morally and ethically (though I fear those concepts are quite foreign to you) you have a responsibility here. Pray to Dawg that you do not add to the burden of remorse he likely feels already. I second my esteemed counterpart in saying that you should try, at least, to make some peace with his family.
Childfree Abby
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