Childfree Abby - Your Golden Years02 September 2006Message ID: 12fj3lljkpanga8@news.supernews.com
DEAR ELLIE: We're a couple in our 50s with a troubled four-year marriage. We love and hate each other, and had almost nothing in common. He lies to me and is nasty when he drinks. He visits the bar daily. When I accompany him (since nothing else interests him), he'll sometimes start a private conversation with a waitress. I feel very insulted by being dismissed. We fight horribly about stuff like this. He accuses me of jealousy, and he avoids confrontation. I want to separate, yet also would like the chance to reach our golden years together. We need a professional counselor urgently. -- SEEKING HELP DEAR SEEKING HELP: A good therapist should help you not only speak up about what's wrong, but also be open to what you need to do to change the pattern. Your husband appears to have a drinking problem, and you could get help by attending an Al-Anon chapter for families and friends of alcoholics. To find the counseling help you need, contact Metropolitan Family Services at www.metrofamily.org.
Dear Seeking: Ok, lets get this straight: you are married to someone with whom you have nothing in common, lies to you, and is a nasty drunk. He has no outside interests except going to the bar. Yet you want to "reach your golden years together"? Even if he stopped drinking, he would still lie to you, would likely still be nasty - and you would still have nothing in common with him. I think you should examine why you would want to spend your "golden years" with someone with all those charming personality traits. My litmus test of a relationship of a relationship is this: "Can you accept this person as he/she is, blemishes and all, with no expectation that he/she will change for you?" People often make the mistake of trying to build a relationship with the person that he/she could be, instead of the person that is. How many times have you heard "I thought he/she would change after we got married"? and when the change never occurs the relationship, in one form or another, fails. For the record, I do not count two people living together who despise each other as a successful marriage. It has been my observation that women, much more than men, are particularly bad for this. Seeking, you and the man you married are in your 50's and you have been married for 4 years. You can bet these characteristics that you so loathe have been engrained for many more years than you have known him, and certainly longer than you have been married. It is extremely unlikely that this relationship will ever evolve into something where the two of you will share happy "golden years" as you see them. Are you prepared to stay in a relation like the one you have, because there are no guarantees that anything at all will change? I think you will find that there are worse things than being alone.
Childfree Abby
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