What If

Last year someone from high school tracked me down, and we’ve been seeing each other ever since. He separated from his wife nine years ago, and they divorced two years later. Even after the divorce he spent Christmas with his ex and their two sons. He also goes to the sons’ birthday parties which his ex has with her extended family.

I thought that was commendable until we fell in love and he started talking about marriage. I could understand it when the children were young, but they are 19 and 22. I also discovered he doesn’t mail his ex alimony every month. He takes it to her personally.

The divorce was his choice, and he said he gave her the house and everything. He left all his personal possessions behind because he didn’t want to be reminded of her and she had purchased most of his clothes. After almost a decade she still has them.

My views are colored by my parents’ divorce. They never saw or spoke to each other until a couple of years ago, 25 years after their separation. Within a year my mother got rid of everything my dad left. It worries me his ex-wife might be waiting for him to go home, and he may feed that hope by visiting her.

Should I kiss him goodbye on holidays and hope he has a good time with his ex, or expect him to create new traditions with me and our families, if we get married? And when should I broach the subject, before or after he formally proposes?

Theresa

Theresa, we take the same way to work until one day there is a detour sign. Then we change. With this couple nothing happened to change their rituals. She didn’t have a new husband, and he didn’t have a new wife. But they were legally divorced, and in all these years he has not gone back to her.

Now change is in the offing. If he proposes and you marry, that will be the first change. Other changes will come because his sons are of an age to hold jobs, have girlfriends, and marry. Surely the sons’ wives will have a say in how Christmas is celebrated, and jobs and places of residence will influence these decisions as well.

Philosophers delight in creating thought experiments by asking the question “What if?” The rest of us also do this. What if I didn’t go to work today? Would I be missed? Would it matter to the boss? Will I have enough sick days left at the end of the year?

Broach this matter to your intended as a thought experiment and see what he says. If you want to be with him on holidays, let him know. Now that Christmas has passed, it would be the perfect time.

Wayne & Tamara

Backfire

I was recently caught talking about a friend to another friend. My friend made a comment about the other friend’s son, and I was going to chime in when the other friend walked in.

I hadn’t actually said anything, but there was an awkward silence and she knew something was being said behind her back. I feel absolutely horrible, but I’m not sure what to do. I should never have been talking about anyone, and now I’m afraid that I ruined a friendship.

Lorena

Lorena, there’s an old saying that a stranger stabs you in the front, but a friend stabs you in the back. From this experience you learned what you were going to say is less important than the damage done to another and your own mortification.

So perhaps this would be a good rule for you. Never hesitate to repeat a positive, but think twice about negatives. Fix them if you can, warn others if they must know, but otherwise stay out of the way.

Wayne & Tamara

Wayne & Tamara are the authors of Cheating in a Nutshell and As the Child of an Alcoholic.

Under The Influence

I’m hoping you can help me discover the moral answer to a dilemma I recently encountered. I know I am not the only woman who has and will face this question, so I do hope you will print an answer.

I recently met a very nice man (I thought) who lives about 40 miles away. We had a very nice date and he was a perfect gentleman. I eagerly accepted a second date with him in my locale. We had drinks, and he drank more than he should have, which is where my question comes in.

As we drew the evening to a close he asked if he could hang at my house for awhile so he wouldn’t drive 40 miles under the influence. I did not like this because I’m used to guys using this ploy to try to become intimate, and because people should be responsible and not drink too much when they need to drive.

If I said no, that meant I could be putting him on the road to, at best, get a DWI and, at worst, kill someone. (I don’t know how intoxicated he was; he seemed fine to me.) Against my better judgment, I allowed him to come into my home, where he almost immediately set on the path to become intimate with me.

When I tried to send him home, he said he still was in no position to drive. I allowed him to stay and kicked him out in the early a.m. I’m still angry because I had laid out my boundaries very clearly. I didn’t want him in my house, and I did not want to be intimate. But he obviously cared little about my feelings.

In the future, what are my moral obligations in this situation? Do I tell him to drive home, make him sleep in his car (which means he’ll drive home), or allow him to sleep on my couch (which puts my safety in danger and simply isn’t what I want)?

Jill

Jill, Gavin de Becker once remarked, “The best cons make the victim want to participate,” and that explains this situation. This man tried to use your own niceness and sense of responsibility against you.

de Becker calls the strategy “forced teaming.” In forced teaming one party tries to create a predicament which requires both parties to solve. The goal is to make the innocent party feel “we are in this together.” But that is never the case. Moral responsibility is not assignable.

Someone who says “Stop me or I’ll do something bad” produces no moral obligation in you. It is simply the strategy of a person running a con. If there is a moral lesson here which applies to you, it is this. It is not right to allow a person to trick you and get away with it.

Instead of getting you drunk so he could take advantage of you, he got himself drunk-or so he said-so he could take advantage of you. That may be a reversal of an old ploy, but the intent is identical. In relationships, people with bad intentions often pull good people off their path.

An old adage says, a teaspoon of sewage will spoil a barrel of wine, but a teaspoon of wine will never improve a barrel of sewage. If this man had achieved intimacy with you, you might be tempted to think of this as a relationship and him as a possible husband. That would have you living in his world.

But even if we assume he didn’t scheme this out and simply has a problem with alcohol, it doesn’t put him in a better light. Dating a budding alcoholic is of no advantage to you. It still makes him a man you don’t want. We don’t have the right to change others and seldom do we have the power.

Wayne & Tamara

Wayne & Tamara are the authors of As the Child of an Alcoholic.

Responsible Parenting

I married my husband after a long love story, and we are a happy couple. Before I gave birth to my baby girl my relationship with his parents was good. After the birth, when my baby was 4 months old, my mother-in-law wanted to interfere in my way of bringing up my baby.

She wants me to feed the baby every three hours. This is impossible because my baby gets hungry a lot and I breast-feed her. Breastfeeding shouldn’t be scheduled. My baby takes three naps a day which is normal for a 6-month-old. My mother-in-law doesn’t want her to sleep that much. She thinks I force her to sleep, which is not true.

My baby sometimes has stranger anxiety and cries when her grandparents hold her. My mother-in-law says that’s because I imprison the baby at home and don’t take her on outings, which is totally untrue. When I try to take the baby and tell her she has normal anxiety, my mother-in-law refuses to let me have her.

When I say we shouldn’t let her cry or she will get negative associations, my mother-in-law tells me I should leave her to cry and that will help her. Every time my husband and I try to explain things to my mother-in-law she insists we are wrong.

Now, when I visit my in-laws every weekend, I become depressed. It makes me angry because I’m losing control as a mum and my baby suffers due to the need for feeding and sleep. What can I do?

Elena

Elena, in 1928 the eminent psychologist John Watson wrote a bestselling book on parenting. Watson told parents comforting a crying child only rewards crying. Watson even suggested babies would be better off raised on “baby farms,” away from their interfering parents.

John Watson’s advice was 100 percent wrong, but some of his ideas persist to this day. The best research suggests responding positively to crying produces children who are securely attached to their parents, and a secure bond makes a child free to conquer the world.

Ask yourself, who is legally responsible for my baby? who is financially responsible for my baby? who will social service agencies hold responsible for my baby’s well-being? The answer, in each case, is you and your husband.

You are the first caretakers of your baby, no one else. If you were hiring a babysitter, a daycare provider, or a nanny, the first thing you would look for is someone who handles your child in accordance with your wishes. These are critical times in your child’s life. You can’t play tug of war with anyone who undermines your parenting.

It may take a village to raise a child, but not when the child is being pulled apart by different factions. Good grandparents don’t embroil you in battles. Your mother-in-law may be a product of a time when children didn’t wear bike helmets or sit in car seats, but that doesn’t give her a right to be a claim jumper.

You and your husband are like-minded. You have tried to explain matters to your mother-in-law. When explanation and reasoning fail, you must take action.

There is a simple solution. If your mother-in-law doesn’t want to follow your wishes, then she has decided not to see your baby. If she wishes to see your baby, then she can change her outlook. But if you cannot cope with denying visits, then make each stay a micro-visit where the harm she can do is nil.

Wayne & Tamara

Wayne & Tamara are the authors of As the Child of an Alcoholic.