Rewind

I am 25 and have been married two years. My husband and I bought a house together one year before we got married, and things went downhill from there.

I married for the wrong reasons. I almost felt I had no choice because the date was set, plans were made, and we had house and cars in both our names. Friends and family tried to talk me out of it, but I felt we could make it work.

Now I think about it every day and think we might be better off if we went our separate ways. My husband makes really good money, but spends it recklessly. What kept me in the relationship was his money and the comfort zone, as much as I hate to admit it.

We see life differently. I don’t feel secure around him, and he is not protective at all. Every time we get into an argument, he threatens me by saying he wants a divorce. I’m tired of it. I can’t live my whole life afraid of arguments and him leaving.

Last week, I went to a divorce lawyer for a consult and for information on how divorce works. I feel if I don’t divorce now, it will happen sometime in the future, and it will only be harder to do as time goes on.

Rhea

Rhea, many people write us and admit they married for all the wrong reasons. Usually they want us to give them a cheat which will make everything right. That’s like Pinocchio wanting to become a real boy without doing the right things.

Realists are people who face things honestly. Realists have the best chance of putting their lives in order. That doesn’t mean being a realist feels good all the time. Often it feels rotten. But being a realist gives you the firm foundation upon which to build the rest of your life.

You were too much in love with your fiancé’s income and too locked-in financially to heed the warnings of friends and family. You overrode your own inner warnings. Now you realize when a person has everything but love, they feel they have nothing.

When we make a mistake, even a serious one, we don’t have to dwell on it. We just need to correct it.

Wayne & Tamara

What’s Missing

I am a woman, 32, from an Asian Indian background. I recently met a guy through a dating website who is of the same racial origin, really nice, and has all the makings of a potential husband.

I’ve been out on three dates with him, and they were all lovely. It is easy to talk to him, and we have things in common. But at the end of the third date he kissed me-and I felt nothing.

Now I am starting to worry about (a) passing on a great guy because I don’t feel any physical attraction, and (b) settling for a guy who is “great-on-paper,” just because I don’t want to be alone anymore.

Am I simply overthinking this or can attraction evolve over time? Does familiarity not just breed contempt?

Alisha

Alisha, neuroscientist Antonio Damasio once treated a man who was well-married, successful, and a good father-until he developed a brain tumor. Though surgery to remove the tumor was a total success, afterward the man’s career was marred by a disastrous series of marriages and poor business decisions.

His mental ability seemed unimpaired, yet this man couldn’t make good decisions because he no longer cared about the outcome. Somehow the surgery had severed the connection between his emotions and his reason.

Feelings are an indispensable part of our makeup. Without them we have no compass. While love makes other things right, other things never add up to love. Don’t think you can go through life faking what you don’t feel, because love is what fulfills our lives.

Wayne & Tamara

Wayne & Tamara are the authors of Cheating in a Nutshell.

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.