I just wanted to add my two cents to the emails you’ll no doubt receive
about Loyal Friend’s dilemma. When we were 24, my spouse and I faced a
similar situation when his (much older) sister asked us if we would
agree to be guardians of her then-seven-year-old twins if anything
should happen to her.

We had a lot of the same reservations that Loyal Friend is
experiencing, namely the fact that we were young and we weren’t sure if
we even wanted to have children of our own. (The jury’s still out on
that, and seven years have passed, but that’s another story.) Plus, we
both work in arts-related fields, so we’re not exactly falling asleep
every night on a big bed made of money.

Our reservations were assuaged somewhat by the fact that (1) my
sister-in-law is in good health and is generally a pretty cautious
person, and (2) part of her planning included taking out a substantial
life insurance policy for herself and making her children beneficiaries,
with the money to be held in a trust (to be managed by us) so that we
could provide for their creature comforts without rocking our already
precarious financial boat.

At the end of the day, we bit the bullet and said yes. We both believe
strongly in family and friends, and that’s what family and friends are
for. Sure, this was made easier by the fact that we also have each other
for support, but hey, life is full of surprises, so there are no
iron-clad guarantees there, either.

I guess I need a suitable moniker here, so just sign me
Seven Years of Crossed Fingers

Dear Seven,

Excellent point — the mom should make as many financial arrangements on her own as she can to ease the burden in that area.She should also lay the legal groundwork for guardianship as clearly and firmly as possible ahead of time.

The tricky element here is that she’s the one who needs to make these decisions, but in the event that they become relevant, she won’t be around to clarify or advise as to her intent.If LF and her friend sit down and go over every contingency in plain English, that should set both their minds at ease.

Dear Sars:

I am married and have been for three-plus years, since I was 19 and DH was 20. (We are now 22 and 23, respectively.) In all, we’ll have been together for four years this December. Our marriage has been on a slow but steady decline since roughly our first anniversary. When I got pregnant with our son in December of 2000, it seemed as if things were beginning to look up, but it was a temporary fix. (We weren’t trying to conceive, by the way. It wasn’t a “save the relationship” baby or anything.) Once our son was born in September 2001, his birth had the same temporary healing effect, but now we’re back to the same old bullshit. Only, as time goes on, the decline becomes more rapid.

There’s always been a degree of abuse in our relationship. While we were engaged, we got into our first fight where he hit me. If I remember correctly, I think I instigated that time. I was self-aware enough to realize it was stupid and immature of me to behave like that, and I made it a point to stop. I assumed he’d come to the same realization and outgrow it, also. However, he sees nothing wrong with it, and continues to hit me ’til this day. He has also added verbal and emotional abuse to his repertoire. It’s not bad abuse. (Not that it’s a good thing. But on the “bright” side, I’ve never been in the ER at 2 AM telling a nurse that I “fell down the stairs” or anything like that.) But not only do I know I don’t deserve to be knocked around with words or fists, I don’t want my son to grow up to be a wife-beating asshole, either. Also, DH no longer apologizes for losing control. He claims he can’t help it and that it’s my fault for provoking him. I have told him I am not dumb enough to fall for his mindfuck and that he needs to take responsibility for his own actions, but he still insists that I “make” him hit me.

Other than DH’s brother and his brother’s wife, no one knows DH does this. The only reason they know is because one evening while I was doing laundry without DH at their house, they saw a bruise wrapped around one of my biceps that was clearly the outline of four fingers and a thumb. I was still freshly pissed from my fight with DH earlier, and made no excuses for him. When my BIL wanted to say something to DH, I asked him not to intervene. I didn’t want to create a conflict of interest with him defending me to his brother.

I am very seriously contemplating divorce. I want to make things work if I can, as I don’t want my son to be a product of divorce and I don’t want to become a single parent. Conversely, if that’s the kind of male role model DH is going to be, I don’t want my son growing up thinking that’s how relationships are supposed to work. I also believe DH would be immature and hateful through divorce proceedings, even if it is a mutual decision to break up the marriage. And frankly, I don’t know if we can afford a divorce in our current financial situation. Both more reasons to stick it out, though preventing my son from growing up into a second-generation abuser still wins out in my mind over all that.

I want to make things better. I have suggested counseling, but DH is very resistant. Should I even bother trying to push the issue of going to counseling? Or do you feel that he’s a lost cause? If I cannot convince him on my own to start talking to a professional, is it fair for me to ask my BIL to be in a position to tell DH that he needs help?

Time is definitely of the essence for me, because if I’m leaving, I want to be out before my son has a chance to see more and more of the abuse. I do not want him to think I’m condoning abusive behavior within a marriage.

Thanks for weighing in.

Punching Bag in PA

Dear Bag,

Get out now.No, now.No.NOW.

Your husband is an immature, violent, selfish asshole.He will not change; in fact, he’ll probably get worse.You need to protect yourself and your son, whatever it takes, and if it means living with your parents and getting a restraining order and making the tough choices that will give you the happy life you deserve, you must do those things and make those choices, and you must begin right now.

I know it’s not easy, but it’s necessary.Your son is already absorbing the facts of the situation, and if your husband will hit you, God knows what he’d do to his child.Pack a bag and leave.Call a hotline.Call a friend.Call the cops if you have to.Get out of there.You can do it.You have the strength the situation requires.You can get through an ugly divorce.You can deal with your husband’s bullshit in court.You can find a way to support your son.You can do it.You can.It’s going to suck.It’s going to get scary.It’s going to keep you up nights.But it’s the right thing to do, for yourself and for your son, and you have it in you to do it.

You know it’s wrong, the way he treats you.It’s not your fault.You don’t deserve it.You can do better, and so can your son.Don’t feel ashamed; things happen, situations get out of control, it happens to the best of us.Tell your family and friends what’s going on.Get back-up.Pack a bag and leave that fuckwad.Ask for help.Know that you will do what you have to do to get through it.

But for God’s sake, leave before he does you and your child any more damage.Do it today.

Greetings Mighty Sars,

I have a small quandary that has been bothering me of late.For personal
reasons, I chose to start an online journal at the beginning of this year.
It’s really been a great help, and I greatly enjoy the feedback and the ability
to vent to total strangers.In the time that I’ve been keeping it, I’ve
gotten a number of steady readers that I only know via the internet.There
are only two people that I know in real life that read it, and I specifically
gave them the address.I gave them the address because they are very close
friends of mine and I felt they should share in the process.I don’t edit
what I write and I know that sometimes they read stuff there that I would
actually say out loud.It’s helped both relationships.

One day, about a month or so ago, I updated using the laptop at work.This
left the address in the history file, and although I cleared out the
history, it seems my boss has taken to checking it.She mentioned a week
later that if I wanted to keep it private I should erase the history, but
that I was not breaking any rule by updating at work. (I did so on my lunch
break.)

Now that I have the ability to monitor site traffic, I’ve discovered that
the IP addy from work is checking my site on a regular basis.I rarely vent
about anything direct from work, but it seems to be an invasion of my
personal space for my boss to check it.She’s mentioned more than once during
my tenure here that it makes her uncomfortable that I don’t let her into my
private life, and she has made it clear that she would like me to be all
buddy-buddy with her.The rest of the staff has a tendency to share their
private lives around the office; this is a very small organization that
brags that it has a “family” atmosphere.

I know that by posting an online journal, I sacrifice a large element of
anonymity; however, I use a pseudonym and give all my friends and family
aliases.I’m not a very public person, and I’m dead set against sharing
personal stuff at work.With all this, I see that I only have three
options: 1) Confront the boss and tell her to stop checking my journal,
2) continue to write and pretend boss doesn’t read, 3) shut the journal down
and move elsewhere if possible.

I would deeply appreciate your input and wisdom on this situation.

Online and in public?

Dear Online,

When you keep an online journal, you have to go into it with the understanding that people who shouldn’t see it potentially could — and probably eventually will.The internet is available to everyone, all over the world, and if you really don’t want anyone reading your stuff, you should go back to a paper journal and hide it between the mattress and the box spring.Sorry if I don’t sound overly sympathetic here, but when I hear people say that they don’t want certain people reading things they’ve put up on the internet…well, it’s the internet.You should have password-protected it, at the very least.

But you didn’t, and now you have a problem.From where I sit, if you really don’t want your boss reading what you write, you’ll have to move the journal and put a password on it to keep her out.Confronting her won’t work; you don’t really have a leg to stand on there, since 1) you worked on it at work and 2) you didn’t take steps to protect your privacy beyond disguising names.And if the issue isn’t that you talk shit about work but that you don’t want your work life to know about your other life, pretending she doesn’t read it won’t work either.

You can’t have it both ways.You can have an adoring randomized audience, or you can have a selected readership that passes muster with you, but not both, and trust me — you never know who’s reading.After I posted my jury duty piece earlier this year, I got an email from Dr. Wolf teasing me about my “that is QUITE a mustache” comment.Did I think any of the people I dealt with on jury duty would ever read my account?No.Do I have to live with it if Your Friend’s Incredibly Cool Mom gets pissed off because I kind of cracked on her?Yes.

Think about what you really get out of writing the journal, and make your decision based on that.If it’s readers you want, well, your boss is a reader and you’ll have to work around that.If it’s privacy you want, change to a mailing-list format and decline the add requests you don’t want.

[9/10/02]

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