Instead of sending D. the careful, self-deprecating letter you
wrote him, send him the straight, desperate letter you wrote me. You
can't marry someone with whom you must be that cautious, someone you
firmly believe would be bored by your thoughts and feelings, or someone
who bores you so much it drains the life out of you.
D. surely knows there's a problem, and he may be even more afraid
than you are of the necessary conflict of a relationship. D. may be
trying to handle the deadness in the relationship by minimizing and
avoiding the problems you see. He may naively believe that he can make a
marriage work by solving problems or avoiding them, when actually
marriage is a lifetime process of dealing with them by comparing your
reactions to the enlightening messiness of life.
You mustn't marry people just because they are nice guys. I'm glad
D. doesn't lie, cheat, or beat you, but that isn't enough to make a guy a
good first husband. (I know some tired, bruised women would choose just
such virtues in a third husband.) Many a woman will stick with a man who
does lie, cheat, and beat her because he has the overriding virtue of
caring about his and her emotional lives.
D. needs to learn a new language. If he is too afraid of clinical
problem-solving, a group setting may be less threatening. Churches and
mental health centers often offer free or inexpensive quasi-clinical
communication courses for couples. Take him to class where they will
teach him the language of life and emotions. Don't be ashamed of it: go
on and speak it yourself. Read books together; go to movies about
something more emotionally complex than broken glass and car crashes.
Refuse to live at his emotional level.
Break it off if you like. Breaking off a relationship at this stage
(before children) is nothing to feel guilty about. For his sake as well
as for your own, stop protecting him from knowing he's alive and learning
to talk about it.
Everyone--even an emotionally silent man--deserves a marriage
partner he or she can please. He may pull back from the life you offer
him now, but he'll need to catch on eventually--there are not enough
emotionally deaf women to go around for all the emotionally dumb men out
there. In time, any woman will want a response.
And please stop apologizing to him for not being happy. Until he
cares how you feel and tells you how he feels, there is nothing between
you to be happy about.
Dear Dr, Frank,
My 24-year-old daughter crashed emotionally at the age of 14 and
has called herself "Mouse" since then. For seven years she has been with
a man of a different race and culture. They have an 18-month-old son
together. She drives a truck and leaves my grandson with his father, who
has never held a job, drinks beer, and gets money from his gambling
buddies.
Recently, I noticed that the baby's tongue and lower lip were
swollen. He was acting out a lot of anger by hitting things. My daughter
said, "His father wouldn't hurt him. He takes good care of him." I
believe my fear is justified. The father is unfit to be a parent and my
daughter is unfit for leaving the child with him.
But the Arizona Child Protective Service has been written up in the
newspaper because their foster care system has generated 10 deaths in two
years and there is high turnover of management. I cannot bring myself to
feed my grandson to a system that is impersonal and has received so much
bad publicity. I want the child with me, but my daughter doesn't believe
he is in jeopardy, though he is sick with a cold most of the time and
survives on soda pop and junk food.
Is there any option other than reporting the situation to a system
that wouldn't care about my grandson?
-- Mouse's Mom
Dear Grandmouse,
I know you're not pleased with how your daughter's life is going.
She's taken a rough road. But she dearly considers herself lucky to have
this man as a partner and father to her son. He seems to give her the
opportunity to develop her own competence. Incompetent men are useful if
they inspire mousy women to roar. And ordinarily, I can think of nothing
more ideal for a little boy than to be raised at home by his
domesticated, underwhelming father.
I understand your concern if the child's father is drinking on the
job. Parenting is too important to be done by people who are rendering
themselves brain damaged as they do it.
But even so, you just don't describe anything in your letter that
would warrant Child Protective intervention. Toddlers fall and hurt their
lips routinely. Of course, if there is more than you have told me, or if
you have any doubts, call Protective Services and talk it over with them.
If then the time comes when the child is more clearly in danger, they
will already have been alerted.
You know that a child is going to get more love and more personal
attention with his or her own family than in an institution or a foster
setting. Still, when the family fails, someone must step in. If abuse is
a certainty at home, then the possibility of abuse elsewhere is a gamble
worth taking. The beleaguered state agencies do a yeoman's job most of
the time, especially if stable relatives stay involved. You may be less
distrustful of them after you have talked with them. Of course, you may
be less distrustful of your grandson's father after you have talked with
him.
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