Direct Answers - Column for the week of June 20, 2005
Direct Answers from Wayne and Tamara
When In The Course...
I was 20 when I married a wonderful guy who is 12 years older than me. He was so mature I thought he must be the wisest man in the world. There was no need for me to study or follow a career because he would be a good provider. All I had to be was his pretty wife and give him children.
Almost 15 years later I am left with two wonderful children and so much bitterness in my heart I sometimes feel life is not worth living. Over the last nine years he has been unemployed for months and changed jobs seven times. On his last job he was drinking most of the time and fell into depressions and aggressions until it came to a stage where the children and I were afraid of him.
All this time I was the provider of the family and worked very hard in unhappy circumstances just to keep the family alive. I finally realized I had to do something for the sake of my children and myself. I asked my husband for a divorce. He refused. Months later I made another attempt for a separation. I think he realized I meant it, and somehow he found a wonderful job within two weeks.
His personality changed again. He stopped drinking and in general is nice to me and the children. My problem is I do not know how to change my feelings. I no longer respect him. I am almost willing to say I've started to hate him. Although he is nice at the moment, I cannot bring myself to trust or love him again.
I tell myself for the sake of the children I should stay with him, but I am battling even to be nice to him. Whatever he does annoys me. I wish he would just find another girlfriend and disappear out of our lives. He says he isn't willing to go to counseling since he is not the one with the problem. Can time heal my unhappiness?
Barbara
Barbara, before they declared their independence, the American colonies were generous in supporting the British crown. Of their own volition the colonies sent more revenue than the mother country required. Despite this the king and parliament imposed one burdensome tax after another on the colonies.
Perhaps the most infuriating of these was the 1765 Stamp Act, which imposed a tax on every scrap of paper of record. Even playing cards and dice were taxed. These taxes were imposed not for the benefit of the colonies, but "for improving the revenue of the kingdom." The result was that every act of the British crown became viewed with wariness, suspicion and mistrust.
A few years later, when the East India Company was stuck with thousands of tons of unsold tea, laws were passed in England to allow the sale of cheap tea to the American colonies. Although parliament bypassed American distributors, this action would have resulted in cheaper tea and benefited most people in America.
But the colonists would have none of it. In New York and Philadelphia ships carrying tea were turned back to England. In Charleston tea rotted on the docks. And in Boston people staged the famous Boston Tea Party. Dozens of men disguised as Mohawk Indians dumped a shipload of Darjeeling tea into the harbor.
There comes a time when it is too late to change the course of human events, and then a revolution which need not have occurred, does occur.
Usually when we get a letter like yours, it is written by a man. The writer begins by admitting he neglected and mistreated his wife for years, and then explains he has changed. The writer concludes by saying his wife will have none of it. Why? Because like the American colonists, she has had enough. She has issued her own declaration of independence.
Wayne & Tamara
Authors and columnists
Wayne and Tamara Mitchell can be reached at
www.WayneAndTamara.com
Send letters to: Direct Answers, PO Box 964, Springfield, MO 65801 or email:
DirectAnswers@WayneAndTamara.com
