Posted by
Playful Walrus on Monday, May 12, 2008 7:09:52 PM
Dear “Progressive, Modern” People: How should we handle situations where we think you are making a huge and terrible mistake, but you expect us to smile and throw you a party?
I recently received:
1) A wedding invitation from a childhood friend is whose bride to be, by the accounts of two people who’ve dealt with her, is a troubled woman.
2) The news that an unmarried professional woman I know will soon be having a baby.
3) A bulletin on MySpace from a high school classmate announcing how excited she is to be moving herself and her two boys into her boyfriend’s place. He’s not the biological father of the boys, and there was no mention of marriage.
In each case, I was dismayed. But these days, you "with it" people expect compliments, praise, congratulations, encouragement, and gifts for being in these situations, and it is very common for people to place themselves into these situations.
Yes, you are adults who should be free to make their own choices. However, we are put into an awkward position when you expect us to express support for decisions that we think are harmful to you and to children and to something we hold dear, such as the institution of marriage. If we express anything other than enthusiastic support, you’ll react as though we wish you ill, when actually we care about you.
If we were to say what we’re really thinking, we’ll risk getting labeled as intolerant, hateful, judgmental, old-fashioned, out step, and so on. And when the years go by and prove us to be right, our legitimate and correct concerns are likely to go unacknowledged, if we’re even still in contact with you. You will never admit that we were right, and you'll likely continue to think of us as jerks (even though we weren't the ones putting your children into a bad situation).
I’ve been there. I was once engaged to a woman who was all wrong for me. My family and friends, no matter what they said, couldn’t do anything about it as far as telling me I was making a mistake. Fortunately, I refused to take her back after one of her frequent “dumpings” of me, and I dodged a bullet. We're both better off now.
Shacking up with a guy, especially when you have kids that are not his, is a bad idea, according to statistics. The likelihood that you and your children will be abused goes way up. It will be harder to get out of the relationship should that become necessary. It provides a poor example for your children. If you want to get married, chances are it either won’t happen or won’t last.
Having and keeping a child as an unmarried professional woman will likely mean that child will be sent off to daycare to be raised by strangers when only few weeks old, and will interact with her exhausted mother for mere minutes a day. Why not give the child up for adoption to a married couple who can provide financially and emotionally for the child?
Marrying a woman who is difficult to get along with without losing yourself entirely is setting yourself up for a lifetime of pain and adversity that is entirely avoidable.
But you don’t want to hear these truths. You want us to smile and give you gifts.
I’d appreciate any advice on how to handle these situations. We don’t want you to think we hate you, after all. But we don’t want to lie to you by making it seem as though we support such foolishness.
*Okay, I wanted to add something that, perhaps, will give you some understanding of how we feel when you come to us with these announcements. How would you feel if we came to you and said "Hey, want to come to our celebration this weekend? We're going to be cutting down ancient Redwood trees to turn into bats that we'll then use to club baby seals. We find this helps gay people to go straight."