Akeath
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One of my ancestors got pregnant while single. She was courting one man openly and another one man not openly, and either could have been the father. She ended up claiming the father was the one her family already knew about, since she was getting a lot of push back for being pregnant outside of marriage already without their knowing there was more than one possible father. People were really harsh about unwed pregnancies at the time – she took a lot of flack, lost her job, and had to move out of the area. Well, that guy her family knew about ended up secretly already being married. She had no idea. We later found out this guy had 10 kids by his wife and at least 3 by other women during his marriage.
He broke things off with my ancestor when she told him she was pregnant, but then introduced her to his best friend, a man who’s wife had recently died and left him a single Dad to 6 children. The man he introduced her to agreed to marry his best friend’s pregnant mistress and raise the child as his own if she would be a loving stepmother to his 6 existing kids. It was some bizarre situation where her married lover didn’t care enough to leave his wife or provide for his own kid, but in some misogynistic way wanted to make sure he found a guy who would claim the kid and provide for them. So she got married to the guy she’d been set up with, they ended up surprisingly compatible, and she and her new husband had 6 more kids together for a total of 13 kids. Later when their child was seeking her roots she was told about her Mom’s married lover. Once DNA testing became common, it was discovered that man wasn’t even the father. But our entire family setup would have been different if married dude hadn’t thought she was his kid – my ancestor wouldn’t have met her husband and had the 34 grand kids and great grandkids she ended up with by the time she passed.
My Grandmother ran away from home when she was 15, met a boy, and gave birth that same year. He dropped her out onto the streets like a hot potato when he found out she was pregnant, and her parents took her back in and raised my Dad as their own son for a few years. While my Dad was still being raised my his grandparents (my Great Grandparents), my Grandmother met a man and married him after knowing him for three days. Her new husband insisted that she needed to take responsibility for her own child and he and she came and got my Dad immediately after marrying and raised him to adulthood. They also had another daughter together. My Grandmother became blind and wheelchair bound due to drug use before dying of cancer, and (step) Grandpa was her caretaker through it all. Her new husband, my Dad’s stepdad, was Dad’s helping hand out of that whole lifestyle. My Grandpa used to say marriage was all about devotion. He took those vows after only 3 days, but he spent the rest of his life living up to them. This story has always amazed me.
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This reply was modified 2 years, 5 months ago by
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This reply was modified 2 years, 5 months ago by
I’ve been happily with my husband for 14 years and I am certain he’s the one for me, but I wouldn’t say I love everything about him. He has flaws – we all do. That’s part of being human. He’s been honest with me about his flaws from the start. If you aren’t seeing flaws, if you think everything about your guy is perfect, then you aren’t seeing clearly. You don’t have to be a perfect person to be perfect for each other. But you do need to be aware of each other’s flaws and how they affect your relationship, and how both the good and the bad mesh and be able to see that the good vastly outweighs the bad. And 4 months just isn’t enough time to be able to accurately measure that. It’s long enough to know that you love what you know about him so far, but not long enough to know him deeply. So I would tread carefully here if your family are so adamantly concerned and slow down a bit. What specifically is upsetting your family about him? You’re being very vague, and I don’t think that’s serving anyone.
I’ve found that the best way for family to come around and see your relationship positively is for them to have lots of time to observe you two as a couple and see for themselves, again and again, that you two try to make each other happy. That you treat each other with grace and consideration and loving care. If they repeatedly see that, they are more likely to come around. So if you want to fight for that have him keep coming around, let them see the health and joy you two bring each other. Let them see that he cares about your well being as much as they do.
I’m concerned about his response to your family situation. Your family doesn’t like him. Rather than staying and trying to get to know them more and maybe negate some of that first impression, he’s decided to move far away and have you follow and move away from your family. That’s…a very concerning reaction. That should give you pause. That’s the kind of thing a dangerous, abusive man would do.
You’ve been so vague about what negatives they’re seeing that I can’t tell if he’s showing warning signs of being dangerous. So I’m going to go ahead and post this list of warning signs of an abusive relationship. You can look over it for yourself and see if any more of these are things your family is bringing up. If he has multiples of these signs, you are better off ending the relationship.
PUSHES FOR QUICK INVOLVEMENT — Comes on strong, claiming, “I’ve never felt loved like this by anyone.” An abuser pressures the new partner for an exclusive commitment almost immediately.
JEALOUS — Excessively possessive; calls constantly or visits unexpectedly; prevents you from going to work because “you might meet someone”; checks the mileage on your car.
CONTROLLING — If you are late, interrogates you intensively about whom you talked to and where you were; keeps all the money; insists you ask permission to go anywhere or do anything.
UNREALISTIC EXPECTATIONS — Expects you to be the perfect mate and meet his or her every need.
ISOLATION — Tries to isolate you from family and friends; accuses people who are your supporters of “causing trouble.” The abuser may deprive you of a phone or car, or try to prevent you from holding a job.
BLAMES OTHERS FOR PROBLEMS OR MISTAKES — It’s always someone else’s fault if something goes wrong.
MAKES OTHERS RESPONSIBLE FOR HIS OR HER FEELINGS — The abuser says, “You make me angry” instead of “I am angry,” or says, “You’re hurting me by not doing what I tell you.”
HYPERSENSITIVITY — Is easily insulted, claiming hurt feelings when he or she is really mad. Rants about the injustice of things that are just a part of life.
CRUELTY TO ANIMALS OR CHILDREN — Kills or punishes animals brutally. Also may expect children to do things that are far beyond their ability (whips a 3-year-old for wetting a diaper) or may tease them until they cry. Sixty-five percent of abusers who beat their partners will also abuse children.
“PLAYFUL” USE OF FORCE DURING SEX — Enjoys throwing you down or holding you down against your will during sex; finds the idea of rape exciting.
VERBAL ABUSE — Constantly criticizes or says blatantly cruel things; degrades, curses, calls you ugly names. This may also involve sleep deprivation or waking you with relentless verbal abuse.
RIGID EXPECTATIONS — Demands that you serve, obey and remain at home.
SUDDEN MOOD SWINGS — Switches from sweet to violent in minutes.
PAST BATTERING — Admits to hitting a mate in the past, but says the person “made” him (or her) do it.
THREATS OF VIOLENCE — Says things like, “I’ll break your neck” or “I’ll kill you,” and then dismisses them with, “Everybody talks that way,” or “I didn’t really mean it.”My husband is positive for Covid. He hasn’t had any symptoms, though. He’s triple vaccinated and has a pretty great immune system. We’ve been together 14 years and in that time he’s only gotten sick once, for 3 days. So I’m not surprised that he’s asymptomatic, and feel confident he’ll pull through this just fine. I’m actually more focused on how he got it. I tested negative at the same time, but I can’t think of any way he could have gotten it except through me. We’re both disabled, so we haven’t had exposure through work, and we live with just the two of us. I’ve been in a bubble with my elderly parents since Omicron started. I haven’t visited anyone else but them and have been avoiding restaurants, not going to the gym, and only going out to places like the doctor or the grocery store and even then always wearing an N95 mask. My husband went with me to the store twice in the last 2 weeks wearing an N95 mask and social distancing, but other than that hasn’t spent time around anyone but me in weeks.
I did visit my elderly, high risk parents early last week though, but I didn’t bring my husband. My parents, my husband and I are all triple vaccinated. While no one had any issues that day midweek my sister tested positive for Covid. I’d seen my sister in passing for a moment from several feet away and said hi earlier, but didn’t get near her. I was close with my parents for quite awhile during the visit, though. My sister has 1 J&J vaccine and had a high fever, sore throat, aches and pains, headache, exhaustion, and lots of phlegm. Apparently she’d started showing symptoms mid-week, but I didn’t hear about it till the weekend. I had gotten some green phlegm and nasal drip toward the end of that week but otherwise felt fine. But I got a test that weekend just in case and tested negative, while my husband who got tested the same time was positive. But I don’t know how else my husband could have possibly gotten it if not through me. We’ve been isolating so carefully to avoid giving anything to my parents when I see them. My parents finally got tested early this week and it was negative, too. So again I don’t know if my sister gave it to them and they gave it to me and I gave it to my husband but we all got tested too late to notice the intermediary steps or if somehow my husband got it another way.
Maybe I want it to have been through my sister and then my parents because that would mean my parents, who are in their 70s and high risk, would have gotten it and transmitted it but still have been okay. If that were the case they would have had it but the vaccine did it’s job and I could unclench and not worry about them so much, at least till the next variant. During the height of the pandemic I went a year without seeing them to make sure I didn’t spread it to them. Eventually I started visiting them once a week again, but I was so careful in every other part of my life to make sure I didn’t pass it to them. Even though my parents, myself, and my husband are all triple vaccinated now I’ve just been so worried about my parents this whole time because they are so high risk. My Mom is in her 70s and has 3 other pre-existing conditions, so I’ve been terrified this whole time that she might die if she caught Covid. I’m in my mid 30s but have two pre-existing conditions that would affect this, so it would be a relief to think that I had had it but was fine, too. My parents have also been really careful, but they’ve had to go to work in person. They always wear N95 masks and haven’t gone out to eat since the pandemic started. My sister was really good at first, but after a few months got tired of things and has long since stopped any precautions.
I’m just…so tired of this. I wish that after my husband and I are through self-quarantining and have both tested negative again I could just worry about my parents getting this less. I’d really like to go swimming at my gym and eat at restaurants again and still see my parents each week at the same time without worrying about passing this to them. And if my sister was the source of it – I’m kind of irritated that I’ve been so careful to not spread this to my parents just visiting them but my Sister’s actually living with them and has not worried enough to change how she’s lived her life for a long time now.
It seems that with just 2 shots and no booster, the vaccine effectiveness for Pfizer against Omicron is only 30%. Moderna seems to be having similar difficulties. Now is definitely the time to get a booster if you haven’t yet. I was able to get mine last month and am so glad I did.
Your husband knows that you can’t go then. He’s chosen that date to manipulate this situation – he doesn’t want his wife along when he introduces his mistress to his family, but he’ll still be able to say you “know about it”. And he can rely on your unwillingness to directly tell his parents how this had made your marriage suffer so that it will look like you tacitly approve what he’s doing, and are in a mutually accepted open marriage. No matter what you say to his parents about not going, he’s going to present the situation when he and his mistress meet with them to make it look like you are providing a stamp of approval on his and the mistress meeting his parents as a couple – without you. He’s getting more serious with his mistress by doing this step, and bringing her even further out into the open. You not going to meet them is going to make it even clearer that you are no longer the primary partner to him – she is.
But this is a damned if you do, damned if you don’t type of situation. Even if you go, the family is going to start realizing that you and he are no longer in a monogamous marriage anymore. Your husband is openly bringing his mistress further into his life. You no longer have a choice of having a happy, monogamous relationship with your husband. It’s leave, or accept that everyone you know is eventually going to think you are willingly in an open marriage. The time when you could pretend to your and his family and friends that he isn’t having this affair is ending with this meeting.
Where I live, a little over 2/3 of people are still not vaccinated, and most everyone is not wearing masks anymore, including workers at grocery stores and restaurants. The Covid cases in my county have tripled in the past two weeks as the Delta variant has swept over the area. I’m one of the very few exceptions that still wears a mask in public indoor places on the off chance that I get a break through infection and then spread it to the unvaccinated people around me who could then be killed by it. I know that has very low chances of happening, but it pisses me off that so many people are misinformed and I think losing their lives over this is far too harsh of a punishment for willful idiocy. Masks are such a small and easy way to protect others from getting sick compared to the possible harm not wearing one can cause. I just don’t get why so many people would rather spread a disease that can kill others than wear another piece of cloth. Our leaders at both the county and state level are strongly pushing against vaccination education and outreach efforts in the name of “personal freedom”. With the vaccine now widely available and easy to get for free at places like Walmart, the deaths taking place here are completely preventable, and I find it deeply saddening and disturbing that so many people are being hospitalized and killed right now. Both my brothers are refusing to get vaccinated, and after my sister got a fever as a side effect from the J&J vaccine she is refusing to vaccinate my teenage niece. My favorite aunt, who is in her mid 70s, is also refusing to be vaccinated.
My sister had said that she wasn’t going to get vaccinated. But she needs to travel out of state next week, so she just got the Johnson and Johnson Vaccine yesterday so she’s got protection for the trip. I am so thrilled and relieved. I really thought my sis would never get vaccinated.
Things are a mess. I live in a state that’s in the lowest 5 out of 50 in % of population vaccinated. My parents live in a separate state that is also in the lowest 5. Each individual state has their own criteria to break up the population into priority tiers. My Mom is in her 70s with 3 pre-existing conditions, and she’s in Tier 2 in her state. I’m in tier 1B in my state with only 1 pre-existing condition. The health department has a questionnaire people can fill out and they claim they will then contact you when your tier comes up so you can schedule a vaccine. But they don’t seem to actually be contacting people. My tier has come up and I haven’t heard anything. Same with my parents in the next state over. A lot of older people are just waiting for the health department to get back to them in vain or checking with just their local pharmacies and hospitals to see if they have vaccines, and that isn’t going to work.
I had to call and explain to my Mom that her tier was up even though she hadn’t been contacted and that if we weren’t proactive about getting her vaccinated her state’s current vaccine supply could be used up on people who were less at risk before she gets hers. We need to look for places that have the vaccine throughout the state and be willing to drive up to a few hours if she’s to get vaccinated any time soon. My parent’s state made a tool this week that lists all the pharmacies, hospitals, etc. in the entire state and whether they have actually received any vaccines yet, which helps enormously. I’m hoping my state will get something like that up eventually. In my state, only 50% of doses are going to hospitals and mass vaccination sites and the rest are all to individual pharmacies, and you have to call every pharmacy around one by one and ask if they’ve even received anything yet, which most haven’t. Once I found my way through an online labyrinth and got the map of what places carry the vaccine in my parent’s state right now and how to contact them I sent that along to my Mom and showed her how to use it despite how wonky it is. She’s going to call each place that’s received vaccines to check if they still have any available, give them her health info, and see if she can get an appointment. Fingers crossed she can get one soon.
I lucked out and got an appointment at a mass vaccination site in my state that’s only an hour drive away. My sister-in-law is a nurse at a hospital and has been able to get both of her vaccines and use her connections to get some of her elderly/higher risk family vaccinated, too. My Dad is high risk and works at a public school and is getting his soon through the school. My husband is young and doesn’t have any pre-existing conditions that apply to this, so we reckon he’ll be vaccinated in the summer. My husband and I have agreed not to start socializing, going out, etc. until he is fully vaccinated as well so it will be still be some time before I can see people again. I’m hoping that by the end of summer I’ll actually be able to hug my parents again. Before Covid I would visit them each week (they are just across the state border, it isn’t a long drive). My sister lives with my parents and has said she is not going to get vaccinated (she’s an adult and can make her own decisions…still grr!) but besides her and my niece everyone else in our households should be vaccinated by the end of summer.
Hospitals are at capacity here. One of my uncles who lives in the country had to go nearly 3 1/2 hours to reach a hospital, only to find out that hospital was out of respiratory devices, so he had to travel to another one also over 3 hours away from the first hospital and he barely survived the drive. Now he’s in a spare lab at the new hospital while on a waiting list for a room. This is insane. Please don’t gather outside of your immediate households for the holidays, guys. There just aren’t any more beds and we can’t handle another holiday surge. Skip this holiday so that next year more people’s relatives are alive to celebrate with.
When you were talking about how he was younger and immature with money, I thought maybe he was in his early twenties tops. But he’s 29. At his age, you can’t blame a lack of financial sense or cleanliness on a lack of maturity. They are part of who he is. I think you need to realize that, and also realize that more time (after 3 years of dating, no less) is NOT going to change him into someone who is good with money. It’s possible that he can change his financial issues, but time alone isn’t going to do it. This isn’t going to be that easy and smooth. His understanding he has a serious financial problem (and not minimizing it as a “small issue”), he himself wanting to change, and then taking a financial class that your community center hosts or speaking to a financial adviser would just be the first steps on a long road to change. And it could be he will always be bad with money, and that once you marry him your own credit score, standing with landlords, and more will also go down with him if you become linked legally.
Would you want to marry him if he never changes with money, if he never magically “matures” to become the person you want? If he were just as-is for the entirety of the rest of your lives together? If the answer to that is no, then you should not get married. That doesn’t mean you automatically have to leave. It does mean that you and he should go to a financial adviser and/or classes together, be clear about your credit scores and debts, and work together to become financially responsible – while dating. Especially, you need to verify his credit score so you are aware of how deep this rabbit hole goes. For another thing, if you don’t start to save for retirement, you either won’t get a comfortable retirement or you may never be able to retire at all. And you need to find a way to save money, because the economy is very shaky right now and you need to be able to handle some knocks without becoming destitute, because it is coming to that for a lot of people right now. Only after you both have been transparent with your spending and started making good, demonstrable financial choices for another couple years without backsliding should you consider joining hands (and finances, and debts) in marriage.
As for your friends, I don’t think that they will always hate your boyfriend now. Hate is a pretty strong emotion. They can advise against marrying him without hating him or always being upset that you choose to be with him. If they are good friends, they will eventually tell themselves that clearly you see something in him they don’t, and that it is your life and your choice. Ultimately, they are just concerned for you. You don’t have to ditch them just because they aren’t crazy about your boyfriend.You are of course going to be the one in the group who likes him most, and that’s fine – you are the one who is with him. As long as they don’t get pushy with you about breaking up with him and getting with the co-worker, I think you can still maintain those friendships. Maybe cool it with the coworker though, as he has crossed a boundary. I think you should give it time for things to die down, maybe broaden your circle a bit, and in awhile reassess how well your friendships are going with everyone. And don’t engage as much in the complaining sessions. Those can really give people odd pictures of what’s going on, and a competition on negativity isn’t the funnest way to spend your time out with friends anyway.
Bittergaymark: Sometimes depression’s voice can be so loud and insistent in your mind that you can mistake it for your own voice. I recognize it in some of your posts, because I’ve dealt with it as well. But don’t let it fucking win, Mark – even if it’s only out of spite and stubbornness, don’t let it win.
Today’s the record for the highest number of cases that my state has seen since the pandemic began, just barely beating out yesterday which had also been a record high. I’m getting frustrated with people who seem to think it just isn’t worth bothering with safety precautions any more, because here at least it not only isn’t over but has spiked higher than it ever has.
I don’t see many people in my area wearing masks nowadays, although even at the height of precautions only about 1/4 of people at most were wearing them. I can’t see our state authorities ever requiring them, not here. I’ve been seeing grocery store workers and doctor receptionists that are told by their employers to wear masks putting the mask under their nose or chin or just taking them off until someone walks up to them. When I went to the grocery store last week, only 1 of the checkout lanes had a cashier who was wearing a mask in a way that would prevent transmission. And that’s the grocery store I go to because they are better than other grocery stores about precautions. It is getting extremely difficult to social distance at grocery stores and other places because other people will just walk up to you or right by you, they don’t care anymore, even if you are very clearly trying to social distance yourself. My state is continuing to move forward with reopening regardless of the spike we’re in. I went for curbside pickup at one of the places I get Chinese recently (I like to support the Chinese restaurants here a lot more lately ever since people started spouting “the Chinese virus”) and saw they’d opened up their freakin buffet again and were no longer doing curbside pickup. When I called to say I was there for my order, like usual, they just told me to come on in and that they weren’t doing curbside any more. The whole parking lot was packed, and inside no social distancing methods were being enforced. I’m not going to that restaurant anymore for now, but there’s another Chinese place that I can still support that is taking precautions.
Also my Mom’s been furloughed from her job of many years. She told me today. They said that her work has been fantastic, but her company is in health care and they have been canceling everything but emergency treatments. Apparently they have lost tens millions of dollars, and are thinking that for the year 2020 total they may lose hundreds of millions of dollars total. They are still paying for her insurance for the 90 day furlough, which is a huge relief as my mom requires regular health care. I’m really glad their doing that. She’s going to try to file for unemployment, she expects to be terminated. She says filing will help her fill up the hours where she would normally be working, as other people in the same situation and state say the holds on phones are often 4-5 hours long and the website is so antiquated as to be hardly usable.
Oh, and my husband’s family is gathering for their church meeting this summer as usual. People come from all over. Usually a few people come from overseas too, but I don’t know how that will work with various travel restrictions in different places. When my Mom-in-Law suggested to her sister who is recovering from cancer that she should wear a mask if she goes, her sister said she didn’t need a mask because she would “pray more”and trust in God that she won’t get sick. I started to bring up the story about the drowning man praying to God for help and then refusing the helicopter. But I just…can’t even. And even if she’s being silly about it, she’s still been so kind to me and I really don’t want her to get sick, no matter how stupid she’s being. I don’t want anyone to get sick or die from this, even if they are misguided or sticking their head in the sand or refusing to take advantage of the medical precautions we are blessed or lucky enough to have access to. I hear people on both sides of the political spectrum saying they hope the other side will have a lot of people die from their various political gatherings and it just makes me so sad. No one deserves to die from this. And it is heartbreaking that so many lives have been lost, and that so many more will be lost, and the number of lives that have and will be taken could be so much less if people made different choices.
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This reply was modified 2 years, 5 months ago by
