"PRUDENCE" MUST BE A MISNOMER.

Dear Prudence ("Prudence", Slate, 6/05/03)

Dear Prudence,

I have been married for six years. I have a nice man for a husband and a wonderful child. But of course, I am not satisfied with my life. I say this because I married my husband when I was barely 19 after dating him for only a couple of months. I had doubts about the marriage before we were married, but I am a people-pleaser and don't like to hurt anyone's feelings. However, after six years of being a "pleaser" to my spouse, I find that my ideas about life have drastically changed. I am no longer the immature 19-year-old who needs a man to care for her. I am going back to school to get my degree so I never have to depend on anyone to take care of me or my child. I am very independent and starting to feel so smothered at home that I feel as though I'm going crazy.The more I pull away from him, the more he clings to me. I am no longer sexually attracted to him, and when he touches me I cringe. I do everything I can to avoid kissing him. He is a very good-looking man, but I feel a brotherly kind of love for him. I suppose I should try counseling, but how can someone teach me to be attracted to him again? I don't want to hurt him, but I feel he deserves someone who loves him. He has such low self-esteem that telling him what I have just told you would crush him. I am afraid to tell him (that's the people-pleaser in me), yet I'm afraid to live my entire life wondering what my life COULD have been. I am very sad and confused about what to do with this relationship. I am living a lie. Please help me. I very much value your opinion. I will be waiting to hear from you.

--Little Lost Sheep

Dear Lit,

How very sad for you. While Prudie doubts that many people-pleasers would go the wedding route to avoid hurting someone's feelings, the consequences remain. What you need to do now is take action so you don't spend another six years feeling miserable but afraid to wound your husband. Because it sounds as though you've not yet given counseling a try, that would be a useful opening salvo in straightening out your life and finding out from whence comes your need to please everyone. Maybe you and your husband can go to counseling together; maybe separately. A qualified couples' counselor will know. There's a chance that your husband could change a few behaviors and that you could arrive at a workable modus operandi. There is, too, the chance that therapy will allow you to leave the marriage without a ton of guilt, if that's your decision. Do bear in mind that people recover from all kinds of hurt.

--Prudie, explorationally

I've had a couple of meetings out of the office this week, so I've heard "Dr. Laura" after not having heard her for a while. Boy, is she mean. There may not be any other major media show in which the host lambasts the callers or guests like Dr. Laura. I heard her, for example, tell a Catholic woman to dump her Jewish fiancee, because intermarrage is bad and tell a woman, who wanted to let her straight-A's teenage son wear a tee-shirt his teacher found objectionable, that she was "saddened" that such parents existed. It's entertaining, but I have no idea why people call in. She's right, of course, but you have to hear the show to realize how completely brutal honesty has been stripped from our public life.

Then there's Prudence the enabler. No one is bad, no one is selfish, no one should have to sleep in the bed they made just because their husband and child are sleeping there. It's hard to take this stuff seriously -- anyone whose life can be affected by making a call to a radio show or sending an email to Slate gets what they deserve -- but it is striking that Laura hangs her hat on Judeo-Christian morality where Prudence's advice is the logical terminus of reasoned relativism. Jeff recently accused me of making a reductio ad absurdum argument that non-religious morality is destined to devolve into a Hobbesian world, but here we are, Jeff. If I wanted sympathy and permission to do whatever I wanted, I would write Prudence. As a member of society, I want the rest of you to call Laura. (Also, I feel compelled to note that I've been married for more than six years.) Posted by David Cohen at June 5, 2003 1:29 PM