Both men and women do terrible things to each other. They betray, abandon, neglect and abuse. Honestly, I don’t think either sex beats the other when it comes to treating spouses like garbage. However, when men do something horrible, they are usually contrite. Often, they take the blame. In fact, in many cases men will take the blame even when they weren’t at fault.
However, with women it is an entirely different story. I have only once in my life heard anything approaching regret from a woman for hurting her husband. This woman, who had destroyed a marriage to a decent man by having affairs, only said, many years after the fact: “don’t get married too young; I regret the mistakes I made because I was too immature.” I liked her much better for it, but still this wasn’t a real mea culpa.
A reader sent me an article about a woman who left her husband after he came home from Afghanistan with severe wounds, including the loss of two limbs. It should be shocking, but it isn’t. Few people have the strength of character to choose a life in service to the higher ideals of family at any cost. In days past, they might not have had as much of a choice, but I’m sure the same thing happened then. It just wasn’t spoken of.
Today, however, communication of this shameful, tragic reality about the human condition is no longer relegated to tragic songs and art, but to the tabloids, where women frankly rationalize the unjustifiable.
Sue Norton, wife of bomb disposal technician Peter Norton, explains why she left her husband and restricted his access to his young sons, who I suspect, given the picture in the article, were the only source of true joy in his life:
On a bright winter’s morning in January 2007, I found myself in a busy car park in Cheltenham with my family. I noticed how happy and relaxed everyone else seemed.
Occasionally, a small child would stare in our direction before their parent whispered to them to look away or shot us a sympathetic glance.
I looked down at my husband, Pete, sitting in his wheelchair in front of me, one arm and a leg missing. On Pete’s lap was our eldest son Tom, then four, pushing his two-year-old brother Toby forward in his pram as I took the weight of all three of them. We must have been a bizarre sight. But by then I was almost beyond caring.
Notice the shame she feels at being stuck with this shell of a man. How could she be reduced to an object of pity?
I still loved my husband, as he probably still loved me, and wanted us to stay together as a family. But I also knew I couldn’t take any more of the physical and psychological strain of looking after two small children and an amputee.
My priority had to be our two small sons. If I allowed myself to be ground down to the point where I could no longer care for them properly, I would be letting the whole family down.
Here’s the usual, common rationale: she’s doing it for the children. That’s a base lie. It’s for her. This is why it is so ugly when women rationalize their choices in such matters: it lays bare the most disgusting truths about humanity. It may be reality, but it is like cutting open the flesh of a beautiful form and revealing the squirming, quivering guts beneath.
Here’s more:
An archeologist and former MoD civil servant, I’d given up my career after becoming pregnant with my first child. On top of looking after the children, I began to feel as if I’d been turned from being Pete’s wife into his carer and nurse.
She resents him now for smashing her dreams. We always turn the blame on those we love…
To me, however, this is the worst:
Pete, now 48, teaches at the UK Defence Academy at Shrivenham, Wiltshire. Tom and Toby’s happiness is paramount to us both, so I take the boys to see their father for one day each fortnight.
Although Pete’s brother helps him with this, it is difficult for me to leave the boys for much longer with their father as he is still confined to a wheelchair and could not run after them in an emergency.
The man is blown to pieces in service to his country, and now, despite struggling back to becoming a productive member of society, becomes a virtual stranger to his own children. Oh, the lot of men. Remember Peter Norton whenever you hear women speak of their “oppression.”
In closing, here are a couple songs about how men suffer from war:
And, on Youtube: “Ruby”
