<h1>My Two Cents: Testosteronus Prix, ed.</h1>

DEAR MARGO:

:

I confided to my cousin, with whom I'm very close, that I'd become intimate with my boyfriend of one year. My parents, who are very conservative, did not know. Quite frankly, I was not ready to tell them. I'm still going to college, and although I would have told them eventually, I didn't feel the time was right for them to know just yet. When I told my cousin about it, I asked her not to say anything. Well, it came to pass that she told my mom, who in turn told my dad. This completely destroyed my faith and trust in my cousin. It was not her place to say anything. My mom, not wanting a rift in the family, thinks I need to "just get over it and forgive her already," but I'm not ready to. I can't even bring myself to talk to my cousin.

Is my mom right? Do I just need to get over it?

--- BITTER AND BETRAYED

Dear Family Outing:

While it’s always more fun to blame somebody else for our own goofs, consider the chain of events here: you got all intimate against your parents’ wishes; you kept it secret from them; you told Radio Free Bigmouth, a cousin no less. Hmmm, almost as if you wanted to your parents to know but didn’t have the nerve to tell them. Surely you, a sexually active college student, are smart enough to know that open mouths and open legs don’t mix in conservative families.

Do not trust the cuz with scandalous tidbits ever again. If she can’t shut up about your pre-marital ribaldry, chances are she’ll blab about voting for Howard Dean, intravenous drug use, and that dead hooker buried in the crawl space (you Deaniacs are all alike). On the bright side, now you have a way to let your parents know uncomfortable things about you without having to confront them directly—that may come in very handy down the road when you get knocked up or busted for that “massage” service of yours.

Be honest with yourself—now that your parents know, you must feel better about it. Apparently, they did not kick you out of the house, cut off your trust fund, or send you to Christian boot camp (“What IS your moral malfunction, numbnuts?”). In fact, you’re halfway to being able to rut like polecats under your parent’s own roof. Thank your cuz for that, the dingy bitch. So, follow your mom’s advice—it will gratify her immensely after you blew her off on the chastity thing—and forgive your cousin.

DEAR MARGO:

I've been married four years and have been happy most of the time. Lately, however, my husband has become very condescending and treats me like a child. He acts as if it takes a long, drawn-out explanation on any matter for me to understand. Then he asks, "Do you understand? Are we clear on this?" I have a college education and am not stupid. Though he doesn't use that word, his tone makes me think it is just on the tip of his tongue. This past weekend, he told me off over some rental property he owns. I have done every bit of the physical labor in preparing this property for sale. I felt too angry to respond in a civil manner at the time, so I held my tongue until I was calm. When I tried to speak to him, he said, "I am going to stop having serious conversations with you because you won't let anything go. Once I have told you what the problem is, it's over. There is nothing more to discuss." I could just scream. This man has gotten to the point where he won't even get himself a glass of water. He will ask, "Do we have any water?" Translation: Get me some water. He went to counseling with me one time, and when we got in the car, he told me he could see us ending up divorced if I ever tried to get him into counseling again.
Please help.
--- ALONE IN PENNSYLVANIA

Dear Reading (the writing on the wall), Pa.:

Men’s shit, huh? Well, if it’s any consolation, men ain’t immune to men’s shit either. In fact, men put up with men’s shit all damn day, then go home and put up with women’s shit all damn night and sometimes an extra ration of teenage daughters' shit for dessert. Bottom line: there’s more than enough shit to go around for everybody.

Sorry to be a downer, but four years into a marriage is about the time for cracks to start showing. In your case, we’re talking fissures. A fistula, perhaps. Or wait-- a vast emotional carbuncle, about to erupt in a rhyolitic flood of pus and blood. He’s just seeing how far he can push you until you give up and get out of his life. You know, like a cat playing with a mouse until its belly bursts open and its guts spill out all over the linoleum.

Everything he does to render you subservient says, “It’s my way or the highway; and, incidentally, 'my way' pretty much consists of you eating a heaping big plate of fresh-squeezed bullshit every day.” Oh joy. He clearly does not respect you and nobody wants to be married to somebody they don’t respect. Only weirdoes tolerate being married to an a-hole who doesn’t respect them. So, unless you go for that sort of thing, it’s time to Kevorkianize the relationship.

True, he’s being passive aggressive to the max, but that’s only consistent with making you do everything including taking care of his rental property and then bitching about the work he fobbed off on you. True, it’s possible that you are, in fact, a dingbat. How does MTC know one way or the other? It could just be that he’s had it with you ‘splainin’ about all the Lucy moves you’ve pulled while running his investment into the ground. Be honest, because if you truly are as blameless as you claim, your marriage is doomed. Funny, but only by being an utter dingbat can you justify remaining married.

DEAR MARGO:

My husband and I have been together for 17 years, married for 12. He's more than a decade older than I am, and he brought significant baggage into the relationship. When we met, I was young, newly divorced, ridiculously naive, and thrilled with the prospect of being needed by my boyfriend and his children. Over the years, I've had one nasty shock after another:

Discovering right before our wedding that he wasn't actually divorced.

Uncovering his "little tax problem."

Surviving his inappropriate relationship with our day-care provider.

Dealing with an ex-wife who repeatedly tried to hit me up for money.

Protecting our children when one of my stepsons had an "episode" that required intervention by local law enforcement.

I am the primary -- and usually sole -- support for my family. I drive three hours round-trip to a well-paying but ultimately soul-killing job and still have to cook, supervise homework, clean, do laundry, make lunches, pay bills and mow the lawn. I'm exhausted, and he still complains that the house isn't kept as nicely as his mother's was. He's got a temper on him, so debating him isn't smart. He doesn't keep any close friends. We don't go out socially. You'd think that with this isolated life, at least the sex would be great. Since he was older and had children, I kind of assumed he knew what he was doing. Unfortunately, no. And I can't leave. I don't want to hurt my children, and where would I go? I own the house. He won't go to counseling. I don't know what to do.

--- MAXED OUT WITH STRESS AND UNHAPPINESS

Dear Too Young To Die, Too Dumb To Divorce:

This letter reminds MTC of the old joke about a boy who never spoke a single word his entire life. Then, at 14, he looks up during supper and says, “The soup’s cold.” His parents fell over in shock, until his mother recovered, saying, “My God, Junior. All this time we thought you couldn’t speak! What happened?” “Well, everything’s been fine up to now.”

While there is no exact statute of limitations in marriage, there is an informal rule that all the crap people do in the first three or four years of marriage has to be forgiven and forgotten by the time the people hit their tenth through twelfth year of being married. People who dredge up crap from that far back to complain about have to answer for the fact that they have stayed married nonetheless. This is a tacit admission of three possible things, either: whatever they did, you did worse; whatever they did, you exaggerate because no sane person would have put up with such crap; or, you are such a hideous loser that this SOB is the best you could do for fifteen freaking years. Sad, sad, sad.

So, forget the sordid litany of vice and failure that was your married life. Concentrate on what is your married life: the continuous, sublime joy that can only come through the graceful acceptance of suffering and forgiving a man who treats you like something that won’t come off his shoe without scraping it with a popsicle stick. Hmmm.

Or, you could re-examine the most unbelievable statement you’ve made in this god awful dirge of a letter: that you can’t leave him. Unless this letter was postmarked “Mogadishu”, you sure as hell can leave him. You have the house. You have the job. Shit, woman, you’ve already been through a divorce. If you didn’t manage to leave your first husband a stripped and bleached carcass, here’s your second chance.

DEAR MARGO:

I was married in 1971 and used a well-known etiquette book revised in 1968. I've used it over the years and found it very helpful. But now I find that the world has changed, and people have changed, and wonder if an updated copy is again necessary. The trouble is, I don't feel etiquette is a changing subject. But what do we do when an unmarried friend or family member is having a baby shower? Or, what to do when that unmarried mom gets married next year -- and wants to have a "big" wedding and wear a wedding gown? What are the "rules" here?

Please direct me. Help!

--- CHRISTINE

Dear Scarlet Letter Writer:

1968? That leaves a lot of ground to cover, alright. First, it’s perfectly okay to invite “colored” folk to the shower and wedding. These days, we consider them just plain folks. Fallout shelter rations are no longer considered practical wedding gifts. Dosing the punch with LSD is now definitely a faux pas (in fact, if you have any of that stuff left over, you’d best forward it immediately to MTC for proper disposal.) As for the specific problem of how to treat an unwed mother, immediately disregard any tips related to flogging, branding, or the affixing of scandalous letters to their gowns. In fact, tear out the whole chapter on “tar and feathering” and “rail riding.” These days, you’re pretty much restricted to sniggering quietly to yourself, and only if you absolutely have to do something high-handed.

You are not quite correct that etiquette doesn’t change. By Webster’s definition, etiquette is, “the forms required by good breeding, or prescribed by authority, to be observed in social or official life; observance of the proprieties of rank and occasion; conventional decorum; ceremonial code of polite society.” Since we no longer grovel before hereditary lords (as freeborn men, we need grovel only before whip wielding dominatrices, Mafia enforcers and shift managers), the “forms required by good breeding” have changed drastically. Why, today, rather than bow and scrape, propriety is satisfied by giving the local duke or earl a high five.

What doesn’t change is the underlying principle of etiquette. That principle is to always act with a generous, kind and gentle spirit so as to avoid unnecessary discomfort or embarrassment to everyone we meet—even a knocked up trollop waddling down the aisle in a rush to get hitched before her water breaks. In fact, especially people like that, who don’t need their special day clouded by some judgmental skinflint too damn cheap to replace a thirty five year old book on how to behave.
Yeah, etiquette— something nobody here promised you.