I heard my wife on the phone saying, "Loathing is acceptable."
When she hung up, I got the story out of her. Turns out she was talking to a friend who’s been married for 2 years. The friend was complaining about her husband, all this stuff she couldn’t stand about him. "I hate him. Am I allowed to hate him?" That’s when my wife said "Loathing is acceptable." You go through a lot of different moods with a spouse and you shouldn’t try and push them down. If it gets past loathing to You want to kill him, or do a Lorena Bobbitt, that’s when you should leave. So spake the wife. I’m going to keep my eyes open.
I sometimes think Phil is going to write a book about marriage. Might be interesting.
It's all about making people feel it in their kishkes, apparently. Sounds reichian, doesn't it? a sort of reichian anti-therapy, devoted to giving even democratic party candidates a conditioned reflex such that they get stomach cramps at the thought of going against "Jewish voters in Palm Beach"?
Obama on Zionism and Hamas, Jeffrey Goldberg, Atlantic Magazine, May 12, says Obama has to please “Jewish voters, particularly those in such places as — to pull an example from the air — Palm Beach County, Florida, whose Jewish residents tend to appreciate robust American support for Israel, and worry about whether presidential candidates feel the importance of Israel in their kishkes, or guts.” If Clinton had been leading, nothing she could have said would have done her any good with those same people, except being more genocidal than McCain.
Phil, come on now, give us a few tidbits of what this wife can't stand about her husband of two years. It might open up all our eyes. Perhaps we can even use the tidbits as metaphors to address your usual subject here.
Chuckie wrote:
"Perhaps we can even use the tidbits as metaphors to address your usual subject here."
Charles, I know you and Phil are in different situations (he's a failed journalist who lives off his wife's family's income, you presumably have a job) but it doesn't seem you'd have to look that far to fathom why Phil's wife might hate him. Would you want to be married to someone obsessed with Jews Jews Jews? Imagine how much enjoyment of life his obsessions must destroy!
There's a difference between being a failed journalist and a being a journalist who's honest enough to tackle an issue that the MSM won't touch with a ten foot pole. Phil's gone too far off the reservation by MSM standards and his ideas would be labeled "antisemitic" if he weren't Jewish. Tony Judt made the same remark. That the only people that MIGHT be able to get away with criticizing Israel or Jewish leadership are Jews is not a healthy sign of discussion. As for Phil, keep the all the sharp knives locked away and make sure to take the Miss out for Mother's Day.
phil is far from a 'failed' journalist. in fact he is very successful.
trying to get to the truth of a situation re power can help one to "fail".
remember gary webb?
I live off my own self-produced income. I have been self-supporting since age 18. Before that, I got "three hots and a cot."
I've been working since age 10. My dad told me: "If you want more go get it!"
My Dad did provide a place to sleep. I ate oatmeal. Powdered milk. I didn't go to Harvard. I worked my way through college via the old steel mills of Chicago.
I graduated law school later.
It was paid for by academic merit scholarship, GI bill, and loans, all paid back.
So?
Further, I think Phil chose not to just be in it for the money or tribal concerns. That alone makes him a hero. Think about it.
Another little whoolgathering nugget!
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Imagine, Phil's wife has heard these story quite often before, maybe even given her well known good advise, e.g. to carefully confront him, insisting that she must do this, when he did whatever she didn't like again, r e a l l y friendly. Otherwise it was useless. …
But all started, when she called Phil's wife from her honeymoon two year ago.
I spare you all the other alternative stories that come to mind.
"I loathe you!"
"I loathe you too, hun."
I started to comment on this yesterday, changed my mind. But now I can't resist.
When you live with somebody, especially somebody you really love, your issues come up. If you start to loathe them, but you know that you loved them at some point, then you should do a little internal work. What's your problem? Because it's probably your own issue. THe other person always had that foible that you now loathe.
Lately I have found that when I'm really resentful of my husband, it's because I actually want him to pay attention to me and I'm too tired/cranky/sick to allow myself to even think of asking for attention. Sets up a very ugly feedback loop, let me tell you. Today we were laughing about it (and I got lovely attention too).
Some of us wives get into the universal complaint of "he doesn't realize how much I do/if I don't take care of it, it won't get done/I don't get a break/this place would fall apart without me." This all may in fact be true. The kids' schooling might suffer, the grandma will inevitably get lost trying to ferry them to the birthday party, and the dishwasher will continue to leave black specks on the glassware if I don't step in. However, it's also true that he really loves me, he does all kinds of things for me and wears himself out, he holds down the only job in the family and keeps us fed and in comfort, and he thinks I'm beautiful even in chemotherapy. So maybe my skills with school, appliance repair calls, and finding children's birthday parties are a nice reciprocation for all his wonderfulness. And if any of his personal foibles irritate me too much, I can remind myself of my own; I'll spare you the catalogue.
Leila Abu-Saba, you reveal a lot of insight. Wisdom. Then again, you always do. In the West, a marriage usually is a contract in the English common law sense, i.e., a mutal exchange of promises in good faith. Between two individuals. The context of
the larger family's (on either or both sides) wishes is relatively absent.
The West is alone in this feeling concept of two individual humans against all odds, directed toward their mutual satisfaction. You sure won't find it in any Arab land, e.g., Saudi Arabi, where the young knw of Valentine hearts, but are mostly totally tribal.
Romantic love originate in the
Western feudal ages, in the courts of the elite–it came as mostly
ego diversion before settling down to politics.
The peasants of course could not afford even this small diversion for a short time.
If you look at all the other cultures, they have not even scratched the surface of individualism as a force.
And yet, individualism, blindly romantic, is the only real force against the tribe and/or state.
Came the state isms.
Do you have a lesson we can learn from your wisdom, on a grander scale–not that your own is not worthy of the highest respect?