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Babette Albin's avatar

What an extensive and well-documented piece. It's reflective of the tribulations of marriage and the complexity of blending two lives. As a veteran of a soon to be 50-year marriage to a successful and ego-driven man, I can attest to the destructive power of loneliness and disappointment.

My husband was intent on pursuing a career in politics and in fact, we were active on the campaign circuit from the time we met in high school. We were signing up unregistered, minority voters even before we were age-eligible to vote ourselves. Harry participated in "Freedom Summer" in 1964, the year that three civil rights workers were kidnapped and murdered in Mississippi.

Ultimately we married after each of us graduated from college, and Harry had already completed a Master's Degree in Journalism. After all the excitement of the Protest Moment, we settled down,. we Harry moped about his lack of. ...whatever.

I admire the fact that Fanny pursued her husband and even when to the extreme option of threatening to sue him for divorce (unheard of in those days)!

It took every ounce of connivance on my part to get my husband off the couch of self-pity: a ticket for the Law School Aptitude Test (LSAT), for his 26th birthday was my strategy.. He scored well and was accepted into a 4-year night law school (St. John's, the very school my father and his had graduated from decades before)

! But did I sit back and wait for the money to roll in? What a waste of time that would have been. I understand that many marriages fail when the man is preoccupied in law or medical school and so I decided to attend class (in the back, unacknowledged. Now I could be pro-active and didn't have to worry about being sidelined by his anticipated, brilliant career.

In fact, we both enjoyed law school (and his study group; likewise had spouses of both stripes (male and female), and we suddenly had a network of social and intellectual merit! We even studied abroad in Jerusalem in the summer of 1976 (I was 7 months pregnant, and it was just after the hostage-battle at Entebbe Airport)!

I'm not suggesting the old cliche of a strong woman behind every powerful man. I am advocating that you have to stand up and respect yourself! And don't sweat the small stuff, because War may be Hell, but Marriage is no Bed of Roses!

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Patris's avatar

The haunted life of a soldier returned from war

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