TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 2010
KLMNO BOOK WORLD
A great divide over housework, cont’d. CAROLYN HAX
Adapted from a recent online discussion, continued from yesterday: the husband who allegedly doesn’t contribute enough at home.
Dear Carolyn: I probably should have included this
[yesterday]: My husband was pretty socially awkward when we first met. I don’t want to say I did him a favor by marrying him, but that’s not far from the truth. I’m much better-looking than he is, I’m much smarter and I have a much better personality. We have an unbalanced marriage, and I expect him to compensate for that in some way. So even if he is doing slightly more work than I am, I don’t think that even comes close to what he really owes this marriage.
Va. You officially can’t be real.
Carolyn: I’m not sure why you think this isn’t real. My husband is upset about the whole thing and maybe my take on things is skewed. It’s hard to think my view is really so off when I get validation from just about everyone I talk with and even my husband would agree our marriage is “unbalanced.” He just doesn’t agree there needs to be a remedy.
Va. again
By marrying, you deemed each other your equals — emotional equals, equals in status, equal partners in each other’s happiness. That includes dividing chores more or less equally based on your total responsibilities, including jobs, kids, ailing relatives, etc. The marriage you’re describing is a business arrangement — one in which,
NICK GALIFIANAKIS FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
from here, you seem to be making out well. A straight answer, just in case.
Dear Carolyn: I appreciate the straight answer.
Maybe what I can take from all of this is that I need some individual counseling and that my husband and I need some marriage counseling.
Va. again
Yes, that’s fair. You do sound sincere now — your view that he owed you more housework because you have the better personality really was shocking to me. I don’t believe anyone gets married
as a favor to the spouse. Instead, people marry a perceived inferior
because there’s something in it for them — be it money or security or a sense of comparative superiority that props them up through life. Apparently, though, people who do this can persuade themselves that they’re doing someone a favor. Then, if the marriage isn’t the free ride to which they feel entitled, they feel justified in protesting. If that’s what happened here, then
I’ll just say this: Your husband is a human being. Please grant him the dignity his humanity affords him, and stop shouting to everyone who will listen about his relative worthlessness as a person against your high value. Start noting and appreciating what he does for you. And yes, counseling, stat.
Re: Shouting to everyone: Huh, wonder if I am guilty of that. My spouse is smart, attractive, interesting, etc. He is also lazy around the house, and moody. I vent about both. Should I not? It is true, not likely to change, and venting does help me cope with it.
Anonymous It’s okay to have discreet outlets; it’s
not okay to blab to any and all. And, it’s okay to accept trade-offs as
inevitable — but it’s not okay to hide behind “venting” when you’re really just miserable. Talk to fewer people, sure, but also listen to yourself.
Read the whole transcript or join the discussion live at noon Fridays
on
www.washingtonpost.com/discussions.
Write to Tell Me About It, Style, 1150 15th St. NW, Washington, D.C. 20071, or tellme@
washpost.com.
Tasty TLC for cookies in these care packages HINTS FROM HELOISE
Dear Heloise: When I was first married, my mother-in-law, an Army wife herself, sent my husband his favorite cookies periodically, knowing I was teaching and didn’t have a lot of time to bake for her only son. She packed them in popcorn —
unsalted, of course. Every cookie was in perfect condition, and the popcorn became an after-cookie treat. I used this method when sending cookies for my daughter in college, and she has used it recently to send cookies to a friend serving in Afghanistan. I really recommend this method of shipping cookies, whether across the
country or across the globe. Pat Baker, Reading, Pa.
Keep those care packages coming! It means the world to someone far away from home.
And another hint on safely sending
cookies ... Dear Heloise:
When I send cookies in the mail, I pack them in cookie tins and pour miniature marshmallows in between to protect
against breakage and help keep them
fresh. I use packing tape to seal the tin. Regina in Fort Worth
Dear Heloise: My best hint is to treat certain
vegetables and herbs as you would cut flowers. Trim the ends of parsley, asparagus, etc., and put in water. Wilted herbs are revived.
Helen in Fort Worth
Helen, how right you are! Herbs can be stored in the fridge in a glass jar or coffee cup with about an inch of water. Cover the herbs loosely with a plastic bag, and change the water daily. The herbs should last one week in the fridge.
Dear Heloise: Have loved your column for years, and
want to share one of my favorite helpful hints with you. When making vegetable soup, I use a bag of cole slaw veggie mix. It’s so easy, with all the cabbage and carrots already cut up.
Pat Loontjer, Omaha
Dear Readers: With e-mail and text-messaging popular, we might forget to take the time to write a note or letter. Rereading letters from parents and grandparents can help people learn about their family histories: romances, births, graduations, weddings and deaths. Write a short note or letter to someone you care about. You just might brighten the person’s day!
Send a hint to Heloise, P.O. Box 795000, San Antonio, Tex. 78279-5000, fax it to 210-HELOISE or e-mail it to
Heloise@Heloise.com. Please include your city and state. © 2010, King Features Syndicate
from vacations with in-laws ASK AMY
Husband wants a break
Dear Amy: I’m a married man in my early 40s. My wife and I live in a great community. We really make an effort to live within our means. We don’t have cable TV, we drive older cars that are paid for and we have no debt other than our house. The current economy and these financial choices do not leave much time or money for extravagant vacations. Because my wife misses her family, we
fly 2,000 miles to visit her folks twice a year.
Am I out of place to think that A. We
skip a year and have a family vacation somewhere else, such as Yellowstone, Disneyland, etc., or B. I stay home and let her visit her folks with the kids — although I wonder why I should be alone for two weeks just because after 10 years I’d like to do something else with my vacation time. My wife and I argued about this, and now her parents have agreed to pay for
our plane tickets. I’m still not happy. Frustrated Father
This isn’t really about money. This is about you not wanting to spend every single vacation with your in-laws. And, brother, I’m on your side. Your wife should definitely spend time with her family, but you two have a family together, and you could also develop vacation experiences with your kids outside of her family’s orbit. You visit your in-laws twice a year. So next year, visit them once as a family
and then do something different with your children (I vote for Yellowstone or camping in one of your state parks over a visit to the Disney empire). You should also invite these grandparents to visit your home. Because you’ve hid behind the red herring of money, your in-laws have called your bluff. Try doing things differently next year.
Dear Amy: I have been married for seven years to
a very kind man who adores me. He runs his own business and keeps a nice roof over our heads. Opposites attracted: I am very outgoing while he is quiet and reserved.
One thing has bothered me for quite some time. He never asks people about themselves. He is, however, quick to answer questions and talk about his successful business at great length. My friends think he doesn’t like them because he never talks to them. It’s embarrassing! After work, I ask about his day and
then wait for him to ask me about mine, but he never does. I was very upset about this recently. His response was, “If you wanted me to know what you did during the day, you would tell me, right?” To his credit, he has asked me once or twice since then about my day, but it felt forced. I feel he is not listening to me when I respond.
His lack of interest comes across as arrogant and inconsiderate. Am I
expecting too much for him to show an interest?
Frustrated in Calif.
People who are shy sometimes hide behind talking. They don’t quite understand the important dynamic behind social conversation. Conversing well is a learned skill; let your husband practice on you and encourage his efforts. Any new skill feels forced at first, but your positive reinforcement should make a difference, long term. A book you should both read is “Are
You Really Listening?: Keys to Successful Communication” by Paul Donoghue and Mary Siegel (2005, Sorin Books).
Dear Amy: Your discussion about a boy who had a collection of stuffed animals made me smile.
Mine was named Muffin. He was a duck that helped get me through law school.
Greg Here’s to Muffin, and all the other
stuffed friends out there who have helped their owners to cope with life’s challenges.
Write to Amy Dickinson at askamy@tribune. com or Ask Amy, Chicago Tribune, TT500, 435 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago, Ill. 60611.
© 2010 by the Chicago Tribune Distributed by Tribune Media Services
Dear Heloise: Quite a few charitable solicitations my wife and I receive contain a real coin to prompt us into giving. I consider it bad form to spend these on ourselves. I save them up, and the next time I’m out, I drop the money into a jar benefiting a society or other charity that leaves a can on local merchants’ counters.
Gregg in New York
Having exhaled, McMillan’s ladies still aren’t breathing easy
by Lisa Page
In her break-out bestseller, “Waiting to Exhale” (1992), Terry McMillan cel- ebrated female bonding. Girlfriends as- sumed top status in the hierarchy of im- portant relationships for women. The novel, about four black women living in Phoenix in the late 1980s, de- picted professional burn-out, romantic betrayal and surviv- al. These were women in their late 30s and early 40s, provid- ing solace to one another in a way that family members, hus- bands and boyfriends did not. They partied together, cried together and, ultimately, re- covered together. McMillan’s new novel, “Get- ting to Happy,” is a sequel that resumes the story some 15 years later. All four women are back, but this time, of course, they’re middle-aged. The is- sues of their youth have morphed into new ones. There are children now from failed relationships and grandchildren, too, along with failed businesses and second mortgages. Each of the four is in her 50s, or about to be, and not quite sure what to do with herself. There’s Savannah, a TV news pro-
ducer. She’s unhappily married to Isaac, a landscaper “in love with wood.” Isaac is also in love with porn and spends more time on the computer than with his wife. And he’s a Republican, which Savannah finds unacceptable. Robin is an insurance executive, a sin- gle mother and a compulsive shopper. The father of her daughter is in jail. She has a long history of sexual relationships with men that go nowhere, but she clings to one dream: getting married in a white dress. She recently discovered on- line dating.
Bernadine is between jobs and the for- mer owner of Sweet Tooth, a defunct res- taurant. Her children are away at school, leaving her alone to mull over her failed romances. Her first husband left her for his receptionist, and No. 2 betrayed her, too. Bernadine has retreated into pre- scription drugs and spends most of her days anaesthetizing herself.
Gloria is the only one happily married.
She’s a former hairdresser who manages her own salon. Her son is a policeman with three children and a wife of ques- tionable moral stature. But Gloria is happy, at least in the early pages of the book. McMillan has said she didn’t plan to write a sequel, but her old characters “began to reclaim their place in my heart, and, like old friends you haven’t seen since college, I wondered how they might be faring now.” She fleshes them
out by shifting the point of view, some- times writing in first person, sometimes in third, resulting in a crosshatch of per- spectives. Her dialogue remains superb. These women have all kinds of con-
GETTING TO HAPPY By Terry McMillan Viking. 375 pp. $27.95
temporary challenges, including elderly mothers, deadbeat dads, hard-up sisters and a changing job market. They’ve gained weight, gone through menopause and suffered memory loss. They’re lonely. They’ve stopped being social crea- tures. They used to “run their mouths on the phone half the night,” but now they e-mail and text each other. “Apparently we’re too damn old to have fun in public places,” muses Savan- nah. But occasionally they get together for Blockbuster Night, where they watch bootleg DVDs and sip moji- tos. Together, they
voice
their frustrations. “I find it grossly unfair that God rigged this whole thing so men seem to get better- looking as they get older
and women simply age out. Why is it that their wrinkles make them sexy and more distinguished,” asks Savannah, “while ours make us look old and un- attractive?” They decide, individually and togeth-
er, to upgrade their lives, to “get happy.” The difference between this book and
“Waiting to Exhale” is that “happy” has a different meaning now. For these wom- en, it’s no longer about the perfect job or the perfect man. It’s a more complicated notion. The theme of addiction carries through the novel, and that’s no acci- dent. McMillan suggests that Berna- dine’s struggle with antidepressants, Robin’s trips to the mall and Gloria’s struggle with food are all symptoms of the same thing. The notion of “getting to happy” means doing away with self- delusion. And, according to McMillan, it also means forgiveness. The outrage and the disappointment so vividly portrayed in the opening chapters must ultimately melt into understanding, even love, if possible.
Some readers may feel that “Getting to
Happy” doesn’t offer many surprises. The ladies learn to undo their vices, to visualize better lives and, through medi- tation, to breathe. And while this makes sense, in terms of the characters, it feels somewhat anticlimactic given the earli- er chapters. Still, there’s an integrity that isn’t compromised here. McMillan clear- ly respects her characters and her read- ers, too.
bookworld@washpost.com
Page is a visiting professor of creative writing at George Washington University.
S
C5
LEADING MAN: George Clooney shows he’s still No. 1 with “The American.” GILES KEYTE/ASSOCIATED PRESS
TOP 10 FILMS
Here are the top movie ticket sales Friday through Monday, with estimated weekend receipts and total receipts since the movie opened. The number of weeks opened is in parentheses.
Weekend Total in millions of dollars
1. The American (1) 2. Machete (1) 3. Takers (2)
4. The Last Exorcism (2) 5. Going the Distance (1) 6. The Expendables (4) 7. The Other Guys (5) 8. Eat Pray Love (4) 9. Inception (8)
10. Nanny McPhee Returns (3)
16.4 19.5 14.0 14.0 13.5 40.0 8.8 33.6 8.6 8.6 8.5 94.1 6.7 108.1 6.3 70.4 5.9 278.4 4.7 23.5
SOURCE: WWW.BOXOFFICEMOJO.COM
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