Dear Abby Needs an Update

This weekend, I was casually looking for the movie times, when I spied Dear Abby and was compelled to read it. When I was in my teens I used to read Ann Landers religiously, so I’m still drawn to advice columns. This one sadly disappointed me.

A newly-wed woman was complaining that her husband was happy to eat frozen pizzas and bagged salads every night saying the meals she cooked, with pleasure after a long day at work, were too expensive and too much trouble. Abby advised her to make him eat them anyway, because it was healthier and gave her pleasure. Hmmm.

There are so many things wrong with that answer, I don’t know where to start. First, she works herself, so she should feel free to cook for pleasure if she wants. Second, if he doesn’t want to eat what she cooks, she should take the leftovers for lunch the next day. Third, he’s an adult and is entitled to make his own food choices, healthy or not, and is capable of heating up his own pizza and pouring his salad from the bag. Fourth, who says a married couple must be blended together to such a degree that they must eat the same way?

The answer Abby gave leans on the tired old way of looking at marriage that I see around me everyday. This subject bugs me so much, that I may have mentioned it before in my blogs, but it bears repeating. Being married doesn’t equate to giving up oneself and becoming like the other.

I can immediately think of two couples where the wife is constantly saying things like, “We think…” Really? And when did your husband have his cloned (from yours) brain transplant? I’ve never heard a husband say the same thing. I think this is so horribly wrong.

These same two couples are not able to function separately in their lives away from work. The wives can only go shopping by themselves, never to a girls’ night out or a solo weekend retreat. The husbands seem to whine a lot and mope when left on their own, one of them choosing to starve until his wife returns to feed him. I don’t know which is sadder, being held captive against your will or willingly building your own prison walls.

Anyway, Abby, this isn’t the first half of the 20th century when the sole responsibility for health and happiness (and cooking) was in the wife’s hands. This is an age where two adults supposedly come together out of love, most of the time sharing responsibilities for income and household. It’s not necessary for the poor schmuck to eat her dinners to make her happy or him healthier. It is necessary for both to wake up to the reality that they are different entities and truly blend their preferences in a way that neither gives up the way they want to live; or not. In which case, they’re not long for the married state.