A remarkable essay
Today my friend Allison pointed me to a truly amazing essay on the Electric Venom blog. Beyond just the whole ego-surfing aspect of me and Michael being referenced in this blog, the essay brought up so many things for me. I write very autobiographical fiction, and I also write personal essays. Moreover, I am constitutionally incapable of keeping my mouth shut about my own life, particularly the aspects of it that make me look the worst. I have an essay coming out in the new Mother's Who Think collection about how I love my husband more than my children. I know I'm going to get grief for that, even though the editors wisely discouraged from putting in a line about how I love my husband so much that I would toss any one of my children in front of a bullet if that was the only way I could save his life. They recognized that for hyperbole above and beyond the usual. But the feeling I was trying to express is still in the essay -- it's the whole point of the essay. And I know there are going to be people who are made uncomfortable by it, people who will dislike me for it. (That is, if anybody reads it at all.) I continue to write this way because I am convinced that for every person who debates whether or not to call DSS and report me, there are others who recognize the emotion and are relieved to see it in print.
I hope.
So, Venomous one, I want to see your personal essays. I admire your honesty, and I'm blown away by your prose.
posted by ayeletw @ 12/03/2004 08:06:00 AM
63 Comments:
Nothing in the world wrong with loving your husband more than your children. I feel the same way. What's more, my parents always taught me that you're supposed to love your spouse more than your children. After all, the kids grow up and move away. The hubby, you have to live with for the rest of your life.
Wow. Fascinating and brave. I can't say I can relate, because I'd probably take the bullet myself not out of any heroic ambitions, but so that I wouldn't know who got it in the end.
I'm not sure if it's loving "more than" but I was told by a rather good therapist that the husband/wife relationship is PRIMARY. It is the most important relationship. And that kids do best if they see and understand that.
I didn't have that model growing up--my dad died when I was six. THen mom alone for six years. Then stepfather. But perhaps you saw healthy love relationships growing up and you are naturally putting into practice what you saw?
My husband would kill me if I sacrificed our daughter to save his life, and I'd kill him if he did the same. In fact, I'd probably then kill myself while I was at it, to avoid the pain and hard jail time. So we'd all be dead.
Problem solved!
I used to go far down this "we'd all be dead" road. Whenever Michael would travel I would decide that if he died in a plane crash, I would pull and Andrea Yates and then kill myself. But now, my children are old enough to have actual lives, interests beyond me. Or maybe they always did but I just couldn't see it. Jesus, this is morbid.
I think it's true that the relationship with your spouse/partner has to be paramount. Your love for children inevitably ends up unrequited to some extent.
I don't know if I agree. Husbands "come and go", but children are forever.
I'm another one of those who would sacrifice her spouse to save her children. I would hope he'd do the same.
But I don't think my position is necessarily the right one, either. And I have to admit I am envious of others being so in love with their spouses. I bet you exchange really nice birthday and holiday presents, too. I got a thesaurus for my last birthday. And the rally sad part is that I asked for it
Good luck with the blog. I linked to you and have had a lot of my admittedly smaller by loyal readership remark that they really enjoy your writing.
-Linda www.junkstorecowgirl.com
Have I mentioned that I absolutely LOVE this morbid and perhaps not-so-hypothetical discussion! What fun!
I can see how your point of view might rile mothers who are unable to be honest about not loving their husbands as much as you love yours (everybody must LOVE their husbands, just as everybody must LOVE their mothers), and hating you with envy precisely because of that. Me, I can envy you while continuing to admire your honesty. That is, I envy that you love your husband that much, not that you love him enough to sacrifice a child for him. That part I just don't get.
It's not that I WANT to sacrifice a child. It's just this insane Sophie's Choice thing. What if I had to? If the Nazis said, your child or your husband, and no you can't offer yourself in their place. In that situation (which would never happen, right?) I'd choose him.
He'd be furious, though, and would probably leave me for it, thereby defeating the entire purpose of the choice. Or not. How unselfish is my love? Probably not that unselfish.
At the risk of sounding like we're starting a Mutual Admiration Society, let me just say that I forgot to mention how much I'm in awe of your writing, your candor, and your refreshingly normal perspective on being a wife, mother and woman.
As for the Sophie's Choice... I'd make the same one. Without my husband, my children wouldn't have come to exist.
- Venomous Kate
I'm all flushed and blushing, Kate! :)
You are a bad mother. Coming from someone who had a child die and multiple miscarriages --- I long for a child. You do not deserve to be a mother.
You are a bad mother. Coming from someone who had a child die and multiple miscarriages --- I long for a child. You do not deserve to be a mother.
Well, I am totally with you AYELET and I thank you for voicing your opinion, I just saw you on OPRAh and you did great...just like Oprah said I do not think any of those mothers are having any sex or have any love for their husbands, he is just "there". Where I on the contrary love and cherish my husband. I adore my 2 boys but eventually they will leave me and not want my advise AT ALL...Yet my husband and I will be together, god-willing and as we promised before God forever...the woman who said husbands come and go must be on her 10th marriage...Marriage is forever, god gives us the gift of children as the fruit of the love IN THE MARRIAGE, NO MARRIAGE or NO INTIMACY w/ your partner NO CHILDREN.....Treasure the man who gave you those precious children, now on the other hand if you can't say you love him then for heaven's sake, what are you doing there? You are not giving your children a healthy example of a loving family, that is where their stability comes from......
My hats of to you AYELET, you are truly an example.
Ayelet has some good common sense when it comes to love. Many husbands/fathers are put somewhere below the ex-brother-in-law on the use of love continuim. If wives/mothers only realized we need love/sex and we need it to be consistant with passion!
Your words about harming your children frighten and sadden me deeply. My heart breaks for your children and the women who actually deserve children but can not have them....You really need serious serious help and I hope desperately that you will get it Ayelet...
i read your piece in the NYT and hated it. Surprisingly, based on your blog, I don't dislike you as much as I thought I would (I too love Kathleen Sullivan, formerly of HLS). How can you play these WHAT IF games with your children? Aren't you superstitious in the least? One the main thoughts I had reading your column, is that given the divorce rate in this country, you can never be sure that this grand passion you have will last. Then you will be quite embararassed by what you wrote. I also thought that people who talk about how great their sex life is all the time are trying to convince somebody or make up for something. Maybe you are more insecure than you think. Also, even (especially) if you firmly believe what you wrote, how can you deal with your children reading it one day? Don't you knowe the life long hurt you will cause them and I don't think there is a way to make up for it. I don't think any good publicity from your piece is worth that. This is the kind of piece you are better off writing and not showing to anyone.
Alright, so I'm 5 months late, but ventually you'll read this - probably.
I ended up on your page here entirely by accident but I'd like to thank you. More than that, I'd even like to write you by email, but, my handle doesn't have a email address yet,, so I'll just say it here.
My parents' marriage was terrible in a million ways but one thing that branded itself into my head and heart ever so deeply was the fact that, to my mother, her children were her life.
For one, I'm revolted by the fact that her children were her life inasmuch as I would have preferred she had her /own/ life, it's no fun being sacrificed for all the time.
But deeper and more importantly it colored ever so deeply my feeling about most women essentially having their husbands as sperm donors. I mean, you're supposed to "get along" with your husband, but your real love is the children.
I'm a man, by the way.
How terribly insecure I am then in a woman's love, how I fear that I'll be the entirely devoted lover, only to hbe jealous of my children for being my wife's "true" love.
I was left with a burning love in my heart for the woman that I'll chose to be my own , and terribly insecure in "knowing" that I would not end up being her true love.
It made sense from an evolutionary standpoint, from a cultural standpoint within our society and from the example that I witnessed as a most impressionable child.
And You, my friend, and the few others who wrote in their concurrance, showed me that I was not necessarilly correct. I now know that under certain circumstances (though I know not which) it is Entirely possible for your wife to love you as her One And Only until your last days in this world. And that encourages me, my friend, so thank you.
ayelet:
i read your article and also saw you on oprah.
sincere questions and comments:
1.does your husband feel the same exact way about YOU?
2. on oprah's show, you said that you worried about your husbands book groupies and that you were getting older and saggier (i paraphrase) and that he could potentially leave you for any one of these young girls---so was this essay really just one big commentary on your insecurity in this relationship?
you have said in the sunday sf chronicle magazine that your husband is so much the better writer, the one whom people will be reading for years to come and that you will merely be a footnote. again, the insecurity issue rears its head once again.
in a way you come across as one of those women who believe that their husbands are so much better than they, worship their husbands to the point of obsession, and do not feel complete as themselves but only as part of a couple.
to say the relationship is the primary one which is essentially the meat of the essay would certainly not have gotten all the publicity you received. i do think you had the ulterior motive to shout your name from the rooftops in any way possible. and you certainly succeeded.
since maternal love is non-sexual unlike spousal love which includes sexual attraction, how is it that you can even say you love him "more" than your children? that would imply that your love is the same across the board. clearly your maternal instinct is somewhat weak. i am not insulting you but rather pointing out that perhaps you would have been better off just clinging to your husband and remaining childless so as to have him all to yourself and not have to share him with anyone else.
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One would think that at this stage in life I would be unshockable. I'm a 40-year-old city editor at a daily newspaper and I read horrifying things every day -- many too terrible for us to print. Still, finding a mother who can say she loves her spouse more than her children and would in fact choose his life over theirs does shock me.
I always thought, before I had children, that all parents love their children very much. It didn't take me very long to see that that's not true. I saw other parents leaving their small children to go on vacations. Not nursing. Propping bottles. Letting them cry routinely. All sorts of things that felt fundamentally wrong to me and that I felt I could not do and did not want to do. I found being a mother extremely fulfulling and I feel sorry for people who don't seem to be able to really get into the experience.
It didn't keep me from returning to my career as they began to grow up, but I was never bored being the full-time caregiver of my children when they were small. Today, I have a very warm and loving relationship with my two GREAT teens. I also have had no problems with them. They obey me, respect me, and achieve well at school. I enjoy their company and they enjoy mine, even as they grow up and begin to spend a little more of their time in school and social activities.
When did feminism begin to mean not that a woman could "find herself" not just at home but anywhere EXCEPT home?
This whole blog really discourages me -- that a mother can say such things and not feel that she has something fundamentally wrong with her ... and that so many others have come out of the woodwork and said they identify with her.
Are there other mothers out there who feel bonded to their children?
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